How much politics is too much?

I’ve been trying to stay away from posting about politics (your own posts are fair game for me) since I know its a particularly aggravating season for everyone… but I’m actually just angry today and feel a need to share.

My news and facebook feeds have been filled repeatedly today with a non-stop criticism of Romney’s attempts at charity in Ohio yesterday. The criticisms are varied, but pretty much all of them say by holding a collection for supplies, non-perishables and cash that Romney is politicizing Hurricane Sandy. Someone even claims to have called the Red Cross and says, based on their very misquoted answer, that Romney’s efforts are actually going to cause the Red Cross MORE work because what the Red Cross really wants is money, not other donations (mind you… Romney’s event had multiple direct methods to give cash to the Red Cross advertised). Ok… I’ll actually concede that the criticism is a legitimate interpretation for the people who don’t like Romney or his politics. I would ask you to remember that Romney regularly donates to charity and other good will organizations (just look at his tax records which all of you regularly complain about) and such an event is not outside of his character or history. Perhaps a more tame interpretation is that as a presidential candidate he has a much bigger megaphone than normal and is simply trying to put it to good use.

What really has me angry today is all of the back patting and **** sucking going on (sorry… that’s probably over doing it a bit) saying that Obama is looking presidential through this mess. I agree he is… but where is the wildly negative interpretations about him?!?! We even have another very recent crisis with which to compare and not a single person out there wants to point out the galactic difference between Obama’s reactions to the two events?

A 7 hour long, planned terrorist attack on a U.S. embassy/consulate kills 4 people, one of them our ambassador. Two of those killed were SEALs on a CIA detachment that were specifically ordered to stand down and let the Americans at the embassy die. The state department watched this in real time via cameras on location… The defense department watched this in real time (with a slight delay) via a drone asset overhead. The day after all of this, Obama goes on a campaign tour…? Then, he and his administration go out and claim for two weeks that this was a spontaneous protest about a video and that they were telling the American people everything they knew as they knew it. Even if you’re trying to be forgiving, you have to say that Obama and his spokespeople were spending all of their time to catch up to the news cycle and limit “political damage”.

Now, over the last 2 days, we have a hurricane that threatens serious damage to the northeast (and now we know will cost 10s of billions in damage and 50+ lives) and the president spends an entire day before the damn thing hits getting his face in the news as often as possible. He and his administration are giving repeated press releases and a mountain of information that most people would never care about.

Two crises… two totally different Obamas. Why the difference? Perhaps because the hurricane is affecting the continental U.S. (as opposed to sovereign territory somewhere else) it’s more politically dangerous to appear disconnected from the event (lest he look like Bush with Katrina). Perhaps he learned something from the reaction to the Bengazi attack and didn’t want another serious political mistake looming just before an election. Maybe the hurricane is coming just before the election and the Obama campaign felt Obama sticking his nose into everything to “look presidential” would help his chances to get elected. Maybe he’s just doing his job as president and I should shut the hell up… Maybe Romney is just trying to do a good thing and everyone else should shut the hell up?

 It has come to my attention…

… that the hosting I was graciously gifted by a friend may be coming to an end soon. I’ll be backing everything up and determining what to do in the next week or so. From what I can see, so very few people read my posts that it may not be worth continuing the site (it probably doesn’t help that I don’t post often… and I’m quite sure that one feeds the other). My original purpose for this site was entire to have my own domain so I could have a better looking email address, which I now have in a live.com domain, so I’m not sure I need to keep either the site or the domain.

If you enjoy my occasional thoughts, I’d appreciate you dropping me a note here.

 Discussion in the wake of Colorado

If social media is any indication, its going to be a very long time before the public can be rational about what to do in the wake of things like the theater shooting, school shootings and the Trevon Martin shooting. We have people saying to “take all of the guns away” and others saying “give everyone guns”. Neither of these are rational solutions or even logical reactions to what has happened in recent times especially since we the public don’t even know what really happened. In the case of George Zimmerman, the Martin family along with racial leaders (Sharpton and Jackson) hijacked the entire media coverage for a month to pain Zimmerman as a bigot who hunted Trevon down “like a dog”. The police and FBI investigations are not showing that caricature to be, at least in part, inaccurate. I’ll bet that through the investigation of the theater shooting we find out that there were indications about this kid being disturbed and that some of the things he procured (or at least the ways he got them) weren’t legal.

Instead of trying to parse through events that I wasn’t there for and try predict things that may have prevented such things from happening, I would love to have a rational debate around the core topic that people are undoubtedly going to talk about a lot soon… Gun control. And I’d like to do so by posing a few targeted questions — and give my answers at the same time.

First, what does everyone really think the problem is. Obviously, guns are directly involved but is the fact that someone used a tool for its intended purpose the inherent problem? More specifically, in the case of the mass shootings do any of you believe that a total lack of gun availability would have prevented the events? In the case of George Zimmerman, what do you think the outcome would have been had he not been able to carry a firearm?

I think the answer to this question probably lends too much to individual bias but lets people understand your thinking. A gun serves to kill a person… not a great goal, but given the world we live in sometimes such a tool is necessary. So to me, the question, in part, becomes does having a gun make a person more likely to commit violence. In a general sense… I answer maybe, it really depends on a person’s psychology. If a person is weak willed or lends themselves to self-aggrandizing behavior, a gun could very easily make them feel empowered which is probably a bad thing. This also lets me answer the second question, I don’t believe the lack of guns would prevent mass murder. Specifically in the theater shooting, the kid had a clear goal of killing and terrorizing. He had the knowledge and ability to make primitive explosives and without a gun he could have just as easily blown the up the theater or part of it (probably causing more death, by the way). For Zimmerman, the only part I can imagine happening different is who died (opinions on who was wrong in that event not withstanding), unless you believe that owning a gun specifically made him feel safe enough to be a neighborhood watchman… in which case we’re going to have to really analyze causal events leading up to anything and everything… not something I plan to do here.

Second, given your understanding from the first question, do you believe that being able to remove 100% of civilian firearms will reduce violent crime/murders?

I personally believe the answer to this is impossible. England tried a gun ban starting in 1997 and only saw a temporary drop in average crime rates (there was no precipitous decline as was predicted) and is currently on average worse than most of western Europe for violent crime. Which is a bad omen since the UK is an island… no 2000 mile long porous borders for criminals to get guns through. In the US, it will be impossible to stop illegal arms (we can’t do it for drugs and we have dogs that can sniff those out) which means the only people we take the guns away from are those who would own and use them for legal and reasonable purposes (and some criminals who can’t find a the guy on the corer selling a pistol). Even if we could get rid of guns, I don’t believe that would really help any long term trends (more than what we’re already doing) since violent crime is rarely about the tool used to perform the violence. As I said before, I’m sure there are some people out there who are emboldened by the possession of a gun, but the gun is still a means to an end. A knife, hell a cross bow, would get those people to the same goal.

Third, assume gun control is successful in reducing violent crime, do you believe there are any negative to overriding the right and purpose behind the 2nd Amendment?

The second amendment was written for the explicit purpose of giving the citizenry the right and the tools to overthrow their own government should the government become oppressive again. It wasn’t so that I can shoot a robber in the face with a shotgun as he comes through my door (although, that’s not a bad benefit), it was so that the government lived in perpetual fear of the people to make sure the people always maintained control. For me, this question is really, can I envision an American government where we the people need to dissolve and reform it? (Yes.) More importantly, does taking away the right for citizens to own and carry guns bring with it the ability for our government to act more like Syria’s or Libya’s where the government has all the guns and the only thing the people can do is die? Does the potential reduction in violent crime override the loss of life in my fictional (but possible) future?

I hope my questions (and maybe my own answers) have caused some real thought on the issue. So last, what is your solution?

I don’t fall into the category of giving everyone guns. There are people out there who should never touch a gun and we need reasonable measures to make sure they don’t get them. However, I also firmly believe that we should empower responsible (and practiced, if not trained) gun owners to carry their weapons just about anywhere. Don’t get me wrong, most of the situations we’ve seen lately probably wouldn’t have changed had the gun laws been less strict. In the George Zimmerman case, it would have just been a bloodbath had everyone had a gun. In the case of the theater, other gun owners could have easily shot more innocent people while trying to bring down the assailant. However, there are situations where gun owners could have changed the outcome. In most of the university shootings (specifically the UVA shooting), at least one of the victims or potential victims was a CC/CWP holder and could have returned fire with minimal risk to others. Very recently, we’ve seen stories of citizens stopping robberies and assaults because they were carrying weapons. Ultimately, this is probably a crap chute. For every good there is a bad and for every bad there is a good and we can’t know the unintended consequences of our actions and laws before they’re put into place.

 http://theascended.org/2012/06/02/1287

I abhor chain mail and forcing people in my contacts list to proactively determine if the crap I’m sending them is more crappy than usual. In an effort to continue in that vein, but also pass on something very interesting I shall put it here.

A pre-warning to all of you, this is highly political in nature (big surprise I’m sure) and I have copied the text exactly as was given to me. If you get annoyed by the text, skip to the end. I’m going to try to provide some references and factual basis, and probably some opinion.

The day the Democrats took over was not January 22nd 2009, it was actually January 3rd 2007 the day the Democrats took over the House of Representatives and the Senate, at the very start of the 110th Congress. The Democrat Party controlled a majority in both chambers for the first time since the end of the 103rd Congress in 1995. For those who are listening to the liberals propagating the fallacy that everything is “Bush’s Fault”, think about this: January 3rd, 2007 was the day the Democrats took over the Senate and the Congress. At the time: The DOW Jones closed at 12,621.77 The GDP for the previous quarter was 3.5% The Unemployment rate was 4.6% George Bush’s Economic policies SET A RECORD of 52 STRAIGHT MONTHS of JOB GROWTH Remember the day… January 3rd, 2007 was the day that Barney Frank took over the House Financial Services Committee and Chris Dodd took over the Senate Banking Committee. The economic meltdown that happened 15 months later was in what part of the economy? BANKING AND FINANCIAL SERVICES! Unemployment… to this CRISIS by (among MANY other things) dumping 5-6 TRILLION Dollars of toxic loans on the economy from YOUR Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac FIASCOES! Bush asked Congress 17 TIMES to stop Fannie & Freddie – starting in 2001 because it was financially risky for the US economy. And who took the THIRD highest pay-off from Fannie Mae AND Freddie Mac? OBAMA And who fought against reform of Fannie and Freddie? OBAMA and the Democrat Congress So when someone tries to blame Bush. REMEMBER JANUARY 3rd, 2007…. THE DAY THE DEMOCRATS TOOK OVER!” Budgets do not come from the White House. They come from Congress and the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democrat Party. Furthermore, the Democrats controlled the budget process for 2008 & 2009 as well as 2010 & 2011. In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat belatedly got tough on spending increases. For 2009 though, Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid bypassed George Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the 2009 budgets. And where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as President to complete 2009. If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for the budgets. If Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself. In a nutshell, what Obama is saying is I inherited a deficit that I voted for and then I voted to expand that deficit four-fold since January 20th. There is no way this will be widely publicized, unless each of us sends it on!

110th Congress according to Wikipedia: The described makeup of the 110th Congress is accurate. In fact, it seems like the author of the above used Wikipedia for the basis of that argument.

Hate to use Wikipedia again, and such a political statistic at that… Job Growth by Presidential terms shows that the first 4 years of Bush saw job growth (albeit meager, especially compared to Clinton) after the 2001 fallout and the second term actually lost all of that growth and then some. More interesting though is the plotting of the employment data. There is clear growth past 2005 into the 2007-2008 time frame. I also managed to generate the following graphic from http://www.bls.gov/ces/cesbtabs.htm, table 1, all employed not seasonally adjusted:

The other elements about what budgets were passed and when are a matter of public record, the more interesting piece of it is really the opinion that the Democrats were moving their policies ahead slowly while simply lying in wait for a Democratic president.

As a Conservative (non-Republican — since I get accused of wearing the R quite often), I really want to believe this is true. At very least, it seems like a decent way to force Obama away from the “It’s Bush’s fault” mantra. However, I find something very wrong with the quote. I can’t honestly believe that any politician wants to hurt the country. The thought that the Democrats want explosive debt that is weighing down our economy and if allowed to continue will kill the economy is comical. I think all of the rich Senators and Congress people would really like to stay rich and an imploded economy won’t allow that. That said, the core of what the quote is getting at, Bush isn’t to blame, does actually seem to be factually sound, but you also have to consider two foreign wars at an estimated cost of $4 trillion (both wars actually did have congressional approval… both houses were Republican) and a bad mortgage market that had been around since long before Bush. I also don’t believe that Reid and Pelosi could single handedly destroy our economy in 18 months only to double down when Obama got in office.

Ultimately, what I want people to get out of this: Republicans didn’t “drive us into the ditch”, and Democrats aren’t “driving us forward”. We need leaders who are better at making rational decisions than politicking and for everyone to stop grandstanding about how their opponents hate the American people for various reasons and that their ideology will grant us unlimited rainbows and unicorns. Realize our problems, find rational, logical solutions that will likely hurt everyone a little today but leave us in a better place tomorrow. Taxing to infinity can’t work, more unemployment and medicare won’t work, and an totally open/free market is so abusive to the consumers that no one would succeed.

 The Future of Life… as seen by lawyers.

A good friend and roommate from college, Brian Buckley, found a frightening video about the possibility of The Singularity as might be affected by lawyers (most notably those from the RIAA/MPAA vein of law). Have a look at his blog. He wrote a unique series on AI a couple weeks ago that was definitely worth a view. Hi writing buddy (also a friend of mine from college), Ben Trube did a similar series at the same time that is also worth some time if you like this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E

 I’m glad I’m not the only one!

 Reason

I feel there needs to be a punctuation at the end of that title… I just have no idea what it should be. Read on… you’ll understand why… I hope.

As of late, I’ve been feeling remarkably persecuted by society. So many things, which should be (and used to be) conversations, have been turned into blatant bullying and righteous sermonizing based on presumptions of unquestionable correctness.

First and foremost, religion… particularly my personal religious beliefs have repeatedly come under unwarranted attack from people who claim to be non-biased and open minded. I could find humor in the obvious irony if I weren’t so repeatedly offended by people who assume I must be stupid or mentally damaged simply because I believe in something that no one has tangible proof of. I have never once made a silly argument like, “you can’t see air, so God could certainly exist”; I have never tried to talk someone out of atheism or into Christianity; My conversations about my faith are always topic related or invited by the individual; So why then must pseudo intellectuals use faulty understandings of philosophy (I dare not accuse them of using logic) to repeatedly insult and debase me… and worse why do they feel the need to, in a sense, conquer my religious beliefs as if they were a disease? [That isn't even a rhetorical question. If one you anti-religion individuals out there would care to answer, I promise not to delete your comments.] I am on a daily basis shocked by the general feeling around me that atheism, or more specifically, anti-theism, is the one and only reasonable belief and that many atheists feel it is their duty to stamp out faith. Have a look at this video. The feeling is very subtle, but unmistakable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urwVVycMp8g

“We are winning against the religious crazies.” Other than having the right and the freedom to believe that there is no god absent persecution and government restriction… I’m not sure what battle it is that you have to win… and he clearly doesn’t mean the war for his rights.

Over the last couple years I have also been repeatedly eviscerated, even by members in my own family, for having conservative political views. Conversations where I can intelligently debate and even learn from people of opposing views are fewer and farther between. Instead, they mostly devolve into attempting to bait me into making some sort of bigoted statement as if being conservative minded inherently makes me hate anyone who isn’t white, heterosexual, speaks English and is already a member of the middle class. Watching any news in recent weeks has on occasion actually made me physically ill. I simply can’t believe that we’ve got to a place in society where we assume someone who thinks differently than ourselves is simply an evil individual bent on self aggrandizing destruction and death. I used to think these feelings of mine were simply because I paid too much attention to the news… but I’ve been going to work earlier to avoid the news in the morning and finding more interesting activities to avoid the news in the evening and the feeling has simply gotten worse from interacting with people around me. Agree or disagree with me all you like, but can’t we have a thoughtful exchange of ideas instead of force feeding a personal agenda down the throats of people who think there is a better way?

Another issue I’ve been having: why is being a white, middle-class male looked down upon today? It seems every other possible combination of sex, ethnicity, social background and any other qualifiers to you’d like to put on have their own advocacy groups and anyone advocating for the “white man” (or actual fairness) gets immediately shouted down as an oppressive person. I think my favorite example of this mentality (without making comment of the actual incident) is the Trevon Martin shooting. In order to give a feeling of racial bias (or at least leave the door open to the idea of it), Zimmerman was labeled a “white Hispanic” by the media (we also shouldn’t forget the clear bias in the editing of the 911 tape by NBC). Never before have I heard that term. Hell, every time I’ve seen the classification for white people, the question is are you “White (non-Hispanic) or Hispanic” and now all of a sudden, when we need someone to look as bad as possible… we label them white… The argument could be made, although very poorly, that they were just trying to be factually correct since one of Zimmerman’s parents was in fact white… I guess that means Obama is the country’s first White-Black president, although, I don’t see that one making the headlines any time soon.

I have fairly thick skin and I’m definitely not crying at night over these things, but I’m having a hell of a time ignoring it. While most of my friends aren’t belligerent, a shockingly high percentage of them seem to share the near militant views that it takes to be so aggressively offensive and its making it damn hard to be open with some of them, or even have a desire to talk to them some days. So, in an attempt to preempt future assaults on my intelligence, allow me to say this… You will never insult me out of my views and beliefs. Since it seems I’ll be firmly on the side of the minority (yes I realize only 30% of America identifies as having no religious belief — bite me) for a while, I can take some solace from Mark Twain: “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.”

 Request for comments!

(Now that I think about it… that title seems too self serving.)

I hate Time Warner. In general, I abhor the fact that cable companies quite often have pseudo monopolies in what ever locality they happen to be operating in (I’m shaking my fist at you FCC), but TWC holds a special place in my heart… one that makes me want to burn them to the ground. Between their price fixing, ever increasing bills, ridiculously ignorant and useless customer service, and general “fuck you world” attitude, they have firmly supplanted OCZ and Tiger Direct (sorry can’t find the link to the TD rant) as my most hated companies. I’m sure many of you out there have had similarly appalling experiences with TWC so I won’t turn this into a pity party, after all, I did file this in my “Technology” section.

I desperately want to replace TWC with Netflix, Hulu and OTA HD TV. More importantly, I don’t want it to inconvenience me so much that I get as frustrated with my own setup as I get with TWC. I’d like to have a unified system that can time shift live broadcasts and access streaming content but am having some serious issues finding a system that qualifies and need some help.

My requirements

• Relatively small form factor
• Capable of accessing and viewing live OTA HD TV
• Capable of time shifting live TV
• Able to access generic streaming content, preferably able to bookmark streams
• Plugin or application ready with Netflix and Hulu addons
• No subscription fees (outside of the streaming services)

I’ve been looking at solutions for months and haven’t found anything that makes me truly happy. Slingbox should really be used with a unified service; BoxeeBox doesn’t have great application/plugin support; Apple TV and Google TV exist for comedic value only; Myth TV doesn’t have official support for Netflix or Hulu and I don’t want to spend as much time trying to fix the streaming services as watching the content I want to stream; XBMC has the same problem as Myth TV although the community seems more responsive to updating their plugins. Insultingly enough, the closest I’ve come to an acceptable platform is PS3 and Xbox 360… the only thing I’m missing there is time shifting for OTA TV.

I’d really appreciate any advice or setups you guys have come up with!

 There’s no kill switch on awesome!

 Taken from failblog… and oh so true.