On Broccoli, Guns, Flour and "Illegal Downloads"

The Justice Dept has dismantled Megaupload, the popular file sharing site because some of its users were illegally uploading and downloading.  Meanwhile, gun manufacturers are not dismantled because some of their customers blow people away with their product.  And Seagrams and Philip Morris seem to be doing fine as hundreds of thousands of their customers -- and some innocent bystanders -- die from their products.

Kim Kardashian is pressing assault charges against the PETA activist who flour bombed her (will General Mills be sued?).   Meanwhile, if you're a white guy packing heat, local law enforcement won't press charges if you chase down and lethally "defend" yourself from a black kid packing Skittles.

Justice Scalia is terrified that if President Obama's healthcare reform stands, the federal government can compel Americans to buy broccoli.

Corporations are people.

Women on birth control are sluts.

Unlimited, anonymous money is free speech.

"We have met the enemy, and he is us." -- Pogo

Plutocracy, yes...life, liberty, pursuit of happiness? Not so much.....

GOP seems to have declared its independence from The Declaration of Independence.


"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."


Hard to do the above if their Creator's self-appointed representatives on Earth (e.g., Rick Santorum) believe that the only right a person has is to pack heat.


What unalienable right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness can be had without prioritizing food, shelter, clothing and healthcare over the enabling of unfettered Plutocratic Greed and gun toting vigilantes remains one of the secrets of the GOP Church.   


Tea Party invocation of the Constitution in service of our "culture of addicted and self-medicated narcissists" (Cornell West) is Orwellian, to say the least.

David Brooks goes strange, again....

Confusing column about "human nature" and the murder of 16 Afghanistan.

Brooks posits that "we are descended from creatures who killed to thrive and survive".  If so,  then the Republican idea of making survival tough for the lower 99%, stirring the pot with ignorance and anger while guaranteeing everyone the right to pack heat is simply NUTS.

Brooks starts out by making the case for nature vs. nurture.  Yet, he seems to end by agreeing with those who behaviorally struggle "to strengthen the good and resist the evil".   So,  even the "innate good and evil" folks are making the case that putting effort into elevating the quality of the behavioral environment is our major hope.  Following that reasoning, wouldn't it be wise for humankind to restrict our exposure to conditions that put us in "survival" mode (war, fear, anger, indignity, greed, etc) and invest in a societal environment that takes us beyond "survival" into conditions that bring out the best in us?

Apparently, the GOP doesn't think so.  Its platform stands for increasing income disparity, increasing desperation, unregulated greed, sword rattling, denigration of science and education,  despoiling the environment for the pursuit of bucks, permeating society with guns, praying with people who are intolerant of others and want to limit the rights of women.   Are these the behavioral "struggles" that will bring out our innate "good"?

Maureen Dowd: "Is Elvis a Mormon?"

In reference to Maureen Dowd's column (NYT, March 18)


The longer the sad spectacle of the Republican primary goes on, the more the GOP is branding itself as the Judao-Christian mirror image of Islamic religious fanatics who "hate us for our freedom".

They also hate us for our "elitist" scientific method and higher education.  Anything, that undermines The Old Time Religion... including facts.... must be rejected by everyone, not just members of their church.  They go beyond that in their stand for "Religious Freedom"  (not Sharia Law, mind you....just THEIR version of it).

Granted the long list of Republican sexual peccadilloes, their current public and sanctimonious obsession with controlling sex and women -- under the banner of "Religious Freedom" -- moves beyond hypocritically creepy....into horrifying.

Obama, Israel and Iran....

Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin excoriates Obama.  My take on her advocacy for continuing military threats (that cannot be bluffs) on Middle East countries:


Here's hoping Ms. Rubin's next column informs her call for another Big Middle East War by advocating higher taxes to fund it and her own kids to fight it.  


After all the blood and treasure America has sacrificed in the cost/benefit disasters that are Iraq and Afghanistan,  armchair tough talk and cost-free BS won't cut it.

Conservative Charles Krauthammer -- "Santorum blew it"

Krauthammer's column in the Washington Post : "Rather than sticking to his considerable working-class, Reagan-Democrat appeal, he kept wandering back to his austere social conservatism."


In his column, Krauthammer pounces on a Republican candidate (Santorum) who "blew it" by publicly standing for basic GOP articles of faith  -- social (and thought control) policies that might have been coin of the realm 75 years ago. No wait, when was the Scopes Monkey Trial? 
 
The core platform of the Republican Party, if enacted,  would socially engineer America into a clone of Somalia -- but with bigger cars and much bigger debt.  Consider what will be the essential identity of the two countries:


a weak central government, no regulation save religious orthodoxy, no gun control, lots of uninhibited piracy ("innovative entrepreneurship") , women as second class citizens who need to "put an aspirin between their legs" while finding themselves part of a polygamous or serial "monogamous" harem  (ala' Newt Gingrich, John Ensign, Mark Sanford, et al).


For interesting reading, follow this calendar.

Fracking: letter to fracking supporter Joe Nocera (NY Times)

Dear Joe,

I wish the actual fracking (and insurance) industry was as confident as you about the safety of the technology.

Thanks to the ex-CEO of Halliburton, Dick Cheney, the fracking industry got an exemption from The Clean Water Act.  If frackers are genuinely positive that fracking does not harm water, why did they prioritize pushing for the exemption?

And, if the technology is not of significant risk to the environment, why are the private sector's professional risk assessors -- the insurance (and mortgage) industry -- backing away from taking financial responsibility for land with gas leases?

There is the battle of talking points -- and then there is the reality:  if fracking can be done safely and responsibly, why hasn't the industry put its money where YOUR mouth is?