The one thing that really bothers me about the abortion debate is that as debates go, this one sucks. Both sides really stink it up when it comes to reasoning through this complex issue. Pro-lifers generally hide behind their Bibles which is great when preaching to the choir, but utterly worthless outside of their little clique. Or they'll say "life is sacred," and then get hammered into the ground with the death penalty. But I'll take it easy on the pro-lifers, because I'm on their side. Besides that, it's more fun to beat up on the pro-choicers. Let's take some of their ideas and just... run with them.
The first centers around the question of "When does a fertilized egg become a human being?" Many learned people have come up with arcane and elaborate formulas for this, which can be debated until the heat death of the universe. I prefer much more simple and elegant solutions that can be proposed and discussed in the space of no more than two martinis. So a couple of years ago, I came up with a Modest Proposal-esque solution to this dilemma. It's really dead simple (rimshot, please): Let any mother abort any baby at any time, with one condition: under penalty of death, she has to eat the fetus. Raw, straight up, and no Tabasco sauce. If it's not a human being - just some foreign tissue growing inside of her then there's nothing really wrong or gross or even cannibalistic about it, right? Heck, it just came out a nearly sterile environment and any toxins in it are just stuff she's got in her already. Just think of it as a really exotic dish. Biologically speaking, it's not nearly as gross as eating sushi, and I love to eat sushi. In fact, since some sushi is actually served alive, we really don't even have to kill it first. If you catch it early enough you can just suck it right down like an oyster. Maybe we can throw in just a little Tobasco. Remember: it's not a baby or anything like that. And ... um... how's that argument working for you right about now?
Another line of reasoning suggests that OK, OK, maybe it is human and all, but since a fetus isn't viable outside of the womb it's not really all the way human or something like that. This assertion fraught with problems to begin with (as anyone born prematurely can attest), but let's just take it at face value because we can have fun with it. The obvious question that comes to mind is "why stop at birth?" Babies can't survive on their own, nor can small children... or even many adults. If they can't support themselves then they're not viable, and we should be able to abort them instead of letting them drain our financial and biological resources (hey, they're costing me money and that's standing between me and more sushi). You could even go so far as to say that people who don't make enough money to pay taxes aren't viable in the sociological sense (ditto). Heck, we could solve social security insolvency, welfare problems, and eliminate the possibility of any Democrat being elected to anything ever again right there! It's tempting.
And finally, we get to: "My trigger finger is part of my body and the government can't tell me what to do with my body!!!"
(For the moonbats reading this, yes, this is satire, and no, I'm not going on nor advocating a shooting spree. But if you can eat the fetuses... well, you win.)
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Arlen Specter - Whoopdy Do
Watching people get excited about Senator Arlen Specter (Ambiguous-Pennsylvania) switching from a Republican to a Democrat is like watching a bunch of five-year-old analyze a chess match by counting the number of pieces each player has.
As a practical matter, the Democrats go from enjoying a 62-seat majority to enjoying a 62-seat majority. Just because Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), and Susan Collins (R-Maine) have Rs after their names doesn't mean squat. It's how they vote that counts. And those votes were lost to the Democrats a long time ago.
As I've said before (well, not here), the Republican's best strategy would have been to kick Specter, Snowe, and Collins out of the party after the "2009 Stimulus" bill was passed with their votes. Not as an angry, infantile response, but as a dramatic gesture indicating a strong strategic shift in policy and as protection against the inevitable backlash that will occur once the repercussions from the massive increase in debt start to roll in. Apparently they're still convinced that the hill to stand and fight on is gay marriage (a wrong stand on so many levels). Americans really need a new party - one with libertarian ideas, but not so many Libertarians.
As a practical matter, the Democrats go from enjoying a 62-seat majority to enjoying a 62-seat majority. Just because Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), and Susan Collins (R-Maine) have Rs after their names doesn't mean squat. It's how they vote that counts. And those votes were lost to the Democrats a long time ago.
As I've said before (well, not here), the Republican's best strategy would have been to kick Specter, Snowe, and Collins out of the party after the "2009 Stimulus" bill was passed with their votes. Not as an angry, infantile response, but as a dramatic gesture indicating a strong strategic shift in policy and as protection against the inevitable backlash that will occur once the repercussions from the massive increase in debt start to roll in. Apparently they're still convinced that the hill to stand and fight on is gay marriage (a wrong stand on so many levels). Americans really need a new party - one with libertarian ideas, but not so many Libertarians.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Amazon hates rainbows. Or something like that.
There's been quite a bit of speculation as to why or how Amazon started suddenly filtering out sexually-themed material, particularly gay- and lesbian-themed books and items.
I generally subscribe to Occam's Razor and would bet it was a stupid policy move that backfired. Hackers? Not terribly likely - the sheer scope of modifying a huge, complex system in a precisely targeted manner would require almost complete and undetected pwn4ge over a long period of time. Glitch? Again, targeting such a precise (and politically controversial) target? Please.
But if I had to pull out my tinfoil hat, I would suppose that if they wanted to mollify a certain group of customers who can't stand to see certain types of product on their site they could do something like this, retract the move, and then (rightly) claim they can't do such filtering because of the backlash.
I generally subscribe to Occam's Razor and would bet it was a stupid policy move that backfired. Hackers? Not terribly likely - the sheer scope of modifying a huge, complex system in a precisely targeted manner would require almost complete and undetected pwn4ge over a long period of time. Glitch? Again, targeting such a precise (and politically controversial) target? Please.
But if I had to pull out my tinfoil hat, I would suppose that if they wanted to mollify a certain group of customers who can't stand to see certain types of product on their site they could do something like this, retract the move, and then (rightly) claim they can't do such filtering because of the backlash.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Circling the drain
School budgets have been all over the news in the past few months. I must confess to being entirely unsympathetic - over the past few decades there has been a negative correlation between increased funding and academic achievement. Correlation, of course, is not causation. While it's true that money and the quality of education are inexorably linked, it's not in the way that most believe it is. You see, I've been to the promised land - a public school that not only worked, but excelled. But why was it better there?
I have some answers that are informed by my personal anecdotes. I went to public schools both in Texas and California. Back in the day, Texas had many "Independent" school districts that were funded by local property taxes. These property taxes were staggeringly high in the middle-class community we lived in - about 3% per year just for schools. The school districts were overseen by a locally elected board of parents and managed by the best administrators the boards could find. There was pretty much no secrecy. Waste was impossible to hide. Texas being a "right to work" state, anyone who didn't perform was shown the door. Teachers cared about education, because if they didn't produce results they'd be fired. Students cared because high standards were demanded and enforced. The overall attitude was that we were the best and if you didn't do your part teaching or learning then you were letting down the team, and you did not want to go there. The results were amazing. Three of the four high schools were ranked (academically) in the top ten in the country. National Merit Scholars had to be crammed into two pages on the yearbook. 98% of students who attended my high school would graduate from college (not just attend). Academic Decathlon teams didn't worry about placing at the district level; they worried about getting more than 50% of the golds at state. If a student missed more than 5 days of class in a semester (regardless of the reason), they would have to repeat it. If you didn't have cancer, your were in class. Students and teachers didn't just show up to learn and teach, they showed up to dominate. Keep in mind that this was not a particularly affluent area; it was middle-class (with maybe 5% upper-middle class). In my mind the key difference was the culture of excellence demanded by the board, who had the power to enforce this culture in the administration, teachers, and ultimately the students.
I absolutely hated that place as a student. As an adult, I can't believe how absolutely lucky I was to have been there for two-thirds of my high school career. You see, I moved to sunny Southern California for my senior year. Allegedly I was in one of the best high schools in the region. It couldn't have been a bigger waste of one year of my life. Yes, there were a few decent teachers (perhaps 15%) who cared and put in solid efforts teaching their students. Only one of them could have even held a job at my old school back in Texas. To the overwhelming majority, you were a warm body in a seat for so many minutes per day. If you happened to learn anything (assuming actual knowledge was even being offered) then that was nice (albeit unexpected). The culture was about meeting the minimum standards necessary to get by. I quickly discovered that the only thing they really cared about was your presence during 2nd period, because their attendance percentage during that time was what controlled the amount of money they would get from the state. Aside from 2nd period, I spent about 50% of my senior year at the beach and still managed to graduate. To this day I don't worry about having missed anything. This is the culture you get when standards are set by government bureaucrats at the local level, state, and federal levels. Nobody is actually, personally accountable for anything other than meeting some practically meaningless guidelines written in Government-Issue weasel-words. The local school district doesn't care about educating kids (they would deny this) - they actually care about meeting state standards so they can get their money. The teachers have a union so powerful that they have the closest thing possible to tenure the day they are hired - a few that are exceptionally motivated will put in extra effort, but the overwhelming majority do not. The state people care about getting as much money as possible to expand their fiefdoms and budgetary control. Ditto for the feds. Any learning that takes place above some absurd lowest-common-denominator is a happy (and incidental) side effect.
Just like business, schools benefit immensely from local control and the only way the locals have real control is if they control the purse strings. It's the Golden Rule - "whoever has the gold makes the rules." The larger an organization is, the more accountability is blurred. It's extraordinarily difficult to maintain high standards as they grow larger, and the rare people with the ability to organize and lead huge groups aren't terribly attracted to civil service paychecks. There aren't nearly enough of them to go around in the business world which is one of the reasons executive salaries have been "bid up" to such absurd levels. Our local-yokel parents in Texas had the sense to bring in (and pay for) six-figure management skills, and got the commensurate results. Sadly, that all went by the wayside in the early 1990s. Texas courts ruled, in a fit of egalitarian insanity, that it was unfair that some school districts wound up with more money than others. Never mind that certain communities decided to make huge sacrifices to have exceptional education - this simply wasn't fair to the communities that wouldn't or couldn't do so. They were given the choice to share their local tax dollars with other school districts (leaving them no better off than if they were state-funded) or subject themselves to funding (and control) from the state. During this court battle our schools could not collect local tax dollars or receive state funding, but they actually had sufficient cash reserves to keep the district (and the lawyers) going for two years before they ultimately submitted. I'm not sure how long state-funded schools would last if pulled from the teat but I'd imagine the time would be measured in minutes, not years.
Before it was neutered, this incident allowed my old school to provide me with one final lesson in life. Liberalism isn't driven by those looking for the greater good. It's driven by tiny people who are so obsessed with jealousy towards those who do better than them - even if those people make huge sacrifices to do so - they'll do anything possible to destroy that success and bring others down to their level. It's people who are too selfish and lazy to do well making sure that nobody else can either so as to protect their meaningless and ill-gotten self-esteem.
P.S.: I can see some people whining and crying about how I might have learned something from the few decent teachers available during my senior year. Nope, not the case - due to the deficient standards in the local schools, what was being taught my senior year was generally at the level of we were being taught as Freshmen and Sophomores in Texas. Even considering the options we had to take classes at the community college across the street the opportunities simply were not there. These problems were exacerbated by lazy administrators who were unwilling to adjust for the relative levels in areas where taking other classes may have made a difference.
I have some answers that are informed by my personal anecdotes. I went to public schools both in Texas and California. Back in the day, Texas had many "Independent" school districts that were funded by local property taxes. These property taxes were staggeringly high in the middle-class community we lived in - about 3% per year just for schools. The school districts were overseen by a locally elected board of parents and managed by the best administrators the boards could find. There was pretty much no secrecy. Waste was impossible to hide. Texas being a "right to work" state, anyone who didn't perform was shown the door. Teachers cared about education, because if they didn't produce results they'd be fired. Students cared because high standards were demanded and enforced. The overall attitude was that we were the best and if you didn't do your part teaching or learning then you were letting down the team, and you did not want to go there. The results were amazing. Three of the four high schools were ranked (academically) in the top ten in the country. National Merit Scholars had to be crammed into two pages on the yearbook. 98% of students who attended my high school would graduate from college (not just attend). Academic Decathlon teams didn't worry about placing at the district level; they worried about getting more than 50% of the golds at state. If a student missed more than 5 days of class in a semester (regardless of the reason), they would have to repeat it. If you didn't have cancer, your were in class. Students and teachers didn't just show up to learn and teach, they showed up to dominate. Keep in mind that this was not a particularly affluent area; it was middle-class (with maybe 5% upper-middle class). In my mind the key difference was the culture of excellence demanded by the board, who had the power to enforce this culture in the administration, teachers, and ultimately the students.
I absolutely hated that place as a student. As an adult, I can't believe how absolutely lucky I was to have been there for two-thirds of my high school career. You see, I moved to sunny Southern California for my senior year. Allegedly I was in one of the best high schools in the region. It couldn't have been a bigger waste of one year of my life. Yes, there were a few decent teachers (perhaps 15%) who cared and put in solid efforts teaching their students. Only one of them could have even held a job at my old school back in Texas. To the overwhelming majority, you were a warm body in a seat for so many minutes per day. If you happened to learn anything (assuming actual knowledge was even being offered) then that was nice (albeit unexpected). The culture was about meeting the minimum standards necessary to get by. I quickly discovered that the only thing they really cared about was your presence during 2nd period, because their attendance percentage during that time was what controlled the amount of money they would get from the state. Aside from 2nd period, I spent about 50% of my senior year at the beach and still managed to graduate. To this day I don't worry about having missed anything. This is the culture you get when standards are set by government bureaucrats at the local level, state, and federal levels. Nobody is actually, personally accountable for anything other than meeting some practically meaningless guidelines written in Government-Issue weasel-words. The local school district doesn't care about educating kids (they would deny this) - they actually care about meeting state standards so they can get their money. The teachers have a union so powerful that they have the closest thing possible to tenure the day they are hired - a few that are exceptionally motivated will put in extra effort, but the overwhelming majority do not. The state people care about getting as much money as possible to expand their fiefdoms and budgetary control. Ditto for the feds. Any learning that takes place above some absurd lowest-common-denominator is a happy (and incidental) side effect.
Just like business, schools benefit immensely from local control and the only way the locals have real control is if they control the purse strings. It's the Golden Rule - "whoever has the gold makes the rules." The larger an organization is, the more accountability is blurred. It's extraordinarily difficult to maintain high standards as they grow larger, and the rare people with the ability to organize and lead huge groups aren't terribly attracted to civil service paychecks. There aren't nearly enough of them to go around in the business world which is one of the reasons executive salaries have been "bid up" to such absurd levels. Our local-yokel parents in Texas had the sense to bring in (and pay for) six-figure management skills, and got the commensurate results. Sadly, that all went by the wayside in the early 1990s. Texas courts ruled, in a fit of egalitarian insanity, that it was unfair that some school districts wound up with more money than others. Never mind that certain communities decided to make huge sacrifices to have exceptional education - this simply wasn't fair to the communities that wouldn't or couldn't do so. They were given the choice to share their local tax dollars with other school districts (leaving them no better off than if they were state-funded) or subject themselves to funding (and control) from the state. During this court battle our schools could not collect local tax dollars or receive state funding, but they actually had sufficient cash reserves to keep the district (and the lawyers) going for two years before they ultimately submitted. I'm not sure how long state-funded schools would last if pulled from the teat but I'd imagine the time would be measured in minutes, not years.
Before it was neutered, this incident allowed my old school to provide me with one final lesson in life. Liberalism isn't driven by those looking for the greater good. It's driven by tiny people who are so obsessed with jealousy towards those who do better than them - even if those people make huge sacrifices to do so - they'll do anything possible to destroy that success and bring others down to their level. It's people who are too selfish and lazy to do well making sure that nobody else can either so as to protect their meaningless and ill-gotten self-esteem.
P.S.: I can see some people whining and crying about how I might have learned something from the few decent teachers available during my senior year. Nope, not the case - due to the deficient standards in the local schools, what was being taught my senior year was generally at the level of we were being taught as Freshmen and Sophomores in Texas. Even considering the options we had to take classes at the community college across the street the opportunities simply were not there. These problems were exacerbated by lazy administrators who were unwilling to adjust for the relative levels in areas where taking other classes may have made a difference.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Greatest Speaker Evah!
Is it just me, or does Obama without a teleprompter sounds like .. uh uh ummm uh uh ...the world's most boring porn soundtrack?
Libertarians need to ... get a life
I've been beating on Republicans a bit lately, and so, having been inspired by a Girl in Short Shorts, I'll take a break and beat up on Libertarians. Your party sucks, please get over it. Don't get me wrong - most of the ideas are pretty good, and at least you vote your beliefs (unlike the Coke / Pepsi partisans), but given a choice between discussing political philosophy with a bunch of Big-L Libertarians and converting to Marxism - well, it'd be a tough call.
My biggest problem with Libertarians is that if they can't have it 100% their way, they want to take their ideas and go home. It's taken over 80 years to create the Keynesian mess we're in today, and it's going to take at least several decades to get out of it. Personally, I think the best road to take is to gently (or cattle-) prod your friends into more (small-l) libertarian ideas and inject those into the Coke and Pepsi parties.
It's pretty easy. For example, Republicans generally understand that the media hates them and their only hope is to be so ridiculously effective that even Obama's lackeys can't cover it up. This means not spending the country into the ground and promoting / going along with ridiculous economic policies (hello, Bush era!) that plunge the world into recession. You can't keep activist judges off the Supreme Court if the unemployment rate is going up faster than Obama's illegal campaign contributions.
Another example: Republicans pretty much get that prohibition doesn't work with guns. It's not a huge leap to get them to understand that it doesn't work with drugs either, and that side effects of the drug war include funding corruption in Mexico, the Taliban, a huge chunk of the organized crime in the US, and stuffing nonviolent offenders into our already overcrowded prisons. If a police state like the Soviet Union couldn't keep the drugs out, how is an open democracy going to do it?
Some other notes, while we're at it:
We're not going back to the gold standard, so get over it.
Ron Paul is a crank who is tight with people who wear sheets on their heads. You don't want to ever associate yourselves with someone like that. Dump him like smelly leftovers.
Ron Jeremy has a better chance of being elected President than Bob Barr. Seriously.
And, finally, highlighting the backwards "love" in R-evol-ution makes you look like a bunch of retarded hippies. Even if it didn't, it's not that clever. Knock it off.
My biggest problem with Libertarians is that if they can't have it 100% their way, they want to take their ideas and go home. It's taken over 80 years to create the Keynesian mess we're in today, and it's going to take at least several decades to get out of it. Personally, I think the best road to take is to gently (or cattle-) prod your friends into more (small-l) libertarian ideas and inject those into the Coke and Pepsi parties.
It's pretty easy. For example, Republicans generally understand that the media hates them and their only hope is to be so ridiculously effective that even Obama's lackeys can't cover it up. This means not spending the country into the ground and promoting / going along with ridiculous economic policies (hello, Bush era!) that plunge the world into recession. You can't keep activist judges off the Supreme Court if the unemployment rate is going up faster than Obama's illegal campaign contributions.
Another example: Republicans pretty much get that prohibition doesn't work with guns. It's not a huge leap to get them to understand that it doesn't work with drugs either, and that side effects of the drug war include funding corruption in Mexico, the Taliban, a huge chunk of the organized crime in the US, and stuffing nonviolent offenders into our already overcrowded prisons. If a police state like the Soviet Union couldn't keep the drugs out, how is an open democracy going to do it?
Some other notes, while we're at it:
We're not going back to the gold standard, so get over it.
Ron Paul is a crank who is tight with people who wear sheets on their heads. You don't want to ever associate yourselves with someone like that. Dump him like smelly leftovers.
Ron Jeremy has a better chance of being elected President than Bob Barr. Seriously.
And, finally, highlighting the backwards "love" in R-evol-ution makes you look like a bunch of retarded hippies. Even if it didn't, it's not that clever. Knock it off.
Republicans aren't ready to Move On and embrace Change.
Note: Believe it or not, I don't hate Republicans. Most of my friends vote that way. I'd generally rather have them in control than the Democrats, although over the last four years I'd call it a wash. If you're a Republican and reading this, think of it as tough love.
The Great Republican Blame Machine continues its witch hunt... now it's the Libertarian's fault their party is now less relevant than the winner of America's Next Top Model. I'm picking on Robert Stacy McCain in the link, but he's hardly alone in this foolishness and I'll give him points for showing my reply shredding his less-than-erudite commentary. Never mind that the so-called "Liberaltarianism" he harps on doesn't exist outside of the speculations of a few columnists. TheSocialism (excuse me) Progressivism embodied by the Democratic Party is pretty much the antithesis of Libertarianism. A few of the most ardent potheads and cokeheads may have voted for Obama on fight-for-your-right-to-party grounds had they actually been able stagger through the bong smoke or pull their noses away from the bathroom counters long enough to go find a ballot box (not likely), but believing this had any meaningful impact is about two orders of magnitude more asinine than believing the youth vote got Obama elected.
The theories have been piling up since November, each more hysterical (in both the humorous and insane senses) than the next: Obama used the Internet better. Republicans are underrepresented on Twitter. Obama had a better MySpace page. Google is run by Democrats. OK, well, these things may have cost some immesurably small number of votes ("You know, I was thinking about voting for McCain, but Obama Twitters! That is change I can believe in!"), but it's nothing like the number of votes they lost by nominating an indecisive old crank who - despite his crankiness - couldn't stomach a Jeramiah Wright commercial. Republicans would, in general, rather worry about Twitter than worry about the fact that 15% of their base is comprised of small-minded bigots who weren't going to nominate a Mormon who might have actually stood a chance at winning. Because that would be like voting for the Devil or something (there's an excellent documentary on people like this).
The real problem is that Republicans are too comfortable with the status quo to get off their fat butts and do anything - and I do mean anything - about the situation. It's not just that they're completely and totally unwilling to police their own, take a short-term hit and let a wobbly member of their party lose a seat (which might actually keep the rest of them in line). They won't even do the little things. Take, for example, NBC. Their MS-NBC channel was pretty much an Obama infomercial during the entire Presidential Campaign. Their parent company, General Electric, is one of the great purpotrators and beneficiaries of the global warming scam. So you'd think that Republicans, as a matter of principle, would avoid funding their political opposition by watching NBC programming. Wrong. The SuperBowl comes around, and they're suckling at the Socialist teat that gives them their precious NFL. I mentioned the possibility of missing a sporting event that they'll barely remember three weeks later to several Republicans. Here are the excuses I got:
"But dude, it's football."
"I'm not a Nielsen rater, so nobody will know."
So, you know, what you do when nobody's watching doesn't really matter. Nice to know that deep in their hearts nearly all Republicans have the same underlying moral principle as the Obama Administration. But what about when people are watching and counting each and every individual action? For instance, with Obama's other group of die-hard supporters: Hollywood. I can understand them not being able to watch a different channel. That would require pushing a button on the remote control (and in some cases, actually leaning forward or - extreme! - standing up). But with Hollywood, they have to decide which completely arbitrary and nonessential entertainment activity they will occupy their time with, then leave their houses, drive in their cars, purchase tickets for, etc. Can they control their spoiled little selves and not support people who will use their money to fund the Reign of the Obamessiah? Umm... no. That would mean missing X-Men XVIII - Wolverine Gets A Haircut. And we can't have that, now, can we?
Republicans need Change. They need to start with their small actions, and follow-up at the ballot box. Until they change themselves, they can enjoy watching the Progressives continue to ... progress.
As for me, I'm not watching NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, XNBC, LNBC, or RGNBC (not sure if the last few exist, but I want to cover all of my bases). I don't care who does or doesn't count this.
I'm also not going to see Hollywood movies. There are plenty of good foriegn films out there.
The Great Republican Blame Machine continues its witch hunt... now it's the Libertarian's fault their party is now less relevant than the winner of America's Next Top Model. I'm picking on Robert Stacy McCain in the link, but he's hardly alone in this foolishness and I'll give him points for showing my reply shredding his less-than-erudite commentary. Never mind that the so-called "Liberaltarianism" he harps on doesn't exist outside of the speculations of a few columnists. The
The theories have been piling up since November, each more hysterical (in both the humorous and insane senses) than the next: Obama used the Internet better. Republicans are underrepresented on Twitter. Obama had a better MySpace page. Google is run by Democrats. OK, well, these things may have cost some immesurably small number of votes ("You know, I was thinking about voting for McCain, but Obama Twitters! That is change I can believe in!"), but it's nothing like the number of votes they lost by nominating an indecisive old crank who - despite his crankiness - couldn't stomach a Jeramiah Wright commercial. Republicans would, in general, rather worry about Twitter than worry about the fact that 15% of their base is comprised of small-minded bigots who weren't going to nominate a Mormon who might have actually stood a chance at winning. Because that would be like voting for the Devil or something (there's an excellent documentary on people like this).
The real problem is that Republicans are too comfortable with the status quo to get off their fat butts and do anything - and I do mean anything - about the situation. It's not just that they're completely and totally unwilling to police their own, take a short-term hit and let a wobbly member of their party lose a seat (which might actually keep the rest of them in line). They won't even do the little things. Take, for example, NBC. Their MS-NBC channel was pretty much an Obama infomercial during the entire Presidential Campaign. Their parent company, General Electric, is one of the great purpotrators and beneficiaries of the global warming scam. So you'd think that Republicans, as a matter of principle, would avoid funding their political opposition by watching NBC programming. Wrong. The SuperBowl comes around, and they're suckling at the Socialist teat that gives them their precious NFL. I mentioned the possibility of missing a sporting event that they'll barely remember three weeks later to several Republicans. Here are the excuses I got:
"But dude, it's football."
"I'm not a Nielsen rater, so nobody will know."
So, you know, what you do when nobody's watching doesn't really matter. Nice to know that deep in their hearts nearly all Republicans have the same underlying moral principle as the Obama Administration. But what about when people are watching and counting each and every individual action? For instance, with Obama's other group of die-hard supporters: Hollywood. I can understand them not being able to watch a different channel. That would require pushing a button on the remote control (and in some cases, actually leaning forward or - extreme! - standing up). But with Hollywood, they have to decide which completely arbitrary and nonessential entertainment activity they will occupy their time with, then leave their houses, drive in their cars, purchase tickets for, etc. Can they control their spoiled little selves and not support people who will use their money to fund the Reign of the Obamessiah? Umm... no. That would mean missing X-Men XVIII - Wolverine Gets A Haircut. And we can't have that, now, can we?
Republicans need Change. They need to start with their small actions, and follow-up at the ballot box. Until they change themselves, they can enjoy watching the Progressives continue to ... progress.
As for me, I'm not watching NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, XNBC, LNBC, or RGNBC (not sure if the last few exist, but I want to cover all of my bases). I don't care who does or doesn't count this.
I'm also not going to see Hollywood movies. There are plenty of good foriegn films out there.
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