Say something about President Obama's critics and race and it's like 1974 all over again for Hall of Fame baseball player Hank Aaron.
"We can talk about baseball. Talk about politics. Sure, this country has a black president, but when you look at a black president, President Obama is left with his foot stuck in the mud from all of the Republicans with the way he's treated. We have moved in the right direction, and there have been improvements, but we still have a long ways to go. The bigger difference is back then they had hoods. Now they have neckties and starched shirts."
After the interview?
"Hank Aaron is a scumbag piece of (expletive) (racial slur)'' read an email from a man named Edward, according to USA Today.
Well, it's a good thing we have no more racism in this country and that was simply the retort of some mentally deranged time traveler from the 1950s!
Conservatives love to whine about how they can't make a critical comment about the president without race being brought into the mix but do you know what's worse than people that play the race card? People that fucking whine about people playing the race card. Like shrill old ladies in a nursing home that shriek when their oxygen tank gets stuck making a turn around a corner, the Right sure does love themselves playing the anti race card. No one is allowed to play the race card any longer because racism is over. Everything said about racially based blah blah blah is wrong forever and ever amen, fuckers! Even people who talk about "Jew run banks" get a pass these days. Why?
Because like all their other peachy personality traits, their frozen in time adolescence won't allow them to admit fault. It doesn't occur to them that they are being racially insensitive and, well, damnit...THEY DON'T WANNA!!!
Change, that is...:)
Thursday, April 17, 2014
Increase The Wage Gap?
Oh, look, Phyllis Schlafly's tired old white ass is trying to sound relevant.
The best way to improve economic prospects for women is to improve job prospects for the men in their lives, even if that means increasing the so-called pay gap.
Hey Phyllis, 1952 called and they want you back in the kitchen slaving away for your man...
The best way to improve economic prospects for women is to improve job prospects for the men in their lives, even if that means increasing the so-called pay gap.
Hey Phyllis, 1952 called and they want you back in the kitchen slaving away for your man...
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Voices In My Head (Anti Semitic Edition)
So, Frazier Glenn Miller is Jew hater and shot up two Jewish community centers in Kansas over the weekend, killing two people neither of whom was Jewish. I was willing to let it go because neo Nazis are sadly always going to be around but then I read that the Mayor of Marionville, Dan Clevenger, agreed with Miller but not his actions. In fact, Clevenger has said all sorts of things over the years...
He also spoke of the "Jew-run government backed banking industry turned the U.S into the world's largest debtor nation." Years later, Clevenger's views haven't seemed to change. "There some things that are going on in this country that are destroying us. We've got a false economy and it's, some of those corporations are run by Jews because the names are there," he said. "The fact that the Federal Reserve prints up phony money and freely hands it out, I think that's completely wrong. The people that run the Federal Reserve, they're Jewish."
No racism here, folks. That's all over with in our country, Please move along...
I wonder if Clevenger is an Obama voter:)
He also spoke of the "Jew-run government backed banking industry turned the U.S into the world's largest debtor nation." Years later, Clevenger's views haven't seemed to change. "There some things that are going on in this country that are destroying us. We've got a false economy and it's, some of those corporations are run by Jews because the names are there," he said. "The fact that the Federal Reserve prints up phony money and freely hands it out, I think that's completely wrong. The people that run the Federal Reserve, they're Jewish."
No racism here, folks. That's all over with in our country, Please move along...
I wonder if Clevenger is an Obama voter:)
Good Words
But the thing that is really killing Mitch McConnell, I think, is the incredible success of Kentucky Kynect. They don't call it Obamacare, very smartly. But this is probably the best run state exchange in the country. Governor Beshear, a Democrat. And the fact that these people have health care after all this time and Mitch McConnell did everything he could to stop them from getting health care. That's got to be a factor here.
You are going to see this all over the country, in fact you already are seeing this all over the country. There's a poll today, the folks suggested that we ought to be on the offensive on Obamacare. We ought to be supporting it. We ought to be proud that we supported it because it is in fact providing people with health care. And nobody knows that better than the people of Kentucky. This is a poor state. A lot of people uninsured. A lot of those people have insurance [now]. That's not going to help Mitch McConnell.
(Howard Dean April 15, 2014)
You are going to see this all over the country, in fact you already are seeing this all over the country. There's a poll today, the folks suggested that we ought to be on the offensive on Obamacare. We ought to be supporting it. We ought to be proud that we supported it because it is in fact providing people with health care. And nobody knows that better than the people of Kentucky. This is a poor state. A lot of people uninsured. A lot of those people have insurance [now]. That's not going to help Mitch McConnell.
(Howard Dean April 15, 2014)
Turning Seawater Into Fuel
Mention the Defense Department these days and you'll get shit from both the left and the right. The left hates everything they do and fails to recognize how they are leaders in non military activity such as breast cancer research. The right complains about how much money they spend and how they are in a constant state of intervention around the world.
Yet, it's stories like this that show that they are of enormous benefit to our society.
After decades of experiments, U.S. Navy scientists believe they may have solved one of the world’s great challenges: how to turn seawater into fuel.The development of a liquid hydrocarbon fuel could one day relieve the military’s dependence on oil-based fuels and is being heralded as a “game changer” because it could allow military ships to develop their own fuel and stay operational 100 percent of the time, rather than having to refuel at sea.
Consider the implications of this as related to climate change. Obviously, seawater is in ample supply and this technology could massively reduce carbon emissions and put us on a path for renewable and sustainable energy for quite a long time.
Way to go, US Military!
Yet, it's stories like this that show that they are of enormous benefit to our society.
After decades of experiments, U.S. Navy scientists believe they may have solved one of the world’s great challenges: how to turn seawater into fuel.The development of a liquid hydrocarbon fuel could one day relieve the military’s dependence on oil-based fuels and is being heralded as a “game changer” because it could allow military ships to develop their own fuel and stay operational 100 percent of the time, rather than having to refuel at sea.
Consider the implications of this as related to climate change. Obviously, seawater is in ample supply and this technology could massively reduce carbon emissions and put us on a path for renewable and sustainable energy for quite a long time.
Way to go, US Military!
A Disgraceful Opportunist and Moral Coward
I miss Christopher Hitchens. I didn't always agree with him but man, he said some very accurate and funny shit. Take, for example, this quote from 2010 regarding Sarah Palin.
Don’t be too hard on her. She didn’t write that piece and she probably hasn’t read it. I doubt she could either read or write it. Everything she does is for effect, she’s, and is always deniable. She could switch back in a minute. At the moment she thinks her tea party crowd wants to hear this kind of thing so she’ll say that. She’s been out to say, ‘well, I don’t know but I think the President ought to produce his birth certificate. I’m not saying it isn’t a good question. Then later, cause she’s got to go to the Gridiron dinner in Washington, and learn how to use a knife and fork and be taught by Fred Malek. She takes it back. She’s a disgraceful opportunist and a real moral coward.
I'd say that last line pretty much sums up most conservatives these days. I wonder if we'll see one that has fucking spine any time soon...
Don’t be too hard on her. She didn’t write that piece and she probably hasn’t read it. I doubt she could either read or write it. Everything she does is for effect, she’s, and is always deniable. She could switch back in a minute. At the moment she thinks her tea party crowd wants to hear this kind of thing so she’ll say that. She’s been out to say, ‘well, I don’t know but I think the President ought to produce his birth certificate. I’m not saying it isn’t a good question. Then later, cause she’s got to go to the Gridiron dinner in Washington, and learn how to use a knife and fork and be taught by Fred Malek. She takes it back. She’s a disgraceful opportunist and a real moral coward.
I'd say that last line pretty much sums up most conservatives these days. I wonder if we'll see one that has fucking spine any time soon...
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
NCAA Athletes: Employees, Amateurs, Volunteers, Indentured Servants or Slaves?
A couple of weeks ago the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Northwestern football players were employees and could form a union.
A common sentiment is that NCAA players have an easy ride and that they don't deserve monetary compensation or unionization. The NCAA sells a fiction that amateur "student athletes" should play for the love of the game while delivering professional levels of performance. Meanwhile, their "non-profit" monopoly pays no taxes on the tens of billions of dollars it hauls in TV contracts and licensing fees. The NCAA's president Jack Emmert makes almost $2 million annually. In 2012 66 NCAA Division I football coaches made more than $1 million (13 made more than $3 million, with a top salary of $5.47 million). In 40 states the highest-paid public employee is a football coach.
Why do so many highly paid individuals insist that the players who do all the real work get nothing for their efforts? And just how easy do these players have it?
For 20 years I've had a peripheral connection to NCAA women's volleyball, and I've seen firsthand the demands of an NCAA sport. For the most part, volleyball players are like regular college students: most of them have real majors (nursing, engineering, speech pathology, etc.), though some have typical "sports" majors like sports marketing, communications or kinesiology. Unlike football and basketball players, most volleyball players have no false expectations of a professional sports career. They therefore take their classes seriously and most get decent grades despite having real majors.
So, the NCAA's fairy tale about student athletes might be true for volleyball, and many other "minor" NCAA sports like wrestling, track and field, soccer, gymnastics, softball, swimming, and so on. But it's a joke when it comes to the "major" sports.
NCAA football and basketball programs are notorious for phony majors, phony classes, grade rigging, "tutoring" and outright cheating. This is because the only reason these players are enrolled in college is to play sports; the degree is just annoying requirement that keeps getting in the way. In basketball this is completely obvious, with many kids ditching college after a year or two to go pro, or jumping into the NBA directly from high school.
What's it like to play an NCAA sport? College athletes have very little control over their lives for four full years -- often five years for redshirts. Their entire lives revolve around training, practices, travel and matches. The NCAA and coaches step directly into the personal lives of recruits and players, often while they're still in middle school. The NCAA imposes restrictions on who athletes can associate with and how they can interact. Coaches monitor players' Facebook and Twitter accounts. At many colleges players can't even choose what they eat: their diet is dictated by the coaching staff, sometimes all year round. Coaches dictate what time players get up, when they go to bed, how much they should weigh, how fast they should run, how much they should be able to lift, and literally how high they should jump.
Many football players are told to put on weight simply to increase their inertia so that when they tackle opponents they do more damage. The amount of lean muscle you can gain quickly is extremely limited, which means many players are encouraged to pack on the pounds in fat. This kind of weight gain is not easily shed after a football career is over, and has serious consequences for long-term health.
Players are subjected to hazardous training and practice regimes that push their endurance and strength to the limit. Injuries are expected: sprained ankles, broken wrists and fingers, torn rotator cuffs and ripped ACLs are common in volleyball; football players suffer those and far worse injuries, including frequent concussions and spinal injuries. Worse, players are expected to continue playing while injured. Many injured players lose their scholarships. Over a five-year period ending in 2009 NCAA football players suffered 318 ACL tears. That means every weekend four or five NCAA football players were out for at least the season, and for many their careers are ended.
These injuries stay with the players, often causing pain and disability for the rest of their lives. Football players in their 20s and 30s have the arthritic knees of a 70-year-old. Some football players have hidden injuries that could suddenly paralyze them if they get hit the wrong way. Some volleyball players and baseball pitchers can barely lift their arms above their heads. And many football and hockey players suffer brain trauma that can cause debilitating cognitive diseases later in life.
Then there are the coaches. Some of them are are great guys, but too many of them are thugs and crooks. Coaches regularly assault players without repercussions.
So, yes: playing an NCAA sport isn't a job. It's four years of boot camp.
Those who are argue that NCAA athletes aren't employees note that they don't receive monetary compensation. They do, however, receive college tuition, room and board. For some schools this can be worth several hundred thousand dollars over the course of a four-year career. Most NCAA programs also have non-scholarship players, called walk-ons, who don't get their tuition paid but who go through all the same rigors of training as the rest of the team.
All players receive training, coaching and medical care, the exact value of which is difficult to calculate: a small percentage of players go on to professional careers in major league football, baseball or basketball where they can make millions of dollars a year. Even in the case of volleyball, there are European and Asian leagues that pay anywhere from a few thousand to a million dollars a season, or lead to a handful of spots on the national team, which could mean a medal at the Olympics.
But the vast majority of NCAA athletes will have no career in professional sports. There are far more college players than there are positions in professional leagues and national teams.
If, despite the compensation that athletes receive, they aren't employees, what are they? Dedicated amateurs? Well-trained volunteers? Indentured servants? Slaves?
NCAA sports is a multibillion dollar industry that pumps up the profits of television networks like CBS and Fox, cable companies like Comcast, satellite TV companies like Dish Network, apparel and shoe companies like Nike and Reebok, sports equipment companies like Wilson and Spalding, bookmakers and betting parlors in Las Vegas. A hel of a lot of money is made off the blood, sweat and tears of these kids.
NCAA conferences are essentially farm teams for the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB. A very good argument could be made for spinning them out of colleges into local semi-pro club teams, which is how it's done in Europe. Club teams are already where the real action is in many high-school sports. But the thought of all that money drying up makes administrators at Division I schools heartsick.
The best thing that could come from the NLRB decision would be medical pensions for all NCAA players (including walkons) -- the NCAA's cost of business shouldn't be offloaded onto our already overburdened health care system. Too many athletes are stuck with huge medical bills ten years down the road for injuries they suffered playing in games the NCAA got paid billions in broadcast rights for.
A minimum standard of professionalism for coaching staff should also be guaranteed, to protect players from abusive coaches.
The American system of collegiate sports makes no sense whatsoever: college is where you should go for an degree in economics, medicine or engineering, not train for the NFL. But this is the system we're stuck with; the NCAA should do right by the kids who are making them bucketloads of money.
[Peter Ohr, the regional NLRB director,] ruled that Northwestern’s scholarship football players should be eligible to form a union based on a number of factors, including the time they devote to football (as many as 50 hours some weeks), the control exerted by coaches and their scholarships, which Mr. Ohr deemed a contract for compensation.The decision started a firestorm of debate.
“It cannot be said that the employer’s scholarship players are ‘primarily students,’ ” the decision said.
A common sentiment is that NCAA players have an easy ride and that they don't deserve monetary compensation or unionization. The NCAA sells a fiction that amateur "student athletes" should play for the love of the game while delivering professional levels of performance. Meanwhile, their "non-profit" monopoly pays no taxes on the tens of billions of dollars it hauls in TV contracts and licensing fees. The NCAA's president Jack Emmert makes almost $2 million annually. In 2012 66 NCAA Division I football coaches made more than $1 million (13 made more than $3 million, with a top salary of $5.47 million). In 40 states the highest-paid public employee is a football coach.
Why do so many highly paid individuals insist that the players who do all the real work get nothing for their efforts? And just how easy do these players have it?
For 20 years I've had a peripheral connection to NCAA women's volleyball, and I've seen firsthand the demands of an NCAA sport. For the most part, volleyball players are like regular college students: most of them have real majors (nursing, engineering, speech pathology, etc.), though some have typical "sports" majors like sports marketing, communications or kinesiology. Unlike football and basketball players, most volleyball players have no false expectations of a professional sports career. They therefore take their classes seriously and most get decent grades despite having real majors.
So, the NCAA's fairy tale about student athletes might be true for volleyball, and many other "minor" NCAA sports like wrestling, track and field, soccer, gymnastics, softball, swimming, and so on. But it's a joke when it comes to the "major" sports.
NCAA football and basketball programs are notorious for phony majors, phony classes, grade rigging, "tutoring" and outright cheating. This is because the only reason these players are enrolled in college is to play sports; the degree is just annoying requirement that keeps getting in the way. In basketball this is completely obvious, with many kids ditching college after a year or two to go pro, or jumping into the NBA directly from high school.
What's it like to play an NCAA sport? College athletes have very little control over their lives for four full years -- often five years for redshirts. Their entire lives revolve around training, practices, travel and matches. The NCAA and coaches step directly into the personal lives of recruits and players, often while they're still in middle school. The NCAA imposes restrictions on who athletes can associate with and how they can interact. Coaches monitor players' Facebook and Twitter accounts. At many colleges players can't even choose what they eat: their diet is dictated by the coaching staff, sometimes all year round. Coaches dictate what time players get up, when they go to bed, how much they should weigh, how fast they should run, how much they should be able to lift, and literally how high they should jump.
Many football players are told to put on weight simply to increase their inertia so that when they tackle opponents they do more damage. The amount of lean muscle you can gain quickly is extremely limited, which means many players are encouraged to pack on the pounds in fat. This kind of weight gain is not easily shed after a football career is over, and has serious consequences for long-term health.
Players are subjected to hazardous training and practice regimes that push their endurance and strength to the limit. Injuries are expected: sprained ankles, broken wrists and fingers, torn rotator cuffs and ripped ACLs are common in volleyball; football players suffer those and far worse injuries, including frequent concussions and spinal injuries. Worse, players are expected to continue playing while injured. Many injured players lose their scholarships. Over a five-year period ending in 2009 NCAA football players suffered 318 ACL tears. That means every weekend four or five NCAA football players were out for at least the season, and for many their careers are ended.
These injuries stay with the players, often causing pain and disability for the rest of their lives. Football players in their 20s and 30s have the arthritic knees of a 70-year-old. Some football players have hidden injuries that could suddenly paralyze them if they get hit the wrong way. Some volleyball players and baseball pitchers can barely lift their arms above their heads. And many football and hockey players suffer brain trauma that can cause debilitating cognitive diseases later in life.
Then there are the coaches. Some of them are are great guys, but too many of them are thugs and crooks. Coaches regularly assault players without repercussions.
So, yes: playing an NCAA sport isn't a job. It's four years of boot camp.
Those who are argue that NCAA athletes aren't employees note that they don't receive monetary compensation. They do, however, receive college tuition, room and board. For some schools this can be worth several hundred thousand dollars over the course of a four-year career. Most NCAA programs also have non-scholarship players, called walk-ons, who don't get their tuition paid but who go through all the same rigors of training as the rest of the team.
All players receive training, coaching and medical care, the exact value of which is difficult to calculate: a small percentage of players go on to professional careers in major league football, baseball or basketball where they can make millions of dollars a year. Even in the case of volleyball, there are European and Asian leagues that pay anywhere from a few thousand to a million dollars a season, or lead to a handful of spots on the national team, which could mean a medal at the Olympics.
But the vast majority of NCAA athletes will have no career in professional sports. There are far more college players than there are positions in professional leagues and national teams.
If, despite the compensation that athletes receive, they aren't employees, what are they? Dedicated amateurs? Well-trained volunteers? Indentured servants? Slaves?
NCAA sports is a multibillion dollar industry that pumps up the profits of television networks like CBS and Fox, cable companies like Comcast, satellite TV companies like Dish Network, apparel and shoe companies like Nike and Reebok, sports equipment companies like Wilson and Spalding, bookmakers and betting parlors in Las Vegas. A hel of a lot of money is made off the blood, sweat and tears of these kids.
NCAA conferences are essentially farm teams for the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB. A very good argument could be made for spinning them out of colleges into local semi-pro club teams, which is how it's done in Europe. Club teams are already where the real action is in many high-school sports. But the thought of all that money drying up makes administrators at Division I schools heartsick.
The best thing that could come from the NLRB decision would be medical pensions for all NCAA players (including walkons) -- the NCAA's cost of business shouldn't be offloaded onto our already overburdened health care system. Too many athletes are stuck with huge medical bills ten years down the road for injuries they suffered playing in games the NCAA got paid billions in broadcast rights for.
A minimum standard of professionalism for coaching staff should also be guaranteed, to protect players from abusive coaches.
The American system of collegiate sports makes no sense whatsoever: college is where you should go for an degree in economics, medicine or engineering, not train for the NFL. But this is the system we're stuck with; the NCAA should do right by the kids who are making them bucketloads of money.
Still No Obamacare Boiling Pit of Sewage In Which We Will All Roil and Scream
The CBO and Joint Committee on Taxation released a series of new estimates Monday on the law’s costs and the number of people it will cover. Here are the numbers and main points:
SMALLER premium rises? Really? That's not what the folks are telling me inside the bubble.
- Insurance premiums under Obamacare are projected to rise less than 3 percent in 2015, a smaller-than-expected jump as the health insurance exchanges enter their second year.
- 12 million more Americans will have health coverage in 2014 than would have been the case without the ACA
- Coverage through the law will cost the federal government about $5 billion less than expected this year.
- The law’s 10-year cost for the coverage provisions is pegged at $1.383 trillion — $104 billion less than prior calculations. Both figures are lower than prior estimates mostly because the CBO and JCT anticipate premium subsidies being smaller.
- The budget estimates now project premiums to be about 15 percent lower in 2016 than initial projections four years ago.
SMALLER premium rises? Really? That's not what the folks are telling me inside the bubble.
Name Changed to Protect the Guilty
Samuel Warde has a piece up about political discussions on digital media that is fucking hilarious. It looks like it's been up for awhile but has just now been making the rounds in my social media circles. Check out some of the lines from "Name Changed to Protect the Guilty."
Well, first you commie fucktards would have to change the law and that is not likely to happen, but if you somehow manage it, I and many others will fight.
I can barely tolerate you leftist/statists as it stands.
Hillary doesn’t stand a chance, not now. You are stuck on stupid, Sam, and you deserve whatever insults are thrown your way. You have ignored the truth and support Statism. It’s your religion. You are as bad as a Muslim in my opinion.
Diversity causes division. America was once the melting pot of the world but the leftist trumpets diversity and division, not unity. I do respect the American way of life, you’re the one that hates it and wants to change it into a socialist State. The wheels are coming off the administration and this will be the year of scandal. I’ll be pretty happy if we see some resignations and an impeachment proceeding. Hopefully we will drive a stake through the heart of statism forever.
Don’t act like the Democrats are any better than Republicans because they have pretty much helped bring this country down. The slide has not stopped. Freedom will soon be a thing of the past.
Seems awfully familiar, doesn't it? :)
Well, first you commie fucktards would have to change the law and that is not likely to happen, but if you somehow manage it, I and many others will fight.
I can barely tolerate you leftist/statists as it stands.
Hillary doesn’t stand a chance, not now. You are stuck on stupid, Sam, and you deserve whatever insults are thrown your way. You have ignored the truth and support Statism. It’s your religion. You are as bad as a Muslim in my opinion.
Diversity causes division. America was once the melting pot of the world but the leftist trumpets diversity and division, not unity. I do respect the American way of life, you’re the one that hates it and wants to change it into a socialist State. The wheels are coming off the administration and this will be the year of scandal. I’ll be pretty happy if we see some resignations and an impeachment proceeding. Hopefully we will drive a stake through the heart of statism forever.
Don’t act like the Democrats are any better than Republicans because they have pretty much helped bring this country down. The slide has not stopped. Freedom will soon be a thing of the past.
Seems awfully familiar, doesn't it? :)
Rand Paul's Party of Justice
A very interesting speech from a man obviously trying to broaden his base in a run for the presidency in 2016. There's a lot of the usual libertarian nonsense but how much of it is just what he has to say?
Pay attention to what he says starting at about the 10 minute, 30 second mark regarding the institutional racism in the criminal justice system. More importantly, note how is trying to get a crowd of old, white people to understand that they have to change their message and broaden their appeal.
Monday, April 14, 2014
Racist or Not Racist
Question for my readers...I was recently engaged in a discussion about the racism in our judicial and criminal justice system (see this link for one of the many studies that show this to be factual) with someone who said, "Maybe black people commit more crimes."
Racist or not racist?
I ask the question because it seems that there seems to be so many bowels blown over "playing the race card" and I want to be sensitive to those folks who, like black people in this country, are under near constant attack for their inability to reflect and admit fault.
Hey, they are people too!!
Racist or not racist?
I ask the question because it seems that there seems to be so many bowels blown over "playing the race card" and I want to be sensitive to those folks who, like black people in this country, are under near constant attack for their inability to reflect and admit fault.
Hey, they are people too!!
We Are Less Free Than North Korea
At least that's what Mike Huckabee thinks.
How many times can "freedom die" tonight before we stop listening to these infants?
How many times can "freedom die" tonight before we stop listening to these infants?
Religious Freedom in Saudi Arabia
A very hopeful piece which I found illustrates that it's best to leave behind stereotypes.
Mr. Awda, alone among Saudi clerics, openly welcomed the Arab uprisings of 2011, and even published a book called “Questions of Revolution.” Promptly banned here but widely disseminated on the Internet, the book drew on Islamic texts and history to reach some very unorthodox conclusions: that democracy is the only legitimate form of government; that Islam does not permit theocracy; that separation of powers is required; that the worst despotism is that practiced in the name of religion.
I've come a long way with my horrible bias and prejudice towards Muslims. I let my anger over the 9-11 attacks cloud my judgment and that was very short sighted and fundamentally flawed. Most of what changed me I don't write about much on here. The general reason are the students that I have had the absolute honor to know in the last few years that are of the Islamic faith. These young men and women have showed me that there is always hope for a strong bridge between the East and the West.
Of course, the hope extends beyond me. The conservatives of the Islamic world (like our own conservatives here) aren't going to last if they don't change.
Mr. Awda, alone among Saudi clerics, openly welcomed the Arab uprisings of 2011, and even published a book called “Questions of Revolution.” Promptly banned here but widely disseminated on the Internet, the book drew on Islamic texts and history to reach some very unorthodox conclusions: that democracy is the only legitimate form of government; that Islam does not permit theocracy; that separation of powers is required; that the worst despotism is that practiced in the name of religion.
I've come a long way with my horrible bias and prejudice towards Muslims. I let my anger over the 9-11 attacks cloud my judgment and that was very short sighted and fundamentally flawed. Most of what changed me I don't write about much on here. The general reason are the students that I have had the absolute honor to know in the last few years that are of the Islamic faith. These young men and women have showed me that there is always hope for a strong bridge between the East and the West.
Of course, the hope extends beyond me. The conservatives of the Islamic world (like our own conservatives here) aren't going to last if they don't change.
Sunday, April 13, 2014
Jesus Was Married
A fragment of an ancient Egyptian papyrus known as the "Gospel of Jesus's Wife," unveiled in 2012, shows no evidence of being a modern forgery, as some critics had charged, according to an article published in the Harvard Theological Review. Certainly, this will cause millions of bowels to be blown around our nation and indeed the world but I don't see how this changes anything.
Does it make Him less of the Son of God if He was married? No. He was a rabbi and there were no priests during that time that took vows of celibacy. He and His wife would stand as shining examples of a loving, committed relationship that should be emulated. After all, He spoke frequently of the evil of adultery and how couples should stay committed to one another. It seems now that He not only talked the talk but walked the walk and that illustrates just how perfect and deep his integrity ran.
Does it make Him less of the Son of God if He was married? No. He was a rabbi and there were no priests during that time that took vows of celibacy. He and His wife would stand as shining examples of a loving, committed relationship that should be emulated. After all, He spoke frequently of the evil of adultery and how couples should stay committed to one another. It seems now that He not only talked the talk but walked the walk and that illustrates just how perfect and deep his integrity ran.
A Nation of Laws
Here's a handy chronology of the history of United States immigration laws. A few points to take note of...
Chinese Exclusion Acts / Immigration Exclusion Act (1882): prohibited citizenship for Chinese immigrants. Subsequent acts reinforcing the exclusion of Chinese immigrant were passed in 1884, 1886 and 1888. "In 1882, 1884, 1886, and 1888, Congress passed Chinese exclusion acts, suspending immigration of Chinese laborers and barring reentry of all Chinese laborers who departed and did not return before the passage of the Act" (Lowe 180-81fn14).
and...
Immigration Act of 1917: Exclusion of Asian Indians (1917) "A geographical criterion was used to exclude Asian Indians, because their racial or ethnic status was unclear" (Lowe, 180-81fn14).
I bring both of these laws to light because they were, at one time, the law of the land and then they were changed. It's not the fucking end of all that is holy if we change immigration law (or any law for that matter) that isn't working and/or not applicable to the times.
Our current system of immigration isn't working. We have over 11 million undocumented workers that are effectively being given amnesty. We are not going to deport the vast majority of them. 40% of them didn't sneak across the border. They stayed beyond their work visas which means that all the border securing mouth foaming isn't applicable. It's time for the House to pass Marco Rubio's bill so we can finally have immigration law that fits the time.
Chinese Exclusion Acts / Immigration Exclusion Act (1882): prohibited citizenship for Chinese immigrants. Subsequent acts reinforcing the exclusion of Chinese immigrant were passed in 1884, 1886 and 1888. "In 1882, 1884, 1886, and 1888, Congress passed Chinese exclusion acts, suspending immigration of Chinese laborers and barring reentry of all Chinese laborers who departed and did not return before the passage of the Act" (Lowe 180-81fn14).
and...
Immigration Act of 1917: Exclusion of Asian Indians (1917) "A geographical criterion was used to exclude Asian Indians, because their racial or ethnic status was unclear" (Lowe, 180-81fn14).
I bring both of these laws to light because they were, at one time, the law of the land and then they were changed. It's not the fucking end of all that is holy if we change immigration law (or any law for that matter) that isn't working and/or not applicable to the times.
Our current system of immigration isn't working. We have over 11 million undocumented workers that are effectively being given amnesty. We are not going to deport the vast majority of them. 40% of them didn't sneak across the border. They stayed beyond their work visas which means that all the border securing mouth foaming isn't applicable. It's time for the House to pass Marco Rubio's bill so we can finally have immigration law that fits the time.
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Good Words (Bill Maher)
“The GOP has kind of become talk radio, an echo chamber where people are not interested in actually legislating or compromising or fixing America, just in screeching about how liberals have ruined it."
---Bill Maher, 11 April 2014.
Check out the whole video, folks, as it is an excellent summation of the Right today. There's also a mention of "voices in their heads" which I fond amusing.
Yet it was his brief mention of why conservatives bitch about people that don't work and yet still seem to have so much time during the day to listen to talk radio got me wondering. Don't they have jobs? It reminds me of this time I had to go downtown for a meeting. I parked my car in a underground ramp and when I got out, I could here Rush Limbaugh's voice blaring out of a car. Some dude was sitting in his car, staring straight ahead with an ultra angry look on his face, fervently glued to his radio and hanging on every word Rush said. What a miserable life that fellow must have had...
---Bill Maher, 11 April 2014.
Check out the whole video, folks, as it is an excellent summation of the Right today. There's also a mention of "voices in their heads" which I fond amusing.
Yet it was his brief mention of why conservatives bitch about people that don't work and yet still seem to have so much time during the day to listen to talk radio got me wondering. Don't they have jobs? It reminds me of this time I had to go downtown for a meeting. I parked my car in a underground ramp and when I got out, I could here Rush Limbaugh's voice blaring out of a car. Some dude was sitting in his car, staring straight ahead with an ultra angry look on his face, fervently glued to his radio and hanging on every word Rush said. What a miserable life that fellow must have had...
The End of the Benghazi Mouthfoam
GOP Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, the Republican chair of the House Armed Services Committee, says he’s satisfied with how the US military and the Obama administration responded to the deadly attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya that killed four Americans, including the US ambassador to Libya.The news also exonerates expected Democratic presidential nominee, and then-Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.
“I think I’ve pretty well been satisfied that given where the troops were, how quickly the thing all happened and how quickly it dissipated, we probably couldn’t have done more than we did,” McKeon said to reporters today, as quoted by AP.
Will they finally leave it alone? Personally, I hope they keep talking about it for the next two years through both election cycles. Between their obsession with the ACA and the IRS, they are like this...
“I think I’ve pretty well been satisfied that given where the troops were, how quickly the thing all happened and how quickly it dissipated, we probably couldn’t have done more than we did,” McKeon said to reporters today, as quoted by AP.
Will they finally leave it alone? Personally, I hope they keep talking about it for the next two years through both election cycles. Between their obsession with the ACA and the IRS, they are like this...
The Only Health Care Nightmare? Pure Spite
Paul Krugman's recent piece on the Affordable Care Act pretty much sums everything up to current status. Some choice cuts...
But wait: What about all the people who lost their policies thanks to Obamacare? The answer is that this looks more than ever like a relatively small issue hyped by right-wing propaganda. RAND finds that fewer than a million people who previously had individual insurance became uninsured — and many of those transitions, one guesses, had nothing to do with Obamacare. It’s worth noting that, so far, not one of the supposed horror stories touted in Koch-backed anti-reform advertisements has stood up to scrutiny, suggesting that real horror stories are rare.
Rare indeed. So much so that you really don't here about them much except for in the right wing blogsphere with the sole intention of increasing mouth foam.
Republicans clearly have no idea how to respond to these developments. They can’t offer any real alternative to Obamacare, because you can’t achieve the good stuff in the Affordable Care Act, like coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions, without also including the stuff they hate, the requirement that everyone buy insurance and the subsidies that make that requirement possible. Their political strategy has been to talk vaguely about replacing reform while waiting for its inevitable collapse. And what if reform doesn’t collapse? They have no idea what to do.
This is especially true since it was their idea to begin with!
What’s amazing about this wave of rejection is that it appears to be motivated by pure spite. The federal government is prepared to pay for Medicaid expansion, so it would cost the states nothing, and would, in fact, provide an inflow of dollars. The health economist Jonathan Gruber, one of the principal architects of health reform — and normally a very mild-mannered guy — recently summed it up: The Medicaid-rejection states “are willing to sacrifice billions of dollars of injections into their economy in order to punish poor people. It really is just almost awesome in its evilness.” Indeed.
Motivated by pure spite...one could extend that to pretty much every issue the Right whines about. They really don't have any there there...
Gruber's point really drives home how this issue ties into all the other ones that will part of this year's election. Last Wednesday, in a single committee meeting, Republicans voted against the Minimum Wage, Equal Pay, LGBT Rights, and Mine Safety. Add in a decided lack of movement on the immigration issue and the Republican party is pretty much the same one that ran behind Mitt Romney in 2012. Have they learned anything?
More importantly, do they honestly think voters aren't paying attention to this?
But wait: What about all the people who lost their policies thanks to Obamacare? The answer is that this looks more than ever like a relatively small issue hyped by right-wing propaganda. RAND finds that fewer than a million people who previously had individual insurance became uninsured — and many of those transitions, one guesses, had nothing to do with Obamacare. It’s worth noting that, so far, not one of the supposed horror stories touted in Koch-backed anti-reform advertisements has stood up to scrutiny, suggesting that real horror stories are rare.
Rare indeed. So much so that you really don't here about them much except for in the right wing blogsphere with the sole intention of increasing mouth foam.
Republicans clearly have no idea how to respond to these developments. They can’t offer any real alternative to Obamacare, because you can’t achieve the good stuff in the Affordable Care Act, like coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions, without also including the stuff they hate, the requirement that everyone buy insurance and the subsidies that make that requirement possible. Their political strategy has been to talk vaguely about replacing reform while waiting for its inevitable collapse. And what if reform doesn’t collapse? They have no idea what to do.
This is especially true since it was their idea to begin with!
What’s amazing about this wave of rejection is that it appears to be motivated by pure spite. The federal government is prepared to pay for Medicaid expansion, so it would cost the states nothing, and would, in fact, provide an inflow of dollars. The health economist Jonathan Gruber, one of the principal architects of health reform — and normally a very mild-mannered guy — recently summed it up: The Medicaid-rejection states “are willing to sacrifice billions of dollars of injections into their economy in order to punish poor people. It really is just almost awesome in its evilness.” Indeed.
Motivated by pure spite...one could extend that to pretty much every issue the Right whines about. They really don't have any there there...
Gruber's point really drives home how this issue ties into all the other ones that will part of this year's election. Last Wednesday, in a single committee meeting, Republicans voted against the Minimum Wage, Equal Pay, LGBT Rights, and Mine Safety. Add in a decided lack of movement on the immigration issue and the Republican party is pretty much the same one that ran behind Mitt Romney in 2012. Have they learned anything?
More importantly, do they honestly think voters aren't paying attention to this?
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