...and the best answer I have ever seen was posted. In addition to this being the best answer I have ever seen, it's also one of the finest examples of satire I have ever seen. Here it is in its entirety...
The questions was how exactly are Christians under attack in the United States?
I'll tell you how:
1. Churches in the USA are regularly burned down by atheists, Muslims, and other anti-Christians, and the secular law enforcement agencies here won't even investigate. That's why you rarely see a church that can be identified as a church in the US. Mostly, Christians meet in hidden locations to avoid detection.
2. It's almost impossible for Christians to get elected to public office. As soon as word gets out that a candidate is Christian, s/he can kiss that election good-bye.
3. The Bible has been banned in the United States. You can't get it here legally, and if you're caught with one you'll go to prison.
4. Christian kids live in fear of their schoolmates discovering they're Christian, because it's bound to lead to teasing, bullying, even getting beaten up.
5. All broadcasting of Christian views has been censored. Try as you might, you will not find a Christian radio or TV station in the US. They do not exist.
6. Christian holidays are forbidden. You'll never hear a peep about Christmas or Easter in the US -- people are simply too afraid to openly celebrate these holidays. Which is a shame for people like me because there would be oodles of marketing opportunities around those events, but alas, no.
7. All Christian symbols are banned. You cannot find Christian jewelry, bumper stickers, t-shirts, or anything like that in the US.
8. Christians who dare reveal their identity, or who are even suspected of being Christian, are regularly beaten in the streets by angry mobs. And again, the secular law enforcement here does nothing to stop it.
9. Christians in America are forced to publicly deny their faith, and to perform public actions to prove they are not Christian, such as being forced into a gay marriage. The alternative is life in prison, or execution.
10. People who are openly Christian here cannot own a business, are harassed at the voting booth so that many do not even attempt to vote, are subjected to special taxes no one else has to pay, and must have a cross stamped on their driver licenses, Social Security cards, and passports.
In short, America is a brutal and frightening place if you're a Christian. I wouldn't go there if I were you.
The answer has gotten over 3,000 views already with my question over 8,000 views. No wonder...it's completely brilliant and makes conservative Christians look fucking ridiculous.
The only thing that is under attack is the ability of a conservative Christian (see also, fucking hypocrites) to force their opinion on the rest of Christianity. That's what they are really pissed off about.
We are calling them on their bullshit.
Sunday, June 14, 2015
Cast The First Stone!
Hey kids, check this out!
It's a Jesus slingshot that's perfect for your evangelical buddy. Help him or her to cast the first stone with this supercool slingshot!
It's a Jesus slingshot that's perfect for your evangelical buddy. Help him or her to cast the first stone with this supercool slingshot!
Saturday, June 13, 2015
Can The Republicans Win In Any Way With King v Burwell?
Chris Trejbal over at Americablog doesn't seem to think so and I agree. If SCOTUS does not uphold the subsidies, they have two choices. If they go the nuclear option, they instantly piss off seven million voters. If they go with the band aid, quick fix option, then the adolescents in their base get pissed off. If SCOTUS upholds again, it would be incredibly demoralizing.
The one thing about his piece that really stood out for me was this quote from the Daily Caller's Neil Siefring.
Republicans shouldn’t disrupt Obamacare’s collapse if the Supreme Court decides the subsidies are unworkable. The blame for this lies squarely with our scholar-leader President Obama and the Democrats. Republicans should not rescue them from their mistakes. Republicans have pointed out for years that Obamacare is unworkable. If the Supreme Court helps prove them correct, Republican leadership in the House should take advantage of the decision to pivot health care back to the states as rapidly as possible and get the federal government out of the health care business at which it has failed so badly. Republicans in the House and Senate should resist the temptation to provide mouth-to-mouth to the bureaucracy the left has constructed. They have done so too often in the past.
Scholar-leader? Prove them correct? Why doesn't Mr. Siefring, like every other conservative out there, admit that he can't fucking stand it when people are smarter and more accomplished than he is? This is a very core problem with conservatives today. They suffer from terrible, terrible adolescent envy.
Fix this problem and most others go away.
The one thing about his piece that really stood out for me was this quote from the Daily Caller's Neil Siefring.
Republicans shouldn’t disrupt Obamacare’s collapse if the Supreme Court decides the subsidies are unworkable. The blame for this lies squarely with our scholar-leader President Obama and the Democrats. Republicans should not rescue them from their mistakes. Republicans have pointed out for years that Obamacare is unworkable. If the Supreme Court helps prove them correct, Republican leadership in the House should take advantage of the decision to pivot health care back to the states as rapidly as possible and get the federal government out of the health care business at which it has failed so badly. Republicans in the House and Senate should resist the temptation to provide mouth-to-mouth to the bureaucracy the left has constructed. They have done so too often in the past.
Scholar-leader? Prove them correct? Why doesn't Mr. Siefring, like every other conservative out there, admit that he can't fucking stand it when people are smarter and more accomplished than he is? This is a very core problem with conservatives today. They suffer from terrible, terrible adolescent envy.
Fix this problem and most others go away.
Friday, June 12, 2015
Saving Lives
One of the main reasons why I support the president is that he has literally saved lives since he has taken office. The passage of the Affordable Care Act has led to more people having insurance and getting medical care that didn't have it before.
Ergo, lives saved. It doesn't get much simpler than that.
Pretty spectacular!
Ergo, lives saved. It doesn't get much simpler than that.
Pretty spectacular!
Thursday, June 11, 2015
The Trouble with Girls
There's been a lot of talk about women in science and technology in recent months. Google's Eric Schmidt stuck his foot in it last March. Apple's Tim Cook wants more gender equality, but his company is still 70% male.
But what has attracted the most attention were comments by Tim Hunt, a 72-year-old biochemist and Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine, who made advances in cell division:
He meant the comments as a joke, but continued to defend the sentiment behind them:
Second, I really don't know where the bit about crying comes from. I worked for 25 years in software engineering, and always had women coworkers and/or bosses. My wife worked in electrical engineering for just as long, and had many female coworkers and employees. Neither of us ever saw women crying at work because they were criticized.
I wonder: in Hunt's storied career, did his criticism of a male colleague ever elicit angry shouts, obscenity-laced streams of invective or even fisticuffs? That's a typical male response to criticism. I have seen numerous violent emotional outbursts from men over the years (especially from managers). I cannot believe that Hunt was never involved in his own share of such altercations.
Isn't an obscene rant just as unprofessional and unscientific as a crying jag?
As a man of a certain age, Hunt would perceive a swearing-filled shouting match as a proper way for scientists to settle their differences. He knows how to win such an argument: just shout back, only louder.
What Hunt is really complaining about is that he can't win an argument by shouting louder when the object of his derision starts crying. Crying disarms him and exposes him for the bully he is.
Now, assuming that Hunt really means what he says, all this loving and crying is his fault. He says that 1) he falls in love, 2) she falls in love, 3) he makes her cry.
Since Hunt is a Nobel Prize winner, I'm going to venture a guess that he ran his lab. That would mean he was the boss. I would also guess the man is rather arrogant, brilliant, self-absorbed and full of himself (he did win the Nobel Prize, so he does have reason). There's an inherent imbalance of power when a renowned boss romances an employee. Because of the potential for abuse, most workplaces strongly discourage such relationships and some even ban them.
Why? The best way to undermine any person's confidence and credibility is to make it appear they obtained their position through sexual favors. By instigating such a relationship with an employee, Hunt is torpedoing that person's career in the most callous way possible.
When Hunt criticizes a lover, the subtext is, "You are stupid. You have this job just because we had sex. My criticism means I don't love you anymore. You're going to lose absolutely everything: my respect, our love and your job. And stop crying, damn it!"
Hunt is little different from the imams and the ayatollahs who want to cloister women in their houses and hide them under chadors. Like them, Hunt blames women for his inability to work without being distracted by their gender. Hunt is the problem, not the women.
Instead of banning women from the labs, brilliant men who can't keep it in their pants should be kept out of management positions. They should work in solitary, monk-like contemplation where they won't be distracted by their inability to concentrate on the science at hand and constantly "falling in love." Which is just the euphemism men like Hunt use for "getting laid."
The real trouble with girls? Men are dicks. In both senses of the word.
But what has attracted the most attention were comments by Tim Hunt, a 72-year-old biochemist and Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine, who made advances in cell division:
“Let me tell you about my trouble with girls,” Mr. Hunt said Monday at the World Conference of Science Journalists in South Korea. “Three things happen when they are in the lab: You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them they cry.”The reactions to his comments have been swift and harsh. Hunt has resigned as honorary professor at University College London.
He meant the comments as a joke, but continued to defend the sentiment behind them:
“I did mean the part about having trouble with girls,” he said. “I have fallen in love with people in the lab and people in the lab have fallen in love with me, and it’s very disruptive to the science because it’s terribly important that in a lab people are on a level playing field.”
And he elaborated on his comments that women are prone to cry when criticized.
“It’s terribly important that you can criticize people’s ideas without criticizing them and if they burst into tears, it means that you tend to hold back from getting at the absolute truth,” he said. “Science is about nothing but getting at the truth, and anything that gets in the way of that diminishes, in my experience, the science.”First off, Hunt has blinders on. There is and always has been same-sex romance. Scientists can be gay like everyone else: segregating men and women won't end romantic entanglements in the lab.
Second, I really don't know where the bit about crying comes from. I worked for 25 years in software engineering, and always had women coworkers and/or bosses. My wife worked in electrical engineering for just as long, and had many female coworkers and employees. Neither of us ever saw women crying at work because they were criticized.
I wonder: in Hunt's storied career, did his criticism of a male colleague ever elicit angry shouts, obscenity-laced streams of invective or even fisticuffs? That's a typical male response to criticism. I have seen numerous violent emotional outbursts from men over the years (especially from managers). I cannot believe that Hunt was never involved in his own share of such altercations.
Isn't an obscene rant just as unprofessional and unscientific as a crying jag?
As a man of a certain age, Hunt would perceive a swearing-filled shouting match as a proper way for scientists to settle their differences. He knows how to win such an argument: just shout back, only louder.
What Hunt is really complaining about is that he can't win an argument by shouting louder when the object of his derision starts crying. Crying disarms him and exposes him for the bully he is.
Now, assuming that Hunt really means what he says, all this loving and crying is his fault. He says that 1) he falls in love, 2) she falls in love, 3) he makes her cry.
Since Hunt is a Nobel Prize winner, I'm going to venture a guess that he ran his lab. That would mean he was the boss. I would also guess the man is rather arrogant, brilliant, self-absorbed and full of himself (he did win the Nobel Prize, so he does have reason). There's an inherent imbalance of power when a renowned boss romances an employee. Because of the potential for abuse, most workplaces strongly discourage such relationships and some even ban them.
Why? The best way to undermine any person's confidence and credibility is to make it appear they obtained their position through sexual favors. By instigating such a relationship with an employee, Hunt is torpedoing that person's career in the most callous way possible.
When Hunt criticizes a lover, the subtext is, "You are stupid. You have this job just because we had sex. My criticism means I don't love you anymore. You're going to lose absolutely everything: my respect, our love and your job. And stop crying, damn it!"
Hunt is little different from the imams and the ayatollahs who want to cloister women in their houses and hide them under chadors. Like them, Hunt blames women for his inability to work without being distracted by their gender. Hunt is the problem, not the women.
Instead of banning women from the labs, brilliant men who can't keep it in their pants should be kept out of management positions. They should work in solitary, monk-like contemplation where they won't be distracted by their inability to concentrate on the science at hand and constantly "falling in love." Which is just the euphemism men like Hunt use for "getting laid."
The real trouble with girls? Men are dicks. In both senses of the word.
Cool Guy With Gun At Airport
Check out Jim Cooley.
He's really cooley, I guess, because he likes to carry his AR-15 at the airport. And then he likes to complain about being harassed by the police. Gosh, I can't imagine why...
Perhaps he and victim George Zimmerman should start a club!
He's really cooley, I guess, because he likes to carry his AR-15 at the airport. And then he likes to complain about being harassed by the police. Gosh, I can't imagine why...
Perhaps he and victim George Zimmerman should start a club!
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Climate Change Won't Make Plants Grow Faster
One of the tenets of climate change deniers is that as the world warms -- when they admit that it is warming -- plants will grow more quickly. It turns out, not surprisingly, that's a lie:
The interesting thing is that the study was instigated by climate deniers:
“There is more to climate change than just temperature,” says Camilo Mora, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Hawaii in Mānoa, who led the work. Drought and limited sunlight will undermine any gain from a warmer atmosphere. By 2100, Mora says, “there could be an 11 percent reduction in the plant growing season worldwide.”Specifically:
One primary reason is that heating the Arctic will not bring pineapples to Alaska. There is insufficient sunlight year-round at high latitudes to support lush vegetation. In addition, the tropics will lose up to 200 “suitable growing days” a year—days when temperature, soil moisture and sunlight favor growth rather than retard it—because of excessive heat and drought. Overall, “the decreasing number of suitable growing days in the tropics will offset optimistic projections at mid- and high-latitudes,” the study concludes.And the idea that increased carbon dioxide levels will make plants grow faster because it's "plant food?" Not true.
Greater levels of CO2 made no difference one way or the other. At higher temperatures plants open their pores, called stomata, to capture the elevated CO2, which boosts photosynthesis, greening the leaves. But plants also tend to close their stomata in warmer temperatures to prevent water loss. Mora says that on balance the two effects cancel out.Plants don't like extreme heat, and just like people, they die when they get too hot. There's a reason that the hottest places in the world -- deserts -- have so few plants.
The interesting thing is that the study was instigated by climate deniers:
Mora did not expect this result when he began the study, inspired by notes he swapped with a climate denier. In 2013 Mora published a high-profile study in Nature showing that climate change would harm plants and animals in the tropics sooner than it would hurt them in the Arctic. He says he received numerous e-mails and phone calls attacking the results. “In one such phone call I decided to talk to the person,” he explains. “The guy, one of the so-called climate deniers, claimed that climate change would actually be good for the planet.” The argument is known as the greening effect—that warmer temperatures and higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere would increase plant growth. Mora found several serious papers reaching that conclusion.
But Mora, who grew up in Colombia and saw plants struggle under high heat and low rainfall, had a hunch that there was more to the story. He and his graduate students calculated the number of days, from now through 2100, when plants would have favorable temperature, moisture and light to grow. They found that at high latitudes plants in the future could not “profit” from warmth because sunlight is limited much of the year. In the tropics temperatures got too hot for numerous plants and drought rose, adding stress to already overtaxed ecosystems. Broadleaf forests there would take the biggest hit, losing as much as three months of suitable growing days annually.Nonetheless, Mora sees an upside to climate deniers:
Mora sees two big lessons from the new analysis. One, “that nothing good can come from messing with the Earth’s climate.” And two, “that engaging climate deniers could be good for scientific productivity.”If climate deniers were all just harmless cranks making scientists cross their t's and dot their i's, that would be one thing. But when they're employees and shills for oil and coal companies that spend billions of dollars suppressing and distorting the truth, dictating government policy and sucking up hundreds of billions of our tax dollars through direct and indirect subsidies, it's a whole other can of worms.
Tuesday, June 09, 2015
Monday, June 08, 2015
Young American Taliban
Check out this photo:
It's from a collection of photos that were found in Nancy Lanza's home after the policed searched during the Sandy Hook investigation. It is not known whether this is Adam or not. Either way, I find this to be profoundly disturbing. What kind of seriously fucked up mentality brings you to a place like this?
Oh, right....the same as this one...
So, how much longer are we going to put up with this ideology?
It's from a collection of photos that were found in Nancy Lanza's home after the policed searched during the Sandy Hook investigation. It is not known whether this is Adam or not. Either way, I find this to be profoundly disturbing. What kind of seriously fucked up mentality brings you to a place like this?
Oh, right....the same as this one...
So, how much longer are we going to put up with this ideology?
Sunday, June 07, 2015
Fantastic Words!
From a recent question on Quora...
I've long suspected that a lot of modern christianity is the result of people who want to be admired and respected like Jesus, but in their hearts they know that they have no intention of living up to Jesus' examples of humility, compassion, sacrifice and tolerance -
So, the only way they can be "like Jesus" is by pretending, at each and every opportunity, that they're being tortured and vilified for their wonderfulness, by jealous moral inferiors. This is why they react with the righteous anger and the teeth gnashing and the wailing and the hysterics whenever they don't get their way - Every time somebody tells them "No, you can't do that", what they pretend to hear is "I HATE YOU AND I WILL CRUSH YOU AND ALL YOUR KIND INTO NOTHING !"
Maybe it's best explained with this wonderfully accurate phrase that I once heard used by an arrogant prick, in a story by Mr. Howard Chaykin: "You can't talk to me that way ! Don't you know who I think I am ?!"
That last line from Mr. Chaykin pretty much sums up every conversation I've ever had with a conservative in general, let alone Christian!
I've long suspected that a lot of modern christianity is the result of people who want to be admired and respected like Jesus, but in their hearts they know that they have no intention of living up to Jesus' examples of humility, compassion, sacrifice and tolerance -
So, the only way they can be "like Jesus" is by pretending, at each and every opportunity, that they're being tortured and vilified for their wonderfulness, by jealous moral inferiors. This is why they react with the righteous anger and the teeth gnashing and the wailing and the hysterics whenever they don't get their way - Every time somebody tells them "No, you can't do that", what they pretend to hear is "I HATE YOU AND I WILL CRUSH YOU AND ALL YOUR KIND INTO NOTHING !"
Maybe it's best explained with this wonderfully accurate phrase that I once heard used by an arrogant prick, in a story by Mr. Howard Chaykin: "You can't talk to me that way ! Don't you know who I think I am ?!"
That last line from Mr. Chaykin pretty much sums up every conversation I've ever had with a conservative in general, let alone Christian!
Christians Under Attack?
I think there are several reasons why conservatives like to play the victim as detailed here by Bill Maher. The main one is they generate support by fomenting anger, hate and fear. What better way to do it then the garbage Bill points out?
'Tis a bizarre world in which they live. I'm very, very glad I don't go through life constantly feeling persecuted and under attack. Oh well...at least they have guns to fight off the imaginary monsters:)
Saturday, June 06, 2015
The 411 On The Clinton Foundation
The attacks and childish taunting against the Clinton Foundation have gotten pretty silly of late. The right wing bubble has been spinning some pretty ridiculous yarns (see: lies) about the organization so I think it's way past time we examine the objective reality. A good starting point is the foundation's site itself. Follow any of the links above the top banner and you can see all the work that they do in the world. It's pretty impressive and helpful to a lot of people...which is exactly why conservatives hate it as much as they do. As one begins to dig deeper into the foundation, several things become apparently quickly-all of which torpedo the myths about the organization we have heard so much about from the right wing bubble.
First, this isn't a personal, family organization. It is a large not-for-profit philanthropic entity that solicits contributions, establishes and runs programs and serves as a vast convening vehicle to mobilize other non-governmental organizations (NGOs), government and private corporate assets to efficiently solve heretofore unsolvable, major world problems.
Second, Bill and Hillary Clinton, along with many other people, work for the foundation. It's not their personal organization. It's a communal one...something conservatives always have had trouble understanding:) They earn zero income and receive no benefits from the foundation. In fact, they donate much of their own personal money to the foundation along with many Democrats and Republicans as well as putting in many hours to ensure that objectives in helping people are met.
Third, contrary to the lies being told about the Clinton Foundation's lack of transparency, the organization is very open about the source of its contributions. Even though they are not required by law, the still post the contributors to the foundation. This is a great illustration as to exactly what happens when you are more forthcoming with information. They basically make shit up. No wonder she doesn't want to release her private emails.
Fourth, 88% of the monies collected by the Clinton Foundation are spent on programs and direct activities that benefit people in need in this country and around the world. Between the Foundation and its subsidiary organization, the Clinton Global Initiative, more than 400 million people in 180 countries have benefitted from its activities since its inception in 2002 - again: that's 400 million people! It has been committed to meeting a number of major world challenges and has active programs addressing climate change, economic development in some of the world's poorest nations, health, including the deliver of HIV/Aids medications at low cost to victims in the world's impoverished countries, general health and wellness and improving opportunities for women and girls. The Foundation has had a major impact on improving the Haitian economy both before and after its terrible earthquake.
This runs contrary to the mostly false statement that the Clinton Foundation spends very little on actual charity. The foundation is not set up like a regular charity that farms out its aid to other workers. They hire workers in house and pay them a salary. That's why their administrative costs are so high. As is most typical of right wing blog commenters, the wordsmithing and monkey word games are hauled out in the hopes of a "gotcha."
I'm wondering if this is going to backfire at some point, though. The continued attacks on Hillary Clinton will inevitably increase the image of her as a victim.
First, this isn't a personal, family organization. It is a large not-for-profit philanthropic entity that solicits contributions, establishes and runs programs and serves as a vast convening vehicle to mobilize other non-governmental organizations (NGOs), government and private corporate assets to efficiently solve heretofore unsolvable, major world problems.
Second, Bill and Hillary Clinton, along with many other people, work for the foundation. It's not their personal organization. It's a communal one...something conservatives always have had trouble understanding:) They earn zero income and receive no benefits from the foundation. In fact, they donate much of their own personal money to the foundation along with many Democrats and Republicans as well as putting in many hours to ensure that objectives in helping people are met.
Third, contrary to the lies being told about the Clinton Foundation's lack of transparency, the organization is very open about the source of its contributions. Even though they are not required by law, the still post the contributors to the foundation. This is a great illustration as to exactly what happens when you are more forthcoming with information. They basically make shit up. No wonder she doesn't want to release her private emails.
Fourth, 88% of the monies collected by the Clinton Foundation are spent on programs and direct activities that benefit people in need in this country and around the world. Between the Foundation and its subsidiary organization, the Clinton Global Initiative, more than 400 million people in 180 countries have benefitted from its activities since its inception in 2002 - again: that's 400 million people! It has been committed to meeting a number of major world challenges and has active programs addressing climate change, economic development in some of the world's poorest nations, health, including the deliver of HIV/Aids medications at low cost to victims in the world's impoverished countries, general health and wellness and improving opportunities for women and girls. The Foundation has had a major impact on improving the Haitian economy both before and after its terrible earthquake.
This runs contrary to the mostly false statement that the Clinton Foundation spends very little on actual charity. The foundation is not set up like a regular charity that farms out its aid to other workers. They hire workers in house and pay them a salary. That's why their administrative costs are so high. As is most typical of right wing blog commenters, the wordsmithing and monkey word games are hauled out in the hopes of a "gotcha."
I'm wondering if this is going to backfire at some point, though. The continued attacks on Hillary Clinton will inevitably increase the image of her as a victim.
Friday, June 05, 2015
Walker Raising Taxes?
Scott Walker recently announced a $500 million dollar stadium deal for the Milwaukee Bucks, half of which will be funded by taxpayers. Somewhat perplexing, no? After all, isn't this the same Scott Walker who is "battle tested" and fighting for lower taxes? I guess $250 million dollars of corporate hand outs are OK:)
I guess funding basketball is OK but not education.
I guess funding basketball is OK but not education.
No Hiatus
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released a report saying that has been no hiatus in global warming after all. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration readjusted thousands of weather data points to account for different measuring techniques through the decades. Their calculations show that since 1998, the rate of warming is about the same as it has been since 1950: about two-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit a decade.
The so-called hiatus has been touted by non-scientists who reject mainstream climate science. Those claims have resonated; two years ago, the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change felt the need to explain why the Earth was not heating up as expected, listing such reasons as volcanic eruptions, reduced solar radiation and the oceans absorbing more heat.
"The reality is that there is no hiatus," said Tom Karl, director of the National Centers for Environmental Information in Asheville, North Carolina. He is the lead author of a study published Thursday in the peer-reviewed journal Science.
One key to claims of a hiatus is the start date: 1998. That year there was a big temperature spike; some of the following years were not as hot, though even hotter years followed in 2005, 2010 and 2014, according to NOAA, NASA and temperature records kept in England and Japan. This year is on pace to break last year's global heat record. The key here is this spike date which is exactly how the church of the climate deniers wordmith and right wing blog comment their way into some sort of an argument.
Remember, the linked report above is peer reviewed science (see: objective reality). The comments sections of a right wing blog is not (see: inferiority complex, envy of success and accomplishment).
Oh, and I had an email request to link this site again for those of you out there who want to torpedo the climate deniers with the detailed science. Click on the intermediate and advanced tabs and use that information in your next conversation. Witness the cognitive dissonance.
Remember, it feels like they are being physically attacked!
The so-called hiatus has been touted by non-scientists who reject mainstream climate science. Those claims have resonated; two years ago, the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change felt the need to explain why the Earth was not heating up as expected, listing such reasons as volcanic eruptions, reduced solar radiation and the oceans absorbing more heat.
"The reality is that there is no hiatus," said Tom Karl, director of the National Centers for Environmental Information in Asheville, North Carolina. He is the lead author of a study published Thursday in the peer-reviewed journal Science.
One key to claims of a hiatus is the start date: 1998. That year there was a big temperature spike; some of the following years were not as hot, though even hotter years followed in 2005, 2010 and 2014, according to NOAA, NASA and temperature records kept in England and Japan. This year is on pace to break last year's global heat record. The key here is this spike date which is exactly how the church of the climate deniers wordmith and right wing blog comment their way into some sort of an argument.
Remember, the linked report above is peer reviewed science (see: objective reality). The comments sections of a right wing blog is not (see: inferiority complex, envy of success and accomplishment).
Oh, and I had an email request to link this site again for those of you out there who want to torpedo the climate deniers with the detailed science. Click on the intermediate and advanced tabs and use that information in your next conversation. Witness the cognitive dissonance.
Remember, it feels like they are being physically attacked!
Thursday, June 04, 2015
Why Can't America Win Wars Anymore?
Why Can't America Win Wars Anymore? This question has been asked in many forms for many years (in MinnPost, the Atlantic, Ricochet, The Daily Beast, The LA Times, etc.). So let's look at the wars that we've won, and the wars that we've lost and see what we can learn.
We "won" the Libyan civil war, in that we bombed Qaddafi's military forces and helped the rebels overthrow and kill the dictator. But the place is falling apart now as various Libyan factions bicker with each other and ISIS is moving in to cause havoc.
We "won" the Iraq war, in that we destroyed the Iraqi military, killed lots of civilians, installed a puppet government and killed Saddam Hussein. But that puppet government turned out to be a puppet of Iran, not the United States. Now Iraq is falling apart again as ISIS fighters take over large swaths of Iraqi territory that the Shiite government can't hold because they have been treating the Sunni inhabitants of those areas like animals.
We won the Gulf War straight up: we kicked Saddam out of Kuwait, crushed his army, placed a no-fly zone over the entire country and neutered his territorial ambitions for a decade. Some people think we "lost" because we didn't take Saddam out at that time.
But it was Dick Cheney, of all people, who so expertly explained why we had to leave Saddam in power in 1993: if Iraq fell apart, then Iran would gain power and then Syria would start falling apart, and then the whole Middle East would go to hell. It turns out the 1993 Dick Cheney was dead right: all the bad things the 1993 Cheney said would happen did happen when the 2003 Cheney invaded Iraq.
We lost the Vietnam war straight up. Yet for all the screaming about dominoes and the moaning about the blow to our prestige, "losing" in Vietnam has had a far more positive outcome than "winning" in Iraq. Communism has been defeated across the globe: China and Vietnam are now capitalist countries, with communist governments in name only.
The Korean War was a draw: we kept South Korea free, while the Chinese and Russians kept North Korea captive. North Korea is now a rogue state: a tyrannical feudal monarchy run by a deranged despot, with a ruling class that serves at the whim of the Supreme Leader and can be executed for offenses as trivial as falling asleep in a meeting.
We like to think we won WWII straight up. We freed western Europe and North Africa from the Germans. We freed Asia and the Pacific from the Japanese. But eastern Europe fell under Soviet control, and shortly thereafter China and much of Asia fell under communist rule.
To make sure we sustained our wins in South Korea, Germany and Japan we had to embark on a huge program of reconstruction and nation-building. We had to occupy these nations for years, babysit them while they wrote new constitutions, build numerous bases at tremendous expense and station troops there for up to 70 years -- and counting.
We like to think we won WWI straight up: we ejected Germany from the rest of Europe. But Russia fell to the Bolsheviks, and Germany fell into a terrible depression, partly due to an unreasonable treaty forced upon them by the victors, and 20 years later Germany started another war. WWI was supposed to the war to end all wars, and clearly it did not.
We "won" the Civil War in the United States, but to this day there are millions of Americans who celebrate the birthday of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America and a traitor to this nation. And these are the same people who today claim to be the "real Americans."
What do our victories and losses tell us? We can win wars to eject invaders and free people from slavery. We used moral suasion to convince the citizens of Germany and Japan that the Holocaust and the war crimes committed by the Japanese were wrong, and got them to change their ways. Stationing hundreds of thousands of troops there for decades made it stick.
But we lose wars that we have no moral standing in, or wars that prop up corrupt allies like South Vietnam. And wars never change anyone's minds about the rightness of their cause, or that a "way of life" based on the enslavement of human beings was worth fighting for. Incredibly, I'm talking about the American South, not Nazi Germany.
How does this apply to our current conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria?
We invaded Afghanistan to get rid of Al Qaeda and bin Laden. We did that in short order, and therefore "won," but then we decided that we also had to get rid of the Taliban. We've been stuck there for 13 years now. (The Soviets were stuck with the same problem in the 1980s but called it quits when their country fell apart.)
We can't win in Afghanistan for two reasons: one is military, the other cultural. Militarily, Pakistan has been undercutting us from Day One in Afghanistan. For some reason Pakistan believes that an Afghanistan mired in eternal turmoil somehow diminishes the power of India, their sworn enemy. Now Pakistan is besieged by their own Taliban terrorists, who kill children by the hundreds. Both Afghan and Pakistani Talibans are essentially untouchable in their mountain aeries in western Pakistan.
Culturally, we have no traction in Afghanistan: we are perceived as invaders and Crusaders, an image perpetuated by American conservatives who keep making this a war between Islam and Christianity. The Afghan Taliban is not an invading force, they are native Afghan Pashto Muslims who have lived there for centuries. Yes, they're an evil misogynistic pack of scumbags, but it's still their country.
There the Americans are the interlopers, the ones using drones to shoot Hellfire missiles into wedding parties and bombing houses filled with children. Unlike the Germans and the Japanese, the Taliban didn't invade another country. We invaded them to get at a few foreign terrorists who were hiding out there. Our bombardment of an entire country to root out a small number of criminals puts us in a very poor light there.
And by the way. We were the ones who financed the Taliban and forced the Soviets out of Afghanistan. As Jon Stewart noted in "Learning Curves are for Pussies," the CIA says it's the only time doing such a thing worked.
It's the same story in Iraq. We are viewed as foreign invaders there. Some locals want to use us to destroy their enemies, but they don't like us, or trust us, or believe in democracy or the rule of law. If we destroy ISIS in the Sunni areas of Iraq, the Shiite government will send troops into those areas and kill the Sunnis for cooperating with ISIS. It's a lose-lose proposition.
We have even less standing to meddle in Syria, where our mortal enemy the Iranians are allied with our mortal enemy Assad who are fighting against our mortal enemy ISIS, and we're allied with people who used to say we were their mortal enemy, but now they'll only cop to despising us and cursing us for not giving them enough money and guns.
Viewing our successes and failures over the past century, it becomes clear that the conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq are not wars that we can win militarily. This is because these countries are made of ethnically and religiously diverse populations who have been at each others' throats for centuries, with lapses of atrocities when dictators like Saddam and Assad used their brutal powers to put a temporary stop to the internecine bickering.
To "win" these wars, we would have to replace the governments of these countries with an American-backed puppet government, along the lines of the post-WWII German and Japanese governments. We would have to segregate these countries into several separate provinces along ethnic and religious lines (Shiite, Sunni, Kurdish, Pashto, Turkmen, Alawite, etc.) , and forcibly repatriate millions of people into the "right" provinces. Doing this fairly is impossible because natural resources such as oil, water and farmland are not evenly distributed. We would have to trust the American government -- which Republicans keep telling us is incapable of doing anything right -- to pick ethnic and religious losers in a foreign country.
And then we'd discover that we already tried that a hundred years ago when the British divvied up the Middle East after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Look how well that worked out!
We would have to spend a trillion dollars a year and station one or two hundred thousand troops in these countries for the next century in an attempt to force them to see reason. Meanwhile, our fighting men and women would face a constant barrage of IEDs and sniper fire as the local population tried to oust the foreign invaders.
You might think I'm making this all up, but Lindsey Graham's plan for the Middle East is what I outlined above, except he ignores the exorbitant cost and the number of American casualties. The South Carolina senator, Republican presidential candidate and self-proclaimed national security "expert" told NBC's Chuck Todd that we need to invade Syria and Iraq, and that we'll never get out. He has deluded himself into thinking that we can do this on the cheap, getting Turkey and Egypt to do all the heavy lifting, and that the people who have been attacking us for the last 13 and a half years in Afghanistan will simply stop shooting and bombing American soldiers in the Middle East if he's elected president.
This was George W. Bush's plan for Iraq. He pretended he could do it on the cheap, insisting that Iraqi oil would pay for it all. But he spent whatever moral currency America might have had in the Middle East by invading Iraq on false pretenses.
Military might can be used to eject foreign invaders like Germany from France, or Saddam from Kuwait. But it can't make people see reason, treat fellow citizens fairly or adopt a liberal democracy unless that's what they want. And right now, all anyone on any side in the Middle East wants is revenge.
We "won" the Libyan civil war, in that we bombed Qaddafi's military forces and helped the rebels overthrow and kill the dictator. But the place is falling apart now as various Libyan factions bicker with each other and ISIS is moving in to cause havoc.
We "won" the Iraq war, in that we destroyed the Iraqi military, killed lots of civilians, installed a puppet government and killed Saddam Hussein. But that puppet government turned out to be a puppet of Iran, not the United States. Now Iraq is falling apart again as ISIS fighters take over large swaths of Iraqi territory that the Shiite government can't hold because they have been treating the Sunni inhabitants of those areas like animals.
We won the Gulf War straight up: we kicked Saddam out of Kuwait, crushed his army, placed a no-fly zone over the entire country and neutered his territorial ambitions for a decade. Some people think we "lost" because we didn't take Saddam out at that time.
But it was Dick Cheney, of all people, who so expertly explained why we had to leave Saddam in power in 1993: if Iraq fell apart, then Iran would gain power and then Syria would start falling apart, and then the whole Middle East would go to hell. It turns out the 1993 Dick Cheney was dead right: all the bad things the 1993 Cheney said would happen did happen when the 2003 Cheney invaded Iraq.
We lost the Vietnam war straight up. Yet for all the screaming about dominoes and the moaning about the blow to our prestige, "losing" in Vietnam has had a far more positive outcome than "winning" in Iraq. Communism has been defeated across the globe: China and Vietnam are now capitalist countries, with communist governments in name only.
The Korean War was a draw: we kept South Korea free, while the Chinese and Russians kept North Korea captive. North Korea is now a rogue state: a tyrannical feudal monarchy run by a deranged despot, with a ruling class that serves at the whim of the Supreme Leader and can be executed for offenses as trivial as falling asleep in a meeting.
We like to think we won WWII straight up. We freed western Europe and North Africa from the Germans. We freed Asia and the Pacific from the Japanese. But eastern Europe fell under Soviet control, and shortly thereafter China and much of Asia fell under communist rule.
To make sure we sustained our wins in South Korea, Germany and Japan we had to embark on a huge program of reconstruction and nation-building. We had to occupy these nations for years, babysit them while they wrote new constitutions, build numerous bases at tremendous expense and station troops there for up to 70 years -- and counting.
We like to think we won WWI straight up: we ejected Germany from the rest of Europe. But Russia fell to the Bolsheviks, and Germany fell into a terrible depression, partly due to an unreasonable treaty forced upon them by the victors, and 20 years later Germany started another war. WWI was supposed to the war to end all wars, and clearly it did not.
We "won" the Civil War in the United States, but to this day there are millions of Americans who celebrate the birthday of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America and a traitor to this nation. And these are the same people who today claim to be the "real Americans."
What do our victories and losses tell us? We can win wars to eject invaders and free people from slavery. We used moral suasion to convince the citizens of Germany and Japan that the Holocaust and the war crimes committed by the Japanese were wrong, and got them to change their ways. Stationing hundreds of thousands of troops there for decades made it stick.
But we lose wars that we have no moral standing in, or wars that prop up corrupt allies like South Vietnam. And wars never change anyone's minds about the rightness of their cause, or that a "way of life" based on the enslavement of human beings was worth fighting for. Incredibly, I'm talking about the American South, not Nazi Germany.
How does this apply to our current conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria?
We invaded Afghanistan to get rid of Al Qaeda and bin Laden. We did that in short order, and therefore "won," but then we decided that we also had to get rid of the Taliban. We've been stuck there for 13 years now. (The Soviets were stuck with the same problem in the 1980s but called it quits when their country fell apart.)
We can't win in Afghanistan for two reasons: one is military, the other cultural. Militarily, Pakistan has been undercutting us from Day One in Afghanistan. For some reason Pakistan believes that an Afghanistan mired in eternal turmoil somehow diminishes the power of India, their sworn enemy. Now Pakistan is besieged by their own Taliban terrorists, who kill children by the hundreds. Both Afghan and Pakistani Talibans are essentially untouchable in their mountain aeries in western Pakistan.
Culturally, we have no traction in Afghanistan: we are perceived as invaders and Crusaders, an image perpetuated by American conservatives who keep making this a war between Islam and Christianity. The Afghan Taliban is not an invading force, they are native Afghan Pashto Muslims who have lived there for centuries. Yes, they're an evil misogynistic pack of scumbags, but it's still their country.
There the Americans are the interlopers, the ones using drones to shoot Hellfire missiles into wedding parties and bombing houses filled with children. Unlike the Germans and the Japanese, the Taliban didn't invade another country. We invaded them to get at a few foreign terrorists who were hiding out there. Our bombardment of an entire country to root out a small number of criminals puts us in a very poor light there.
And by the way. We were the ones who financed the Taliban and forced the Soviets out of Afghanistan. As Jon Stewart noted in "Learning Curves are for Pussies," the CIA says it's the only time doing such a thing worked.
It's the same story in Iraq. We are viewed as foreign invaders there. Some locals want to use us to destroy their enemies, but they don't like us, or trust us, or believe in democracy or the rule of law. If we destroy ISIS in the Sunni areas of Iraq, the Shiite government will send troops into those areas and kill the Sunnis for cooperating with ISIS. It's a lose-lose proposition.
We have even less standing to meddle in Syria, where our mortal enemy the Iranians are allied with our mortal enemy Assad who are fighting against our mortal enemy ISIS, and we're allied with people who used to say we were their mortal enemy, but now they'll only cop to despising us and cursing us for not giving them enough money and guns.
Viewing our successes and failures over the past century, it becomes clear that the conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq are not wars that we can win militarily. This is because these countries are made of ethnically and religiously diverse populations who have been at each others' throats for centuries, with lapses of atrocities when dictators like Saddam and Assad used their brutal powers to put a temporary stop to the internecine bickering.
To "win" these wars, we would have to replace the governments of these countries with an American-backed puppet government, along the lines of the post-WWII German and Japanese governments. We would have to segregate these countries into several separate provinces along ethnic and religious lines (Shiite, Sunni, Kurdish, Pashto, Turkmen, Alawite, etc.) , and forcibly repatriate millions of people into the "right" provinces. Doing this fairly is impossible because natural resources such as oil, water and farmland are not evenly distributed. We would have to trust the American government -- which Republicans keep telling us is incapable of doing anything right -- to pick ethnic and religious losers in a foreign country.
And then we'd discover that we already tried that a hundred years ago when the British divvied up the Middle East after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Look how well that worked out!
We would have to spend a trillion dollars a year and station one or two hundred thousand troops in these countries for the next century in an attempt to force them to see reason. Meanwhile, our fighting men and women would face a constant barrage of IEDs and sniper fire as the local population tried to oust the foreign invaders.
You might think I'm making this all up, but Lindsey Graham's plan for the Middle East is what I outlined above, except he ignores the exorbitant cost and the number of American casualties. The South Carolina senator, Republican presidential candidate and self-proclaimed national security "expert" told NBC's Chuck Todd that we need to invade Syria and Iraq, and that we'll never get out. He has deluded himself into thinking that we can do this on the cheap, getting Turkey and Egypt to do all the heavy lifting, and that the people who have been attacking us for the last 13 and a half years in Afghanistan will simply stop shooting and bombing American soldiers in the Middle East if he's elected president.
This was George W. Bush's plan for Iraq. He pretended he could do it on the cheap, insisting that Iraqi oil would pay for it all. But he spent whatever moral currency America might have had in the Middle East by invading Iraq on false pretenses.
Military might can be used to eject foreign invaders like Germany from France, or Saddam from Kuwait. But it can't make people see reason, treat fellow citizens fairly or adopt a liberal democracy unless that's what they want. And right now, all anyone on any side in the Middle East wants is revenge.
U.S. Corporations Outsourced National Security to Russia
Yesterday I carped about how American companies have been outsourcing manufacturing and tech jobs overseas, and how they've begun firing Americans working in tech jobs and are replacing them with immigrants with H-1B visas.
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| Russian RD-180 Rocket Engine Being Test-Fired at NASA |
After Russia annexed Crimea last year, Congress passed legislation that forced the Pentagon to stop buying Russian rocket engines that have been used since 2000 to help launch American military and intelligence satellites into space.I'm all for cooperation in space -- the joint missions at the International Space Station with Russia, Japan and Europe are a great way to advance human understanding of the cosmos. But outsourcing the engines for our military rockets is stupidly greedy.
Now, that simple act of punishment is proving difficult to keep in place.
Only five months after the ban became law, the Pentagon is pressing Congress to ease it.
Of course, conservatives are all bent out of shape by this. After vacillating between hardons and hatred and for Vladimir Putin, they are blaming it all on Obama:
“I don’t know what the Pentagon’s position can be, except for them and the Obama administration trying to placate Putin,” Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican of California and a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said. He predicted that the legislative fight would intensify in the months ahead.But corporate greed and laziness are responsible for this debacle. The Republicans' pals in the defense industry decided to put profit before national security.
The companies that formed United Launch Alliance, the joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin that has a monopoly on military and intelligence launches, decided to buy rocket engines from a state-owned Russian company called Energomash in the 1990s. They didn't want to continue to build their own engines for the Atlas rockets -- they could make more money by using cheap Russian labor to build engines for our military rockets.
You know how American rocket scientists and engineers are -- they're all worried about safety and stuff, and they live in liberal California where houses cost a million bucks. They're so arrogant, they think they know everything and you have to pay 'em so much. It's much cheaper using Russian engineers who get paid peanuts, drink nothing but vodka and live in barracks in Samara (yeah, I'm just making that last part up).
Fortunately, SpaceX, the upstart company founded by Elon Musk, has now been cleared to compete with ULA for launching these sensitive payloads. And Musk's launch vehicles -- made in America -- are cheaper than ULA's Russian-based rockets. If Congress doesn't pass a bill to allow ULA to buy Russian rocket engines, ULA will be out of a job and SpaceX will have the monopoly on launches.
Rocket engines aren't the only place we have a technological vulnerability. Our entire computing infrastructure is dependent on semiconductors, computers and networking hardware made in foreign countries, primarily China.
The United States invented semiconductor and networking technology, but to increase profits corporations sent the vast majority of semiconductor manufacturing overseas, mostly to China. Design centers soon followed, and now the United States is totally dependent on Asia for our computing hardware.
There's no way to know whether the state-owned Chinese corporations that build this equipment have installed backdoors in the chips, computers, and network routers our military is buying.
The lesson? Corporations have no loyalty to America. They're in business -- they keep telling us -- only to "increase shareholder value." Can you really trust people with our national security when they tell you straight to your face that the only thing they care about is money?
This is another reason not to be so trusting about free-trade treaties -- not only are we forcing American workers to compete with low-wage workers in countries like Vietnam, but are we opening the door for them to compete on contracts for critical military infrastructure? We don't know -- the treaty's secret!
The Criminalization of Joy and the Legalization of Intimidation
Once you think law enforcement in the South has reached the nadir of stupidity, someone in Georgia, Alabama, Florida or Mississippi turns around and shows that their intelligence and morality can sink even lower into the muck:
Don't the cops in Mississippi have better things to do than put people in jail for expressing happiness?
Meanwhile, in Texas the governor is about to sign a bill that will allow people to carry guns on college campuses. But Texas is behind the times: Mississippi passed a similar law in 2011, and Northwest Mississippi Community College is one of the schools where you can pack heat as long as you got your certified instruction from the NRA.
That makes Mississippi the state where you can go to jail for shouting someone's name, but intimidating people with guns on college campuses is a God-given right, dammit!
It makes you wonder: if someone had shot those people for disturbing the peace in such an undignified fashion, would the cops have taken them in for questioning? Or would they believe it to be a clear-cut case of justifiable homicide?
I guess these proud family members -- instead of shouting the graduate's names -- should have fired their shootin' irons into the air in celebration. Who could possibly object to gunfire? It's a Second Amendment right! Freedom of speech is just the First Amendment, and everyone knows two is greater than one!
This is what white people just don't get about the situation of African Americans in this country. They have to put up with kind of crap every ... single ... day of their ... entire ... lives.
[T]hree people are facing charges and the prospect of $500 fines and six-month jail terms after they were accused of cheering during the [Senatobia High School] graduation ceremony, held at Northwest Mississippi Community College on May 21.As I read this, I immediately suspected that the people charged would be black and the perpetrators of this idiotic waste of taxpayer dollars would be white. As it turns out, Jay Foster, the superintendent, and Zabe Davis, the chief of campus police, are white. And, yes, the accused are African Americans, according to the report from WREG TV, which also indicates that the number of people charged was four rather than three.
“We were instructed to remove anyone that cheered during the ceremony, which was done,” Zabe Davis, the chief of the campus police and a Senatobia High alumnus, said Wednesday. “And then Jay Foster, the superintendent, came and pressed charges against those people.”
Don't the cops in Mississippi have better things to do than put people in jail for expressing happiness?
Meanwhile, in Texas the governor is about to sign a bill that will allow people to carry guns on college campuses. But Texas is behind the times: Mississippi passed a similar law in 2011, and Northwest Mississippi Community College is one of the schools where you can pack heat as long as you got your certified instruction from the NRA.
That makes Mississippi the state where you can go to jail for shouting someone's name, but intimidating people with guns on college campuses is a God-given right, dammit!
It makes you wonder: if someone had shot those people for disturbing the peace in such an undignified fashion, would the cops have taken them in for questioning? Or would they believe it to be a clear-cut case of justifiable homicide?
I guess these proud family members -- instead of shouting the graduate's names -- should have fired their shootin' irons into the air in celebration. Who could possibly object to gunfire? It's a Second Amendment right! Freedom of speech is just the First Amendment, and everyone knows two is greater than one!
This is what white people just don't get about the situation of African Americans in this country. They have to put up with kind of crap every ... single ... day of their ... entire ... lives.
Wednesday, June 03, 2015
Firing Americans and Hiring Foreigners
For decades American manufacturing jobs have been going to places like Mexico, China, Malaysia, Vietnam, and so on. Part of this was facilitated by NAFTA, but most of it is due to the vagaries of international trade, which is generally considered a Good Thing for our economy.
In recent years non-manufacturing jobs have also been fleeing these shores: many call centers and help lines have been outsourced to India (which American customers absolutely detest because they can't understand the accents), much software development has been outsourced to eastern Europe and India. Even legal research and medical image analysis have been outsourced overseas.
I have personal experience with this. In the early 2000s, after the company I worked for was bought by a British multinational, a policy came from on high that all American software contractors be replaced with Indian programmers from a specific contracting company.
But American corporations, like Disney World, aren't satisfied with this solution because some jobs just can't be outsourced to foreign countries. The employees need to be in-country. The solution? Bring in foreigners with H-1B visas and replace American workers with them.
[A]bout 250 Disney employees were told in late October that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Over the next three months, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost.Yes, Disney (as well as other companies such as Southern California Edison and Fossil) is firing Americans, hiring foreigners for the exact same job and then forcing Americans to train their foreign replacements. For that last ignominy, they get a 10% severance bonus. Nice, huh?
What are H-1B visas?
According to federal guidelines, the visas are intended for foreigners with advanced science or computer skills to fill discrete positions when American workers with those skills cannot be found. Their use, the guidelines say, should not “adversely affect the wages and working conditions” of Americans. Because of legal loopholes, however, in practice companies do not have to recruit American workers first or guarantee that Americans will not be displaced.These companies are clearly lying to get foreign workers: they're laying off qualified people and replacing them with foreigners using the H-1B program. This isn't about finding qualified workers: it's about firing Americans and hiring foreigners for less money.
And American companies still aren't satisfied. The US Chamber of Commerce wants to double or triple the number of H-1B visas. They say they can't find enough qualified American engineers and programmers: what they really mean is they don't want to pay American-level salaries.
To make it worse, the H-1B program is a nightmare for many of the people who get the visas: they are essentially indentured servants. The Indian "in-sourcing" companies that snatch up many of the H-1B visas create phantom jobs and then try to shop around the employees they bring in on false pretenses. They tell the immigrants to falsify their resumes to get jobs they're not qualified for and then force the employees to pay the fees the companies are supposed to pay to get H-1B recipients into the country.
Now, I'm not some whack-job nativist who thinks that furriners are destroyin' Merica and we gotta take it back! In the 1990s I worked with several people from India and Pakistan who had H-1B visas. They were competent and deserving of the jobs.
But the H-1B program clearly has become a cesspool of corruption and greed. It must be radically reformed. But how?
The H-1B visa holders I worked with were directly hired by the company to work for the company. The corruption in the H-1B program is due to the way American companies treat workers: they don't want long-term employees, they want low-cost slaves they can dismiss at a whim.
So companies like Disney and SoCal Edison hire consulting firms and staffing companies, which are usually based in India, to find disposable employees at the lowest possible cost.
These corrupt middlemen should be eliminated. If a company can't find the employees it needs in the United States, then it should find and hire foreign workers themselves. If these companies need employees that badly, then they should be required to make a long-term personal commitment to them, to ensure that they remain gainfully employed for several years and won't be taking other Americans' jobs.
Right now these companies can bring in foreigners, employee them for a couple of months, and then lay them off. At that point the workers will be competing with Americans for any job, not just the one they were hired for. Companies are even using the H-1B program to fill low-wage jobs, not just tech specialists.
If American companies can't find Americans with the skills to do the jobs, they should be investing in the American education system and training Americans to do the job.
American companies like Disney have huge profit margins and are sitting on huge piles of cash. Instead of whining that they can't find enough programmers and have to get them from India, they should endow scholarships at American colleges and universities in the specialties they need.
Robert Iger, CEO of Disney, was paid $46.5 million dollars last year. That's enough to endow 2,000 scholarships at American public universities.
Instead of trying to get Congress to pass laws to allow them to import more wage slaves from India, or expecting someone else to create employees for them for free, American companies should be investing in the future of this country.
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