I’m a big believer in the power of myth. My only gripe is when people don’t admit that what they believe in is a myth in the first place. See, I don’t think aa story has to be true in order to learn valuable life lessons from it. So, I can be an Atheist and learn from Jesus, or not believe in the Federal Reserve and still earn and spend money. The thing is, I understand and admit that both are myths–fictions that don’t represent anything provable.

Now, the only reason I bring this up is because the other day, an Internet acquaintance of mine and I were talking about political party differences between my country and his (he’s in Germany) and naturally taxation came up (check the comments to see the convo). He referenced that little chestnut of historical Americana, “Taxation Without Representation” via the Boston Tea Party, and suggested it was our “founding myth.”

I did take issue with this, but only the part where he suggested that it was our “founding myth.”

Oh, I agree it’s a myth in that the “Boston Tea Partiers” were likely Freemasons who probably worked it out with the British East India Company (run by Freemasons) to let them throw British East India tea into the harbor, thus making it a kind of “false-flag operation,” and thus, a myth–but the idea that our country was founded on this myth? Nah, that’s not accurate to me at all. So, here’s how I replied (emphasis added for effect):

My country’s founding myth is that all men are created equal and that we have “inalienable rights” like the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Firstly, when our “founding fathers” said “all men” they clearly meant “all land-owning white males” since, according to the rules they, themselves, wrote, only men who owned land would be allowed to vote.

Secondly, all men (and women) are not “created equal,” they are “created equally.” Which makes that not just a myth, but a grammatically incorrect myth. In fact, saying we are all created “equally” is a more accurate statement than saying we are all created “equal” since that suggests “equal” is a state of relative identicalness. Saying we were created “equally,” says we were all created in the same way–via a sperm penetrating an egg.

But saying “we’re created equally” allows for things to go south once a human is conceived. You get your random-ass genetic combinations, you get your genetic mutations and you get your recessive genes kicking in (or not). We’re all created the same way, but then random chaos muscles in and who knows how we’re actually born? From there it all depends on your parents, where they raise you and how rich you are.

Third, we don’t have universal health care here, so “life” is not guaranteed.

Fourth, if we’re suspected of terrorism we can be detained and held indefinitely if the government decides to. So there goes the “liberty” part.

Finally, in order to afford a home, food, electricity, the Internet and so on, we need to have a job that consumes 8-10 hours of our lives (including commute time) every day. Adding that to 8 hours sleep and an hour for each meal and that leaves 3-5 hours per day for that “pursuit of happiness” stuff. Of course, add in chores, dealing with family, replying to emails running errands AND trying to keep up with the news, and the pursuit of happiness gets relegated to your next vacation, which is usually just 7 days long.

Sorry–you said something about a tea party? Yeah, those guys are arguing over a myth, too.

Oh wait, you probably meant the Boston Tea Party. We’ve now got these right-wing morons who think America is under attack by liberals. They’ve been holding “tea parties” (aka protests) to voice their anger about government run health care. See, THEY believe the myth that government-run health care will put private health care out of business and that the government will decide who lives and who dies and that it’ll make us all Nazis (since Nazis were socialists)…

I’m sorry, I think I lost track of your point…

And then there’s the myth that terrorism is a real threat to us, when statistically, we have a WAY bigger chance of dying from cancer than we do from terrorism.

I’m sorry, I should stop typing now…

Indeed, I should.

Yeah, we’ll all be forced to support the health insurance industry–you know the health insurance industry! They’re the fine folks that think it’s OK that the thousands of uninsured people die every year. Yeah, we will be forced to support these greedy-ass people if this bill passes. The good news is that this won’t pass–I’ve read a number of news sources that quote politicians on both sides of the party wall who say they won’t support it.

What’s disturbing here is two fold.

First, that the fact that statistically so many people are set to die this year due to a lack of affordable health care is not causing an nation-wide uproar. (Though later in an interview with one of the people behind the study that came up with the 45,000 number seemed to revise it down to 25,000 and just the other day I posted about the number being down around 18,000. The point is, tens of thousands of people are dying because the system has let them slip through the cracks.)

Secondly, this bill is a big fat gift to the insurance industry. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how this benefits them:

Mandate (force) most Americans to get health insurance and that means HUGE dollars for insurance companies.

There’s also a third aspect I already mentioned of not giving us an option to opt out of supporting the greedy-as-hell insurance industry. Thanks Baucus, you corrupt bastard.

Who cares about Tax-N-Spend Democrats? I’m more worried about Take-”Bribes“-N-Pass-Laws Democrats (and Republicans)!

I’m glad I wasn’t drinking anything when I read the below paragraph excerpted from an article today at Boston.com:

“In another stunning example of hypocrisy, congressional Democrats are wasting taxpayers’ time and resources on a legislative measure to censure Congressman Joe Wilson so they don’t have to talk about their exceedingly unpopular health care plan,” Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele said in a statement.

I am almost speechless.

THREE WORDS FOR YA STEELE:

Osama bin Laden

You remeber him! He’s the guy YOUR PARTY was supposed to see captured “dead or alive.”

Yes, it’s the “Party of Life” that fights two wars, killings hundreds
of thousands, torturing, sacrificing our values, sacrificing both
domestic and international law in the War Against Terror which has yet to yield the guy who you people said attacked us eight years ago–and you have the balls to accuse ANYONE of hypocrisy?

Fuck you, Michael Steele and the Republican Party.

Huh, this reminds me a little of a novel I wrote once.

Seems that there’s a bill that was introduced last spring in the US Senate that would allow the USG, specifically the POTUS, to disconnect private computers and/or networks from the ‘net. The bill’s been revised, but it still doesn’t sound so hot. Here’s how an August 28, 2009 article at Cnet.com explained it’s current form:

The new version would allow the president to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” relating to “non-governmental” computer networks and do what’s necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for “cybersecurity professionals,” and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.

So, now the government wants to license network IT guys. In other words, you’d need permission from the USG to run a computer network that extended beyond your house (by the sound of it, anyway). Juuust great–it’s vaguely possible that such a measure might cut down on spam or hacking-related crime, but it’ll make a lot of IT people’s lives harder. That’d be one less thing I would be able to do for a living since I’m broke and couldn’t afford a license.

But it’s the “do what’s necessary to respond to the threat” part that I love the most. What the hell does that mean?

Anything.

That’s what’s so scary. The original bill made it sound like they could come into your house, unplug your wifi router and walk off with it. I use Skype, talk about an abridgment of free speech!

But in the new version of the bill it sounds like literally anything could be done to your computer. I LOVE power grabs like this because people don’t think the worst of government until it’s too late (or if it’s about something irrational like death panels).

Back in the late Clinton years, the USG passed a law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). In short, it banned the discussion of hacking digital copyright methods online. Think of it like someone telling you that you’re not allowed to talk about safe cracking.

Yeah, people didn’t think it would be a big deal back in the day because it seemed like the Internet might still be a fad. Well, it wasn’t.

Likewise, this S.773 bill scares me because it was developed behind closed doors and we don’t really know why it would even be necessary unless Senator Jay Rockefeller, the author of S.773, knows something we don’t.

I just love it when politicians think they deserve to know things that we don’t. It was a politician who once expressed that the Internet was “a series of tubes,” or “a truck” or something. I really don’t like trusting these besuited morons with our tax dollars, our country AND our Internet.

This screencap comes from an article on Reuters.com. It reports on how the Republican Representative from South Carolina refuses to apologize on the House floor. Wilson was apparently on Fox News Sunday today (WHO SAW THAT COMING???) where he said that he is a person who believes in the truth and felt he had to say something when he heard the President of the United States make misstatements in a live, televised address watched around the world.

Fine–forget the massive show of disrespect, forget the message of disorder a House rep heckling the President sends other countries (AND AL QEADA! GASP!), forget that there’s plenty of time for him to be on Fox News after Obama was done speaking. I’ll ignore all of that and in exchange for the answer to just one question:

Where was this idiot over the last eight years? When Bush trumped up reasons to go into Iraq did Joe The Heckler call him George The Liar? When Dick Cheney spoke bald-faced lies about Saddam Hussein having connection with Al Qeada did Joe The Heckler hold a press conference where he called Dick out?

No, of course not. Why? Because Wilson is a liar, himself. I just proved it.

I really hope the Dems grow a pair on this one and censure Joe Wilson. Sure they were too spineless to even try to impeach Bush but this should be much easier.

It’s also a shame that almost nobody is calling Wilson and other Republicans out for their money-first/human-life-second (or third or fourth) attitude.

They recognize no hypocrisy when they call themselves "pro-life" but then fight for war and fight to bail-out the banks and corporations and now fight to make sure all Americans don’t have access to healthcare.

The fact that the Democrats don’t just put the smackdown on the Republicans pretty much proves that America is anything but "a culture of life."

I also wonder how long it’s going to be before people notice the Revolving Door politicians use to kiss corporate ass now in exchange for good corporate jobs later once they leave their cushy positions in politics (only to end up back as politicians or in appointed government positions later).

So in the end Wilson’s ego is now too big to allow him to apologize on the House floor and his brain is too stupid to realize that such an apology on the House floor would be a great opportunity to call Obama out again.

Duh.

On a side note, I’m wondering why Reuters put that article in their "Canada" section. Ah well…

EDIT: In case you missed it, I first posted about Joe “The Heckler” Wilson back on Thursday.

BTW: I keep calling him “Joe The Heckler Wilson” because I don’t want anyone to confuse him with outed-CIA-agent Valerie Plame’s husband, former diplomat Joe Wilson. THAT Joe WIlson was the Joe Wilson who suffered the wrath of the Bush administration when he told the truth about their being no evidence that Saddam was looking for uranium in Africa by having his under-cover wife’s status as an under-cover CIA operative blown.

Neat how both Joe Wilsons say they believe in the truth. Too bad only one of them really does.

What a night! I can’t remember the last time I watched the guy in the White House talk and didn’t immediately feel like leaving the country right after. @siskita suggested the last time might have been 9 years ago.

But regardless of what you say about Obama and his plans for health care reform, one thing really bugged me last night and it was that moment where Republican “Representative” from South Carolina Joe Wilson heckled Barrack Hussein Obama in the middle of his speech.

No, it’s not the obvious disrespect the act showed the duly elected President of the United States that bothers me. I think Wilson had serious guts and passion to heckle the leader of the free world on international TV.

I don’t necessarily disagree with what Wilson was thinking when he blurted out “YOU LIE!” either. As I listened to Obama speak last night I was reminded of my deep distrust of all politicians. Just because he’s black doesn’t make Obama uniquely honest and of course it doesn’t make him a liar either. But where was the logic in accusing Obama of lying in the middle of him accusing Republicans of lying?

“I KNOW YOU ARE BUT WHAT AM I?” he might as well have yelled.

If Wilson had an actual point, that’d be one thing, but it seemed like passion and guts were all he had to back up his accusation and that got me thinking. What made an inside-the-beltway guy like Wilson think that it was OK to heckle the guy who currently resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave? Would he have done the same if Bush had been speechifying?

Or was the fact that Obama is black or that he has a Muslim-sounding middle name or that he’s so young and different, subconsciously make Wilson think that Obama didn’t deserve the respect of having a decent argument lodged against him?

Maybe that’s my mistake, expecting a decent argument from a bunch of frothing-at-the-mouth Republicans who would do anything to keep their jobs, even see people die in Iraq or at home (Iraqis and USGIs die in Iraq/Americans who can’t afford health care die at home). Because, to me, that IS the irony to all of this. Check out this WSJ.com editorial Karl Rove wrote from the future (check the date on the screencap below and compare it to the first sentence in the piece):

What’s more telling than the fact that Rove clearly wrote this editorial before Obama even gave his speech is that fun little subtitle there “Red-state Democrats are being asked to risk their seats.”

So, let me get this straight:

1) Americans are dying because they can’t pay for the health care they need to survive

2) Political risk is more important than American lives

Clearly, Karl Rove hates America.

A screencap from today’s WashingtonPost.com main page. Click the pic to read
more. Hang on, though–is it me? Or does Wilson seem awfully tan for a guy
who spends most of the year in Washington DC???

Haha, OK, that’s an unfair statement, but clearly, when you react, preemptively, as Rove did, and when you react with such emotional, disrespect in the middle of your opponent explaining himself, it shows the level of fear the Republicans are dealing with right now.

I think America is starting to fall apart. Even putting the economy aside, I think we’re seeing a real “pulling aside of the curtain” here. The man behind said curtain hates the idea of equality.

He HATES it.

The idea that this guy, with a different opinion from him getting to stand up and speak to America without interruption was just too much for Joe Wilson.

The veil has come down and we’re looking at the rich, white face of “I’m better than you.”

That’s what this country is all about and it’s what it has always been about.

From Columbus’ journal entry way back in 1492 when he spoke of how perfect the natives would be as slaves, right up to the now where we modern-day wage-slaves blow the overwhelming majority of our lives working for other people barely finding the money to survive on our own.

God forbid we should have a system that keeps us healthy without us having to pay on top of everything else.

Oh no, rich white men who wear suits to work every day and alternate between private sector jobs and public sector jobs know what’s best for all of us.

Sorry, we can’t all work together to pay for health care for everyone.

Forget that we all work together to make capitalism work. Forget that the reason those rich white guys got rich is because we all agreed to buy their cars, their drugs, their line of crap in the first place.

So, we can all pitch in to keep capitalism going but try to encourage a system that takes a bit of cash from most and makes sure everyone gets health care and you’re as good as Karl Marx.

God bless America? Which America? The one in all the sales brochures? Or the actual one that says free health care is bad for everyone but the military and politicians.

Think Specter’s Switch to the Democrats Means Anything?
You Need to Understand Our One-Party/Two-Head System,
originally uploaded by thepetecom.
Original WashingtonPost.com article here.

Think about it: our system allows for legalized bribery. Every politician is pro-corporate because that’s where the overwhelming majority of their campaign contributions come from. To keep those contributions flowing (which allows them to keep getting re-elected) politicians will do anything these corporate donors ask. Does it really matter if one of them takes money from Coke instead of Pepsi? Or barters favors with agribusinesses instead of the oil industry? What happened to government for the people, by the people?

What’s worse is that some companies and industries will give to both parties to make sure that whomever wins, they’ll have influence.

Back on April 13, 2009 Noam Chomsky was on Democracy Now and he addressed this issue this way:

You can learn a lot from campaign contributions. In fact, one of the best predictors of policy around is Thomas Ferguson’s investment theory of politics, as he calls it—very outstanding political economist—which essentially—I mean, to say it in a sentence, he describes elections as occasions in which groups of investors coalesce and invest to control the state. And he takes a look at the formation of campaign contributors, and it gives you a surprisingly good prediction of what policies are going to be. It goes back a century, New Deal and so on. So, yeah, it can predict pretty well what Obama is going to do. There’s nothing surprising about this. It’s the norm in what’s called political democracy.

I know I’m quoting the infamous Noam Chomsky, but he’s quoting Thomas Ferguson and who cares as long as what they’re both saying is accurate?

Sure, there may be some slight ripples, but ultimately, the problems with our system will still be there no matter which side of the aisle Specter iss sitting on. Our system is built on corruption. Is it any less corrupt because companies you like get their way?

Dems Debate Whether to Investigate Crimes of Bush Admin or: Why I Refuse Party Affiliation,
originally uploaded by thepetecom.

Geh… This is just sad beyond words. WashingtonPost.com is reporting that the Democrats in Washington are torn as to whether or not to go after Bush Admin officials for approving torture.

So, FOR YEARS there have been loads of evidence that the Bush Administration committed crimes. The GAO actually found that they had violated federal law (go to the GAO website and do a search for "covert propaganda"). We all know that acts of torture were committed in Iraq, we know the Bush Admin misled us into war in Iraq and mismanaged our war in Afghanistan.

Yet, no investigation let alone impeachment hearings for any Bushites.

The excuse while Bush was in office was "We can’t impeach him now, there just aren’t enough votes."

Then, once the Democrats took the majority in Congress, the excuse became "Well, there’s not enough time left before Bush steps down."

For anyone who thinks the law should be enforced the last eight years have been very hard.

But it’s not getting any easier now. If EVERYTHING ELSE wasn’t enough for you, Obama just released memos PROVING Bush officials were down with torture–those of us with morals would THINK we’d finally see some criminal charges.

Maybe we still will–but not before the Democrats debate about WHETHER TO ENFORCE THE LAW.

This is why I refuse to be in either political party. The Democrats are wondering if international and US law needs to be enforced and the Republicans feel the law can go to hell if the cause is just.

The most depressing thing of all is that Obama was supposed to change all of this. Now we see that Democrats and Republicans, alike, believe that the law is to be enforced on the little people and that for the rich (mostly white) folks in government, the law is simply not a concern if one’s motives are pure.

I said mostly white, above, because now, apparently, Obama is in violation of the law too–international law demands that war crimminals be prosecuted.

So while I’ll never call him "King Barry," Barack Obama is, and will continue to be, above the law until he goes after the Bush Administration.

Progress?

Here’s another reason Republicans should shut their fracking GOBS about how the Democrats are wasting spending our tax dollars.  Check out that chart.

Can you believe that shit?

Look at the absurd difference between how much the moonshot ran us, compared to the Bailout.

$237 billion vs. $4,616 billion.

Dude, our leaders are unbelievable fools.

Just to add to that chart, I did a quick bit of Googling and found the Cancer.gov’s numbers on how much was spent by our government on cancer research in 2007: $1367.1 million–not even a billion-and-a-half dollars were spent on cancer research.

So, if my math is right, to save our banks the outlay was 3,000 times the amount spent on cancer research in 2007. (That’s 4,616,500,000,000 ÷ 1,367,100,000 = 3376.85612, according to my Mac’s calculator widget–actually, I had to lop off the bottom six zeroes because it couldn’t handle anything with so many zeroes.)

So, this is our lovely government. Charged with keeping us safe, yet more willing to keep bad banks afloat than to keep our lives, uh, alive.

Incidentally, according to Cancer.org, in 2007, Cancer killed just short of 1.5 million Americans (1,444,920 is the exact number, FYI.) The current estimated population of America is just short of 306 million people. That means that around 1 in 300 people die of cancer in a year. How many people die of bad banking?

Special thanks to my good friend Katabasis at http://i-squared.blogspot.com for pointing me at a VoltageCreative.com blog post written by Wade who made up the chart above based on numbers from a post by Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing.net.

Posted via email from thepete’s posterous

OK, this is kind of a convoluted story here. According to two articles at ReadWriteWeb.com (here and here) President Barack Obama has had an interesting time using YouTube to deliver his weekly addresses.

As everyone knows, Prezzi Barry O’bama was posting his weekly vids on YouTube, but privacy advocates raised a big stink. The stink seems to be well founded since YouTube uses “long-term tracking cookies”. My guess is that these cookies allow Google to know where you go after you leave YouTube? I don’t know to be honest. Regardless, it seems that the White House using said cookies violates federal law. Yep. How many times did Bush violate federal law? Just a few times.

But worry not, Obamafans! The Obama Administration stopped violating federal law by, essentially, giving itself a pass. Which, you know, is pretty shitty. Talk about kingly behavior. I can hear Obama now:

“What’s that? Using YouTube is uhhhhh violation of federal law? Well, uhhhh, let’s just uhhhhh… changethelawforonlyus.”

That’s the very definition of being above the law. At least he had the decency to do it, uh, legally, by issuing himself an official exemption–just like Bush did with all of his signing statements.

Now, that was back in February–yesterday, ReadWriteWeb.com reported that the Obama Admin was ditching YouTube in favor of Vimeo (see cap above), and would no longer be using those pesky long-term cookies (we assume). Still, Obama and Pals broke the law.

Is this a concern of Abu Ghraib proportions?

Of course not.

But if this is how Obama treats the little laws, how is he going to treat the big ones when lives depend on it? Will principles, morals and/or the law win out? Or will the myth of security beat all?

The ObamaWatch continues…

Posted via email from thepete’s posterous