This Is Wayne’s Ego Posting

I was playing around with what kinds of things I could do with this blog, and I happened to notice some of the stats. I see that I have 4,168 views (as of this particular moment, though that may change soon, I hope), but only 132 comments.

132.

I appreciate that people stop by and read my work, but for the love of whatever Deity you worship, could you at least say something about what I do? Anything???. I take pride in the parodies I do, and I don’t ever consider posting them until I think they’re as good as I can make them. While I occasionaly post about other topics, in other ways, the song parodies are the primary reason I started this blog. So please, please, please, I am begging you, could you at least say SOMETHING? I admit it, I’m asking for the blogging equivalent of a sympathy fuck. You can even tell me we’ll never see each other again, I won’t mind. Just…say…something.

Thank you.

I will let Wayne take over now.

It’s the Torture, Stupid

Who cares what Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew and when she knew it? That isn’t the point. The point is what it is that she is accused of knowing – That the Bush Administration, in violation of both US Law and International Treaty, tortured people.

Tortured Thoughts

While watching Countdown tonight, something struck me.   Absorbing all of the new information regarding the torture memos;  reading the unambiguous objections of several JAGs against the torture techniques; hearing Richard Wolffe’s eloquent words – all against the background of the lies, lies, and more lies from the Bush Administration now being contradicted by the flood of information which has come out over the last few days – I finally was hit by the full and terrible realization that our country, my country, which I love for so many reasons, had died.

As I began to weep, varied images and thoughts jostled in my mind:

We Lock Up Governors, Why Not Presidents?

“…he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,”

The United States Constitution, Article II, Section 3

I’ll be perfectly honest with you. I don’t know what to say. I was watching Countdown with Keith Olbermann, and I remember growing numb as I listened to what I was hearing. I’m still kind of numb, even as Rachel Maddow interviews Rep Adam Schiff about what we learned today, and I don’t know how to admit it, but I can’t quite remember exactly what it was that they say our former president, George W. Bush, the man who stood before the American people and said, “We do not torture!”, authorized be done in my name, in your name, in all our names, to the people we captured after September 11. I remember this: It was torture. And we did it.

I’m not going to tell you that I stood by our president the whole time and said, “Well, if he says we aren’t torturing anybody, then I take him at his word.” I’m not stupid. I’m not insane (by certain definitions). I’m not naive. At the time he stood before us and said those words, those four words far more nefarious than the sixteen words, I knew what kind of person was telling me that. A pathological liar. A sadistic man-boy. A spoiled child who was given everything he had in life, including his millions of dollars, and never once understood the concept of responsibility. A man who didn’t know how to admit a mistake, even when it was obvious to people less intelligent than he. A man who could not make the mental connection between the the things that he did and the events that resulted from them. Or between cause and effect in general. His mind simply does not operate from a factual basis. He makes decisions based on things that he believes, not necessarily things that are actually, provably, demonstrably, inconclusively true. He knows that torture is not legal. But he was told that what we were doing was not considered torture. And he believed that. So it was, as far as he was concerned, if he had any concern at all about the subject, true. And so he told us, “We do not torture.” Except that it was. And it was done in our name. It was torture. And we did it.

No, I knew immediately that when George W. Bush uttered the words, “We do not torture,” that we were, possibly at that very minute for all we knew, torturing people.

Are We Born Inherently Good or Inherently Evil?

I am posting this thread because I would like to have a serious discussion with everyone, but especially conservatives, about the core principles of our liberal and conservative philosophies. I am Liberal (well, Liberal-Libertarian, technically, according to PoliticalCompass.org; it only takes about 15-20 minutes to see where you fall on the political scale) and I want to have a serious discussion about why we think the way we do. I am not a philosophy student, just someone trying to learn things.

I am asking everyone who participates in this discussion to please be polite. I have tried to have such discussions on other sites (mostly ThinkProgress), and, unfortunately, the negative tone of some of the comments toward these people left them, shall we say, not in the mood to continue the dialog. I would not like that to happen here, so I am asking all participants to be respectful to the commenters personally even if you are being disrespectful to the comment itself. Remember to keep the two separate. I would like this to be a discussion of ideas, not of personalities. And since this is my blog and not someone else’s, I will edit and/or delete comments that I feel are too insulting to the person. Rip the comment itself to shreds if you wish, but don’t insult the person making it. I will hold myself to this standard, too.

One last thing before I start things off. This is only a conversation, not a competition. So, please, no wagering.

At the core of the difference between Liberal and Conservative beliefs is the question of whether we, as humans, are born inherently good or inherently evil. Thomas Hobbes believed that without some strong authority keeping us in check, mankind would devolve into a constant state of warfare. In contrast to Hobbes, John Locke believed that man’s natural state was not one of warfare. [Full disclosure: This are general summaries I got from Thom Hartmann's great book "Cracking the Code". Some day soon, I hope to sit down and read those links I put in above in full. It's okay if you don't right now, but they are there for your own edification.]

So, do you believe that humans are inherently evil and must be dominated by a strong authority of some kind? Or do you believe that we are inherently good, and that our natural state would be to live in cooperation with one another? When I think of this, I am always reminded of a great scene from “The West Wing”. After pipe bombs killed some students at a college and the perpetrators were caught, President Bartlett said of them, “They weren’t born wanting to do this.”

And remember, kids. Be nice.

How Much is a Trillion, Pt 2

In How Much is a Trillion, we talked about how a trillion of anything could relate to us as individuals. For those seeking a great job, one paying $1 for every second, they were unlikely to even earn a trillion dollars, as it would take more than 31,000 years to do it. Remember, that’s $1/second. And it would take more than 31,000 years to spend/earn a trillion dollars. Moving on, for sports fans, we compared a trillion dollars to the amount of money it would take to give every major baseball player on the 40-man roster of every one of the thirty teams, a $250 million contract just like A-Rod’s. And we found that they were short of a trillion dollars, with plenty of room to spare. So much room, that they could have, effectively given every player a $750 million contract, and still not quite reached a trillion, though they would be close. Then we looked out into the depths of space to find that the furthest things we’ve seen out there were about 90 trillion miles away, but the light from them would take 15 billion years to reach us, just so we could see what they were up to 15 billion years ago. Well, here’s some more perspective. We found out from our $1/second job that it would take 31,709 years to reach one trillion seconds. (That’s 1,000,000,000,000.)

One trillion seconds ago, humans were just becoming humans. We used to call them Cro-Magnon, but scientists seem to favor the term “Early Modern Humans” (or EMH) now. Not sure why. Something to do with them not really being all that different from Neanderthals after all. A trillion seconds ago, the Earth was coming out of its last ice age.

A trillion minutes ago

Re-Thinking Capitalism

As one of the nation’s premier non-economists, I have some thoughts I’d like to share about how to fix the economy to the betterment of the many over the enrichment of the few. We’ve all heard the expression, “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” Most of us believe it to be true (because it is), but the naysayers are almost always from the elite class of people who have quite a lot of money. More than they need, if you want to be perfectly honest. And to me, therein lies the heart of the debate: Should Capitalism be about getting what you need, or getting what you want?

The people who study this stuff refer to it as Wealth Condensation, but I’m a non-economist, so I’m simply going to refer to it as a “flaw” in the system. In a nutshell, the way things are set up right now, wealth flows through the system into the hands of an elite few – the Super Rich. I’m talking about the people with, like, a hundred million dollars or more. They’re out there, and they have a lot of the money.

The Right-Wing Label

The Right-Wing in this country uses fear and hate to win public support for their ideas. This cannot be disputed, and was even studied by Associate Professor Jonathan Haidt (“What Makes People Vote Republican?). In a nutshell, when our fears and emotions are tapped, we tend to react first and rationalize what we did later, even if our “rationale” is in conflict with the facts. Rather than appeal to our intellect and ability to reason our way to a solution, the Right-Wing stokes fear and hate and then tells you who to fear and who to hate. The reason why you should fear and hate becomes completely irrelevant once they have tapped into your emotions, for any kind of “reasoning” will make sense if it makes you feel justified in doing what you did, even if you normally would have thought that what you were doing was wrong. Without this tactic, they could not win support for their arguments on the facts alone. (And when I talk about “facts”, I’m talking about things that are actually true, not what many people might believe to be the truth.)

Whether they want to admit it or not, this attribute in humans to have our sense of fear and hate be easily tapped comes from our evolutionary survival skills.

With Solemn Pride

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, armistice began. World War I, The “Great War”, the war between the Entente Powers (the Allies) and the Central Powers (led by Germany) had finally come to an end. The next year, President Woodrow Wilson declared November 11, 1919, to be Armistice Day. His proclamation began, “To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations…”.

A Quiz About the Savings and Loan Scandal

This was originally published in one of “Uncle John’s Bathroom Readers“, but I can’t find which one. It was written several years after the famous S&L Scandal of the ’80’s, and I have made only minor editorial changes. (Such as identifying Neil Bush as the current President Bush’s brother, as opposed to the former President Bush’s son.) The quiz was found on a Snopes.com comments page, so I can only hope that guy copied it right. Anyway, I hope you enjoy taking this True-False quiz. Answers and scoring guide are below the fold, along with some additional reminders about how one of the current presidential candidates fit into all this.

You, your children, and your grandchildren are going to be paying for the savings & loan scandal for years, but how much do you know about it? See if you can tell which of the following statements are true:

1. The S&L scandal is the second-largest theft in the history of the world.

2. Deregulation eased restrictions so much that S&L owners could lend money to themselves.

3. The Garn Institute of Finance, names after Senator Mike Garn–who co-authored the S&L deregulation bill–recieved $2.2 million from S&L industry executives.

4. For his part in running an S&L into the ground, Neil Bush, (President George W. Bush’s brother), served time in jail and was banned from future S&L involvement.

5. Rep. Fernand St. Germain, House banking chairman and co-author of the S&L deregulation bill, was voted out of office after some questionable financial dealings. were reported. The S&L industry immediately sent him back to Washington…as its lobbyist.

6. When asked whether his massive lobbying of government officials had influenced their conduct, London Savings president Charles Keating said, “Of course not. These are honorable men.”

7. The S&L rip-off began in 1980, when Congress raised federal insurance on S&L deposits from $40,000 to $100,000, even though the average depositor’s savings account was only $20,000.

8. Assets seized from failed S&Ls included a buffalo sperm bank, a racehorse with syphilis, and a kitty-litter mine.

9. Working with the government in a bailout deal, James Fail invested $1 million of his own money to purchase 15 failing S&Ls. In return, the government gave him $1.8 billion in federal subsidies.

10. Federal regulators sometimes stalled as long as seven years before closing hopelessly insolvent thrifts.

11. When S&L owners who stole millions went to jail, their jail sentences averaged about five times the average sentence for bank robbers.

12. The government S&L bailout will ultimately cost taxpayers as much as $500 billion.

13. If the White House had admitted the problem and bailed out failing thrifts in 1986, instead of waiting until after the 1988 election, the bailout might have cost only $20 billion.

14. With the money lost in the S&L rip-off, the federal government could provide prenatal care for every American child for the next 2,300 years.

15. With the money lost in the S&L rip-off, the federal government could have bought 5 million average houses.

16. The authors of Inside Job, a bestselling exposé of the S&L scandal, found evidence of criminal activity in 50% of the thrifts they investigated.

ANSWERS

McCain-Palin, Still Breaking The Law

Back on Aug 30th, reporter Jed Lewison reported that the McCain campaign’s choice of widely-unknown Alaskan Governor Sarah “Lady McPalin” was so hasty, that they had to use her official portrait in their campaign promotions, in “clear violation of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act”.. Well, it should come as no surprise that more than two weeks later, despite her many campaign appearances since the announcement, despite the loads of TV time she’s had, even if most of it was not in front of reporters asking questions, they are still thumbing their noses at the law. Yes, my friends, the McCain-Palin 2008 Campaign is still breaking the law.

So I Told the Senator, Thanks, But No Thanks, on That Vice Presidential Pick from Nowhere

Below is an actual message I sent to Senator John McCain, via his contact form. Aren’t the Internets fun?

Dear Senator McCain,

Thanks, but no thanks, on that Vice Presidential Pick from Nowhere. I keep asking myself if you could have picked a worse running mate if you had chosen from among the Republicans you beat to win the nomination. And while I would not have wanted any of them to become president any more than I want you to,

Scott of the Anti-Architect

Scott McClellan has finally published his tell-all book, “What Happened”. The reaction from the White House was, predictably, well-organized and “on message”. If you’ve been watching any of the coverage since McClellan’s first appearance on the Today Show, you know that the White House was both “puzzled” and “sad”. And, apparently, aliens have taken over Scott McClellan’s body because, almost to a person, they all said, “This is not the Scott I knew.” I’ve got news for them. It’s not the Scott we knew, either.

I do want to thank McClellan for, once and for for all, publicly revealing what we all knew, but which the White House refused to acknowledge that they knew, and that is

Why Hillary Should Not Continue to Run

As a New Yorker and constituent of Sen Clinton

What Is It Going To Take, John Hall?

I’ve told you every time I’ve met you, Congressman John Hall (D, NY-19), that I wanted you and the Democrats to put an end to the war in Iraq and to hold President Bush and Vice President Cheney accountable for their many, many, many, many (and very many more) violations both of law, and of their constitutional oaths to “faithfully execute the office” they were each about to enter. Neither of these men has done anything “faithfully” since they took office. I thought you understood that! You looked me in the eye and agreed with me that they were awful in their disregard for the law. And you dared to foist upon me your lame excuse, when we met again this past Saturday, about why our troops are still in Iraq and Bush and Cheney are still running around free. You actually tried to tell me that it was our fault, the voters, that you “couldn’t” do anything about Bush and Cheney, because we didn’t send enough of you Democrats to Congress. Well, John, that is bull-fucking-shit, and you know it!

And This Is Because…?

Well, I didn’t think I would find an example so quickly about the dangers I mentioned in my previous post about Eisenhower. [He warned us about the military-induistrial complex, but not for the right reasons.] We are now using the military as a “make jobs” program to boost our economy, but we are doing it under the guide of “protecting our national security interests.” It’s a lie. The US Navy has decided that it wants to re-establish the Fourth Fleet. (I didn’t know they just “dissolved” them; I thought they just parked the ships some place.) The new fleet will be led by a nuclear aircraft carrier to be used “in support of conter-terrorism efforts.” And from which part of the world do they expect the next threat of terrorism to come? Is it the Middle East, where the Fifth Fleet already patrols? No. Is it off the coast of Asia, where the Seventh Fleet patrols? No. The next threat must be coming from, wait for it,

Eisenhower Was Right But For The Wrong Reasons

In his farewell address of 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously warned of a build-up of the “military-industrial comlpex.” He was right in that we be concerned about it, but the reasons we should have heeded his warning were not the ones he stated in his address. Eisenhower was concerned that so much of our annual budget would be devoted to the military-industrial complex, it might gain so much power that it could threaten the peace around the world. He also warned that it might one day dominate the scientific and academic world, to the point where government contracts replaced intellectual curiosity. Stranger still, he also feared that scientists might try to take over the

When the Army Won’t Defend Religious Freedom

Though raised a Christian, Army Specialist Jeremy Hall, while stationed in Iraq, came to have different beliefs about the existence of God. He became an atheist. Little did he realize that while he, along with every other person who serves in our military forces, took an oath to support and defend the Constitution, some who took that oath did not take it to mean they had to support not having any religion at all. Specialist Hall had to be transferred out of Iraq due to threats he received because of his atheism. Even at his new assignment, Fort Riley, Kansas, the threats and intimidation continued. What I want to know is, how could so many people be ignorant about what religious freedom means?

When Specialist Jeremy Hall held a meeting last July for atheists and freethinkers at Camp Speicher in Iraq, he was excited, he said, to see an officer attending.

But minutes into the talk, the officer, Maj. Freddy J. Welborn, began to berate Specialist Hall and another soldier about atheism

Congress Critter On My Corner

Today, as part of his ongoing “Congress On Your Corner” program, my US Representative, John Hall (D, NY-19), was at our local post office to listen to constituent views and help people who need the help of their Congressman. I was willing to wait until he had helped all of the people who actually needed their congressman’s help, but one of the people helping him out insisted that I get in line to speak to him. So I did. And I have to say I was thoroughly dissatisfied with his responses.

I reminded him that when I met him two years ago, I told him that the two most important things to me were ending the war in Iraq, and holding the president and vice president accountable for their many violations of the constitution. And while I appreciate all that he has done, I was disappointed that he and his fellow Democrats have failed to do those two things. His reply, to both of these issues, was, essentially, that the Democrats didn’t have enough votes. That’s

The Police Should Not Use Deadly Force For Imaginary Reasons

The acquittal of three New York City police officers in the execution of Sean Bell (he was shot fifty times, with one officer firing thirty-one times) raises some very serious questions for me. In this case, as in many similar previous cases (around the country, not just in New York City), the justification allowed by the police rests entirely on what they imagined was happening, not what actually was happening. Though the details of this case don’t matter, it turns out that the police had reason to believe that someone at the party had a gun. Does that justify mortally firing at someone, repeatedly, even though they did not see any gun? The problem rests on equating two different kinds of beliefs: those you arrive at through deductive reasoning, and those you arrive at through inductive reasoning. One is usually based on actual facts, the other is usually based on one’s imagination. (See explanation here.)

Deductive reasoning starts with the more general and works toward the more specific to reach a conclusion. Inductive reasoning works the other way around.

The Supremes Blow It Again

The Supreme Court recently ruled that execution by lethal injection does not constitute “cruel and unusual punishment”. (Side note, would it not have been “unusual” the first time it was done and, to the uninitiated, a tad “cruel”, too?). Oddly enough, while they felt that Kentucky’s Strap-Right-Up-Get-Yer-Three-Shot-Monte Lethal Injection system of capital punishment was constitutional, “a majority could not agree on the proper standard with which to judge execution practices.” But whatever that standard was, they felt Kentucky had met it.

Before continuing, I’ll cut to the chase and state up front that I oppose the use of capital punishment for reasons on which I shall elaborate later. And, yes, I do agree that the Constitution’s specific mention of terms such as “capital offense” clearly and undeniably proves (yes, “proves”) that the Framers found no problem with the use of capital punishment per se. So, no, it is not, in and of itself, unconstitutional. I shall stipulate all of that up front, so there is no need to rehash any of it. Capital punishment is, in and of itself, constitutional. (There, I said it and I’m mad.)

What I feel is unconstitutional is the way in which the sentence has been administered, and upon whom, throughout our justice system. Let’s face facts,

How The Clintons Have Framed The Race

Here in Washington, D.C., the home office of political self-promotion…prevailing Conventional Wisdom has now moved beyond popular consensus over the suddenly “inevitable” presidential nomination of New York senator and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton to pretentious speculation about her choice of a vice presidential running mate (either Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland or former Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Jones).

We’ll get to when that was written a little later. My point is that there was a time when Sen Hillary Rodham Clinton was hands-down going to be the first woman nominated from a major political party to be President of the United States of America.

Young Voters Shun Third parties – More Politics As Usual

According to a story by the AP’s John Riley (via Raw Story), young voters today are shunning third parties in favor of the traditional two major political parties. One 21-year-old interviewed considered himself “among those who see third-party candidates as spoilers, a view that, coupled with a renewed excitement for major party candidates, is draining key support from third parties in 2008.” And since third-party condidates often get their support from young voters, this year the pickings from the two major parties seemed too good to pass up.

Koch said another reason support for third-party candidates is waning is the dynamics of this year’s presidential race. Strong support for the Democratic candidates, especially Obama, has energized young and first-time voters to turn out in primaries and caucuses.

In addition, there are no particularly strong third-party candidates who have distinguished themselves from the major party candidates this year, Koch said. The possible candidacies of Ralph Nader, former Republican congressman Bob Barr of Georgia and former Democratic congresswoman Cynthia McKinney of Georgia have the potential to grab some support from young voters, he said, but probably will not.

As a result of this, the next generation of young voters will help perpetuate the main problem with our two-party system of politics – the two major political parties, and the winner-take-all system of electoral politics that favors it. If you read your US Constitution carefully, you will find that nowhere does it mention political parties. Nor does it specify that there be two and only two “leaders” in each House. By all rights, Sen Bernie Sanders (Soc-VT) should be considered the Socialist Party Leader in the US Senate. It’s the Senate Rules that prevent him from claiming that title. (Note: He is the only Socialist Party member in Congress, but that would still make him the leader.) And the reason it is that way is because the two major parties want it that way.

Hello world!

Pardon our appearance.  I’m in the process of transferring stuff from my current blog, Pick Wayne’s Brain over on Blogspot.com. But do check back in from time to time. If I put anything new up on the other blog, I’ll post it here. And, eventually, the vast majority of Jane’s and my posts will get transferred here, for easier reference. Yes, even the song parodies.

Meanwhile, thanks for checking in, and if you’ve never heard of me before, please go visit my other site. Take care.