Passion 2: Alien Jew v. Predator Jesus ON ICE!

There is no such thing as clean coal. Eviscerate the black through the severed head of a mountain, down the hatch and all the coal is dirty. Mountaintop removal mining makes it all seem dirtier, especially to a kid from the Mountain State, who sees West Virginia failing in many ways, but at least we have pristine and beautiful mountains. Until they're decapitated in an effort to reach the dark kernels of dirty energy found inside.

What passes for a news cycle some weeks really makes me itch. George Will wrote in apparent advocacy for a "global cooling" cycle, and supported his columnistic efforts with a few discredited magazine covers from the 1970's. Now he has been taken behind the blogoshpere's virtual woodshed, and probably won't care and will write about something else, maybe Japanese terrorism or the overwhelming success of the Iraq War. Anyone who can't look at a simple graph and see a disturbing global warming trend is being willfully stupid. Those who seek to advance some debate are just being contrarians, and avoiding obvious facts on purpose in an effort to satisfy...what exactly? This "debate" has been ended by scientific fact, and any ideology involved with denial of global warming has no credit and no usefulness.

Afghanistan will probably fail to do what we think we want it to do, but will do what is has always done: not be centralized and be run by tribal warlords. The path to Taliban control of Afghanistan isn't hard to follow - what has the surge done in Iraq? It provided security, which was designed to allow for American political goals to be met in the new, more secure environment, but raise your hand if you can tell your brother or your sister what goals have been achieved. The elections went well, I guess, but Iraq is in limbo. That's the best we could expect from a surge that followed the inept execution of a tragically misguided war policy. We can hope that Afghanistan is different, but what would make it different? 17,000 more troops? The Soviet Union had far more than that total, and retreated in defeat not long before their state collapsed.

It's a lot easier to point out where the fuck-ups are than to offer solutions, but we are overwhelmed right now. Solutions come from necessity and ideas, but so much is necessary to fix and the ideas only manifest themselves through the will of a corruptible legislative body. And when corruption is absent, ideology and mistrust and careerism drive much behavior in Congress. So this is not an entry about solutions, but about a couple of problems that came to mind while I was sitting here. The news media should be ashamed of its non-coverage of anything this week - if you've trolled some news sites this week you know what I'm talking about. Fluff city, as if nothing is going on worth discussing. I declare otherwise.

I'm thinking about a different bloggish structure, one that would require me to move on from this rough draft-ready blog and probably the other one I do to one which I program myself. Because I don't go out much on the weekends any more, and I need something to do and I want to do it with a lot of pictures. I'm thinking about counting pawn shops and payday loan joints next weekend, in Covington, KY. I wonder how many people are served by these wonderful and useful establishments? You can see gallons of blood in the water.

Sailin' On

The Great Depression featured, among many things, a 25% unemployment rate. The economy was stagnant, didn't grow for years, a lot of people died as a result. Dust scarred a swath through the southwest, some bears made good and bulls didn't exist in reality.

So the New Deal was not some gigantic government expansion born of liberal ideology but necessarily pragmatic counter-cyclical spending. The Depression lasted a long time; a few decades after the Industrial Revolution it looked as if the great capitalist structure was perhaps a great failure. So we're lucky it WAS a cycle, if a long and desperate and brutal one. Roosevelt doesn't get credit from conservatives for his policies - a great deal like to credit the spending associated with WWII solely with bringing us out of the mire - but look at the ideological trench these conservative Republicans are in, and the validity of such ideas is minimized. They simply can't translate those ideas into policies that work. Tax cuts? That's about it - we see how this goes. Hoover did nothing in the face of impending doom and the result was a prolonged stagnation of the economy. I suppose that losing wars isn't very profitable, and the bedtime story of successful tax cut stimulus is a myth born in the ether.

Besides, a big reason for this burst bubble is the fact that we have been spending more than we've been saving. That's our fault. So why give tax cuts to people who will spend them on HDTVs and Wendy's and SUVs and pornography? We forgot how to save, and all the economists and the politicians do is tell us to spend. 9/11 - go shopping! Economy is up - buy a house! Economy is down - buy a house cheap! Housing prices forever rise, you see. The basic premise that people do better when they have more of their own money has been refuted. We clearly don't know what the fuck we're doing.

Conservative Republicans don't seem to think that military spending counts as government spending - defense is a massive expenditure, we have a military which is about 7X bigger than the next biggest. It isn't necessary; we should lead with our head and not our heart with respect to foreign policy, and if we could manage to do that, we would be in much better shape indeed, since we wouldn't have Republicans in power preaching tax cuts while expanding military spending, forcing us to borrow against the full faith and credit of a United States that is failing financially and simply has no clue when it comes to intelligent foreign policy. We're so SCARED all of the time - so we need this big, bad, very expensive military structure. Oh, and that structure is very profitable for a few very powerful people of course. What does this stimulate for the rest of us?

The government is spending money now because somebody has to. The worker/consumer/family doesn't have the extra money anymore and is cowed by failures of advice re: what to do with their incomes. Invest! But in what? We can't trust you sir, you may be running a Ponzi scheme. Well, we tried to buy a house but a lot of times you weren't as clear as you could have been regarding exactly what interest rate we'd be paying on this mortgage. We trusted you! And you sold us instruments, and said buy, and there you go. No one who advises investors to sell goes very far in an investment firm. That's not how money is made.

But then again, they only sold all of that because many, many of us weren't very smart. Really, we aren't so bright in this country. We don't know economics or civics very well, we treat evolution as a belief. We're very intellectually lazy sometimes. That is profitable for MSNBC and Fox News, and I understand that we work more hours than any other population on the globe, but maybe it's time to put down the tricked-out remote and cancel the DirecTV, eat some brain food and wean off of McDonald's and learn how the world works. We know what greases the axle, money, and yet we know very little about the application. The stock market once provided capital to industry - now it's a crapshoot that rewards the psychotic type-A personalities who are driven by this psychosis to succeed at all cost, fueled by trust funds and competitive insecurities and with no soul to provide drag. Nice penthouse, nice car, great party. Love ya.

I haven't made much money over the years and I have a job, so I'm not really affected or concerned. I'm sailing just like I always have, watching some abstract destruction of some peoples' lives, not much different than at any other time, observing the continuum of life and its successes for some and failures for others for all the reasons. I never invested or cared that much about money, and I don't care about retirement. I'm not scared the way I'm supposed to be - the system doesn't like me very much. I'll retire someday but I refuse to focus on it to some probable theory of my detriment. You might say that I'm going to crash and burn - I might say you're going to stagnate. Which is worse? I am a person without a profit scheme, and I'm fine with that. Life is good - I won an arts and crafts contest last week. The prize was a pound of Starbucks coffee. I left it at the bar. Now if I was really desperate, would I have done that? Sometimes it's good to learn to live small. That way you don't have trust the two dimensional figures on the TV, who are convinced of what you should do with your money. And then when it disappears down the rabbit hole, they do a lot of apologizing. But you're just as broke. Save your money.

The unemployment rate is just under 8% during the Great Correction. Good luck.

Self Immolation: Because You Care

I was reading about GM and solvency and it occurred to me: If consumers don't trust GM to honor warranties and contracts if they go bankrupt, why doesn't the government just guarantee them instead of throwing $17 billion at a failing giant? That would be a more specific and practical way to go about supporting GM, if that is indeed a sound idea.

I'm not sure it is though, and I keep hearing horror stories about auto parts. So many auto parts outlets would surely go out of business if GM failed because GM parts are such a cornerstone of their sales! This is what I read. This is silly: People wouldn't stop buying cars and therefore needing parts; other companies would move in and take over GM's share of the market, and the auto parts outlets would sell parts for those brands instead of the GM brand. Did we all eat bad peanuts that damaged the sections of our brains attached to reason? Or did we all move to huts located under power lines after the housing market collapsed? Maybe we're just not thinking enough about the information we're presented.

Why doesn't the UAW understand that it doesn't produce anything? No union produces anything; they are supported by union dues and Democratic handshakes, and because they don't do anything else they will fall on any sword to "protect" workers. In this case, according to Newsweek, GM pays employees an average of $71 an hour compared to $46 for Toyota. The pension and health care payouts to current retirees are astronomical - think of the future retirees and those on the cusp as similar to those who will be drawing social security, and you can see why huge future entitlements are such a problem. We can no longer afford them and must CUT THINGS. Raise the retirement age; people are living longer these days. The UAW should realize that the employees of GM are entirely dependent on the success of GM, and so is the UAW for their union dues. Auto companies fail, workers stop paying dues...well, this is elementary to anyone but the UAW. Everyone gets a little less, but everyone survives. The UAW seems to think that everyone who retires gets to go to laborer heaven by divine right.

Now let's talk about responsibility, as I was involved in a discussion about American responsibility as it relates to the drug war. I was presented with the notion that Americans are incredibly irresponsible and gluttonous and all the rest. My first response was that we are certainly free to be gluttonous. We clearly have the money and the resources, although I think most of us find gluttony disgusting and personally damaging.

But this continued to bug me. Why? Because this notion suggests that we have failed at something and can't change the policy that has failed so thoroughly (the drug war) simply because we can't handle legal drugs to due some sort of undefined irresponsibility. If we are so irresponsible, why do we work more hours and are more productive than any country on the planet? Yes, we beat Japan. Why do we STILL export more goods than any country on the planet? Yes, we beat China. It's mind boggling to me how much we focus on our failures to the point that the sky is always falling, and then when we have real problems that could be solved practically and MUST BE SOLVED for us to continue as a successful country we fall back on how awful everyone is and just give up. What the hell does that have to do with American ideals of hard work and the primacy of free society?



Adam Shepard, Scratch Beginnings:

"I am frustrated with the whining and complaining. Frustrated with the materialistic individualism that seems to be shaping every 13-year-old to be the next teen diva. Frustrated with the lethargy and lack of drive. Frustrated at always hearing how it “used to be” when people talk about the good ol' days in the same breath as their perceived demise of America.

I am really, really frustrated with the poor attitudes that seem to have swept over my peer group. Frustrated with hearing “I don’t have” rather than “Let’s see what I can do with what I do have.” So, I have decided to demonstrate that it doesn't have to be that way. Here’s my premise:

I am going to start – almost literally from scratch - with one 8' x 10' tarp, a sleeping bag, an empty gym bag, $25, and the clothes on my back. Via train, I will be dropped at a random place somewhere in the southeastern United States that is not in my home state of North Carolina. I have 365 days to become free of the realities of homelessness and become a “regular” member of society. After one year, for my project to be considered successful, I have to possess an operable automobile, live in a furnished apartment (alone or with a roommate), have $2500 in cash, and, most importantly, I have to be in a position in which I can continue to improve my circumstances by either going to school or starting my own business."

Support this man: This is a young citizen who gets it. Not to kill the suspense, but he was successful in his venture. Of course it's hard to find a publisher for your book when you aren't whining about the falling sky and how Americans are destined to fail miserably, but I choose to believe what I always have: We are better than the sum of our parts and no problem is too big. WWII proved that, the civil rights movement proved that, hell - the last election proved that. I will be buying Adam Shepard's book to support him and to read about how he accomplished something that so many people forgot was possible, or worse, took for granted: Success, starting with nearly nothing, in the United States. What a novel concept.

The Sex Offender Shuffle

Myspace allows for transmogrification from pervert to fun Myspace user, and soon we're all an "Add A Friend" away from certain disaster.

I am alerted to this situation by my reliable friend Veda, who has posted an informative blog about Myspace sex offenders. Apparently 90,000 have been identified and booted from the service recently, up from the 40,000 or so previously reported. It got me thinking - are these the real sex offenders that your mother warned you about, those strangers that you are certainly not to talk to or take candy from, or are they the countless "others" who have been caught up in a wave of paranoia and the predictably failed, draconian response of law enforcement?

I ask this because pedophilia is a specific evil. Even the television show "To Catch A Predator," while disturbing, certainly blurred this line and did so in a questionable way. Because pedophilia is sex with children, and anything else isn't, we really, REALLY need to generalize less about this.

The sex offender list may be useful, but putting everyone on it certainly isn't. The first comment on Veda's blog goes something like this: "They should all be castrated!" Really? How would one castrate a woman teacher who had sex with a student? And why would one want to destroy her genitalia? Or anyone else's for that matter, seeing as we are trying to live in some form of civilized society and mutilation runs counter to that advanced ideal? Anyone who wants to mutilate people is suggesting a personal blood lust, similar to the death penalty blood lust that has killed innocent people, similar to the torture blood lust satisfied on Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib detainees (save America from those brown shepherds with the funny names!) It's amazing to me how so many "good Americans" are ready to destroy any remnant of this country's moral fiber by reducing us as a whole to the same level as the people we're attempting to punish. But give that commenter a knife and present them with the genitals of one of these "sex offenders" and see how sure it is wielded. Those with that particular bloodthirsty affliction would rather have the government do the dirty work, and that is beyond a reasonable doubt. You bring us down.

Oh, and leave your chemical castration musings at the doorstep along with your chemical lobotomy conjecture, Mr. or Mrs. Medical Expert. You sound like you might be from Nazi Germany.

The teacher thing: problem. A 21 year old male who has to register as a sex offender for having sex with a 16 year old girlfriend: problem. Is the 21 year old misguided? Sure, probably, but lumping this dumb guy in with a hardened criminal rapist or unrepentant pedophile waters down the list. I mean, how many times do have we have to hear that someone got in trouble for anything remotely related to sexual misconduct and then we read "and so-and-so had to register as a sex offender." What, did they have a Penthouse mag in the desk drawer at work when they got caught masturbating? Lewd and lascivious! Not constructive, especially when we realize that the list isn't set up to be punitive but to be informative to the community that the sex offender is released to. I don't need to know if Ms. Lefave is in my neighborhood. Psychologists and super-liberals can cry wolf all they want to about how the boy who has sex with the hot teacher can be as affected by that experience as the situation in which the male teacher gets his jollies with a student, but I will disagree here. The dynamic is different, and while I think that the female teacher/male student thing is a somewhat strange phenomenon, I also think that placing these women on a sex offender list is silly. Doesn't all of the publicity generally take care of that?

So what is the quality of this list of 90,000 Myspace sex offenders? How many are a threat, and how many are an annoyance? I would imagine that the real deal, felonious sexual predators are deeply in the minority. How many are pedophiles, attempting to lure kids through a social service, and how many are rapists? If a grown woman doesn't know to be careful before meeting one of these Myspace chaps at this point, then she may never learn. Kids are different, but private accounts and parental supervision go a long way.

The issue is that everyone is a sex offender now and on such a list despite the quality and severity of the crime and most importantly, the actual threat to the community. When did we forget that the safety of the community is the whole point of these lists, and not an opportunity for dimwits to moralize about "perverts" on one hand while advocating mutilation on the other? Which is worse?

Heat Seeker

I helped someone move yesterday, a brutal misadventure concerning ice and snow and a dank, dog shit infested basement filled with angry Rottweiler and those unhappy fecal and ammonia-piss smells. There's a fellow named Willie the Disk who occupies a space near the beginning of Naked Lunch. He's a heroin addict, has blinded himself by shooting up in the eyes, the stuff has eaten his nose and he has reduced himself to nothing more than a twisted mouth, hungry for heroin. He's a single-minded, single-product consumer, with no humanity left. He can only feed.

The house I moved this fellow into was full of Willies. Me, I was doing a favor for my friend Shawn D, and this was his uncle we were moving. I can't say no to Shawn D, especially considering that he helped me with my last move. It's never pleasant. His uncle was a squatter, basically homeless, who has done nothing but take his whole life. So in an effort to get rid of him for good, Shawn D and his mother and myself joined forces to move him out of the house where he was squatting, once Shawn D's home, and into this new situation. A new situation indeed - it's pretty much a flophouse for crackheads and heroin addicts and all the iterations of Willie the Disk. All family, a motley crew of aunts and cousins and the matriarch, none of them acknowledging the presence of myself or Shawn D, or anything else that can't be ingested to satisfy the nucleus accumbens.

These people fit a strict definition of human, but appear to be soulless shells who can only feed. What religion would save them? There's a good line spoken by the character Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Men: "If the rule you followed led you to this, of what use was the rule?" The man he was addressing was at the business end of a powerful gun, and soon the violent death he would suffer brought full meaning to the aforementioned quote. So if drug addled losers such as those I encountered yesterday are following any rule, it's a rule of self-satisfaction through drug use, at any cost, financed by visits to the pawn shop after petty theft of another's possessions or the marketing of the body. The scavengers are doubtlessly diving into the newly found items I hauled through the ice and snow and into the environment that consisted of the fumes of waste, and the utter waste of humanity presented upstairs.

I wonder if it's possible for any one of them to be saved? What is the point of no return regarding the complete wasting of one's life? Of course we see people wasting their lives all of the time, but is it useful to us to have a grim example of what not to do regarding the conduct of life? I wonder if many people have given up themselves after seeing others throw it all away, and know that this rock which orbits a shining star is a hard place indeed. Thus hopelessness.

I refuse to do that. Feeding is easy, meaninglessness is easy, giving up is easy. The hard part is to save yourself, the harder part is to save anyone else, or at least help them to do that. Many of an officially licensed, biblical salvation mindset believe that everyone can be saved. A noble idea, but one that in its consideration can't overcome the dark truth, witnessed by one's own two eyes, that some people you just can't reach. There is no saving some people.

It's hard to write off another human and then feel that the human experience is wholly positive, or at least has the potential to be. But we know that it isn't anyway the moment a child dies in a war zone. And if someone has written themselves off, they have taken themselves out of the game, and the game is the noble continuance of our lot, imperfect as it is, but special like no other form of existence we know of. I choose to experience it as fully as I can, well aware of the limitations of time and death. Those I can't control, but how I live within those boundaries I can. Therefore Willie the Disk can be educational, a pioneer into the dim frontier of wasted life, an example of one tragic outcome of singular self-fulfillment. We can learn from this and, if we're lucky, pull a few others along with us on this journey of unknown and unspecified purpose.

Thus meaning.