Body Organs and the Free Market

Obama's Poll Numbers

Most of the major polling places show the president dropping in the polls to the low 40s. Understandable, considering that he is responsible for the fumbled roll out of the Affordable Care Act web site and registration. So why does Rasmussen, a conservative polling operation, show him dropping only a few points and staying in the mid 40s?

My thought is that Americans aren't as upset with the president as the political media is making it out to be. We haven't heard any stories about the people finding better policies, only stories that are negative. Of course, that is what is popular right now:)

Couple Making Out At Bus Stop Like It's Fucking Paris

Missing Guns

One of the main reasons why there is so much gun violence in this country is that people are simply irresponsible with guns. The gun community can't seem to get their head around this fact. This recent piece illustrates just how bad it is.

In October GOP congresswoman Renee Ellmers reported that her gun had gone missing from her Kansas home. Ellmers, who left her AR-15 leaning against a locker in her unlocked garage, is an avid gun rights supporter. She claims that gun owners, like herself, are totally responsible and don’t need the government interfering in their business. As it turns out, however, Ellmers, like too many other gun owners, isn’t as responsible as she claims. Hopefully, her missing gun will not be used to murder someone. But even if it does, surely we can’t blame her? She’s a “responsible” gun owner, after all. 

After Missouri House staffer, Dave Evans, left his loaded gun in the men’s restroom of the State Capital Building on September 23, 2013, the incident drew a brief flurry of national media attention. It also drew the typical right-wing responses about all the “responsible gun owners” in the world. Except, you know, when they leave the gun in the bathroom…

The whole article is filled with incidents like this. My personal favorite is the one about the criminal who scolded the "responsible" gun owner. The saddest ones were stories like this.

Let's set aside the paranoia and pathological hatred of the federal government and leave the religion about the 2nd amendment behind forever. The current laws regarding firearms are not working because people are simply not responsible enough to live up to them.

Deeply Rooted In Nonviolence

I'm not much of a Wikipedia guy but their entry on Christian pacifism is excellent. We sadly forget how our Savior was deeply rooted in nonviolence...

Only One Verse

The Bible only has one verse that directly comments on the value of a fetus. Here it is.

And if men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she has a miscarriage, yet there is no [further] injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman's husband may demand of him; and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any [further] injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise. (Exodus 21:22-25)

So, a fetus is essentially worth a fine determined by a judge. Note that if the woman dies, then it is "life for a life" so there is a definite distinction the life of an adult and the life of child, or in this case, a fetus. The historical context of this makes perfect sense as children were generally thought of as "less than" during this time period. It really wasn't until the Industrial Revolution that cultural attitudes shifted to the concept of the "Precious Child."

This would be an excellent example of how a teaching in the Bible no longer applies to today. Many believe that a fetus is life and I would agree once the child reaches a certain stage of development (the heart is formed and the brain divides into five vesicles). I have no issue with abortion up until this point but after that, I do. The federal ban on third term abortions should extended to the second term. This is where the pro choice crowd should compromise.

Where the pro life crowd should compromise is on freeing up money for sex education and pummeling women in their 20s (the ones most likely to get an abortion) with information and incentives to not have an unwanted pregnancy. The goal should be to reduce the demand for abortion, not attack the supply except in the case of 2nd term abortions. An outright ban on all abortions would create numerous problems such as a criminal enterprise, higher costs for social programs and hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of unwanted children...which we have far too many of already.

Getting around the conundrum of people behaving irresponsibly is tough. This is the bane of the gun community as every day they look like assholes because far too many Americans can't be trusted with guns. Clearly, they can't be trusted with sex either. So, how do we change that?

Obviously, I don't have all the answers.

Right For That Generation

Last Thursday I met an old friend round the pub to catch up. I hadn't seen him in far too many years and have known him since I was six years old. It was fun to spend an evening with someone who lived nearly all of your life in a parallel fashion. The common experiences of living in the same neighborhood and going to the same schools for K-12 really warmed my heart and made me feel very connected to my wonderful memories of my childhood.

We talked about a great many subjects, politics, sex and religion among them. When he was younger, he was pretty hardcore Democrat but has since become more Republican and conservative. I guess that's what a few years at Bethel College will do for you! But he's still got a ton of common sense as he spent much of the night laying into the far right, the Tea Party, and, yes, even Christian conservatives. He would likely be labeled a RINO by today's incarnation of the Right and banished for lack of purity.

The statement that really drove this point home and one that completely blew me away came from our discussion about the Bible. I gave him my usual line about the Bible being wrong about some things to which he replied, "Mark, the Bible isn't wrong. It's just that some of it was right for that generation."

Wow.

And no shit.

He cited the rules on pork, for example, as being simple common sense because they didn't have a way to keep it fresh. Those rules applied for that time. The same was true, he felt, for homosexuality and I've talked about this previously. Back at the time the Bible was written, sex was much different than it is now. People were far cruder and roman orgies were rampant. Young boys were abused and people had much less control over themselves sexually than we do today. In short, there were no Neils and Steves who have been life partners for 20 years and have adopted children from Central America.

There are many universal truths in the Bible that span generation to generation. Loving thy neighbor, the Ten Commandments, serving the poor, helping the sick, not judging others, and being as peaceful and loving a person as you can be. Then there are the beliefs that were only true for that time...the ceremonial laws about food, appearance, and dress...the subjugation of women...sexual mores...attitudes about slavery...anyone with a brain realizes that those things applied to that time but not ours.

Of course, these days I think that those without a brain should just go right on thinking that those laws still apply to today. I used to think they should just let go of those beliefs but I realize now that I am older and wiser that people like that need those the threat of hellfire to keep them from raping a young boy on crystal meth in a hotel room. Their loss of control translates into a clear and present danger to our culture and are quite clearly beyond all help.

After all, we are a culture that helps the disabled, right?

How Gay!

Warped Kubrick

I don't know what to think about this story that I recently discovered in my "To Post, Misc" file. Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is one long metaphor for the slaughter of Native Americans? Or it's a confession that Kubrick helped fake the moon landing? Completely silly and completely fascinating at the same time! Here is the first 12 minutes...

Dear Mr. Watterson

In this day and age, every article of clothing is prominently emblazoned with the manufacturer's logo, successful comic books and novels are optioned for Hollywood movies, and fictional characters are turned into action figures, plush dolls, Halloween costumes, etc. Isn't it suspicious that Ewoks look like highly-merchandisable teddy bears? Religious holidays like Christmas and Easter have turned into orgies of consumption. Everything in our culture is commercialized and monetized to the maximum extent possible, until its currency is so debased that it becomes a cliche.

Take, for example, the Garfield comic strip: it was in a lot of papers, but there was really nothing to it. Yet they have sold millions of stuffed Garfields, and they even made a movie out of a lousy three-panel comic strip that was about about a cat that eats lasagna. Strips like Bloom County and Dilbert were higher quality and were frequently about something, but they also went the merchandising route, cashing in on plush Opuses and Dogberts. The Simpsons is a merchandising monolith.

In such a world it's hard to imagine someone who would turn down all that cold hard cash to maintain artistic integrity. Yet there is such a man. He and his creation are the topic of a documentary called Dear Mr. Watterson. The director was recently interviewed on NPR.

The comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, written and drawn by Bill Watterson, was a classic. It's about Calvin, a boy who thinks his stuffed tiger, Hobbes, is real. Calvin is constantly ambushed by Hobbes, and Calvin talks about this imaginary playmate as if he's a real tiger. His friends think he's nuts, but he has amazing adventures with dinosaurs and spaceships and film noir detectives, even though the world around him is disappointingly mundane.

People still love Calvin and Hobbes: it was smart, funny, philosophical, touching, poignant and sometimes mean and crude. It ran for 10 years, and when Watterson had said everything he wanted to say, he stopped writing the strip. That was almost 20 years ago. In a world where pointless comics like Mark Trail and Rex Morgan, M.D., soldier on for decades, penned by faceless corporate shills, Watterson voluntarily ended one of the best comic strips ever written.

Bill Watterson never sold out, even though the strip has the most obvious merchandising gimmick you can imagine. One of the titular characters is a stuffed animal. But you can't get an officially licensed Hobbes stuffed tiger.

It's not like Watterson is a pauper and needs to sell out: Calvin and Hobbes was tremendously successful during its run, and book-length collections of the strips are still doing a brisk business. The strip is syndicated in reruns and you can see it on the web. So Watterson has no financial need to sell out: he's got a steady income and has maintained the artistic integrity of his creation.

But that doesn't stop the vast majority of successful artists and writers from cashing in. Most, given the opportunity, decide to merchandise their creations even though they're already doing quite well.

Now, I'm not saying that selling out is always a bad thing. But most Americans seem to take it as an article of faith that more is better, as so eloquently stated in the immortal words of The Tick, spoken to his disciples in the Mystic Order of Arachnid Vigilance (from The Tick #9, "Road Trip", 1991):

Always ... always remember: Less is less. More is more. More is better, and twice as much is good too... Not enough is bad, and too much is never enough except when it's just about right.

This attitude, which almost caused the collapse of our entire economic system in 2008, was presaged in the pages of The Tick. To finance their organization the M.O.A.V. planned to "buy real estate for no-money down and sell it at huge profits!" The author was a seer!
  
The Tick is a satirical superhero comic created by Ben Edlund, who has "sold out" several times with licensed merchandise and animated and live-action television versions of The Tick. He's also done a lot of work in Hollywood (well, mostly Canada) on shows such as Firefly, Angel, Supernatural and Revolution.

So, yeah, he's a sellout. But if Edlund had never sold out I wouldn't have found the original black and white Tick comics. The shows he's worked on, and the specific episodes and characters he's created are self-aware, self-critical and self-deprecating. They never take themselves too seriously.

It warms my heart that Bill Watterson can keep the memory of Calvin and Hobbes pristine (at least until his money-grubbing heirs get their mitts on it). But I also like that Edlund went on to do a lot of new and entertaining work that was made possible by him selling out.

The most important thing is these men got to choose: they had control over their creations and could choose whether to license them. This is unlike many artists and writers who've been shafted by giant corporations, like Siegel and Shuster of Superman fame.

If there's anything that should be changed in our intellectual property laws it's the idea that the creator of a work of art can sign away the rights to their creations. It should be illegal, like selling your own children.

To decide whether something is a sell-out or not, you have to ask whether the merchandising is a betrayal of the original artistic concept. Star Wars action figures? Not a sellout. Superman Halloween costume? Not a sellout. Tick live-action TV series? A lousy failure, but not a sellout.

But the core of Calvin and Hobbes is that Calvin's antics and the living, breathing Hobbes are products of his vivid imagination. Calvin can take any mundane object and through the power of his mind transform it into a grand adventure.

A licensed Hobbes stuffed tiger that replaces a child's imagination with a product manufactured by people whose childhood dreams ended in a sweatshop making slave wages? Definitely a sellout.

State's Highest Paid Employee?

A Little Low?

12 Million Americans Believe Lizard People Run Our Country.

That number is actually lower than I expected!

Hilarious!

I don't know why but I've been on a real photo kick lately. It truly is a medium that has exploded thanks to social media. But it also has an eye to the past and that's why I completely adored this site. What a fantastic idea! Check it out!

Best. Photo. Ever.

He's Right

Michael Tomasky is absolutely right when the says that the Democrats need to to stop freaking out and take charge. They tend to get sucked in to the news cycle panic of the moment and forget about the the long term picture. In the final analysis, this is where we are at.

The current situation is serious. But I remember a lot of other times when it was supposedly curtains for Obama, too, because inside the Beltway, the more disciplined Republicans, who after all are in the luxurious position of just sitting back and firing away, have an easier time winning news cycles. But out beyond the Beltway, the party that shut down the government for three weeks and killed immigration reform and wants to decimate food stamps and can’t even pass its own spending bills doesn’t look very appealing to most people. The fate of Obamacare can be changed. The DNA of the GOP cannot.

How To Admit Fault

I challenge any conservative to show me a Republican that is this reflective and honest.

 

The Barack Obama they hate simply doesn't exist.

The Magic Bullet Was Ordinary After All

With the anniversary of the Kennedy assassination coming up, NOVA ran an episode called "Cold Case JFK" that may interest conspiracy theorists.

Using the slim evidence left over from the botched investigations in 1963 and experiments with a rifle identical to the one Lee Harvey Oswald bought mail order, ballistics experts Luke and Mike Haag and other forensics experts put together a pretty convincing case that Oswald fired all three shots: The first one missed. The second one hit Kennedy in the back, exited at the neck, passed through Governor John Connally, passed through his wrist and then lodged in his leg. The third bullet hit Kennedy in the back of the head, causing a small entry wound and a large explosion of brain and blood at the exit point in the forehead.

Carcano 6.5 mm cartridge

30.06 cartridge

Rear View of Magic Bullet

The bullet in question was a 6.5x52mm Carcano cartridge, similar to the one shown on the right. A 6.5 mm Carcano model 91/38 carbine was found in the Texas Schoolbook Depository with Oswald's handprint on it. The key thing about this bullet is the long, cylindrical shape of the slug (the part of the cartridge that's fired from the rifle). Most rifle bullets are like the 30.06 slug below on the the right: more conical than cylindrical.

The cylindrical shape of the Carcano slug means that it has more contact with the riflings inside the rifle barrel than a 30.06 slug does, which gives it more spin and therefore makes it fly truer through the air.

However, once it passes through something -- say, a head or ballistics gel -- it begins to "yaw" or tumble. The bullet had started to tumble when it struck Connally, and hit him sideways instead of straight on.

The Haags' experiments in the NOVA program bear all this out.

The Carcano slug was also copper-jacketed, which means it would deform less than a naked lead slug. And the slug that was found on Connally's gurney was deformed -- the rear end was pinched in, just as you would expect if it hit Connally sideways, as shown in the third photo.

The third bullet hit Kennedy in the back of the head and caused a massive shockwave through the skull, causing the forehead to explode. The pattern of cracks in the skull is consistent with a rear entry wound, ruling out a shot from the Grassy Knoll. The backward jerking of Kennedy's body evident in the Zapruder film was due to a spasm that caused all Kennedy's muscles to contract, but since back muscles are stronger than abdominals, his head jerked back.

Other incidentals such as people hearing more than three shots are due to echoes and the supersonic speed of the Carcano slug.

From all this it seems that Oswald really was the lone gunman. Which means Arlen Specter and the Warren Commission actually got something right with the single-bullet theory.

Oswald, an avowed Marxist, apparently tried to assassinate Edwin Walker, a retired general who Oswald called a Fascist (Walker had tried to stop desegregation in Mississippi). So it's plausible that Oswald was a nut and was just moving on to higher things by assassinating Kennedy, with no orders from Cuba or Moscow or Vegas or the Teamsters. Oswald may also have had an accomplice in the Walker assassination attempt, which means... Well, you get the picture.

However, the fact that Oswald shot Kennedy single-handedly doesn't mean there was no conspiracy. Jack Ruby's shocking murder of Oswald on live TV is incomprehensible. Why would a strip club owner with mob connections sacrifice his own life to spare Jackie Kennedy the pain of testifying in the trial of the century?

Unfortunately, forensics and ballistics will never provide the answers for the machinations that led up to Ruby's silencing of Oswald.

Hating Pope Frank

I've been laughing my socks right off of my feet as the Right reacts to Pope Francis and his vision that primarily involves Christians actually (gasp!) doing the work of Jesus. You know, feeding the poor...taking care of the sick and less fortunate...as opposed to judging others and being maniacally obsessed with sex. None have been more shocked than Sarah "I'm on a book tour so it's time for me to say dumb shit" Palin.



OMG, Sarah!! Jesus was, in fact, a liberal:)

Welfare Myths

I'm pretty sick and tired of all the myths being spread out there regarding people on welfare. Thankfully, this piece torpedoes nine of them quite well. Here are three that stand out.

Myth: “People on welfare are lazy and sit at home collecting it while the rest of us work to support them.” 

Fact: The welfare reform law that was signed by President Clinton in 1996 largely turned control over welfare benefits to the states, but the federal government provides some of the funding for state welfare programs through a program called Temporary Assistance For Needy Families (TANF). TANF grants to states require that all welfare recipients must find work within two years of first receiving benefits. This includes single parents, who are required to work at least 30 hours per week. Two-parent families are required to work 35 to 50 hours per week. Failure to obtain work could result in loss of benefits. It is also worth noting that, thanks to the pay offerings of companies such as Walmart, many who work at low wage jobs qualify for public assistance, even though they work full-time.

Right. People that get assistance are already working. Their jobs simply don't pay enough. And bitch all you want about federal spending on food stamps but the states are the ones that largely control aid to the poor.

Myth: “There’s a woman in Chicago. She has 80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards. … She’s got Medicaid, getting food stamps and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income alone is over $150,000″ – Ronald Reagan

Fact: Ah, the “welfare queen.” Ronny loved to tell his stories, and his welfare queen story is one of the most popular. The only problem is, the woman he talked about didn’t exist. There is some evidence that elements of this story may have been based on facts, but the descriptions of abuse by an actual woman were wildly exaggerated by Reagan.

The Right loves to make shit up (see: lie). This would be a great example.

Myth: “Most welfare recipients are minorities and illegal immigrants.” 

Fact: TANF benefits were paid out to roughly the same percentage of white and black recipients in 2010, according to the HHS report. In fact, the percentage of black families receiving welfare benefits has declined by almost 7 percent since 2000. Regarding illegal immigrants: those who are in the United States illegally are ineligible for benefits other than emergency Medicaid.

Many of those white folks are rural poor in deep red states. If they could only realize that the people they support are essentially lying to them with religion and are actively trying to fuck them, every state would basically be blue.

Welfare falsehoods really piss me off. Spread this post and the included links around and don't let the Right continue their lying.

Finally

Well, Joe McLean has gone and done it. The Daily Beast columnist has put up the perfect description of my three regular commenters (juris imprudent, Guard Duck, Not My Name). Now I think I understand how they are all united even though they have differing views on religion.

Apocalypticism.

They, along with the Tea Party and many other conservatives, think the End Times are nigh. And guess what? It's all the fault of the liberals.

There are so many great lines in this piece I don't know where to start. Let's see if I can limit myself to just three and then urge y'all to go and read the rest.

They believe America teeters on the brink of destruction, and hold as an article of faith that liberals, gays, Democrats, atheists and the United Nations are to blame. This “end-times” world-view is a foundational precept of the evangelical movement, from which many of the so-called Tea Party favorites spring.Of course, the Tea Party is not just composed of members of the Christian right. Many are genuine libertarians. Some nurse an unreconstructed Confederate grudge, while others harbor a thinly disguised racism. However, the real energy, the animating force for the movement comes from evangelicals, of whom Ted Cruz, Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin are the most strident. These are the modern-day ”apocalyptic prophets.”

See, you don't have to be a Christian to believe in the apocalypse. Kevin Baker isn't a Christian. Neither is juris. Yet there is something in their libertarianism that helps them along to end times thinking. McLean does a good job of explaining the history of end times thinking. But how does that fit in to today?

For these apocalyptic prophets, the issues aren’t even political anymore; they’re existential, with Obamacare serving as the avatar for all evil. In this construct, any compromise whatsoever leads to damnation, and therefore the righteous ends justify any means. Now if you are battling the forces of evil for the very survival of the nation, there can be no retreat, no compromise, and no deals. Like the Jewish zealots at Masada, it’s better to commit glorious suicide than make peace with the devil. There can be no truce with the Tea Party because its apocalyptic zealots can never take “yes” for an answer.

Compromise as damnation...yep. McLean also notes what I have been stating previously. The GOP establishment and business wing of the party is fighting back. The coming civil war in the Republican party is going to be bloody. But how will it all end? McLean says either the pragmatists win or the hardliners revolt and leave. Either way, a center right party emerges that will enjoy support.

Not surprisingly, these moderates have both liberal and conservative views. 64% support gay marriage, 63% support abortion in the first trimester, 52% support legalizing marijuana, and they support a strong social safety net by wide margins. But 81% support offshore drilling, 90% support the death penalty and 57% are against affirmative action. So a new moderate coalition might well attract significant support from the moderate middle, establishment Republicans, Independents and centrist Democrats too.

Whatever way you cut it, my three commenters, along with the Tea Party and the right wing blogsphere, aren't going to get what they want. Oh well. At least they'll have plenty to complain about. Hey, maybe we could help them set up their own community with all the rest of the doomsayers. They could walk around all day preaching apocalypse to each other and leave the rest of us sane people out of it.