We really do have some idiots in Washington, DC.

I'm not a huge advocate of hate crime laws personally, but it has nothing to do with the objections the Republicans normally like to float. I just don't agree with the idea that just because a crime is committed against a minority that the perpetrator can be sentenced to a much stiffer punishment. It's an unfair legal bill in the first place. However, I do understand the idea behind it, but it's just another good idea that will be abused by the sleazy lawyers of the world.

Steve King while arguing against a bill that will put sexual orientation into the list for Federal Hate Crime Laws decided to take a different route in his stance. He argued that including legislation for the protection of homosexuals in the hate crime laws, it would be opening up the gate to more groups wanting protection based on their sexual practices. He listed off quite a few.

Honestly, why are people electing the dumbest of our population for public office? I mean, Bachmann from MN is extremely stupid, as I pointed out in the opening for my previous post. And now, King from IA can't make a distinction between sexual orientation and a fetish. Please, get a clue about who you are voting for, or just plain don't vote. (I know some people will hate that comment about not voting, but it is seriously better than voting for an idiot because you won't take the time to actually figure out who you are voting for).

Do Conservatives even think before they speak?

Torture seems to be the 2nd hottest topic around at the moment. But swine flu isn't really political or religious unless you're a complete nut like Michele Bachmann. And she's wrong, it wasn't under Carter, it was under Ford. (psst, he's a republican).

Anyway, back to to the topic of torture. A survey released by Pew Research Center on the correlation between church attendance and support for torture is somewhat interesting. 54% of church goers say that torture can be justified. While 42% of people who attend services seldom or never agree that torture can be justified. To me, this is proof that being Christian and attending church services does not instill any more morals or values than can be attained in a non-religious person or home. It doesn't really say "Christians are bad people," nor does it say "atheists are bad people." However, it can be considered to say that more Christians are willing to torture than atheists are.

Not surprising to me, Paliban Daily, a Christian "news" site has a different interpretation of the data.

In a newly-released poll, it is shown that 58% of Americans who avoid church services support the “rights” of terrorists over Americans. We can’t say we’re surprised.

Saying that you cannot torture a terrorist does not place his rights above any American's right, since they cannot be tortured either. I can't say I'm surprised that you are too stupid to understand this.

They were asked how often they attend services, and then asked, “Do you think the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information can often be justified, sometimes be justified, rarely be justified, or never be justified?” Torture was not defined, but may be understood from recent news reports to include pouring water onto their faces, making them stand still, and dressing them in itchy wool sweaters. Basically, making them uncomfortable.    

Recently, conservative nitwit Sean Hannity said he'd volunteer to be waterboarded. As if it's some sort of proof that it isn't torture and is, as this article puts it, just "pouring water on to their faces." However, I highly doubt that any of these people realize how scary simulated drowning by an enemy would be. Do you think Hannity would agree if we were going to ship him to Iraq and let some of the rebels there administer the waterboarding? Me neither. And on top  of this, after WW2 the US  prosecuted a Japanese soldier for waterboarding. So it was obviously illegal and torturous then. This all boils down to the conservatives doing their very best to dance around admitting they did something wrong, ever. Waterboarding is much worse than uncomfortable, and everyone knows it.

We see here that the absence of God in their lives has led to these sad creatures favoring terrorist monsters over their fellow man. How can anyone not find this incredibly disturbing? We were disgusted at the immorality of these so-called “people”.

We’re also pleased to announce that more than 6 out of 10 white evangelicals believe that the safety of Godly Christian Americans outweighs the comfort of enemy combatants.

Oh, I do find this incredibly disturbing. And, unfortunately for us all, these terrorists monsters are our fellow man. A radical, crazy, religious, hate-filled sect of our fellow man, much like the 60% of Evangelical Christians who believe that torture can be justified. I'm disgusted at not only the immorality of these people, but in their willful ignorance of their own religion and their willingness to label those who have a good moral grounding in the knowledge of torture being wrong as immoral.

Jesus, without whom there would be no Christians, preached love for all mankind, not just those who love you back. Jesus (if real and here today) would not preach against atheists, gays, or any other minority. He would extend his hand to us and try to convince us of his message, sure, but never hate, exile, or shun us. He walked with lepers in the Bible, I'm pretty sure he could stomach a black, an atheist and a couple of homosexuals. He would never condone this idea that it is alright to kill as long as you are protecting your country. A very popular and well known teaching of Christ is "turn the other cheek." This would mean that we should not retaliate against terrorists, and certainly not torture them for information on how to retaliate. So this "godly 60%" is a complete myth and the author of this article has no real idea what a Christian really should be.

I personally do not believe in the Bible or its teachings as a whole (I agree with parts, 'cause there are some good messages here and there) so I shouldn't be held to it's rigid guidelines. It is a free country. And yet, my morals seem to be more on par with the teachings of Jesus than many of the Christians today. This is not to say that there are not good Christians out there. However, these evangelicals really need to stop trying to injecting their "beliefs" into the lives of others, especially when they can't even follow it themselves.

Stephen Colbert had the chance...

BUT HE BLEW IT!

All the anger, rage, and hate that Colbert has mockingly stored in him while pretending to be a right wing lunatic and he can't even use it for any good at all!

In the audience on Colbert last night was one of the 2 men from the Sonic commercials. He could have destroyed the man, and then I would never again have had to endure something along these lines. Why Colbert, WHY!?! I do enjoy your show and your hilarious caricature of the right wingers, but you have really disappointed me by not taking a stand against other annoyances, such as terrible advertisements that are clearly aimed at the lowest common denominator of intelligence in our sad society, but forcibly rammed down the rest of our throats relentlessly.

However, you did eat an ewok, so I guess I'll forgive you. This time...

Teabagging... are you serious?

I think everyone has made fun of how clueless the chosen name was considering the alternate meaning.

However, that is not my complaint or purpose in discussing it.

On April 15th (also known as Tax Day in the US), many "protests" were organized. "Tea Parties". What are they protesting? Well, lets take a look at it.

It is a throwback to the original Boston Tea Party, which was a protest against Taxation without Representation from the British Government. A just cause. However, these people, no matter how much they want to claim they aren't represented, have elected representatives in office for their area. Unless they live in Washington DC. Speaking of, I do believe it was the conservatives who so opposed giving Washington representatives in Congress, while the citizens of our nations capital do pay taxes. I suppose if they were throwing these tea parties for that purpose, it would make sense, but they aren't. Therefore, this is not paying any homage to the original Tea Party, it is a mere perversion of the original message and is displayed in terrible taste.

Also, some indicate that it has to do with more or higher taxes under the current administration. First, Obama has neither hinted at nor proposed any new taxes. So it must have to do with the planned tax hike for people making over $250,000 a year in 2011(after the current recession is projected to be over). 3%. It is not groundbreaking, it merely puts the tax code back to how it was before Bush slashed taxes for the wealthiest Americans in 2001. How many people will this affect? From the way the conservatives are acting, you would think it was a lot of people. However, according to factcheck.org, if the $250,000 is meant for couples and $125,000 for individuals (which seems likely), it would affect roughly 3.1% of Americans. If it's $250,000 for any household, that figure drops to about 2%. And oh yeah, this is for personal taxes. It doesn't affect businesses & corporations. So the whole idea of "job creation vs. job loss" is nearly a completely moot point, because most companies (even small businesses) are separate from their owner's personal incomes. Not to mention, there are several large loopholes in the corporate tax codes that allow large percentages of income to never be taxed properly (you can google this rather easily, I'm just lazy).

Another reason I've heard thrown about is being upset over wasteful government spending (like this didn't happen under G.W. Bush, his father, or even Reagan). This is one place where I actually find myself agreeing with Conservatives. Though, I never seem to agree on who is responsible for wasteful spending with them. Conservatives want to blame it on the Democrats exclusively and have even proposed a spending freeze. (Also, Economics 101, you do not cut spending or increase taxes during a recession unless you are trying to make it worse, hence why the rescinding of the Bush tax cuts is not until 2011). I want to blame it on the government in general. Nobody seems to pay attention to what the government spends the money on. It over pays for nearly everything (especially when Haliburton is involved, but I'll just leave that whole mess out of it). Democrats & Republicans alike are terrible about weighing the worth of spending versus the price of it. Earmarks contribute and are bipartisan in origin. Blaming one side or the other is irresponsible. However, the Bush tax cuts lower the income of the country and ultimately do contribute to the deficit. So protesting against removal of an irresponsible tax cut is another ultimately bad idea.

So basically, these Tea Parties are nothing but a flailing last(I hope anyway) gasp from a Republican party with no identity, a shrinking base, and no real clue of how to relate to the world today. Such as lovingly referring to their protests as "teabagging" in all seriousness.

Stewart v. Cramer & CNBC

Jon Stewart completely dismantled Jim Cramer's Ego in approximately 5 minutes.

And yet, this is supposed to be one of the premier advice givers when it comes to investment. And as Cramer so eloquently pointed out, Stewart is a comedian. How sad has this world and it's news become when a comedian is the one who has to point out the ludicrous reporting of a major news organization, and the leader of it's specified market (in the case of CNBC, it's business & investing). Yes, everyone is entitled to mistakes. But Cramer, while pleading with people to buy Bear Stearns stock, even says "it acts much better than it should." Isn't this supposed to be a clue? Aren't you an expert and know that if it's too good to be true, then it fucking is?! This isn't a mistake. This is pure and simple: GREED. Nothing more. Nothing less. It's the greed of "oh, it's higher than it should be, it's making money." When in fact, it isn't making money, and it's on the surface of a bubble that has to pop, just as every bubble must, economic or not.

So what does CNBC run the next day on Kudlow?  Well, Art Laffer talking about how Obama is ruining this country, and how the stock market is the proof, since it is forward looking and not backward looking, which rests all blame squarely on the current administration (on the 2nd page, halfway down). Why on earth does Laffer even get to talk after that horrific display? And isn't this the exact thing that Jon Stewart was pointing out originally? Honestly, it seems to me that CNBC not only misses the point when it comes to Stewart's segment on them, but they miss the point when it comes to their own "area of expertise". We should just lump them in with Fox News as a network of self absorbed, self congratulating, out of touch, ignorant, pissy, overly conservative, close-minded idiots.

As you can tell, I don't have much of an opinion on the matter.  /sarcasm off

Facebook Observation

All you have to do is scan Facebook for about 10 minutes and you'll probably find about 4 or 5 of the many "Obama is a liar," or "Obama is a socialist," or "Obama killed the stock market,' or "Obama killed capitalism," or "Obama killed the US" or some other such nonsensical group full of raving lunatics who had condemned Obama's term as president before it had ever started. And all they do is sit around quoting Fox News, Hannity, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, or some other crazy Right-Wing nutjob source. These people are not just nutjobs because I disagree with them, they are nutjobs because they believe they, and only they, know or can know the truth or the right answer or the right path, and these truths, answers, and paths are often very contradictory.

So what is the motivation for these people? What links them together with so much intolerance towards Obama? Well, it doesn't take much effort to notice that nearly all the active members are also part of some Christian group on Facebook as well. Many are so polarized against Obama based on things such as abortion, which is a stupid reason. If you actually look, not a single major political figure has even attempted to overturn Roe v. Wade. It's all a campaign polarizing argument, and never has any substance. Abortion isn't going to be banned, get over it. Another topic is Stem Cell Research, which most people who are against have no real clue what it even is, or what it's potential is. They just know they're against it, because some figure (either political or religious) said they were supposed to be. Stem Cell research has amazing potential and could be the next great breakthrough in biological science or medicine. Of course, it's hard to convince people who refuse to accept Evolution that science/biology is a good thing.

I'm amazed that after the last 2 voting cycles of Republicans getting their asses kicked, that the Right & Evangelicals are hitching their wagons together. It's obviously failing. More of America is atheist or agnostic or non-practicing every year. This isn't some atheistic recruiting process, or some great evil corrupting minds, as most of the nutjobs would have you believe. It's a natural progression away from a Religion. If you think about it, the world has been dominated by different religions over and over, they keep getting debased and a new one takes it's place. However, in this cycle, science has given us something other than the supernatural to look at and many people are seeing how ridiculous it is to believe in fairy tales and base your entire existence and life upon them.

Some, however, refuse to be a part of the movement towards modernism, free thought, & realism. These are the idiots who comprise the very vocal portions of these Facebook groups. I'm in no way claiming that you cannot oppose Obama or his politics without being stupid. I'm merely pointing out that a large vocal portion of these people are idiots & refuse to actually use their brain for anything other than parroting some other more famous idiots.

Things you can hear in a network lab.

So today, I end up in a discussion about the proposed solutions to the plan of reducing foreclosures. It was obvious immediately that these 2 gentlemen were most likely Conservative Republicans. No big deal. While discussing the housing market, I disagreed with them both over how house prices would recover. I said they would not get anywhere near as high as they were 2 years ago within the next 15. They both disagreed, and said that it would take about 3 or 4, and not more than 7. And finally, one of them basically says "We're both 40, you're 25, we know more than you," which did irritate me, but topics were switched to the Obama plan so I shrugged it off.

They expressed concerns about how people who bought houses they couldn't afford and had no business buying were going to be "bailed out" while people like themselves who have struggled but continued making the payments were to get no help. I made the argument that there were people out there who got conned into adjustable rate mortgages that suddenly shot up prematurely, and people who had lost their jobs due to no faults of their own, and people who's house was suddenly worth half what they paid for it because of the housing bubble busting, and these people do deserve some help.

They both agreed, even though it really seemed neither wanted to. Then they proceeded to bring back up the people who feed off the system, and complain more about them. I agreed, there are far too many people who do that, but there is no macro way to weed those people out, and the others really do deserve help so they can stay in their homes that they've worked hard for. One of them actually said "I guess I should just become a Democrat and feed off the system like the rest of them." This kinda irritated me. I only said "I'm a democrat, and I'm not on welfare, tenncare, or any other government program other than the Pell Grant & Federal Work Study, which I actually do work for." And basically quit participating with them, since they had taken this from a discussion to an "I hate Democrats" meeting rather suddenly.

Not 2 minutes later, I hear one complaining and the other agreeing about how much they hate the idea of "having to do community service in order to get their Pell Grant money from the government." I said nothing, because I'd already determined that these 2 were so completely among the 3R (Retarded Redneck Republican) category that it was pointless and a waste of my energy to try to convince them of their stupidity. But seriously, how do you go from complaining about people getting money from the government, even if they might deserve and need it, to complaining that you're going to have to work for your money from the government? Do people even know what hypocrisy is anymore? I silently laughed to myself about how self absorbed and misinformed these 2 were and continued doing some lab work.

This doesn't even address the fact that, while I haven't researched or heard anything about it in quite a while, I do believe the community service for college money was supposed to be in excess to the already in place Pell Grant. So it would be "working for extra money." Sigh.