This wealth re-distribution is fucking crazy

What on earth is Palin talking about when she accuses Obama of wanting to re-distribute wealth? She's a moran for at least two reasons: First, Alaska is the champion of that; and Second, that's exactly what happens in modern states. Let's explore:

First: Alaska is a state with no income tax and no sales tax. Instead, the state government imposes massive taxes on oil companies, and then uses that to finance the state budget, run massive surpluses, and send a big fat cheque to every last Alaskan (Palin increased this by $1200 while she was governor). NOW: Let's say Obama (or any Dem) proposed cutting federal income tax to zero and then taxing every business some huge amount and sending cheques to everyone (ahem, Bush stimulus package). The Republicans would shriek bloody murder. But then consistency has never been the hallmark of the Republican party, and anyway, no one really minds kicking oil companies around (sort of like teh gaiz).

Second: Of course some sort of wealth re-distribution is natural in a modern state. Some might say using taxes to pay for public services is a form of it (you know, roads, sewers, schools, etc.) Without that, the rich would pay to have their own schools and roads and the poor would simply be shut out on dirt roads homeskooling their kids (sort of like in the entire south, of course).

So unless the Republicans are proposing some sort of state that uses taxes only to fund wars and nothing else, they should really shut the fuck up about re-distribution because that's the way it's been ever since the first person or company was taxed, which has, of course, been going on for quite some time now. Like thousands of years.

Morans.

In relation to my post about being over morans not understanding socialism

In relation to my previous post, let me also add the following comment, since I know that inevitably people will pull the "well you moved here if you don't like it leave" nonsense:

Grow up. It isn't the case that only naturalize citizens can be critical of their country. A) I emigrated when Clinton was president and things were better then; B) I'm a citizen and it's my right to criticize; C) I'm in the highest tax bracket; D) There's a lot that's great and good here; E) Everyone should be trying to make their country better and not accept it simply as is; F) My life, job, family, friends, and assets are here.

*and if you don't get what a "moran" is, google it. Eesh.

I am so fucking over

people in this backwards right wing kleptocratic-plutocracy that is at the bottom of every measure of civilization (say, for example, infant mortality--29th in the world FTW) can suggest that socialism is somehow bad is beyond me.

YOU PEOPLE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT SOCIALISM IS.

You equate it with communism, with totalitarianism. Not with true Democratic socialism, that, in fact, doesn't lead to tyranny, doesn't lead to, oh, I wonder, the suspension of ancient liberties like in this country. Strangely, the great modern socialist states--which would be Canada, the Netherlands, Scandinavia--don't actually torture their citizens or other people's citizens. Strangely, too, they don't engage in unprovoked wars.

Oh and they appear to have balanced budgets and roads that work and they can build opera centres and their bridges don't fall down and they clothe and feed their people while strangely being vibrant democracies with more than 2 parties.

I thought I was a conservative and un-socialist, until I moved here to see how fucking terrible it is without it.

It's not fucking socialism

I'm really over people like Andrew Sullivan saying that the bailout is socialism. It's not. This is what I wrote to him:

Andrew,

Please, please, please stop with calling the bailout socialism. No one who's not a blinkered conservative can claim that.

If it were socialism, there would be some better stake for taxpayers. State-owned companies work to the benefit of their shareholders, i.e. the people: the people share both the risk of failure as well as the benefit of success.

Here, Wall street benefits when times are good, but the taxpayer is on the hook when it's bad.

I've said it to you before and I'll say again, this is not socialism. There is simply no upside to the consumer (apart, maybe, from the economy collapsing but that isn't what I mean). Wall street executives made huge gambles, made big profits for themselves, and now that it's all falling apart, the taxpayer is on the hook. It's not socialism, but it's a sure sign that the U.S. has become a kleptocracy.

Random thoughts on old videos of Palin

Okay, I'm laughing my ass off at Palin's "Ms. Alaska" videos--her in the swimsuit, and her "playing" the flute.

But then I got to thinking. It's the '00s. Everything is being recorded. All my friends have digital cameras, pocket sized ones that we take everywhere. There are pictures of me doing all sorts of things posted all over the internet--parties, events, dinners, sporting things.

And it's not really all that fair to judge Palin for being a terrible flutist or looking ridiculous in a bathing suit and big hair. Because, lord knows, if I every run for office, all someone will have to do is pull out one of my Hallowe'en albums and I'm toast. Like the one Hallowe'en where a group of us wore football pants and shoulder pads and that was it? Or our impending costume this year . . .?

It reminds me a little of the book by Arthur C. Clarke, "The Light of Other Days." There, a device is invented that basically creates little wormholes the user can look through--to see anyone, anywhere, at any time in the past or present. The point of the story is "what happens when all privacy is taken away, completely." Some respond by not caring--by being naked all the time, having sex in public, having no secrets at all. Others respond by finding cloaking devices and trying to escape.

I guess my point is that we're going to have to face this question in the future: Everone has a myspace or facebook page. Everyone that's not a boring Christian in North Dakota has embarassing pictures posted somewhere, or in someone else's possession. I hope we get to a place where all that stops mattering--that we accept that, as a price of living in an interconnected world, we lose some of our privacy. We all have stuff that will make us look bad, but maybe that will help us start judging people on substance and not on whether they got drunk at a party 20 years previously.

Nah.

Arguments for restricting suffrage

Honestly, people like that make me believe we are truly doomed. If they actually believe what they're saying, in the day of media and television and information, we are FUCKED.

National Projects

Amid all this talk of a $700,000,000,000 bailout, I watched an episode of The West Wing last night where Bartlet wanted to cure cancer. He is sitting in a boring dinner with a bunch of doctors when one of them mentions something to the effect that if they had 10 billion and 10 years they could do it.

And that got me thinking: Where are those great national projects now? With $700 billion going to bail out some investment banks, and $1 billion being spent every day on the war in Iraq (I grabbed that number today from the NYT's Thomas Friedman)--think of what we could do with that money! Meanwhile, our bridges fall down, our cities get smited, health care sucks, social security is in trouble. Anyone who's recently been to JFK or LaGuardia or LAX and then flown to, say, Hong Kong's new airport, or even Pearson's beautiful new terminal 1 will know how little we're paying attention to infrastructure here.

With $700 billion, could we cure AIDS?

With $700 billion, could we find a real cure or treatment for cancer?

With $700 billion, could we not create the finest school system in the world, instead of falling further and further behind?

Isn't the point of taxes that they get spent on things to make the country as a whole better? Aren't they the price of living in a modern state?

But no, if we weren't bailing out Wall St. and fighting the war in Iraq, all we'd hear would be tax cuts tax cuts.

And our bridges would continue to fall.

Flag Pins

You remember all the hysteria about Obama not wearing a flag pin? How the right wingers gnashed their teeth in anger and said he was a bad American?

This picture is from September 11, in New York, at Ground Zero.

Compare and Contrast

and

Fuck you rest-of-world barbarians

http://www.parl.gc.ca/Infoparl/english/issue.htm?param=189&art=1284

Most notably, the Québec Act allowed the free practice of Catholicism in Québec, and modified the oath of allegiance in order to allow Catholics to hold office in the government. It was another 50 years before Catholics in England would be granted the full freedom provided under the Québec Act.

This pragmatic approach turned out to be effective in Québec, but it was definitely contentious elsewhere. The Québec Act was among the provocations that led to the revolution in the Thirteen Colonies to the south. It was denounced both by the First Continental Congress, and in the text of the Declaration of Independence itself. But the challenges of governing a New World territory such as Québec simply could not be ignored, and the Colonial administration wisely chose the controversial but pragmatic solution that included religious tolerance and minority accommodation. In a sense, this policy was vindicated to the extent that the colonies that would later join the Canadian confederation declined to participate in the revolution that broke out in the American colonies.

Note that the Yankees denounced the Quebec Act--which allowed the free practice of religion in Canada.

Fuck you, Yankee savages, when you talk about American freedom. Whether it was religion in the 1770s or torture now, you're wrong. And you have always been. You aren't more free than we are; you just persuade yourself that you are. And fuck you too, Yankee barbarians, that the idea of religion or creation is even an issue in schools now.

And remember we stopped slavery almost a hundred years before you killed each other to try to save it. Barbarians. You're the only serious country that actually debates abortion and health care. And nominates some idiot to be your VP.

But then, you also re-elected Bush.

Dissing American barbarians aside, this is a more affirmative point:

Somewhere among the examples of France, with its civil law heritage, Britain with its common law and unwritten constitution and the United States, with its melting pot and its near-absolute framework of rights, Canada forged its own unique constitutional settlement. In doing so, it honoured a proud New World tradition of pragmatism and accommodation. Moreover, these initiatives went beyond lofty pronouncements in constitutional documents. Commissions and tribunals were established to ensure that citizens whose constitutional rights had been violated could obtain a meaningful remedy.

And isn't that the point. American law is lofty in sentiment, but the little dude ends up fucked. We actually make it happen. Examples (aside: anyone advocating "this is our national language and all golf players and school kids must only speak it" would be laughed at as a lunatic):

I am thinking of the extent to which our parliamentary institutions have strived to ensure the accommodation of persons with disabilities – both for members of the public and members of the assembly. We see the use of sign language in television broadcasts of parliamentary proceedings, level access to public areas and to the Chamber alike. In the Senate, I recall the example of Senator Gauthier, whose full participation in debate in the Chamber and in committees was accommodated by the provision of real-time transcription, which allowed him to overcome his severe hearing impairment. I think of my colleague in the House of Commons, Steven Fletcher, the first quadriplegic Member of Parliament in our history. He has been elected, and re-elected, in Winnipeg. The House of Commons took steps to ensure that he is able to participate fully as a member in the Commons and in its committees, and as a Parliamentary Secretary to a Minister. Making this possible required pragmatic accommodation on a “micro” level. This included modifying the rule that excludes “strangers” in order to allow an assistant to sit with Mr. Fletcher on the floor of the House. These are specific cases, but they are not merely anecdotes. They are illustrations of the extent to which the impulse to accommodate has entered our collective consciousness – not just on an abstract and theoretical plane, but in every day real-world situations.

Fuck you, rest of the world. You got it wrong. You've slaughtered each other and locked each other out of your schools and courts and water fountains, all because you can't handle someone with a different language or colour or religion or slaves. I'm looking at you, Africa, Yugoslavia, the US, continental Europe. Oh ya and everywhere else too. I'm not saying Canada got it all right. But let no one lecture us about tolerance. And the next time some idiot says "We (speak different languages)(practice different faiths)(are different ethnic groups) (come from different tribes) (etc)" I'll point out that the most advanced, just, kind, progressive country that has ever existed manages all of that. Without killing each other.

Some of you backwards foreigners could bomb our cities to the stone age. You could never rebuild them.

You think you win on the strength of your arms; we will win with the strength of our ideas, the breadth of our minds, and the size of our hearts.

And one day Canadians will wake up and realize we are the most privileged and blessed 33 million people that have ever existed, and the only people that will have it better are our children.

Amen

Honestly. Republicans are such lying swine.

She didn’t say “no thanks” to the “Bridge to Nowhere” until after Congress had already abandoned it but given Alaska a blank check for $223 million in taxpayers’ money anyway. Far from rejecting federal pork, she hired lobbyists to secure her town a disproportionate share of earmarks ($1,000 per resident in 2002, 20 times the per capita average in other states). Though McCain claimed “she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities,” she has never issued a single command as head of the Alaska National Guard. As for her “executive experience” as mayor, she told her hometown paper in Wasilla, Alaska, in 1996, the year of her election: “It’s not rocket science. It’s $6 million and 53 employees.” Her much-advertised crusade against officials abusing their office is now compromised by a bipartisan ethics investigation into charges that she did the same.

Now we're in silly season

This, reported on Americablog:

Rudy, who built his career on being Mayor of NYC during 9/11, thinks the Mayor of Wasilla is equal to the task:

In an interview Wednesday on ABC's "Good Morning America," Giuliani was asked, "If she were the president on 9/11, you would have been confident?"

Giuliani responded: "I'd be confident that she'd be able to handle it. She's been a governor of a state, she's been mayor of a city."

Inside, it must make Rudy seethe to compare himself to the Mayor of Wasilla. NYC has neighbhorhoods and housing complexes with more people than Wasilla.

She's good on defence because Alaska is close to Russia. She'll be a good commander in chief because she commanded the national guard of Alaska (which has been refuted--she never made a single decision). And now, because she was mayor of a town of what, 20 people? she could handle a major terrorist attack on the biggest city in the country.

The worst part is people buy this shit.

Republicans divorced from reality

Listening to the speeches last night, you would think Democrats and Republicans inhabited different planets.

First, for Fred Thompson to call out Barak Obama for being inexperienced is a touch ironic.

But more importantly, for him to talk about deficits, about America's standing in the world is nonsense. Who was President when there was a surplus?

And to call out the Congress for being dysfunctional was funny too, since Republicans have basically made it clear that they'll filibuster anything they don't like. It's like Tories in Canada complaining that Parliament doesn't work when they are the ones with a 200 page book on how to disrupt committees.

The problem is Americans and Republicans believe this nonsense.

Fuck all this shit

After all the speeches, I'm done with American triumphalism. What-fucking-goddamn ever.

Greatest country in the world? Land of promise?

We raise our country out of the cold wasteland. We created the gentlest, kindest, most tolerant society that has ever existed. We have universal healthcare. We care for our poor. We allow gay marriage.

I grant that the US ain't bad. I live here, after all.

But the idea that somehow it's so amazingly more exceptional than we are is ridiculous.

We didn't build our greatness--our little, tiny, small country's greatness--on slavery.

We didn't spend years slaughtering each other.

We were cruel to our aboriginals, but we didn't engage in wholesale slaughter.

Our minorities could vote earlier.

And so, out of the cold, the misery, the snow, the darkness, and faced for almost our entire civilization's existence by the terror of the invasion of the most powerful state in the world, we survived. We threw them back. Our society is the rebuke to the planet that two languages and at least two religions must hate each other.

The only metric the beat us in is their ability to bomb us into the stone age.

They will never beat us on justice, they will never beat us in tolerance, they will never beat us in class mobility, and they will never beat us in caring for our people.

And so when some idiot Yankee politician says the US is the most free and the greatest and with the greatest potential, let us show them our shining, just, safe, gun-free, tolerant and radiant cities are the irrefutable proof that they aren't the only ones who got it right.

We just did it better.

Happy Canada Day

One-hundred forty one years ago today our little experiment in North America started. And somehow, 141 years later, our bumble-bee land, that everyone thinks should have fallen apart, and which, if it followed the path of every other country in the world, with their inability to have different races and languages and religions live together in peace, would have--our improbably country stretches across a continent, is one of the world's oldest and most stable democracy, and is a beacon of justice and kindness.

So, Happy Canada Day! And God save the Queen.

The HORROR

The Ambassador-designate from North Korea puts his arm around the GG!1!1!!!


Of course, it't quite as bad as this, but still . . .

Amen

From my favourite lawyer, Dahlia Lithwick. She is so right.

If we manage to erase one hideously bad idea from our collective memories of the law in the war on terror, please, please let it be this one: Legal questions are neither "hard," nor "novel," nor "open" merely because someone at the White House didn't like the legal answer that followed them. Easy questions don't morph into tough ones just because you can find some guy willing to argue the other side. And if—as both Sands and Lederman have observed—Haynes and his colleagues shut down efforts by Jane Dalton, the legal adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to review the techniques, then we truly are witnessing something astonishing: Haynes turned an easy legal question into a hard one by avoiding it altogether.

Let them tell us

That this is not right and not real:

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1407952648/bctid1614766169

If we could broadcast these videos across the state, and people could see that it isn't just a 'lifestyle' and we're not aberrations and that love is love is love is love, I hope I have enough faith in the goodness of people that we would crush this attempt to amend our constitution.

Marriage in West Hollywood

This video made me all teary.



It speaks for itself, and I'll say nothing more, save to contrast it to the negative message of all those idiot protesters out there.

Help make Christians broke

Gay marriage has been legal for just over an hour. The Family Resource Council has an ad out, the typical scare people with non facts kinda ad. And they have a "Marriage Protection Kit" that you can send for, for free.

So I say let's all order them and burn them. Their web site says that resources are "limited," and each one they send to us is one bite in those resources (they're free). So order them here.

And, of course, I used a porn star name to sign up.