Fred Thompson supporters may not appreciate me lumping them together as a bunch of philiacs, but it's difficult not to think so after reading over the many waves and waves of anticipation over a, seemingly, inevitable presidential candidacy. My complaint does not lie with either their motivations or their intentions for supporting the guy, I'm quite happy the supporters of Thompson are motivated by someone. Unfortunately, (yes, here's the "but" part), I seem to run into too much of the same sets of phrases whenever I read about Mr Thompson in the blogosphere and that has me worried. It almost seems robotic or automatic in certain ways when you run into comments about someone or something that is way too repetitive to be regarded as original thought. Too many things said in support of Fred Thompson seem to me to be far too sound bit-ish and reminiscent of group think mentality. Are we, as conservatives, so desperate for a good candidate, that we hold someone (who can potentially be an honest-to-goodness conservative) with so much regard that we are blinded to any serious flaws that lay just below everyone's tunnel-visioned attention?

I really haven't witnessed a good debate about his credentials or his qualifications. The only thing I have really seen is a mild once over, then an agreement for support only because there doesn't seem to be much enthusiasm for the other candidates. Maybe I haven't read enough through the blogs and are just naive myself and have the wrong impression. Maybe there is a large debate going around and I just happen to be going to the wrong places. I doubt the latter, but time will indeed tell when he decides to actually run and I can see just what conservative principles he really stands on.

Personally, I think he is unelectable solely for the reason he is attached to the "Silent" generation. You can receive that as being rather shallow, but it is far from it. There is actually a lot of background behind my reasoning, and if you wish to know, you should read up on "The Fourth Turning" by Strauss and Howe. I think it can provide some historical perspective as to why I chose my decision about Fred. (On a minor note, he was a US Senator after all and they have been, as of the last several decades, unable to get elected to the presidency. AlGore and Kerry are more widely known examples.)

Finally, Harry Potter has vanquished Voldemort and can now go on a long (and permanent) holiday. Sounds good to me. I don't know why, call it masochism, but I have never really enjoyed the Harry Potter books. This view certainly makes me a minority (and a crazy one at that) and that's certainly fine with me. I have grown, over the period of the seven books, to grow tired of Harry Potter's character altogether. My biggest problem was that he never matured past eleven years old, when he first was able to join Hogwarts and get the whole story going. Throughout the entire series, the Wuss-Who-Lived was a boy obsessed with his feelings and never seemed to have gained the ability to communicate or articulate beyond the level of junior high. He always just threw himself into every situation, no matter how many times doing so ended up being a trap or an easily avoidable situation had he just taken a moment to think --something that everyone learns with experience. It's called common sense and Harry was terribly deficient in it.

You could count on Harry for getting into a bitchy mood every time he ran into Snape or Malfoy. You would think that after running into those irritating characters on a daily basis over a period of several years would flatten a few buttons. How many times does someone who irritates you, pushing the same button, send you into a rage before it's just time to get over it? Call me even crazier, but wouldn't experiencing multiple near-death situations, which progressively increased as each book was released, have a sobering and maturing effect on someone, even if just a little? Not for Harry Potter, nothing seemed to phase him for remaining the same immature eleven year old who could never learn except to become even more unreasonable and occupied with how his friends are going to be affected by some given situation rather than focus on the evil who will do far worse if it wins.

For that matter, just about everybody in the series was incapable of expressing something without it turning into a shouting match heavy with teeny-bopper drama should there be a disagreement from someone. What the hell is that all about? In the first couple of books, fine, but the third, the fourth, and so on? Is that how Rowling views how everybody talks to each other? Then there's another thing, it took far too many pages to get the point of a discussion. The inability of most characters to get to the point within the confines of less than 10 pages or less is both unnecessary and time wasting after you've gone through several hundred pages of it throughout the books. I wasn't expecting the Trio (Harry, Ron, and Hermione) to be equivalent to the Hardy Boys, but a little like them would have been nice!

I guess my complaint really goes beyond Harry Potter and extends towards the author herself. With all due respect, this is somewhat of a problem for female writers: They want to interject too much female qualities into male characters. Harry was a good example of this. Case in point: Harry's preoccupation with his feelings, he never reasoned through any situation, except after there had been some sort of eureka moment for the umpteenth time because the author simply wants to move the story forward after going on and on for 40 pages or so. (If you've read the books, you know this is not an exaggeration!) ...

... Oi! I did not intend to turn this into a rant fest over the HP books, so let's just end it by concluding I started enjoying myself over the last book only after I got to the "Battle at Hogwarts" chapter. I was not impressed with the Epilogue and thought it was cheesy, fluffy, and too brief. I got the impression Rowling had become exhausted with writing up to that point and just wanted to throw in a nice ending with just enough characters that it wouldn't cause too much upset but not enough where she would have to continue writing for several more pages.

I have wondered why some male heroes have to go on consciously struggle with their feelings. Two of the most popular and successful franchises who use male heroes have the need to control their emotions an important aspect of proper development throughout the stories. The two franchises I am talking about are Star Wars, and Harry Potter. As far as I know, and you can call this projection, but I don't go about worrying about how my feelings are going to get in the way of decisions. I have had my feelings apart of me for my whole life and I seem to get along fine without having to re-evaluate how my feelings are going to make my life miserable if, seemingly, left unchecked.

Both Luke and Anakin, in their respective movie sets, were taught early on that feelings were something to be suppressed at great expense, otherwise bad things will happen. (Bad things such as having to speak in poorly written, redundant dialog about how you've wiped out an entire village after your mother died in your arms from wounds inflicted by prolonged torture.) From Yoda, Qui Gon Gin (spelled wrong), Obi Wan, and even Darth Vader (for Luke), the use and control of emotions has been an integrated issue.

As for Harry, he has always had an issue with his anger. While my objections to the Harry Potter series extends to his lack of maturity despite his progression in age, one continued theme Rowling has purposely put in the storyline is his anger issue.

(Egads, where was I going with this? I seem to have picked up a bug over the weekend and it has wiped me out.) Anyway, it just seems strange to me how there is even an issue of emotional control with the characters mentioned above. To me, it is not a masculine viewpoint to reflect on a continual basis ones own emotions as they are in the  above stories. I don't quite remember reading this kind of issue with the likes of Heinlein, Ayn Rand, Asimov, Wells, et al. Maybe it is a contemporary thing.

"Conservatives think liberals are wrong. Liberals think conservatives are evil."

Yesterday had began a process of thinking that I haven't done in awhile (yes, thinking, what a concept). That process has to do with the arena of ideas in the war of politics, specifically, how liberals and conservatives view the world.

Without diving too much in to a complicated subject at which I will attempt to make my point from, I will do my best to compress this subject without drowning you readers with details and background. In any event, if you care to, you could always ask for clarification at the end as I do let anyone post comments.

In debating between the groups of conservatives and liberals you will notice, for the most part, that their styles of arguing are generally a dichotomy. Conservatives, for the most part, argue on the basis of reason, providing facts to back up their assertions. Liberals on the other hand, prefer to argue on the basis of emotion, providing an emphasis on idealism rather than reality.

The biggest draw back to conservatives using their main method of debate is that their facts could be wrong, or they have made some inconsistent reasoning based on faulty thinking. Simply debating the issue, with good Q&A, will resolve the issue one way or the other. The point is that the topic eventually gets resolved because a consensus is achieved.

The biggest draw back to liberals using their method of debate is that it isn't debate. Emotion tends to remove the person behind the emotion from the conversation, and instead erects a barrier that even an atomic bomb-powered sledgehammer couldn't budge. You cannot debate, let alone have a meaningful conversation, with someone who won't even listen, thus comprehending, your point of view.

There are two ways to resolve any conflict associated with liberals. The first is to agree with them, the second is to make a side comment about things such as the weather while slowly inching towards to door. Unfortunately, many of you (ha ha, as if there are enough people reading this to constitute "many", I got myself good on that one) have friends and family who are liberals, so the second option of "making a run for it" just won't work. Therefore, just simply changing the topic to more benign issues is certainly a better remedy, unless of course, you are ready to put up with the Liberal-Defense-Mechanism(tm).

I have found, by arguing with many over the years, unfortunately many of which was done on the internet, that liberals generally are very good at not responding or answering directly the issue being discussed. Generally speaking, when you really start to get at it with a liberal, when you actually get engaged in a discussion, the liberal(s) tend(s) to start up their Liberal-Defense-Mechanism or LDM for short.

What is the LDM? The LDM consists of several automated defense mechanisms that a liberal possesses in their brain that permits the illusion that a conversation or argument is actually taking place. When in fact the liberal is just playing games with you because they are unable to properly debate you on the issue, and are too arrogant or dumb to admit to such deficiency (which is especially true in the case where there is an audience, or others are in attendance in the discussion). In rare cases the liberal actually believes the totally ridiculous things that they say as truth, moreover that oddball non-responsive answers provided are not only sensible but that they are clever and witty.

To be more specific on what the automated defense mechanisms are, I shall give them each a name, then with a description of the mechanism's function. Some of these functions are well-established fallacies. These functions are not in any particular order.

1. Shotgun or Scatter: When in response to a point or question by the conservative opponent, the liberal will ask or say a whole bunch of things that are only partially related to the subject at hand. The velocity and amount of various topics that are spat out in rapid succession are designed to put the opponent (conservative) immediately on the deffensive, because as soon as the opponent chooses any one of the many topics that the liberal has rapidily fired out, as if being shot out by a shotgun, they have just accomplished a subject diversion that the liberal is free to waste time actually pretending to defend or rebutt. The scatter process can be done ad infinitum. This LDM is an advanced form of bait and switch, but the difference here is there are several avenues of bait instead of one.
   
2. Diversion: Simply put, the response is an attempt to deflect the issue to another issue to keep the opponent offguard. As soon as the new topic is accepted, the opponent has to start all over again, and if the liberal can't rebutt on that topic either, they'll simply switch to something else. It keeps the opponent guessing and on unstable ground.
3. Overgeneralization: The opponent or conservative states a position, a statement, or point, then the liberal takes the statement or point and restates it as an extreme overgeneralization. This particular mechanism is quite irritating to the opponent of the liberal, because it implies that the opponent is actually stupid enough to fall for this obvious trap. Either this mechanism is intentional or the liberals' brain really does add in additional words not originally spoken by the opponent, the latter indicates severe brain damage.
   
4. String-Powered: Remember those dolls that had a chord in their back, that when you pulled on the string, a device within the doll would play a pre-recorded message? This mechanism is no different from that of those dolls. The liberal doesn't really engage in the conversation, until their opponent says a certain "trigger word" that causes a pre-recorded response to begin playing out of the mouth of the liberal, as if someone reached back and pulled on a chord on the back of the liberal. The pre-recorded response is expressed to the point where the liberal is even unaware of what they are saying, because if you were to ask them to repeat what they just said, they tend to look at you blankly as if they actually said something a moment or so ago. Additionally, the fact that liberals tend to flail and commit many facial expressions at the direction towards the opponent during a "string pull", does not mean at all that they are even aware of what they are saying. This particular mechanism is by far my favorite, because I coined the term. (I think)
   
5. Non-Responsiveness: Is similar to the Diversion mechanism, but the liberal doesn't even go that far in effort. The response is usually something completely irrelevant to the conversation. Non-sequitor comes to mind when describing Non-Responsiveness.
6. Ad Hominem: "To the Man" is what the term translates as from Latin. Why even bother with a rebutal or capitulation to the point, when there is much more to gain from personally attacking your opponent! This mechanism is the worst because it not only confirms that the liberal can't win the argument, but that the insult reflects more on the liberal as a person than the person they are attacking. For a potential reasoning behind resorting to Ad Hominem, please refer to LDM #13: Rectal-Cranial Inversion.
   
7. Invention: The liberal seemingly pulls statements made by the opponent out of thin air, as if from a magic hat or their own arse, when the opponent never made such statements or implied any such rhetoric invented by the liberal. Invention is done in order to throw off the opponent, immediately putting them on the defensive by having to refute or defend a statement that was never said. For the motive behind the use of this mechanism, please refer to the tail end of mechanism #3: Overgeneralization.
8. Denying the Charge: When liberals defend against accusations that were never made in the first place. It is a pre-emptive action that causes many conservatives to scratch their heads in wonder, skeptically pondering why the liberal would deny something that wasn't even accused, unless there is something to the seemingly unnecessary denial.
   
9. Exclusive Dictionaries: When liberals like to use their own special definitions of words to prove their point. This sort of mechanism usually surfaces when liberals have only been around other like-minded liberals for too long.
10. Entrapment: The liberal will argue a point or position based on an unusual or specific, but non-common, definition of a word. This LDM is intended to frame an argument in such a way as to entrap their opponents, because the opponent would most likely try to argue from the actual definition intended in a normal discussion, thereby keeping the opponent from addressing the real argument, which the liberal would surely lose, and they know it, hence this LDM.
    
11. Clintonian speak: It depends on what the meaning of is, is.
12. Kerry speak (or Wafflism): When you vote for something before you voted against it. In other words, when you pander to both sides of the coin, but assert that you have always maintained one position.
13. Rectal-Cranial Inversion: The LDM is one of the most obvious to notice, because the liberal believes that it is so self-righteous, and the opponent is just plain stupid, that such pompous arrogance is self-evident in the discussion. For if the opponent truely understood the argument, as the liberal does, then the opponent would agree with the liberal. The fact that the conservative is merely arguing against the liberal indicates to the liberal that the conservative has mental problems.
    
14. Labeling: The liberal has to break someone down into a group, or identity. The individual cannot simply be as is. Every person on the planet has to be included into an identity, such as race, sex, religion, political leaning, income, nationality, etc. so as to allow a positive or negative judgment to be made of that individual by the liberal depending on the sequence of the grouping. Because this mechanism is so natural and instantaneous for the liberal, it is difficult to conclude the origination of this mechanism as being apart of the LDM or simply a (defective) wiring of the neurons. Without such certainty to point to the mechanism's end point, the function will be assumed as an LDM.
    

Because liberals utilize emotion in their "reasoning", they tend to view those who don't think (feel) as they think (feel), who just happen to be conservatives, as evil. To simply say that conservatives are wrong would be unnatural for a liberal.

Since conservatives tend to use reason, they tend to view those pesky liberals as wrong-minded. You will also notice that conservatives tend to focus on the rights and wrongs of the ideas, topics, issues being discussed while liberals tend to label both the person and their views as deficient, or worse.

You will also notice that most people who say things like "I think..." a lot in conversation are conservatives, while most people who say things like "I feel..." a lot tend to be liberals.

More to come.

Mad Cow in Pasadena (aka Weebork)

p.s. No typos were harmed in the making of this posting.

I had a small argument with a lady at my church over the popular vote vs the electoral college. I had injected myself into the conversation she was having with our pastor, and it remained civil, for the most part, except the entire conversation was one sided as this woman didn't even listen to what I was saying.

Her point was that the Electoral College (EC) is now irrelevant, and the US is the only country left in the world that doesn't elect through the popular vote (this was her strongest supporting point). I disagreed with the irrelevancy of the EC by saying that if the electoral college were to be supplanted by the popular vote to elect the president, it would result in over 90% of the country being ignored. She didn't get my point, even after I repeated it several times in different ways. I ended up asking her if she even understood what I was saying, in which she promptly replied "no". Either I have a serious problem communicating, or she was too dense, or unwilling, to atleast entertain my point. (Note: It is irritating to have to make this point obvious: It is ok to disagree with me, but there is a difference between disagreement and outright denying the consideration of an argument. If you want to disagree with me, fine, but at least understand what I'm saying!)

Why the popular vote electing the president would damage our country and ignore almost the entire county is because if the popular vote elected presidents, the politicians running for the position would only go to the most heavily populated areas of the country to campaign. Politicans would only need to campaign in about 7 or 8 of the most heavily populated parts of the country, specifically metropolitian areas such as LA, New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, etc. to become elected. The politicians would pander to those dense areas, promising all sorts of entitlements, while bypassing the other millions of people that live throughout the rest of the country. How in the world can you expect proper representation of the country to the degree that 90% of the country is ignored in its right to selecting a presidential candidate?

The Electoral College is an intergal part of our representative democracy. The Founders, having a clear understanding of the increased influence a highly populated state would have over a smaller populated state, decided to create a system to balance out the two types of states. This system was so important and necessary, that it was imbedded in the original language of the Constitution. The populous state would easily outvote a smaller populated state in a presidential election if the method of selecting the president were by direct democracy, ie. popular vote. Because there are more of the smaller populated states than highly populated states, the EC was created to allow the smaller states greater influence in a presidential election, providing a greater plurality of the country, to potentially outvote the fewer, though, highly populated states.

Let's remember that the EC is made up of electors voted by every state's legislature. It isn't just some phantom, mysterious body that magically appears every four years to wreck havoc on our country, electing an individual to the presidency by fiat, and then quickly dissipating back into the ether. The EC is made up of real people, that are selected by our state's representatives, that we, the people, in turn, voted into office.

The reasoning behind the popular vote way of electing our president is based on the idea that if more people want a particular candidate as president, then naturally they should get that person into the presidency through the popular vote. The problem with this, as stated from the beginning, is that since most of the population of the country is located in such small areas within a few states, the vast majority of the country would not have a say in the selection of a presidential candidate. There is no plurality in a popular vote. Plurarity, E Plurbius Unum, "out of many, one", is a foundational concept within the American psyche.

Amending the Constitution to annul the EC would not only be impossible, as the smaller populated states would never provide the necessary two-thirds approval Congress needs to pass a constitutional amendment doing so, but that the resulting change would cause a breakup of the Union as those same numerous, smaller populated states would understand that their say in a presidential election would become as annuled as the EC. If you thought the last civil war was bad enough, imagine a civil war in the US involving fifty states and 300 million people. You may think that this is an overreaction to the pro-erradication of the EC, but that is what I forsee in the future. The steps to chaos are quite logical in sequence if you take the consequences into consideration.

Aside from the fact that the smaller populated states would never allow a change such as the elimination of the EC, but the concept of initiating such a change is based entirely during certain periods in American society. Our most recent period, which began about 40 years ago, emphasized the individual, rather than the group. I would say that around the year of 2000 began the trend of society to once again focus on groups, and away from individualism. Certainly 9-11, and more recently the 2004 presidential election, has indicated that society is indeed, moving towards group orientation. The popular vote is a reflection on the emphasis on individual rights, and the electoral college is a reflection on groups, in terms of states. With this idea in mind, there will be no serious discussion among the American public to change the way we elect presidents. Perhaps in another 40 years, when the pendelum swings back towards individualism, can we expect the argument for eliminating the EC in favor of the popular vote to rise again.

To go back to the above ladie's point about how the US is the only country in the world that still uses an EC, such a reasoning requires am erroneous inferrence: That every other country is better than that US because they don't use an EC. Ok, so the US is the only country to have an EC, so what? The US is also the most powerful country in the world, being the only superpower, with the largest economy, the best military, the freest and richest, and possessing the most superior culture. Could part of the reason why we are all of those things be because of our reliance on the Electoral College? The reason for having an EC is actually strengthened because we are the only country in the world that uses it.

While hanging out with some friends at a Claim Jumper over a few drinks, our get together quickly turned into a roundtable discussion over foreign policy. There was some concern over Mr. Bush's diplomacy with countries that aren't helpful to the US. Countries such as France, Russia, and China were selling weapons, military equipment, and commercial items, such as fiber optic wire, for military purposes, to Iraq in the years and months leading up to Operation Iraqi Freedom (Gulf War II). Under the guise of diplomacy with those countries, the Bush Administration has done a good job avoiding public discussion of these dubious acts to the public. It is this friendly diplomacy that was the complaint.

I didn't really comment on the matter because I didn't really have anything to add. My friends were right in the sense that the Bush administration wasn't making public statements regarding the above activities to the public, but as to the reasons why the administration is purposely omitting such statements out to the public doesn't necessarily equate to a wrong action. I believe there to be much more going on behind the scenes than is realized. After all, there are two sides to a countries diplomacy: the public side and the private side.

The public side is the version of diplomacy that is released from the administration to the media, which is then disseminated. The private diplomacy is the diplomacy that is actually taking place. It can be that both types of diplomacy are the same, but I highly doubt it. Because there are much more things going on behind the scenes, it is quite impossible to tell what the actual diplomacy is. It is until private diplomacy is negotiated and implemented by all parties, when the private diplomacy becomes public domain. Something to keep in mind however is that not all diplomatic agreements are made public.

I think the skepticism over the apparent diplomatic handling by the Bush Administration is somewhat justified, however I think an important point must be remembered when keeping such skepticism in mind: The administration is working for what's best for the country. Even if we don't exactly know what the real diplomatic course is until it is finished, we can still be confident that the direction the diplomacy is going is good for the country.

In other words, I think the administration is letting these other countries know about their dubious actions, but it is brought up in the private diplomacy phase. Both parties want to gain from their diplomatic endeavors. The Bush Administration will no doubt use all the things the other countries have done against them to gain leverage. This leverage will be used to compromise certain things that those other countries want (gain), and the US can gain additional diplomatic conditions of its own. If those bad things are brought up privately, the administration would have much more leverage to work with against Russia, China, and France, than if the information was often reminded to the public. For the latter, it would be more difficult to negotiate because the governments of those countries would be in defense mode.

It can be frustrating to see a lack of public statements condemning actions by France, Russia, and China, but keep in mind the big picture when dealing with matters of diplomacy. I would like to see a more direct punishment by the administration to those countries, but perhaps there is a legitimate reason for the silence. I just don't know.

I am tired of the word judgmental. No, strike that, I am sick of people who use the word. Not only do too many people use the word too often, but they also don't understand what they are saying. What they think they are implying when telling you to stop being so judgmental is that you're being "too critical" in your value judgment on someone (or group) in particular. However, in order for you to stop being "too critical" they in turn become critical. So in other words, it is only wrong for you to be critical, while the chastiser may be so without question.

I want to cringe every time I hear the phrase "Don't be so judgmental." because the statement itself is judgmental. Also realize that such a statement is a self-inflicted trap for the person asserting it. It is just as idiotic to tell people not to be judgmental as it is to say "There is no such thing as absolute truth." Not only is it difficult not to get irritated at such nonsense, but it also says a lot more about the person saying not to be so judgmental than it does the person being "judgmental." People who say to not be so judgmental are probably the most judgmental of all people.

I think it would be wiser (and less frustrating for me) for these types of people who just throw out the word judgmental, to either shut up, or use the better version of the word: prejudgmental. If their intention is for you to not make a value judgment on someone because you "don't know them" or other such reasoning, then I think it would be better for them to use prejudgmental, as it adds meaning to their complaint. It is more easily understood to tell someone not to be prejudgmental as it is to tell them to not be judgmental. Certainly there are times when being judgmental is too critical and incorrect, and a correction is in order for such times, but I think that mistake comes from a lapse in prejudgment than judgment. Personally, I'd rather have them not say anything, unless it is to correct something asserted that is flagrantly wrong.

I think it is entirely acceptable to be judgmental. It is impossible not to be judgmental. Even merely asserting that you are not going to be judgmental is a judgmental assertion. The word simply means to be critical, but critical doesn't necessarily mean bad. Critical reasoning just doesn't leave much room for a variety of conclusions, narrowing down the choices to usually one or two, and those two decisions are usually opposite to each other. In fact, critical reasoning negates relativism.

I am judgmental, but I don't really have a problem with it. I understand that perhaps there will be times when my judgment will be wrong and unnecessarily harsh, but why should those situations negate the entire ability to be judgmental? I think that society would be better off if people were more judgmental, especially judgmental on social behavior.

I believe the story of Adam & Eve is not an historical account based on real people and a real situation, but an allegory. Many people consider the story to be literal, that there really was an Adam and Eve, and their decisions caused Original Sin, and God to cast them out of paradise. If there really was an Adam and Eve, then the story presented in the Bible has been altered. If the story hasn't been altered, then it is an allegory.

There are a few reasons why I think the story is an allegory instead of a literal account of events. The main reason is the discussion between Adam, Eve, God, and the Serpent. Many people who take the story literally consider the serpent to be Satan. If that is true, that the serpent mentioned in the story was Satan disguised as a serpent, or the serpent is merely metaphorical for the Devil, then there is a contradiction. After God finds out(!) that the serpent (Satan) had tricked Eve, God punishes the serpent (Satan) as an animal by cursing it to crawl on its belly for eternity, just as a snake does! First question: Why, if the serpent is Satan, did God punish a real snake? Was the serpent the Devil, or was it a snake? Even if the serpent wasn't Satan, it can still be said that there is a contradiction. If one takes the story as an allegory, the contradiction, while still present, loses significance because it is just a literary device.

Another point to add was the part when God, not the serpent, lied to Adam and Eve, when He told them that if they ate of the forbidden fruit, they would die. The serpent said they wouldn't die; they ate the fruit, they didn't die. Adam and Eve were already mortal when they ate the fruit, this is why God, speaking to someone else, or others, said that they'd better keep Adam and Eve from the Tree of Life to prevent them from living forever. All God did was guarantee that life wasn't going to be easy anymore, and that when people died, they would return back to the dirt they came from. No where in the scripture leading up to this point said, nor implied, nor indicated that Adam and Eve were immortal.

The lessons learned in the allegory help explain why life isn't so easy, that there is and will be strife, pain, and suffering in life. If the allegory is taken literally, then there are too many things that come up in the scripture that cause confusion.

It was very beneficial for California when Arnold vetoed the bill raising the minimum wage. For raisining the bill would have hurt the California economy. Some think that raising the minimum wage, thereby giving more money to people, would help the economy because then people would have more money to spend. While the first part of the previous sentence is true, that raising the minimum wage does give more money to people, the latter part is a misunderstanding of how a business works. So how would raising the minimum wage hurt the economy?

To explain the answer is to go to the fundamentals of business. I am going to point out that raising the minimum wage would have actually damaged the economy, and hurt everyone.

Businesses exist to make money. Their sole reason for existence is not to create jobs, or make the customer happy --those things are only bi-products. If a company is not making money, then there is no point to running a business.

[Note: Just for the sake of the below exercise, let us assume that $100 is a lot of money so I don't have to type out large numbers. So $100 is equivalent, in this argument, to $100,000.]

Let's pretend that we own a business, and this business makes widgets and sells enough widgets to make $100 in gross income per month. Gross income is the total amount of money a business receives before the deduction of cost. Cost is anything that the business has to pay for, such as bills, employee wages, resupply etc. Profit is the amount of money a company earns after cost.

So we, as owners of the business, have the initial $100 ,and now we have to take out cost. So let's say that utilities is $10, supplies for making more widgets are $20, and employee wages are $40. So total cost for our business is $70. Our profit out of $100 is $30.

Widgest are not that really difficult to make, so we don't need to employ highly skilled, professional widget manufacturing people. Instead, we can higher some high school students who make minmum wage to make our widgets. The total amount of wages is $40 per month.

At some point in time, the government announces that it has raised the minimum wage. The amount of the increase raises our cost of employee wages from $40 to $50. The effect of this raise in minimum wage is in regards to our profit, because instead of making a $30 dollar profit, we are now making $20.

Since businesses exist to make money, we as a company have to do something to raise our profit margin back up to at least what we were making, which was $30. There are two main things we can do: 1) We can lay off enough students to reduce the employee cost, or 2) We can raise the cost of our widgets. Since businesses don't like to lay people off unless they absolutely have to, by default companies facing reduced profit will raise the price of their goods and services. This raise in price is inflation.

Now that I have established some of the principles of business in relation to why the recent mininum wage increase would have hurt our economy, it is now time to focus out into the broader part of the subject.

I am well aware of the benefits of minimum wage. I think it is important for there to be a minimum wage that companies need to pay their employees. And there are times when minimum wage needs to be raised such as when the wage is below the traditional rise in the cost of living, not short term changes in inflation. Minimum wage is not entirely a bad thing, but it is mostly a bad thing. Part of the reason why it is a bad thing is well explained in the above hypothetical. But to add more reasons why a thing like minimum wage is mostly bad is because when it goes up, so does inflation.

Proponents of minimum wage increases are well-intentioned, though ill informed. Minimum wage rasies the cost of just about everything. The increase of minimum wage just ends up hurting the people whom it is designed to help. The rise in inflation that minimum wage produces keeps the people who are on the bottom living off of minimum wage where they are -the bottom-, but now everyone else is paying higher prices. How is this beneficial?

A particular point that proponents use is a trickle up theory, where you give more money to the bottom and it works its way up. So the theory goes, the more money on the bottom enables those that live on that level a little more money to invest, or put into the economy.

There are two flaws in this proposal. The first flaw, a fundamental one at that, is that the money that is given to the bottom is either from taxed money or law-mandated wage distribution. In other words, the money is *spent*. As opposed to tax cuts, where the tax law is eased and the money is *returned*, not spent. The second flaw is that the theory fails to take into account the inflation that is tied in to minimum wage, such inflation that comes from businesses raising their prices in order to maintain their original profit percentage they were acquiring before the increase in wages was implemented.

The California economy would have been seriously hurt by the introduction of an increase in minimum wage, and would have resulted in further inflation. It is already difficult for companies to make enough money where they are now, it will certainly be even harder if they have less profit by having to pay higher wages. Higher wages are good, but can only be effective in the long run if companies are able to stay in business to support those wages.

Some proponents of raising the minimum wage blame Republicans for being evil and hating the poor. This is both wrong and ignorant. These people fail to understand the fundamentals of business and how they work, which helps explain why they hate Republicans so much.

The Democrats need to come up with a new playbook:

In a reponse on another livejournal's website, I pasted the essay below. The reason in pasting the essay is because of its similiarties in language against the war in Iraq from the Democrats. [Remember, this essay was written in 1917. The founder of the Progressive Party is the author of this essay.]

http://www.progressive.org/nichols9901.htm (scroll down to the bottom of the page)

Title: The Right of the Citizen to Oppose War and the Right of Congress to Shape the War Policy

BY ROBERT M. LA FOLLETTE SR.

"IN these days whenever an American citizen presumes to question the justification, either in law or morals, of our participation in the European war, he is at once denounced by the war party and the war press as disloyal to the country. [Replace "European War" with "War in Iraq", and "war party" with "Republican Party". --Ed.]

The war party in the United States seeks to justify our entrance into the bloody conflict on the ground that it is in the interest of democracy. [How funny that this is the same complaint from the Democrats of today with Iraq. --Ed.] But every man and every woman knows that there is a struggle going on today in every civilized nation between democracy and autocracy. [Remember, autocracy is another word for "liberal elite". --Ed.]

Every nation has its war party. It is not the party of democracy. It is the party of autocracy. It seeks to dominate absolutely. It is commercial, imperialistic, ruthless. It tolerates no opposition. It is just as arrogant, just as despotic, in London, or in Washington, as in Berlin. The American Jingo is twin to the German Junker. [Hmmm, commerical, imperialistic, non-democratic, arrogant and ruthless, yep, Democratic reference to Republicans #2! --Ed.]

In times of peace, the war party insists on making preparation for war. As soon as prepared for war, it insists on making war. If there is no sufficient reason for war, the war party will make war on one pretext, then invent another, possibly more effective, pretext after war is on. [Please feel free to include the phrase "Bush lied" in there somewhere towards the end and we have yet another item from the Democratic playbook.
--Ed.]

Before war is declared, the war party assumes the divine right to denounce and silence all opposition to war as unpatriotic and cowardly.

After Congress has been bullied into a declaration of war, the politicians, the press, and the mercenaries of the war party assume authority to deny the right of American citizens to discuss the necessity for the war, or the ultimate object and purpose of the declaration of war. [Just read this whole sentence as the current whining about the Patriot Act. --Ed.]

Today Secret Service men, United States District Attorneys, United States Marshals, United States Court Commissioners, and other federal officials are rankly abusing their authority on every hand. People are being unlawfully arrested, thrown into jail, denied the right to employ counsel, or to communicate with their friends, or even to inform their families of their whereabouts, subjected to unlawful search, threatened, intimidated, examined, and cross-examined. The most sacred constitutional rights guaranteed to every American citizen are violated in the name of democracy. [Don't forget John Ashcroft is accused by Democrats for doing the same exact things. --Ed.]

It appears to be the purpose of those conducting this procedure to throw the country into a state of terror, to coerce public opinion, stifle criticism, suppress discussion of the issues of the war, and put a quietus on all opposition. . ."

It is time for the American people to assert and maintain their rights." [...And vote Republican! --Ed.]

June 1917

Robert M. La Follette Sr. founded The Progressive magazine in 1909. [Al Gore founded The Sore Loserman magazine in 2000. --Ed.]

With almost a hundred years of using the same, tired rhetoric, Democrats have better come up with something better if they want to win further elections.

I have an issue with people who whine about school administrations suspending students over zero-tolerance school measures. Critics of the zero-tolerance policies in schools state absurd examples of its enforcement to give credit to their criticism against such policy. For example, if there is a zero tolerance measure against bringing drugs to school, and a student is suspended based on that measure because they brought some Advil with them without going through the school first, the critics shout and hoot about how dumb these zero-tolerance policies are, and how stupid the administrations are for enforcing those policies in extreme ways.

What I would like those of you who may agree with the critics that zero-tolerance policies are bad, or to those of you who may not know much about the subject, I would like to put context to these so-called "absurd" enforcement of rules.

I will start off by agreeing with the critics that such enforcement is, to a degree, absurd. However, there is a method to the mayhem. The reason why school administrations enforce the rules to such absurd lengths is to prevent lawsuits. Because of the times we live in, if someone is punished for doing something quite heinous, they can sue the school, and win, if another student isn't punished equally, even if that student's actions were extremely mild, such as bringing Advil to the school.

I remember an issue over so-called "free speech" where there was a student at a school who wore t-shirts with vulgar, offensive language on them. The school suspended the student after the student refused to stop wearing the shirts. The parents of the student sued the school district not only because the suspension of the student for wearing his t-shirts violated his first amendment rights, but also that there are other students who wear t-shirts with "offensive" words written on them, but those students weren't suspended, therefore this is a violation of equal protection. The student won the lawsuit, forcing the school district to not only allow him to wear those offensive shirts, but they had to fork out some cash too. (Now, perhaps an argument can be made that it is the fault of the judiciary that is the root cause, well, yes, but that is for another discussion.)

So the issue is not the school administration's cruel efforts to rake every kid over the coals, even if such violations of the rules are benign, the real issue is the school's desire to prevent as many lawsuits as possible. One of the ways to prevent lawsuits to the schools is to enforce zero-tolerance policies equally on everyone, even if it makes everyone miserable in the process. It is until this plague that has been infecting our judiciary, where judges put their personal views into opinions, instead of interpreting the law, is removed, will frivolous lawsuits end, and so too, will the over enforcement of zero-tolerance policies by school administrations.

In other words, don't blame the school administration. Blame the lawyers, judges, and the dopey parents who let their children get away with nonsense, even to the point of bringing about lawsuits to perpetuate it.

Call it arrogance if you will, but I am quite frustrated at the inability of other people to realize that sound travels. It is absolutely amazing that most people don't realize that when they are making noise in their near vicinity, that those sound waves don't immediately fade out or only are heard by the person making the noise, those sound waves travel far and wide until they are absorbed by material or cancelled out by other sound waves.

I lived in a house for about a year that was filled with oblivious people. They would get up at wee hours of the mornin' to get ready for work, the day, etc. and decide that 6AM is the perfect time to start running the vacuum, or some noisy kitchen appliance, or prepare food for lunch/dinner that involves using sledge hammers, large axes, and table saws to the various food items that will be cooked together for the meal -- forget about the rest of the people in the house that don't need to get up with them at such an early hour.

At school, it is no different when it comes to the obliviousness. At the library, there is a section of computers that allow students to type up papers, research, or surf the net while they are at school (I am typing this blog entry on one of them). Some of these morons use AIM to use up their time. Using AIM is fine, I don't care how people waste their time at school, they paid for it; however, part of AIM's default setting is to have sound for the outgoing/incoming text. Every time one sends or receives a message the damn program makes a short noise to notify the user of the transmission. Many of these mongoloids leave the bloody sound on, allowing half of the library to hear how many times they've received/sent a message. It probably has never occurred to them that a library is supposed to be a quiet place, and quite frankly, I don't need to know that some jackass has had 57 message transmissions over the course of the last 30 seconds.

What's that you say? Why don't I ask them to turn their sound off, or get headphones? I do. After asking or telling someone to turn their blankety blank blank sound off for the gazillionth time, kind of wears away on the futility of trying to make dumb people aware of anything beyond themselves. It's not that these people are selfish necessarily, although that doesn't say that many of them aren't, it's just that these people are just too stupid to realize how irritating such actions can be to others. I am highly certain that a vast majority of them, at one point in time in their life, has had the subject of being aware of their surroundings brought up and discussed with them. So they can't blame their problem on ignorance. Their problem has to be more signficant: cranial malfunctioning. Maybe I'm being too presumptuous here, but I'm tired of assuming that these people are all aware of the concept of sound travel, but ignore the consequences because they don't care. If I'm aware of how much noise I make, then others most certainly have to be aware as well!

Most of the time I try to reduce the noise I make, if I am at someone else's house, or if there are other people around me who are either trying to sleep, or are trying to take advantage of a quiet atmosphere. I hate interruptions as much as anyone, so I try not to become an interrupter as much as possible.

Now I must be honest, I do have a weakness in this area: Dialog. I have a tendency to be a loud talker, partially because my vocal chords are built that way. However, I can get extra loud, especially during social situations where there is a lot of people, such as when a bunch of friends and I are out at a restaurant. I sometimes get caught up in dialog to consider my vocal strength, but I am learning, and I am getting better. (The difference here is that such social places are an expected place to make noise, especially if the place is crowded.) However, a vast majority of the time when I am at a location that isn't loud, such as a library, I am quiet and discreet. So people CAN learn, but maybe I'm only talking about intelligent people (I did mention the arrogance, didn't I?)

So, damn it, be aware of your noise. Unless you want to face the wrath of some blogger's rant!!

Note: I just noticed a fellow a few computers down from me who is wearing headphones. No doubt he is aware that sound travels. It looks like I'm not the only one who understands something so simple!

Light Bulb Alert Notice: If after reading this posting you have realized that you fit under this Habit, don't panic! You are on the road to recovery because you simply realized the obvious, and have gained some IQ points along the way, congratulations! You have now began a journey out of the Mongoloid category and into the realm of the common people (damn, there goes that arrogance again!).

I just don't believe that the character that we've come to know as Anakin Skywalker over the last two movies turns into Darth Vader in the third. The kind of character that Lucas portrayed Anakin to be would be too inept to become anything significant -- I don't care how many midichlorianes he's pumped up with.

Anakin was too emotional and never seemed to move mentally beyond that of a junior high student. On top of that, Lucas wanted this stupid Freudian origination of corruption. It isn't merely that Anakin was just some bloke who got tempted by the dark side and became a Sith, but that he had to have some deeper, psychological reason behind his turning. He was worried over his mother, fearing that she would die and he wouldn't be there to protect her. Moving on to Episode 3, the same psychological absurdity applies to his wife, Pad Me. Because of the warning presented to us by the English challenged, wisened Master Yoda in Episode 1 "Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering." We revisit this scene with the young Anakin in the third episode where the same situation is happening, but with the added bonus of actually being tempted by the capped devil incarnate Palpatine. Other than the idea of where Lucas gets his origins of evil, we are witnessing a plot line that enables filler between fight scenes.

The only thing that seemed to be of any significance, and which is part of the phiisophical debate over the origins of evil, is the actions and decisions that Anakin makes over the course of the movies that slowly turns him towards the dark side. Anytime Anakin considered or agreed with actions that were based on logic and less on feelings, was a turn towards the dark side. Any actions that were based in the reverse were a move towards the light side. In other words, any decisions that are based on reason are inherently corrupting. I consider it pathetic that Lucas portrays authority in such a negative way. So let me get this straight, if you are a person who is decisive based on logic, not emotion, then you are either already on the dark side, or are heading that way fast. How else can this conclusion be reached after watching the entire set of movies? The only people who actually thought things out in a dispassionate way were the bad guys. The only people who used their feelings were the good guys.

Did you notice that in most movies the bad guys think, and the good guys are just lucky? The Wicked Witch of the West, aka Darth Sidious and his band of flying monkeys, the insurrectionists, all planned, weighed options, and actually thought about what their future moves would be. After all, Sidious had this plan of taking over the Republic for over ten years, even before "Anny" pod raced his way out of his mother's womb. Palpatine always had this plan that he was basing all of his actions on. All of his actions and decisions were strategic, while those of the good guys, the Jedi, were all reactionary to Palpatine's strategy. It wasn't that the Jedi tried to figure out what was going on, but they merely reacted to the situations presented to them and charged at it with full force, never considering that perhaps directly attacking the problem isn't always the smartest way to go, considering that perhaps your enemy may be counting on you to act this way.

The only reason why the good guys seem to get ahead at all is because of their luck. The good guys are always too lucky to be of any worth. The plot development gets tiring after the gazillionth time it's displayed on the screen: bad guys win and win and win and win, until the very end, when just as the bad guys are going to completely win, the good guys win by some miracle. It isn't because the good guys win by out thinking their enemy, but by exploiting some mistake the bad guys made (and they always make some critical mistake) in their plan, or action in attempting to kill the good guys.

The Jedi never wondered how all the different events were connected. It never occurred to them that the discovery of a clone army coincided with the event of the separatist movement and the elevation of a Senator to a Supreme Chancellor with emergency powers. (Powers that the Executive Branch would get in all Democracies in a time of war.) The only thing the Jedi were good at is seeing a threat, and eliminating it by direct force (which is the main reason why people go to see the movies.)

On a side note, I was asked whether I thought Anakin was right in the scene where Master Windue was going to kill Palpatine without the benefit of a trial. On an abstract level, I can see where Anakin was right --that's why I initially agreed with Anakin. But after giving it some thought, on the practical level, I thought that maybe Windue was correct. After all, we're talking about a person who would later become responsible for millions of deaths, and overall mayhem and chaos. It took the skills of one of the most powerful Jedi to put Sidious in his place, and we're supposed to believe that putting the dictator on trial in his own country, with tremendous support by the Senate, is the better way? I don't think so. If I were put in that situation, I would have stuck him like a pig, and then taken him into custody. The higher morality (justice) in that regard is ending the war to end the continual loss of life, not the principle of giving the Sith Lord the luxury of a trial because of some assumed level of higher civility. The inference in the argument of killing him without the benefit of a trial is a foolish notion of "going down to their level". That if Widue had simply executed Palpatine, then the Jedi would have been just as evil as him. Nonsense.

In a final complaint, I did think that aspects of the movie were rushed. I also thought that it was cheap to put a Republic ship that looked vaguely like the X-Wing into the third episode. To become a bit of a Star Wars geek here, the X-Wing was entirely developed by the Rebels in the later episodes. They didn't modify it from existing Republic, which is why there were only Tie fighters in the first trilology. Also, at the end, the inclusion of the evolving Star Destroyer, with the beginning work of the Death Star, is too quick. If the Death Star was that far along at the beginning of the Empire, then it would have been completed far before Luke, Lea, and Hans ever got into the picture. (So, Star Destroyers, the Empire uniforms, the non-cloned officers, etc. were created almost instantaneously, but it took them twenty years to finish the Death Star?)

Despite my complaints mentioned in the above, I did enjoy the last movie. I thought it was better than the last two movies, but I do reserve the original trilogy as the better lot. For what it's worth, this Revenge of the Sith was visually, musically, and audibly fantastic. The characters are a different matter, but I didn't see the movies for them.

The cartoons of today are feminine. None portray boys or men with any masculinity. Instead, they are all what women expect men to be, wusses. Any male traits are distorted through such characters as bullies, or those male traits are discredited by being subjected to some psychological underlying lesson in civility. The lesson is always taught by a female in the cartoon, hence, a lesson in femininity.

Cartoon fathers are portrayed as either fun-loving idiots, or well-meaning idiots.

This sort of thing has been going on for decades. Look no further than the ever-popular (among liberal weenies) Captain Planet. A cartoon based on environmental wacko propaganda. The main character was a environmental nutbar liberal trapped in a Jolly Green Giant suit encapsulated in spandex.

Feminine cartoons are not inherently wrong, that is, as long as they are cartoons for girls. If it's a female cartoon, then I'm ok with that. But when all of the cartoons are girl-dominant, I take issue.

I think that cartoons will change in the near future to include masculinity. I blame the current round of feminine dominance on the Silent generation. When the Boomers reach a certain level of replacement level in positions of authority, we will see a complete reversal of males being wusses. Boys will learn to be boys, and men will allowed to be men. All in good time.

It will take a genocidal war to win against terrorism. Fighting a genocidal war isn't going to be fought because we need to be as brutal as the terrorists in order to show strength, or our resolve, or our courage, or any of that superficial, chest-beating, fluff crap. The terrorists will know how strong and powerful we are when we are killing them by the bushel, utterly crushing their skulls beneath the treads of our tanks, and taking no heed at slaughtering them in any way possible.

Until then, we will be fighting in a way that does not achieve ultimate victory. The war will wage on, victory is being achieved, but only at a snails pace and victory will not be ultimate. In its current form, the military is being restrained from winning. The military has the will and the means of winning the war, it's just that they aren't being allowed to do those things by senior military and political officials who are constraining the military because they are terrified of dragging the US into another World War. So instead of achieving victory, the military is to do petty things like surgical strikes, and occupy a country long enough for its own military and law enforcement institutions to get off the ground. Please note that this isn't a criticism of the policy to do those things, my complaint is that these actions don't constitute victory, but merely prolong the conflict long enough to allow variables that would complicate things, and therefore slow everything down even further to hinder total victory. If you want to blame, or worry, about the creation of any quagmire, you need to blame the old generations that are root cause behind it.

Our military is being kept on a leash. The military is being micromanaged by the Pentagon in order to restrict the military from killing too many people at once. This is why we gave the citizens of Fallujah a week to exit the city before we went in. If it were up to me, I would have given the citizens a 24 hour warning, kept the troops at the perimeter of the city, and then bombed the living hell out of it. Satellites or observation aircraft could have helped find terrorists by the use of infrared. Back to reality, the one week notice for Fallujah was to eliminate both the innocents, and a majority of the terrorists, especially their leadership (i.e. Zarkawi?), from getting killed in the vengeance unleashed by our awesome military.
[As if I feel sympathy for many of the civilians in Falluja anyway. They knew who the terrorists were and, for the most part, didn’t rat them out for whatever irrelevant reason. It's the same reason why I don't believe the local Muslims when they give the list of talking points, such as Muslims are against terrorism, Islam isn't a violent religion, Islamofascists don’t represent Islam as a whole, etc. If that were true, if they really meant what they said, then why don't these moderate Muslims stand by that and start pointing out the radical imams and their followers in their midst that are going to cause terrorism and death? I don't necessarily discount what the regular Muslims are saying, but I can’t figure out why they won't put their money where their mouths are and starting pointing out the islamofascists in their midst.]

The troops in Iraq know how to achieve victory, but the price of that victory will be too much for the media, and fellow appeasers, in terms of the amount of destruction that would be brought upon the landscape in the military’s campaign to victory. The media here at home would go absolutely berserk over the decimation of our enemies because the media is mostly fixated on the idea that any military action the US commits in its own interests is nothing more than an extension of Vietnam. The media, and most of the Democratic leadership, are all stuck in the 1960's, with a cloud of distru