The blog combining two passions most people could give a rat's ass about.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

The curious case of Barack Obama

There are many odd things about the gap between the way Obama governs and the way he speaks. Before he took office there was some speculation as to the type of people he would appoint to his cabinet. Obama was a community organizer and would probably bring other organizers with him to Washington. Would he give Cornell West a cabinet position?
But you'd think Hillary Clinton won the election by looking at the cabinet of the current administration. The Obama administration is to the Clinton administration as the Bush Sr. administration is to Bush Jr. DeJaVu you can believe in.
Perhaps, if the speculation was right that different voices would be in the White House, things would be different in DC. Perhaps Republicans would have acted differently if they thought the other side would be different.
The reason I think the more we elected change the more things stayed the same is because Obama choked. Instead taking up the challenge with fresh eyes, he deferred to the old guard.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

oppression of language

Have you noticed how crappy movies are bundled together on DVD? They don't always fit together either. What if someone sees a movie they like but don't want the movie it's bundled with?
There is this bullshit definition of racism that attempts to bundle it with oppression. The two may often go together but most of us define racism as
rac·ism (rszm)
n.
1. The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.
2. Discrimination or prejudice based on race.-http://www.thefreedictionary.com/racism

But I have been recently reminded that there is another definition that goes something like
rac·ism (rszm)
n.
1. Oppression AND prejudice based on race.- some liberal douche bag/racism

What they are doing with this definition is trying to bundle race and oppression. The two are often bedfellow, but trying to making them interchangeable is wrong. First because there are people who are oppressed but not because of race. Secondly because this is a lame attempt to exonerate racists that are not white.
In every encounter I have had with the latter definition it was someone attempting to justify the same kind of rationale they were criticizing. You see the convenient thing about that definition is it implies that those who are being oppressed are capable of being racist. By that definition it is impossible for a black person to be a racist.
Changing the definition of a word is a masturbatory way to win an argument. Beyond that it is a disservice to progress for several reasons(I like lists okay):

1. It creates a scalability flaw in the logic. Can a white family be racists if they are being oppressed in a black neighborhood?
2. It ignores the fact that there are more than one race. The definition makes it impossible for there to be hate crimes between people of color who are being equally oppressed by white society.
3. It ignores the fact that the most racist people in America are not in an economic status to oppress others and often live where there are no minorities to physically intimidate or otherwise oppress.
4. It implies that one is only racist while actively oppressing others.
5. It denies the possibility of reverse racism

The last is a sticking point with me. I do not being judged by my race. It's confusing to be because I knew my great grandfather who had grown up on a reservation and was always told growing up that we have gypsy blood in our family. Even though I know as a (hopefully) rational adult that I am basically the standard euro mutt, the mythology of my childhood is still part of my racial identity. And I am far from alone. Part of the compelling thing about the plight of native people in America is how many of us 'white folk' have a stake in both sides.
When kids used to play Cowboys and Indians, I'm sure there was no shortage of Indians, because everyone I have ever met with a sliver of American Indian practically thumps their chest when they tell you what tribe they come from.
The other reason it is important to note the American Indians (not the pc term but I am lead to believe it is the preferred term) when talking about race is that most people do not know that American Indians were often slave owners. The actor Don Cheadle is the descendant of American Indian slaves.
Racism is often a defense mechanism to justify the mistreatment of others but it isn't the only form racism takes on. And that defense mechanism can run both ways. There are probably people who see me and assume by the lightness of my skin that I am oppressing them and they resent me for it. And I'm sure that resentment plays a part when the minority of that minority take back what they can by whatever means they can.
It is wrong to assume that one group of people of people is inherently better or worse than any other group. Your religion(or lack there of) does not automatically grant you moral superiority. Your race doesn't mean you are born with more or less 'sin' on you.


PS
I am highly suspicious of the women who seem to favor the definition of racism that bundles oppression. Just because white women don't have as much power as men in our culture, they do not get to pretend that they are any less white than the rest of us. Nice try.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Where the jobs at?

Improved trade with China is not a cure for our unemployment numbers. Definitely won't hurt. But if we want American jobs that are not going to be given to robots or moved overseas and over borders we have to start thinking about things differently.

Infrastructure
We (at least partially) spent our way out of the Great Depression by investing in infrastructure. At 14 my grandfather and his brother went off to join the CCC where they were taught a trade and put to work renovating state parks and other public properties. Obama promised this but I'm not seeing the profane devotion to infrastructure I expected from him. Remember when the right was worried Obama was going to give all the poor cushy government jobs to cement Democrats in office? I didn't see that happen.

Unions
I have mixed feelings on Unions. At their best Unions protect workers from abusive employers from screwing over their employees. I would have grown up without knowing my grandfather if it wasn't for the Carpenters Union providing him such excellent healthcare (Throat cancer from chewing tobacco).
On the other hand unions are another bureaucracy that don't serve those who don't know how to work the system and they bully business's into forfeiting control of their own companies.
What we need is an investigation into Unions that result in a guide to running a union as symbiotic to business not a parasite. I have a couple of ideas but I need to do some research before I throw them out there.

Job Corps
Instead of throwing a bunch of money at a stupid border fence we should be putting that money into Job Corps. If we flood the labor market with young workers there will be less jobs for illegal immigrants. I never heard of Job Corp until I was almost 30. High Schools should be presenting it as an option to everyone struggling in the education system instead of pushing college on everyone.

Internal economy
I don't have a problem with global trade but we have to have a healthy internal economy in case we piss off the rest of the world. Actually it is too late for that and Hu (our president's guest from China)was blatantly expressing his interest in seeing the end of the US dollar as global currency (I blogged about it last year).
The problem with our economy is that a very big chunk is out of circulation (rich people not spending it) and those who do spend it can't afford to buy American goods or local produce.

New Tax Status
I'm not sure about this one because I'm not an accountant, but I wonder if we need a new tax status for generous employers and/or altruistic businesses.

Stacking the Deck
As I expressed in my 2010 congressional campaign we need to end corporate welfare. I'll never get why people are more concerned with redistributing the wealth than they are tax money being used to stack the deck against small business (aka where most jobs come from).

Bulldozers and yachts
I'm keeping an eye on bulldozers and yachts over cars. These large vehicles are probably not going to be made by robots anytime soon because the production numbers are not high enough. Bulldozers are being made in Illinois and Yachts in Wisconsin.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

You go girl! Seriously, just go...

So my friend wanted to know how I felt about Palin's speech or whatever it was, but I didn't have one because I didn't watch it. He couldn't believe that I didn't bother.
I am over Sarah Palin. She's predictable which makes her boring. She has nothing interesting to say. I'm glad I'm not alone...


The Colbert Report
Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Mika Brzezinski Experiences Palin Fatigue
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical Humor & Satire Blog</a>Video Archive

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Lies, and those lying lie detectors that lie about detecting them

Did you know that the inventor of the polygraph/lie detector was also the creator of Wonder Woman? Did you know the lie detector is also fiction?
For the longest time I would muse that it was odd that polygraph experts weren't driven out of business by better software. I was totally surprised that the reason for this is that lie detectors are bullshit (I should say Bullshit since that is the show that made me aware of this). It is a clever idea for technology that just doesn't work.
There are a several reasons the polygraph doesn't work including: The human body is too complicated, and may give false positives. The human mind is complicated and may be responding to a word in the question, a tangent thought, or something completely unrelated which would result in a false positive. The truth is too complicated and a binary answer isn't appropriate.
In my family we were raised to believe that a man is only as good as his word. I've taken this philosophy to an extreme and nearly driven myself crazy trying to pursue the truth. I know how hard the truth is, but I can not abide a blatant lie.
The lie detector belongs next to the gadgets in kids spy kits, that work well enough as toys but are not actually practical. The only solution I see is if people start suing these reality shows that do polygraph.
These shows reinforce to the American public the false legitimacy of polygraph. Lives have been ruined by these things and someone needs to make these shows fear legal recourse. I don't generally advocate going crazy with the litigious attacks, but people trust Maury and his ilk, and he is providing the only information on the subject that many people have.
And it matters. There are states that still use polygraph in there courts and many businesses ask if applicants are willing to submit to a polygraph. Spy agencies still use them around the world.

Monday, January 17, 2011

memenaut

While explaining for my family business I was telling my aunt (which I pronounce awwnt fyi) about my phobia to mint. When I was five I noticed something odd in my behavior; I would not eat mint even though I didn't know what it taste like. I actually forced myself to put a mint in my mouth and keep it there even though I had the urge to spit it out. Maybe I even spit it out and picked it up and put it back in my mouth, that parts a little fuzzy. What is clear is that I concluded that I liked the taste of mint and my revulsion was due to some sort of earlier trama. Years later I'm living with my dad (who I never told about the mint thing) and he tells me a story about me choking on a dinner mint.
My aunt didn't respond in anyway, wondering if she was even still in the room, I turned to look at her and her jaw was dropped. The reaction was so strong it took me a minute to connect what she said next to the story "You look for the things in yourself that others run away from."
I'm not afraid to 'go there'. I'm someone who loves to think and contemplate even when it takes me to some dark places. To me there is nothing better than realizing I didn't really understand something before or that I was wrong.
I like to put on other people's paradigms and walk around. Explore their world view a bit. As far as I know the only time I got caught up in it was when I was checking out conspiracy theorist (the mid crazy not the crazy crazy).
I sometimes explore these ideas through fiction. I create characters who think differently from myself or live in a world where there is a God or magic is real. But more often lately I have taken my storytelling skills to nonfiction where I've learned to bring people along without being so subtle it may be missed.
I hesitate to label myself a philosopher or even 'a noticer' as Mark Twain has been referred. I'm a thinker. And while it's impossible to never bullshit yourself there are a few tools that will help you if you want to explore as I do:

Know that everything is absurd. Nothing should be sacred to you to the degree that it can't be ridiculed. Laugh at it especially if you believe in it.

Know that no one is inherently better than . If you think one religion,gender or race makes people more moral, you are wrong. There are assholes of all creeds.

Know that there are multiple truths. Things are always more complicated and more simple than you would think. Everything bleeds into everything else. Everything that can be identified is part of something else and has parts within it you can't see. While something you believe may be true there are things that seem contrary that are also true

Monday, January 10, 2011

believe it or not it's no ones fault

Should Sarah Palin apologize for putting crazy fuel out there with that graphic of a crosshairs on Gifford's district? No. It might be nice if this tragedy inspires her to tone down the rhetoric,but we shouldn't be holding her accountable for something that was inevitable.
Palin and her ilk are only as much to blame for the attack in in Arizona on Rep. Gifford as rap music, video games, and pornography are to blame for Virginia Tech and Columbine- not at all. Some people are just crazy and sheltering them from rhetoric and shocking entertainment will not diminish that. I spent an hour reading as much of his writings as I could and see no evidence that he is coherent in any real way. This act was not a logical conclusion to the hateful language in our politics. This was an illogical conclusion of a madman. If it wasn't political, it would have been a pop star event or in the halls of his community college.
The violent outburst in Tucson may be a reflection of our rhetoric but it isn't a symptom.

Friday, January 7, 2011

Corporate Hissyfits

Don't buy into the corporate hissy fits. I'm talking about when a new law is passed and affected industries start raising prices or adding fees so they can 'stay competitive'. It sounds reasonable but you must consider the source. If Bank of America, Exxon, or Goldman Sachs is saying it, probably not true. If it's a community credit union or small business that isn't publicly traded, then there might be something to it.
I'm not anti-prosperity, I actually do a lot of business with Bank of America. But big companies know they have the ears of our politicians. They make sure they do. Even when someone like Obama gets a lot of donations from individuals they make sure they make bigger payouts to maintain their influence.
This raises the question of how big of a deal it is when they bitch about restrictions the same way my 5 y/o may cry a little harder when mommy is home. These companies punish their customers and hope the politicians cave before the competition figures out how to take advantage.
When a small business raises prices in response to a national law it is because they have to. They don't have the luxury of taking their customers for granted. They are not having your tax money funneled to them. They can't dump a small portion of their budget to flood the media with ads.
One of the recent lines of crap I've been hearing is about 'job killing bills'. The problem isn't a lack of jobs. There are lots of jobs overseas and/or for robots. The problem (well one of many but we'll focus for now on) is that our tax money is paying big companies to run smaller companies out of business. Tax money driving companies too small to employ robots and too local to export the work.
Smaller companies thrive on being altruistic (generally) while publicly traded companies are legally obligated to endlessly raise the value of their stock even at the expense of their customers. The stocks and subsidies give them superhuman levels of purchasing power,shelf space, and regulatory override.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

"The N word" isn't a word (and why nigger belongs in Huckleberry Finn)

For the longest time I was in a seemingly endless debate with one of my best friends about racism. My basic point was that it is wrong to act as if there has not been any progress made on racism when there has been. My friend would make arguments and I would make counter arguments.
He was smoking a lot of pot then and would forget the whole conversation, so we'd get into it over and over. My arguments would get stronger while he kept making the same points until he finally threw up his hands and loaned me the book he was basing most of his arguments from.
The book is titled "Racism without Racists" and it basically says that white people feel guilty for being racist so they cover it up. Which there might be some validity to, but the more I read of the book, the more full of shit I realized the author is.
As an example he implied that one woman in a survey was hiding her racism because she said that her uncle was black when in fact he wasn't her uncle he was her godfather. While to me, having a parents who CHOSE a black godfather, would imply that she was probably not a racist.
I told you that story so I could rant about something else. In the book "Racism without Racists" the author argues that in an age of color blind racism that hiding racial slurs is actually evidence of racism. Saying 'the N word' means that you are just as much a racist as someone who says 'nigger'.
Though the author is an asshole it did make me realize how stupid saying 'The N word' is. This euphemism actually takes the bite out of the word, but not in the way intended. When it is being reported that someone said 'the N word' it doesn't sound as bad as the man was ranting about 'them niggers'. I have a much more appropriate response to the man who was ranting about 'them niggers' than a guy who said the 'n word'.
In current events this is important because there is a new edition of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn that will replace the word nigger with slave to allow the book to be taught in schools.
This is HERESY! Twain is making social commentary with his book. Changing the word takes meaning out of that commentary. When Finn starts the book calling his unlikely accomplice a nigger it shows just how far Finn comes at the end of the book when he's calling him a friend.
If teachers are not competent enough to teach the material as is they should have the children read something else (like where the Red Fern Grows or My Side of The Mountain). If a teacher is worried about the parents get permission slips. It is important for the reader to hear the ugliness of the words if they are to understand the book.
Some will say it is better to edit the book and let kids read it then deny them the book. Bullshit. They are being denied the book if you nerf it. You might as well edit out the section on lynch mobs while you are at it. There are plenty of fine adventure books in classic literature that will appeal to children. Huckleberry Finn says something about our country and it makes us feel something about our country. If we aren't ready to expose our children to that don't try to sell them the diet version. Have them read Tom Sawyer an hope they read the sequel when they can handle it.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Monday, January 3, 2011

Deadlines

Yesterday Lindsay Graham was on Meet The Press. Though he later surprised me with his revelation that he is now some kind of enviromentalist, who seeks to get off of foreign oil, he didn't surprise me with his comments on deadlines.
Dusting off some Republican talking points as to why we couldn't announce our time table in Iraq, Graham went into why we shouldn't do the same thing for Afghanistan.
Lindsay Graham is a well groomed proper boy with a girl's name, so maybe he doesn't have the relationship with deadlines most of us do. Most of us need deadlines.
I try to put a blog up every day by 10AM. That is just a general guide that no one but me (as far as I know) cares about. The baby really doesn't care about it. So I often take more time than I really need on either the blog or projects I put ahead of the blog. But when I was in art school, and had deadlines I was always taking on these huge projects and turning them in on time (Or early).
Deadlines keep us honest. Not only does it mean we will finish in a (arguably) timely manor, it means that we will set realistic expectations. Politicians tend to overpromise when there is no deadline.
It is better to surprise pesimist by exceeding their expectations than to disappoint optimist by falling short. If we set the bar low and get out, the people of Afghanistan will be much more likely to look favorably upon us, than if we continue to stay there raising the bar.
I know there are probably generals who say we need more time, but half the kids in my class would say the same thing. People tend to ask for more than what they need. That's how it works.
The deadline for withdrawl in Afghanistan will have a great affect on morale. For our troops it'll raise morale because they get to go home. For insurgents it'll lower morale because they can't claim we're imperialist pigs who want the Arkansas of the middle east.
Or better yet the 'terrorist' will try to wait us out. They'll tell themselves they're just going to lay low for a while until we leave and then they'll really show us. But most of them won't set any kind of deadline for how soon after we leave that they'll do it, so they'll just never get around to it.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

New Years

I've come around on New Years resolutions. I didn't think much of them but my wife seems to have convinced me they are important. I don't remember what she said so I'm assuming she was naked when she won me over.
I always try to keep a little log of how much drawing I do every year with the goal of drawing at least two pictures/comic panels a day. But this year in addition to that I will attempt the following:

Finish Ron Paul's A Foreign Policy of Freedom; Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship
I've been borrowing this book from my grandpa since before Ron Paul was a household name. Because each section is so short I've been using it as a bathroom reader. The main problem is I am a slow reader but a fast pooper so I'm only about halfway through it. I'm sure at least one of the kids will recollect as an adult how I "always coming out of the bathroom ranting about how fucked up our political system is".

Finish drawing Crawlers
...Or at least what I have planned for Crawlers. Right now there are only supposed to be four or five chapters. Though I already have one intermission planned...

Publish MENTAL
In either 2008 or '09 I finished the first book of MENTAL. I have to go in and fix the links but more than that I need to get it in book form even if it is only Print-On-Demand. I would also like to get it on the Kindle.
If you noticed that I said 'the first book' and are wondering "Are there more books coming". I would have to say "Scott, did you call grandpa it's his birthday" and "maybe, eventually".

Publish NILvsDCbs
I'd like to put all my political comics and press releases from my 2010 into some form of print and donate copies to the local libraries if they'll take them.

Lose weight
I want to get back below 200. Before going to Chicago for Thanksgiving and my wife's bake-o-thon I was around 206 (though the Wii may say differently if I bother to check)

TBA
Around my birthday (in the spring) I'll say my final resolution because there is more than one way to start a new year