Air Conditioning for your Freedom

Gizmodo has a short article about the military’s use of air conditioning with tents.

“the Department of Defense spends $20 billion air conditioning tents and temporary structures for the military. That’s more than NASA’s entire $19 billion annual budget“

The most interesting bits from this article however are actually the reader comments.  While some bemoan such blatant idiocy (air conditioning un-insulated structures) there are a surprising number of comments which rail against anyone questioning this use of money as unpatriotic and immoral.

stratocaster28 wrote, in response to one of these questioning comments: 

“In another time, you would have been branded a traitor for what you just wrote, and probably executed.
. . .
You’re a traitorous hypocrite accusing the very people who put their lives on the line so that you can have the right to the same air conditioning i’m sure YOU DO USE, with the peace and the economy to enjoy it in.
. . .

Don’t even try to justify what you wrote, you simply cannot.”

 grok666 wrote:

“you should kiss the ass of the next military member you see in thanks for helping to protect the country that makes your life so easy to bitch about the leadership without being hunted down and killed for your viewpoint.”

Lovely.  Don’t question authority you ungrateful little bastards, just bend over and take it if you don’t want to be called a traitor.  I’ll show you an inefficiency! 

 

It’s 2011 and we still have to deal with these morons?  really?

Quote of the Day – Leo Tolstoy

Patriotism … for rulers is nothing else than a tool for achieving their power-hungry and money-hungry goals, and for the ruled it means renouncing their human dignity, reason, conscience, and slavish submission to those in power. … Patriotism is slavery.

- Leo Tolstoy

Obama Speaks on Healthcare

Left —— Medium —— Right

The political spectrum according to Obama.

Jolly jeepers it would be nice if Obama kept one of his campaign promises.  Just one.  He did get a dog, but that one doesn’t count.  Evidently insurance will now be mandatory under Obama’s healthcare reform.  He says he favors a public option, but stops short of saying it is a requirement.  One reason I liked Obama more than Clinton in the primaries is that he didn’t favor making insurance mandatory.  One of the reasons I liked him better than McCain, among many, was his strong support of a public option.

Oh well, I guess I should have voted for Clinton and McCain’s love child.  I guess I did.

But what is key here is that the Obama camp left themselves with no room for compromise.  Those of us actually on the left wanted a single payer system – we have compromised.  The public option seemed like a good middle ground between us and the right.  But by starting with the public option, Obama has given the right the ability to try to reach a compromise from the public option.

Oh well, I guess healthcare REFORM will have to wait for the next president.  Obama has got some good ideas but ultimatly is leaving healthcare in the hands of insurance companies. . . and we’ve all seen how that works out.

Dysfunction’s Role in Religion

From Newsweek (believe it or not):

In brief, the number of American non-believers has doubled since 1990, a 2008 Pew survey found, and increased even more in some other advanced democracies. What’s curious is not so much the overall decline of belief (which has caused the Vatican to lament the de-Christianization of Europe) as the pattern. In a paper last month in the online journal Evolutionary Psychology, Gregory Paul finds that countries with the lowest rates of social dysfunction—based on 25 measures, including rates of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, unemployment, and poverty—have become the most secular. Those with the most dysfunction, such as Portugal and the U.S., are the most religious, as measured by self-professed belief, church attendance, habits of prayer, and the like.

What is also disturbing about this is that the US is considered a country with more dysfunction.

That’s How They Get You!

The Ethiopian Review has a great article listing the top ten reasons why we should hate cell phone companies.  I’ve always thought that I was getting screwed, and evidently I was right:

For example, Verizon plays: “At the tone, please record your message. When you have finished recording, you may hang up, or press 1 for more options. To leave a callback number, press 5.”

Everyone already knows how to leave a voicemail message. Apple required AT&T to drop the requirement, for example, and somehow iPhone users are still communicating with each other.

Pogue estimates that Verizon, for example, takes $620 million a year away from customers for all the collective “minutes” required to listen to these messages. That’s just one carrier, and just one example of how carriers make money by optimizing what they call Average Revenue Per User (ARPU).

I’d love to hear a rebuttal to this article from the cell phone companies.

The Necessity of Cable News Quacks

When one thinks of people like Glenn Beck, Keith Olberman, Bill O’Reily, and Rush Limbaugh, one often finds oneself wanting to stab ice picks in one’s ears. These people are commentators, not newsmen, but this distinction is not understood by a lot of people.

But let’s imagine a world in which these vitriolic opinionated ass-hats didn’t exist.  It would be a world of reporting only the facts.  “People gathered outside the capitol today and protested the legality of President Obama’s birth certificate.”  “Some republicans are upset about the death panels that would be created under the congress’ health care reform bill.”

The point is that there are some truly crazy people out there and perhaps it takes some crazy people to cover them.  I’ve seen the so called serious news cover these events and with only a few exceptions they are far more interested in not offending anyone that they don’t say anything at all.  They’re afraid that if they point out that there is no way that Obama isn’t a citizen they’ll be accused of being left wing and biased.  The right has embraced so many lies that it is impossible to report the truth without appearing to be leftist.

When we have actual US Congressmen (I’m looking at you, Michele Bachmann) who think that the census leads to internment camps, who receives huge amount of campaign donations from the insurance companies and proceeds to act as their puppet, who has consistently worked to incite violence against those who oppose her, who thinks CO2 is natural and therefore harmless to the environment, and who thinks  that we need to go through and purge the congress of all of those with what she has determined to be “anti-american” philosophies – why shouldn’t we have crazy people on tv talking about them?

Until we start electing serious people there will be no possibility of serious news.  This is not to say that there are not good news sources out there, and it is not to say that all cable news commentators were created equal.  But it is to say that the serious news should spend less time complaining about the so-called “fake” newsmen on cable news and start complaining more about the “fake” people who are deciding our fate.

Alternative Medicine an Alternative to Effective

Salon has a great piece about the somewhat more than sketchy health articles on the Huffington Post.

 

I get a lot of news from the Huffington Post.  It is even my homepage on my computer.  But I’ve also learned never to venture into the “Living” section – as it is full of almost nothing but metaphysical homeopathic bullshit.

While I admit that the drug companies have too much pull over health-care in this country, I also know that they are not ones to turn down a profit.  The drug companies are not engaged in a conspiracy in which they convince the American people that only their drugs work for any given illness.  If drinking wormwood tea made cancer go away they wouldn’t try to cover it up, they would try to sell it.

I often hear people say we just need to give homeopathy a chance – that we are too biased to traditional western medicine.  What they don’t understand is that we did give alternative treatments a chance.  We gave all treatments a chance, and those that worked became medicine and those that didn’t became “alternative medicine”. 

The scientific method applies the same to western medicine as it applies to gravity or to the nature of matter.  Just because you want Aloe Vera Gel to cure your arthritis doesn’t mean it will.  Either accept everything that the scientific method gives us or accept none of it.  If you pick and choose than you undermine it’s very usefulness as a system.

The government is spending an increasing amount of money by investigating the legitimacy of so-called alternative medicine.  And so far all they’ve found is that they are simply an alternative to effective.  And yet they through more money down the well. 

Like the family that was recently held responsible for the death of their child (for not taking her to the hospital in lieu of prayer) people put themselves and others at risk when they turn away from western medicine.

Our culture’s growing appetite for natural and organic foods cannot be allowed to spread to far.  Soon there will be a movement against penicillin and the very plastic that makes the syringes that carry it.

Our intellects enable us to create things from other things – it is why we’re on the top of the food chain, it is what makes us human.  Homeopathy is a move away from progress, from evolution.  It is a move to simpler times, with simple remedies, simple sickness, and simple death.

Obama Accomplishes Nothing

My thoughts exactly almost exactly.

Pay-Day: Blackmail the Catholic Church

The New York Timeshas an interesting article about former Archbishop Weakland of Milwaukee.  Evidently 20 years ago he had had an affair with a 30 year old man who then blackmailed the Catholic church for $450,000 – what they paid to keep him quiet.

He has a memoir coming out next month which promises to be a good insight into the corruption of the Church.

The archbishop is also one of the first to actually come out of the closet.  He believes that the church’s teachings about women and homosexuals are misguided.  I hope he succeeds in his efforts to reform the church – for if there has to be a church, I’d rather it be a tolerant one.

Comcast – Get with the Program

Here’s another item to add to my already long list of things I hate about Comcast:

Why can’t they limit the list of channels in their channel guide to only the channels they’ll let me watch?  I don’t pay for HBO or any of it’s 87 spin off channels, so why do I have to scroll through them on the channel guide?  I have a feeling it is because they hope that I will see that The Princess Diaries is playing on HBO and that if I were only to order those channels I too could be enjoying it.  In reality it just makes me that much more bitter at Comcast every time I see the “for ordering info, please press “info”" message appear on my screen.

I understand, it is easier to just give everyone the same list of channels and let them remember which of the zillions of channels they are allowed to watch – but that hardly seems like good customer service.  In fact, I used Comcast’s online chat feature to ask if there was a way to limit the list of channels to only those I pay for, and after having to convince the customer service representative that I was not in fact having an issue with my remote (that’s always their first question, probably because their remote is the worst designed piece of shit on the planet) they eventually suggested that I try turning off the closed captioning . . .

It’s 2009 people.  It’s a digital service which means that somewhere there is a computer controlling what I see.  I know there is also a computer that knows exactly what I pay for.  Just link that shit up man!

And don’t get me started about the design/functionality of their DVR.  Sweet Jesus.

Quiverfull

Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD:
and the fruit of the womb is his reward.
As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man;
so are children of the youth.
Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them:
they shall not be ashamed,
but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.

Psalm 127:3-5 (KJV)

Morning Edition had a piecetoday about the Quiverfull movement in which Christian families keep having children until God tells them to stop (no word yet on that ever happening). 

Why would you have so many children that you can only afford to live in squaler?  God – obviously.

If you’re up for a laugh I recomend visiting Quiverfull.com:

We exalt Jesus Christ as Lord, and acknowledge His headship in all areas of our lives, including fertility. We exist to serve those believers who trust the Lord for family size, and to answer the questions of those seeking truth in this critical area of marriage.

It seems that these people take things from the bible that speak of children way too seriously.  Which makes me wonder what they do when they come across passages like this one:

  When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are.  If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again.  But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her.  And if the slave girl’s owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter.  If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife.  If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment.   (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT)

Actually, that might not be a bad money making scheme – and if ever prosecuted you could just say it was all religious observance.  Have a lot of children so that you can sell the daughters as sex slaves!  It’s bible-condoned!

Pope Hates Africans – Wants them to DIE!

From the AFP:

Benedict told reporters Tuesday aboard the plane taking him to Cameroon that AIDS was a tragedy “that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems.”

The solution lies in a “spiritual and human awakening” and “friendship for those who suffer,” he said on his first trip to Africa.

In response, Spain is pledging 1 million condoms for those countries worst hit by the AIDS epidemic.  So thank you, Spain . . . but can’t you spare a few more than that?

In any case, only have unprotected sex with the pope, because apparently his condoms are lubed with AIDS.

Two people that could have been avoided if their parents had only used a condom.

Hallelujah! Governor Sanford is Praying for us!

From Think Progress:

On C-SPAN’s Washington Journal this morning, Sanford [R. Gov of SC] received a call from a Charleston resident who said he lost his job because he has been taking care of mother and sister, both of whom have serious illnesses. The caller told Sanford he is “wrong” to decline the money. “A lot of people in South Carolina are hurting. And if this money can come and help us out we need it.” In response, Sanford could offer him only his prayers:

CALLER: I hope you all are not playing politics with this. People in South Carolina are hurting. You know how unemployment rates are high right now and going up higher. We are running out of money in the unemployment bank — we need money for that, the people that need help. And I’m one of them, I can’t get no help. […]

SANFORD: Well I’d say hello to Charleston because its home and I’d say hello to this fellow this morning and say that my prayers are going to be with him and his family because it sounds like he is in an awfully tough spot.

 

All I have to say is that I’m glad I live in a state where the Governor counts on more than prayers to solve problems.

 

Israel Bombs Gaza, Bush Blames Hamas

Sure, Hamas has fired some rockets into Israel – but it is hard to claim Hamas is the one not upholding the ceasefire as you’re bombing them.  So far over 300 dead and an Israeli minister claims they’re not going to stop until they’ve proved to Hamas it isn’t worth it to fight.  Eesh.

And surprise surprise, the US is taking Israel’s side.  It doesn’t really matter which side is on the right (neither is) but since we gave Israel their weapons, it looks better if we support them.

Presidential Candidate Debate Part the Third

Why is John McCain blinking so much?  He looks like he just downed 6 shots of espresso.  Maybe he’s trying to look perky.

More thoughts to come . . . I know, you’re excited.

Seriously, McCain is creeping me out.  The debate has been pretty predicatble so far . . . but dear god someone get the man some eyedrops.

Why doesn’t anyone talk about how one of the main problems with health insurance in this country is that it is too expensive – and that it doesn’t need to be . . . bring the costs down god damn it.

And if McCain doesn’t shut up about Joe I’m going to shoot someone.  It might be you, so you’d better hope he shuts up about joe.

I love me some cavelier activity.