tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20549907386371176982024-03-08T23:33:53.812+10:30Wayne's TakeMy take on things I observe.Wayne Francishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13977767234366313023noreply@blogger.comBlogger82125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054990738637117698.post-33323459866702007232017-01-14T12:51:00.001+10:302017-01-14T12:51:36.776+10:30An analysis of Meryl Streep's 2017 Golden Globe speech. What exactly is your problem with it?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I've had to critically analyse Meryl Streep's speech because I keep hearing from conservatives how inappropriate it was of her to give. So if your a conservative and had a problem with the speech, which I hope you actually read or listened to, then please tell me where you actually have a problem. I really want to know how anyone, even conservatives, can criticize this speech. So if you have a problem with it tell me what you didn't like that she said and in your own words why you don't like what she said.<br />
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Now for the analysis.<br />
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<li>"<i>Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Please sit down. Please sit down. Thank you. I love you all.</i>"</li>
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There should be nothing controversial with that but if there is please let me know.<br />
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<li>"<i>You'll have to forgive me. I've lost my voice in screaming and lamentation this weekend. And I have lost my mind sometime earlier this year. So I have to read.</i>"</li>
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OK you can say she's being dramatic. Weird that an actor would be like that but is this a problem for you?<br />
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<li>"<i>Thank you, Hollywood foreign press. Just to pick up on what Hugh Laurie said. You and all of us in this room, really, belong to the most vilified segments in American society right now. Think about it. Hollywood, foreigners, and the press.</i>"</li>
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Is this an inaccurate statement? I'd personally not say they are the "most vilified" but I'd agree that they are among them. Certainly lately it has gotten worse but foreigners for a long time have been vilified. Even when the Irish, Italians, Polish, Jews, and many other ethnic groups had migrations to America it has been looked at by many "real Americans", that often ignore that they descended from foreigners, as a bad thing. The press is currently under attack, and this isn't in itself a bad thing if and when they don't do their job. But we see an attack by the incoming President to turn the USA into a place like Turkey where freedom of the press is a pipe dream.<br /><ul>
<li><i>"Think about it. Hollywood, foreigners, and the press. But who are we? And, you know, what is Hollywood anyway? It's just a bunch of people from other places.<br /><br />I was born and raised and created in the public schools of New Jersey. Viola [Davis] was born in a sharecropper's cabin in South Carolina, and grew up in Central Falls, Rhode Island. Sarah Paulson was raised by a single mom in Brooklyn. Sarah Jessica Parker was one of seven or eight kids from Ohio. Amy Adams was born in Italy. Natalie Portman was born in Jerusalem. Where are their birth certificates? And the beautiful Ruth Negga was born in Ethiopia, raised in -- no, in Ireland, I do believe. And she's here nominated for playing a small town girl from Virginia. Ryan Gosling, like all the nicest people, is Canadian. And Dev Patel was born in Kenya, raised in London, is here for playing an Indian raised in Tasmania."</i></li>
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She simply points out that Hollywood is a mixture of Americans from all walks of life along with foreigners with all sorts of backgrounds. Something our country is supposed to be about. Everyone being equal regardless of where they come from. </div>
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<li><i>"Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. If you kick 'em all out, you'll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts."</i></li>
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While you might like football and mixed martial arts is this what you would want your entertainment to be limited to? Is sports all you care about? Do you think most American's would share that view? Do you actually classify MMA as an "art" instead of a "sport"? Do you not like the pun she used?<br /><ul>
<li>"They gave me three seconds to say this."</li>
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Did you get upset because she took 5 minutes and 28 seconds of your life away? Did you actually listen to the speech in the first place?</div>
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<li>"<i>An actor's only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us and let you feel what that feels like. And there were many, many, many powerful performances this year that did exactly that, breathtaking, passionate work</i>."</li>
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Do you not think that actors introduce the audience to a viewpoint they might not have ever thought about. Is this a bad thing? Should we only be exposed to characters that hold our own world view?</div>
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<li>"<i>There was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good. There was nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job.</i>"</li>
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Do you think that Trump wasn't performing? Do you think the message, of division, hate, and even violence, he put forward for anyone that had differing views then his supporters is a good thing? Do you not think that it was an effective performance? Trump did win the electoral vote after all. </div>
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<li>"<i>It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth.</i>"</li>
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Have you not seen the increased visibility of racists and bigots? Do you know that scenes like this are on the rise? Do you think this is a good thing?<br /></div>
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<li>"<i>It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter, someone he outranked in privilege, power, and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it. I still can't get it out of my head because it wasn't in a movie. It was real life.</i>"</li>
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Do you think it was and is OK for Trump to mock people based on their appearance? Do you give him a pass on this? Is it wrong for any of us to point out that he acts like this? Is it wrong for any of us to say that it made us sad?</div>
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<li>"<i>And this instinct to humiliate, when it's modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody's life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing.</i>"</li>
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Do you understand that Trump is in a position of a role model and what he does, and condones, legitimizes those ideas and actions in those that follow him? Just like when he said he'd pay legal fees for anyone that assaulted people that didn't support Trump at his rallies. Is this type of action OK? Do you support Trump's behavior of humiliating people based on superficial traits like appearance, gender, religion, ethnicity instead of their actual intellectual position on an argument?</div>
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<li>"<i>Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.</i>"</li>
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Do you disagree? Do you think we should disrespect others based on superficial features? Do you think we should incite violence? Do you think it is OK for the powerful to bully the weak?</div>
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<li>"<i>This brings me to the press. We need the principled press to hold power to account, to call them on the carpet for every outrage.That's why our founders enshrined the press and its freedoms in our constitution.</i>"</li>
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Do you think it is not the duty of the press to hold the government accountable, accurately report events, inform the public and protect their sources identities? Do you think that Freedom of the Press, part of the 1st Amendment, is an important freedom or not?</div>
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<li>"<i>So I only ask the famously well-heeled Hollywood Foreign Press and all of us in our community to join me in supporting the committee to protect journalists. Because we're going to need them going forward. And they'll need us to safeguard the truth.</i>"</li>
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Is it OK for her to ask the press to stand united behind the 1st Amendment or not? If not then why? What is your reasoning? Do you believe that Freedom of the Press is not needed?</div>
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<li>"<i>One more thing. Once when I was standing around on the set one day whining about something, we were going to work through supper, or the long hours or whatever, Tommy Lee Jones said to me, isn't it such a privilege, Meryl, just to be an actor. Yeah, it is. And we have to remind each other of the privilege and the responsibility of the act of empathy. We should all be very proud of the work Hollywood honors here tonight.</i>"</li>
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Should she not be humble by her position? Should she instead feel a sense of entitlement because of her position and think she should be treated differently?</div>
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<li>"<i>As my friend, the dear departed Princess Leia, said to me once, take your broken heart, make it into art. Thank you.</i>"</li>
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And finally do you not like the original Starwars? Seriously Do you have a problem with that line?<br /><br />If you've made it this far and came into this thinking Meryl Streep's speech was bad please let me know if you've changed your mind and why or if not what you still have a problem with. If you still have one or more problems why does that/those problem(s) detract from the rest of the speech.</div>
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Wayne Francishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13977767234366313023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054990738637117698.post-41501355773916166152015-09-25T03:29:00.001+09:302015-09-25T03:32:31.035+09:30Dr Ben Carson, ignorance or lying?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Now there is no question that Ben Carson is a smart man. He was a very skilled neurosurgeon. But the problem with people that are extremely good at something is that they often inflate their ability or knowledge in another area. Well Ben Carson is doing that here.<br />
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Now I'm a layperson when it comes to science. Sure I'm a science geek and love to learn about various topics especially biology, psychology and physics, which includes cosmology and astronomy. I'm not a scientist. I don't have a degree in the field. But I am fairly well educated in the field. So there is a problem if I can punch holes in his arguments. There are things that I don't know for sure and I'll admit it when asked a question. If I'm unsure of the answer I'll emphasise that fact and I'll probably go learn more to educate myself and I'd hope others would research what I said and if I was right or wrong about a topic. <br />
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So here I'm going to go through his speech and point by point I'll point out where he gets the science wrong. I'll explain how much he gets the science wrong. Note that his speech is only 3 min and 45 seconds long. It is very easy to spout shit about stuff like this and raise doubts. To convince people that often don't want to know the truth because it goes against their religious views. It takes a lot longer to refute the claims. This is because these things are often complex topics. Learning isn't easy. If it was everyone would be doctor or scientist.<br />
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First here is the interview<br />
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<a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3245656/It-s-ridiculous-Ben-Carson-believes-Big-Bang-fairy-tale-Darwin-s-theory-evolution-work-devil.html#v-4502205961001" target="_blank">What Dr Ben Carson thinks about the big bang</a><br />
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11 seconds in and he uses the term "highfalutin" in regards to literally a whole field of professionals? What would his response be if someone label all doctors as pompous or pretentious? So he starts off with an ad hominem attack. He leads with denigrating a whole field of scientists. Why? Because he knows his audience is mostly made up of people that don't understand the field in question and don't like the implications it has. Mind you this audience, as most audiences, wouldn't understand the technical details about neurosurgery either. He knows it sets up the audience so they can more easily dismiss what scientist say if they ever do hear more. Because they are just pompous and pretentious after all.<br />
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16 seconds in he say that "they" the highfalutin scientist "saying there is this gigantic explosion"<br />
OK 16 seconds in. 2 words "gigantic explosion"<br />
Lets talk about what they actually say. The Big Bang Theory (BBT) says that everything we can see in the universe was condensed into a very small region of space. If you watch the show The Big Bang Theory then you would have heard the theme song "<span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 18.2px;">Our whole universe was in a hot dense state,</span>". Already a TV sitcom gets the science much more right then Dr Ben Carson.It wasn't an explosion it was a very rapid inflation. You might think I'm quibbling about terms but there are very specific differences. An explosion is a sudden outburst of something. There is a location where the explosion happens. Material is pushed away from that spot leaving a cavity behind. This is NOT what scientist say happen in the early universe. What they say is that there was a rapid inflation of space/time. We know, thanks to Einstein, that space and time are part of a single whole. It is space that expanded. Now what was in this space is very different from what you and I see around us. Atoms didn't even exist. The energy density was so high that even protons and neutrons couldn't form. The stuff that they are made up of are called quarks and at those energies you can fit all the matter and energy in the universe into a very small region. How small? 7.7×10<sup>−30</sup>m. Now this isn't a size the human brain is used to dealing with. A proton is about 1×10<sup>−15</sup>m. So we are talking about a distance 1,000,000,000,000,000 (1 quadrillion) times shorter. Now are physics at this point are not well understood for good reasons. These are energy densities we can't even think about working with. If we could we could be making universes left right and centre. So gigantic? Nope. Explosion? Nope. It was a rapid inflation of space-time Now see 1 paragraph to try to explain how 2 words are totally misrepresenting the science. In actuality I could probably right pages on just this bit and I'm not a scientist.<br />
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3 more seconds and he say "Everything came into perfect order". No! It most definitely did not. In fact the early universe was very smooth. I'm talking like the differences were 1 part in 100,000. This in terms of the science is saying that temperatures where VERY even. To give you an idea of how uniform that is think of the Earth and the temperature difference on it. Now imagine that instead of having temperatures going from -95C to 56C (-128F to 134F) the temperature was just 21C (70F) The differences in extremes would be about 1/1000th of 1 degree C or 1.8/1000th of a degree F<br />
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The universe was even smoother and more uniform before. This is what it was like 380,000 years AFTER the big bang. For almost that entire time the universe was so hot, over 2,726C ~5,000F that light couldn't any where because it kept getting absorbed into the protons that made up the plasma that filled the universe. So the universe started out VERY smooth and over 380,000 became much less smooth but still smoother then 1 part in 100,000. At this point the inflation had ended but the universe was still expanding. Stuff wasn't moving through space. The space between stuff was just getting larger. With this expansion comes the fact that the density was dropping As that happens the temperature drops. After about 380,000 the temperature dropped enough that the electrons whipping around the place could get captured by the atomic nuclei. Not really "perfectly ordered". Then the universe continued to expand. At this point there would be a glow everywhere in the sky like the sun but as the universe continued to expand this glow faded. It then took another about 200 million years before the first stars formed as that very uniform gas started to condense into pockets of higher densities that formed from gravity. Perfect order my ass.<br />
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25 seconds in and he presents to the audience terms they are probably not used to. He mentions the second law of thermodynamics and entropy. He wants you to think there is a problem that the scientists can't explain properly. First off what is the 2nd law of thermodynamics or 2LoT for short.<br />
It is that in any cyclic process the entropy will either increase or remain the same. Well what is entropy? Entropy is the amount of energy in a system that is available to do work. Well there are 2 problems the 2LoT refers to "closed" systems and even if the observable universe was a closed system there was a LOT of energy to do stuff with. How much energy are we talking about? Well think of our sun. It is about half way through its life on the main sequence. The observable universe has about 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times the amount of energy of our sun. Note that even after our sun "dies" there will still be a far bit of energy coming out of it. So yes as time goes on it will be harder and harder to do "work" in our universe but thankfully our universe has a HUGE amount of energy to begin with.<br />
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So 37 seconds in he say "you are going to have this big explosion and everything is going to become perfectly organised" well good thing that isn't what the scientist ACTUALLY say happened.<br />
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44 seconds in he says "when you ask them about it they say they can base this on probability theory if there are enough explosions over a long enough period of time" blah blah blah. He already got the first bit extremely wrong. But you may have heard something vaguely similar and I'll try to explain this. Often you'll hear people say how finely tuned our universe is. You might read some popular science magazine say how many different types of universe there could be out there. There are various hypothesis about where the universe came from. Scientists don't say the BB (Big Bang) is when the universe was created. We don't know that. We have some ideas but the BBT (Big Bang Theory) just says we can trace back to a point where the universe was very hot and dense, again just like the song says. Scientist also ask questions like "Why does the electromagnetic force have the strength it does?" "Why is gravity so weak in comparison?" "Why is the speed of light what it is?" "Why does the electron have the mass it does?" and the list goes on. These are what we call fundamental constants. They are numbers that we can measure but don't seem to have a reason why they have the value they do. It is possible they could have other values but if they did the universe would act different then it does. We may never know why some or even all the fundamental constants have the values they do. On hypothesis is that these values some how get frozen in at the very first instance of inflation. There is another hypothesis that inflation happened not just in what we can see. We estimate the entire universe is at least orders of magnitude large then what we can see there might be other universes that bubble off that have different values for the constants. This would result in a whole range of possible universes. Most of them not at all compatible with life as we know it. But this could be happening countless times which means there would also be a countless number of universes that would be very similar to ours. This will blow your mind too. It is entirely possible that this multi verse is itself infinitely large. That means there would be an infinite number of universe. Not only that there would be a smaller, but still, infinite number of universes that would be EXACTLY like ours. But this is just hypothesis at this point in time and truth be told we probably would never be able to detect another universe. But it isn't incompatible with the models we use to describe and make predictions about our universe.<br />
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Well that doesn't even scratch the surface of that but he's distorted what the scientists actually say. So lets just go with "We don't know why our constants are the way they are" but even so given they are constants our universe would have ended up pretty much like this no matter how many times you re ran the process. Sure there might not be a Earth but there would be Earth like planets. There would be the same chemical processes going on and there is every indication that there would be life in it that evolved to a point where it could ponder such questions. So no we don't need the "perfect explosion" we just needed that inflation to happen and our constants to be about what they are. They could even fluctuate. Some of them could fluctuate quite a bit and life could still evolve let alone have stars, galaxies and planets form.<br />
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1 min 11 secs in and he's used the, what is normally tornado in a junk yard, creationist claim. He just modifies it to a hurricane in a junk yard. Normally this is used to try to discredit evolution. Saying that there hasn't been enough time to form life blah blah blah. But hopefully being a doctor he isn't that stupid about biology. But you never know. For the record the Vatican supports evolution and not just "micro evolution" because there is no such thing in science terms. That is a creationist term and that is the audience he is talking to. Again science says that given the constants of our universe the structure we see would be inevitable. Might be slightly different like comparing a blue mustang with a red one. Essentially the same.<br />
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1 min 31 secs and he is amazed that we can predict a comet is coming in 70 years. Dude, it is just gravity and high school maths. Even if the constants where different we'd still be expect predictions of that type to be possible. That is because the universe does have constants. Perhaps if gravity wasn't a constant well then we couldn't make that prediction but then if it wasn't a constant then stars might never have formed let alone planets. Bill O'Reilly has a saying "Tides go in, tides go out. You can't explain that!" and he's just as fucking ignorant of the science as Dr Ben Carson seems to be. We can predict tides because gravity is constant. We know that the moon won't sudden'y take 10 days to orbit around the Earth. <br />
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1 min 40 secs in and he drops the "fairy tale" line to a crowd that probably believes that there was an actual first human male named Adam was formed from much by a human shaped magical being that knows everything but yet didn't see that his creation would be tricked into eating from the tree of knowledge by a talking snake....yea that isn't a fairy tale.<br />
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1 min 43 secs "that is amazing!" Yea scientist would think that too because that isn't what scientist say happened!.<br />
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1 min 52 secs "even if you use their own theories you have this mass spinning and then it explodes" NO! that isn't what the theory says. How about he either learns what the actual theories say or shuts the fuck up about it. I would never dream of walking into an operating theatre and telling some brain surgeon that he's doing it all wrong because I read a comic book that had a drawing of a brain in it.<br />
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2 min 13 secs he starts babbling about angular momentum and tries to discredit scientist even more by pointing out how some moons don't orbit in the same direction as most other moons. Guess what that is OK. Because the total angular momentum is still the same. Some moons where captured after the formation of the solar system. Some might have been put into a different orbit because of interactions with other planets. But forget that. According to him the universe is in "perfect order" now he is showing us that no...no it isn't. Hell out solar system isn't even in perfect order. Something hit Venus so hard it almost flipped completely up side down so now it rotates in the opposite direction to most other planets. Uranus is tilted on its side by over 97 degrees so one of its poles points almost directly towards the sun. Again science explains this just fine because science doesn't say the universe is "perfectly ordered"<br />
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2 min 28 secs "what about the billions and billions of explosions that where not perfect?" I don't know Dr Carson. You are making up a fantasy universe that doesn't at all match what we observe and what scientist say happened. Fuck where is Santa Claus? Where is Darth Vadar? Dr Carson's understanding of the actual science isn't even close to being right. There is a saying used in science "That's not right. That isn't even wrong" and is used in reference to statement that are so off base it doesn't make any sense. Kind of like someone say that taste of an apple is the letter J.<br />
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2 min 34 secs Again where is this debris? Well if you want to talk about the multiverse then by definition those other universes are not connected to us. If he means something else then again it isn't what scientist are saying.<br />
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2 min 41 secs He say it, science, requires an enormous amount of faith. No ... no it doesn't. It takes a bit of learning. This argument is often used by creationist and there is a reason why. Either they are just parroting it from someone they heard it from or they what to put science on the same footing as their religious belief. Faith is defined as a strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof. Science is about finding actual evidence and seeing if that evidence supports or falsifies a hypothesis. The 2 are not even remotely the same. A person of ANY faith or no faith at all can go out and look at the data and test models and see if the predictions match observations. We can't do the same with religious claims. If we could there would not be so many religions. Hell there would not be so many versions of Christianity. <br />
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2 min 54 secs and the first mention of God. What does science say about gods? Nothing. Science is agnostic on the topic. Why? Because science is about describing the natural world around us in a manner that allows us to make useful predictions. Deities are super natural and would be not subject to "natural laws" especially if you think they created them. Now science can make statements about religious claims like the claim the Earth is only 6 thousand years old or that there was a world wide flood. Both which are demonstrably false but those are topics for another day.<br />
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3 min 3 secs he doesn't have enough faith to believe in scientist. No he doesn't have enough knowledge in the appropriate field to believe it and probably doesn't want to because it threatens his very weak theology. This isn't a dig against people that believe in any god(s). This is a fact that his theology is very weak.<br />
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3 min 13 secs he claims that so many things have to violate the theories own principals. No. His poor understanding of the science makes him confused. That is OK if I had his false understanding of what the current science said I would probably be confused. But instead of him going to learn he just wants to throw up his hands and says "God did it" Why is he even a doctor? Surely if his god knew someone was going to have a brain condition then that god wanted them to have it. Let them die and go to the kingdom of heaven. Ah bad theology there.<br />
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So let us assume there is a god. Are you telling me that you don't think your god could have set those fundamental constants up the way that it wanted? I hate calling the Christian God a he because I can't understand why a god with no other gods would have a penis. Set up the constants and set the universe in motion. Dr Ben Carson's god is so inept that it couldn't produce the universe we see with continually interfering with it. He's taken evolution deniers claims and push it back to the universe. Just like creationist that don't understand evolution he doesn't understand cosmology. Or maybe he does and he is just lying his audience. I think the answer is some where in between.<br />
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Now think about this. It takes him 3 and a half minutes to spout out a bunch of shit. It takes a layperson over 4 hours to try to correct the lies he spun. That is because making shit up is easier then learning the actual science.<br /><br /> Many of you will still believe him. Very few of you will bother to even investigate what science actually says. Most people wouldn't even had read the first few paragraphs of this post let alone the whole thing. But if just one person decides to actually look into how bad his ramblings are then my time was well spent. Because then you'll probably think how dishonest he probably is even if he does believe what he says because he has to much wrong and to much like long debunked arguments to have just thought this up himself.<br />
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<br />Wayne Francishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13977767234366313023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054990738637117698.post-61256157943150195062015-07-20T02:01:00.001+09:302015-07-20T02:01:31.939+09:30Is it illegal to collect rain water?Collecting rainwater is not illegal. In a few states it was very restricted like in Colorado, Utah and Washington. That ended in 2009 when those three states relaxed their bans. In a handful other states, rainwater harvesting is regulated. In these states you have to obtain a permit, which is in most cases is about making certain that your harvesting equipment doesn't contaminate groundwater. So it isn't illegal. It is like saying "Building a house is illegal" no, it isn't. Building a house without following the law is illegal.<br />
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There was a guy in Colorado who was jailed for 30 days back in 2012 but this is because he had been denied a permit, but went ahead and built three HUGE reservoirs anyway. So he broke yes he broke the law but not in the way this graphic suggests. Should he be allowed to defy the state regulatory agency?<br />
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Think about the situation tho. The idea of regulation of rainwater harvesting is pretty simple. Water falling from the sky is public property, not private property, and belongs in the water table where it can restore diminished streams and reservoirs. Those who collect it privately are "hoarding" it. Of course the opposite theory is: a person who uses rainwater first is consuming less public water. So it isn't a simple issue especially in places. You'll find that there are even communities that require rain water collection because it reduces the burden on the public water works.<br />
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The problem here is that on the Internet people are not being subject to any kind of screening, editing, fact checking, or anything else. It is a great place to plant and spread misinformation for political purposes.<br />
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Here is a good article about the actual situation instead of converting it into a sound byte that makes it sound like it is just big government getting in peoples faces for no reason.<br />
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<br /><a href="http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a11758/4314447/" target="_blank">http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a11758/4314447/</a></div>
<br />Wayne Francishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13977767234366313023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054990738637117698.post-4753918300936455442015-07-08T19:15:00.002+09:302015-07-08T19:15:44.334+09:30Obama Hope and Change?Yup he didn't enact most of the Change I wanted and I lost a lot of Hope on him because of that. Like many other presidents he disappointed me in many areas including the A.C.A. His position to be thought of at the great compromiser compromised the ideas he should have been known for. <br />
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What the average person hoped for was a better health care system. What they got was a better health care system but not as good as it should have been. Why? He compromised using a republican plan that still gives too much to a bloated and corrupt industry. There are too many examples around the world of better health care systems to ignore them and go for a solution that ultimately is a big boon to the health insurance industry. For example here in Australia we have a single payer system augmented by an individual mandate for those over a certain income level. This gives the government the power to control exploitative practices by the healthcare industry while still having a private healthcare and insurance option. This leads to better healthcare across the board by providing a baseline of coverage that everyone gets with the option for persons to still have higher level coverage and access to doctors of their choice.<br />
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What the average person hoped for was a change to the politics in Washington. What they got was the GOP stating that their number 1 goal was to make Obama a failure as a president by voting against him regardless of the benefit of the policies put forth. Even when he compromised and decided to go with a “republican plan” as with the A.C.A. the GOP would vote against it. If you think about it he could have pushed through a better health care plan but compromised with an opposition that didn’t want compromise. Fuck they didn’t even want their ideas. They just wanted Obama to fail.<br />
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What the average person wanted was some sensible gun regulation. What they got is a few speeches and a ton of people not only not willing to even listen to some sensible gun regulation but even a loosening of gun regulations in many cases. All backed by the straw-man argument that sensible gun regulations = take away all guns. Often using false dichotomy that if everyone didn’t have guns America would be a lawless land. Using a Historian's fallacy that the founding fathers thought everyone should be able to have any type of weapon they wanted and that they would think that the same combat tactics of the 1700s could be used today against a 21st century military.<br />
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What the average person wanted was corporations and those running them to be held accountable for their actions. What they got was more of the same privatization of profits but socialization of the risks. What they got was the words that corporations can be “too big to fail”. What they got was inaction by the DoJ to pursue criminal charges against executives who commit white collar crime that dwarfs blue collar crime by several orders of magnitude.<br />
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I could go on and on. But I ask what was the alternative? With Romney we probably would have got the A.C.A. at best and at worst a watered down A.C.A. where insurance companies could deny you coverage or cut you off when you got a major illness. We would have still been kicked out of Iraq by the government there because the people were sick of seeing innocent people be killed by US contractors with no repercussions. We probably would have seen social security get abolished and those funds used for more tax breaks for the highest end of the economic spectrum with the same flawed trickle down economic justification we’ve heard for the last 3+ decades. We would see more workers rights eroded away leading to more corporate welfare like the abolishment of minimum wage in the argument that it hurts the economy to pay someone enough that they can live without working 80+ hours a week leading to a shifting of the burden of those people from their employers onto the social program systems.<br />
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Was Obama against marriage equality? Historically no. We have his statements from over a decade before he ran where he was clear that he supported it. He then did a typical politician move and changed that position when he needed votes. He finally went back to that position when he needed the money from those that supported the position. So his moral convictions wavered, as most politicians convictions do, when faced with a population that doesn’t care about getting rid of a bigoted law.<br />
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I’ll leave it there. You can read more about my position, both positive and negative, with respect to President Obama in other posts on my blog.<br />
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Wayne Francishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13977767234366313023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054990738637117698.post-86029627767339160732015-07-08T17:23:00.001+09:302015-07-08T17:23:29.493+09:30A review of a review of a book of a collection of essays.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51L%2B1SEY0%2BL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51L%2B1SEY0%2BL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" height="320" width="214" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.6666669845581px; line-height: 20.2399997711182px; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a post in response to the following blog post about the content of a book found at</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.6666669845581px; line-height: 20.2399997711182px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://victorhanson.com/wordpress/?p=8514" target="_blank">ISLAM THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS</a></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.6666669845581px; line-height: 20.2399997711182px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I've got a few problems with that abstract and I'll highlight them here.
First: the need for a Western “forward policy” in the Gulf in order to protect U.S. and European interests, particularly oil and its transport, against both Soviet adventurism and the greed of Middle Eastern potentates.
translated : the need for policies to protect western multinational corporations and their greed and shift the risks on to the American public via a cost in both American citizens lives and tax dollars to protect said western multinational corporation's interests. The mentality that the Middle East, or for that matter any place in the world where multinational corporations want to exploit local resources, fighting against said multinationals is a bad thing is simply "Fuck the locals, the world's rich people we identify as like us deserve that resources, and ultimately money, more than they do".
When the Eastern block countries do it then it is "adventurism" when the Western multinationals do it then it is called "capitalism". One only has to look at the number of times crony capitalism, or as we call it in the USA 'Capitalism', has little to no regard for anything but short term gain because they know the risks they take will most likely not be shouldered by those that take the risks and get the reward regardless of the outcome.
The "greed of Middle Eastern potentates" is also rich. It rubs us wrong in the west because of its imperial implication but our rich are effectively the same. They often inherit their wealth and control the politicians and thus the laws to keep themselves wealthy and thus in power. Would you complain if a US leader stopped Russia from trying to exploit any of the US's natural resources? Nope. Funny enough we let western multinational corporations rape those same natural resources further demonstrating Western potentates or as we call them "the mega rich American's"
The issue is many American's look at those rich people and think "If I work hard enough I could be just like them" when the reality is it will never happen. Even winning the lottery a few times in a row wouldn't get you there. The American dream is just that. A dream that has been swapped out by those that already have theirs. So it is not much different then a "Royal family" in the Middle East.
Second: The use of the word "liberal" in this synopsis with reference to the "West". The article refutes it's own claims by its own lead "how little we’ve learned about the Middle East.". One can not start out by pointing out how little the west has learned about the Middle East then call the US liberal.
Third: The “affirming a disjunct” logical fallacy throughout the entire article. Is there truth to many of the reasons they claim there are problems? Fuck yea! But that doesn't mean that the way the West has exploited the area for almost a hundred years isn't also a significant part of the issue. You can’t handwave away those issues. Yet this is what many people want to do or are just ignorant of those issues. It reminds me of Bill Cosby. Denial that he did anything wrong. Shifting the blame and rationalisation when he is forced to a point that he can’t deny what he did wrong any longer. Much of the USA does it with regard to the black community. The idea that slavery was oh so long ago. “The got the right to vote decades ago!”. All the while ignoring the reality then trying to claim that blacks deserve to be targeted by law enforcement because they are just thugs. That all crime in the black community should cease before we attempt any further discussion about racism within the USA.
Fourth: The idea that the "West" only wants democracy for the area and it is just these primitive people that won't accept it is the major problem. The reality is we've never really brought democracy to the area. We supported and often put in place the same autocrats the article complains about.
Fifth: The idea of tribalism as bad. The USA can be thought of, in one respect, as one huge tribe. You'll hear it coined by other terms like "National Exceptionalism". The article will complain about a "tribe" wanting what is best for their local people while we want what is best for "our nation" which these days isn't really for the nation but again what is best for the multi-national corporations. We often subdivide our national tribe when we don’t like what is good for the national tribe. We push these things into terms like “State’s Rights”
The fact is we are humans with a fairly well understood social evolution. For hundreds of thousands of years most humans, Homo sapien, whole social world was a few hundred people at most and tribal. People point to the bible thinking that it is a moral code for all people but in reality it is a code for a tribe. It is full of laws on how you treat people within the tribe compared to how you treat people outside of your tribe. Even western people still pull this tribal mentality all the time. Look at any competitive activity we are involved in. Fuck even things that shouldn’t be competitive we still do it. Every sporting team is drilled how they are some how better and more deserving than the others. When anyone tries to belittle “tribalism” like they are above it I’ll point out the hypocrisy they display every day of their lives.
The comment of “Any progress towards political maturity has been stultified by their inability to comprehend any loyalty other than that to family, tribe or religious sect. Loyalty to the nation or to the constitution is a concept devoid of meaning for them.” ignores so much it isn’t funny. Look again at issues we have in the USA where people bitch about “State’s Rights”, often in a vain attempt to hold on to some bigoted view that most of the country finally recognizes is bad for society. Look at the religious divides in the USA. A small but vocal component of the Christian majority will cry persecution any time their doctrine isn’t allowed to be shoved down the throats of all Americans. Non believers make up about 14% of the US population yet when you look at representation within politics, especially federally, it is devoid of non believers. Why? For the same reason every president ever elected so far has claimed to be Catholic. Most people in the USA will vote for a candidate based on their stated religion over an opponent even in the face of the politicians actual positions.
Iraq should not have been 1 country. It would be like if the USA the North East was primarily Secular Humanists, the South East was primarily Southern Baptists and the West was Hindu. You’d see that the USA wouldn’t work very well together. We need not look far to see this type of behavior. Look at Canada and the strong divide between the East and west and their mentality. Fuck look at Texas and tell me a decade that has gone by where there hasn’t been people bitching that Texas should secede from the union. When a national disaster hits you always hear people bitch how their tax dollars should not go to aid some other state.
Realistically Iraq should have been 3 countries. The north which is primarily Sunni Kurds, the West where are primarily Sunni Arabs and the south which is primarily the Shia Arabs. It is understandable that a Sunni Kurd will have little ties to the Shia Arabs in the south and may not want to risk their lives for them. Fuck you have plenty of Americans that wouldn’t want to risk their lives for their neighbors because their neighbor is Black or White or Latino or gay or Muslim or atheist. If we had a civil conflict in the USA how do you think it would pan out? Oh fuck me we did and look America almost split in 2.</span></span></span></div>
Wayne Francishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13977767234366313023noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054990738637117698.post-69783846608957994612015-06-07T18:40:00.000+09:302015-06-07T19:07:39.542+09:30FGM Female Genital Mutilation, what it is, what it is not, why you should care and what can you do about it.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1J1vb1b-edw/VXQKIdAGuaI/AAAAAAAAC1U/_C5oXUvuNGI/s1600/fgm-380x247.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="208" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1J1vb1b-edw/VXQKIdAGuaI/AAAAAAAAC1U/_C5oXUvuNGI/s320/fgm-380x247.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
This is probably something many of you don't want to know or let alone even think about. For various reasons people will not discuss issues such as this. The largest reason is society has a number of taboos when it comes to the topic of sexuality and things relating to sexuality. This reason, like all reasons, any one can give about why people should not talk about topics like this are deeply flawed and far out weighed by the reasons to bring topics like this to light. So I hope you will continue reading and find out what the facts are and what you can do to help combat against this torture of young women.<br />
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So what is Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)? FGM is the complete or partial removal of the external female genitalia. Some may claim that it is often no different then male circumcision. The reality is much different. Some argue that it is a cultural issue and no business of anyone else's to comment on another culture's practices. But this argument ignores the fact that any time we identify a cultural practice as demonstrably harmful to an individual, group of people and/ or society as a whole we should make efforts to stop such practices. <br />
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FGM falls under all 3 of those categories. It is clearly harmful to the individual. Any procedure done against the will of an individual that is for non-medical reasons falls under this category. Even if the girls are "talked into it" they are often to young to understand the ramifications of the decision and the pain, both short and long term, that they will have to endure. The practice is demonstrably harmful to all women because its sole use is as a tool to oppress women. To literally make sex unpleasurable for women and remind them that they are the property of men. Finally it is demonstrable that it is harmful to society as a whole because we see time and time again that when women are oppressed in societies those societies do not do as well. Societies where women are treated as equals have higher quality of living then those that do not. The most successful way you can help a community flourish is to empower the women of those community and that includes giving them reproductive autonomy. <br />
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Now to the specifics to demonstrate that this isn't just a form of "female circumcision". The most minor version of FGM most closely resembles male circumcision. Some apologists will claim this is the most common form but while the removal of the clitoral hood would be anatomically the same as a male circumcision, the reality is this rarely ever happens. So Type 1 is normally the removal of the hood and the clitoris. This is like saying that instead of a male having their foreskin removed they had not only the foreskin removed but at least the whole head of the penis. Anatomically it it more like chopping off the entire penis. And this is the most minor version of FGM performed. <br />
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More severe versions of FGM removal of the labia minora, the "inner lips". This is called type 2 FGM. Type 2 can even include removal of the labia majora. To shock you even further there are a total of 4 types each worse then the previous with varing amounts of damage being done in each level. Type 3 includes actually sewing up the remaining vaginal orifice. <br />
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There are other procedures done with FGM in various regions. This includes cauterizing or even removal of tissue not by cutting but by abrasion. Think of it like this. A doctor says "We need to remove your hand." then whips out a large file and starts at the tips of your finger.<br />
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While some procedures are done to babies, who won't remember the procedure, many are done to little girls around the age of 5. Most procedures are, in fact, done to girls between the age of 7 and 10. Pretty much always these are done with absolutely no anesthetic.<br />
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FGM has further complications and results in an extra 1-2% in perinatal deaths. Death rates from the actual procedure is recorded at 2.3%. Compare this to the most overblown rates of death from males circumcision which is less then 0.009% or over 255 times less likely. The more accepted numbers for deaths do to male circumcision is between 0 and 1 in 500,000 which means FGM is over 10,000 times more deadly.<br />
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Do you think this is just a problem of Muslims? Nigeria has the highest rates of FGM and the occurrence in the Christian community is higher both in number and percentages. Do you think it is only a problem in Africa? A 2015 study estimates that over a half a million females in the USA are at risk of or have undergone FGM and that number is up from about 228,000 women in 2000. It is illegal, thankfully, in the USA under <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/116" target="_blank">18 U.S. Code 116 - Female genital mutilation</a>. But this does not help girls when they go back to their parent's country of origin on holiday. While it is illegal here the parents are not subject to prosecution if it is done overseas. The Girls Protection Act of 2010 tried to address this issue and was cosponsored by 156 democrats and 21 republicans. The republican controlled Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations blocked it from going to a vote. I have no idea why they would prevent this bill from going to vote. I can guess that the oppression of women is just part of most of their world view when you look at their voting records.<br />
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The problem needs to be brought to light. Legislation needs to be enacted to protect those women in the USA from this practice. More broadly we need to apply political and social pressure to stop this practice that at the end of the day serves no other purpose then to oppress women. Something that in 1915 should not have been acceptable let alone 2015. I encourage everyone to research this topic. If you keep your head in the sand on the issue then that is your choice. But as with all bad positions you hold it reflects on the type of person you are. Yes I'm trying to guilt you into action because staying silent on issues like this is unacceptable in my opinion.<br />
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Read more about FGM here <a href="http://search.who.int/search?q=FGM&ie=utf8&site=who&client=_en_r&proxystylesheet=_en_r&output=xml_no_dtd&oe=utf8&getfields=doctype" target="_blank">World Health Organisation</a><br />
Google "FGM charity" to find were you can go to help. <a href="http://16days.thepixelproject.net/16-organisations-charities-and-grassroots-groups-working-to-stop-fgm/" target="_blank">Here is one article </a>that lists 16 various organisations trying to tackle this issue.<br />
<br />Wayne Francishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13977767234366313023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054990738637117698.post-28009992360231607102014-12-22T19:41:00.001+10:302014-12-22T19:41:09.883+10:30Remember Solyndra?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MnvQDsklP3s/VJff05M7w0I/AAAAAAAACn4/nSHAYtegglY/s1600/solyndra.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MnvQDsklP3s/VJff05M7w0I/AAAAAAAACn4/nSHAYtegglY/s1600/solyndra.jpg" /></a></div>
Do you remember Solyndra? This is the solar panel manufacturer that went bankrupt after receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in government money. The Obama administration was blamed for the program. Loosing and wasting your tax dollars on left wing liberal projects that were supposed to help lower our carbon foot print. So, was it really as bad as you remember?<br />
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This is a short post in reply to a FB post where I'm talking about how peoples views are often distorted by misreporting and out right lying by not only Fox News but most media outlets. To often people latch on to this stuff and don't let go. I still hear people make comments about Solyndra and frankly most people have no real clue what happened or even what "Solyndra" was. They just use it as a "buzz word". When people bag Obama there are a few "go to" terms. Solyndra! Benghazi! Obama Death Panels! <br /><br />The reality is most often very different from the shit that is in people's heads. Yes "shit". It is a very apt word to describe the "information" it is largely all the stuff that wasn't useful and probably just out right fake. Much like what you flush down the toilet every day from your previous days meals.<br /><br />Did you know that the program that gave Solyndra money was supposed to loose hundreds of millions of dollars. $780 million dollars has been lost by 4 companies including Solyndra. The Department of energy factored into the loan program these types of losses. The whole program was supposed to loose money over all. The costs was deemed acceptable because of the innovation it was expected to spur. So Solyndra lost about 528 million dollars. Three other companies folding lost the program another 150 million dollars. <br /><br />Before I go on let me talk a bit about the DOE's renewable-energy loan program. Normally we would hope that private equity providers, like Mitt Romney has made so much money off of, would be the source of funding for programs like this but people like Mitt Romney don't like these "risky" investments do they. He doesn't actually like investments full stop when you talk about building up companies. He's more for going in, transferring debt then dumping or dismantling the companies. So the government had to step in. The government has been doing this type of stuff for a long time. Obama's administration isn't the first and it certainly won't be the last to issue loans like these. Hell the banks get loans like these all the time from the government and they loose hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars.<br /><br />Anyway what is the state of the renewable-energy loan program that was budgeted to actually loose money. Well turns out that the program is going to make any were between 5 and 6 billion dollars. Not bad aye. Have you heard Fox News or any other news organization talk about that? Did they explain that the program was supposed to loose money but ended up being a bit of a cash cow? Probably not. Doesn't work well with the view that the vocal right wing want to push that Obama wants to destroy America.Wayne Francishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13977767234366313023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054990738637117698.post-43885793019669787822014-10-12T13:15:00.003+10:302014-10-12T13:15:59.949+10:30A response to Bob FrancisThis is in response to the following face book discussion.<br /><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WayneEFrancis/posts/10153269624224778" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/WayneEFrancis/posts/10153269624224778</a><br /><br />First off psychology is a science. It is highly statistical science but if you want to be a Scientologist like Tom Cruise go for it.<br />
Second you don't start with a theory. You start with repeatable observations and experiments, analyse the observations in unbiased manners, things like double blind tests, and you formulate a falsifiable hypothesis which can also be independently verified. A scientific theory is a well substantiated explanation of some area of the natural world that arrived at after repeated applications of the scientific method. Continually testing new and existing data to see if the current theory is still accurate. If it isn't either the theory is falsified and may have its domain of applicability reduced and it is replaced by a new theory that makes more accurate predictions or more predictions.<br />
Newton's law of gravity is an example of a Theory that while wrong is still widely used but its domain of applicability is reduced.<br />
Your statement that they've stopped checking observations is disingenuous or ignorant, take your pick. It is like saying biologists have stopped checking if evolution. It is continually examined. New scientists in learning their field continually test current hypotheses and theories and many main stream scientists do the same.<br />
Your example of Einstein is a good one. He originally predicted that GR indicated a non static universe and introduced a cosmological constant to keep it static. He later said that was "the biggest blunder in my career" and it was removed from GR for a very long time. Then we continued to test GR over the next 80 years. ~20 years after GR was published we found something that didn't add up within GR and that was the galactic rotation curves that indicated that galaxies where rotating to fast for the amount and distribution of matter within the observed galaxies. Pop forward another ~60 years and we discover that there is unseen mass around almost all galaxies. Mass that is at best very weakly interacting electromagnetically. Pop forward another 10 years and we discover that the expansion of the universe doesn't indicate that it is going to slow down but never quiet reach zero thus will expand forever and it isn't slowing down and never has been slowing down to cause a "big crunch" but in fact is speeding up and dark energy is introduced as the cause of the Hubble expansion.<br />
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The SAME type of stuff goes on with climate change. To say it doesn't ignores all the scientific work out there and frankly shows a very poor understanding of the scientific method.<br />
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You know why appropriate action isn't being taken. Because of people like you that want to deny the science kick up a stink if money was sunk into fixing the problem. Would you right now be willing to go through the pain and expense that it will take to fix the problem? The IPCC report is not only about the science but there is a whole volume that goes into mitigating the problem and it factors in how much people are willing to do. The science of psychology on this matter is pretty clear. People generally have very short term impulses that work against fixing problems like this. Politicians have short term goals of getting reelected. People might like the idea of not fucking over the environment or even other people but when they can be fooled or self deluded into believing that there isn't a problem they'll take the greedy option. Take Easter island as an example. That society kept cutting down trees and at some point you'd think that they might consider it a bad idea to continue to do so but no...they didn't. They cut down EVERY tree on that island. They destroyed their civilization. This isn't some "soft science" hypothesis. We know they did it. Captain Cook discovered the island before the population completely dwindled out. The boats they had were pitiful meaning they couldn't even fish properly any more.<br />
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So again if you don't know what is in the IPCC report please shut up and stop making false statements about the report and all the science in the report because YOU and everyone like you, including Fox News, CNN, etc. Everyone that either knowingly or unknowingly makes it look like the science isn't in or says that it isn't science because, even though you haven't investigated the issue you are sure that all those scientists are doing bad science, it it is treated as a "religion" is the problem.<br />
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Religions have "Truths" that are not independently verifiable. That is why we have thousands of denominations of the "Christian" religion, forget about all the other religions. Science, including the science of climate change is search for the best explanation to observed physical facts. The observed physical fact is our climate is changing. The fact isn't based off of 1 piece of data. It is from many different areas of the relevant sciences using data from many different sources. If you want to know about it then there is the IPCC report which makes it very easy to get a very large amount of work that has been done on the topic. Think of the IPCC report as a HUGE scientifically reviewed paper.<br />
Are there still questions? Yes! Does that mean we should ignore everything we know until all those questions are answered? Not if you care about your grand children and great grand children. You and I might miss much of the problems. But Steven, Melissa, Bryan and Joshua won't. They'll be in the thick of it. And because simply pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere isn't a instant fix they are quickly being set into a future they'll not even be able to properly mitigate given the current science. It will take hundreds of years to get the oceans to return to normal. We'll never get back some of the aquatic life that is dying off because they can't evolve quick enough to the changes in their environment do to climate change.<br />
The "taxing production" isn't a scientific solution. It is a political solution to try to motivate companies to change in a manner that is less economically impactful. I don't think that carbon should be taxed either. It is a stupid political trick to get people to think that the governments and companies are trying to do something. What needs to be done? Read the volume of the IPCC report that goes into that. There are many ideas that can be implemented put forth by many people much more knowledgeable then you and I. Not only "scientists" but others like economists.<br />
It is like if you went to the doctor and they told you that you have a tumor in your head and they recommend an invasive surgery because based on their knowledge you'll die if it isn't removed. You might go to a few other doctors to get a second, third and forth opinion. Now imagine you've gone to 100 doctors about the issue and 98% of them agree that you need to get it operated on. None of them will guarantee your survival. Of the 2 others 1 suggests you use this drug that they say will help and you know that doctor has received a lot of money from the pharmaceutical company that makes that drug. Last doctor isn't sure that the tumor will continue growing or even if it does that it does you might have a better quality of life not operating. Then Alex, your neighbor, comes over and says that through meditation you can heal yourself. A work mate comes to you and says all you need to do is use a pillow with magnets. And another person that noticed you reading up on the topic of brain tumors while on the train tells you they heard that brain tumors actually can make you smarter. Who are you going to listen to? In reality you probably wouldn't get to 10 doctors. You'd be faced with doctors on one side pretty much in universal consensus about what you should do and quacks on the other side. Then CNN picks up your story and they'll bring 1 of the doctors on and Alex on to have a "debate". Hopefully most people will walk away hearing that all the doctors you went to see agreed on the treatment but a good percentage of people will hear that meditation has been found to work, even though there isn't any science or real evidence behind it, and they'll think you should go down that route because it is less invasive. That is what it is like. You can disagree but, by what you've posted, you clearly don't understand the issue.<br />
<br />Wayne Francishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13977767234366313023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054990738637117698.post-60751050592363263322014-09-25T12:46:00.001+09:302014-09-25T13:23:58.162+09:30Please stop with the persecution complex!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Do you really think that Christians in the USA are persecuted? Is your opinion of your religion that inflated that you think that Christians need more rights and respect at the cost of American citizens of different beliefs? Do you really think that given a Christians receive less respect then those with other beliefs?<br />
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The USA has a majority of people that identify as Christian. 73% at the latest count. Almost 20% of American self identify as non religious. Yet Congress is about 90% Christian and 9% Jewish. Hmmm seems we have about 20% of our country not represented yet if you listen to Fox News it is Christians that are the powerless ones. <br />
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It isn't Christians that are looked down upon by the majority of the country. There are polls and studies that show that the majority of Americans would trust an atheist LESS then they would trust a rapist. As scared as many American's are of Muslims they are more likely to vote for a Muslim for president then an atheist. <br />
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You have government officials that instead of giving equal treatment to a secular organisation they prevented a Christian organisation from doing the same thing just to spite the secular organisation. So here you have two organisations that want to help people. One is Christian and the other is run by an atheist. The Christian politician decided that he would pull support from the Christian organisation rather then affording the secular group the same privileges. Who is the one that is being persecuted and who is doing the persecuting?<br />
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How many times do I have to see memes like this?<br />
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Let us look at the logical fallacies here.<br />
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First off America is NOT a Christian Nation. From the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796.<br />
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"As the Government of the <b>United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion;</b> as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims]; and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Mohammedan] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."<br />
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America is a nation for people of ALL faiths and religious beliefs. Not just the thousands of Christian denominations that can't even agree on the interpretation of most of their holy book.<br />
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Second, who exactly says that <u>YOU</u> can't say "Merry Christmas"?<br />
When has someone bitched you out for saying "Merry Christmas"?<br />
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Many people and organisations say "Happy Holidays" because there are other people in the USA that celebrate different holidays around this time of year, including pagans from which the Christmas Holiday was co-opted from the holiday of Saturnalia.<br />
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So if you are offended that other people and organisations are not paying your religion enough attention that is your problem. There is no war on Christmas or Christians. There are just people of other faiths that would like to pay and receive respect to people of all faiths and the rights our constitution guarantees. Every time someone claims the USA is a "Christian Nation" they marginalize all American's that don't self identify as Christians. I didn't serve my country for 6 years just for Christians. I served my country for the benefit of ALL its citizens.<br />
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So for once I'd like to see Christians actually act as suggested in Ephesians 4:1-3 "I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace"<br />
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If you want to say "Merry Christmas" then go for it but don't EVER tell someone else that they must express a greeting in the manner which you demand. Are you going to bitch me out if someone sneezes and I say "Gesundheit" instead of "God bless you"? Do you even want a blessing from a heathen like me? Sure, with 80% of America worshiping the Abrahamic god I'd probably be fine with that response. I'm sure most of the other 20% wouldn't care that I said "God bless you either". I may get a few people say something like "Actually I don't believe in God but thank you" and I know this because I have at times said this and heard other atheists say it. So isn't saying something like "Health" a more inclusive response? You won't hear a Swede yell at me because I didn't say "prosit". They wouldn't go away and start a meme implying they where discriminated against because someone didn't greet them in the way they normally greet others. They'd probably say thank you and move on grateful that they were acknowledged<br />
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Stop with the persecution complex because when minorities, that are really persecuted, see/ hear you complain then it just leaves them with a bad feeling about your self righteousness.Wayne Francishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13977767234366313023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054990738637117698.post-3144256967643683182014-09-17T00:00:00.002+09:302014-09-17T00:00:18.519+09:30What is the USA good at? Pissing off and on everyone in the middle East!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Think about this. 1953 We destabilize the government in Iran. In 1979 that came all tumbling down on our head. The USA puts into power Saddam Hussein and at the same time the USA secretly worked with Pakistan to create the Taliban to combat against Russia. We back a horrific government of Saudi Arabia because of the large amount of oil they control. We supply intel to Saddam Hussein on Iranian targets and ignore the fact that he's using chemical and biological weapons on them, some of which we sold to him using some of the billions of dollars we essentially give him. At the same time we sold arms to Iran through Israel in attempt to have hostages release. This all done by the greatest administration according to many in the GOP. We then have the CIA aid in the creation of al-Qaeda to also combat against Russia but at a crucial point we withdrew aid from al-Qaeda. Saddam Hussein uses chemical and biological weapons not only on Iranian combat forces but his own citizens. The US blocks an attempt by Iran to raise the issue of Iraq using biological and chemical weapons, probably due in part to the USA supplying much of the components of those weapons to Iraq. We finally loose the last little bit of control we had of him much like we lost control over Iran. Suddam occupies Kuwait. Something that the USA could have lived with if it it didn't threaten Saudi Arabia. USA goes to war with Iraq with just under 300 casualties, 2/3 by either accident or friendly fire incidents *rolls eyes*. We spend then next few years trying to regain control of Suddam with no success. August 6th 2001 President bush was warned about Bin Laden being determined to attack the USA and promptly told the analyst ""All right, you've covered your ass, now." apparently more concerned about his vacation. 1 month later the 9/11 happens and the USA uses this to start 2 wars. One with Iraq over WMDs that did not exist and the other against within Afghanistan. The USA then is directly and indirectly responsible for literally hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in both those countries being killed. The USA uses weapons like white phosphorus grenades in areas with large amounts of civilians within. We use signature strikes attacking suspected but not confirmed targets often just based of the use of a cell phone without knowledge of who is in possession of the said phone. We arrest and deport people to Guantanamo Bay often just on the word of various accusers we are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars to for essentially a body regardless of any proof they've been involved in any crime. We torture many of these people there in an attempt to extract information from them but not once got a single piece of accurate information. Some prisoners we use a process of rendition where we send them to places like Egypt to torture them more extensively while trying to maintain some deniability over the torture. We even abducted innocent civilians from countries like Italy, had them tortured to find out we had the wrong person then dumped them in the desert of Afghanistan hoping they'd die. We perform attacks on suspected targets then when first responders show up to aid the injured we'd attack them as well. We execute drone attacks based on very faulty data even after we see that we've killed dozens of innocent people for every "valid" target we got. <br /><br />All during this time we've got politicians saying "They hate us because they are jealous of us" "They hate us because they hate us." "All they want is the destruction of western society"<br /><br />Today we have the GOP screaming Obama should have backed the "moderate" rebels in Syria. When we have no idea who the "moderate" rebels are if there are such a thing. A few of the groups many Senators claim are "moderate" have just signed agreements with ISIL who we now want to attack because they've beheaded a few people which was in response to us bombing them. The reason they are there is because we tried to force 3 different groups of people into one country, Iraq, with out regard for their actual backgrounds. To this we now will wage an air war against them but the GOP wants boots on the ground because for them it isn't a real war unless American men are being killed on the ground. This will get American's more scared and fuel more money into the military industrial complex. <br /><br />We don't have enough money to help a 9 year old boy have lunch at school but we can afford to pay hundreds of billions of dollars to fight a force of currently only 30,000 odd fighters. But fear not! The USA attacking them will rally more fighters to their cause so the battle will not be won easily or quickly.<br /><br />We now have the Deputy National Security Adviser saying the following. "We need a Sunni partner in these countries. That's why we need his inclusive government and that's why wee need a Sunni opposition partner in Syria" referring to Iraq. Do you know who that describes? Saddam Hussein! For fuck sake. We've got a pattern of sticking our nose in places it does not belong. Backing the wrong people. Switching sides then backing the opposition. Often while still backing the original group. Pissing them all off so that they then all want to attack the USA. <br />
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SSDD, Same Shit Different Day. Given Hillary Clinton or Ran Paul in 2016 I'd have to go with Ran Paul. I hope a legitimate Democrat beats Clinton in the primaries.<br /><br /><br /><br />Wayne Francishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13977767234366313023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054990738637117698.post-83287995062092238612014-08-08T02:37:00.000+09:302014-08-08T03:03:14.366+09:30What would you want the world to do if every week 102 children in Boston where being killed for the past 4 weeks?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The latest count for children killed by Israeli incursion into Gaza in the last 4 weeks has topped 408. 102 children ever week. 14-15 children every day! What would you do? What would you want the world to do?<br />
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Now you might say "But Israel has to protect itself from Palestinian rockets?". I'll tell you the number. It is 28. Now you might think "See! 28 Israelis is a significant number!". But let me tell you one more piece of information you should know about that number. That is 28 Israeli's in the last 13 years. How many this year? One. Yes one Israeli killed by 705 attacks fired from all over Palestine in the last 7 months. So Israel wanted to "cut the grass" and launched a ground invasion into a city that is already blockaded.<br />
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Let me go into the geography a little for you. The Gaza strip is ~63% larger then Boston with 3 times the population. Now factor in that 44% of the Gaza strip is designated as "no go zones" by the Israeli Defense Forces you've got a even worse situation. Take a look at it here compared with Boston. The people can not leave this area. So when you hear the Palestinians get warning to leave where are they to go? They can't leave the borders. They can't even move around much within the strip. Most of the people there are dependent on the UN for food and basic medical supplies.<br />
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If you took all the children killed in just the last 4 weeks and spread them out as much as you could each child's dead body would be about 1/2 a mile from the next and the entire gaza strip would be covered. To give you a rough idea I've done a little placing of 400 dots over the Boston area. Remember this is just in the past 4 weeks. Oh, remember I've used the 44% of the area where Israel says they can't go too.<br />
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I don't care if you think Israel is justified to have occupied and oppressed the citizens of the Gaza strip for the last 47 years. I don't care if you think it is Israel's right to force out a democratically elected government. I don't care if you justify Israel's military action because Hamas's charter calls for the destruction of Israel all the while ignoring the Likud party's charter says the exact same thing about not only Hamas but all Palestinians.<br />
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What I care about right now is the whole sale slaughter of the Palestinians within the Gaza strip and specifically the deliberate targeting of refugees even when in well defined UN controlled compounds. What I care about is over 400 children that should be still on the face of this Earth and not mutilated beyond recognition or crushed by the very building that was supposed to be their protection.<br />
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Israel has killed over 1,900 Palestinians in the last 4 weeks in the Gaza strip. 75% of them innocent civilians. Take that square of dots above and increase the number of dots by 4 and that is the carnage that is going on. <br />
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You say Israel has no choice because Hamas and other Palestinians are using civilians as Human shields? Hmmm back in 2005 the Israeli High Court found that the Israeli Defense Forces used Palestinian civilians as human shields 1,200 times in the previous 5 years. There are multiple reports of IDF forces using civilians just this week. One was the use of an 11 year old Palestinian boy to open packages the IDF believed may have been booby trapped with explosives another case where they tied a older boy to the front of their vehicle. Let us forget the hypocrisy there. Let me point out that Israel has bombed 8 UN run refugee camps who's location they knew about. One of them hit just days ago the UN had relayed the camp's location to IDF 37 times in the last 4 weeks. You heard that there were rockets found at some UN locations? Did you hear that it was the UN that found the rockets? Did you hear it was the UN that turned them in? Did you hear that the UN locations where those rockets where found were not occupied by refugees or even currently used by the UN? Did you hear that the locations bombed had no rockets and no attacks were made from them in the past 4 weeks? Now tell me why the IDF had to target them. I can tell you why. Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Palestinians need to be beaten into submission. That it is Israel's goal that the civilian losses are so great that the civilians stop the dissidents and then turn around bow to their oppression under the hand of Israel.<br />
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Israel has a right to exist. So does Palestine. Hamas has said they will bow to the will of their people and if the people want a 2 state solution that is what will happen. Israel on the other hand just yesterday said there will never be a 2 state solution. Palestinians will never be released from their oppression. <br />
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Hamas and other groups within Palestine need to stop using force because it is utterly ineffective. It is getting them no where. Like wise Israeli needs to stop their excessive use of force. All it is doing is breeding more hatred. Their constant targeting of civilians is causing more and more Palestinians, that only want to live their lives, to change and want nothing but revenge for the decimation of their families by Israel. The problem is Israel has all the power. Before the ground offensive the death toll ratio was around 300:1 Even if Israel stopped air strikes any Palestinian dissident's attacks are shown to be not very effective. With less then a .5% success ration Israel has little to fear. <br />
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How long will you sit around and ignore the tragedy happening to the people within the Gaza strip? How long would you expect the world to sit around if it was your baby just 24 days old, along with eight other members of your family, 2 of them also children, that was killed by an artillery round destroying their house. None of your family being involved in any aggression. How many of your friends would you see die before your eyes? How many nights would you cower in fear never knowing if you'll never see the light of day? How long would you think the world should stand by and allow this to happen to you and those you love? I say this has been 4 weeks to long. If you have any compassion, if you say you believe in "God" how can you do nothing? How can you say nothing? <br />
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Pointing out that Israel is using excessive force isn't anti-Semitic. The oppression of the Jews decades, generations, ago does not give them licence to murder innocent civilians with impunity let alone free from the criticism of the rest of the world. All this does is make Israel look bad. The propaganda white wash they've used for decade is old and the world is quickly getting bored of it. How many more innocent people have to die before you'll act? I bet if it happened to just one person you know many of you would act right away.Wayne Francishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13977767234366313023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054990738637117698.post-51138686475778704812014-07-23T19:28:00.002+09:302014-07-23T19:28:58.129+09:30Is your news source really about news?If you live in the USA then where you get your "news" from is most likely not really concerned with news but money and what sells. So what sells? Things that make you afraid of things that are different. Fear mongering is rich among the major media outlets. What you don't get is a true picture of what goes on in the world. You normally hear how it is reasonable that Israel kills 4 times more innocent civilians then intended targets. You hear how they give warning and ask Palestinians to leave before bombing You hear that Israel has no choice when they kill civilians. You don't hear that the Gaza Strip is basically a large prison. You don't hear that Palestinians can't really leave the Gaza strip. You don't hear that Israel bombs civilians completely isolated from valid military targets like the a hospital or 4 kids playing ball on a empty beach. I could go on but this post isn't about Palestine and Israel. It is about news outlets and them not actually reporting news.<br />
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Do you know who this woman is? Some of you might but odds are most of you don't. Her name is Shannon Guess Richardson. I don't know about you but I think she's pretty but then I have a thing for red heads. Shannon is from Texas and she was an actress. Don't feel bad if you still don't recognize her. Even though you've probably seen her, she's been in Walking Dead, Vampire diaries, Twilight Breaking Dawn and a bunch of other tv shows. Pretty much everything she's been in has been as an uncredited extra. This isn't the news that you should have been told. What you should have heard from your news sources is that she is a dangerous terrorist inside of the USA. You might be thinking "WHAT!?!?!, She doesn't look at all like a Muslim!". She isn't. She is much more dangerous. She is an extreme right wing conservative who is part of a population that think it is her right to try to assassinate multiple politicians including the president. She even tried to frame her innocent husband for it. What did she do? She actually sent ricin to Obama, Bloomberg and Mark Glaze. She's eventually pleaded guilty and will serve 18 years. Now if she was Muslim she probably would have had a good chance of being shot while being taken into custody. <br /><br />Think this isn't a big deal? I can see some people I'm related to making the claim it wasn't that serious because the president was never in danger because of the security protocols around him. For you that don't know how deadly ricin is think about 1 aspirin. Now chop that pill into over 200 equal parts. Now take just one of those portions and that is enough to kill a fully grown person. Yes Obama was very safe. He doesn't open his own mail and there is strict screening on any mail sent to him so even the staff in the white house were in no danger. But what about Bloomberg and Glaze? What about the postal worker that handled those letters. What if on or more of the letters broke open and contaminated other mail. <br /><br />But even the "liberal" media of the USA didn't really say anything about this. Because she is a white female. You can guarantee that if she was Muslim that you would have heard nothing but her story for weeks on end. But your news doesn't want you to think critically. They want you afraid of stuff you find hard to relate to, like Muslim terrorist. That is what drives their profits and you come out the other end with a distorted view of reality. You look at Shannon and you probably think something like "she looks like someone I'd be friends with."<br /><br />How many right wing extremists have you heard about killing anyone? Now how many times have your heard how dangerous Muslim terrorists are. Do you know right wing extremists are over twice as deadly as Muslim terrorists in the USA? Left wing extremists are really bad. They haven't killed anyone in over a decade. I often blame conservatives for not standing and speaking up against the radicals in their midst. But truth is most of you don't know they are there. Funny enough it is right wing extremists that always ask why Muslims don't condemn Muslim Terrorists. This is what is called projection and isn't anywhere near reality. The reality is that there are TONS of Muslim organisations that put out statements of condemnation after some terrorist attacks. From the right you only hear how the actions of radicals in their own groups are some how justified.<br />
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So here is what I suggest you start doing if you want real news. Try other sources. Huffington Post is a good one. The BBC is pretty good. Al Jazeera is actually excellent and much more independent from government pressure then the major networks in the USA. <br /><br />At the end of the day if you want to stay ignorant then by all means keep watching Fox News, CNN, or even MSNBC. You'll get right wing view, warped "balanced" news or Centre right "liberal" views. What you will not get is the real story but something that makes them money and doesn't actually amount to anything remotely like journalism.Wayne Francishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13977767234366313023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054990738637117698.post-37677677608743039412014-07-18T00:22:00.000+09:302014-07-18T00:22:05.848+09:30Pointing out disproportionate responses is not anti-semitic<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-O1O2iZo5WSU/U8fUz-xCxMI/AAAAAAAACgg/TD7jRjULFKM/s1600/Flickr_-_Israel_Defense_Forces_-_Eight_Qassam_Launchers_in_Gaza.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-O1O2iZo5WSU/U8fUz-xCxMI/AAAAAAAACgg/TD7jRjULFKM/s1600/Flickr_-_Israel_Defense_Forces_-_Eight_Qassam_Launchers_in_Gaza.jpg" height="131" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Palestinian Rocket</td></tr>
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1 Israeli dead, over 200 Palestinians dead and over 80% of them innocent civilians. Make shift rockets fired from the Gaza strip are rendered harmless by American designed and funded technology. Israel then uses sophisticated rockets and bombs for which the Palestinians have no defense against. All the while Israel has occupied Palestine for over 44 years and refuses to allow them any sovereignty. Israel says they want peace but, with America's support, won't allow Palestine to even have a voice in the UN to negotiate for peace.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jZZFV5eHytM/U8fVF89BOdI/AAAAAAAACgo/q_r6tSRY3mk/s1600/The-Iron-Dome.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jZZFV5eHytM/U8fVF89BOdI/AAAAAAAACgo/q_r6tSRY3mk/s1600/The-Iron-Dome.jpg" height="125" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Israeli Defensive Rockets</td></tr>
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Now as American's we have no moral ground to stand upon with how many civilians we've killed in the past 2 decades. But as American's we shouldn't let what is happening in and around the Gaza strip to continue without voicing objections. There is wrong on both sides but Israel is not responding in kind. A 200:1 ratio isn't a proportional response especially when the current reason the fighting is going on is because Israel refuses to stop occupying Palestine. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Just one of the Palestinian Children killed by the Israeli Navy</td></tr>
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What would you do if this was your child? This child was just one of 4 that where killed by the shelling of a beach by the Israeli Navy. This kid was not a"human shield" for Hamas or any other group attempting to attack Israel. This kid was playing on the beach with his friends. Some of his friends died with him. Others are badly wounded and witnessed their young friends bodies get mutilated beyond any ability to survive. Avigdor Lieberman, Israeli foreign minister, said "To the best of my understanding, it is not possible to ensure summer vacation, a normal summer for our kids, without a ground operation in Gaza". So this Palestinian child, and others like him, had to be brutally killed so that children in Israel can enjoy their summer vacation? What kind of sick twisted logic is that? <br /><br />For over 4 decades Israel has been the oppressor. Perhaps they should try a different tactic especially when they are killing 200 times more people then their enemy. Perhaps they should show some restraint when they are only, at best, 20% effective at targeting their enemy with the other 80% being innocent people like the child above.<br /><br />We, as Americans, have to realize that many around the world that "hate us" don't hate us simply because they are jealous of us. They hate us because we occupy them. They hate us because we kill their children. They hate us because we oppress them. Here we occasionally ask for Israel to show restraint but never demand it. <br /><br />What if that was your child? What if some foreign nation occupied were you lived for almost your entire life? What if you had to live in constant fear? How would you react? Do you know why Palestinians blow themselves up in a market? Because they don't have F-16s supplied by the USA to deliver their bombs. They aren't terrorists. They are fighting for their freedom. Just because Israel has more expensive weapons doesn't make them right. Just like the USA using unmanned drones to kill innocent civilians doesn't make it right. Just because I point out the reality doesn't mean I'm anti-semitic.<br /><br />As American's we need to open our eyes up to the reality of the destruction we cause. We need to open our eyes up to the destruction we condone. Then and only then maybe we can halt the blood baths we create. Then and only then will we be able to start to repair the damage WE have done to our own image. Then and only then can we start saying we are part of the greatest nation the world has ever seen. Until then we are just bullies of the world an Israel is just our side kick. But instead of stealing lunches and punching a weaker kid we literally kill children that just want to be children.<br /><br />Israel, like the USA, needs to realize that just because we can destroy our enemies with relatively few casualties of our own doesn't mean we should. So when someone like Dick Cheney talks about defense spending and says "<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Century, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">That ought to be our top priority for spending. Not food stamps, not highways or anything else,"</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Century, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span> we shouldn't listen. We already spend more then the next 11 countries combined. Dick Cheney says we can't fight 2 wars at once. Well our funding says we should be able to fight 11 wars at once and still have a little left over.<br /><br />The reason that they don't want peace is 2 fold. First it keeps them in power. For Israel if their people are afraid then their government has more power. The second reason is money. This is trillions of dollars in play keeping the military industrial complex going. Those corporations don't want peace because peace is bad for business. Fuck the dead kids and fuck the average person. Dick Cheney would rather your son or daughter have a gun in their hands made by these corporations then your child actually getting an education. Because the education won't make Cheney and his friends money and an educated person is what the rich fear the most. Keep your population dumb and poor to keep your power.Wayne Francishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13977767234366313023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054990738637117698.post-77072730572888816392014-07-05T04:58:00.000+09:302014-07-05T04:58:39.704+09:30Double standards with touchy subjects. Did you ever have a crush on a teacher?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6MKqR7p7X6Q/U7bV_kTGPZI/AAAAAAAACfw/6VTovDB73H8/s1600/kathryn-ronk-wedding.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6MKqR7p7X6Q/U7bV_kTGPZI/AAAAAAAACfw/6VTovDB73H8/s1600/kathryn-ronk-wedding.jpg" height="193" width="200" /></a></div>
Well another female teacher sleeping with a male student of hers. 29 year old Kathryn Ronk has been charged with multiple counts of first degree sexual misconduct, one count of child pornography (presumably a picture of the boy, and one count of providing a minor alcohol. The boy is 15 years old. So I'm going to go some of the things many people think but few will openly discuss. It may make you feel uncomfortable but stepping outside your comfort zone can very often be a good thing. Some times doing it is a necessity to really start to make change that is needed within our society. If you don't care about making change then feel free to click "x" now.<br />
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First off it is inappropriate for multiple reasons in my view. The age being the first. The position of authority being the second. There are some interesting issues we, as society, need to look at these types of things. <br />
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I've seen arguments, in the past, how something like this isn't that bad. Honestly there is running jokes about hooking up with hot teachers while you are in high school. It is a huge fantasy of a large number of students of both sexes. Our culture both demonizes and glamorizes it. The list of movies and songs that show how it is just normal "young love" is very long. From movies like Blame it on Rio, American Beauty, Private Lessons, My Teacher's Wife, Circle of Two and many more. Sting wrote the song "Don't stand so close to me" in the late 1970s and won a Grammy in 1981 for the song. Re-released in 1986 right when I was just 16. Sting reportedly says the song is not autobiographical but he was a teacher and it really isn't a stretch now is it. <br />
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These days we seem to have more views of predatory pedophiles lying and manipulating "grooming" young people on-line. Before the internet such grooming was much more personal. Actual pedophiles had to put themselves in roles where they would be around young people constantly but that is for another blog post. I'm not sure I'd class Kathryn as a predator or a pedophile but is that because of culture I grew up in? It reminds me of this episode 10 from season 10 of South Park. I've got a clip here for you. Basically Kyle's little brother, Ike, who can barely talk, is having an affair with his kindergarten teacher.<br />
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You might not find South Park funny but the sentiment isn't really far off the mark if Ike was 10-11 years older.<br />
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When I was in high school there were 2 young female teachers I had a crush on and would have been ecstatic if I hooked up with either of them. Lets be honest, like most young men, I probably would have been over joyed if I hooked up with almost any of the young women in the whole student body back then. The attitude is boys are boys and, well, as young men we are naturally horny little bastards. So when I was 15 if I had a teacher like Kathryn that I had an affair with I can say that I'd have come out of the whole ordeal with very minimal metal scaring. I'm sure it would not last and would be very sad when it ended. At the time it would be very hard emotionally but hormones would have kicked in and some other girl would have caught my eye. I'm sure I wouldn't have been scarred for life. I'd wager that probably 95% of the guys I went to high school with wouldn't have ended up any worse for the wear if it happened to one of them either. <br /><br />
We, as a society, don't like to think of young women in the same light. We hold them in a better light for the most part. In a way everyone just accepts the way young men will act. But females...they aren't controlled by hormones like boys aren't they?. They are looking for long term love! Their crushes on a teacher are motivated differently in our eyes as society. But I wonder how many of the women I know had such crushes and what was honestly going through their heads. My experience is that young women are not all that different then young men. Young men are controlled by hormones but most guys I know at 16 were not out to play the field. We were, for the most part, happy to try to latch on to one girl for as long as we could. Bird in the hand mentality. Tho the 2 in the bush would get us in trouble even if we never got close to them. Males and Females have our differences for sure but girls aren't the princesses we expect them to be. That is fine too. Because once we stop trying to hold them to unrealistic expectations they'll have less pressure and can be who they want to be. A young woman that does have sex shouldn't be looked down upon and called a 'slut' while young men get a pat on the back and a 'that's my boy!'<br />
<br /> So looking at this situation I know I should look at this in the same manor that I'd look at it if it was a 29 year old male teacher and a 15 year old female teacher but it is hard to keep that in frame. Maybe because I've got a strong protection instinct. I've gone through so many phases looking at age differences between couples from different perspectives. When I was 18 and based in Georgia I had a girl friend that turned 17 just a month after we. I also dated a 28 year old woman when I was barely 18. Was the fact that I was a Marine a reason people didn't look at that as a bit odd? When I was just 22 in and stationed in Hawaii I met a 20 year old woman I fell head over heels for but I remember thinking when I first met her "Hold on! She's only 20...she's pretty young!" when in reality it was me that wasn't as mature as I would have liked to think. Years later after getting married, leaving the Marine Corps, having a child and broken up with my ex I found myself 28 and in the same year I dated two women that were very different. One woman that was 9 years older then me and one that was 9 years younger then me. The younger woman was much more mature then the woman that was over twice her age. In my mid 30s I once again found that I couldn't bring myself to date women that realistically where only 7-8 years younger then me. In 26+ years of dating my views on age have changed. The rule of 1/2 your age plus 7 years seems pretty safe but I still wouldn't want a relationship with a 29 year old. Not because she'd be to immature but realistically the problem would be years down the line when the 15 year gap doesn't get smaller but actually bigger. I relate to people younger then me just fine these days but when I'm 85 and needing some care I'd hate to think I'd be hindering a partner just 70 and still very much in the game of life<br /><br />
So I've had a roller coaster ride with my personal views on ages and relationships but I've realized a few things. Age is often a poor factor when it comes to the emotional maturity of a person. At the same time we have to have some lines. Many courts are now starting to factor in age differences in situations where current laws are fairly stupid. For example a 17 year old boy and his 15 year old girlfriend's relationship shouldn't suddenly become illegal because he turns 18. The age difference didn't really change and he shouldn't face a sex offender charge because of it. Was dating a 19-20 year old when I was 28 wrong? Some might say so and if she wasn't the woman she was I would have agreed but it still wouldn't be illegal just like when I just turned 18 and dated a 28 year old while stationed near D.C. So is 29 and 15 all that different then 28 and 18. Realistically the difference between 28 and 29 is nothing. The difference between 15 (probably almost 16) and 18 is just over 2 years. Even going through boot camp I'm not sure I was all that much more mature at 18 then I was at 16. <br /><br />
So where does this leave my opinion of the matter. Surprisingly enough I'm pretty clear in my head despite what I've said up to this point. She's gone to far. Most places the age of consent is 16 and we have it there for a reason. She faces up to 15 years in prison because she couldn't seem to wait just a few months. Do I think she deserves 15 years? No. Partly, I'm sure, because of how society has framed my view about this topic. Partly because I think the current laws in many places need to be further reformed and some judgement should remain in the power of the Judge. If Kathryn is convicted and there was no evidence that something more devious was going on then yes I think she needs to be rehabilitated but I think it should be more mental health treatment then hard core jail. I'd have to say the same thing, and this is difficult, if it was a 29 year old male teacher and a 15-16 year old female student. Hell, the student could be of the same sex as the teacher and I don't think it should matter. If the teacher was found to have been grooming more then one student then the picture starts to drastically change from a bad indiscretion to predatory behavior. The liberal in me starts going out the window and I'd want the judge to throw the book at the teacher. Our teachers need to be stronger morally because of the position they are in.<br /><br />
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Finally some random thoughts that I know are just not informed. OK call me shallow but she's very attractive. If she wanted a young guy she'd have an easy time with young men just in uni or the military. First thought I think of is why? Just go pick up an 18 year old. I'd like to think that she did fall for him. I don't know what they are feeding some of these young men but they seem to look much older then anyone I went to high school with. This is what an under 18 player in Australia looks like these days. Would you look twice if you saw the woman above kissing this young man?<br />
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With young women we might try to say it is all the make up and that is partly true. In reality it is our media that is changing our views and changing the outlook of our young men and women. I'll wait and see if I can get a transcript of the court case when it happens but in reality I'll never know the real true story. I hope she gets the help she needs and hopefully someone talks to the young man and puts the whole thing in perspective for him at least. Hopefully the whole process of her going to trial doesn't traumatize the young man.<br /><br />Wayne Francishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13977767234366313023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054990738637117698.post-51859832416061174772014-06-19T01:26:00.001+09:302014-06-19T02:07:01.426+09:30A response to good questions/ statements with regard to guns and gun ownership and regulations.<br />
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My nephew Bryan responded to a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/WayneEFrancis/posts/10152953969199778" target="_blank">Facebook post</a> I made that linked an article talking about the reality of "good guys with guns"<br />
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I started to just respond in the face book post but this warrants more attention then a quick face book response. Hats off to him for actually voicing his views. How much he or anyone else will accept the logic and reasoning why the arguments fail is not controllable by me. All I can do is state the reality and point out the flaws. So with that I hope this makes you think a bit about the issue.<br />
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Here is his post and what follows is my response.<br />
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<b>BrYan May</b> I don't care what the numbers are, I would want to at least have the opportunity to defend myself against an intruder. Otherwise I'd just be a dude asking the gunman to get out of my house.<br />
It's our second amendment right to keep and bear arms. If there ever was a need for a militia, we as people, would need to be equipped. With the way this government has turned, it's important to be able to protect yourself. This is a tyrannical government that's infringing on a lot of the freedoms our forefathers fought for against England. This is a police state where regular cops have military weapons and vehicles. And laws granting them the ability to go in your house and search without a warrant. Reminds me of the Revolutionary war days when red coats could use houses for whatever they wanted.<br />
There's a lot of fed up people here. If there was ever a rebellion, we need to be armed. To protect ourselves from any enemy.<br />
I just looked up deaths by motor vehicles and guns ans in 2010 the numbers were about even. Should we have stricter regulations on motor vehicles too?</blockquote>
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Ok Bryan let me address your points one at a time.<br />
1) "I don't care what the numbers are..." I can stop right there. Your family is safer without a gun in the house period. Even with a home invasion risk you, your wife and your children are over 4 times more likely to get shot because you have a gun in your home. If you goal is to protect your family from harm then the best thing for you to do is not have a gun. In a home invasion situation the best thing for any family to do is call the police immediately and barricade you and your family in one of the rooms and remain on the phone with the police. I know it doesn't sound manly to hide in a room but it is the safest thing for your family and I personally don't have to risk my family's safety because I want to look more macho. Arguing that you are safer with a gun is as sensible as saying you are safer not wearing a seat belt in your car. I don't care how safe you feel. Reality doesn't care how safe you feel. Reality says you or one of your family members is more likely to get shot and possibly killed if you have a gun.<br />
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2)Next the Second Amendment says "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."<br />
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First 4 words "a well regulated Militia. This would equate to something like a national guard. Yes back over 220 years ago well regulated state militias where a credible threat against the Federal government that was still unsure if the laws put in place would be sufficient to control the federal government. The reality is the laws, if we choose to use them, are very sufficient to control the federal government. The problem is that most people don't want to bother. It is far easier for people to complain about the government over reach and corruption and do nothing about it and pretend that if you have a gun that you'll be able to stop the new world order when it comes. The reality is quite different. Our forefathers put in place all the tools we need if we just choose to use them. Lets us take the single largest problem with our government with respect to governing over its citizens. At all levels government is becoming more and more corrupt. Big money in politics is the largest factor for this. Both the democrats and GOP are controlled by big money. We don't have a right and left wing politicians. We have right wing and centre right wing politicians because corporations and the ultra rich are primarily right wing. Over 90% of people in the USA believe that money corrupts politics but congress isn't going to change it, the executive branch doesn't come through with the change that they promised and the judicial branch has been stacked over the last few decades with to many judges that consider corporations and the rich more important then you and I. With the latest ruling by SCOTUS we get statements like <br />
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"Associate Justice Anthony McLeod Kennedy - We now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption."</blockquote>
And they expect us to believe that because we let them by our inaction. Not because we aren't willing to take up arms but that to many people aren't willing to voice their opinion. We all know that almost all politicians are going to listen to a billionaire throwing them and their party millions of dollars a lot more then you and I who wouldn't even appear on their radar even if we donate to their campaigns. There are studies that show that, with regard to legislation, the common citizens views do not factor into actual legislative results but if you are in the top .01% the legislation almost always aligns with your positions on a topic. <br />
So given that you aren't going to, and shouldn't, form an armed revolt against the federal government what can you do? Well the forefathers where very smart individuals. Article 5 mandates that the states can force the federal government to amend the constitution even if the politicians in Washington don't want to. There is a big push to have the states force the Federal government to amend the constitution and over turn rulings like Citizens United, which might sound like it is good for you but basically says a corporation is a person just like you ....except better. They get all the rights you do but can have limited liability, can't be drafted, can't be sent to jail, can spend more money supporting political candidates then you can which means they can legally buy your politicians. To see how you can help without the use of a gun go to<br />
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Now back to guns. What do you think would happen if the federal government came for you. I mean really wanted to come for you. To many people look up to people like Cliven Bundy as standing up to the Federal government and think, "see we've got guns and the government is afraid of us". They are stupid. First Cliven Bundy steals from all Americans. Other ranchers pay grazing fees that Bundy believes he doesn't have to. He uses federal lands to feed his cattle and doesn't think the law should apply to him. It is no different then someone thinking they don't have to pay any taxes but still have the government protect them with police and fire departments. Use federal and local roads. Use national parks we pay to maintain with our money. Use the schools to educate their kids. For fuck sake it is like someone driving into a national park, cutting down all the trees to hall off to a lumber yard and pocket all the money. But people flock to Bundy with their AR15s in hopes that they'll be able to use their weapons against the government.<br />
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If the government wanted to take them out how hard do you think it would be. Forget the legality but just pure combat. I can tell you that everyone at the Cliven Bundy ranch would be dead and I'd be surprised if even 1 military member was even harmed during the assault. The reason the government just doesn't go in is not because they are scared of the civilians with guns and what they could do to an assaulting force but what a few dozen stupid idiots with AR15s would be willing to try to do to protect a racist thief. Having a gun doesn't help them any more then them all having kitchen knives and threatening to drink poisoned kool-aid if the feds get to close.<br />
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If you try to use a gun to stop a police officer from legally searching your residence then you are stupid. If police officers illegally search your residence then take legal action against them. When you see cops racially profiling black kids, speak up there. Don't interfere but tape it. Post it. File a complaint with the police. Take it to your politicians that you won't stand for them overstepping their authority. Boston is no stranger to putting police back in their place. On October 21, 2004 Victoria Snelgrove, a 22 year old journalism student was killed by a police officer after the Red Socks won against the Yankees because the police were using crowd control tactics that the situation did not warrant and the police officer wasn't trained for and should not have been authorized to use. Did enough happen to all the police officers involved, not in my opinion but actual action was taken and police officers did get punished and demoted. When cops over step their authority you and every other citizen need to be involved in correcting the issue. If no one steps up and makes a fuss then the country will slide deeper into a police state. This means that you have to stand up for your rights even if it means you might get pepper sprayed or arrested some times. Having a gun won't help you one bit and if you pull it out on a cop then expect that your wife and child will live on without you.<br />
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Finally your argument about motor vehicles. We do have stricter regulations on motor vehicles. You register your motor vehicles. Your motor vehicles are insured and inspected. You hold a licence to drive your motor vehicle and can loose the right to drive said motor vehicle. There are sensible road rules. Speed limited, laws against drunk driving. Your motor vehicle primary function isn't to kill or maim another person. Yes accidents happen with vehicles and they get investigated. But with guns and gun ownership we don't have the same type of regulations. Vehicles are also used a HELL of a lot more then guns. If vehicles where used only as much as guns and still had the same death rates ...man. The average American driver spends about an hour a day in the car. Tell me how many people do you know that use their guns more then they drive? It is also a logical fallacy to say that since cars cause deaths that guns shouldn't be regulated even if the risk in using them was the same which it is not. It is a lot harder to function in modern society without a car then it is without a gun. We accept the risks with vehicles and we are constantly making driving safer. We do no such thing with regards to guns.<br />
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Now I've not even said anything about taking away all guns. If you want to have a hand gun in your home and accept the increased risk to you and your family that is your decision just don't delude yourself. What I say is better laws and regulations should be in place. This means standards across all 50 states just like there are standards to drivers across all 50 states. Just like there are safety standards in all states with the road worthiness of your vehicles in all 50 states. You can't just go buy a car in Rhode Island because they allow you to drive unroad worthy vehicles there. I've said it before and I'll say it again if we had similar laws and regulations with regard to guns that we do with vehicles there would be less deaths. There is a reason why American children are 9 times more likely to be killed by a gun then in an other developed country and it isn't because of "bad guys with guns" most of the time. To often it is because stupid parents with guns don't know how to secure their firearms properly.Wayne Francishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13977767234366313023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054990738637117698.post-35137293598871273492014-06-12T23:30:00.000+09:302014-06-12T23:30:15.308+09:30Right wing extremists more dangerous then Muslim extremist!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">A</span>lmost 2 months ago I did a post on face book, April 16th if anyone wants to verify it, that talked about how right wing white extremists, are a much bigger threat to Americans then any radical Muslim organization. We've been hit again by white right wing extreme tea party members wanting to spread their message that they want to take over the government and will kill anyone that stands in their way. Just a few days ago 2 police officers and a third innocent person lost their lives to right wing nuts. Now let us just ignore the stupidity of the laws and lack of laws with regard to gun possession because, honestly, if you want to preach about your second amendment rights then go fuck off and join a well regulated militia because you, and I hold no respect for your ideas, most likely have never even read the Second Amendment for yourself. When you actually know those topics which you try to defend your position with then, and only then, will I consider engaging in a conversation with you. Until then I would get better responses from a 2 year old on the topic of quantum mechanics then I will with you about your rights to bare .<br /><br />
So now with those people that have no clue about their actual rights pissed off and gone let me talk to those of you that are still here consider yourself "conservative" and republican, but have common sense. Again I'm not talking about gun regulation here. That is another topic. What I want to talk about is you taking control of your political movement and parties. You actually being constructive with your involvement in government. You actually condemning the extremist the lurk all around you. Because by being silent and wishing these people just didn't exist you contribute to their voice. By not calling them out you lend credibility to there views. The number of "conservatives" that I see supporting and/ or justifying stupidity by those within their ranks simply because you share some label is stupid in itself. Now it is hard to justify and support the killing of those 3 innocent people but what about those at the Cliven Bundy ranch? What about those of you that support him? Do you really know what that was all about? I've talked to a few "conservatives" that said they did but their ignorance on the matter of which they claimed to understand and support was shocking. <br /><br />The rest of the world, and again to many "conservatives" forget there is a big ass world outside their little bubble, looks at America and shakes their head in horror and the vast majority of it is because of stupidity that comes from a small vocal minority within the conservative base. So forget the fact that I can't talk to 4 people, outside of the USA, without finding that at least 3 of them thinking that what is happening with the right wing is crazy. Forget about the opinions of others. How about actually doing something. How about doing more then sharing a post saying you support the troops or [insert patriotic meme here] or [Share if you remember what manners are]. Fine if you want to do that but you know what is really important calling out those that might fall under your big tent but are clearly as crazy as Charles Manson or those that follow him. Reclaim your party. Call your politicians out when they don't want to label something as "domestic terrorism" because it was 2 white people doing it, but if they even think someone had any Arabic looking traits they'd be screaming it from the roof tops. <br /><br />Basically don't be a hypocrite. You want to bag Obama? Fine I can give you lots of material you can work with and if you read through many of my posts on this blog you'll see it for yourself. But at the same time you can't remain silent about the extremist views others in your party are shouting all the time. Because at the end of the day if you don't call them out eventually one of them is going to do something that hits a little to close to home for your liking. You shouldn't want to be one of the people that could have made it clear as a "right wing conservative" you don't support their unpatriotic and immoral world views even if they call themselves right wing too.Wayne Francishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13977767234366313023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054990738637117698.post-44493160676249374162014-05-28T14:02:00.003+09:302014-05-28T14:37:56.400+09:30Critical thinking on the topic of "Chemtrails"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Having served in the military and been very close to the air craft that produce contrails and even have jumped out of them and seen the contrails I can tell you that they are indeed water vapor. The science on contrails is well known. There is an impact on climate as it changes the amount of heat escaping the atmosphere back down to the Earth but these are not crop dusters spraying the Earth. Contrail refers to the condensation of water. <b>Con</b>densation <b>Trails -> ConTrails</b><br />
First I'll go into the science on contrails then I'll go into just some evidence against "chemtrails".<br />
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There are 2 different processes that is going on here, for the formation of contrails. The first one involves exhaust from the engine. Burning fossil fuel produces water vapor and carbon dioxide. The water vapor alone doesn't produce the contrails. It is a combination of factors. The water vapor introduced into the atmosphere increases the humidity past its saturation point. The exhaust provides particulate matter for the water vapor to condense around and at high altitudes these water drops freeze. Depending on the conditions this can occur very close to engines or a bit away. The reason they don't just "dissipate", "evaporate", "disperse" is the same reason clouds don't because that is what these are, clouds.<br />
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The second, and more minor cause is differentials in pressure. This type also is more visible at lower altitudes and can even be observed on even small aircraft. The vortex from points on the plane like wing tips, tail and propellers cause these types of contrails. These contrails will last as long as the exhaust contrails but depend on slightly different atmospheric conditions to form. I've seen these trails form during take off but like the contrails from the exhaust they tend to disappear faster because the atmosphere near the ground is very different then high altitudes.<br />
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OK, that is a very basic and quick run down on contrails. Is there an impact on the environment? Yes, It amounts to an estimated 120KW of energy retained per square kilometer. If anyone is interested in the climate change science I can point you to the peer reviewed papers on the science.<br />
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Now for the evidences of a conspiracy of global chemical spraying.<br />
1) You'd have to involve to many people to keep it so secret. All those chemicals would have to be manufactured, transported, and loaded on to the planes. At every point you are talking about countless people needing to be involved yet no credible evidence has ever come to light involving "chemtrails"<br />
2) All these planes would have to have a storage and dispersal system installed which wouldn't be hard to see. If you believe that extra chemicals, to make you sick, are in the fuel then you don't know the testing that goes on with fuel. Don't be insulted most people don't. I've had extensive bulk fuel training while in the USMC. Not like it is a course given to every person in high school. Typically diethylene glycol monoethyl ether is the antifreeze used with very pure kerosene to produce jet fuel. You really don't want the fuel lines in your 777 freezing up at cruising altitude. The name might even sound very scary but so does dihydrogen monoxide and I bet you have no problem with that. Is the antifreeze safe to drink, of course not. It is a chemical compound that should not be ingested. Go <a href="http://hazard.com/msds/mf/baker/baker/files/e2625.htm" target="_blank">here</a> to read all about the chemical information on it. <br />
3) If they where trying to disperse a chemical do you think they would do it in a manner which stays condensed in a very local region high in the atmosphere?<br />
4) While I support peoples home grown veggies how does this help against a supposed atmospheric chemical spraying program? Again if some world organisation wanted to contaminate your food and water then there are a lot more efficient ways to go about it then spraying chemicals into the high altitude where those same chemicals are more likely to be broken down by natural conditions long before they reach the surface.<br />
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Finally saying Bill Gates admits to some "chemtrail" conspiracy is easy. I can say Santa told me that aliens control us with radio waves and I should wear a tin foil hat. Don't be insulted by the analogy. I'm just pointing out that there seems to be as much evidence of Bill Gates saying any such thing as Santa. It is very easy for us to hear someone say "Bill Gates said [x]" and believe it without ever hearing Bill Gates actually saying it but being convinced he has. It is also very easy for us to hear someone give some talk. Hear/ see something else and think we heard the first person say something they didn't. It is very common. They human mind is very good at inventing memories that didn't actually happen. So if someone like me asks for your source please don't get offended. If you want to know the source(s) to any of my statements I'm happy to provide it. Some might be my personal experience but I'll never tell you that I heard from person [x] that person [y] said something in the scientific arena. I've read the "article" about chemtrails and Bill Gates involvement with geo-engineering. It provides a very distorted take on the facts. Even while citing the information they've clearly distorted the information from the source which it self is only a blog post and not one supporting the idea of chemtrails at all. It is just this type of misinformation that makes me want to throw out the entire article. The fact that the "global research" web site is host to tons of conspiracy articles like the twin towers on 9/11 were not taken down by the air craft hitting them but the government having them rigged with explosive lends even more evidence that this sight isn't a good source despite how professional it looks. Some articles, like the one Ali linked to, are sourced well but following the sources there is extreme quote mining going on at best and out right distortion of the source material at worst.<br />
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Critical thinking is the clear rational and open minded investigation of topics that results in conclusions informed by evidence. The evidence does not support a world wide conspiracy to spray chemicals into our atmosphere using air crafts of all types involving what would probably need millions of people all around the world to pull off. Contrails science is pretty straight forward. Is our atmosphere polluted? Yes and we should stop that. The biggest causes are burning of fossil fuels and chemical by products. We should have better environmental regulation but while you're focused on contrails of aircraft, which should be addressed too, what are the corporations around you doing to the environment. Not to make you sick but just because they want more profits and don't care about messing up the environment if they can get away with it.<br />
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If anyone is really interested I could be convinced to write up a longer blog post on this with references.<br />
Or you could believe that I'm part of the conspiracy.Wayne Francishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13977767234366313023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054990738637117698.post-6963095040507247902014-05-24T13:58:00.000+09:302014-05-25T15:34:53.251+09:30Do you really want change in the government?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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With the US Congress's approval rating approaching single digits it would be easy to think that Americans are ready for change. Sadly many Americans just don't give a shit. 31% of Americans it seems and that is 31% that admit it. Forget about the 31% the say they support the GOP and 37% that say they support the Democrats but really don't give a shit. We just finished having primaries for house and senate members and even though 67% of people poles said they want their representative voted out 45% of people when faced with a change said they approved of what their representative was doing. So Congress's approval rating is 11%, 67% of people said they want their representative voted out but then when faced with a change 45% said they actually approve of their representatives. If you made it past 1st grade maths you should see those numbers don't add up. Note they aren't from different poles.<br />
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So what does this mean? It means people are afraid of change. Especially change that they control. Most people would rather sit back and do nothing then go forward and cause a change to the system even when they admit the system is fully broken. <br />
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These mid term elections often receive less then 40% turn out of eligible voters and numbers show that even though more people say they would support democrats (37%) over republicans (31%) the truth is that among likely voters the numbers are about 50/50. <br />
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The issue here is Americans are getting lazy with our involvement in government. We like to say that we support this or that political view. We'll share face book posts like crazy but when it comes to actually making an effort with our government it becomes just all to hard for most Americans. This is a major reason the ultra rich have been so successful in taking away the rights of common citizens. Today you are a second class citizen behind the rich. The facts show that it doesn't matter what you and I want with regard to political decisions but if you are part of the top .1%, not even 1%, then the politicians almost always vote in your favor. Corporations are now first class citizens that are above the law. They are allowed to avoid paying taxes by shipping profits to countries like the Bahamas. They are actually paid by our government in the form of subsidies, tax credits, interest and risk free loans and many other forms of corporate welfare to the tune of hundreds of billions and even trillions of dollars a year even while making record profits. <br />
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Mean while many of those same corporations continually chip away at your rights as a citizen. You don't need to be paid a living wage. You don't need health care. Your vote shouldn't count as much as people richer then you. You should not be allowed to sue them if they've done anything wrong to you. They should not be held responsible for the actions taken by their executives. They should be able to force their will on you and your property without any recourse by you. They should be able to dictate what content and news you are allowed to view/ hear.<br />
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If you've made it this far congratulations for making it through another one of my posts on the growing inequality in our world. Of the few that made it this far most of you will move on to sharing some useless post on face book and watching videos of kittens on YouTube and put this post out of your mind. I hope I've actually caused at least 1 of you to actually think about the situation so that maybe just maybe down the line this might be just one of the things that eventually led you to actually care about the country you live in. To not just say you love your country but to actually do something to fix your country. I wish I could bet that you would but I'd loose that bet far more often then I'd win. Sorry but my faith in you is not that great and I wish for you to prove me wrong.<br />
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If you want a place to start then go and see how you can help reclaim our government that is supposed to be of the people by the people and for the people. Not just for corporations and the rich that control them. If it is just all to hard just donate $10 to help those that will make the real effort.<br />
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Wayne Francishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13977767234366313023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054990738637117698.post-43960870741172912002014-05-24T00:14:00.002+09:302014-05-24T00:16:39.090+09:30Get off your ass and really support our troops!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There seems to be a new controversy brewing with regard to the U.S. Department of Vetrans Affairs. Unless you've been sleeping under a rock in the last few decades you would know about the crazy wait times veterans are having to go through to receive the medical care they rate and deserve. It would be easy to point to Obama and say it is all his fault and he does hold some responsibility for the situation but here is this blog post I'll list some things you need to think about as you hopefully then go on to contact your federal representatives and tell them you do not accept our federal government sending our young men and women into multiple wars then when they come back decide that you don't want to fund a medical system that will fix what the wars have broken.<br />
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I already see members of the GOP complaining that the Obama administration is not taking care of our veterans but they seem to selectively forget that it is they who have repeated blocked attempts to provide more adequate funding for the VA. Mitch McConnell filibustered a 21 billion dollar bill for the VA that had passed the procedural vote 99 to 0. Then then turned around and complained about the very bill they said they wanted. They actively fought against helping our veterans then quickly turned around and ram through a bill that exempts the coal mining industry from environmental regulations. They named it "Preventing Government Waste and Protecting Coal Mining Jobs in America". <br />
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Let me translate the title for you<br />
"Preventing Government Waste" - Don't let the government regulate and test the environmental impact of coal mines to include water safety from chemicals used by the mines entering the water table. <br />
"Protecting Coal Mining Jobs in America" - The coal industry that is already making huge profits and allowed to pollute the environment on top of receiving billions in federal subsidies, tax credits and other corporate welfare benefits needs to cut production costs even more so that their share holders make more money.<br />
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So the GOP will filibustered a bill helping our veterans but will ram through a bill that allows an already profitable industry to fuck up our environment even more.<br />
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You might ask why the VA needs more money. Don't we give the VA billions already? Yes but the VA has been on a bad track since the 60s. The fact that we've doubled the amount of veterans needing care from the 2 wars the Bush administration started didn't help. Let me be clear here. The GOP is a war mongering party that took every opportunity to engage in military action and funding a huge military industrial complex, a.k.a. corporations that profit greatly from said wars, then consistently says that the actual people that fight the wars need to tighten their belts because it cost to much to send them to war. We'll spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year paying companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Raytheon and many otheres but can't even scrap together 3% of our military budget to handle the wounds we inflict on our soldiers by sending them to wars.<br />
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The GOP doesn't have a problem passing tax cuts of hundreds of billions of dollars a year for the rich. Lets look at the Koch Brothers. Each of them earn about $700,000 an hour. That isn't 40 hours a week. That is for every hour of every day of the year. They save about over $100,000/hr directly from the Bush tax cuts. Even if they paid the top rate which they don't. Each of them saves literally billions of dollars a year because of tax cuts. They invest hundreds of millions into the GOP essentially buying politicians to ensure that the tax brakes for the rich keep coming, push for a removal of the minimum wage because paying someone $7.25/hr is creating a culture of dependency. If you agree with him until I point out he wants to pay people even less. What the fuck do you think will happen to a family that is already on minimum wage if they now only get 1/2 or 1/4th of their current income? Who do you think will pick up the slack. Note they, and the politicians they've bough, fought against bills to help returning vets with getting jobs and starting businesses. Tax cuts for the rich at the cost of fixing our broken vets seems to be one of the GOP's motives here.<br />
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You might say why do we need the VA? Many people have an image of dirty hospitals can poor care when they think of VA centres but this is far from the truth. When vets do eventually get the care from the VA they tend to be happier then those that are cared for by the civilian system. The complaints about in patient care has dropped by over 20% in recent years. <br />
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While the GOP have been fighting against supporting the VA deal with over 883,000 claims in their system, more then double of 2009, they do things like try to force the Air Force to buy 42 new C-27Js when the Air Force says they don't want them, that they are already moving the some of the already purchased aircraft to the USAF storage facility in Arizona, you know the one..it is in tons of movies. Or how about the Army being force to buy dozens of new M1A1 tanks it doesn't even want. They politicians will say it is to save jobs but the cost is stupid. Take the C-27Js cost $53,000,000 each to buy. The 42 aircraft will save 800 jobs at the Mansfield National Guard Base. Who the fuck thinks that spending billions to save 800 jobs is a good idea? I'll make a useless point and say that the air craft are produced by an Italian company but it doesn't matter. Even if it was an "American" corporation the truth is that they are multi-national corporations that funnel most of their profits through places like the Bahamas to avoid paying taxes. Here is what you do. Don't spend that 2 billion dollars on aircraft that we don't need. Don't give the money to a multinational corporation that pays almost nothing in taxes and funnel that into the VA's budget and you would have increased their capacity to take care of our vets by over 10%. <br />
Lets just focus here BILLIONS on equipment we don't need just in these 2 cases but fuck our troops is the message that congress is send us. This is because these corporations kick back part of their HUGE contracts into the campaign financing of politicians. It is literally kick backs here just legal. The politicians will call up these multi-national corporations and beg for often just tens of thousands of dollars in donations then when in office push through bills that earn these same corporations hundreds of millions to billions of dollars.<br />
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There is a bright note here with some conservatives. Bill O'Reilly just did an interview with Carl Rove, the man that orgistrated and responsible for a war that cost over 4,000 American soldiers and well over 100,000 Iraq civilians their lives, and pointed out that during the Bush administration there was a 3 billion dollar shortfall with the VA's budget. Bill O'Reilly then points out to Carl Rove that the VA gave the incoming Obama administration, in 2008, a report that said "that the problems and causes associated with scheduling, waiting times and wait lists are systemic throughout the VHA". O'Reilly says "the problems existed on the day Bush left office". Carl Rove just said "no no no" denying the facts. This isn't a problem that happened under Obama's watch. Sure it continued and got worse as we brought more and more troops back from those wars Carl Rove got Bush to start. Obama couldn't just not bring back the troops and avoid the problem. They've been trying to increase the VA's budget and bring its administration system up to date but the GOP keep blocking the funding.<br />
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It is all because multi-national corporations have huge lobby efforts with hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars to buy our politicians and our vets only have you and I supporting them. How about do more then share a post saying you support our vets. How about you get off your ass and call your federal politicians and tell them you want them to do right by our broken soldiers. If soldiers are willing to put their lives on the line to protect your freedoms, even if it is because of lies by people like Carl Rove, then you can spend a bit of your time actually involving yourself with the governing of our country and actually support those that protect us. Then after you tell your politicians that tell them you are supporting a constitutional convention to remove big money from politics and that the Wolf Pac is coming for them. <br />
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Go and see how you can help reclaim our government that is supposed to be of the people by the people and for the people not corporations.<br />
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Wayne Francishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13977767234366313023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054990738637117698.post-40253710213611451102014-05-09T22:17:00.001+09:302014-05-09T22:22:48.681+09:30Mitch McConnell, GOP Hypocrite Grand Wizard and Senate Minority Leader.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Mitch McConnell, Republican leader in the Senate is complaining that Alison Grimes who is running against him in Kentucky has received some funding from out of state, notably from some Hollywood people like Leonardo DiCaprio, Cameron Diaz, Ben Affleck, J.J. Abrams, Steven Spielberg, Danny DeVito, Jack Black, Jennifer Garner, Mike Myers, James Cameron, Jon Hamm and Nicolas Cage to name just a few. She raise $250,000 from these people. Now you can ask why they care if they aren't from Kentucky she is taking their money. But then you'd have to realize that Mitch McConnell got about $16,000,000.00 from out of state. That is 80% of the money he has raised. So apparently to the leading GOP Senator raising $250,000 from individual citizens is worse then him raising $16,000,000.00 from bank executives that he does everything he can to keep them from getting in trouble when they break the law. <br />
Who are you more worried about having an adverse influence on politicians. Cameron Diaz or someone like Winfried Bischoff, CEO of Citigroup in 2008, who thought it was a good idea to use federal bail out money to give over $3,500,000,000.00 in bonuses to executives. Bonuses ... to executives that played a major role in the banking collapse.<br />
This is just one reason I say Fuck the GOP. This is like Ted Bundy criticizing me for bumping into someone on the street. As Jon Stuart says these GOP members just live on Bullshit mountain and not in the real world.<br />
This old white man needs to be booted out of office. I would love to see some new faces take their place.<br />
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How about this ... let us get fucking big money out of politics all together. <a href="http://www.wolf-pac.com/" target="_blank">http://www.wolf-pac.com/</a> is an organisation not funding politicians but funding the fight to reclaim real citizens rights. Almost all Americans agree that the federal government is being destroyed and control by corporate and big money donors. We need 33 states to call for an amendments convention of the states. We have 1 state down 32 to go. Because corporations are not people. Unfortunately they are treated better then people. They don't get in trouble when they break the law like we do. If I steal a few hundred dollars I'll be arrested and serve some time in jail. If a national bank defrauds millions of Americans for hundreds of millions of dollars no one goes to jail and at worst they are hit with a fine of just a small portion of the money that they've stolen.<br />
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Go and see how you can help<br />
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.Wayne Francishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13977767234366313023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054990738637117698.post-61411269596727858382014-04-11T03:36:00.001+09:302014-04-11T03:36:31.782+09:30What kind of Governor sentences 6 poor people to die every day?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I've been going over some of the literature and legislation of various states with respect to the ACA better known as Obamacare over the last few weeks. With the deadline/milestone just past I was curious to see what various states have been doing with Obamacare. For those that don't know as part of the ACA states have been offered an expanded Medicaid system to cover low income citizens. This care is funded by the federal government and unlike Medicare part D which Bush implemented but was completely unfunded the Medicaid expansion is fully funded. <br />
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What both surprised me and at the same time was totally unsurprising to me is that 21 states have refused the Medicaid expansion. This expansion was to cover very low income workers that previously would not have fallen under Medicaid. This include single adults under the age of 65 earning less then 133% of the poverty amount.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DxuMFf0PYe0/U0bDe9EPidI/AAAAAAAACW4/OUxadeeD2bQ/s1600/Charlene-Dill-family.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DxuMFf0PYe0/U0bDe9EPidI/AAAAAAAACW4/OUxadeeD2bQ/s1600/Charlene-Dill-family.jpg" height="164" width="320" /></a></div>
What that would mean is a woman struggling with 3 part time jobs could be covered by Medicaid and receive the health care and medicine she needed to stay alive. Let me call this woman, I don't know, Charlene Dill. Now what is sad is Charlene isn't some hypothetical woman. She was a real woman that was working as hard as she could to support her 3 children who couldn't afford health care and feed and shelter her children. She would have been eligible for Medicaid under the expanded program. Instead she died on the floor in a strangers home while trying to sell them a vacuum cleaner. I shit you not, one of her jobs was as a door to door salesperson. But because she couldn't afford her hear medication because she had to make the decision to take care of her kids over taking care of her health.<br />
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<br />You might be asking yourself why she was not covered. The reason is Governor Rick Scott of Florida refused the expansion because he's a hard core Republican and doesn't want the ACA to succeed. His opposition to the ACA puts 750,000 low income Florida residents, like Charlene, in a healthcare dead zone. Of these 750,000 uninsured people we can expect that 1 person will needlessly die every 4 hours because they can't afford the healthcare they desperately need. Bu Rick Scott doesn't care. Those are poor people and he has to stand up for his principals as a GOP member and fight against this evil Affordable Care Act, that was actually the idea of a GOP think tank, simply because it is a Democratic President enacting it.<br />
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The sad thing is there are plenty of other republican Governors that have vetoed or outright rejected the offer to expand Medicaid, 19 to be exact. 7 republican Governors have actually put their citizens health before their political obedience.<br />
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First off Gov Brian Sandoval Nevada who, over a year ago, became the first GOP governor to break ranks and cover almost 78,000 of his citizens who would have most likely continued to go uncovered.<br />
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Gov Jan Brewer Arizona cover who fought through a deadlock of the republican controlled legislature to get 350,000 of her citizens coverage they would otherwise not have had.<br />
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Gov Susana Martinez New Mexico who was also an early adopter in Jan 2013 assured that over 170,000 of her low income citizens would now be eligible under the expanded Medicaid that previously would not have been.<br />
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Gov Terry Branstad Iowa has made it possible for over 100,000 of his citizens to be covered under the Medicaid expansion program in his state but has instituted a premium for anyone with an income over 1/2 of the federal poverty level. Just to let you know that is just $5,835 a year for a single person. To the state legislators credit the provision will not cut those that do not pay the premium.<br /><br /><br />
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Gov Jack Dalrymple North Dakota. Next Wednesday, the 16th of April, will mark the 1 year anniversary of Gov Dalrymple signing the legislation that will see almost 30,000 new low income residents become eligible for the expansion.<br />
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Gov Rick Snyder Michigan along with a republican controlled legislature passed the expansion with a 75-32 vote to cover an additional 400,000 Michigan citizens that were previously ineligible.<br /><br />
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Gov John Kasich Ohio just signed the expansion to the program on Jan 1, 2014. A special bipartisan legislative panel of 7 state legislators approved the expansion with a 5-2 vote. Republican lawmakers are now upset with the panel's decision and are preparing to fight the expansion that will cover 275,000 Ohioans. The republicans instead want to offer income tax cuts instead. Note those income tax cuts will do nothing to help the low-income citizens and will mostly benefit the top 1% of income earners.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />So hats off to these 7 republican governors that put their citizens health ahead of the stupid politics that have plagued America for far to long. The GOP party leadership has openly said its number one priority is to oppose everything Obama tries to do. Think about that. Regardless of the value of any program that aids to the success of the nation the GOP leadership have vowed to oppose it simply because it is being put forth by a democrat President. The GOP is so bold they don't even care that they've said this while on national television. They bank on the fact that most of their supporters would rather see America fail then to allow the current President put American on the right track on any issue. Then they could turn around and blame President Obama for the failures that the GOP brought about.<br /><br />One thing to watch is how you will hear the GOP change the way they talk about the ACA from Obamacare to The Affordable Care Act. They've lost the battle. As more and more Americans actually start seeing the benefits of actually having healthcare coverage that works for them and that they can no longer be dropped because they've fallen ill and the program becomes even more popular the GOP will no longer use the term Obamacare because they won't want to associate it with Obama. Mark my words you will also see a number of republicans trying to rewrite history and claim they were always in support of it. Many of their supporters will blindly believe it because they to don't want to think that Obama could be responsible for setting America down a path where the Charlenes of America don't die because they have to choose between feeding their kids or buying the medication that will save their lives.<br /><br />Rest in peace Charlene Dill. Hopefully the people of your state will recognize that Rick Scott isn't a Governor of the people of Florida.Wayne Francishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13977767234366313023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054990738637117698.post-9504122544181008462014-04-02T12:01:00.000+10:302014-04-02T12:01:17.579+10:30Reversing your Pin will NOT bring the policeMany urban myths are harmless. Occasionally there are ones that do present a possible danger. For years this urban myth of putting your pin in backwards as way of notifying the police you are in danger. This is the current version going around Facebook.<br />
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This is a lie. Why might you ask am I upset with this? Well if you went to actually use this you could put yourself in a worse situation thinking the police are coming but they really aren't. If someone tries to rob you the advice from the police is not to resist. Your life isn't worth a few dollars.<br /><br />
Here is the official statement from the Australian Bankers Association.<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.bankers.asn.au/ArticleDocuments/192/ABA-111075-v1-Fact_Sheet___False_information_on_e-mail_about_PINs.PDF.aspx" target="_blank">http://www.bankers.asn.au/ArticleDocuments/192/ABA-111075-v1-Fact_Sheet___False_information_on_e-mail_about_PINs.PDF.aspx</a><br />
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Go read it yourself. <br />
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Here is a tip when you get these types of posts that equate to chain letters from decades ago. IE if you get an Facebook post that says it is important to share it with everyone you now then just Google the topic.<br /><br />
click the link below and see what comes up.<br />
<a href="http://lmgtfy.com/?q=atm+pin+number+reversal+-+good+to+know">http://lmgtfy.com/?q=atm+pin+number+reversal+-+good+to+know</a><br />
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One of the best sites with these things is Snopes.com because it not only tells you if something is a myth it often tells you if it is true or partly true along with as much history about the topic that they could find.<br />
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So read the ASA's statement. Think about the ATM safety tips they list and I've provided below. If you do find yourself were someone is threatening you with harm and wants your money assess the situation. If they have a weapon or look like they can hurt you then give them the money and then immediately contact the police. <br /><br />ATM Tips<br />
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<li>Minimise your time at the ATM by having your card ready when you approach the machine; </li>
<li>Take a look around as you approach the ATM and if there's anything suspicious, don't use the machine at that time (report any suspicions to the police); </li>
<li>Once you've completed your ATM transaction, put your money away immediately and leave. It's best to count your money later; </li>
<li>If you don't feel comfortable using a particular ATM, consider continuing on to another branch or using off-street ATMs in banking lobbies; </li>
<li>Do remember that EFTPOS can be used to withdraw cash at many other places, like supermarkets and service stations. </li>
<li>If you simply want to check your account balance or transfer funds between accounts, telephone or Internet banking can be used instead of an ATM. </li>
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Wayne Francishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13977767234366313023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054990738637117698.post-66897522867562135252014-03-12T00:08:00.000+10:302014-03-12T00:08:29.592+10:30If you are conservative please know your candidates!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Ted Cruz makes my skin crawl on so many levels. First is that his father actual raised him and still tells him that he an "anointed king" and is here to "bring the spoils of war to the priests". His father actively spreads lies about Obama not being American. Get this. A Cuban man who's son is born in Canada is OK to be president but a Black man born in Hawaii to an American woman and a man from Kenya is not in their eyes. Hypocrisy at its finest. <br /> He's against the LGBT community having equal rights. He actively promotes banning of homosexual marriages claiming that states are being forced to let gay people get married. The truth is gay people had the right to get married in many states and it is bigots like him that have not only pushed for laws to ban gay marriages but they go a step further and add it to the state constitutions.<br /> He claims he wasn't for shutting down the government and he must have some idiot supporters that don't pay attention to what he actually does or says. He's also made indications that he might try to do it again!<br /> He is one of the most condescending people I've ever seen. At CPAC he actually accused McCain and Dole of not standing up for their principals. Both men very decorated war heroes. Bob Dole receiving 2 purple hearts and a bronze star with valor and McCain a prisoner of war during Vietnam that was offered freedom but refused because he would not leave unless every other American was released with him. Tortured and put in solitary confinement for over 2 years and was lucky that he didn't die many times over. His hair literally turned white from the stress. <br />
Fucking smug little twerp has the audacity to put himself above McCain and Dole when it comes to principals. He's got no idea what standing up for a righteous cause means. All he will do is fuck over America thinking it makes him look tough. This man disgusts me and if he doesn't disgust you then you should have a long hard think about your true morals and ideals.Wayne Francishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13977767234366313023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054990738637117698.post-16037904257658007232014-03-10T12:52:00.001+10:302014-03-10T12:52:13.328+10:30End Corporate Welfare!<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-a9dryE2CNnA/Ux0dIoMT-GI/AAAAAAAACTk/JTkqhK6OZns/s1600/nocorporatewelfareSmall.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-a9dryE2CNnA/Ux0dIoMT-GI/AAAAAAAACTk/JTkqhK6OZns/s1600/nocorporatewelfareSmall.png" height="134" width="320" /></a>So every time you complain about some family getting a few hundred dollars in government assistance please don't be a hypocrite, complain a few hundred thousand times when some, very profitable, multi-national corporation gets hundreds of millions of dollars from that same government. Me personally I'd rather help hundreds of thousands of families in need rather then just one corporation that is already profitable and we do this for tons of corporations. But they control the mainstream media and have most Americans thinking it is low-income families that are the cause of all of America's problems.<br />
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Paul Ryan wants every American to have to pull themselves up by their own boot straps. The public schools he went to he wants destroyed and privatized. Look how that has worked for Universities where it is obvious that only the rich or ultra gifted may hope to attend such expensive schools. He wants to destroy social security and funnel those funds towards lowering taxes for the rich. A program he used to help pay for his tuition for Miami University. He will vote for unfunded programs like Medicare part D when a republican puts them forward but fully funded programs like the Affordable Healthcare Act he'll appose because a democratic president puts it forward, even though "Obamacare" is a republican idea. <br />
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Like most GOP politicians, and sadly to many democratic ones too, he has no problem rewarding the rich with extra prizes while making it harder and harder for lower and middle class Americans to actually make it in America. An attitude that if you inherit millions or, even better, billions, that you are some how better and more deserving then those born into poverty. That for this privileged birth you should be given orders of magnitude more assistance from the government despite the fact that you don't actually need it. The end goal for him is to help the rich get richer. That the worth of government spending is how much money can you make with the money that the government can give you. Sure everyone knows a rich person can take millions and makes some profit with it. But a poor person that will just spend a few dollars you give to them on something useless like food is stupid. They ignore all the losses that happen when the rich fail multiple times. <br />
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Trump has made a career out of filing for corporate bankruptcy. He has already done it 4 times now, effectively, and sadly legally, stealing from others. Yet so many in the GOP will support this type of man as ideal candidate for political office. To many rich people, and those that desire to be rich, are happy to help the rich get richer off the dime of American's those in the middle and lower economic range. <br />
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Is it fair that we, the people, bail out banks that are "to big to fail" with trillions of our dollars because they gambled with our money in markets they wanted to fail? Is it fair that we allow them to simply create off shore shell companies to avoid paying billions of dollars every year in taxes? Is it fair that we subsidize ventures they engage in where they again make massive profits from knowing that they won't pay taxes on those profits?<br /><br />So the next time you complain about having to subsidize little johnny's school lunch STFU and bitch about Citigroup, and countless other corporations, reaming you to the order of hundreds of billions of dollars a year!<br /><br />The only way we'll get this system changed is to get the big money out of politics. Stop the rich and multi-national corporations from legally bribing politicians into passing more and more laws that only benefit the rich while making every attempt to stop providing little Johnny with, probably, the one decent meal he might even get in a day. Go to <a href="http://www.wolf-pac.com/" target="_blank">WolfPac</a> and help regain control of your government in the manner the founding fathers provided for us.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.wolf-pac.com/">http://www.wolf-pac.com/</a>Wayne Francishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13977767234366313023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054990738637117698.post-34902347576658885462014-03-06T23:54:00.001+10:302014-03-06T23:54:33.572+10:30What do you think about the Keystone pipeline? Is the reality what you think it is?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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If you listen to the GOP you'll get a different story on a different day about why the USA needs the Keystone pipeline expansion.<br />
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<li>They'll say that the USA needs it for energy independence.</li>
<li>They'll say that the USA needs it to develop our resources.</li>
<li>They'll say that the USA needs it for the jobs it will create. </li>
<li>Now they say we need it to make Russia weaker.</li>
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What is the reality. The reality is their big donors in the Oil and Gas industry want it so they can make more money. Plain and simple.<br />
Let us look as some facts that are easily understood that show how much of a lie the GOP is pushing and how many Americans are swallowing it hook line and sinker.<br />
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So lets take point 1. The pipeline doesn't help with energy independence. The primary purpose of the pipeline is to get product from Canada to refineries in the gulf. That refined product is then shipped around the world in a globally controlled market. Some of it will stay in the USA but the cost at the pump is the same regardless if the product came from a well half way around the world, from a well a thousand miles away or from a oil well 15 minutes from the refinery and your local petrol station.<br />
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On to point 2. The fact is the pipeline will service mostly product from Canada. Many people don't realize how much fossil fuel Canada has. Mostly because up until recently it wasn't cost effective to extract and refine. The oil isn't what you might think. It isn't like the oil Jed Clampett found while shooting at some food. This stuff is dirty dirty dirty. The chemicals and processes they use to make it be able to flow through the pipelines makes it even worse.<br />
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Point 3.The jobs the pipeline will create are 2 kinds. Short term construction jobs that go away and don't actually contribute in the grand picture. The 2nd is the jobs created by the inevitable spills that will occur. Some how I'd rather not have to employ people to clean up these environmental disasters. First off our tax dollars goes into that clean up. It isn't like Exxon flips the bill for the entire clean up. Fuck the "clean up" is often a joke. Many of them have the offending companies shrugging their shoulders how it could even be done leaving a natural disaster not only for you but your children when they are all grown up.<br />
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Point 4. It won't make Russia weaker. The global market for oil is controlled in ways you wouldn't even dream of. Production is controlled to control prices. No one in the gas and oil industry want to really compete. They don't produce to capacity because that just drives down the price. They keep the demand high so they can maximize their log term profits. Russia will still drill, refine and sell the same amount of oil at the same price regardless of the situation with Keystone.<br /><br />Lets move on to safety. How many pipeline incidents do you think happen in the USA? You might be able to think of a handful you've seen on the news if you are lucky. But the reality is that there about 300 every year amounting to about 250 million dollars a year in property damage and around 20 deaths a year and almost 100 injuries directly attributed to the pipeline incidents.<br />
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Currently our refineries aren't laying dormant. They are receiving enough product from existing pipelines and other transportation methods.<br /><br />The fact is that this just reduces the cost for the oil and gas manufactures. You might think this would drive down prices but this isn't a capitalistic market. Free market principals do not apply here and any savings gained goes straight to the share holders, executives. The consumer sees none of that.<br />
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You can be for or against the pipeline. That is your choice. But the GOP and their lies about why it should go ahead? You should only swallow that if you like the taste of shit.<br /><br />
Sarah Palin will have you think environmentalist are complaining about nothing that "That earthworm can take one for the team" Note Sarah Palin doesn't care about the environment because she believes that the rapture is right around the corner. Fuck why should she want an Earth where her children can raise their children when she thinks they'll all be brought up to heaven ahead of us heathens, that want to protect and preserve our environment, who will sit under judgement of Jesus for 1,000 years before getting our souls completely destroyed. That is going to happen any day now according to people like her. How anyone could want a politician that actively promotes the idea that the world needs to come to an end is beyond me. Up to that point she thinks she might as well get as rich and powerful as she can.Wayne Francishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13977767234366313023noreply@blogger.com0