This blog is officially dead. Goodbye.

Ben

If legislators vote in a law that they haven't even read, do I have to follow that law? It seems to me that we all voted for representatives with the implication that they would read and study proposed bills before voting on them. If they admit to not reading them before voting, then their vote shouldn't count, as they haven't actually completed their duties.

I wonder how many of the people that called me heartless for saying that a pedophile like Michael Jackson doesn't deserve our tears spent even an instant feeling sorrow for the death of a real hero like this guy.

At what tax rate are you no longer a free person, but instead a slave of the state? I say somewhere around 50%. Not that I'm suggesting that governments then have every right to tax up to 50%, I'm just saying that at 50%, you are working for someone else, not yourself, and you are not doing it willingly, and that makes you a slave. Obama wants to make our rich people slaves. I thought we fought a big war to end slavery in this country, but rich people are an unprotected group (unless they are black or hispanic), and thus we can enslave them while making the poor happy with the blatant theft (some might even say evil) of taking 50% or more of someone's income.

I found this on Powerline, just a nifty little point that says so much:

"It is still fundamentally true that you can't become a German or an Englishman or a Spaniard, but you can become an American..... ....Every time people born somewhere else choose to become Americans, Abraham Lincoln's vision, grounded in the Declaration of Independence, is realized once more."

You also can't become a Saudi or a Palestinian or a Russian or an Egyptian. But you can become an American, and you can become an Israeli. And you can become an Australian. For now you can become a Canadian, but more and more you are really a blank-Canadian, a Muslim-Canadian, French-Canadian, etc., with seemingly separate rules of law for each, so Canada doesn't count anymore.

So Michael Jackson is dead and half the world seems to be crying. Somehow I can't seem to forget that he slept with little boys, so I will save my tears. I'm not saying I'm happy he died, I'm just not going to mourn the passing of such a person.

A lot of people are getting behind Obama's plan to have the government offer health insurance. I just don't get it. So let's say there's now a public option.... First off, pretty much anyone with chronic illnesses is going to switch to the public option, because it will most likely be mandated to be cheaper. Then the government will soon find they don't have enough healthy people paying premiums to offset all the sick people on the plan, so they will come up with some sort of incentive that a private company is unable to offer, or they will find some other way to shift the law to get more healthy people on the plan. At the same time, to save on overhead headaches, companies will stop offering health plans to employees, and instead give us all 2.5% more pay or something like that. Since individual private insurance doesn't get the same tax breaks that employer-provided insurance and presumably government-offered insurance does, it won't make any fiscal sense for an individual not to be on the government plan at that point. And soon enough there will be no private option left. It comes down to this- no government plan can compete on a level playing field with private ones over the long term. So they won't have a level playing field, politicians and bureaucrats will tilt it in their favor.

Even if the government could conceivable do it better and cheaper, I still wouldn't want it. Why? Because I am not a ward of the state, I am a free man, and I do not want government officials, elected or otherwise, making decisions about my health care. Anyone who tells you the private sector shouldn't be scared, that as long as they are competitive they'll be ok, and if they aren't then why shouldn't we do the government plan is being naive. They are ignoring all the millions of incentives that this will create for politicians to make the government plan the only plan over time, and then we lose our freedom.

The current system is broken, but not because of the private sector. If you want to blame someone, blame wage controls put in place by the government in WWII. That's why employers started offering health plans, and why they got a tax break for doing so while individuals cannot get that same tax break. Give individuals the same tax break that businesses do for health insurance, and then you'll see the free market work it's magic.

To those of you who object that the free market only works if people are willing to spend the time to find the best service and the best doctors and the best prices so that competition will help the best and hurt the worst.... I say that your health care should be far too important to you to allow such choices to fall in to the hands of politicians or even your employer. I say you should be lobbying for health insurance tax breaks so that you have the freedom to find the best, and I say if you aren't willing to put in time and research to find the best solution for yourself, then you deserve the crappy care you will get from Obama's plan. It's pathetic that people are willing to spend hours upon hours shopping for shoes to match a new dress, but get upset at the idea of having to shop around for the best health care.

The problem with letting someone else decide on what health care is best is that they might be considering different factors than you, like price instead of quality, or speed instead of accuracy.

It's too early in the game to predict a result, but what is going on in Iran has implications for beyond its physical borders. There are two really fascinating things going on here.

One, the country is revolting. 70% of the population there is under 30 and mostly secular, so the days of the Mullahs being in charge are nearing an end, even if the current events don't do it. Demographics are an unbeatable force. A few 60 year old men cannot control a country of millions of 20-somethings who don't like old men. And the result of the current unrest could lead to real democracy over there, and the beginning of wider change throughout the Middle East.

Two is twitter. New technology and historical events are colliding like never before, and it's fascinating to see the quick evolution going on. For instance, once the Iranian government started shutting down Twitter relays or whatever the proper nomenclenture is, folks started posting backup IPs through Twitter, but it being public and all, the Iranian government saw those IPs posted and blocked them, too. So now the people are finding other means of communicating relays so they can use Twitter and keep the flow of information going.

Keep yourself posted on what's going on, this is important, possibly world-changing stuff. If you really want to know what's going on, forget big media, CNN and ABC don't have a clue. Go somewhere like www.boingboing.net and look for their stories on Iran and follow links from there and explore the plethora of fascinating communication coming out of an opressed state.

What exactly defines "zionist?" One thing a lot of anti-semetic jerks like to say is that they aren't "anti-Jew," they are "anti-Zionist." But what does that mean? Traditionally Zionism meant that you believed in a goal of a Jewish state to protect Jews from the sort of things that tend to happen to them in non-Jewish societies, like pogroms, Holocausts, the Dreyfuss Affair, the Leo Frank lynching, and general anti-Semetic hate.

So when someone says they aren't against Jews, just Zionists, what they really mean is that they are against any Jew who is proud of being Jewish and willing to defend both themself and their families and fellow religionists against aggressors. Anti-Zionism means the only Jews you like are the ones that dislike 90% of the Jews in the world. And therefor you are against 90% of the Jews in the world. It's hard to seperate anti-Semitism from anti-Zionism, because when it's all said and done, Zionism is the belief that Jews should be allowed to live in peace, and anti-Zionism is the belief that they should only live where they are told to, and they should not defend themselves against aggressors.

An email I just wrote to my sister:

So I assume you've read about the Holocaust Museum shooter? I'm just
curious if people in your circles are talking about it at all, and
what they are saying. I keep hearing how this is yet another case of
right-wing extremist violence, but I have a hard time equating a man
who hates Bush, neocons, Israel (which has much higher support on the
right than the left in this country), and thinks socialism is the
future of humanity can be called right-wing? I don't think he could
really be called left-wing either, though his rantings make him seem
more left if you were forced to define him.

But I think that right there is the root of the problem. Everything
in society today has to be looked at in terms of its group
identification. Why can't the guy just be crazy, why do we have to
say he did it because of some group we decide he was associated with?
Than all of the sudden you are looking at members of particular groups
not as like you, but as something different. Then they become
dehumanized, and that historically leads to mass murder, and has
nothing to do with which side of the aisle you consider yourself
politically. Both left and right wing regimes have used group
identification to commit mass murder, and it could easily happen in
this country if we start looking at every individual murder as the
result of a political ideology.

It's already happening. Not to the extent of killing people, but look
at the abuse Sarah Palin takes. Letterman made a rape joke about her
14 year old, and gives a lame half-apology, but if you read the
left-wing gathering places online, there's an awful lot of people that
think it was ok because Palin is Republican. That's just an example,
people on the right dehumanize people on the left plenty, too. And
it's so very dangerous, possibly one of the most dangerous tendencies
of our society, and the exact opposite of the world Martin Luther King
Jr. dreamed about.

Some deluded nutcase shot and killed a guard at the Holocause Museum, and it's being shouted from the rooftops that it was a case of right-wing extremist violence.

That's ridiculous. This is a man who hates Jews and Israel. Which side of the aisle shows the most support for Israel? The right. He hates Bush and Neocons. Sounds like a left-winger to me. He believes socialism is the future of humanity. How can you be more left than that?

Thing is, he's not left, either. He's just a crazy nutcase. Why do we have to define every event by some sort of group identification? Why can't people understand that crazy is crazy, and not necessarily politically aligned with anyone?

One of the problems we had during the Bush era was that the Bush haters brought up so many ridiculous, outlandish criticisms that folks like me that lean right had to spend time and effort refuting, while we would have been better off being able to spend our time legitimate criticisms of Bush, of which there are plenty to be had. I fear the same thing happening with Obama. His supporters are going to spend so much time refuting ridiculous claims of Obama-haters that legitimate criticisms from within his own party won't have as much time to get aired. And that's why the Tea Party and other folks looking for a better government than what Obama is giving us need to emphasize the importance of staying on message and only using legitimate criticisms of Obama. If the Tea Party's message start leaning towards crap like "Obama wasn't really born in Hawaii" or "Obama is Stalin," they will lose me and a whole lot of other people.

I'm a big, big fan of this Tea Party thing. In this age where economic concerns easily trump social issues like abortion and gay marriage, it's a perfect time to forge a new coalition of libertarians, fiscal conservatives, and Democrats who understand that our wealth comes from business, not big government, and that strangling business and overtaxing consumers will not lead to prosperous future.

Anyway, I had a little friendly debate with some other folks who are fans of the movement over how it should present itself. We never really came to agreement, but the crux of the issue was a poster from the Atlanta Tea Party that had Obama in a Russian military uniform. I said comparing Obama to Stalin is off-point and will hurt recruitment of more folks to the cause, whereas they thought it was a perfectly reasonable sign for the context and that people at the Tea Party understood it was a comparison involving socialism, not Stalin's mass murdering of millions of people. I see their point, but I call it preaching to the choir. Yes, the people there may have gotten, but the people watching on TV that might come to the next protest may not have gotten the message, and just like Bush/Hitler comparisons made legitimate opponents of Bush look like fringe wackos, I think Obama/Stalin comparisons will hurt the cause. I find it hard to separate Stalin the communist from Stalin the mass murdered, so when I see a comparison to him, I think of both of those things.

An analogy would be a Bush-hater having a sign comparing Bush to Hitler and saying the comparison is not that Bush is a mass murderer like Hitler, but that they both spend tax dollars to make the trains run on time. Somehow I don't think that's gonna fly.