Separation of State and Superstition

Health Care - Why Does it Cost So Much?

2010-01-11T19:33:00.001-08:00

Why does it cost so much? This is the big question that seems to be avoided most of the time.

The answer is transparently simple. It costs so much because there is nearly unlimited demand. There is nearly unlimited demand because the segment of the population that uses the most health care gets it for free.

It's all about supply and demand. If something highly desired is free, what else can happen to the price other than go up?

Medicare is the sole cause of skyrocketing health care insurance costs. Medicare was started in 1965. Before that time, going to the doctor was like going to the car mechanic - it was an unpleasant expense but it was manageable. The health care insurance problem has been growing since 1965.

What would happen if the government gave free cars to all kids between the ages of 16 to 24 years old? Every kid would have an awesome car. The price of cars would go up. The technology in the cars would rapidly improve because price is meaningless to the kids when the government is paying the bill. Pretty soon, only the kids will have cars and the rest of us will be riding the bus.

There are two solutions to the health care crisis

Get rid of medicare
Give medicare to everyone

Getting rid of medicare is impossible because seniors vote and they won't go for it. No politician is gutsy enough to advocate scaling down medicare. Giving medicare to everyone is therefore the only reasonable solution. And it's a fair solution. Giving free health care insurance to a single segment of the population is NOT fair.

Interestingly, seniors don't like the idea of giving medicare to everyone. Why? Because they correctly realize the country cannot possibly afford to give everyone the same benefits currently enjoyed by seniors. In other words, their privileged portion of the pie will be reduced when everyone gets an equal slice.

Read this for a little more detail.

Simple Fix For Economy That Won't Cost a Dime

2009-12-28T22:44:00.000-08:00

Here's a simple fix for our economic woes that won't cost a dime:

eliminate all sales taxes.
tax only individuals on their income, not businesses.

Sales tax is not fair. Why? Because sales taxes put more burden on poor people than on rich people. Imagine two people, one makes $25 per day and the other makes $100 per day. On a particular day, they both buy a movie DVD for $20 and pay 8% sales tax which is $1.60. Both people paid $1.60 in sales tax but that represents 6.4% of the lower income person's daily salary while it's a mere 1.6% of the other person's daily salary. The reality is - poor people are shouldering a ridiculously unreasonable share of the sales tax burden.

Sales taxes are a terrible idea that should be stopped. Right now, many companies are complaining that Amazon doesn't have to charge sales tax giving Amazon an unfair advantage over their brick and mortar competitors. Eliminating all sales taxes for everyone will fix this.

How about taxing people on income and not taxing businesses? There's no such thing as a business without people. A business is just a concept - there has to be someone receiving the profit. Why not just tax the income when a person actually receives it? Eliminating income tax on busines will free business to focus on good ideas rather than tax impact.

Where can states and cities get their income if there is no sales tax? From income taxes alone.

What would happen in our economy if there were no sales taxes and no tax on businesses? The economy would become highly productive because no one and no business would be wasting time and money trying to control their tax exposure - we would enter a whole new era of productivity and wealth. This would be a positive change in our society on a scale to rival the industrial revolution and at the same time, it would be more fair.

See http://fairsimpletax.blogspot.com/ for more detail.

Michael Moore's Sicko is the Best Film he has Made

2009-07-21T20:30:00.000-07:00

Just watched "Sicko" by Michael Moore and it was great!

I haven't been a big fan of his films in the past because they tend to be over-sensationalized and emotional without really examining the issues.

Sicko starts off looking like a typical Michael Moore film replete with testimonials of people complaining about our health care system. It then transitions into more of a true documentary by asking the important questions and taking a look at the answers.

The film examines the health care system in Canada, France and England. It looks at the incomes of doctors working in those socialized medicine countries. It looks at the quality of their health care systems and their prescription drug prices.

Unfortunately, the film totally misses the boat when it tries to explain how our American health care system got so broken. For that, please see this article in my blog: Health Care Crisis

I highly recommend everyone to see the film "Sicko" by Michael Moore.

The Problem with Healthcare

2009-06-24T11:56:00.000-07:00

The soaring cost of healthcare and healthcare insurance is called a crisis. Many people talk about the crisis in healthcare but few ask, where did the crisis come from? As if healthcare is somehow preordained to be in a perpetual crisis by its intrinsic nature.

The simple and obvious truth is, the healthcare crisis is caused by medicare. What is medicare? It's socialized medicine but it's only socialized for a specific segment of the population - the elderly. Any American of a certain age automatically qualifies for medicare and at that point, their healthcare is paid by the government which of course, gets the money from the rest of us via income tax.

Medicare was created in 1965. Before 1965, seeing a doctor or going to the hospital was just like having car trouble or seeing the dentist today. It was an extra expense that was unanticipated and unpleasant but you could deal with it and pay for it out of your own savings. Today, very few people could afford a trip to the hospital. The simplest thing, like a broken leg, is outrageously expensive. Since healthcare is outrageously expensive, naturally the insurance is going to be expensive also.

How did medicare cause the current high-price crisis in healthcare? Remember the principle of supply and demand? The senior segment of the population gets free socialized medicine. Since it's free, there is no control on the demand for healthcare by the elderly. They can go to the doctor as much as they want and the taxpayers will pay for it. They can get expensive MRI scans and drugs as much as they want and the taxpayers will pay for it. MRI and other amazing technology will be invented and implemented at a fast pace because medicare guarantees a deep pocket to pay the inventors and make them rich. And on and on. Socialized medicine has created nearly unlimited demand. High demand means high prices. There's no getting around that.

What if the government decided that all young people between the ages of 16 - 30 have a right to any car of their choice and as many cars as they desire and the government will pay for everything? Car prices would skyrocket just like healthcare prices have skyrocketed. There would be unlimited demand for new cars. Young people would use their government car ticket to buy Porche's and Ferrari's. Some would buy American cars but even the least fancy car acquired by a young person would have all the bells and whistles and extra charges. Car makers would start inventing faster and more impressive cars because there's a guaranteed market to the young people and price is not a problem. New technology would be invented at a fast pace because it's guaranteed to sell to the young people. Meanwhile, prices would skyrocket and the rest of us would have to start riding a bus because owning our own car would be out of reach.

How can we fix this problem? First, recognize and understand the source of the problem. Then, there are quite a few options. We could begin to place restrictions and limits on medicare to slow down the demand. We could eventually phase out medicare but, hopefully, it would be done over a long time span and with the least amount of pain inflicted on the elderly who have grown up paying their share of medicare taxes and expect to be taken care of.

Another possibility is to let young people in the work force sign a contract stipulating they only have to pay half the normal medicare tax but will not receive medicare when they get old, benefiting them now and for the rest of their working life and benefiting society later.

Another possibility is to go the other direction and completely socialize healthcare for the entire population instead of just for the elderly. That would certainly be more fair than the current system. If healthcare is completely socialized, access to healthcare will naturally be restricted (no economy could possibly enable everyone to have as much as they want the way seniors do now - that's as impossible as raising the minimum wage to $500 per hour), quality will go down (from the perspective of wealthy people who get everything they want from our current system) and the system will either bankrupt itself or access will be restricted to an equilibrium point where people are willing to live with the level of service and willing to live with the taxes to pay for it at the same time.

It's possible that if healthcare is socialized completely, eventually the healthcare system will suck so bad that people will finally realize it's bad and get rid of the socialism and move back to a free-enterprise approach to healthcare. Completely socializing medicine could actually be a step towards getting rid of socialized medicine. And, if healthcare is socialized completely, at least it would be more fair than the current corrupt and broken system that only benefits a specific segment of society.

Here's an article from the New York Times which clearly illustrates how seniors are using the medicare system in Florida:

September 13, 2003

RE-EXAMINING MEDICARE

Patients in Florida Lining Up for All That
Medicare Covers

By GINA KOLATA

BOCA RATON, Fla. - It is lunchtime, and the door to Boca Urology's office is locked. But outside, patients are milling about, calling the office on their cellphones, hoping the receptionist will let them in. To say they are eager hardly does them justice.

"We never used to lock the door at lunch, but they came in an hour early," said Ellie Fertel, the office manager. "It's like they're waiting for a concert. Sometimes we forget to lock the door and they come in and sit in the dark."

Yet few have serious medical problems, let alone emergencies. "It's the culture," said Dr. Jeffrey I. Miller, one of four urologists in the practice.

Doctor visits have become a social activity in this place of palm trees and gated retirement communities. Many patients have 8, 10 or 12 specialists and visit one or more of them most days of the week. They bring their spouses and plan their days around their appointments, going out to eat or shopping while they are in the area. They know what they want; they choose specialists for every body part. And every visit, every procedure is covered by Medicare, the federal health insurance program for the elderly.

Boca Raton, researchers agree, is a case study of what happens when people are given free rein to have all the medical care they could imagine. It is also a cautionary tale, they say - timely as Medicare's fate is debated in Congress - for it demonstrates that what the program covers and does not cover, and how much or how little it pays, determines what goes on in a doctor's office and why it is so hard to control costs.

South Florida has all the ingredients for lavish use of medical services, health care researchers say, with its large population of affluent, educated older people and the doctors to accommodate them. As a result, Dr. Elliott Fisher, a health services researcher at Dartmouth Medical School, said, patients have more office visits, see more specialists and have more diagnostic tests than almost anywhere else in the country. Medicare spends more per person in South Florida than almost anywhere else - twice as much as in Minneapolis, for example.

But there is no apparent medical benefit, Dr. Fisher said, adding, "In our research, Medicare enrollees in high intensity regions have 2 to 5 percent higher mortality rates than similar patients in the more conservative regions of the country."

Doctors say that Medicare's policies are guiding medical practice, with many making calculated decisions about whom to treat and how to care for them based on what Medicare covers, and how much it pays.

"The bottom line is that the stuff that reimburses well is easier to get done," Dr. Carl Rosenkrantz, a Boca Raton radiologist, said.

Thomas A. Scully, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said he knew the situation all too well.

"We have a system that does nothing to look at utilization," Mr. Scully said in a telephone interview. "If you send in a bill and you are legitimate, we pay it."

The effect shows up in the way doctors deal with office visits, for example. Medicare in Boca Raton pays $52.46 for a routine visit, in which a doctor sees a patient with no new problem. That is not enough, doctors say; it costs about $1,500 a day to run an office there, they explain. Payments in other states are different, adjusted for cost of living, but doctors say, and Mr. Scully agrees, that they are generally inadequate. Doctors who try to make a living seeing only Medicare patients for routine visits, he said, "have a very rough time."

Medicare bases its payments on a system in which each kind of service is assigned a "relative value," Mr. Scully said. To increase the payment for routine office visits and stay within its budget, Medicare would have to decrease the relative value of other services.

A committee of doctors meets each year to suggest relative values, he said, but "the most aggressive and active groups tend to be the specialists."

"Year after year," Mr. Scully went on, "the specialists come in and make a very strong argument for higher reimbursements. There's eventually a squeeze on the basic office visit."

In many areas of the country, private insurers pay more for office visits than Medicare does, so doctors can essentially subsidize their Medicare patients.

"If we just saw Medicare patients and didn't see anyone with regular insurance, we wouldn't be able to pay the bills," said Dr. James E. Kurtz, an internist at Chatham Crossing Medical Center in Pittsboro, N.C.

Elsewhere, many doctors are refusing to see Medicare patients. "Some counties in Washington have no doctors who take new Medicare patients," Dr. Douglas Paauw, a professor of medicine at the University of Washington, said.

Doctors in South Florida do not have a choice. Private insurers there pay the same as Medicare or less, and so many old people live in the area that if doctors want to practice, they must accept them. But how to make a living?

One way, Dr. Robert Colton, an internist in Boca Raton, said, is to see lots of patients, spending just a few minutes with each and referring complicated problems to specialists.

Dr. Colton did that for a while, seeing as many as 35 patients a day. A typical busy internist, he said, would see 20 patients a day. "I felt like a glorified triage nurse," he said.

"If you try to handle a complex problem, it slows you down," Dr. Colton said. "You have to sit down with the family, meet with the patients, talk to them. If you say you have coughing and you are short of breath and your knee hurts, I might have sent you to two different specialists."

The goal, Dr. Rosenkrantz said, is to move the patients on. "The worst thing that can happen is for someone to walk into your office and say, `I have an interesting case for you.' Financially, you'd be dead."

Even seeing patients in the hospital can become an exercise in time management, Dr. Rosenkrantz said. "We have doctors who do rounds at 4 a.m."

A second driving force behind medical care in Boca Raton is the demands of patients. They want lots of tests and specialists, they refer themselves to specialists, they ask for and get far more medical attention from specialists than many doctors think is reasonable or advisable.

"This Medicare card is like a gold card that lets you go to any doctor you want," Dr. Colton said. "I see it every day. When there's no control on utilization, it's just the path of least resistance. If a patient says, `My shoulder hurts, I want an M.R.I., I want to see a shoulder specialist,' the path of least resistance is to send them off. You have nothing to gain by refusing."

Patients here say they have mixed emotions. They complain about rushed primary care doctors but readily admit that they seek multiple specialists and multiple procedures.

The primary care doctors are often irritatingly busy, patients say. "In waiting rooms sometimes they are standing against the wall," said Marvin Luxenberg, a retired lawyer who lives in nearby Boynton Beach. Then, he said, "when you get in to see the doctor, you get just three or four minutes of time."

Dr. Colton says he found a way to give his patients more time. He joined a "concierge" practice, in which patients pay an annual fee in addition to the normal charges for medical services. Dr. Colton's group, MDVIP, charges patients $1,500 a year and limits the number of patients each doctor sees.

But not everyone wants to pay that kind of fee. Many patients just spend their time in specialists' offices. Each specialist handles a different aspect of their care, with no one coordinating it.

Specialists get no more than primary care doctors for an office visit, but they provide tests and procedures that demand higher Medicare reimbursements. Doctors say those payments allow them to stay in business, especially if they provide the procedures in their own office.

Medicare pays the doctor and the facility where a procedure is done. For a nuclear stress test, for example, the doctor gets about $200 and the facility gets about $1,200.

"Doctors have incorporated these tests as much as possible into their offices so they can gain from the facility fee," Dr. Thomas Bartzokis, an interventional cardiologist in Boca Raton, said.

Patients say they have lots of specialists, and lots of tests. Asked how many doctors he saw, Leon Bloomberg, 83, a patient of Dr. Miller, thought for a minute and looked at his wife, Esther.

"Between us, we have 10 or 12," Mr. Bloomberg said, including a pain specialist and a neurologist for his neuropathy, a cardiologist for his heart condition, "a pulmonary man" for his asthma, a rheumatologist for his arthritis and Dr. Miller for his prostate. Mrs. Bloomberg has her own doctors, including ones for heart disease and for diabetes. "We have two to four or more doctors' appointments a week," Mr. Bloomberg said.

It is easy to find all these specialists, he said. "You get recommendations at the clubhouse, at the swimming pool. You go to a restaurant here and 9 times out of 10, before the meal is over, you hear people talking about a doctor or a medicine or a surgery." And of course there are the other patients in all those waiting rooms. Mr. Bloomberg even recommends specialists to his own doctors.

But some patients say they are frustrated by what they call a waste of resources. "The doctors are raping Medicare," said Louis Ziegler, a retired manufacturer of flight simulators who lives in Delray Beach.

Mr. Ziegler recalled going to a doctor for a chronic problem, a finger that sometimes freezes. All he wanted was a shot of cortisone. But he got more, much more: "I had diathermy. I had ultrasound. I had a paraffin massage. I had $600 worth of Medicare treatments to get my lousy $35 shot of cortisone."

Dr. Colton, the internist here, is frustrated, too.

"The system is broken," he said. "I'm not being a mean ogre, but when you give something away for free, there is nothing to keep utilization down. And as the doctor, you have nothing to gain by denying them what they want."

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Religious Republicans True Goal - Taxpayer Dollars for their Religion

2008-10-17T21:04:00.000-07:00

More evidence about the republican's true agenda in this NYTimes article: Bush Aides Say Religious Hiring Doesn’t Bar Aid

McCain Wants to Eliminate Employer-Paid Health Insurance

2008-09-17T09:22:00.000-07:00

Here's the article in the NYTimes.

Another article in the NYTimes.

Apparently, McCain's idea is to:

...get families out of employer-paid health coverage and into the health insurance marketplace, where naked competition is supposed to take care of all ills. (We’re seeing in the Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch fiascos just how well the unfettered marketplace has been working.)

The article gives a few reasons why this is a horrible idea. I think something not mentioned is that many people take or keep a specific job primarily for the health insurance. This radical change could significantly alter the dynamics of our job market in unpredictable and possibly devastating ways.

RELIGULOUS - Movie by Bill Maher on Religious Superstition

2008-07-21T08:42:00.000-07:00

I can hardly wait for the RELIGULOUS movie coming out on October 3, 2008!

http://lionsgate.com/religulous/

http://my.break.com/content/view.aspx?ContentID=533344

Atheist Army Spc. Jeremy Hall sues Army for religious discrimination

2008-07-08T20:22:00.000-07:00

Good article on CNN about and atheist soldier, Army Spc. Jeremy Hall who says the military has turned into a "christian military." He was denied promotions because of being an atheist and his life was even threatened by other troops to such a degree that the army assigned him a bodyguard.

Michael Weinstein, a retired senior Air Force officer and founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, is suing along with Hall. The permeation of religion into the military is so bad that he refers to the Pentagon as the "Pentacostalgon."

Here's a very interesting analysis of public opinion as a response to watching a CNN special about this.

Here's the origional article.

Comparing the Health Care Plans of the Presidential Candidates

2007-09-26T20:21:00.001-07:00

The New York Times has an article comparing the health care plans of the major presidential candidates (click here to read).

What's missing is an explanation of WHY health care costs are skyrocketing. The reason is simple - it's supply and demand. Demand is unlimited because the government gives free medical care (or nearly free) to a select group of people - the elderly via medicare. With high demand comes high prices. That's all there is to it. I wrote about the problem and the solution here.

The Magna Carta is For Sale

2007-09-25T21:11:00.000-07:00

This will be interesting to all lovers of freedom:
The Magna Carta is for sale! (click for article in the New York Times).

Article about Ayn Rand in the New York Times

2007-09-15T19:55:00.000-07:00

Here's an article in the New York Times about Ayn Rand. It mentions Alan Greenspan who was influenced by Ayn Rand in the 50's.

Ayn Rand in the New York Times

Former Bush Chief Speech Writer - We're Being Guided by God!

2007-08-22T09:32:00.000-07:00

Here's a telling quote from Michael Gerson, who was chief speechwriter for George W. Bush before becoming a policy adviser and then a magazine columnist.

... I have twice had conversations with Mr. Gerson, when he was a guest at a biannual dinner of former White House speechwriters. He was a bit bashful, but ready to talk about his Christian conservatism. “We’re being guided by God,” he said. Our second conversation, in 2004, included the unsurprising disclosure that Karl Rove was handling all matters related to the re-election.

See: Hey, I Wrote That! But the President Said It — Out Loud!

iPhone - Expensive Closed System

2007-07-09T13:00:00.001-07:00

"Hacker Jon Johansen claims he can activate a brand new unactivated iPhone without signing up for AT&T service."

Apparently, you are not supposed to be able to use the iPhone for music or web surfing without a two-year commitment to AT&T's cell phone service.

This is a good example of why I hate the current cell phone industry. If I buy an electronic device, shouldn't I be able to use it the way I want without committing to a monthly subscription? Especially if I pay $500 or $600 for the device! How would you like to sign a two-year contract on a new car forcing you to buy gas only from Exxon?

Google is also not happy with the current state of the cell phone business. Here is the way Google thinks the business should work:

In Google’s view of the future, consumers would buy a wireless phone at a store, but instead of being forced to use a specific carrier, they would be free to pick any carrier they wanted. Instead of the wireless carrier choosing what software goes on their phones, users would be free to put any software they want on it.

See: New York Times - Google Pushes for Rules to Aid Wireless Plans, July 21, 2007

I wouldn't buy a digital picture frame back when they required a monthly subscription. I won't buy a Tivo as long as it's only useful with a monthly subscription. And I really hate the way most cell phones are locked to a carrier who wants to charge you for every little trivial thing like putting a ringtone on your phone.

I'm waiting for an open phone that I can OWN rather than merely USE. Apparently, a completely open phone powered by Linux is on the way!!! It's supposed to be mass-market ready by October 2007. Being open means software and hardware developers all over the world can build applications and improve the phone. I can hardly wait.

Links:
Comparison of iPhone and Neo 1973 open phone

iPhone hacked

iPhone hack

Neo1973 news

More Neo1973 news

Bush is a Muslim Terrorist!

2007-05-15T11:04:00.000-07:00

Why have there been no terrorist attacks since 9/11?

Because George W. Bush is the greatest ally the terrorists could ever have!

Bush is the unwitting agent of the terrorists, destroying America from within like an insidious cancer. Imagine if the terrorists planted an undercover agent in the American presidency. How could the undercover terrorist inflict the most damage on America?

Here's a potential terrorist game plan:

Destroy America's credibility, ethics and image. Do this by cheating on elections, eviscerating the constitution with domestic spying and sabotaging Habeus Corpus, condoning torture, politicising the justice department and throw in some scandals and corruption in organizations like the world bank just to make sure everyone notices.
Destroy America's economic power. Do this by spending America into bankruptcy by lowering taxes while increasing spending.
Neutralize America's military. Do this by attacking and permanently occupying a previously harmless muslim country, getting permanently bogged down in a pointless yet expensive war that can never be won. If the initial attack is based on claims that later turn out to be false, such as the infamous Weapons of Mass Destruction, then the military debacle can help with point #1, destroying America's credibility.
Neutralize objections to theocracies. Do this by destroying America's traditional wall of separation between church and state. If America itself is a theocracy, then how can America argue against an islamic theocracy? Also, since the muslim terrorist's goal is to install islamic theocracies, a good first step is to convert secular governments into religious theocracies. Later, it will be easier to simply replace one type of theocracy with an islamic theocracy.
Enhance terrorist recruitment. Do this by occupying a muslim country with no end in site torturing prisoners so that all terrorists can see the evil of the occupier.

I don't really think the terrorists are smart enough to come up with a plan like this. But maybe they are smart enough to recognize that Bush is their best ally and is unwittingly playing right into their hands. Perhaps this is why there have been no terrorist attacks since 9/11.

Fixing the Patent System

2007-04-18T11:16:00.000-07:00

The US patent system is broken. It hurts us all more than it helps. It either needs to be fixed or thrown away.

How does it hurt us? Take the "One Click Ordering" patent by Amazon. It's a ridiculously simple idea that anyone and everyone could and would have implemented on their websites but Amazon just happened to get a patent on the concept. Because of this ridiculous patent, all of us have to endure multiple steps when we order products on other websites.

The "One Click Order" patent just happens to be the obvious target of ridicule in the patent system but there are many more subtle absurdities that cause us all harm in the form of higher prices and reduced access to new technology. The harm comes when companies create some new product or technology that innocently and accidentally happens to infringe some obscure, overly broad patent that no one ever heard of only to end up in costly litigation with the cost passed on to us, the consumers.

Technology patents today are a virtual minefield of obvious ideas that have been "claimed" like land in the gold-rush era. But if all these technology patents are so obvious that they get infringed easily by companies that never even heard of the patents, then did they really deserve to be patented in the first place?

The patent system is supposed to rest on this principle - "you tell us how you did it so that we can all do it in the future and, in exchange, we will give you a 20 year monopoly on your idea."

That's a reasonable proposition. But, it implies that if the idea is so simple that many people are going to come up with the same idea then the idea should not be patentable. Likewise, if companies are infringing patents accidentally left and right, then perhaps those original patents should never have been granted in the first place.

HOW TO FIX THE PATENT SYSTEM:

The fix seems simple based on the principle "you tell us how you did it so that we can all do it in the future and, in exchange, we will give you a 20 year monopoly on your idea." Simply add a criteria to the patent process that an idea must be unlikely to be invented by other people. And in patent litigation, if the patent is easily, unintentionally, accidentally and often infringed by people WITHOUT knowledge of the patent, then the patent should be suspected of being too simple and too obvious.

There is currently a push in Congress to fix the patent system. The drug companies want to keep the patent system strong while the technology companies want to reduce the cost of litigating accidental patent infringement. The solution posted here explains and solves the problem cleanly for both of them. Obviously, the creation of a new drug is expensive and time consuming and is not the kind of thing anyone and everyone can do on their own. This is why the drug companies deserve their patents. On the other hand, technology patents, in particular computer programming technology such as Amazon's One-Click Ordering, most definitely are likely to be independently reproduced by hordes of programmers which is why they do NOT deserve to be patented. The technology patents in the computer field are getting accidentally infringed everyday because they are simply ideas that thousands of programmers are likely to independently create - making them not suitable to be patented.

P.S. There is already a "novel" and "non-obvious" test in the patent system today but apparently it has no teeth and is not blocking utterly simple and obvious ideas like Amazon's One-Click patent.

Well Written Article by Conservative Slamming Bush

2007-01-03T12:14:00.000-08:00

Just discovered this well-written artiticle:

Doug McIntyre, conservative commentator, slams the Bush presidency.

Here are some notable quotes:

Iraq:

We’re not in the “waning days of the insurgency.” We’re about to slink home with our tail between our legs, leaving civil war in Iraq and a nuclear-armed Iran in our wake. And Bin Laden is still making tapes. It’s unspeakable. The liberal media didn’t create this reality, bad policy did.

Cutting taxes while increasing spending:

He cut taxes and I like tax cuts. But tax cuts combined with reckless spending and borrowing is criminal mismanagement of the public’s money. We’re drunk at the mall with our great grandchildren’s credit cards. We traded tax and spend Liberals for borrow and spend Conservatives.

Why Does God Hate Amputees - Awesome Website

2006-12-05T21:48:00.000-08:00

I love this website! It's friendly and well written!

Why Does God Hate Amputees

And here's an excellent article on the website dissecting delusion:

Understanding Delusion

Frank Rich on the Bush Regime's Evil Ways

2006-12-03T20:34:00.000-08:00

This is an excellent interview with Frank Rich about the Bush regime.

Frank Rich on the lies and deception of the Bush regime

Here's a notable quote:

For me, watching Bush, Rove, and the GOP is almost like watching Jason or Chucky from the slasher movies. They keep coming back no matter what you do to them. I call them "electoral savants," phenomenally good at demonizing their enemies and winning elections, but with no inclination or competence for governing.

Why is Iraq Guaranteed to Fail?

2006-11-28T20:53:00.000-08:00

Iraq is absolutely guaranteed to be a failure in the long run.

Why?

Because, even if Bush could get exactly what he wants and all the insurgents in Iraq suddenly stopped fighting, what then? Iraq would still be a muslim country with an islamic constitution and where will that lead? A muslim country with an islamic constitution is guaranteed to turn into a wacko-fanatical muslim country. History proves it.

Even Turkey is leaning closer and closer toward islam everyday. And that's in spite of the fact that Turkey has a secular constitution established by its revered founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Apparently, just the mere presence of a large population of muslims in a country is enough to fatally poison a country's secular heritage and future.

The simple reality is that any superstition that commands its believers to convert unbelievers is a poisonous cancer that perverts and destroys everything in its path. This is true for christianity just as for islam. The koran is more internally consistent and clear than the bible so it grows faster and slightly more dangerously than christianity. But they are clearly twin tumors on humanity.

Ted Haggard Gives Marriage Advice

2006-11-22T17:13:00.000-08:00

video:
Ted Haggard, a typical christian, gives advice on having a good marriage with a member of the opposite set.

How Should We Deal With Iraq Right Now?

2006-11-05T09:05:00.000-08:00

PREMISE: Iraq is already lost and staying the course in Iraq is as sensible as staying the course in Vietnam from 1968 to 1973. In other words, it will accomplish nothing good. Staying the course actually makes us less safe from terrorists because it is a training ground for terrorists and because our presence in Iraq infuriates the muslim world thereby generating more terrorists!

PLAN A:

The obvious solution to really fix Iraq and deliver democracy to the middle east is to partition Iraq into three countries, Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite and impose on each of them a secular constitution similar to America's. We should NOT let them choose their own constitutions because they would choose islamic constitutions. We should give them a proper secular constitution with a written provision that allows them to write their own constitution 15 years down the road. Religious superstition is like cancer, having invaded the body politic it must be deliberately and forcefully removed. Allowing Iraq to write its own constitution was a fatal flaw in the Bush regime's approach to Iraq.

The population at large, after all the religious bloodshed they've seen recently, might now recognize the wisdom of secular government. The religious murderers and death squads in Iraq might have taught a lesson to the majority of the moderate Iraqi population and they just might embrace and defend a secular constitution.

The founding fathers of America recognized the wisdom of secular government, making America the first secular government in the world and that, dear friends, is why America has the oldest continuously operating constitution in the world even though America is one of the youngest countries in the world!

PLAN B:

The big fear in withdrawing from Iraq is that Al Qaeda will take over and make Iraq a base of operations supported by oil revenues. The solution is simple - move our troops to Afghanistan before it's too late and while we still have a chance of accomplishing something good in Afghanistan. In the meantime, tell Iraq and the world we reserve the right to kill any Al Qaeda operatives in Iraq and we reserve the right to kill Moqtada Al Sadr. We can let the civil war proceed and let the wackos in Iraq simmer and stew in their own mess and simply pick off from a distance any Al Qaeda leaders that pop up.

This is what Israel is doing with Gaza - sitting back out of harm's way picking off the leaders of the enemy. It's the most cost effective way of keeping the enemy down and controlled.

CONCLUSION:

Plan A is the right choice but plan B is the easy choice. Both plans are better than the current counter productive debacle that makes us less safe and makes the whole world hate us.

Plan B is not pretty. We created the mess in Iraq by invading and it's unfair to the ordinary citizens of Iraq to foment a civil war and then just leave them to struggle for survival. But what George Bush did is done. At least plan B would accomplish something with minimal waste of America's resources whereas staying the course will accomplish nothing while wasting billions upon billions of dollars and thousands of lives not to mention actually making us LESS safe from terrorism.

WHAT NOT TO DO:

I just heard Jim Webb, senator-elect, say his plan is to have the countries next to Iraq assume responsibility and control for Iraq. What an empty and stupid idea! Most of the countries next to Iraq are wacko muslim countries, specifically Iran. Would giving Iraq to Iran really be that much better than just handing it over to Al Qaeda?

We also hear the Bush regime talking about giving up on democracy in Iraq and supporting the idea of an Iraqi strongman instead. Isn't that exactly what Saddam Hussein was??? This is exactly why the whole Iraq war is such a debacle! We've come full circle to learn that we were better off with Saddam Hussein in power!

Iraq is Already Lost - I Predicted it Two Years Ago

2006-10-31T20:39:00.000-08:00

Iraq is already a lost cause. And two years ago I predicted exactly what is happening in Iraq today. See: How to Fix Iraq. I posted that back in September of 2004.

Here are some of the predictions in that article that have now proved true:

For long term stability, Iraq must be split into three separate countries: Kurdish, Shiite, and Sunni, otherwise, it's a certainty that at least one minority group will be brutally oppressed by muslim fanatics.

There must be complete separation of church and state...

We must set a deadline for when we will leave Iraq because any project takes 10 times longer than necessary in the absence of a deadline.

Actually, Iraq could still be salvaged if someone in our government had the guts to say, "let's stop acting like lemmings staying the course right over a cliff - let's split Iraq into three countries, kurdish, sunni and shiite, giving each their own secular constitution modeled on America's constitution."

But since no one in our American goverment has the brains or the guts for strong medicine like this, Iraq is a lost cause.

Afghanistan is not yet a lost cause, though it is rapidly devolving into an Iraq-like disaster. We should get out of Iraq and move all our troops and equipment to Afghanistan for at least a chance at salvaging something good out of this republican debacle.

Charles Darwin Online and Free!

2006-10-29T09:43:00.000-08:00

The writings of Charles Darwin: http://darwin-online.org.uk/

Draft-Dodging President is calling the Democratic Party "Cut and Run"???

2006-09-30T19:30:00.000-07:00

President Bush and Karl Rove have labelled the Democratic Party "the party of cut and run."

Why is no one calling attention to the irony of a draft-dodging president labeling ANYONE as a war avoider??? This is so weird and ridiculous it belongs in a David Lynch movie.

For those of you who don't know, little Georgie W. Bush during the Vietnam War had his father get him a cushy position in the "champagne corps" - a velvety national guard assignment nicknamed the "champagne corps" because of all the powerful rich kids using that avenue to avoid the Vietnam draft.

By itself, that's not a big deal. Lots of powerful rich kids avoided the draft that way. The really big deal is that little Georgie failed to complete his national guard committment of 6 years because he decided to skip out and get into politics. He basically went AWOL. But due to his father's clout he was able to get away with it rather than going to jail like an ordinary soldier. Plus, as governor of Texas, little Georgie ordered all records of his national guard service destroyed. A coverup in essence.

Does little Georgie deny this? Does he say he completed his national guard service? No. He doesn't deny it because that would be a direct lie which might get uncovered some day if anyone finds evidence that Georgie failed to destroy. What he does say is that he "was honorably discharged." I saw Bill O'Reilly interviewing little Georgie on TV and directly ask him about the controversy. Little Georgie didn't have much to say. He simply said, "I was honorably discharged." Well duh! Charles Manson could be honorably discharged from prison if he had the same parents as little Georgie.

We should all mock little Georgie the draft dodger next time he has the nerve to refer to the Democratic party as the party of "cut and run".

Who is going to protect us from our president?

2006-09-28T20:05:00.001-07:00

Apparently, the Bush regime is going to succed in eviscerating the American Constitution with the new torture bill making its way through congress.

I heard some speeches from congressmen saying, "these people are not soldiers wearing a uniform and fighting for a country, they are terrorists and it's our job to protect the American people from terrorists!"

What I want to know is this - who is going to protect us from our president and our government?

Emotional babbling about terrorists is irrelevant. Considering the amount of unchecked power this bill will concentrate in the presidency, it's our own president we should be worried about, not a few terrorists. This bill that is about to pass pretty much gives the president the power to declare ANY non-citizen an enemy combatant, lock them up for eternity without trial AND eliminates the right of the accused to challenge his imprisonment and torture in court.

This doesn't even sound like it's happening in America, does it?

Imagine someone, a non-citizen, married to an American and having lived in America for 30 years donates money to a charity. If the president decides that charity is connected to terrorists, the person who donated can be taken away in the middle of the night and never heard from again. And you know that once the religious fanatics have the power they've been seeking, pretty soon internet porn and abortion and anything the fanatics don't like will be somehow connected to terrorism.

Where is this going?

This is way too much power concentrated in the presidency. What's to keep the president from abusing this power? History has shown that too much power in the hands of one person will nearly always be abused. King George of England had too much power over the American colonies and that's why we had the American Revolution.

Is Bush trying to protect America or destroy it?

This is getting serious. This is a giant leap towards destroying America. Once our president gets too much power, starts abusing the power and turns us into a totalitarian police state, the only way back to freedom and the American way will be through revolution - once again.

Gee - I hope the unAmerican Bush doesn't interpret that last sentence as a terrorist remark and send the goons to grab me in the middle of the night to spend the rest of my life getting tortured in a secret dungeon. Perhaps after this torture bill passes I better delete this blog and stop saying anything negative about the president.

Torture is Like Police Brutality - The Authorities Become the Bad Guys

2006-09-19T20:23:00.000-07:00

Who would have ever thought we would see the day in America when an idiot president is pleading with America to give him the right to torture?

Only a low-forehead, retarded fool could believe wide-scale torture is in America's best interest.

Bush says that if we allow him to torture we will be safer. But who's going to respect a country that tortures? And if nobody has respect for America, is anybody going to care if we're attacked again? If we throw America into the moral cess pool, will the islamic religious fanatics gain respect for us and be less likely to attack us?

If we allowed the police to torture suspects, would it reduce crime? NO! Just like in the movies, when a state becomes authoritarian and the police use brutal force, people begin to side with the criminals. If we gave the police the right to torture suspects, then anybody opposing the police would be seen as the heroes.

There is nothing more dangerous, sinister and un-American than a regime that tortures.

Bush could Pardon in Advance Torture Interrogators

2006-09-19T06:57:00.000-07:00

Bush is trying to say that CIA interrogators won't do their job without protection from legal liability due to torture.

If they really did have a significant terrorist who had critical information, Bush could just issue an advance written pardon to the interrogators if torture was really and truly called for, as in the hypothetical example of a terrorist who knows the location of a nuclear bomb hidden in a city.

But this is not good enough for Bush. Why? Because then Bush himself would be liable and responsible and on record. In addition, Bush wants the privilege of ordering torture on a wide scale by entire government departments - he doesn't have time to issue pardons for all the low-level people he'd like to have committing torture.

Let Bush Torture or he will Stop Interrogating Terrorists

2006-09-16T10:52:00.000-07:00

The clown in the white house actually had the nerve to tell Congress and the public to give him the legal right to torture suspected terrorists or else he would stop all interrogations!

Think about what he is saying. He is threatening to stop doing his job if he is not allowed to torture the way he wants to torture. He is saying, "you let me torture suspected terrorists the way I want or else I won't try to stop the terrorists from coming after you."

This is like a high school football quarterback telling the coach, "you let me have complete control or else I'll start throwing interceptions and let the other team win."

Anybody who threatens to sabotage their own job should be fired! Threatening to stop interrogating suspected terrorists should be an impeachable offense!

Nobody is telling the Bush regime it's not allowed to interrogate prisoners. But the Supreme Court and we the public ARE telling Bush he must do so legally and ethically and without torture. And we are telling him to stop dragging the already declining image of America through the mud!

Bush is trying to make the case that intelligence interrogators can't interrogate without legislation clarifying how much they can torture. What a load of BS. This is nonsense on the very face of it. Simply stop doing ANYTHING that might be construed as torture and there won't be any risk of legal sanctions. It's as simple as that. If you think waterboarding is borderline, then don't do it. America needs to return to the moral high ground and stop allowing the Bush regime to corrupt and destroy traditional American values.

Would you rather have it known that your country has brutal tactics and tortures prisoners, some of whom happen to be innocent, or would you rather have it known that your country treats all humans decently and never tortures anyone?

Perhaps if America had a world-wide reputation for treating all prisoners decently, some of the enemies would be less likely to fight to the death to avoid capture. If we treated prisoners decently we would probably get a whole lot more information out of them. Most of the middle eastern countries are known for brutally torturing prisoners. Lowering American values to their level is not doing any good for our cause. It's hurting our image and helping to create more terrorists and we need to stop this now.

Why Has America Not Been Attacked in 5 Years?

2006-09-08T08:23:00.000-07:00

For the same reason America was not attacked during the eight and a half year time span between the first world trade center bombing on February 26, 1993 and the second on September 1, 2001.

It's certainly not because the Clinton Administration kept us safe during that eight and a half year time span. And this recent 5 years without an attack is NOT because of the Bush regime and its assault on democracy and civil liberties.

Do you really think the religious fanatics would not have done something if they had the capability to inflict harm on lots of Americans? Do you really think they would not have blown up a suitcase atomic bomb in Israel if they had such a device and the capability to deliver it?

The answer is simply that the religious terrorists are impotent and weak and stupid.

It's very easy to kill and destroy and steal. That's why criminals choose a life of crime - it's easier for human parasites to steal the fruits of someone else's labor than to labor themselves. Killing and destroying is easy yet the religious terrorists are only capable of a few significant acts per decade. Obviously, they simply aren't very capable. It's lucky for us they are so stupid and impotent.

Think about it - the most significant act of terrorism to date simply involved 19 men taking over 4 small confined spaces using knives. Is that some big monolithic achievement? Hardly. The only thing that even lends significance to the event is the fact that some beautiful buildings collapsed and 3,000 Americans died because of the buildings.

So, why is there so much terrorism in Iraq right now? Because the entire country is filled with religious fanatics! Duh! If the entire country were filled with cannibals there would be a lot of human flesh eating going on. If the entire country were filled with assassins the killings would be quieter and more effective. But if Iraq was filled with atheists instead of religious fanatics it would be a beautiful, peaceful country on the leading edge of science with a rich history and a thriving tourist industry.

Religious superstition destroys and corrupts!

Osama Bin-Laden is a Religious Conservative, Just Like Bush

2006-07-23T10:33:00.000-07:00

These days, when a politican identifies himself as a conservative, most likely he means a religious conservative.

During the Reagan era, conservative meant someone interested in fiscal restraint and smaller, more limited government. That's hardly the case under the current Bush regime. Today the word conservative means little more than simply fundamentalist christianity.

And what is a religious conservative, aka, religious fundamentalist? Here's a good quote from the New York Times that sums it up:

The real underlying issue is that fundamentalism in the Southern Baptist form is incompatible with higher education. In fundamentalism, you have all the truths. In education, you’re searching for truths.

David W. Key, director of Baptist Studies at the Candler School of Theology at Emory
New York Times 2006.07.22

One significant fact left out of this quote is that the fundamentalist believes he has all the answers AND he believes all the answers come from books written nearly 2000 years ago by superstitious men who didn't even know the earth is round.

So, when we hear of someone running for political office and identifying themselves as a "conservative", let's remember that Osama Bin-Laden is also a religious conservative from one of the three main world religions.

Iraq Cannot End Well Without Separation of Church and State

2006-06-25T21:41:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, we allowed some Iraqis to choose an islamic constitution. Therefore, Iraq is a lost cause and we should either get out or make a dramtic change in direction and give them a secular government.

Islamic governments either turn wacko like Iran and the Taliban or they turn to absolute, despotic dictatorship like Saddam Hussein and other islamic countries. Islam is simply not a mild mannered religion and doesn't typically lead to moderation. Even if an islamic country does have a period of moderation it's not likely to last long. The islamic religion, when officially part of a government's constitution, is like cancer - it nearly always grows into a bigger problem.

What we've accomplished in Iraq is removing a dictator and installing a fanatical, fundamentalist, islamic theocracy. We replaced something bad by something worse. So what, exactly, is the point of staying the course in Iraq? It cannot end well and we should just cut our losses and get out.

Crack the Power of Incumbency - Consecutive Term Limits

2006-05-22T06:45:00.000-07:00

If Ray Nagin, mayor of New Orleans, can get reelected, it proves the power of incumbency.

Allowing our U.S. senators and representatives to bask in luxury and opulence in our congress for their entire lives promotes corruption, arrogance and back-room politicking. Would Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff have been able to weave their web of illegal deals if Tom Delay had not spent 22 consecutive years in congress making connections and practically getting "made" as they say in the mafia?

Limiting the number of consecutive terms congressmen can serve will do more to cure Washington of its culture of corruption than all the lobbying laws combined.

This is a simple cure for much of the evil in Washington - let's limit the number of consecutive terms for which a congressman can get elected. After two consecutive winning elections to office, senators and representatives should have to sit out a term. During their "out" term, they can mingle with normal people and get reacquainted with reality. If they are really worth their salt, they can always come back for another two consecutive terms after each "out" period.

Presidential Signing Statements = Abuse of Power

2006-05-09T18:59:00.000-07:00

I just learned about presidential signing statements today on NPR and I'm blown away!

It's no wonder Bush has never vetoed a bill from Congress. In many ways, a presidential signing statement is more powerful than a veto.

What is a presidential signing statement? When Bush signs a law, he then issues a legal document , known as a signing statement, to go into the federal register along with the bill. In the signing statement Bush issues executive orders declaring which parts of the bill he disaggrees with and intends NOT to follow.

These signing statements can be more powerful than a veto for several reasons:

They go unnoticed. Even many congressmen aren't aware of them.
They cannot be overridden by congress.
In some cases there can never be a plaintiff to force the issue before the supreme court.

This president and his republican party have in the past vigorously whined about "judicial activist" - judges who interpret the law the way the want to interpret it rather than the way congress wrote it. Isn't this exactly what Bush is doing? Isn't presidential activism far more sinister and dangerous to our country than judicial activism could ever be (since the executive branch of government is the one that enforces laws)?

This is just one more example of the dumbest president in American history trying to elevate himself and the office of the president to the level of absolute dictatorship.

"This is an attempt by the president to have the final word on his own constitutional powers, which eliminates the checks and balances that keep the country a democracy. There is no way for an independent judiciary to check his assertions of power, and Congress isn't doing it, either. So this is moving us toward an unlimited executive power."

-- Bruce Fein
-- a deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration

Full Story: Boston Globe: article by Charlie Savage

Examples: Examples of presidential signing statements

Can you say tyranny?

Can you say impeachment?

Only Karl Rove and Dick Cheney Matter in the Bush Administration

2006-04-20T06:10:00.000-07:00

On the surface, there appear to be some changes afoot in the Bush administration but they are merely cosmetic changes. The reality is this - there are only two people running this country, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney.

Even President Bush himself is largely inconsequential outside his role as figurehead president and "man of god".

Karl Rove is now going to concentrate on "politics" over "policy" but he is still in the White House and still very much in the seat of power. What's the difference between politics and policy anyway? Don't they go hand in hand? By "politics" they are referring to getting out the republican vote in the upcoming elections. What this really means is that the republican party is worried about upcoming elections so much that they've officially assigned their number one marketing genius, Karl Rove, to attack the problem. And, let's be honest, Karl Rove is a marketing genius. And the fact that he is unencumbered by ethics and morality makes him dangerous. Marketing is Karl's forte. You can see the stroke of his brush on the style and substance of every talking point coming out of the Bush administration.

Nothing changed when Colin Powell departed and nothing changed when Condoleeza Rice was placed in charge of controlling the violence in Iraq (remember when she got that high-profile assignment back when she was the head of the NSA? She certainly didn't improve anything in Iraq). Nothing changed when these high-profile people came and went because no one else really matters in this administration other than Karl Rove and Dick Cheney.

So, unless Karl Rove and/or Dick Cheney are booted out or go to jail, the personnel changes in the White House really don't matter in the least bit.

"Not Superstitious" is a better way to say Atheist

2006-04-05T20:56:00.000-07:00

The word atheist has a lot of negative baggage and generally comes across in a negative way in spite of the fact that everyone is born atheist (a newborn can't possibly believe in any gods and therefore is atheist by definition).

A better way for the atheist to answer when asked if he is a "believer" is this:

I'm not superstitious. I don't believe in tarot cards, voodoo, astrology, psychic powers or religion.

This has many benefits over the word atheist as follows:

Being not-superstitious is a positive thing. Would anybody distrust a non-superstitious person? Would anybody say, "oh, that's terrible! you should be more superstitious!"

It differentiates between people who say they are not religious yet believe in astrology, voodoo, reincarnation or any of the other superstitions that are just as silly (though less evil and less dangerous) as religion.

It puts the religious person in the position of trying to explain why his religion is any different than other superstitions. That might actually cause some of them to start thinking.

Since religion is no different from any other superstition, there can be no rational, objective explanation of how religion is not superstition and the religious smut peddlers will be embarassed and religious institutions will begin to look silly instead of occupying an unearned exalted position in our society.

The word "superstition" is well known and well understood. It needs no further explanation and instantly and accurately belittles religion as silly nonsense but without sounding too negative.

This is a crystal clear and absolutely true characterization of religion.

If all atheists start calling themselves "not superstitious", religion will come to be associated with other superstitions like astrology, fortune tellers, voodoo and other such nonsense just as it should be. It will be knocked off its lofty, respected perch which it didn't earn and doesn't deserve. This little thing just might reduce the level of religious fanaticism in the world and make the world a safer place for all of us. Let's get started before it's too late!

I just read a post at: Atheist Revolution that made me realize I was unclear in what I'm advocating here. I'm not trying to say we should do away with the word "atheist", it's a good word that simply means without theism. Hopefully someday, after we rid the world of insidious superstition, it will come to have a positive connotation in the public at large as it deserves. And in any technical conversation, such as when newscasters are talking about the various religions of political candidate, atheist is the correct and proper technical description of an atheist. But I think that when a stranger on the street asks you your religion, "not superstitious" would be a better answer than atheist. And when presidential candidates list their religion in their little bio section on the network news, "not superstitious" would be better than atheist. Why? Because simply answering atheist allows the questioner to shrug and mutter under their breath "oh, he's one of those." But, answering "not superstitious" casts a negative connotation on religion (as it deserves) and forces another question - "is religion just one of many superstitions?"

We, the reality bound, are in a battle with the forces of unreality-based superstition and words play an important role. These two simple little words, "not superstitious", can do a lot to help the side of reason and reality.

Sam Harris Hits a Home Run in this Interview with TruthDig

2006-04-04T20:19:00.000-07:00

This is most provocative interview with Sam Harris I've ever seen. Sam really hits the nail on the head in this one, pointing out with crystal clear clarity the abject stupidity of religion. The entire thing is worth reading.

Here's a small quote from the article:

www.truthdig.com/report/itemtest/20060403_sam_harris_interview

... every Christian knows exactly what it’s like to be an atheist with respect to the beliefs of Muslims, for instance. Muslims have the same reasons for being Muslim as Christians have for being Christian. They have a book they’re sure was written or dictated by the creator of the universe–because the book says that it was written or dictated by the creator of the universe. Christians look at Muslim discourse and find it fundamentally unpersuasive. Christians aren’t lying awake at night worrying about whether they should convert to Islam. Why not? Because Muslims can’t really back up their claims. They are clearly engaged in a style of discourse that is just not intellectually honest. It’s not purposed to genuine inquiry into the nature of the world. It is a reiteration of dogma, and they are clearly committed to a massive program of self-deception. Every Christian recognizes this about every religion other than Christianity. So every Christian knows exactly what it is like to be atheist. They just don’t turn the same candor and intellectual honesty on to their own faith.

Good Quote: Give a Man a Fish

2006-03-12T19:23:00.000-08:00

"Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; give him a religion, and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish."

Bush Gives 2.1 Billion Tax Dollars to Religion

2006-03-10T06:42:00.000-08:00

Just read this in the New York Times this morning. I think all superstition practitioners (like astrologers, fortune tellers, psychic surgeons etc.), should jump on this and sue for discrimination if the government won't give them money.

The New York Times

March 10, 2006
Bush Urges More Money for Religious Charities
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

COLLEGE PARK, Ga., March 9 — President Bush said Thursday that his administration had made progress by awarding more than $2.1 billion last year to social programs operated by churches, synagogues and mosques, a modest increase over 2004.

But Mr. Bush said that corporate foundations were not doing enough and that they should give more money to religious charities.

Mr. Bush made his comments at a conference in Washington organized by the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives before leaving for a state Republican Party fund-raiser in Georgia.

"I am confident that the faith community is achieving unbelievable successes throughout our country," Mr. Bush said at the Washington Hilton. "And therefore I would urge our corporate foundations to reach beyond the norm, to look for those social entrepreneurs who haven't been recognized heretofore, to continue to find people who are running programs that are making a significant difference in people's lives."

Mr. Bush said that the White House had looked closely at 50 large foundations — he did not say which ones — and that one in five had charters that prohibited them from giving money to religious institutions for social service programs.

"I would hope they would revisit their charters," Mr. Bush said.

Mr. Bush has made his religion-based initiative a central part of his "compassionate conservative" agenda since his first year in the White House, but has run into hurdles trying to carry it out.

Legislation that would have made it easier for religious charities to seek government money for social programs sputtered in Congress in Mr. Bush's first term. He bypassed Capitol Hill and signed executive orders that created religion-based offices in 10 agencies.

Mr. Bush signed an executive order this week to establish a religion-based office in an 11th agency, the Homeland Security Department.

...

Excellent Article by Sam Harris

2006-02-10T22:01:00.000-08:00

This is a very good, straight to the point article:

www.truthdig.com/dig/blogitem/20060206_comments_atheism

Democrats Need Principles!

2006-02-08T06:31:00.000-08:00

It's not enough for the Democrats to simply talk about how evil and incompetent the Republicans are.

And it's just dumb the way the Democrats are trying to jump on the religion band wagon. Everytime a Democrat gives a speech these days, notice how many times they try to mention faith and god. Do they really think they can compete with Republicans in the religion arena? Or do they think religious voters are so fickle that religion is merely a qualification test for political office rather than an end-all, be-all platform as republicans have recognized it? Democrats seem to think that if they can pass the religion test the voters will then look at the issues but that's just not reality. The reality is that grabbing political power for christianity is what this current religious fad in America is all about and the Democrats will never be able to compete with Republicans on that battle field nor should they because it's a battle field that does not belong in America.

The Democrats would be smart if they found some principles to stand on. One good place to start would be the principle of separation of church and state. Instead of trying to mention god in every speech, the Democrats should have a policy of NOT mentioning god or faith but, instead, purposely and publicly keeping religion out of politics. This is a principle the voters could respect. Everyone knows it is a core American value and is good and right. Even the relgious Republicans know deep in their hearts there is something sinister involved when politics is infected by religion.

Instead of feebly mimicking the Republican's public display of religion, the Democrats should take a stand for the 200+ year old American principle of separation of church and state. It's a true American value worth saving.

"The party which, while in a minority, will lick the dust to gain the ascendancy, becomes, in power, insolvent, vindictive and tyrannical."

...Noah Webster

The Miners Died Because there is NO God!

2006-01-22T08:45:00.000-08:00

Religious extremists love to spout off in their self-rightousness that god did this or that for this or that reason. Yeah right. As if they know something more than anyone else. If they really know something about an earthquake or mine cave-in or other disaster, why can't they predict it in advance rather than pompously arm-chair quaterbacking after the fact? They can't predict anything because they don't know anything!!!

Anyone can make up nonsense about why god did this or that because it's impossible to prove right or wrong. It's impossible to prove right or wrong because there is no god so god is not going to come down to earth to correct anyone.

It's time for rational people to start pointing out the obvious. When random events in nature occur and people start bleeding on about, "how can a merciful god allow this to happen?", we need to shine the light of reality on their superstition and let them know stuff happens naturally because there is no god! Earthquakes, floods and hurricanes are not caused by god, they are just natural events. Good people die in natural disasters just like bad people becaue the disaster isn't coming from a god and isn't choosing sides, it's just nature. Duh!

Here are some examples of the inane absurdities spouted by religious wackos:

Pat Robertson said god gave Ariel Sharon a stroke because Sharon gave away Gaza. So Pat is claiming to know not only that god did this but even why god did it. If Pat has some inside info from god, why is he no more able to give a warning than anyone else?

"He was dividing God's land and I would say, 'Woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the (European Union), the United Nations or the United States of America.

-- Pat Robertson

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said god gave Katrina to New Orleans because black people weren't taking care of themselves.

"Surely God is mad at America. He sent us hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it's destroyed and put stress on this country. … Surely he doesn't approve of us being in Iraq under false pretenses. But surely he is upset at black America also. We're not taking care of ourselves."

-- New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin

Jerry Falwell said AIDS was god's punishment for gays.

AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.

-- Jerry Falwell

And my favorite........

Thomas Prince preached that the 1775 earthquake was god's next move because Ben Franklin's lightning rod was interfering with god's preferred form of expressing his displeasure.

In America the earthquake of 1755 was widely ascribed, especially in Massachusetts, to Franklin's rod. The Rev. Thomas Prince, pastor of the Old South Church, published a sermon on the subject, and in the appendix expressed the opinion that the frequency of earthquakes may be due to the erection of "iron points invented by the sagacious Mr. Franklin." He goes on to argue that "in Boston are more erected than anywhere else in New England, and Boston seems to be more dreadfully shaken. Oh! there is no getting out of the mighty hand of God."

see: http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/skepticism/franklin.html

On that last item, it's pretty remarkable the layers of superstition built up around lightning and storms. At that time, christians truly believed lightning was a direct spanking from god and that wind and storms and weather in general were the direct work of demons and angels. That age of religious stupidity died fairly quickly once Ben Franklin proved the electrical nature of lightning and proved that lives could be saved with lightning rods. It funny how we don't learn much in school about the depths of religious stupidity regarding weather prior to Ben Franklin's famous kite experiment. Religion has a long history of being on the side of primitive stupidity and then wiping the record of that stupidity out of the history books!!!

Religion is More Dangerous Than Communism

2006-01-22T08:27:00.000-08:00

Bolivia is turning towards communism. I used to think changes like this were bad. They are bad because communism is just a form of dictatorship and dictatorship is bad because it means one person or group of people gets to have unchecked power over everbody else for no legitimate reason. But there are far worse things happening in world of politics today.

The really dangerous evil in the world today is religion and the turning towards theocracy! Most of the wars and the torturing of innocents in the world have been caused by religion. Religion teaches that it's okay to believe in nonsensical superstition and therefore religion corrupts and destroys the mind. In fact, I would argue that mental atrophy caused by religious superstition is what creates the mass stupidity that allows communism to spread in the first place. Religion teaches, "don't think, just believe" and, "you are evil by nature and sacrificing yourself would be good and noble." Would anyone really fall for communist propaganda if they weren't already conditioned by these two religious principles?

The one and only good thing about communism is that at least it keeps religious superstition under control.

These days, when I read about a country turning towards communism I think to myself, thank goodness they aren't turning into a christian or islamic theocracy!!!

Religion Leads to Poor Ethics

2005-12-21T21:19:00.000-08:00

Judge John E. Jones III ruled that it is unconstitutional for a Pennsylvania school district to present intelligent design in high school science courses because it is not science but merely religion.

Further, the judge issued this scathing commentary about two of the intelligent design proponents:

"It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the I.D. policy."

Unfortunately, it is really not ironic at all. Religion breeds corruption and evil. It is no coincidence that in this time when religious republicans have control of our government we are simultaneously in the midst of a culture of corruption. Religion, corruption and low ethics go hand in hand. Highly religious muslims are committing murder while christians are stealing and cheating and invading other countries on false pretenses. Religion and evil are twin brothers.

Has there ever been a time in the history of humanity when religion was powerful while corruption and evil were held in check? I don't think so. When religion ruled we had the dark ages and the inquisitions and the crusades and all manner of evil.

The periods of freedom from superstition coincided with an increase in ethics. The Rennaissance was also called the enlightenmen as well as the age of reason. These were periods of increasing ethics. Reason breeds ethics while religious superstition breeds evil.

It's a fact that few people are aware of - religion causes evil. Who would you trust to tell the truth and behave ethically - a nutty liberal who believes in his principles or a nut wearing his religion on his sleeve? I'm not a liberal because I believe in free enterprise, not socialism, but I definitely will trust liberal over some phony, smiling christian any day of the week.

Why does religion destroy ethics? Have you ever seen those bumper stickers that say, "I'm not perfect, just forgiven"? Isn't that just a way of saying, "I plan to do bad things and still feel good because I'm christian and god will forgive me"? Isn't that a predisposition for doing bad things? Isn't that way mafioso in Italy can murder in the morning and then ask forgivness in the afternoon and never feel guilt or remorse? Perhaps that's why the mafia comes from the same place as the catholic church. Religious people have it ingrained in their subconscious that if they cross an ethical boundary, they can always fall back on a backup plan - forgiveness. They know they can get rid of the guilt that nags them by praying and asking god for forgiveness. This ridiculous nonsense pre-wires the subconscious of the christian to be less concerned about violating ethics because they have a foolproof backup plan for eliminating guilt.

The notion that religion brings ethics to society is deeply wrong. The truth is - religion destroys ethics! Faith is evil, reason is sacred!

Condoleezza Rice says US secret prisons and extrajudicial rendition is saving European lives

2005-12-06T06:46:00.000-08:00

Condoleezza Rice says US secret prisons and extrajudicial rendition is saving European lives so European leaders should not complain about or question the Bush regime.

That may or may not be true. But it is also true that if we let the police execute the bad guys on the spot at their own discretion it will greatly reduce crime. And considering the Bush regime's track record of incompetence and dishonesty, it's far more likely that the secret prisons have done nothing good for anyone.

And it's also true that if a brutal dictator rules Iraq, terrorism in Iraq could be nearly wiped out. That's why we didn't hear about foreign terrorists or insurgents in Iraq when Saddam was in power. Should we release Saddam Hussein to clean up Bush's mess? (Perhaps the Bush regime is planning to fake the escape of Saddam Hussein and let him regain power in Iraq in order to clean up the terrorist/insurgent disaster that Bush created while allowing Bush to get out of Iraq and save face?)

Condoleezza's logic appears to be this: "if we the government are stopping some terrorism then you the citizens of America and other countries should not complain about our methods." But by that logic Saddam Hussein was a fantastic leader!!! Far better than Bush in fact. The blatant stupidity of Condoleezza Rice's speech is just mind boggling! Either she is really stupid or else she thinks her audience is really stupid.

Come to think of it, if we accept her logic, why don't we let police, highway patrol, judges, senators, representatives, mayors, governors and city councilmen execute on the spot anyone they deem a public menace? Why bother with expensive, time-consuming jury trials?

The answer is - because government can't be trusted!!! Government has the legal power to kill you!!! Give too much power to any one person or any one department of the government and your right to life, liberty and property will be destroyed in the blink of an eye. That is the whole point of checks and balances. Do Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice have any understanding of this concept? Perhaps they simply believe they can pull the wool over our eyes.

The history of human civilization is all about kings, popes, dictators and mandarins grabbing and abusing dictatorial power. Civil rights are a recent and rare phoenomena in human history.

The whole point of the American Constitution is to LIMIT and CONTROL the power of our goverment because a government out of control is everyone's worst nightmare. An evil government is far more dangerous to us than all the terrorists in the world combined.

Penalties Doubled for government officials in a position to abuse authority!

2005-11-30T20:17:00.000-08:00

Penalties are doubled for drivers who speed in a construction zone because the workers are vulnerable.

How about doubling the penalty for corrupt politicians?

We are all vulnerable to the power of government officials. This includes police, judges, district attorneys, IRS auditors, senators, congressmen and presidents.

They all have power over us and we are all vulnerable to their power.

Shouldn't they pay a double penalty if they abuse their authority? They should pay a much higher penalty than the average Joe Citizen when they are convicted of serious abuse-of-authority crimes but the reality seems to be they pay a much LIGHTER penalty. Why?

Personally, I believe a government official who abuses their authority and hurts innocent people should be executed.

Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham is the latest corrupt republican to be caught. He apologized in tears but he'll probably get a minor slap on the wrist, spend a short time in jail, and retire a wealthy man after using his position as congressman to line his own pockets with money and perks at our expense - the citizens of America.

Black Friday Deals Exposed in Advance

2005-11-20T11:17:00.000-08:00

I was never much of a black friday enthusiast, until now.

Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving and is the biggest shopping day of the year. It's called "black" because some retailers get out of the red and into the black in terms of profits on this day.

Many retailers have their best deals of the year on this day. Most of them like to keep their special deals secret until the actual day, presumably to reduce consumer comparison shopping which reduces cutthroat competition between the retailers.

But now there's a way to find out what the deals are in advance! The New York Times had an article yesterday listing 3 websites that reveal the deals, and in some cases the actual advertising flyers well before the day arrives.

Click here for a list of the three websites.

I'm excited about black friday now that I know where the awesome deals are and don't have to drive to multiple stores to take my chances. I plan to be at the stores that have what I want when they open on black Friday morning and for the first time, I'm going to part of the insane shopping crowd on that day.

Take a Financial Calculator When Buying a Car

2005-11-05T08:48:00.000-08:00

A month ago I bought a new car at Findlay Toyota in Las Vegas. I bought the car through the Costco auto buying program so I wasn't expecting the dealership to try and rip me off.

But they tried.

The salesman showed me the invoice and quoted me the Costco price as they're supposed to do under the Costco program. Then, the salesman goes and talks to the finance guy and comes back and says, "okay, your payment is going to be $334 per month at 5.9 percent interest."

Fortunately, I always bring my financial calculator when buying a car because I've seen this scam before. So I get out my calculator and do the numbers and they don't add up. $334 per month at 5.9% means a total price for my new Corolla of $17,318 but the Costco price I was quoted was $16,540. So they were trying to trick me out of almost $800 extra!

I said, "hey, could you please double check these numbers because they don't seem correct." The finance guy said, "Oh, sorry, that's a mistake. That's the payment for 48 months, not for 60 months."

How do I know this wasn't an honest mistake? For one thing, that's still not the correct payment for 48 months. For another, this was a salesman who remembered every number on everthing. He even knew my zip code when I told him the general location where I lived. Yet when he came back to tell me the monthly payment and I asked him what was the principle and he said, "I don't remember."

Clearly, it was an intentional trick to try and make an extra $800 for the dealership.

I've actually seen this exact same scam attempted on me on the last four cars I've bought in California and Arizona so obviously, it's standard operating procedure at car dealerships. I feel sorry for the people who don't know how to calculate payments and interest and who get ripped off as a result.

The bottom line - take a financial calculator when you buy a car and be prepared to check the numbers!

Bush is Figurehead for Presidents Rove and Cheney

2005-10-28T21:58:00.000-07:00

Could Bush be the dumbest president America ever had? I think it's highly likely.

The only way an idiot as dumb as Bush could get elected is to be a christian riding a wave of christian popularity and having an impressive former-president for a father. Take away either the christianity fad or the presidential father and Bush would have been a laughingstock like Dan Quayle from the moment he opened his inarticulate mouth.

So, who is really running the country? Clearly, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney are co-presidents and Bush is just a mascot. That's why Cheney was calling the shots for the entire day of 9/11 while Bush was hiding though Cheney later claimed he had "the full approval and knowledge of the president." It's similar to England having a figurehead Queen while others are actually in power.

Ten or twenty years from now, if the moron Bush junior is still alive, will anyone be asking for his deep insight into the world events from 2000 to 2008? Doubtful. But people will be asking Karl Rove and Dick Cheney for their thoughts (if they're still alive and not in prison).

Bush is a joke. The only reason anyone even pays attention to him is because he speaks for presidents Rove and Cheney. Rove and Cheney are smart enough to know the curtain must not be moved revealing the wizard of oz or else all respect will be lost. They are satisfied to be calling the shots from behind the curtain while their lap dog is the face in front of the camera.

Everything about this administration stinks of a rotten, unethical, incompetent miasma and it's hurting the America I love.

Ironic! London Bombers did a Scientific Practice Run

2005-09-21T06:44:00.000-07:00

The New York Times today said the London bombers did a practice run two weeks prior to their suicide attack.

How terribly ironic!

They believe they were murdering for god's sake yet they did not trust god enough to just do it without practicing. If they believe in god so strongly, why don't they believe god will control the outcome?

It's funny how people believe god is in control of the weather, especially during a natural disaster like hurricane Katrina, yet when the rubber meets the road even fanatical suicide bombers don't seriously trust god, and neither does anyone else. The reason is simple - god doesn't exist which it why god can never be relied upon for anything.

Basically, the London suicide bombers were being scientific. They had an idea about how to execute their murderous plot but they didn't place empty religious faith in their idea - they tested the idea. It's sadly ironic they would put their murdering mission to a scientific test yet they would never consider putting their driving philosophy, belief in a supernatural god, to the test.

See also: what is science

Simple Solution to Iraq Constitution - Do What America Did

2005-08-18T13:17:00.000-07:00

The only way Iraq can have a workable constitution that doesn't allow one religious sect to dominate and abuse all others is to do what America did - create a secular constitution and keep religion out of government.

America was the first secular government in the world and has remained so for over 200 years in spite of repeated attempts by religious groups to grab power and turn America into a theocracy. (What "repeated attempts by religious groups to grab power" you ask? Under president Abraham Lincoln, the religious republicans wanted to rewrite the constitution to say the American government derived its power and authority from god rather than from the people. Fortunately for America, Lincoln, who never joined a church in his life, managed to rebuff this religious power grab. It's an ugly irony that modern religious republicans are calling themselves the "party of Lincoln.")

Why has America managed to retain its secular government in spite of the fact a majority of Americans are religious? Because the different religious groups don't trust each other! (Does this sound similar to the situation in Iraq?) And they should not trust each other. All the flavors of christianity and all the flavors of islam each believe they are the one true religion and each believes they have a duty to take over and "save" everybody else.

All the various religious groups in America have historically realized that if religion is allowed into government, it's only a matter of time before one sect becomes dominant and begins to suppress and eliminate the competition.

This is the main reason America has retained its secular government for over 200 years - each religious group has understood that its own survival might depend on keeping religion out of government.

This will probably be the reason the religious republicans fail in their current attempt to take over our government and turn us into a theocracy. So far, the religious right has managed to fake out all the other religious sects into thinking they are working for a common cause. They have tricked the catholics into joining the republican anti-abortion crusade. They have tricked the Jews into voting republican to maintain American support for Israel. They have tricked the mormons into believing all "christians" should be united on religious values. But make no mistake about it. The group currently in the driver's seat is the evangelical christians. Evangelical christians consider mormons and catholics to be on the fringe of christianity, if christian at all, and they certainly don't consider judaism and islam to be part of their group.

If the evangelical christians succeed in grabbing full power, you can be sure they will start hammering catholics and mormons and Jews and muslims just as much as they're currently hammering atheists. There will be no room in the government for any religion except "the one true religion."

All the religious groups outside of evangelical christianity had better wake up to the fact they are dining with the devil. If they join forces with the evangelicals, pretty soon they will find themselves on the inquisitor's torture rack.

Likewise, in Iraq, if the new constitution is based on islamic law, one religious sect will survive and the other two will be eliminated. Members of the two weaker religious sects in Iraq had better start pushing for a secular constitution or else they will soon find themselves either dead or converted.

When it comes to religion in a theocratic government, only the strong survive, whereas in a secular government, each religion has an opportunity to grow based on its own merits.

For an excellent history of religion and secularism in America see "Freethinkers" by Susan Jacoby.

See also: How To Fix the Mess in Iraq

Impeach the Unethical, Incompetent Fool - George W. Bush

2005-08-14T11:21:00.000-07:00

Bush has proven that he is both unethical as well as incompetent.

It's common knowledge that he purposely mislead us into the Iraq war. The Iraq fiasco is bad but what's worse is that we are now resource crippled at a time when there are real issues to deal with such as Iran's and North Korea's nuclear ambitions and an economy that could blow at any time due to the housing bubble and the massive federal budget deficits.

In order to begin the healing process as a nation and take a small step towards regaining credibility in the world, we need to hold Bush accountable.

George W. Bush should be impeached for crimes against America. After he is convicted here he should be sent to the World Court to face trial for crimes against the world. Let the international tribunal punish him. He is a scoundrel and doesn't deserve to die on American soil.

Richard Nixon Ethics, Jimmy Carter Incompetence

2005-08-13T11:16:00.000-07:00

The Bush clown went on TV recently and said, "the economy is strong and getting stronger."

If he had a shred of decency, he would have said, "the economy is relatively strong right now but faces a significant risk in the housing bubble."

That would have been the honest thing to say but honesty is the last thing to be expected from this president. He is digging his own grave in which his legacy will be buried. I predict George "Wrong Way" Bush will go out of office in disgrace. He will be remembered as the president with Richard Nixon ethics and Jimmy Carter incompetence. He is and will be remembered as the worst and most damaging president America ever had.

When the housing bubble implodes sparking the beginning of the end of our economy, how stupid is his "strong economy" speech going to sound? When China and Japan and South Korea stop financing our shaky economy by purchasing treasury bills our interest rates are going to shoot through the roof. How dangerously incompetent will Bush's massive budget deficits look then? And considering that he campaigned under the promise of reigning in pork-barrel spending, how hypocritical and dishonest is he going to appear in retrospect?

America is on a dangerous path and contrary to what Bush believes, there is no god to save us. Only clear thinking, rational people can help and hopefully we'll get one for our next president.

New Blog on Fair Simple Tax

2005-07-05T23:15:00.000-07:00

One thing I'd most like to see in my lifetime is the fixing of our messed up and unfair income tax system here in the U.S.

I've created a new blog which proposes a constitutional amendment to make our tax system fair and simple: Fair Simple Tax

In a nutshell, the idea is to tax only individual people (not businesses) on their income and eliminate sales taxes imposed by the states. I believe this will make the tax burden fair for everyone and give an enormous boost to our economy at the same time. Now that we have terrorism to worry about can we really afford to waste 10 Billion dollars every year on the IRS when there is such a fair and simple alternative?

What is Science?

2005-06-11T13:33:00.000-07:00

Science is the search for objective truth. How do we know if something is objectively true? By testing it.

If it cannot be tested, then it is NOT science.

Objective truth is important because we know objective truth is actually true. Religious truth has no credibility. If religious truth had any value for finding what is actually true then we would allow religious testing into areas of life where it is currently banned, such as our drug testing methodology. In America, new drugs have to be rigorously tested for safety and efficacy, usually in scientific double-blind clinical testing. Would any religious wacko be willing to take drugs that bypassed all this scientific testing and were merely approved by a religious committee which prayed for guidance from god to make FDA rulings? It's painfully obvious that all the religious leaders in the world praying to god for guidance would NOT be able to predict the safety and efficacy of a new drug any more reliably than a 5-year old doing eeny-meeny-miny-moe.

If we didn't use objectivity to verify the truth of our ideas our medical doctors would still be using leeches to bleed sick people because they "believed" in the technique and didn't bother to test their theory.

This is why "intelligent design" cannot be called science, because it cannot be tested. If it cannot be tested then it simply has no credibility and doesn't deserve further consideration. Anybody could sit down for one day and dream up 500 different hypothetical supernatural origins for the universe and none of those 500 hypothesis would be worth investigating without at least a shred of evidence to begin with. In fact, that's exactly where religion came from - superstitious, ignorant men who believed the earth was flat sitting around several thousand years ago dreaming up fantasies.

Here is a graphic example of the difference between science and religion. Imagine you wake up and find yourself isolated in a white room. When you went to sleep everything was normal and you have no idea how you got into the white room. The religious approach would be to curl up in a ball in the corner of the room and pray. The truly devout would accept the new condition as god's will and simply wait for god to make his next move. The scientific approach would be to start thinking and reasoning. The rational person would reason that he isn't dead yet so someone must have put him in the room for a purpose. He would hypothesize that someone might be monitoring him and he would shout to see if he could get some attention. He might bang on the walls to see what they're made of and and test for an escape route. We could go on and on but, hopefully, you get the point. The religious approach is to ignore reality and just believe whatever you want to believe but the scientific (aka rational, logical, objective) approach is to think and reason and try to understand the world and perform tests and experiments to verify if our understanding is correct.

But what if we find out that gods really do exist? If any gods would reveal their existence then all rational people would believe in gods. Suppose the gods revealed themselves to us and proved to us they have unlimited supernatural powers. Then rational people would believe in the existence of all-powerful gods and supernatural power (actually, it would then be considered natural, not supernatural). But the next question would be this, do these gods deserve our respect? An objective, unbrainwashed reading of the christian bible shows that the god of christianity is a vile, filthy, evil god who deserves to be killed, not worshipped. The god of christianity is filthy because the christian myth was created by filthy-minded, superstitious, ignorant men who believed the earth was flat.

At this point in time, the existence of god is just like the existence of space aliens - there may be a lot of people who believe but there simply isn't a speck of evidence. A few centuries ago most people believed the earth was flat. Clearly, millions of people believing something does not make it true. (Actually, belief in gods is far less credible than belief in aliens. We see ourselves on this planet so it's reasonable to think there might be other creatures on other planets. But we have never seen any evidence for the existence of a supernatural creature so there is no basis to suppose that any supernatural creature has ever existed at all.)

Is there any supernatural claim in any religion that can be objectively tested and shown to be true? No. Not even one. Therefore, believing in god is unscientific because it is a belief that can't be tested and for which there is no evidence.

See also: Intelligent Design Has Missing Link

Stupid Wars Destroy the Military

2005-05-23T02:22:00.000-07:00

The war in Iraq is ruining military recruitment as it should. Just one more catastrophic result of a religious president asking his invisible friend, god, to give us victory in a war we launched without ethics.

Only an idiot would sign up to serve in this military under this president. Soldiers in Iraq are NOT dying for America. They are dying for George "Wrong Way" Bush. Many Americans would be willing to die for American freedom but who wants to die for George W. Bush in a stupid, unethical war? Who wants to die for a draft-dodging, silver-spoon-in-mouth president who lacked the integrity to complete his comfortable national guard duty while others were drafted to die in Vietnam?

The only real difference between Iraq and Vietnam is that soldiers in Iraq volunteered. If this president starts drafting young men as slave soldiers and sending them to die in the Iraqi meat grinder, we'll start seeing anti-war protests just like Vietnam all over again.

Consecutive Term Limits for Congress

2005-05-18T03:59:00.000-07:00

The children in congress are getting really wacky and out-of-touch these days. Our "representatives" are not representing we the people anymore. They are representing their own greedy hunger for power, glory and wealth. They are a good-ole-boy network diseased by too many years of too much power with too little accountability.

It's time to reign in our elected representatives. It's time for term limits. Here's a proposal: After two consecutive elected terms, a senator or congressman must sit out one term. After sitting out one term, he is eligible to run again for election and so on.

Under this proposal, the senator or congressman can continue to be an elected representative for his entire life with occasional spells of unemployment and if he is good, he can continue providing value to our country for many years. And in each of his second consecutive elected terms, since he will not be eligible for immediate reelection, he can concentrate on doing the right things instead of focusing on raising money for reelection.

Intelligent Design Has Missing Link

2005-05-08T14:46:00.000-07:00

The intelligent design proponents say that life is too complex to have evolved naturally so it must have a designer. Their favorite example is an ordinary watch. If you find a watch on the beach, they say, you know it is too complex and its purpose too intentional to be a random creation of nature - therefore it must have been designed by some sort of intelligence.

But you know the watch is designed precisely because you recognize it is not natural! You can see it is not a product of nature. Nature doesn't produce such things. Nature produces things like mountains, rivers, planets, solar systems, gravity, electricity, nuclear forces, animals, insects and all manner of living things. Nature does not produce watches. You can look at a watch, see it is not natural and therefore conclude it was designed by an intelligence.

The missing link: How do you look at nature and conclude it is not natural so it must be designed? How do we jump from: "a watch is not natural so we know it must be designed by intelligence" -to- "nature is complicated so it must be designed by intelligence"? There is simply no analogy whatsoever between these two things.

The intelligent design argument really just boils down to this, "hey dude, nature (aka reality) is complicated and I don't understand it so I will assume there is a god that created everything."

The funny thing is, many natural things are complicated yet we don't assume a supernatural creature is behind them. For example, have you ever seen a dust devil? They are like miniature tornados and I've seen many of them in Phoenix. They are amazing! In the middle of an otherwise normal day you can sometimes see one of these phenomenon spinning about seemingly with a mind of its own. What could possibly motivate the air to gather up from all around in a rapidly spinning funnel for no visible reason? I don't know exactly why it happens. I think it's random chance having to do with temperature and humidity and wind currents. If I hadn't seen one I would never have believed it possible. Yet it happens in nature by random natural events and no one outside a mental institution would say it is created by invisible beings.

The intelligent design proponents think a god is the only possible explanation for the existence of the universe but they can't explain where god came from in the first place anymore than anyone else can explain where matter and energy came from. We simply don't know. So, why does the intelligent design proponent stop with just one god? If there is one, there could just as easily be many. Perhaps there is a whole plethora of gods with some more powerful than others. Or perhaps they are all equally omniscient and omnipotent. But if they are all omnipotent, could one of them kill all the others? Maybe one of them is an evil bastard and killed all the other gods and that's why there is only one wacko god creature who feels the need to have insignificant humans worship him. He's an unethical ego maniac. Perhaps the one remaining god died and that's why we haven't seen hide nor hair of him in several thousand years.

If we continue contemplating the possible existence of one or more gods, will we ever figure out an answer? Nope. So what's the point in wasting intellectual energy on something that may or may not exist but for which there is no evidence and which is unprovable and untestable? The world and the universe seem to work according to natural laws that, as far as we know, have never been broken. If there exists a supernatural creature with supernatural powers who is not subject to the laws of nature, why don't we wait until he shows himself before we start making all kinds of assumptions about his possible existence and the existence of others like him?

And if some people say this supernatural creature has already shown himself as Jesus Christ, then where's the proof? The christian bible says that if a person has even a tiny bit of faith the size of a mustard seed and asks god to move a mountain, the mountain will be moved. The christian bible also says (Mark 16:16) that if a person believes in Jesus Christ and is baptized he will be able to heal the sick by a mere touch with his hands. Funny that christians don't question why the catholic pope is unable to heal his own Parkinson's disease. So, in the presence of all these claims of supernatural power yet in the complete absense of any demonstration of supernatural power, I challenge the christians to show that their faith is true and that god exists. Let's set a date and time and do a demonstration on national or worldwide television. Let's get the pope, president Bush, Billy Graham, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, all the religious leaders and all the believers in all the world to pray for one simple little demonstration that god really exists. Let's have 4 billion people simultaneously praying for the same little thing. Let them pray and ask god to levitate a penny just a few inches above the ground. If the penny levitates, then god exists. If not, then they can still believe in their mythological god but at least they won't be suffering under the illusion that prayer actually works. Of course, the pope and the president and all the believers will not accept this challenge. They know deep in their hearts it won't work. They'll say we're not supposed to test god even though their god supposedly would move a mountain for them if they asked.

See also: What is Science?

Magic Bullet to Fix Income Taxes and the Economy

2005-04-13T13:32:00.000-07:00

Last night on ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings (April 12, 2005) there was a segment exposing the small amount of income taxes paid by corporations. By 2003 Corporations were only paying about 16 percent of all income taxes taken in by the U.S. federal government.

Specifically mentioned was Wachovia which saved 3 billion dollars by purchasing a sewer system (or something like that) in Germany then immediately leasing back the sewer system to Germany. The only purpose of the transaction was to reduce Wachovia's income tax burden.

What we have here is a complicated, unfair system in which corporations waste enormous time, money and resources just to reduce their income tax burden. At the same time, the naked truth is individual people pay most of the income tax to the government and corporations pay very little. All the effort corporations put into reducing their income tax burden is simply national productivity down the drain. It does nothing healthy or good for our country.

There is a simple magic bullet that can fix this problem: change the system to tax ONLY individuals and ONLY on gross income with no deductions and no loopholes. For example, change the system to tax individuals at a rate of 25% of their gross income over $40,000. No deductions for home ownership. No deductions for dependents. No loopholes for rich people. No unfairness at all anywhere in the system. And corporations can forget about income taxes and get back to the business of making better products leading to an improved economy and higher wages for all Americans.

The Economist reports that Russia discovered making income tax simple and fair increases both productivity and compliance, a win for both government and the people.

I've written about this idea for fair, simple income taxes here in this blog:
Magic Bullet to Fix Income Taxes and the Economy 1
Magic Bullet to Fix Income Taxes and the Economy 2
Magic Bullet to Fix Income Taxes and the Economy 3

God Did Not Save Terri Schiavo

2005-04-11T15:51:00.000-07:00

Why didn't god save Terri Schiavo?

Why couldn't an angel come to the hospice and give Terri Schiavo a functioning brain?

Could it be due to the fact there is no such thing as a god or gods, angels, or in fact, anything at all supernatural?

When is the last time the world saw an objective demonstration of anything supernatural? Answer: never!

When something subjective happens, like one person lives through a car accident or a sick person gets well, the religious say god helped. But never in the history of the world has anything objective been seen to happen because of god. A person with scars will still have the scars tomorrow - god can't be troubled to magically make scars disappear. An objectively dead person will still be dead tomorrow - god can't be troubled to magically make a dead person come back to life. God never seems to do anything objectively obvious. If god exists, why does he need to play these little parlor tricks and pretend as if he doesn't exist?

Since "god" seems intent on keeping his existence a secret, how can anyone actually believe? No one really believes the ancient American Indian witchdoctor's rain dance actually had anthing to do with making rain. Most of the time when the witchdoctor would do his rain dance, it would not rain. So why would any Indians in the tribe believe the witchdoctor had magical power? What kind of answer can the christians come up with if someone asks them why they "know" their religion is true but they also know the Indian witchdoctor is false. Even the christians admit the impossibility of performing a test to see if their god actually exists. So why is christianity any different from any other cult or superstition? The truth is this: christianity is just a superstitious cult that happens to have a lot of followers. The only difference between christianity and other superstitious cults (astrology, crystal power, psychics, palm readers etc) is simply the quantity of believers.

Save the Children - Allow Priests to Marry

2005-04-05T17:29:00.000-07:00

Hopefully the new pope of the catholic church will be smart enough to fix the problem of sexually perverted priests.

The fix is simple. Allow priests to marry.

Catholic priests turn into sexual perverts because they try to live an unnatural, against-nature perverted lifestyle of absolutely no sex.

The idea that abstaining from sex is somehow good and noble is a perversion of nature. Perverting nature in that way leads to sexual perversion. For the sake of children everywhere, let's hope the new catholic pope has the wisdom to do away with the ridiculous abstinence nonsense.

Schiavo Bill on Steroids, Rest of Congress Brain Dead

2005-04-05T10:50:00.000-07:00

Why can't Congress do something about deficit reduction, income tax reform, the looming Medicare disaster or other seriously real problems as quickly as they passed the Schiavo bill?

The clowns in congress actually stayed through midnight wrestling with the Schiavo bill.

This certainly shows the perverted priorities of the conservative christian republicans.

Republican Party is POT Party

2005-04-05T01:18:00.000-07:00

The Republican party should no longer be called the GOP.

It should be called the POT party: Party of Theocracy

Religious Dictatorship is Worse than Communist Dictatorship

2005-03-24T01:35:00.000-08:00

There are really only two kinds of governmental systems: free and dictatorship.

There are several kinds of dictatorships: communist, religious, feudal, monarchial, nazi etcetera. But they are all dictatorships plain and simple. They are all unethical. They are unethical because they do not give equal political rights to all people.

There is only one type of government that gives equal political rights to all human beings: free enterprise.

Although all dictatorships are bad, they are not all equally bad and the worst of all is a religious dictatorship. History shows that religious dictatorships are by far the cruelest, deadliest, most inhumane dictatorships. The dark ages was a long and deadly religious dictatorship. Fortunately, during the dark ages, the religious wackos had to share power with monarchs and other wannabe dictators or else it would have been even worse.

I'll elaborate on these concepts later.

It's Religious Wars, Not Culture Wars

2005-03-21T05:21:00.000-08:00

The media is calling the weirdness in Washington "culture wars". The media still doesn't get it. It should be called religious wars, not culture wars because all the weird disputes in politics these days are sparked by religion.

What the religious Republicans are trying to pass off as a "culture of life" should more properly be called a "culture of religion" because as I've pointed out here in this blog, the so-called "pro life" movement has nothing to do with respect for human life and everything to do with religious superstition.

The religious Republicans say that "moral values" won the election in 2004 but the correct term is "religous values." Religion is one possible source of moral and ethical principles but a better source is rational, objective thinking. Aristotle and Socrates lived hundreds of years before Jesus and are infinitely more valuable as fountains of clear-thinking, rational ethics. In addition, Socrates was tried and executed by his government for his principles yet he never wavered in sticking to his principles and, unlike Jesus, he wasn't hiding out, trying to evade capture. (If Jesus wasn't hiding from the Roman soldiers, then why did Judas have to betray Jesus' location before the soldiers could find him?) Socrates had far more integrity and was a much greater and more noble hero than pathetic little Jesus.

The religious republicans claim to be concerned about the civil rights of a human vegetable and they claim to value the human potential of a microscopic clump of unborn cells yet they condone torture and change bankruptcy laws so that the rich can protect assets but the poor have no escape. I wish the religious republicans could be a little more concerned about people that are actually living among us and less preoccupied with vegetables and clumps of cells.

If the religious replublicans keep going in their current direction, pretty soon we'll have inquisitions and crusades again, but this time they'll be backed by nuclear weapons. Can you imagine what the world would be like now if Spain had nuclear weapons during the Spanish Inquisition?

Media and rational people everywhere, please don't fall for the subterfuge spewed by the religious republicans. Instead, please use the following phraseology:

religious wars NOT culture wars
culture of religion NOT culture of life
religious values NOT moral values
people of religion NOT people of faith
POT party (Party of Theocracy) NOT GOP party

It's Time to Abandon Taiwan and South Korea

2005-03-16T01:11:00.000-08:00

America should have learned at least one thing from the Vietnam War: it's stupid to fight for the freedom of a country when the people in that country won't fight for themselves.

It's in America's best interest to publicly dismantle and disavow our thankless job as the global bodyguard for Taiwan and South Korea.

What would we really lose if China swallows Taiwan and North Korea swallows South Korea?

There is a significant percentage of people in Taiwan who believe Taiwan should be reunited with mainland China. We should get out of the way. Do we want to start world war 3 and send Americans to die when the Taiwanese themselves don't care?

The same thing goes for South Korea. The South Korean government is openly hostile to America and many of its citizens are anti-American. If we remove our land mines from the demilitarized zone and then get out, the dictator-clown with the funny hair in North Korea can take over South Korea and have even more slaves under his thumb. North Korea can plunder the wealth of South Korea and people in the North will be able to taste food again. Soon, the economy of the reunited Korea will be as bankrupt as North Korea is now and America and Japan will have less competition in the electronics industry. Everybody wins - except, of course, the South Koreans.

It's time for Americans to concern themselves with the best interest of America. We should have learned from Vietnam that fighting for so-called freedom in some ungrateful corner on the other side of the Earth does nothing to futher our interests.

Social Security Fix? Bush is a Liar and Denier

2005-03-15T02:41:00.000-08:00

In spite of the bleak outlook for Bush's social security plan, he says he's going to keep "... pushing and explaining to people of all ages why Social Security needs to be fixed permanently and why it's best that personal accounts be part of the solution."

What does it matter what he says? Does anybody still listen to the moron?

He has proven himself to be a liar and denier.

He said it was important to attack Iraq because they had weapons of mass destruction. They didn't. So then he said, "the world is better off without Saddam Hussein."

He says private accounts will fix social security and those near retirement won't be affected and the young will have more at retirement. When that proves false, he will simply say, "America is better off without the old Social Security system."

Reality and truth have no bearing on Bush. He says whatever he needs to get what he wants then denies he was wrong. He has lost all credibility and no one should pay him any attention. He is an unethical tyrant riding a wave of christian fanaticism.

Extrajudicial Rendition and Torture

2005-03-06T14:12:00.000-08:00

Why do we need to be very careful and cautious with the Bush regime's inclination for extrajudicial rendition and torture?

For the same reasons that:

We don't allow our president to be absolute dictator for four years.
We require two officers with separate keys to launch a nuclear missle.
We have three branches of government providing checks and balances on each other.
We require a court order to allow police to enter a private property.
We require a court order to allow government to seize private property.
All police shootings are investigated.

In a nutshell, to prevent abuse of power by not concentrating too much power in too few hands. This principle is essentially the whole point of our constitution - to provide for a workable government but restrained with checks and balances in such a way that no one person or department or branch has enough power to abuse their power.

Anytime we must consider new powers in the hands of our government, we must ask ourselves, what is the potential for abuse of this power? If the potential for abuse is great, we must build in some checks and balances on that power.

In the case of torture, it's often said that if a terrorist knows of an atomic bomb that's going to destroy a city and kill millions, it would be reasonable to torture the terrorist in order to save millions of lives. That's absolutely true. It's against our constitution but millions of lives outweighs this one single torture. But ONLY if we really know there is a potential to save millions of lives. (Let's not forget how easily the Bush regime said, "we must attack Iraq now because they have weapons of mass destruction," only to hear him say later, "oops, he didn't have weapons of mass destruction but the world is better off without him.") So, how can we judge when torture might be permissable? Very simple - by court order. The court order must come from a significant federal court and must not be a simple thing to obtain. It can be a quick thing to obtain in emergencies but it must never be a simple and casual thing to obtain. It might even need to come from the Supreme Court. There is a huge potential for abuse with torture so we need some serious safeguards against abuse.

Right now, the Bush regime can torture anyone at anytime or send them to a foreign country for torture without a court order and without any oversight. This is unacceptable. If this is not stopped soon, it's just a matter of time before news reporters are tortured to give up their sources, illegal file sharing kids are tortured to give up their co-conspirators, and all of us have more to fear from our own government than from terrorists.

This abuse of power by the Bush regime is dangerous to the American way of life and it will spread rapidly if we don't get it under control soon. Power corrupts and the current Bush regime has way too much power already.

BTK Killer is Church Leader

2005-03-01T15:18:00.000-08:00

The BTK killer, Dennis L. Rader, has been caught. He is the president of the church council at Christ Lutheran Church in Wichita Kansas and has been a member of the church for about 30 years.

That should not come as any suprise. Most violent wackos are religious. It is probably the extreme internal conflict between reality and religious superstition that causes their wackiness. After all, according to the religious superstition, wouldn't they be doing their vicitms a favor by killing them and therefore sending them to heaven early? I'm not sure why the christians don't see all the good that serial killers do for their vicitims.

I wish someone would do a study on the religious beliefs of violent criminals in prison. I'm pretty sure it would be discovered that a disproportionate percentage of violent criminals are religious and that few violent criminals are affirmed atheists. I'm also sure it would be found that very few affirmed atheists are incarcerated for crimes of ethics such as theft and breaking contracts (note: cheating on taxes is probably not a crime of ethics). It will be found that affirmed atheists are by far MORE ethical and honest than their religious counterparts. After all, it takes a courageous and conscious mental effort to reject the religious superstition that has been brainwashed into us from birth. Any person with the courage to reject superstition in favor of reason and risk eternal torture in the process likely has a profound respect for human life and human reasoning.

Religion is Harmless Until People Take it Seriously

2005-02-25T13:56:00.000-08:00

The christian religion in one form or another has been in America since the beginning. So why is it only now rearing its ugly head in dangerous ways? Because now people in high positions of American government are taking it seriously!

What is the difference between a religious fundamentalist and a religous moderate? The fundamentalist takes his religion seriously, believes deeply, and follows absolutely. When the religion says kill nonbelievers, the fundamentalist follows the command. Both the Koran and the christian bible order believers to kill nonbelievers. The only difference between the 9/11 terrorists and the religious republicans in America is the terrorists were more devout in their faith.

Religion is mostly harmless as long as nobody takes it seriously. When people allow their religious superstition to rule ceremonies and funerals but rely on reason and science to guide their actions and government, life goes on. But when people allow religious superstition to rule government then all hell will break loose!

The pope just had an emergency tracheotomy last night to save his life. Clearly, when his life is on the line, he and his followers trust medical science more than they trust god. Any time the outcome is clear, objective and indisputable, all people, religious or otherwise, trust reason and science over their religious superstition. It's only when something is vague, unclear and subjective that any person in the world is willing to put their faith to the test. Clearly, faith is unprovable, unreliable, untestable and therefore, of no value in reality.

Yet faith is destroying America right now. We have a retarded child in the presidency right now who believes he is doing god's will. How does he know god's will? Through faith. Religious faith is believing something when there's no reason to believe it. So in essence, George W. Bush simply believes that if his belief is strong enough, god will guide him. Considering that he was a failure in every endeavor prior to becoming president, clearly our country is in danger.

So, now religion is coming out of the closet and out of the church and starting to have more than mere ceremonial influence in our lives. The last time this happened it was called the dark ages. Superstition ruled and the church murdered millions and people suffered on a massive scale. Allowing religious superstition to rule in the nuclear age is not a good idea.

The Gates - Is it Art?

2005-02-13T12:48:00.000-08:00

The so-called "Gates" was just unveiled in New York City by Christo and his wife Jeanne-Claude.

It's a bunch of rectangular panels of saffron-colored pleated nylon swaths.

Is it art or just nylon nonsense?

It is definitely NOT art because absolutely anyone in the world could dream it up and create it. If it requires absolutely no talent and anyone in the world can do it then it CANNOT be a work of art.

It might be an interesting novelty but it is certainly not art.

It is precisely for nonsense like this that we need to have a good definition of art. Having a widely accepted rational definition of art will inevitably result in an overall improvement in the quality of art available for all of us to enjoy.

Bad Time for Retarded Children to Control America

2005-02-12T11:31:00.000-08:00

North Korea has admitted possessing nukes and Iran has refused to curtail their nuclear program.

This is a very bad time for us in America to have retarded children running our government. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, and Wolfowitz are the crazies. They are a pack of retarded children in a bible study group chanting religious mumbo jumbo while America gets sucked into the dark cesspool of religious superstition.

Thanks to them, we have maxed out our military in Iraq, which has been proven to be absolutely no threat to America, and we have little military power left to focus on the despotic countries that actually do pose a threat.

When Bush or even a muslim mullah get sick they go see a doctor. They don't sit around in a prayer group praying to get well because they don't trust faith when it comes to their own health. Yet when it comes to war and young soldier's lives, America's leaders rely on prayer and the christian bible for direction. That's why we're in this mess with Iraq and we're heading for disaster with our soaring national debt and increasing numbers of nuclear powered wacko regimes.

At this dangerous time in our history, we need clear rational thinking and good judgement running our country not the religious superstition of retarded children.

Carly Fiorina Dumped at Last

2005-02-09T14:41:00.000-08:00

Hewlett Packard has finally seen the light and dumped Carly Fiorina.

The Carly saga is a good example of what's wrong in American business today - management being drawn from the ranks of smooth-talking used car salesmen rather than from the ranks of people with talent and good ideas. That's why America is tops in the world at marketing but pretty poor at engineering. We still have good innovation which is why most of our strong, exciting companies are young, such as google for example, while most of our older companies are dying a slow death.

Any two-bit car lot is populated with smooth, eloquent, fast talkers but you wouldn't hire a used car salesman to manage a nuclear power plant, would you? Yet American businesses often can't seem to distinguish between someone who sounds good versus someone who is good.

If you find a CEO who is a horrible talker but has a track record of success, invest in that company. You know that person will be a winner because they got there through talent, not smooth talking.

Carly was a smooth talking salesman. That's her talent. She should have never been in charge of anything larger than a McDonald's. Her only real success happened during the height of the dot com bubble when virtually everyone was successful. Combine a dot com bubble with a fast-talking salesman and you get a lucky skyrocketing career of an untalented future CEO destined for future flameout.

Torture Czar Confirmed as US Attorney General

2005-02-04T13:42:00.000-08:00

The torture czar is now head of the Department of Justice.

This says a lot about the Bush regime's position on human rights and civil rights and brings into focus the abject hypocrisy behind their anti-abortion slogan "the strong must protect the weak."

Digital Privacy of Fallen Soldiers

2005-02-03T13:12:00.000-08:00

I'm annoyed at the parents suing to get access to their dead children's email accounts and websites. They are piggy-backing on the emotional trauma of soldiers dying in Iraq to invade their childrens privacy for their own benefit.

The families claim that digital access should pass to the next of kin just like letters, clothes and high school soccer balls. But letters, clothes and soccer balls are out in the open and don't constitute a privacy issue. Doesn't a person have a right to some degree of privacy even after death? What if a fallen soldier had personal videos of sex with his wife? Doesn't he have a right to expect that his parents will never see it? What if a fallen soldier hated his parents? What a tragic final insult to then give the hated parents access to all his personal information.

Take the case, for example, of Karl Linn who died in Iraq last week. His father, Richard Linn, is trying to get access to Karl's email accounts and websites. If Karl wanted his parents to have access to his private emails, why didn't he leave his password with his parents in case he died? He could have left his password in a sealed envelope addressed to his parents among his personal effects at his station in Iraq. After his death, his parents get all his personal effects and the problem is solved and no one's privacy is invaded. As far as his website goes, any pages of the website that the parents had access to could easily be downloaded and saved permanently. Why do the parents need access to anymore than this?

I'm ashamed of these parents trying to use the courts to get access to their dead childrens private and personal files. If they want to honor their dead children, how about they start by honoring their dead children's privacy!

The Shocking Truth About Our Banking System

2005-01-12T16:06:00.000-08:00

If you deposit $100 cash in a bank, how much money can the bank turn around and lend out?

You might think the bank would be able to take your $100 and lend out $90 but the true answer is they can lend out $900 !!!

What!? How is it possible for them to lend out more than they take in? It's called fractional reserve banking. They are lending money that doesn't exist. It's phantom money. It's unethical and unhealthy for any economy.

Banks have a long history of unethical behavior in this regard. In the early days, a bank was just a secure warehouse to safeguard your gold. People would place their gold in the bank and get a receipt. People started trading receipts rather than running back to the warehouse to get the actual gold. The banks realized they could print some phony receipts to buy land and buildings and no one would be the wiser as long as not all the customers came asking for their gold at the same time.

That's how it got started but how does it work today? Currently, there is a 10% reserve requirement for banks in the federal reserve system (virtually all banks of any significance). This means if you deposit $100 in cash into your checking account, the bank can lend out $900 because they will have cash on hand equal to 10% of loans outstanding. If you then write a check to someone for $100 who happens to use your same bank and who deposits your check into their account at the same bank, all is good from the perspective of the bank. Nothing happened except a little accounting entry in the computer. What if you withdraw $100 of cash from the ATM or the person to whom you wrote the check does their banking at a different bank than you? Your bank will have to turn over actual cash but then they are no longer meeting their reserve requirement. They will have to borrow cash somewhere to cover their 10% reserve requirement. That's what inter-bank borrowing and the federal funds rate is all about.

Does it sound a little flakey? That's because it is flakey. It's the world's largest pyramid scheme. Wouldn't you love to be able to loan money you don't have and charge interest on money that doesn't exist?

How does it affect us? It gives us wild inflation, deflation, recessions, depressions and economic instability. Inflation is entirely created by the banking system with the Federal Reserve in the driver's seat. Inflation results from increasing the money supply and only banks, especially the Federal Reserve, can increase the money supply. The Fed and the banks create phantom money which increases the money supply which causes inflation. This is the ONLY source of inflation. If you ever hear the Federal Reserve or banking executives claim to be fighting inflation, don't believe it. They are the sole creators of inflation.

Believe it or not, the Federal Reserve is not entirely a government entity. It is mostly a private entity with little accountability to our elected government officials. The accountability of the Federal Reserve really boils down to just two things: 1) Quarterly reports to Congress; 2) Congress created the Federal Reserve via legislation and can eliminate the Federal Reserve just as easily. If it weren't for the fact that Congress could eliminate the Federal Reserve or change the laws governing its operation, the Federal Reserve would truly be an evil rogue operation.

What should we expect in the future? We currently have a national debt of around 7 trillion dollars, nearly $25,000 for every man woman and child in America. Unless there is another technology boom like the internet boom of the 90's to increase taxes taken in by the government, there is only one way our government can pay back this enormous debt: by expanding the money supply thereby devaluing the money and creating inflation. The Federal Reserve can do this with the wave of a pen. You can expect your money to become considerably less valuable in the near future, i.e., you can expect some serious inflation, possibly another great depression.

How can we fix this problem? There are lots of good ways to fix this problem. One way is to simply eliminate the Federal Reserve and require all banks to have a 100% reserve. A 100% reserve means that if you deposit $100, the bank can turn around and loan out $100 but no more. They cannot loan money that was never deposited and doesn't exist. But how should we control the size of the money supply? Milton Friedman suggested that we simply increase the money supply by 3 percent each year every year. Increasing the money supply 3% per year would lead to a much more stable economy. We would still have highs and lows but they would be milder and shorter than we get under Federal Reserve. Remember, the Federal Reserve was created in 1913 and the Great Depression occurred in 1929. One repercussion of this fix is that our economy wouldn't grow as fast in boom times but by the same token, it wouldn't crash as hard in bust times. The economy and prices in general would be much more stable over time and economic growth would be steady and predictable.

What can we as consumers do to protect ourselves from the rigged money and the resulting inflation? Some suggest purchasing collectible gold coins - collectible because if the government once again outlaws private ownership of gold collectible gold coins would probably be exempted. Another good option is investing in the stock market.

Here are some books on this topic. These are the best books I've found so far on this topic but I'm still hoping to find better books. If you know of better books, please let me know.

Why Keep Government and Religion Separate?

2005-01-02T08:36:00.000-08:00

Why keep religion out of government? Because religion is not objective. Religion is nothing more than subjective opinion and personal preference. Can anyone prove their religion is right and other religions are wrong? There is no evidence that any gods ever existed and there is no evidence that even one single supernatural event ever occurred in all the history of the earth. Belief in the supernatural, the basis of religion, is unprovable, untestable, unverifiable and therefore absolutely unreliable.

In other words, there is no reason to think religion is anything more than pure superstitious myth.

Should a government be based on or influenced by myth? Would you want your government run by people who relied on astrology? How about electing a psychic as president? What about a president who makes all decisions based on Tarot cards or the voodoo pattern formed by casting some chicken bones on the floor? How about if, instead of requiring rigorous clinical trials to determine the safety and efficacy of new drugs, the Food and Drug Administration simply prayed for guidance from god? What if the Supreme Court issued rulings with no more explanation than "divine guidance" rather than detailed, logical opinions based on constitutional principles?

So, you wouldn't want a president to take us to war based on a hand of Tarot cards? Why not? Could it be that you don't believe in Tarot cards? Why don't you believe in Tarot cards? Is it because you've never seen any evidence to suggest Tarot cards can reliably predict the future? Exactly what is the evidence you've seen to suggest the existence of anything at all supernatural?

Here's a good little experiment: Ask a religious person how he knows his religion is correct and other religions are wrong. After wading through some diversionary chaff, there are really only two possible answers:

I just feel it.
I just believe it.

In other words, belief in religion is not based on evidence or reality or reason. Belief in religion is based on nothing. People just choose to believe because they want to believe.

If religion is not based on evidence or reason, how do you confirm it is right or wrong? If you can't even confirm a religion as a whole is right or wrong, how can you begin to interpret the meaning of thousand-year-old gibberish written by ignorant, superstitious men that didn't even know the earth is round and didn't know of the existence of bacteria let alone that it causes disease?

On top of being pure myth, christianity, like most religions, is so full of contradictions and inconsistencies that anyone can justify anything based on it. Want to justify war? The bible says that if people in a city serve other gods you are to kill everyone in the city and burn it to the ground (Deuteronomy 13:12-16) and Jesus commands we kill anyone not believing in him (John 15:6). Want to justify peace? Jesus said turn the other cheek. Any book of philosophy that can be conveniently used to justify both sides of any argument is not to be trusted and is not worth the paper it's written on.

The bottom line is this: religion boils down to mob rule. It has to be mob rule because it is not based on reason or evidence. You can't assert a religious position by being brilliant with logic since logic has nothing to do with it. Whoever gets the most followers is the leader of the mob and is the one who decides. That's why Islam has its sharia and christianity has its tele-evangelists. They are the leaders of the mob and they decide how to interpret the thousand-year-old religious writing.

So, if religion controls government, it means that government is controlled by a mob. This is just another form of dictatorship. A religious theocracy is really a religious dictatorship.

Religion is a weed growing in the brain attacking the natural human capacity to reason logically and think clearly. It starts small but eventually it will take over and corrupt and destroy all that is good in humanity.

Like a weed, religion needs to be stamped out while some of us can still think clearly like rational human beings.

The World Was Better Off With Saddam Hussein In Power

2005-01-02T08:27:00.000-08:00

I just saw King Abdullah 2nd of Jordan on TV last night. He's concerned that the Shia majority in Iraq will take power and align themselves with their religious center - Iran.

In other words, he's concerned that Iranian Shiites will end up controlling Iran, Iraq, and Iraq's oil. Combined with their influence in Syria and Labanon, the new Iran-Iraq could be a major destabilizing force in the middle east.

What a disaster.

Saddam Hussein kept the religious fanatics under control in Iraq. Apparently, keeping muslim fanatics under control requires a brutal dictator. We were actually safer WITH Saddam Hussein controlling Iraq. Invading Iraq has been the greatest recruiting tool the muslim fanatics could ever have hoped for and was a horrible mistake. Invading Iraq has destroyed America's credibility in the world, destroyed America's military recruitment, and squandered the new trust we all had in our American military that took so many years to regain after the Vietnam debacle.

Imagine what could have been had someone like Colin Powell been president instead of the "W" clown. Colin Powell would have investigated and determined that Saddam was not a threat to America. He could have then chosen to work diplomatically with Saddam encouraging Saddam to move gradually towards democracy. It could have been a win-win situation for Iraq and America and, indeed, for the whole middle east. Instead, thanks to the clown in the oval office, we have the worst possible outcome: American soldiers dying for nothing, more muslims than ever wanting to kill us, and a situation in the middle east getting worse by the day.

Our idiotic Bush regime has caused some serious damage to America and the world but the christian fanatics don't care! They re-elected him in spite of the fact that he has done the wrong thing at the wrong time every time. This is part of the problem with mixing religion into government - a total disregard for reality to such a degree that the worst president in the history of the United States can get re-elected merely on the basis he is a "christian" in spite of the fact he is a miserable failure.

The christian fanatics, like the muslim fanatics, are not concerned with reality. Their only concern is spreading their personal religious superstition.

Privatize Social Security

2004-12-21T23:51:00.000-08:00

Why does the clown in the oval office think privatizing social security will fix social security?

Because it will eliminate the government's liability to pay your retirement. Instead, you will be responsible for managing your own retirement. If your retirement gets screwed up and you have no money for old age it's either your fault or just bad luck with the stock market timing. Regardless, it's personal responsibility although it's involuntary.

In other word's, it will actually be effective at removing the burden off the government of a program that costs more money than payroll taxes bring in.

If the economy takes a dump and people's private social security accounts lose 90% of their value - oh well. Stuff happens. But you can't blame the government because it's your own private account and your own responsibility, not a government entitlement program.

This is the true reason for privatizing social security. Simply eliminating government liability to pay and replacing it with personal responsibility and personal risk.

It's moving social security toward the idea of a simple savings account but one which you are forced to have. It's a way of forcing idiots who don't want to save money for old age, to save money for old age.

Why should the government force people to save for retirement? Because so many people fail to save for retirement or invest too much money in high-risk adventures like an over-inflated stock market. This is exactly what happened in the 1920's and 1930's which led to the great depression and provided the motivation for F.D.R. to give us our current social security system.

But claims that privatized social security will allow people to earn a higher percent on their money by investing in the stock market is just marketing hooey. That's just a phony carrot to entice people into accepting the idea. It's a lot like HMO's saying they reduce costs by preventing disease rather than treating disease when the real truth is, they reduce costs by limiting access. It's just marketing misdirection.

Personally, I would rather see the government give workers the right to opt-out of social security payroll taxes. In exchange for signing a contract that gives the worker the right to pay only, say, 50% of the normal payroll tax, those workers who agree to sign give up all claims to any future social security benefits. This would fix the system but wouldn't leave us with forced, involuntary savings accounts. This is the true free-market approach to fixing the problem.

Billy Graham and Bush - Just Another Lie

2004-11-23T01:05:00.000-08:00

The official story is that Bush, beseiged by alcohol and irresponsibility, sought help from Billy Graham who then turned him onto extreme religion.

Last night on the TV news, however, I saw Billy Graham himself say that it never happened.

Bush is such a dyed-in-the-wool liar, he even lies about his own religious awakening. How's that for religious values?

Christians Should Be First to Die in Iraq

2004-11-16T04:27:00.000-08:00

There's a nasty thing going on right now: call-ups for the Individual Ready Reserve.

I suggest christians be the first in line to die.

They believe they will go to heaven after they die so death should not be a big deal to them. And it was mainly the christian voters that sentenced all of us to four more years of Bush and his Iraq fiasco in spite of Bush's stupidity and Bush's amazing record of incompetence. You would think the christians would be eager and proud to fight for their preacher-in-chief.

So why don't we hear about long lines of christians signing up to enlist in the military?

Obviously, christians are hypocrites. The muslim terrorist wackos have a much deeper and more sincere faith in their religion than the American christian wackos.

Religious Values Defeat American Values

2004-11-03T20:06:00.000-08:00

Bush won, consummating the victory of religious values over American values.

Separation of church and state was one of the original and foundational American values second in importance only to the right of free speech. Both will be under attack in the next four years. Electing Bush to a second term is a nail in America's coffin.

The religion virus has spread so far and wide in America that droves of people voted for their religious persuasion against their own economic interests. Average Americans voted to give tax breaks to billionaires and tax dollars for faith-based initiatives.

Now, this clown in the white house will be convinced he has a mandate from god to further tear down the wall between church and state.

The last time religion ruled, it was called the dark ages. America, get ready for a modern dark age. Get ready to see Roe-v-Wade overturned. Get ready to see a government assault on pornography and unmarried sex. Get ready to pay taxes for faith-based government. Get ready to see a government-backed christian assault on everything that christians hate, like sex and free speech. Get ready to see government-sanctioned police brutality and violations of civil liberties. Get ready for religious hysteria.

There is a possible silver lining - the president's god squad might get so fanatical in the next 4 years that it becomes painfully obvious we need a constitutional amendment separating government from even the slightest hint of religion.

Bush Asks For Support of Kerry Voters

2004-11-03T20:05:00.000-08:00

Bush asking for the support of Kerry voters makes me sick to my stomach.

That's like a rapist asking his victim out to a romantic dinner date after the dastardly deed is done.

Bush just doesn't get it. Separation of church and state is not just another trivial policy issue. It's a core American value and the Bush regime is raping that core value that made America a good wholesome country!

Dred Scott is Code for Religious Anti-Abortion

2004-10-19T17:33:00.000-07:00

When George W. Bush was asked in the debates what kind of Supreme Court justice he would appoint if re-elected, Bush responded with some nonsense about the "Dred Scott" decision.

I couldn't understand why he would bring up a case from 1857 regarding slavery that is universally recognized as one of the US Supreme Court's biggest mistakes. Now I know.

It's code for attacking abortion rights. It's code for anti-choice.

In the Dred Scott case, the Supreme Court decided that slaves were property. Religious republicans believe that Roe vs. Wade is a mistake in the same vein as Dred Scott. They believe that Roe vs. Wade is similar to Dred Scott in that it gives women the right to control their own bodies as if their bodies belong to them like property.

I've got news for the republicans - ethically speaking, each person DOES own their own body and has the right to do with their body as they see fit as long as they don't violate anyone else's rights in the process!

George W. Bush and the religious republicans believe choice is wrong, that abortion is wrong. They don't want to say so publicly because they might lose votes if voters know the truth. But at the same time, they want to reassure the faithful that if Bush is re-elected he will appoint justices who will overturn Roe-v-Wade. That's the reason for the coded reference to the Dred Scott case in the debates.

This election is critical because the next president is likely to appoint at least 2 and maybe 3 Supreme Court justices. If Bush is re-elected, that could spell disaster for America and the decidedly American value that we have the right to pursue our own happiness as long as we don't violate anyone else's rights.

GOP TV aka Fox News: Anything BUT Fair and Balanced

2004-10-09T20:56:00.000-07:00

I just watched the documentary called "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism".

It was an eye opener. I already knew Fox News is GOP-Religion-TV but I didn't realize how many devious little tricks Fox is sneaking into their "news" show to push their religious agenda.

The documentary suggests that media conglomerates have gotten too big and government should break them up. As a strong believer in ethical free enterprise, I don't agree. Let the market take care of itself provided everyone has equal rights and those rights are equally protected.

Personally, I don't have a problem with Fox News being one sided with a strong religious agenda. I do, however, have a big problem with them claiming to be "fair and balanced"! It's an intentional, premeditated, bald-faced lie. It's deceptive advertising. It's unethical. In general, religious fanatics are the most unethical, immoral, and dangerous people on earth.

Bush Defenders Believe He's Doing God's Will

2004-09-25T01:48:00.000-07:00

When you think about it, what could George W. Bush have possibly done worse? Everything he has touched has turned out badly. In every case, he's done the worst possible thing.

So why do some people still defend George W. Bush? Because they believe George Bush is doing god's will since he's working to bring christianity into our schools and our government. They sincerely believe Bush's team is god's team.

This is a very good example why government should not be infected by religion. Even in the face of disastrous consequences as a result of wrong judgement and wrong choices, the religious fanatic still believes he's on the right path because he believes god sent him on that path. Furthermore, it's impossible to reason with the religious politician (or the religious voter) because reason and religion are incompatible.

Of course, it's an enduring mystery why an all-powerful being who reads everyone's thoughts and controls every molecule of the universe would need simple humans to defend him. But then again, it's also a mystery why such a being needs to be worshipped by humans yet refuses to prove he exists.

Take away the religion factor and nobody in their right mind could possibly defend Bush.

How to Fix the Mess in Iraq and Move Forward

2004-09-23T01:36:00.000-07:00

America cannot have credible moral leadership in the world unless we are moral and ethical. Our actions in the past have NOT been ethical and we will have no credibility until we face up to what we have done.

We have interfered in the internal affairs of many governments around the world. We trained Osama Bin-Laden because we wanted Afghanistan to resist the Soviets. We supported Saddam Hussein when he attacked Iran because at the time we liked Iraq more than Iran. We helped the Shah of Iran oppress the Iranian people because we liked his pro-western attitude. In 1963 John F. Kennedy approved the assassination of the South Vietnamese leader in order to install our own puppet regime with the purpose of keeping communism out of South Vietnam. We give billions of dollars every year to Israel to help them enslave the Palestinians because christians in America believe Israel is a manifestation of bible prophecy. We attacked Iraq simply because George W. Bush wanted to. None of these actions are legitimate or ethical.

Here's what we should do to correct our mistakes in Iraq and the world, now and in the future:

Apologize for interfering in foreign governments. Apologize for training Osama Bin-Laden to fight Russia. Apologize for Supporting Saddam Hussein against Iran. Apologize for supporting the Shah of Iran. And most of all we must apologize for allowing the mother of all jackasses, George "Wrong Way" Bush to run wild in the world. After apologizing, we must promise that henceforth we will be an ethical nation ruled by reason rather than religion.

Apologise to our own American soldiers for using them in unethical, careless and downright silly war campaigns that were not in America's vital interests. We must promise our current and future soldiers that we will never again send them in harm's way unless it is truly vital to America's interests. We must do this before recuritment falls so low that our military is decimated and we're forced to return to a draft.

Renounce interference in foreign governments. It is legitimate to come to the aid of a country attacked by another such as when Kuwait was attacked by Iraq in the first gulf war. It is ligitimate to overthrow a dictator who brutally abuses his subjects to such a degree that much of the civilized world agrees with overthrowing the dictator. It is legitimate to counter-attack if we were attacked first, hence, our war in Afghanistan is legitimate. It is even legitimate to pre-emptively attack another country but only if we have verifiable, objective evidence that they pose an eminent threat to America.

Stop the hemorrhage of our foreign-aid tax dollars flowing endlessly to Israel and Egypt every year. If we want to give money to other countries, it should be for a limited time and a specific purpose, not a permanent annual charity handout forced upon the America taxpayer.

Never train armies in other countries for their own internal civil wars unless absolutely necessary.

We must set a deadline for when we will leave Iraq because any project takes 10 times longer than necessary in the absence of a deadline. Say, in a year or two. But, if the Iraqi government should ask us to leave ahead of schedule, we would leave immediately. We reserve the right to stay beyond the deadline and issue a new deadline if the Iraqi government requests it and we believe it will be fruitful. There's no other reasonable way around this deadline - there's just no value in fighting a never-ending war for a lost cause. What did we gain from 5 more years in Vietnam after 1968 when we finally learned we needed to get out? Absolutely nothing! All the secret negotiations and back-room politics by Kissinger and Nixon didn't change a damn thing in the final outcome.

For long term stability, Iraq must be partitioned into three separate countries: Kurdish, Shiite, and Sunni, otherwise, it's a certainty that at least one minority group will be brutally oppressed by muslim fanatics.

There must be complete separation of church and state in any new government constitutions created under our purview.

After facing up to our own guilt and committing ourselves to an ethical future, we will be in a position make it clear there are certain issues upon which we will not yield and upon which we will use force if necessary to maintain our security.

Here are the principles we should announce and stick to faithfully:

Under absolutely no circumstances will wacko regimes be allowed to have nuclear technology. This means all muslim theocracies as well as wacko dictators like the bad-hair clown in North Korea, Kim Jong-Il. If we know they are building nuclear technology, we will first try diplomacy but if necessary we will destroy it just like Israel destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981. This same principle will apply to chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction.

If we can prove a country is harboring terrorists, we have the right to destroy the terrorists where they hide.

For the remainder of the American occupation of Iraq, if an American vehicle is disabled by attack, any Iraqi within 50 meters of the vehicle will be shot on sight. An American vehicle disabled by attack should be a no-go zone for Iraqis and if a crowd gathers closely, they have been warned so they have no right to whine and complain if they get shot.

Moqtada Al-Sadr must be executed. The 1,000 American soldiers who have died deserve to see Moqtada Al-Sadr pay for what he has done to them and to Iraq and the Iraqi people deserve a fair chance at democracy. If we leave Al-Sadr alive, the probability of democracy in Iraq is much smaller. Killing that muslim fanatic is the single most valuable thing we can do to give Iraq a fair chance at democracy.

In a nutshell, there are two main reasons much of the world hates America: our interference in foreign governments and our yearly 3 Billion dollar plus gift to Israel. Simply stopping these two activities will go a long way towards reestablishing our ethics and regaining our credibility.

Apologizing and facing up to what we've done and declaring rational, ethical principles upon which we stand will instantly reduce the threat we face from terrorism.

See also: Simple Solution for the Iraq Constitution

Vietnam, Iraq, Bush, Nixon

2004-09-18T14:00:00.000-07:00

What did America gain by fighting in Vietnam? Nothing. Vietnam was a stupid war regardless of whether or not the "cause" was noble. John Kerry deserves credit for having the courage to both fight in Vietnam and fight against the stupidity of the war itself.

We should have learned from Vietnam that it's not a good idea to fight for a people's freedom when those people are not motivated to fight for their own freedom.

Iraq is a stupid war just like Vietnam was a stupid war and Americans are dying for nothing but at least in Vietnam, presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon didn't tell lies about our motivation for fighting.

Bush is like Nixon because he cares not for the ethics of how he achieves his goals but simply believes that ends justify means. The Bush regime is willing to lie about WMD because it believes the end result will justify the lies. The Bush regime is willing to undermine the Constitution and sacrifice individual liberties because it believes turning America into a christian nation will justify destroying American values.

Bush is Nixon with religion instead of brains.

Iraq is Vietnam with religion instead of communism.

George W. Bush Abuses Presidential Power

2004-09-09T04:16:00.000-07:00

The Bush regime abused its power this week in a significant way that was horribly underreported in the news.

The Bush regime declared that it was unconstitutional for Congress to compel the disclosure of data over objections from the executive branch.

The Bush regime asked NBC to refrain from showing interviews with Kitty Kelley who wrote an unflattering book about the Bush family due to be released soon.

The first item was in regard to a medicare law passed recently under false cost information because the chief medicare actuary was ordered to withhold the true cost from members of congress. Since around 1912, it has been illegal for the executive branch to issue gag orders forbidding federal employees from providing information to members of congress. These laws have never been found unconstitutional.

The sinister thing here is not even the fact the Bush regime was cheating or issued a gag order against the chief medicare actuary. It's the audacity of the Bush regime to claim it has the right to issue gag orders and that the law against self-serving presidential gag orders is wrong and unconstitutional! The information gagged by the Bush regime was not classified or privileged. It was simply cost information that congress needed in order to vote on the medicare law.

Should the president be able, by executive order, to gag all communication to Congress? If so, the president could get away with almost anything. Already the president has, for all practical purposes, issued a government-wide gag order to suppress information relating to Bush's failure to serve his term in the National Guard during the Vietnam war (he dodged the draft using his father's political influence and then couldn't even complete his cushy National Guard duty yet this slimeball was FOR the Vietnam war and wants to be our commander-in-chief?).

Should the president be asking news media to withhold information from the public?

This president is showing his true colors. He does not care for democracy or freedom. He simply thirsts for unbridled power.

Is it Wrong to be Selfish?

2004-09-08T19:03:00.000-07:00

Some people think it is wrong to be selfish because if everyone was only out for himself without regard for others, there would be anarchy. Religion and communism both preach that "selfish" is a dirty word. I've heard George "Wrong" Bush refer to the 9/11 firefighters as "selfless heros". I hear that word, selfless, all the time on the news referring to some kind of hero. But what does "selfless" mean? It means the opposite of selfish - it means unselfish.

Here's one official definition of selfless:

Having, exhibiting, or motivated by no concern for oneself.
see: dictionary.reference.com/search?q=selfless

Is it a good thing to have absolutely no self interest? If a woman had no self interest, she would give herself to any man that wanted her at any time because she would consider her own interests unimportant; only the interests of others counts. If a christian had no self interest, he would not be a christian because he would not care about his own salvation.

Clearly, being completely selfless or unselfish is not good.

Selfish means achieving one's own values. I value human life so I would take some degree of risk to my own life in order to save another's life but the amount of risk would depend on who's life was at stake and how valuable they were to me. I would risk certain death to save my wife because she is very valuable to me. I would take a smaller amount of risk to save a stranger. I would NOT risk even a broken fingernail or a minute of my time to save Osama Bin Laden or George W. Bush because their lives have absolutely no value to me.

Any man who would risk certain death to save a stranger is truly unselfish/selfless and is also truly stupid with messed up values. What about his wife and kids? Is saving a stranger worth depriving his wife and kids of their husband/father? Where are his values placed? Is a stranger more important to him than his own wife and kids? Of course, taking a risk involves probability. The firefighters of 9/11 were heros because they took a risk to save human life. The fact the towers collapsed and killed them is an unfortunate result of rolling the dice. Would they have gone into the twin towers if they knew the buildings were going to fall down and kill them? Obviously not. Anybody who knowingly allows himself to die for a stranger is inhuman and deserves no accolades (unless they've got a terminal disease and don't have much time left in which case they clearly place a high value on human life and that would be selfish, not unselfish).

A man who values human life enough to take a limited risk to save another is a hero. A man who would jump into alligator infested waters to save his wife is an even bigger hero because his sincere love for his wife is noble.

We should be considerate and compassionate of other people but only because we selfishly value human life. That is achieving our values and is therefore selfish rather than unselfish.

Ayn Rand calls this "rational selfishness". She wrote a book on this topic called, "The Virtue of Selfishness".

What is Art?

2004-08-24T19:33:00.000-07:00

What is art?

It is a thing created by a person using a rare, innate, creative talent.

That's all there is to it. If nearly anyone can do it, it is NOT art. If nearly anyone can learn to do it, it is NOT art. If it can be done by following formulas or scientific method, it is NOT art. If only a person born with the rare, innate, creative talent can do it, it is art.

Almost everyone knows this definition intuitively. You can see it in the way people use the word art in sentences like these:

blah..blah..blah is more art than science.
blah..blah..blah is an art form.

In the movie "Man on Fire" with Denzel Washington, Christopher Walken's character says,

"A man can be an artist in anything, food, whatever. It depends on how good he is at it. Creasy's art is death. He's about to paint his masterpiece."

All of these uses of the word art imply the same definition given in the one-line definition above.

Art is very much like genius. In fact, art is genius in a creative field. Some people say that it's impossible to define art. That's nonsense. If it couldn't be defined then it would have no value in our language but we use it all the time so it must have some intuitive meaning. Some people say art can be anything and everything but that's also nonsense because that's a non-definition. People use the word art often and we usually know pretty accurately what they mean so clearly the word has some intuitive definition. To say that art can't be defined or that it can be anything and everything is like saying there's no such thing as a genius or everyone is a genius.

Art is the opposite of science. Art is all about creativity and inspiration and talent whereas science is all about formulas and reasoning and logic. Of course, a scientist can use inspiration to invent a formula but he will then write down all the steps and logic and every other scientist will reproduce those steps and achieve the same result. But there is NO formula guaranteed to produce a great painting or photograph or novel or movie or song or acting performance in a movie. To be an artist producing works of art requires a rare, innate creative talent. Period.

Art is NOT the same thing as skill. A skill is something that can be learned by pretty much anyone. Laying bricks is a skill. Welding is a skill. Anyone can learn to do those things. Some learn faster than others but, by and large, anyone can learn to do them. It does NOT require an innate talent to do those things.

Is skill involved in art? It usually is. A painter usually has to develop his skill at painting before we can know that he has talent.

Creating something by way of technical proficiency is NOT necessarily creating art. Technical proficiency means highly skilled and skill is not art. Only something produced by a rare, innate talent is art.

Why does the talent have to be rare? If everyone had the talent to produce sculpture like Micheangelo, then sculpture would not be considered art. That is simply not the meaning of the word art as people use the word.

Does art have to have value? It is not a question of value. Nearly anyone could learn to be a good auto mechanic so fixing cars is not an art form. It is definitely valuable though.

If something is art, does that mean it has to be liked? Absolutely not. Art can be revolting. I've always hated "The Scream" (which was stolen recently) but I recognize that it is art because the artist had a rare talent to capture on canvas the emotion of terror and broadcast it to the viewer with chilling resonance. Few painters could achieve this and it is that rarity of talent that is the essence of the definition of the word art.

How do you define rare? The more rare the talent, the more valuable the art. In general, rare means that not typically everyone has the talent or the ability to learn the talent.

Can something be both a skill and an art? Of course. A writer with rare, innate talent is an artist who produces works of art in the literary field. The rest of us who don't possess a special innate talent for writing are not artists and we do not create works of art. We non-artists try to gain as much skill as possible to do the best job we can but we will never be able to create true works of art because we were not born with the innate talent.

Does the creative talent have to be innate? Not necessarily. If in the future we can inject our brains with talent like in "The Matrix", then we wouldn't have to be born with the talent. But currently, artistic talent is like genius - we are either born with it or not.

Why is being the fastest runner in the world not considered art? Being the fastest runner does require innate talent but it has nothing to do with creativity, therefore it is not art.

Was Einstein an artist? Nope. To begin with, he didn't create anything, he discovered some laws of physics just as Newton didn't create gravity but rather discovered its rules. But to take the point deeper, the scientist applies logic to a problem in a step-by-step formula which can be learned and duplicated. But artistic creativity is about creating something using talent that can NOT be duplicated by following formulas. This is why the best algebra student in the world is not considered an artist - algebra is following formulas and logic, it is not pure unlearnable creative talent.

Is a teacher with a rare talent to inspire students an artist? Our intuition tells us the teacher is not an artist and our intuition is correct. Firstly, the methods and techniques used by the inspirational teacher can be taught to other teachers. Secondly, the inspirational teacher may possess attributes that can not be taught to others that increase her effectiveness such as a soothing voice, great beauty, or even just a great personality. Possessing a quality does not make an artist. For example, a woman so beautiful that she drives men to tears just from looking at her is not an artist. It is the actual use of talent and creativity that makes an artist. Our intuition as to what is art and who is an artist is usually correct (at least among rational people) and that's what this definition of art attempts to capture and crystallize.

Is this definition of art complete? No. It doesn't touch on some of the secondary meanings of the word. For example, a child doing his "art homework" is not necessarily an artist but rather, is a student attempting to exercise his creativity even though he may not have the capacity to create a true work of art. This definition seeks to provide an accurate definition of a "true work of art" and a "true artist".

Why is it important to have a definition for "art"? Because otherwise, a lot of crap is passed off as art. Many years ago in Phoenix, there was a controversial art exhibit. The so-called artist was a photographer who had taken pictures of the deposits in a toilet bowl. Each photo listed what the donor had eaten for the previous days before the picture was snapped. The photos were taken with great technical skill. The exhibit was controversial because many complained that these photos were crap, not art (no pun intended). I saw the "artist" interviewed by the news channel saying that he wanted to get a reaction whether positive or negative and if he could get an emotional reaction with his pictures, then he considered it good art.

How do you argue with this if you can't define art?

Clearly, these photos were not art. Anyone could learn to take technically proficient photos and snap pictures like these. Since anyone could do it, it is NOT art. To say that something is art if it produces an emotional reaction is ridiculous. Anybody could find a cat run over by a car and frame it and hang it on the wall and pretty much guarantee that it would get a strong emotional reaction but few people would be silly enough to call it art.

There is a lot of crap getting passed off these days as art and this is a good example of how incorrect or non existent definitions in language can have an actual effect on society.

[There is another word that has been incorrectly defined and the misunderstanding of this word has resulted in enormous human suffering! That word is "selfish" and you can read more about it here.]

There is another even more important reason to define art - to learn that human reasoning is the proper way to understand anything! Some artists low on the talent totem pole try to say that art can't be defined because a clear definition will deflate the value of their work. These are wannabe artists, not true artists. But the more sinister reason some people try to say art can't be defined (or the equivalent statement that art can be anything and everything) is actually an attack on human reasoning itself. To say that a word we all use in everyday language and of which we all have an intuitive understanding can't be defined is to attack our subconscious understanding that human reasoning is the tool we use to gain knowledge and understanding. Of course, few people wake up in the morning with the conscious goal to attack human reasoning but, by and large, those people who prefer to live in the world of superstition and mysticism and religion are the same people who would tell you that art can't be defined. They have a vested interest in attacking the definition and therefore, convincing you that your ability to reason is not the most powerful tool in your intellectual tool bag. Human reasoning and clear thinking is their nemesis.

Some people tell me that my definition is good but it doesn't provide a formula to determine objectively and absolutely if any particular thing is art or not. They are quite right. This definition is a principle, not an exhaustive formula. A Supreme Court decision is also not an exhaustive formula solving all future issues. But it does lay down the principles upon which future issues will be decided. The definition of art is like the definition of genius - it doesn't tell you exactly how to measure it or at exactly what level it transitions from ordinary to special but it does give you a foundation for understanding it. Without a guiding principle, you can't even begin to talk rationally about whether or not something is art.

So, the next time you hear someone referring to something as more art than science, keep this definition in mind and you'll have a crystal clear understanding of the meaning of that phrase.

George W. Bush Thinks the Earth is Only 10,000 Years Old!

2004-08-21T21:35:00.000-07:00

The lunatic fringe christians these days actually believe the earth is only 10,000 years old!

It's hard to imagine that anybody could be nutty enough to believe something so ridiculous but the hard-core christians in America believe exactly that.

When John Kerry and George Bush debate on television, I wish the moderators would ask this question: Do you believe the earth is on the order of 10,000 years old or on the order of millions of years old?

If George W. Bush answers 10,000 years, then people will be faced with the reality that he is on the lunatic fringe. If he answers millions of years, then his only true base will be faced with the reality that he is a liar when politically expedient. Either way, he will be exposed.

Religious Beliefs Have Consequences

2004-08-16T15:59:00.000-07:00

Here is a quote from Sam Harris, author of "The End of Faith, Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason"

It is time we recognize that religious beliefs have consequences. As a man believes, so he will act. Believe that you are a member of a chosen people, awash in the salacious exports of an evil culture that is turning your children away from God, believe that you will be rewarded with an eternity of unimaginable delights by dealing death to these infidels — and flying a plane into a building is only a matter of being asked to do it. Believe that "life starts at the moment of conception" and you will happily stand in the way of medical research that could alleviate the suffering of millions of your fellow human beings. Believe that there is a God who sees and knows all things, and yet remains so provincial a creature as to be scandalized by certain sexual acts between consenting adults, and you will think it ethical to punish people for engaging in private behavior that harms no one.

Nobody Trusts God When Their Health is at Stake

2004-08-07T10:43:00.000-07:00

Why is it these religious leaders who chant "god is great" never trust god when their health is at stake?

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, 73, an influential moderate cleric, was reported to have left Iraq on Friday to seek medical treatment in London for a heart condition.

Flat Tax or National Sales Tax?

2004-08-04T15:29:00.000-07:00

Dennis Hastert, speaker of the house, appears to support a national sales tax to fix our unfair and complicated income tax.

I say "appears to support" because I think it's a ruse. The concept of a national sales tax is a political fragmentation grenade lobbed into the flat-tax camp to make sure we keep our unfair, extremely complicated and expensive income tax system.

I never heard of the idea of a national sales tax until people started talking about a flat income tax. After the idea of a flat tax was introduced and gained popularity, suddenly the idea of a national sales tax surfaced dividing the people wanting to fix our income tax mess into two camps. Divide and conquer. It was a brilliant strategy. If only the politicians could use their cleverness to actually do something for the good of America rather than just protecting their turf.

The national sales tax is a ridiculous concept and has no chance of ever passing. That was exactly what people like Dennis Hastert wanted - suggest an idea that is impossible but which might sound good to some and therefore, divide the group wanting change into smaller groups so they will have less power.

For a very brief explanation of why a national sales tax is absurd, please visit here.

More on the Flat Tax

2004-08-02T04:32:00.000-07:00

Tonight on television I listened to Steve Forbes talking about his flat tax idea and learned a fact: Income tax in America is a 200 billion dollar a year business! That 200 billion does not produce anything of value. It's merely money wasted hiring tax accountants and tax lawyers and filling out forms to send in to the IRS.

To put 200 billion dollars in perspective, that is twice the budget for the state of California! The annual budget for California is only 105 billion dollars.

Some argue that moving to a flat tax would eliminate a lot of jobs because the flat tax would be so much simpler that we wouldn't need so many tax accountants and tax lawyers not to mention the hugely expensive IRS bureaucracy. Arguing against moving to a flat tax because of lost jobs is like arguing against curing polio because the wheel chair industry would have to layoff workers.

Imagine a primitive little isolated village with 100 inhabitants and 1 king. The king could order that 100 people farm the land and grow food to feed themselves and him. Or, the king could order that 80 people farm the land and 20 people stand around singing songs to the king and filling out paper work. In the latter case, 80 people have to work hard to produce food for themselves as well as for the 20 that aren't doing anything useful simply because the king said so. That's what we have with our current income tax system. The people that do productive work have to work harder to make up for the people that simply feed off the government mandated income tax bureaucracy. Is it a good investment for America to dedicate 200 billion dollars per year to an infrastructure that exists only because the government says it must exist and which produces absolutely nothing of value?

There are two problems with our income tax system:

It is not equally fair to everyone.
It is extremely complicated and expensive and a drag on the economy.

I've suggested my flat tax idea in this blog which will fix both of these problems. It's different from what Steve Forbes promotes in that my idea is a new concept, namely taxing gross income rather than net income and taxing only individuals, not businesses.

Steve Forbes wants a flat tax that still has deductions (a tax on net income) and still taxes businesses. Steve Forbes flat tax is mainly just tax simplification but is not a new conceptual approach to the problem. Make no mistake, it is deductions and exemptions and special calculations that make our income tax system both unfair and complicated, not the progressive rates. Graduated or progressive rates by themselves are not excessively unfair and don't add much complexity. It is the deductions and excemptions and special little calculations that congress implements that are the heart of the problem with our income tax system.

Our income taxes have lots of deductions and special calculations because congress thinks it is their job to influence how people handle their money. For example, congress wants to encourage people to buy houses since home construction is good for the economy, therefore, home mortgage interest is deductible. Besides adding complexity to the tax code, it also adds unfairness. If home owners get a big tax break while apartment dwellers do not, is it fair? Absolutely not! Apartment dwellers are subsidizing home owners. Apartment dwellers are paying MORE than their fair share while home owners are paying LESS than their fair share! Likewise, people with children get a huge tax break while people without children do not. Why should childless couples subsidize those with children? Sure, children are expensive but so are exotic cars yet we don't give a tax break to anyone because they choose to buy an expensive car. Having children is a choice and those that choose to have children should pay their own way. A good flat tax system is all about being fair to everyone, not just fair to those behaving the way the government wants them to behave.

And why should we tax only individuals and not businesses? Because a business is just a concept. Take away the people and there is no business. People are the fundamental element. Tax people when they get income and tax all people the same way and then everything will be fair and simple. Tax only people, not businesses and the economy will thrive because businesses will invest more energy actually producing something of value instead of wasting a lot of energy managing their taxes. What about people who own their own business? Sooner or later, the business owner has to get some money or value (such as a loaner car) from the business and that's when it should be taxed.

As long as congress thinks they have the right to influence what you and I do with our money they will continue to add one unfair and complicated wrinkle after another to the tax code. It is not the job of our government to tell us what to do with our money. It is the job of our government to protect our rights and they should try to do it in the most fiscally responsible way possible and wasting 200 billion dollars every year on paperwork is NOT fiscally responsible.

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Take Back Our Money From the Religion Virus!

2004-08-01T19:46:00.000-07:00

Today I noticed on the back of my $20 bill, where it says "in god we trust", someone crossed out god and wrote in reality.

I started thinking, what a great idea! That's one way to communicate that we believe in separation of church and state.

In nazi controlled regions during World War 2, Churchhill (or someone) came up with the idea of writing "Victory" on public walls and public buses and every other public surface. It was only symbolic, of course, but it let freedom-loving people know they were not alone and it gave the nazis notice that the people would not give up without a fight. It helped to energize the resistance against Hitler.

Since the religious republicans feel free to pass laws regulating our sexuality, our freedom of speech and everything else that makes America free, perhaps this is a good way to fight back.

A Stronger Defense Does NOT Mean We're Safer

2004-07-27T14:21:00.000-07:00

George W. Bush likes to say we are safer today than before 9/11 and the 9/11 Commission Report seems to say the same thing but I think some definitions are getting confused.

We do, in fact, have stronger defenses against terrorism now. Improving the airport screening process gave us a stronger defense against terrorism. Whether the airport screening is good enough is debatable but it is clearly stronger than before 9/11.

But, is a stronger defense the same thing as safer? Only if the risk remained constant!

But the risk has NOT remained constant! Preemptively attacking Iraq has inflamed the passions of would-be terrorists around the world and now there are a lot more people who want to do us harm.

Before 9/11, we were in a little wood cabin with the door locked and a single hungry bear in the woods. Now, we're in a little wood cabin with the door locked and we have loaded gun on our lap but there are 100 hungry bears banging on the door trying to get in. We have a stronger defense but are we safer?

Higher Priority for IRS than Coast Guard or CIA

2004-07-02T02:51:00.000-07:00

Does it make sense that our government spends more tax dollars taking our money than protecting us?

The budget for the IRS is around 10 Billion dollars per year. The budget for the Coast Guard is around 6 Billion dollars per year. The budget for the CIA is estimated to be around 5 Billion dollars per year.

So, taxing Americans is a higher priority than inspecting cargo containers coming into our ports (Coast Guard). Sticking with our unfair and overly complicated income tax system is a higher priority than collecting intelligence on foreign terrorists (CIA).

This pathetic paradox is why we need a new tax system. The best proposal I've heard of is right here: www.FairSimpleTax.com.

If we fix the tax system, we could instantly free up nearly 10 Billion dollars per year of the IRS budget which could be better spent protecting us from terrorist attacks. At the same time, we could finally make income taxes fair for all Americans and we would improve our economy in the process.

Religion is More Harmful to Children than Porn

2004-06-30T04:01:00.000-07:00

The religious republicans are at it again.

Today, the Supreme Court, once again, stopped the religious republicans from enforcing COPA, the so-called Child Online Protection Act, intended to "protect" children from internet porn.

Just how much harm is done to a young boy looking at naked women? Most young boys have a strong desire to get a peek at a Playboy magazine and most succeed. Have they been irreparably damaged?

If the religious republicans succeed in enforcing this nonsense, then rational people everywhere should hire a good lawyer, like Mike Newdow for example, to sue web sites that promote religion on the grounds that it causes serious psychological damage to children.

What could possibly be more damaging to a child than telling him over and over from the time he's an infant that there exists an invisible person who is unwilling to prove he exists watching him every second of every day and reading his thoughts and if he doesn't believe in the invisible person he will be tortured for eternity? Yet we tell that same child that monsters don't exist so it's silly to be scared of monsters.

America Was Safer With Saddam Hussein in Power!

2004-06-28T16:16:00.000-07:00

America's powerful military is unable to control the religious insurgent wackos in Iraq. How did Saddam keep them under control?

Saddam Hussein didn't have the same limitations placed on the American military - he could torture and kill innocent people to force them to spill the beans on the locations and operations of the religious nuts. Then, he could tame the religious nuts.

So, apparently, only a ruthless dictator can tame the religious wacko terrorists in Iraq.

Does anybody know where we can find a ruthless dictator type to get the religious terrorists in Iraq under control?

Hmmmmm.... Perhaps we should apologize to Saddam Hussein and ask him to take control in Iraq and tame the religious terrorists since we seem unable to do so.

Perhaps we should recognize and admit the world was safer when Saddam Hussein was keeping the religious terrorists under control in Iraq.

No matter how you look at it, what we did in Iraq under the Bush regime was the worst possible thing to do. It made America and the world LESS SAFE, and it destroyed America's image and credibility in the world. Osama Bin-Laden is the one who attacked America on 9/11 and he is still running free. Afghanistan is still a mess and seems to be getting worse every day. How much better it would have been to put 135,000 troops in Afghanistan looking for Bin-Laden and stabilizing that country before sending them to Iraq. Even people who believe attacking Iraq was a good idea must admit that we should have cleaned up Afghanistan first.

I am ashamed that Bush is president of my country. I'm ashamed that I voted for him in 2000.