Psychopolitik 2.0

Libertarian Public Service Announcement:

-When we talk about state failure in terms of “who regulates the regulators?”, this would be an example of what we mean:

The funds that pay pension and health benefits to police officers, teachers and millions of other public government employees across the country are facing a shortfall that could soon run into trillions of dollars.

But the accounting techniques used by state and local governments to balance their pension books disguise the extent of the crisis facing these retirees and the taxpayers who may ultimately be called on to pay the freight, according to a growing number of leading financial analysts.

State governments alone have reported they are already confronting a deficit of at least $750 billion to cover the cost of the retirement benefits they have promised. But that figure likely underestimates the actual shortfall because of the range of methods they use to make their calculations, including practices that have been barred in the private sector for decades.

Local governments use these same techniques for their pension funds and face deficits that further contribute to what some investors and analysts say may be shaping up to be a massive breach of faith with a generation of public government employees. (emphasis mine)

On the bright side, those rules aren’t even serving the purpose people thought in the “private” sector either, so you could rationalize this as the State for once avoiding something that doesn’t help. If you’re desperate, that is.

Sometimes there are moments where, even when you know much of the information already, seeing it nakedly laid out in chronological order really pushes your buttons.  I know we generally bash Bush as dumb, yet the worst part isn’t his own lack of intelligence, but how that trait made him so easy to convince to go along with dumb and/or evil ideas.  I doubt there’d be such emphasis on his brain if it didn’t drag us into committing rampant war crimes.

This needs to end, at all costs, as soon as possible.   If  we keep going down this road, eventually some other country will start discussing invading us for “liberation”…

Another no-knock.  Another innocent man given the Tony Montana treatment.  This time he didn’t even have a gun that WORKED, it was just for looks to scare off intruders.  The cops mistook jewelry making supplies for drug paraphernalia, and saw fit to knock down the door & damn near murder this guy, and then had the NERVE to charge him with assault when he didn’t fire a single shot, meanwhile the cops left an irretrievable bullet near his heart.  Radley has the whole story, try not to throw your monitor in a fit of rage while reading it.

Radical times forge radical people.  This goes on long enough, there won’t be enough handcuffs for them to lock up everyone that ends up Cory Maye instead of Kathryn Johnson.  This is clearly thanks to the War on Drugs, and would cease with its peaceful end.  Sadly, it looks like that conclusion will not be realized until after more bodies needlessly pile up.  If this is what it takes, then so much for civil society, interesting times for all…

For some reason, USA Today did an interview with Hillary.  During that interview, she said this (all emphasis mine):

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

“There’s a pattern emerging here,” she said.

Let’s count the possible insinuations here, shall we?

1. A college education means you don’t do “hard work”.
2. “hard-working” minorities are irrelevant.
3. Whites that have been to college are somehow corrupted.
4. Only poor whites do “hard work”; blacks are either on welfare or uppity college-educated fancy car drivin’ Dilbert-with-a-tan negros.
5. Non-college educated whites are automatically racist, and should be pandered to.
6. Everyone that votes does so on the basis of race when there’s that option, and there’s more whites than non-whites, ESPECIALLY blue-collar whites, so…’nuff said.

Unlike much tamer comments by Obama, this will not be called out in the media as a WTF moment.  Why?  Because they go by narratives that are imprinted on the coverage from day one, and a rule of their narrative is that an establishment candidate always gets the benefit of the doubt, whereas an “outsider” can barely breathe without saying something stupid.  Besides, she’s white and Bill’s Wife, he’s some skinny nigra that knows how to talk.

This isn’t about being for or against either of them: the only reason I register to vote anymore is so they know that I chose not to though I could, as a silent protest against legitimizing a system that I reject.  It’s about how the media’s definition of fairness is to give equal time to obviously dumb ideas, and not to treat similar conduct with the same response when different people engage in it.  It’s about my amusement at how when someone of the majority plays to race as a factor it’s seen as OK, while the slightest whiff of it from anyone else signals Panic Time.  Most importantly, it’s about being absolutely SICK and TIRED of hearing people who by definition don’t care spewing “blue-collar” this and “regular folks” that & not being questioned about it, when in the long run the best outcome for “regular folks” involves these empty suits taking a 7 foot walk off a 6 foot ledge.

-I just got back from an event where they had beer and all you can eat chicken wings. An’ it was for CHARITY! That’s my kind of givin’, hells yeah!

-Um…oh yeah, Microsoft can suck my dick. What someone plays on their portable video/audio player should be none of their damn business. What’s the deal with this gradual overriding of the proper concept of what it means to buy something? I pay you for a product, from then on it is mine, I can do whatever I feel like with it, if you have any power over me whatsoever then I am merely renting, which means you lied to me in the process of buying it. THAT, folks, is why I bought a no-name mp3 player, it was cheaper and they understood their role, which was to give me the ability to play mp3s on it, and stay out of my way.

-Remember that book about Cocaine I mentioned here before? Lately I’ve been rereading it, and I notice a curious undercurrent behind the history of yayo that says a lot about class, race & the true nature of international trade. That it all started with incas chewing a leaf and getting a buzz akin to some really good coffee, then went on to being exploited to keep them in what might as well have been slave labor by the imperialist invaders of the time, only to be distilled to its purest state and used for medical purposes w/ a wink and nod towards the global corporations that were dealing the shit, only for the world to freak once the people where coca actually grew started getting paid off of it, really says a lot. It’s fast becoming a cliche here, but I gotta say it in reference to how people south of the border took up demand of such a popular product: what the fuck did you expect? It’s highly ironic that the easiest way of dealing with the street crime in the US due to the drug trade — calling off this retarded-ass “War on Drugs” — would, if one seriously thought about it, actually make it much less lucrative. The status quo, functionally speaking, is no different from simply subsidizing the production of Young Jeezy’s Favorite Subject.

-Irony is…the office responsible for enforcing whistleblower protections & anti-discrimination meansures within the gov’t being investigated for violating whistleblower protections & anti-discrimination measures.

-Associated Press: “Borrowing is higher than expected“. Gee, ya think?!?

-Last but definitely not least, some good news for the ladies with Backtion: a recent study suggests that a certain type of hip and butt fat actually helps prevent diabetes.

Of course, I am referring to Chris Paul. What a ridiculous outcome…

re: those exit polls: How long is the gap between that and knowing the actual result, on average? Who started the exit poll thing anyway?

Yes, that’s the closest I will come to talking about todays primaries, because to be honest with you I’m wrapped up in multiple layers of don’t give a fuck, and the Cavs play in a few minutes.

The “war on drugs” claims another one:

A man who was denied a liver transplant largely because he used marijuana with medical approval to ease the symptoms of hepatitis C has died.

Timothy Garon, 56, died Thursday at Bailey-Boushay House, an intensive care nursing center, said his lawyer, Douglas Hiatt, and Alisha Mark, a spokeswoman for Virginia Mason Medical Center, which operates Bailey-Boushay.

His death came a week after a doctor told him a University of Washington Medical Center committee had again denied him a spot on the liver transplant list. The team had previously told him it would not consider placing him on the list until he completed a 60-day drug-treatment class. (emphasis mine)

Clearly he didn’t HAVE 60 days, huh? Dumbasses like this get medical licenses?

The case highlights an ethical consideration for those allocating organs for transplant: whether using marijuana with a doctor’s blessing should be held against a dying patient in need of a transplant.

The Virginia-based United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees the nation’s transplant system, leaves it to individual hospitals to develop criteria for transplant candidates.

At some, people who use “illicit substances” — including medical marijuana, even in the dozen states that allow it — are automatically rejected. At others, patients are given a chance to reapply if they stay clean for six months. Marijuana is illegal under federal law.

Uh, yeah, because all “illicit” substances are the same, and marijuana being the only thing that kept him functional during his last days still made him a junkie in their eyes. Do they turn away alcoholics? And if not, why not?

May this tragedy earn them a huge malpractice suit.

If this story qualifies as a “top story” for Yahoo News’ frontpage, then they need to slap whoever programmed that computer algorithm that picks those.

“Oh, those poor, downtrodden record & film companies!“:

A House committee passed an anti-piracy bill yesterday that would stiffen penalties for illegally copying and distributing music and movies and would create an “intellectual property czar” at the White House level — a job that the Justice Department warned would “undermine” its independence.

The bill, introduced in December by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and 17 co-sponsors and known as the Pro IP Act, is championed by a broad base of intellectual-property holders, including entertainment companies, auto parts manufacturers, drugmakers and unions. It now heads to the House floor, and advocates hope it will pass this summer.

In addition to creating the position of IP czar, the bill would amend federal copyright law to add resources to the fight against piracy and raise the ceiling on damages that could be awarded by a civil court to a rights-holder whose work had been pirated.

It’s a sign of just how idiot-to-the-core this idea is that the Justice Department actually opposes it. Clearly the media conglomerates wanted this, and they convinced Conyers to go along with their idea by throwing in his state’s particular dying industry. The drug companies are just extra money behind it — tax dollars end up subsidizing their research anyway, and how often does anyone in the US come across counterfeit drugs?

“Intellectual Property” is a crock, an inherently unenforceable concept created out of thin air that in practice does nothing but facilitate the separation of creative content from its true creator. The music industry itself might as well be a sweatshop, as unless you’re Madonna or 50 Cent you have no leverage to get what you deserve on a label. The movie studios should really just shut up, because one look at how much they rake in despite the overwhelming suckitude of Hollywood these days shows just how much “piracy” hurts (read: zilch). In the US the only people that can download movies like that have souped-up higher-tier broadband connections, and just because they download some movies does not mean that they don’t buy DVDs — besides, in case you hadn’t noticed, thanks to the ISPs dragging their heels on network capacity, it’s kinda a hassle downloading large files, part of the reason why they actively try to dissuade people from taking literally their big flashy ads for “Unlimited access! Blazing speed!”. If their prime concern is overseas piracy then they’re even dumber than I thought: somehow I doubt the average person in China has enough money to buy the real thing anyway.

The old content regime is dead, it just doesn’t realize it yet. Eventually we’re going to get to a point where CDs, movie theaters & video rental stores are obsolete, everyone just downloads it all. People won’t distinguish between “mainstream” and “underground” musicians anymore, as they’ll have the same access to either, and compensation for their work will go directly to the artists, with no middleman. Except for a die-hard traditionalist fringe, films will be released online & downloaded directly into your TV, and it will take the same amount of effort to watch an indie flick as it will to watch the type of films that are mass released now, and star power alone will not guarantee a jackpot, so there’ll be incentive to make sure that all costs are necessary to making the film & not mere self-aggrandizement. We’ll look at this turn of events and wonder why we tolerated it any other way in the first place. Who will we have to thank for it all? Our friendly neighborhood pirates, for showing the way forward.

This bill = pissing into the wind. With your mouth open. After drinking two 40s of Olde English and eating General Tso Chicken all day.