Authoritarian Assholes' latest excuse to Censor the Internet

Via ballgame of feminist critics: Stop SOPA! AKA PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet To summarize SOPA/The Protect IP Act are basically excuses to use intellectual property rights to intimidate and shut down anyone posting content on the internet that the powers-that-be don't like.

As the video on vimeo.com shows there are already laws in place to protect intellectual property. While these are imperfect, it is not as if the entertainment industry is in imminent danger of bankruptcy. There are issues in the digital age that still needed to be sorted out with regards to the rights of owners of intellectual property and the rights of purchasers of content to share that content with others. But, there is no hardship so great being imposed on the creators of intellectual property that the government and Hollywood lawyers need to monitor everyone's personal website to penalize anyone who might have made an offhand reference to a copyrighted work.

For anyone interested in fighting this there are, in addition to the link provided by vimeo - fightforthefuture.org/pipa, there are also the following links to petitions and form letters to congresspeople: http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/protectip_docs, https://wfc2.wiredforchange.com/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=8173

I am sure all bloggers and blog contributors can understand the importance of this.

Muppet Welfare

WTF is this garbage? I love Muppets and I know that they can survive without being Welfare Queens. Look at the non-Sesame Street Muppets, (Fozzie Bear, The Swedish Chef, Miss Piggy, et. al. and INCLUDING one who is ALSO a Sesame Street Muppet - Kermit the Frog!); they've made it in the free market without having to go on the dole (at least until Jim Henson sold them to the über-welfare parasite known as the Walt Disney Company).

And, as for the Sesame Street Muppets other than Kermit - they've had some considerable success in the private sector in the form of merchandising - does "Tickle-Me-Elmo" ring a bell? If Sesame Street had to make it on commercial TV, it could. Yes it might have to accept commercials for sugary cereals and fast food thus causing obesity, diabetes, and toothlessness, since any child who sees commercials for such products will demand to eat them every day for every meal until they wind up in diabetic comas, and their parents will be powerless to stop them. But most children will wind up discovering such things and be drawn in by their irresistible lure anyway. So the possibility of junk food being endorsed by Cookie Monster and Oscar the Grouch (who I believe eats garbage from the garbage can he lives in) shouldn't make that much of a difference. Or if it did, I'm sure the creators of Sesame Street could secure an arrangement that their program could only be sponsored by their own merchandise. But then they couldn't shill for having our tax dollars support programs like Masterpiece Theatre and operas. Fine programs, of course, but ones which are mostly watched by people with more money than God, and who are to cheap to shell out a few bucks for cable channels or DVDs that offer the same type of entertainment, and sometimes even the exact same shows.

I'm down with Brown

Of course I mean Charlie Brown, he's one of my heroes. Cleveland Brown (not to be confused with The Cleveland Browns) is pretty cool too. Leroy Brown had a seemingly glamorous thug lifestyle though he did kind of turn out to be a loser when confronting the "jealous man."

But what about Scott Brown? Well, I thought this comment I posted about him to Feminist Critics was worth re-posting here:

I didn’t notice this thread before today. I know this discussion is mostly irrelevant now, but I will say I’m glad Brown won. From what I know about him he doesn’t seem like an ultra-right wing fanatic who would restrict personal freedom on either religious or nationalistic grounds, at least not any more so than the Democrats do. I am not in love with the Republicans but he does bring some balance to the current overwhelming leftist Democrat domination of Washington. In recent times some our best years have been under divided governments (Reagan with the Democrat congress throughout his term from 1981 to 1989 and Clinton with the Republican congress from 1994 to 2001). When the two parties clash they somewhat keep each other’s runaway spending and attacks on civil liberties in check. Not ideal, but the best we can hope for until there is a viable third party.

And if Coakley is anywhere near the man-hater she is portrayed to be here, then even if I was a socialist I would still be glad that Brown won. He won’t have much effect on policy until and unless more Republicans are elected this November, while Coakley might well have gotten her misandric agenda passed into federal law almost immediately.

Edit: I originally included this line in my first paragraph of lame, but for me irresistible, jokes about the name Brown: "And then there was FEMA director Michael Brown, who sure did do a heck of a (shitty) job!" Thinking it over that wasn't fair since FEMA would, does and always did, suck no matter who heads it. Also, Hurricane Katrina was only a federal matter because of gross incompetence of the state government of Louisiana and the local government of New Orleans. Mississippi was hit hard by the hurricane too but did not have nearly the same level of humanitarian disaster.

Winners and Losers

Now more than ever, I wish I would have written a post last year congratulating Major League Baseball's Philadelphia  Phillies for winning the World Series. I kind of wish I would have written one congratulating them when they won the National League Pennant this year, though at least this way I can't be accused of jinxing them. Anyway, while it was disappointing to see them lose this year's  Series, it was a joy to see them go two years in a row. They are still winners in my book and should hold their heads high. I will certainly miss being near them when I move to New Hampshire.


As for the "Losers" referred to in the title of this post, no, I don't mean the New York Yankees fans, as obnoxious as many of them are. This is their moment and I don't begrudge them their celebrations. Well, not too much, anyway. No, the losers I'm talking about are more along the lines of the usual suspects.

First, there are the piece of shit Bensalem cops who arrested Susan Finkelstein for allegedly trying to trade sex for World Series tickets. How did these brave modern day Sherlock Holmeses discover this dangerous criminal? From an ad she posted on Craigslist. Aside from the ridiculousness of anti-prostitution laws in general, there are dozens of ads on Craigslist that are more explicitly offering prostitution than this:

DESPERATE BLONDE NEEDS WS TIX (Philadelphia) Diehard Phillies fan--gorgeous tall buxom blonde-- in desperate need of two World Series Tickets. Price negotiable--- I'm the creative type! Maybe we can help each other!

The Barney Fife KGB wannabes who responded to this ad were obviously more concerned with getting publicity for their little department than doing anything that would actually protect the public. I guess they wanted to make it appear that they are good for something other than writing parking tickets or harassing honest, law-abiding gun owners. Maybe also they were motivated by the idea that sports are supposed to be pure and wholesome and not to be tainted by anything the sanctimonious mavens of morality arbitrarily decide is wrong. Same mentality that allows officials of all of the professional sports leagues and the NCAA to swoon from scandalized outrage at the thought of expanding legalized gambling on their sacred rituals, while never missing a crass opportunity to gouge their fans for extra bucks. Also the same mentality that causes league officials suspend and sternly scold the players catch with marijuana, while these same pompous preachers don't think twice about accepting ads for beer and boner pills  (Not that I have anything against beer or hard-on pills, I enjoy beer quite a bit and am glad that there are pills to help me get an erection should I ever need them - it's just that it is the height of hypocrisy to accept money to promote drugs which do have considerable, if worthwhile, risks while condemning users of what overwhelming evidence shows to be the safest drug humanity has ever known).


And that brings me to the other losers I have in mind, two pieces of garbage from across the pond named Alan Johnson and Neil McKeganey. I usually don't get involved in the internal affaires of other nations (though I have severely criticized Harriet Harman on Antimisandy.com this was because she tried to make a United States governor submit to her will in her desperate crusade to subjugate her fellow British citizens). Anyway, Johnson and McKeganey are two nanny state extremists who are demanding that Professor David Nutt resign his position as chairman of Britain's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) because he was brazen enough to commit the ultimate crime - telling the truth. Specifically, for saying that "alcohol and cigarettes are more harmful than cannabis," a position that no serious researcher would object to, except on ideological grounds. McKeganey, himself, even admitted “In terms of health harm there is no doubt that cigarettes and alcohol are both more harmful than many currently illegal drugs,” he added. “They are associated with many more deaths and with much wider rates of illness," but despite such an acknowledgment of common sense, he was perfectly able to adapt his authority worshiping doublethink to pretend to believe such obvious bullshit as this:

If you are the key person offering advice to the government you cannot then simultaneously, in public, criticize the government for the decisions it takes. David was going so far beyond his remit to raise fundamental questions about the direction of UK drugs policy in relation to cannabis and in relation to seeking to combine alcohol and tobacco with illegal drugs — in the process muddying the distinction between illegal drugs and legal drugs.

No, God forbid someone advising the government should disagree with them. Everyone should know that "advising" the government means confirming the fact that the almighty politicians and bureaucrats are always right. And yes, how dare Nutt  [muddy] the distinction between illegal drugs and legal drugs. He has no right to do that just because this distinction is based on anti-scientific, superstitious arbitrary moralism. Obviously, if drug laws were based on public health instead of manufactured prejudices alcohol would be of greater concern to authorities than cannabis, and tobacco would be of much greater concern than cocaine, heroin, or any other so-called "hard drug."

Don't get me wrong - I don't think any of them should be illegal. Even tobacco which is much deadlier than alcohol, cocaine, and heroin, to say nothing of the safer-than-aspirin drug cannabis, has been responsible for far fewer deaths than meddling authoritarian governments. But putting things into perspective, "muddying the distinction between illegal drugs and legal drugs" is a logical response to the arbitrary bullshit of morally bankrupt government drug policies. Well when my friend e-mailed me this story under the subject line: "Refuse to support Nutt's sacking!‏" and beginning with the line "It looks like Johnson is supporting Nutt's sacking", I said "What a couple of Johnsons Johnson and McKeganey are. They are not fit to lick Nutt's sack." I think that pretty well sums it up.

Just When You Thought the Talk About "Privilege" Couldn't Get Any More Stupid...

Along comes this: http://www.adonismirror.com/09152009_leader_pot_whites_only.htm.

So Richard Leader thinks that taking a courageous stand against an unjust law is an act of "white male privilege":

The stunt has white-male written all over it. I should know: I’m a white male myself. You can see it in his straight-faced claim that he didn’t do it for attention. You can see it in his imagination that a simple school project made him a true actor in the political process.

Well, for one thing, I can say that Ian Barry is a hero and a patriot much like one of my long-time heroes who is of African Descent: Ed Forchion, aka N.J. Weedman.

But, maybe the author of Adonis Mirror, Leader, does have a point. After all, the white people who participated in the Montgomery Bus Boycott knew that they would not face penalties as severe as those whose rights they were demanding be respected. Same with those white folks who marched in various Civil Rights marches throughout the 60's. Or those men who dared to stand up for feminism back when it was about equal rights and not female supremacy, like today (Of course the men, would only face lesser penalties in terms of social sanctions; women then, as now and always, got treated with kid gloves by the legal system). When I, as a disabled teenager was being bullied by non-disabled, or less disabled teenagers, I would have been grateful for a non-disabled teenager to use his or her "able-bodied/able-minded" privilege to stand up for my rights. I did not think that the people who did or would have done these things were arrogant assholes rubbing everyone else's noses in their massive privilege, but then I obviously don't know as much about "oppression-privilege" politics as the all-knowing Leader (pun not intended -see comment).

I seem to remember reading somewhere that one of the obligations of privilege is to fight for the rights of those do not have it and cannot stand up for themselves. I didn't think that standing up for the rights of the less privileged was a bad thing if you did it in a non-patronizing way that showed solidarity with the oppressed. Well, thank Cthulhu that we have people like Richard Leader to tell us how wrong those notions are.

Edit: I decided to edit out the instances where I made fun of Richard Leader's name as this distracts from the seriousness of the issue. Besides, while he is an arrogant know-it-all who thinks he can tell everyone else how to run our lives, Leader did not deserve to be personally attacked. For that I apologize.

Debate on Culture continued from Ren's Place

This is the continuation from an ongoing debate at Renegade Evolution's blog.

Anthony Kennerson: Still having that racist moment, are you??

"Racist moment"? This baseless ad hom is no different than the accusations of being sexist radfems hurl at you for your defense of sex work. You can do better than that.

AK: And you didn't even bother to answer my question: how is our "Western culture" -- you know, the one who slaughtered Native Americans, enslaved Black Africans, stole Hispanic and Native American land, and dropped nuclear weapons on Asians -- any more qualified to judge anyone else on who's "superior"??

As VirtueAndVice admitted Anglo-American culture has "its faults" just as every culture throughout history has had. But if no cultures were superior to one another there would be no asylum seekers or refugees. Immigrants, yes, but not people looking to escape from the places where they were born. The greatest tragedy of at least the more extreme forms of multiculturalism is that it encourages people coming from dangerous, oppressive places to re-create the dysfunctional situations from which they came. When my ancestors came from Ireland and Italy, they brought some of their traditions with them but they did not pretend for a minute that things were better back home, or demand the right to continue traditions that would undermine the foundations of American liberty.

AK: First off, like most conservative critics of "multiculturalism', they are so desperate to take an isolated act of cruelty and make it representative of a whole culture or race or "civilization", and therefore declare their favored "Anglo-American" (read that to mean "White Western Christian civilization") to be not only superior to all but to be imposed on all others

These would be isolated acts of cruelty, except that the people engaging in them are using "culture" as an excuse. And some (not all but too many) western leftists are backing up these excuses. As for "be[ing] imposed on all others" V&V said (and I agree), "That's not to say that we should go out and bomb other countries when they don't see things our way."

AK: But I wonder, VaV...would you have gone into such histronics if the perpetrators had been fundamentalist White American Christians?? After all, it's not as if they haven't done such things themselves. Oh, wait...

Who is defending the preacher in that article? Probably not even most of his fellow Evangelicals. Certainly not any groups that have the numbers of the multi-culti defenders of similar behavior by so called victim groups.

AK: Secondly...I'm not much of a fan of the Nation of Islam for many reasons...but to compare them to the KKK is sheer madness. Not even Louis Farrakhan, for all his alleged anti-Semitic smack and belief in numerology, has ever burned a cross in a White neighborhood, or lynched a White man, or intimidated a single White person out of voting.

Farrakhan is too smart to get his own hands dirty by personally participating in acts of violence. Same with most Klan wizards (when was the last time David Duke was arrested). It doesn't mean that Farrakhan's rhetoric is any less responsible for black-on-white violence than the identical rhetoric in reverse by Klan leaders is for white-on-black violence. Similarly, as far as we know, Mary Daly has never directly committed an act of violence against a man (or a boy). It does not mean that her anti-male views are any less hateful than the Nazi's anti-Semitic views, just that she apparently has not yet had a chance to act on them.

SnowdropExplodes: The term "rape culture" has a real meaning in describing Western European cultures - so the culture isn't all that great towards women (whatever the law tries to do about it).

Rape culture is mostly a feminist invention. To the extent that it exists, it refers to a very small subset of western men. Like V&V, "I was 17 once, and 0% of the guys I knew were talking about planning violent sexual assaults."

Cassandra: VirtueandVice - I don't think you understand what multiculturalism is. It can be what you're describing in the hands of a few fools, but that is not in principle what the idea is all about, nor how it's commonly expressed.

Multiculturalism may be all sweetness and light in principle, but not in practice. All to often it is exactly as V&V described. Those fools aren't so few.

Cassandra: OK, reading VirtueandVice again further down...you're not even making a real argument, you're just a zenophobic racist. Never mind, not worth the time.

I see no evidence of racism or xenophobia on the part of V&V. If anyone is acting like a closed-minded bigot it is you. So maybe V&V's opinions (and mine) are not worth your time. Fine if you want to only associate with people who already agree with you 95% of the time. But these opinions are held by a large number of people throughout the western world - close to a majority, if not an outright majority. Furthermore, they are gaining wider acceptance in some places, particularly those - such as The Netherlands - where the damage from extreme multiculturalism has been most obvious. Given that, if you really believe we are wrong you should at least try to make a convincing argument why.

Just a Random Thought...

Gun rights activists often say "Better tried by twelve than carried by six." I'm not sure that's true. However, having a gun makes it more likely that if you are carried by six it will be on your own terms and if you go down fighting maybe you can take some of the scumbags with you. Or better yet, leave them with permanent injuries. Especially in the case of breaking an unjust law that is enforced with severe penalties, it may be better to fight to the death than let government hired goons cart you off to prison. I'm not saying that I would - when push comes to shove I probably wouldn't have the courage. But I'd like to think that it would at least be possible.

Foreign Aid Petition

I received an e-mail asking to sign a petition to "Reform U.S. Foreign Aid." I had to think about this a little while. Normally, I don't think it is a good idea to try to "improve" something that, for the most part, I'd like to see eliminated. But, after looking at the text of the bill, as well as various commentaries on it, I decided that its calls for accountability, transparency, and streamlining bureaucracy are positive enough to outweigh any problems it might have. So, I signed the petition, while attaching this message:

I would prefer to see all foreign aid eventually phased out. I would like to see assistance to allied governments come in the form of loans or favors that can be reciprocated rather than grants. Charity, where it is needed, should come from voluntary private donations, not taxpayer money. But, seeing as how foreign aid is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, this does seem like a step in the right direction.

Let the Tea Bagging Continue

KIA, in responding to Becky C.'s post put it best:

If you were like me and real-world committments prevented you from attending the tea parties live, you can send an electronic teabag here:

http://teaparty.gop.com/

Nevermind the hypocrisy of the GOP now, go ahead and teabag the current leadership. It's never too late to try to make a difference.

I couldn't agree more. I know that the Republicans under Bush outdid what the Democrats had done in wasteful spending up until that time. I know that the Republicans under McCain would likely do the same. And I'm far from convinced that GOP politicians have learned anything from last election.

If the GOP is giving us a forum, though, to express outrage about taxes and spending I am not against using it. Just as if the Dems gave a forum to protest loss of civil liberties under a Republican administration, I'd use that, even though Dems are not much better, and arguably worse than the Repubs on that score.

I don't care who Fox News praises and the other networks ridicule or vice-versa. It's about the message, not the messengers. So I sent my postcard and you can too. It's a little late for tax day of this year but really, really early for next year! (And it would be great if the spirit of protest could be maintained year round).

We Need More Eighteenth Century Men

Thomas Frank in his column this week in The Wall Street Journal Eighteenth-Century Man made a good point about the ridiculousness of fat-cat politicians who pretend to be down-home folks while they spew faux-populist rhetoric. However, he failed to prove that the main subject of this column, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, fit this category. In fact, he conceded that "Mr. Sanford's democratic idealism may be for real, but ... with ideals this bad, you don't need hypocrisy to go wrong." And what are those horrible, horrible ideals? Opposing deficit spending, seeking better ways for people to invest their Social Security money, and above all, refusing federal government handouts.

Now, I know that in times like these deficits "don't matter." We are all Keynesians, socialists, or whatever term will fly to justify the "temporary" increase in government spending to get us out of the latest emergency. Fine. Let's get all we need from "the rich," and who cares if those labeled rich for the purpose of soaking them at tax time may be anything but. Is there really no way to cut a $3.55 trillion budget? Is raising concerns about deficit spending really such a bad thing? I thought that one of the causes of the current economic crisis was people spending beyond their means - whether they were private individuals, corporate executives, or even those most virtuous of virtuous people - government officials.

How about Mr. Frank's take on Social Security? Well he does score some cheap points by saying:

Business, on the other hand, is an institution with almost magical powers of beneficence: were we to entrust our retirement savings to "conventional investments" instead of government, Mr. Sanford wrote in 2000, we could expect returns of 8% a year. (And that's why the Dow stands well above 20,000 today.)

Very good, except that an investment purely in the stock market has historically yielded close to 10% per year since 1926. So the 8% return implies a balance between stocks, bonds, and money market instruments as financial advisers have always recommended. With such a combination there will be fewer years with a loss and those years that do have a loss will be less severe. Even taking into account the really bad years like 1931 and 2008, long term investments in the markets almost always beat the below 3% returns offered by Social Security. Plus, markets do tend to go up shortly after their worst crashes (one of the best years in the market was 1933). After Social Security collapses we can look forward to the government printing more worthless bills. Of course, I can't blame anyone who can't trust the markets. But I can say that the money you send to the government for Social Security would be much better invested in gold coins, canned goods, bottled water (or water purification tablets), farmland, livestock, guns, ammo, etc. than to finance government waste.

Finally, there is Mr. Frank's smug dismissal of Mr. Sanford's refusal to be a welfare queen:

Worst of all, his stand against the stimulus, while self-denying in the Sanford tradition, was taken against the loud protests of less Spartan citizens. Mr. Sanford's desire to strike his bold moral pose took priority over his state's need for relief.

Loud protests of less Spartan citizens? How many citizens protested against the stimulus package in the first place? Quite a few I know protested against the first round of Federal Bailouts (with letters to congresspeople - those protests were not very loud, I guess that's the problem). The point is, there will almost always be loud protesters on all sides of a controversial issue and if government officials never did anything because there were protesters opposed to it governments would never get anything done (which would be a good thing, but only officials of all ideological stripes paid heed to their protesters equally). In any case, in this era when it seems that every public figure, whether in government or private industry, has an outstretched hand saying "gimme, gimme, gimme!' does it not seem right to condemn the one who says "I don't need your charity." After all his "less Spartan citizens" can move to any of at least a dozen other states whose governors are begging Uncle Sam for bailouts like dogs begging their masters for treats, and whose legislators have already spent twice the bailout they hope to get.

It is true, Mark Sanford may not be the responsible citizen legislator he pretends to be. But it almost seems that Thomas Frank wishes he wasn't. Mr. Frank and his ilk can accept sleazy, lying politicians. What they can't accept is principled opposition to big and ever-expanding government.