Archive for 2010
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »NoLabels.org – A Reasonable Voice, Or A Party By The Sheeple, For The Sheeple?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on December 13, 2010 by admin in Politics
Monday, December 13th, 2010Is the new political organization “No Labels” a centrist astroturfing operation, a bunch of high-ideal do-nothings, or a genuine voice of reason? Time will tell.
There’s a tasty little morsel of irony in the fact that the politician that said “cynicism is a sorry kind of wisdom” is almost single-handedly responsible for driving mine to new heights. My cynicism, that is, not my wisdom. So it shouldn’t be surprising that my first response when I read about the new political organization No Labels the other day was “Great. Finally a party for people who don’t believe in anything“. Of course, I’ve already sort of got that angle covered with my own political ideas, which over the past few months have included the Donner Party and the Punk Party. But after watching a few of No Labels’ video streams and following up on the spin they’re getting in the news cycle today, I think I may give them a longer look. The general reaction in the media so far seems to be that starting a rational dialog about solutions to the nation’s problems is somehow a preposterous idea. This piece on Slate is essentially a lengthy snark on No Labels’ assumed naivete. Politico is grumbling that there aren’t enough Republicans involved. The Christian Science Monitor is trying to spin up the rumor that it’s just New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s vehicle to the White House in 2012. On salon they’re all up in arms about who’s funding things, as if a political 501(c)(4) ever runs around disclosing their backers. They’ve only raised about a million dollars, by the way, which is chump change in today’s politics. I think the problem we’re witnessing here is that the press is so accustomed to feasting on the Nazi/Socialist slander that drives today’s politics that it collectively can’t handle a little sanity. The only tangible criticism I personally have so far is that they seem to have brazenly ripped off their graphics from a New York artist. Which really only means someone in the media department is probably getting canned, and some not-terribly-original artist in New York will probably get a payoff. So is No Labels just an astroturfing operation? I guess we’ll find out with time, but for the moment I think turning the rhetoric dial below 11 for a while can’t hurt. So far the only red flag for me was Joe Lieberman’s presence, but hell, he’d probably show up at a KKK rally if he thought it would keep him in office. And will No Labels’ message of cooperation get anything done? Who cares. As P.J. O’Rourke said, “The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop”.
Christmas Gift Ideas For Boyfriends That Won’t Grow Up
[ Comments Off ]Posted on December 12, 2010 by admin in Holidays
Sunday, December 12th, 2010As if there are boyfriends that will.
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Whistleblowing For Fun & Profit: Bradley Manning Will Enjoy Neither
[ Comments Off ]Posted on December 11, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Saturday, December 11th, 2010As George Bernard Shaw pointed out, you should never wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it. To get the truth out these days, it seems like everyone involved has to be the kind of person you wouldn’t want dating your sister.
We’re probably all getting a little WikiWeary, with WikiLeaks and Julian Assange dominating the news cycle for the last few weeks. Which is probably a good thing, because as Assange gets all the credit for exposing the corruption of governments worldwide, and hacktivists around the world rise to defend him, the guy who REALLY exposed the corruption is rotting in jail, largely forgotten. So what about Private First Class Bradley Manning? Is he a hero? A traitor? In the increasingly less-nuanced views of our time, there seems to be little middle ground on this topic. My personal views are mixed. I have a pretty strong sense of honor, and this man was a soldier. In my eyes, his method of releasing classified information clearly violated the guidelines of his command structure. But on the other hand, his command structure has violated its own sense of honor, from the Abu Ghraib scandal to the Collateral Murder video that was the first of Manning’s leaks to be released. And frankly, the fact that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld intentionally blew the cover of Abu Ghraib whistleblower Joe Darby doesn’t bode well for the US Military’s Whistleblower Program. Historically of course, doing the right thing has to be its own reward. Although Daniel Ellsberg is regarded as a hero of sorts for the Pentagon Papers, you’ve probably entirely forgotten Jeffrey Wigand of the Brown & Williamson ‘impact boosting’ scandal that cost the tobacco industry billions in headaches. And although there’s a good chance you know Karen Silkwood’s name, she probably died for her efforts. And I personally had never even heard of Wendell Potter, the former insurance industry executive who exposed many of the industry’s deceptive practices, and has recently come out in defense of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, asserting that the private sector attacks on WikiLeaks set a scary precedent. Things look a little dismal all around for truth; sadly, the president that campaigned on transparency in government is being even harder on whistleblowers than the Bush administration. So no, there’s probably not much glory awaiting Bradley Manning, unless they’re stupid enough to martyr him with execution, as many are suggesting. And the rat that ratted out Manning? If you have the time, Glenn Greenwald has a lengthy piece on Salon trying to sort out the convoluted trail of Adrian Lamo, the convicted hacker turned government informant in whom Manning confided. Lamo has a pretty sordid history himself, and when you read about how he works, and his recent push for a heavier hand with WikiLeaks, you get a strong sense that he blew Manning’s cover more out of self-interested ass-covering than out of some sense of reluctantly doing what was right, as he typically tries to play it all off. So the next time you’re thinking about blowing open that international scandal at work, make sure you sell out properly and get your millions. Basic honesty seems to lead to jail. Or death. And as Adrian Lamo shows us, your reward will have less to do with human decency than your desire to profit.
5 Things I’d Do Before I’d Get A Flu Shot
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on December 10, 2010 by admin in Health & Wellness
Friday, December 10th, 2010People sometimes doubt my rather strong feelings about why I won’t get a flu shot. Here are some examples to help make my point.
No offense to all the well-intentioned police and medical professionals of the world, but I learned a simple rule at a fairly young age: If there’s a cop or a doctor around, something bad is going on. And in the case of doctors, I always like to point out that their financial well-being relies on a continuous supply of sick people. Which is why I tend to shun them; although I’m happy to see a professional if a limb is partially severed or a bone is protruding through my skin, I tend to be a little suspicious about all the precautionary measures they suggest. Especially after having browsed the trade mags that some doctors are foolish enough to leave lying about the waiting room. You know, the ones that have big ads with headings like “Increase Your Billing By 35%!” Which all ties in with why I refuse to get a flu shot each year. I mean, it’s also rather disturbing to think about injecting something into my bloodstream that contains stuff like chick embryo fluid, cells from monkeys, sheep blood cells, mouse serum, material from guinea-pig embryos, or cells from human aborted fetal tissue. And in the case of flu vaccines, high levels of aluminum, mercury, and formaldehyde (full list here). I’ll take my chances on the flu, thank you very much; with the worst case I ever had, my fever hovered around 104°F for several days, and I actually kind of enjoyed the hallucinations. Plus, being laid up like that also seems to be the only way I ever manage to get a few days off in a row, and catch up on some bad TV. So in any case, I’m not here to tell you not to get a flu shot, have at it. Maybe you’ll luck out and your offspring will have the agility and curiosity of monkeys, the craftiness of mice, the docile nature of sheep (always handy in the workplace) and be as cute as hamsters. By the same token, I’ve probably made it clear by now that there’s not much hope of getting me to get one. If not, below are several things I’d gladly do before getting a flu shot myself. Read the rest of this entry »
Yule Survive – Six Moody & Depressing Christmas Songs To Get You Through The Holidays
[ Comments Off ]Posted on December 9, 2010 by admin in Music
Thursday, December 9th, 2010Sometimes the only thing you get for Christmas is your freedom, and the only thing under the tree is you, passed out drunk. Yule get over it. In the meantime, here’s some melancholic music to help you wallow.
  The perfect tree to pass out drunk beneath. |
You have to dig pretty deep to dig up weirder Christmas music ideas than we did over the last couple of years with Generation Triple Xmas – Holiday Songs For Millennials, last holiday season’s Oye To The World, our tribute to the non-Christian menorah-ty , and our mashup roundup of 2008, Generation X-Mas, but this year we’re digging deeper. Or lower, as the case may be. Yeah, yeah. Christmas is a time of joy and celebration, blah blah blah. Face it. For much of the world, Christmas is only a few days after the longest night of the year, and unless you live in southern climes, there’s a good chance it’s cold and dreary during those few hours of daylight that do exist. No wonder we string lights all over the place, eat ourselves into oblivion, and try to cheer each other up with presents wrapped in shiny paper. So this year, why not just roll with it, and ball your eyes out with some awesomely depressing Christmas music. We’ve rounded up a few tunes below to help bring you down, but got so depressed in the process that we couldn’t go on. Feel free to share some suggestions. We’ll post them in a followup, that is, if we can read your comments through the tears that are freezing our eyes shut