Sunday afternoon

I see that the Obama administration is dealing with what are being called "crises" by the news media. Of the three alleged crises--the IRS targeting right-wing groups, more Republican whining about the Libyan embassy thing, and worsening sexual assault cases in the military--only the latter strikes me as a serious problem. The other two are just Republicans trying to do the only thing they remember how to do--that is, pitch a partisan fit.

As for the IRS scrutinizing right-wing tea party groups applying for tax-free status, I think that's probably a good idea. People who do nothing but preach hatred for government, democracy, and taxation deserve extra scrutiny. 

The Benghazi issue is a tired rerun taken seriously only by Fox News and its followers. Obviously, it was an unfortunate screw-up and a tragedy for those killed, but there is little doubt that Fox has blown it out of proportion for political purposes. I've even heard some of Murdoch's ridiculous alarmists saying that the president should be impeached because of it. All that does is reveal their true purpose.

Again, the contemporary Republican Party is controlled by anti-democratic forces who remain focused on one thing and one thing only--discrediting the Obama administration. Governing is the last thing in their minds. They just can't stand it that Obama won a second term. What they don't understand--and apparently will never understand--is that the majority of Americans are voting against the self-serving values of the super rich and their Fox-controlled suck ups and apologists, the tea party. 

As for the absurd rise in military sexual assaults--including the discovery that some of those responsible for discouraging it are themselves sexual predators--is unforgivable. Clearly the military is incapable of overseeing itself on this issue, so maybe it's time to adjudicate military sexual assault cases in a different way. Whatever the case, as commander-in-chief, Obama needs to act quickly. 

How about this? If you're convicted of sexual assault in the military, you have a choice:

1. Immediate dismissal from the U.S. armed forces plus a long stint in federal prison (where you can enjoy all the sexual assault you can handle).

2. The surgical removal of your testicles. I think that would go a long way toward solving the problem.  

Soon there will be no more jobs

From saliva to 3-D image

The DNA revolution promises to be the most significant scientific feature of the 21st century, but like everything else, science can be used for good or ill. What say you about using DNA traces to recreate 3-D images of people? See the New York Times.

When technology is just plain stupid

If you watch this video and think the robot is cool, then you probably own every Apple toy there is, and I'd be willing to bet you do nothing of real value with those toys. If you did, they would be called tools, not toys. If, on the other hand, you watch this video and think, "Why don't they just get a horse or a donkey?" you can relax. You're still a rational human being.

A brief interview with Ray Kurzweil

In the future, we will look back at the recent roll out of Google Glass--those ridiculous digital glasses now worn by early-adopter geeks--as a significant moment in cyborg evolution. In this little "Marketplace" clip, futurist Ray Kurzweil, who now works for Google, tells us what's in store for us in the 2030s. Kurzweil is anything but a crackpot. While aging Midwesterners and Southerners are still waving around their bibles and guns to fend off the Antichrist, our young people will have become science fiction cyborgs.

Nick Barborak's email

Petty political squabbling in Lisbon is nothing new, and Republican Party Chair David Johnson's apparent attempt to discredit former county treasurer and current state Rep. Nick Barborak is no surprise. Now Auditor Nancy Milliken, another Republican, has joined the game. See today's Morning Journal article, Treasurer's missing computer found.

We're told that Mr. Johnson is looking for "among other things, emails between [current treasurer Linda] Bolon and Barborak and with the state auditor's office." Ostensibly, this all has to do with "bookkeeping problems" left over from Barborak's term as treasurer. One interesting wrinkle in this tale is that it was Bolon, a Democrat, who drew attention to the problem in the first place.

According to the MoJo, Johnson's public records request cannot be granted because of Barborak's claim that his office computer "crashed" sometime in 2012. Today's new development is that Auditor Milliken has located said computer. If the hard drive remains in the machine, any good IT person should be able to recover the data.

What raises red flags for me is that so far no one has asked the obvious question: If it's email that Johnson wants, why isn't anyone looking on the server? While copies of email messages do get stored on individual hard drives, they are always on the email provider's servers, and typically such messages are retained for a long time, especially on government servers.

This fact is so obvious that its omission in the reports is glaring. So either all of these folks are technologically naive (and that's a kind way of putting it), or it's not email that Johnson is after.

I'd like to think that at least Mr. Barborak understands these things. If there is something on that hard drive that he didn't want anyone to see, he would have removed the drive and taken a sledge hammer to it. So far, there is no indication that Barborak did anything to hide or destroy the data.

Like I said, pretty much any competent IT person should be able to recover the data as long as the drive is available. According to today's MoJo story, the IT guy who looked at the computer when it crashed performed only a cursory examination, not a complete forensic analysis, but again, if it's email they want, Barborak's computer isn't necessary.

It could very well be that access to the server cannot be granted under a simple public records request. In other words, such access could require a warrant, but to be honest, I'm not sure how all that works when it comes to public government documents. But the fact that I don't know is irrelevant. It is knowable, and someone should bring this up.

Terrorist? No problem. You can buy a gun in America.

Trees in the air, water in space

As if we needed another explosion

Just a few days after Boston, an industrial explosion has rocked Waco, Texas. At left is a still image from cellphone video taken at the moment a fertilizer plant exploded. A half second later, the guy taking the video was on the ground. At this point, no body knows how many people are dead.

The land of the gun

The Senate's failure to stand up to the gun manufacturer lobby means that the U.S. will remain the Wild West from sea to shining sea. Every day the news will be filled with gun violence and death. It doesn't matter whether the casualties are children, college students, innocent bystanders, or what. The NRA has spoken.

I don't care what they actually say, there is no way around it: The NRA wants everyone--regardless of criminal history, mental condition, or propensity for violence--to have access to guns. And our federal lawmakers are so afraid of the gun seller's lobby that they are unwilling to support what the majority of Americans want--namely, some kind of regulation on who can buy guns in this country.

But the NRA said "no" to the American people, and we must abide by what the NRA says.

A week of bomb scares

Bomb threats at the East Liverpool Wal-mart, a downtown law office, and a Salem Subway restaurant have attracted news media attention this past week.

It all started with everyone getting jacked up over an alleged pipe bomb found near a gas line in Negley, but that turned out to be just a piece of PVC pipe. Tuesday's Wal-Mart bomb threat turned out to be part of plan devised by some homeless guy to steal a TV. As far as I know, the other two threats remain under investigation and don't appear to be related.

I think we all understand the necessity of evacuation when bomb threats are made, but let's face it, people who really want to kill others with a bomb don't warn them first. Beyond simple mischief, the motivation behind the typical bomb threat is diversion. I'm sure there are other reasons why people make bomb threats, but there is little that can be done to stop them.

While four "bomb" incidents in five days is a bit strange for a relatively insignificant county like Columbiana, it doesn't seem like these incidents are related. When real explosions occur, we can get excited, but for now, I think we can relax.  

Bride of Christ or paranoid schizophrenic?

The flea circus comes to Palestine

One thing you can always count on is that human beings will believe anything, especially if it's invisible and it doesn't exist. Televangelists, popes, prophets, storytellers, and mediums count on it.

In fact, the invisible is history's most successful business. In most human cultures, you can't be considered a good person unless you believe in the authorized fantasies. Simple people of faith are the happy, cheerful ones. Throughout most of history, if you didn't publicly profess your faith in these superstitions, you ran the risk of being burned, boiled, or hanged. In many parts of the world, that's still true.

So in the immortal words of Fantasy Island's Ricardo Montelban, "Smiles everyone. Smiles!"

Even as the United States is one of the most progressive nations on the planet, it is also one of the most backward. So it should come as no surprise that necromancy is presented as front-page news in medieval Columbiana County, Ohio. See The Morning Journal: Cleveland ghost hunters forming local chapter.

Today's necromancers have given up the crystal ball and Quija board. Now they show up in dark, scary old buildings (particularly the basements and attics, where the invisible dead live) with "computers, digital cameras and digital recorders" so as to "capture things not seen by the naked eye"--orbs, mists, etc.

Oh, and don't forget your "spirit box," which, according to The Morning Journal, is "a device that allows spirits to speak through the white noise created through radio channels as they are being scanned."

I shit you not. This is in the newspaper.

Also, 21st century necromancers no longer practice the "dark arts" or "the occult." No, what they do is "research." And of course they have web sites with scientific-sounding names like clevelandparanomalresearch. The web site tells us that the "researchers" now active in East Palestine are "official members" of the GAC. And what is the GAC? Well, it's the Ghost Adventure Crew!

Scoobie snack, anyone?

And as for those pesky skeptics, The Morning Journal warns us against them. Yes, there are always going to be a few lost souls who are familiar with real science and real research, but their ranks are few, so pay them no mind. They are the Unbelievers, and we know what to do with them.

Frankenstein

Democracy

Selected quotations

"The ideal disease balances the costs and benefits, keeping you alive (but possibly altering your behavior) long enough for it to reproduce in the next victim." 
                                  --Craig A. James

"Among the vast store of teachers' stylistic reserves are techniques that resist measurement, such as humor, surprise, suspense, encouragement and calculated criticism. To teach is to perfrom, and central to the performance is empathy. The best teachers are mind readers."
                                  --David Morris, from today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded on fables and mythology." 
                                  --attributed to Thomas Jefferson (see comments page)

"It's no secret, nowadays, that there are no heroes
and there is no blame. You may still find love.
It's all right. Give me the gun."
                                  --Jennifer Michael Hecht

"Express coordinate ideas in similar form." 
                                  --William Strunk/E.B. White

The absurdity of super wealth

Apparently there are neighborhoods in London where property is so expensive that homeowners don't even live there. See A Slice of London So Exclusive Even the Owners are Visitors. This is such a poignant symbol of human absurdity that it requires no further comment.

Fat cats

Everyone knows that unchecked capitalism inevitably creates an economic class system in which a disproportionate percentage of the wealth ends up in the hands of the few. We also know that in a democratic state, a reasonably content middle class is the only route to ongoing political stability.

Without the assistance of the masses, oligarchs cannot rule, at least not for long. So it is in the oligarchs' best interest to convince the masses that they have their best interest in mind. If you are working or middle class and you believe that the wealthy genuinely care about you, chances are you are a Republican.

In modern democratic capitalism the rich become models of consumption for the middle class, which, in turn, become models for the working class. The middles must believe that with hard work and luck, they can become rich too, and the working class must believe that they can become (or that they actually are) the middle class. As well, everyone must believe that they can strike it rich at any moment by winning the lottery, the death of a rich relative, divine intervention, etc. I call this the "Beverly Hillbillies" myth. It's an important part of the equation.

In the meantime, everyone apes the class above them using the excess money of the rich via credit (debt). The goal is to consume conspicuously so that others will think you have more money than you do. In this expanding consumption system, the poor are seen as useless, lazy losers whose goal is to benefit from everyone else's hard work, but just like the rich, the poor exploit the system for personal gain in ways that are not available to the working and middle classes.

No matter where you are in the class system, capitalist consumption has no satiation point. We are programmed and conditioned to always want more. The best example is the obsession of the wealthy to acquire still more wealth, but this insatiable hunger can be seen in every class. How else can we explain that one of the biggest problems for the American poor is obesity?

Our entire economic system is built upon this premise of ever-expanding consumption, a model that logically cannot be sustained. But pay no mind to that. It's simply unAmerican to be satisfied with what you have, even when you have everything you need. Ours is the ultimate materialist culture.

It is within this context that I suggest you read "Trickle-down consumption: How rising inequality can leave everyone worse off."

Now go a little more macro with Reagan administration Republican David Stockman's "State-wrecked: The Corruption of Capitalism in America."

The armchair rationalist

I read today that the new pope of the Catholic Church prayed for world peace. How many of you out there actually believe that world peace will come as a result of this prayer? On second thought, forget how many of you believe it (or not). The evidence is clear: World peace already has not occurred as a result of the prayer, and it won't come tomorrow, the next day, or any time after that.

So what has the pope's prayer accomplished beyond letting us know that the pope says he would like his god to deliver world peace? Clearly no supernatural, all-powerful entity paid any attention to the prayer, so how might we interpret this blatant public failure of prayer? Let me go back to my original question. Did anyone on Earth, including the pope, expect that this request for world peace would be granted?

O ye of little faith.

www.jesusvideo.com

As of March 23, 2013, all Americans have Antichrist implants

Did you get your implant? It's mandatory. If you didn't get it, the FBI will be knocking on your door. You can't run; you can't hide. The SEVEN YEARS OF TRIALS AND TRIBULATION are coming soon! The END TIMES are upon us! While you await THE RAPTURE, you must resist HEALTH CARE at all costs! Do not--I repeat, DO NOT--accept health care of any kind! If you get sick, pray. Otherwise, receive the MARK OF THE BEAST. The MARK OF THE DARK LORD, OBAMA!!!! Now TURN UP THE REVERB AND HEAR THE VOICE OF THE ONE TRUE GOD (Ronald Reagan).

What do you get when you mix religious psychopaths with truckers?

Cold Dead Hand

Cold Dead Hand with Jim Carrey from Jim Carrey      

The great American disability scam

NPR has produced an excellent in-depth analysis of the Social Security disability benefit and how it works to undermine welfare reform. Whether you are interested in the topic of "entitlements" as protester or receiver, I urge you to take the time to read and/or listen to UNFIT FOR WORK: The startling rise of disability in America. To download the entire Planet Money podcast, go to the This American Life web site and click download show 490: Trends with Benefits.

Evil is alive and well in the U.S.A.

The NYDN front page pretty much says it all. If you still need convincing, read the accompanying story.

As far as I'm concerned, Wayne LaPierre and the NRA are no better than the Ku Klux Klan or al-Qaeda. Americans should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this sponsor of evil to have so much power in our country. As for politicians who are afraid to oppose the gun lobby, it's time to send those cowards home.

And how about that kid who opened fire in the school cafeteria in Chardon. If anybody deserves to be drawn, quartered, and fed to snakes, it's Thomas Lane. Read about him in the New York Times.