Just One Cynic's Opinion

VIDEO: Free Enterprise Was Invented in the 1800's - Maybe It's About Time for a Change?

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Lenard) — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 20:53:00 +0000

This 3 min. edit of the 6th episode ("Hole in the Ground") of James Burke's illuminating 1985 TV series called "The Day the Universe Changed" begins with him talking about Agricultural Revolution in the 1700's, which paved the way for the Industrial Revolution in the 1800's. Well worth the watch:

And it does indeed 'beg the question'!

Here's a clip from another episode, this one points the way forward to the approaching irrelevance of national identities and boundaries in the coming century: "The Day The Human Universe Changed".

Fats Don't Make Us Fat, Carbs Do!

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Lenard) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 15:13:00 +0000

From Fast Company (link). This is truly, mindbogglingly revolutionary! Really. What it means is that the 'Olympic Ski Team Diet,' first popularized back in the 70's, was key to not just gradually becoming a more healthy eater, but also to dropping weight without exercise:

Eat as much meat as you want (yes, even fried chicken!), plus vegetables slathered in butter, milk and cheese, but minimize you intake of carbs like pasta, breads and cereal; starch like rice, flour, potatoes and corn; and sugar.

In other words, fried foods/fat is not the problem, the breaded/flour coatings and potatoes are! Cut down on the fries and KFC-style coatings and eat as much spicy roast or deep-fried chicken as you want.

To enlarge click once on each of the 3 images to load, then again to zoom in:

Key to what scientists have learned since the 70's is DO NOT completely cut out carbs, starch and sugar as your body 'thinks' it is being starved of those 'easy-to-digest' calories and starts 'hoarding' what little energy it's getting from these sources, just cut back to a minimal portion of these substances.

Research into how the human body functions has also proven that 'diets' aren't the way to lose weight permanently, changing eating habits are the way to do it. What the high protein, fat and fibre, low empty-calorie program offers, however, is the chance to prove to yourself, by sticking to it stringently for just a couple of weeks, that the weight can actually come off without exercise and while eating to satiation at every mealtime! Trying a 2 week program will prove that sticking to this new selection of proportions will work over the long run.

Including exercise in any obese person's weight loss regimen is completely self-defeating, in my view.

Doing so is the equivalent of strapping one of those big water-cooler jugs filled to the brim onto an athletic person's back (or belly) and then getting them to do their normal work-out routine. They'd quit after 2 minutes because it's just too strenuous. In my opinion, anyone who is obese (not just a bit over-weight) should invest all their energy into changing their eating habits with high protein, high fat and low empty-calories, NOT burning calories.

More recent research has proven that any moderate exercise OVER 30 minutes per day (even as low as 3 x 10 minute walks around the block or shopping mall) does not improve wellness or longevity, but anything LESS than 30 minutes leads to illness and early death (link).

On a related note, if your workouts take up too much of your time, or hurt too much, you won't keep them up! Here are my thoughts on how to keep motivated: "How to Workout for the Rest of Your LONGER Life! (link)"

If you liked this, you might like my post about how the 'free economy' is gradually killing everyone with obesity (link).

Santorum Beats Romney! (Due to the Votes of a Minority of White Senior Citizens...)

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Lenard) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:07:00 +0000

One of the biggest "universal human truths" about democracy, but especially about conservative voters, that no one likes to talk about is the fact that they skew older, whiter and totally averse to change. When no one else bothers to go to the effort of voting, these old fart members of the 99% determine the winners among the 1%.

What the world is seeing when American states wherein the outcome of a internal Republican party contest means little in the bigger scheme of things, like the Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado wins for Rick Santorum over Mitt Romney, is what happens when democracy is reduced to its lowest common denominator. When there's really no reason to turn out, the only people who do are the retired people who don't have much to do with their lives, but are REALLY fired up about returning things back to the way they were 50 years ago.

Average Tea Party Supporters: "Don't change ANYTHING!!!"

Recent brain studies have revealed that men as they age past 65 suffer changes in their frontal lobes that begin to diminish their ability to be objective in their thinking. They begin to see things in absolutes, black and white instead of shades of grey. We all see this in older fathers who stop speaking to their kids for not sticking to the old-fashioned, conservative values that they have gradually become polarized about. These are the guys who are bothering to get out to the voting stations in Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado and who also badger their wives non-stop with their gradually more rigid conservative diatribe.

Read: "Why the Future Does NOT Belong to Narrow-Minded Old Farts"

(Scientists at the University of Iowa has proposed that some older adults experience disproportionate changes in certain areas of the anterior portion of the frontal lobes. 25-33% exhibit a preference for choices that lead to high immediate reward but greater long-term punishment, which both makes them more vulnerable to scams, but also to giving in to the reward of feeling self-righteous while accepting the long-term loss of intimacy with family and friends. "I don't care if they never speak to me again! I'm gonna say what has to be said!")

Kind of makes you think twice about taking the results too seriously, yet this is what we continually see happen in these political 'races', the continual swing back and forth between conservative and liberal party dominance. It's not JUST what the media makes it out to be, a natural, inevitable shift in the general public's desire to maintain a 'centrist' balance in any country's governance, it IS what happens when younger, more open-minded voters get motivated to vote, then lose interest as their needs get met by the politicians they put in power last time around.

This is not simply an interesting side-note to the way democracy tips based upon human nature, especially in the US, it is a very big driver in what makes democracy so flawed in America. What I mean is that it opens up the machinations of government to blatant manipulation by the politicians.

Think about it. George W. Bush got into power because the average American's impression was that Bill Clinton (the quintessential politico who made ALL his decisions based upon populist poll results) was kind of a 'lame duck' (not quite true looking back at his record, but the Monica Lewinsky affair didn't help to dilute this impression) and the democratic contenders to Bush were even lamer. "W." even won a second term on the basis of his brother, the Governor, handling the vote count in Florida and there was really no outcry about this flagrant slap in the face of democracy in America. Incredible!

In the absence of really strong contenders and big, contentious issues, average Americans lose interest and the voting power swings to the old farts, who vote the way they always do, regardless of the GOP contender's actual platform -- they vote for things to go back to the way they used to be, and Santorum is ALL about turning back the clock! The Republicans regain control, and in contests like those in Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado the more conservative guy wins! (Whether or not he'll make it further is up for grabs, but the Democrats would prefer a more extreme candidate to run against Obama as he'll be sure to lose in the climate of 2012.)

So what? Well the 'what' is that the Conservatives (I'm employing the capital "C" intentionally) in ANY country, but especially flagrantly in America, blatantly and baldly manipulate this base of voters. They pander to them during the race, then smugly work behind the scenes to do whatever benefits them and their family and friends among the 1% most: usually by finding ways to take the US into armed conflicts and increase the value of their stock holdings in the global military-industrial complex. That's not me being some bleeding heart liberal, it's just a statement of fact. (The jockeying for position on rationale to get involved in Syria and Iran among the American military cheerleaders is already heating up -- and the wealthiest Democrats have lots of stock, plus voters working in 'the complex' too!)

So-called "Conservative" politicians in every country in the world leverage human nature to take power by inflaming the natural human instincts of the most easily manipulated voters: the ones who get out to vote most often and reliably and are most upset by the notion of change. As soon as the issues that motivate the younger, more liberally-minded citizens to vote become muddied or less volatile, the Conservative politicians go back to beating the drum about how they are going to 'restore grass root values', and the old farts just show up and vote the way they always do. What is really happening in the background, however, is that younger voters simply aren't showing up at the polling stations.

How to manipulate older voters by leveraging human nature:

Nationalism - Humans have an inherent need to identify themselves by 'tribe', and this phenomenon is 'transferable' - intensely emotional feelings of loyalty can be shifted from one's original nationality to a new one due to the new emotional ties that are laid down by living in a newly adopted country. People will literally die for their country, so beating the drum about "real Americans" fires off a bunch of unconscious neural connections (i.e. "Anyone who doesn't agree with me supports enemies of America.").
Us vs. 'Them' - Sadly we're pre-programmed to also identify with people who are most like us. Humans feel discomfort and even fear towards those who look (morphology) or act (culturally) differently. These instincts can be ameliorated through proximity (integration) and familiarity/friendship (getting to know others over time), education and exposure (TV shows), but it remains deeply rooted in our psyches. If we've had little exposure to 'others', we'll seek out ways to justify these feelings of mistrust and 'otherness', like not believing someone's birth certificate is real.
I am a Chosen One! - Like 'us vs. them' and nationalism', we have built-in brain defences that reassure us whatever we do or think is better than the rest, so when a politician seems to be less pious than we think he should be, or of another 'belief team' than ours, we get a bit uncomfortable with him representing our team.
"Imagine If!" - We're OK with supporting a royal family through our taxes, or movie stars through ticket sales, or Paris Hilton and the Kardashian's through gossip magazine and perfume purchases. It costs us so little and gives us the entertainment of "Imagine if that was me!" We can't all rise to those heights, but we can share the spotlight and 'high life' vicariously. If some rich politician wants to go to all the effort and expense of representing us, more power to him, but at least he's OUR guy! (And we'll so enjoy seeing him fall from grace if he slips up and we change our allegiances!) So when he assures us he's 'going to bat' for us, we give him our votes and sit back and enjoy the spectacle.

Following 8 years of George W.'s warmongering and pocket-lining (stocks in Haliburton, oil firms and the arms manufacturers), with a truly different, dynamic, more youthful and liberal champion to rally behind, the fickle and apathetic younger voters got motivated to show up. Barack Obama came to power. Sadly he didn't do what he said he was going to do -- instead his ego got involved and told him he was sufficiently smart and all-powerful to be able to play the game in Washington by their rules. NOT! He could have continued to embrace 'change' and leverage a highly motivated base of younger Americans to help, but instead he waded into the old fart 1% power broker fray and got stalled. Sad, really.

If I may be so bold, however, given all the rhetoric and attention that the 'Occupy Movement' has generated (and, to be fair, even that of the "Tea Partiers" -- note I don't give them the credibility of being a political 'party'), I do not think that the Republicans have a hope in toppling Obama for a second term. They are trapped in a conservative hyperbole prison of their own making, pandering to the old farts in the 99% while using the cash of the 1% to do the pandering.

There's still sufficient "hopey-changey" momentum out there to keep the Democrats in power for another 4 years so average Americans can see what they might be able to do with a practical stretch in power (and the GOP is still far too polarized to look like a reasonable alternative). It will require a new strategy for the 'second half', however, on the part of the President since trying to prove he could do the impossible and 'hope to make change' from the inside out within Washington's 1% power brokers was a fool's errand.

Trying to Impress a Girl, Concordia Captain Kills 32 People at a Cost of Billions of Dollars

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Lenard) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:02:00 +0000

32 lives lost, a ship scrapped and enormous damage to the industry. Whoops! The shocking truth is unbelievable.

Nothing will change the facts, however. Captain Francesco Schettino drove his ship into rocks, surely must have felt the impact (and seen on the GPS screen and associated alarms that the ship had run over a well-marked shoal of rocks), and instead of assessing damage, tried to make light of his grave mistake and impress the girl by going to the restaurant to enjoy a romantic dinner with his new love, ignoring the gradual list of the ship, a condition a captain would be extremely sensitive to. It was too late to effect a safe grounding manoeuvre by the time someone insisted he return to the bridge.

Capt's wife Fabiola Russo, 48

You heard it here first, the real story of what really happened aboard that led up to the disaster, actually and factually. The single largest human disaster ever caused by one married man's desire for the company of a younger woman.

With the facts as we now know them, the cause of the Costa Concordia ($569 US to build) is fairly clear. As of today 13 bodies have been found, 19 are still missing and there's a piece of rock the size of a truck buried in the hull with a 30 meter-long breach in the hull behind it. Add in all the new holes blown through the hull and it's unlikely that the ship can be put back into service.

25 yr old Dominica Cemortan on left

This is what happened: during the previous cruise a 25 year old Moldavian woman, Dominica Cemortan, who worked on the boat (as a dancer?), clearly 'got to know' the Captain. At the end of that cruise she finished work and decided to become a passenger for the next cruise, registering on the Friday morning and checking into a passenger cabin. It's not clear how a ship employee might have the disposable income to afford such a trip, but maybe she received some financial assistance from management or was staying in a room that hadn't been booked.

52 yr old Capt. Francesco Schettino

That afternoon the Captain diverted the ship from it's normal route to 'grandstand' and bring it close to shore, something he'd done several months before successfully. This time he was apparently distracted and ordered the turn away from well-mapped rocks too late, causing the momentum of the ship to swing it into them and break off an enormous piece of rock in the hull. The photo shows white and red painted interior walls of the ship that the collision exposed to the seawater. That is no small hole and it most certainly immediately effected the speed and handling of the ship as indicated by its change in speed from 15.3 pre-impact to 2.9 knots by the time the Captain returned to the bridge.

As the ship took on more and more water (note that the impact MUST have been felt up on the bridge given the damage done and the sensitivity that a crew develops for the 'feel' of their ship underway), the Captain went to dinner with Dominica, drinking wine, according to one member of the restaurant staff and ordering another glass to savour while she awaited dessert, the two of them chatting as the ship began to list (the kitchen staff claim things were sliding off the shelves when Dominica ordered her dessert) from the weight of the thousands of litres of seawater flooding the lower decks. Finally someone was able to persuade the 'unflappable' Captain to leave the restaurant and return to the bridge, accompanied by his young companion.

Apparently realizing from either reports from below and/or the instruments/gauges that the ship was sinking, the Captain did what he should, quickly assessing where the closest dock or pier and shallow water was and ordering a hard turn to port (left) towards a small fishing boat pier or breakwater wall in the bay they'd just passed. It was too small to dock the enormous boat at, but it might have allowed them to lower a gangway to it from the bow and evacuate the passengers and crew for a relatively safe 'abandon ship' manoeuvre. It also would have allowed the ship to settle to the bottom in shallow water to be re-floated more easily (modern cruise ships have a relatively flat bottom).

Unfortunately two things happened that caused this last ditch plan to go wrong. With a relatively flat bottom, as the ship went into a hard turn to port, the water flooding the lower deck shifted to starboard, causing the ship to list even more than it normally would. Given how close they were to shore the Captain and crew had no choice but to 'commit' to turning the ship even more tightly to avoid running it directly into the rocks on the point of land they were trying to slip past.

What this meant was that the relatively sharp right-angled starboard bottom edge of the ship's bottom, now filling with the seawater shifting into it from the hole on the port side, dipped far deeper into the water than the ship's normal 'draft' (depth). This bottom edge hit a submerged rock shelf and the ship ground to a halt, firmly lodged onto the rock shelf and filling with more water past any point of recovery. The additional water (and likely more from a large new hole on the starboard side) began to tip the ship onto it's starboard side and sink it further, where it is still sitting today.

In retrospect, he might have been able to save the ship and all the lives aboard (unless some people were killed down below when he drove the ship onto the initial rocks) if he'd turned hard to starboard instead of port and had ordered all the lower decks abandoned and all the watertight hatches (doors) sealed down below. This would have tipped the pierced port-edge of the bottom further underwater, but would have kept the water inside on the same side as it already was. The ship then could have drifted under its own momentum into the shallow water and 'nosed' up to the pier (seawall?) he was trying to get to.

The problem with anything he might have tried was that some of the power had gone out, according to passenger reports, although this likely only occurred once the turn was initiated. Whether this would have disabled their ability to steer the ship or run the engines is unclear. There were clearly auxiliary back-up generators as there was power on the ship after it ran aground (well lit decks in the night during evacuation), but until the final reports are in and the analysis is made public, we won't know what the conditions were. However, with the auxiliary power working the communications systems, like the public address system, should have been functioning. (Ms. Cemortan even reports that she was "invited" onto the bridge to translate instructions to the Russian speakers on board, something that only could have been done from the bridge via the public address system.)

Once everyone was in the process of trying to abandon a ship that was so badly tilted that it was impossible to lower the heavy liferafts down the angled port side of the craft, the Captain claims he 'fell' into a lifeboat and could not get out to direct the evacuation efforts from aboard the cruise ship (the only place he could have 'fallen' off the ship was the bow where there are no life rafts, or off the starboard rail, a side everyone would have been avoiding as it was gradually submerging). Note that he would have known, from the charts he'd looked at and from their proximity to shore, that there was no way the ship would completely sink, so there should have been no desperate panic on his part to save his own skin. (He may have been fairly drunk at the time, however...)

What would cause this man, charged with such great responsibility, to be in such a rush to abandon his post and obligations to thousands to get in to a life raft and escape? Who was in that raft with him? A certain young blond woman, by any chance? And why did he clearly lie to the Coast Guard Captain who berated him so soundly about returning to the ship? He seemed determined to give the impression of being a hero AND stay with whoever he was alongside him at the time. (The truth will come out eventually!)

His Companion thru the Disaster Goes on TV to Defend 'Her Captain"

In a mind-boggling twist, the girl went on TV, as a 'former crewmember' (entertainment staff) of the Captain's who happened to be on the bridge when he smashed into the first rocks, then had dinner with him while the ship was going down AND was back on the bridge when the abandon ship directive went out (it follows that she must have been in the life raft with him, too), to defend her captain for having handled the situation so well, and for "saving countless lives". Now there's a credible voice! Perhaps she isn't Moldovian, but from the Isle of Siren...

Further, on Jan. 24 the Captain's wife, 48 year old Fabiola Russo, told the media her hubby "is not a monster", saying: "My husband is at the centre of an unprecedented global media storm," Ms Rossi told Oggi, an Italian weekly magazine. "I cannot think of any other naval or air tragedy in which the responsible party was treated with such violence. This is a manhunt, people are looking for a scapegoat, a monster. It's shameful." I'm pretty sure she hasn't done the research I did for this post, but her devoted husband is going to be long remembered for his choices on that fateful day!

One thing is abundantly clear from the facts at hand, if the Captain had stayed at his post after the collision, instead of turning a blind eye to the disaster he had just caused and sticking to his original plan to impress and romance Dominica over dinner, he would have had more than enough time to assess the damage and run the ship aground safely. He could have prevented the loss of life, as well as the total loss of the ship and the environmental risk.

Ah, passion, it makes us do crazy things, especially when it involves an older married man having a girl 27 years younger showing interest in him...

'Accepting' face-veils: Is "No-Fault Assault" Going to be OK in Canada Next?

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Lenard) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 22:58:00 +0000

(Attribution link)

A thought on Canada's acceptance of the hijab (hair-covering scarf), niqab (hair and face-covering scarf) and burka (head to toe 'cloak'). It's really NOT about multi-culturalism and being broad-minded, its about the underlying principles of 'accepting' repressive and backward impositions into our accepting and progressive Canadian culture. If it is OK to toss out centuries of carefully evolved Canadian freedoms for one group, where does it stop? Polygamous marriage becomes OK? Beating women isn't so bad? Keeping a household slave is fine if that's what you're used to? I had this to say on Maclean's Magazine's site in response to their recent article about the wearing of the face-veil in Canada:

Having lived and worked in the Middle East, I think the main point is that for Canada to accept the covering of one group of religious followers' faces means that our society is accepting the philosophy behind it, the notion that if a woman does not cover herself, her femininity, her attractive face, it is her fault if men 'want her' and cannot control themselves (not-the-man's-fault assault). While some Muslim women do this because of their interpretation of the Koran, many do it because the men in their society label them as 'loose women' and 'bad Muslims' for not covering up. That's a pretty powerful tool to fight against, being labelled a 'slut' and 'societal failure' everyday by everyone around you.

The reality is that just a few decades ago (a generation who are in their 60's and 70's now) there was virtually no face covering going on. Before oil made the entire nations in the Arab States wealthy enough to quit being nomadic camel herders, there was far too much work to be done to cover up all the time. This is a new imposition from Imams who want to be known for making new and more stringent proclamations -- ever MORE conservative interpretations of the Koran. Some years back in Saudi Arabia the commonplace baring of hands and feet suddenly became taboo and many women began wearing socks and gloves in the 50+ C degree heat.

Note that there is NOTHING (not anywhere in the Koran) that states the colour of any of these 'modest article of clothing' be black. Black was imposed upon women in Saudi because it discourages women from going out in the sunlight. When the temperature goes up to 70 C in the sun, even weary black pants is a painful experience. All the men wear white, very thin cotton garments that shelter them from the sun while being as cool as possible.

Like the work that Catholic Bishops are doing behind the scenes to give themselves the semblance of power and an excuse to mingle with high rollers (see my last post here), when we go along with whatever some control-obesessed males have cooked up under the guise of religion just to be politically correct/sensitive, we are actually opening the door to much more radicalization.

Many new Canadians, having come from totally repressed, censored countries, revel in their 'rights' once they become citizens here, to protest being offended by everything they come across -- it's like being a kid in a candy store, and they snicker at the way the rest of their fellow Canadians rush to apologize and acquiesce. This 'multicultural melting pot' that P.E. Trudeau began has gone out of control, to the point where Canada is losing any clear heritage. It's being whitewashed to avoid "offending" newcomers.

Net-net, this face-covering thing is (in most of the Arab world) a new imposition, not a consistent thing stretching back millenia. For Canada to roll over on it would be a violation of our core values, that men and women are equal. Wear what you like, shave your head, never cut your sideburns, but when it comes to hiding your identity, you should be required to expose yourself to ANY person who asks you to do so, everywhere in our free country, just as any man walking into a bank or courthouse wearing a ski mask would be asked to do.

The real issue, when we are talking about 'fundamentalism' in ANY religion, Catholicism, Evangelical Christianity, Judaism or Islam, is that, while 'sticking to the strict rule book' is immensely pleasurable and reassuring for many obsessive-compulsive, change-averse types, the rules and regulations written into these books were relevant thousands of years ago. The message of 'doing the right thing' versus doing whatever we selfishly would prefer to do has eternal relevance, but the majority of people in every society use religion as a 'guideline' for their lives/behaviour, they don't see it in 'absolutes' and over time open-mindedness has begun to take over. There will always be individual men with psychopathic tendencies who will try to hijack ancient religious writings as an excuse for doing things they really enjoy doing, like tossing acid in the faces of women, raping them, or controlling them in other ways, but the majority of people 'get' that these ancient historical documents have lost their relevance and they no longer abide by them word-for-word.

It's time for modern societies like Canada to stop 'tip-toeing' around recent immigrants' demands to never change and refuse to assimilate. It's time to say "These are the modern, open-minded, fair and egalitarian rules of Canadian society, your new country's morals/ethics that are the foundation of providing you and your family with a better life and more freedom. Sorry, but if you are so keen on not changing, on not accepting Canada's view of humanity, then return home and stay there, and if I visit your country, I promise not to break your country's codes of conduct and respect your traditions."

Just because the Koran happened to be written at a time when it was common to keep slaves (interesting that you don't hear about Muslims using all the mentions of slaves in the Koran as justification for enslaving people -- although there are literally tens of thousands of household slaves in the Middle East today within those impenetrable walled family compounds) doesn't mean that today it is OK for slavery to be enshrined in Islamic countries' constitutions. The issue of repression of women is identical. It was commonplace and accepted as a part of life 2,000 years ago, it no longer is.

That is what the hijab is all about: the world's largest religion saying that, because this book, the central tenant of our religion, was written at a time that it was OK to enslave people and for men to blame women for stirring up males' sexual desires, we have to stick to it word-for-word thousands of years later. Not cool. Our species has evolved socially, we've learned many new things, humans of every stripe have to live differently together today than we did thousands of years ago. The sheer volume of humans on the planet now necessitates it. You can still embrace the core message of Islam without adhering to ancient prejudices, and the veil is an extremely public display of the idea that if women do not cover up their attractive bits, it's their own fault if they get sexually attacked.

At it's core, the male-initiated pressure for some Muslim societies to use collective shame as a tool to subjugate women. The face veil is not a "curtain", as some supporters euphemistically characterize it, it's purely and simply a public poster that says: "I've given in to the males in my family and culture who choose to blame women for their aggressive sexual tendencies." It also says: "We new Canadians do NOT trust Canadian laws, police and judicial system to keep us safe and grant us the same freedoms as women from other cultures. Covering my face is a symbol of my family and culture's ongoing support for our 'old country's' moral values and laws that put women in jail if they 'allow themselves' to be raped, then force them to marry the rapist."

This is Canada in the 21st century. It's not your fault you're beautiful, it is mine if I decide to attack you. Cover your hair if you like the religious symbolism, but you don't have to fear being attacked or ostracized for having the freedom from male repression to be seen for who you are in this country. You are not a slut for not veiling your face, you're a modern Canadian citizen, be proud of that.

Men Rule! Women Get the Short End of the Stick...

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Lenard) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:33:00 +0000

You gotta love the male mind. Since the dawn of hominid existence there was a group of men sitting around the campfire after having failed, yet again, to bring home an antelope carcass, digesting the meal of vegetables and fruit that the womenfolk gathered and cooked, making shit up. With nothing much to do, they came up with stories to explain stuff they didn't understand and, as they really enjoyed sex and wanted more of it from the womenfolk, much of the time the point of the stories was to control the women in their tribe or any women they came across.

ALL of religion, the dogma, the stories, the rituals, the rules, came from the minds of men. The women were too busy to come up with these stories, although they probably had a big influence on injecting morals and ethics into the stories during the re-telling! Catholicism is entirely and completely a system of rules, regulations and privileges that revolve around making a bunch of men all-powerful. Catholic popes had multiple wives back in the day!

Islam is all about men exercising absolute control over women (although most of the 'covering-up' and 'can't go out' rules are interpretations of vague words in the Koran that were only invented in the past few decades since oil made people in the middle east wealthy enough to stop having to be nomadic). The beauty of modern interpretations of the Koran is that much of it is about how it is the womens fault that men are attracted to them.

As is the case with politics when voters lose control of the politicians once they are elected, once religious leaders are in power, they live in a world of their own invention, dealing only with each other, creating and executing machinations that please themselves no end, making them feel important and giving them justifications to spend money on expensive dinners and plane flights to influence other powerful men, like in this case:

HuffPost Investigates: Catholic Bishop Lobby Influence

And since most of the people who bother to go through the ridiculous efforts that are necessary to get elected are men, women continue to get the short end of the stick since they don't protest, they aren't involved in the machinations! Great set-up for all theses guys!

Limit "Relaxing" Time to 23 1/2 Hours a Day

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Lenard) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 15:06:00 +0000

Pretty simple, easy way to longer life and MUCH better quality of life:

Yeah, I've gone on about the single biggest health issue our human species faces today before (100% created by "the free market economy" and human nature), but there is a very simple solution: limit your 'relaxing' time to 23.5 hours a day.

And if you're serious about staying fit, here's my take on how to keep your workout time and effort down to a reasonable level: "How to Workout for the Rest of Your LONGER Life! (link)"

I Was Like This Kid, You Were Too

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Lenard) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 20:21:00 +0000

I was the scrawny, socially awkward kid at the back of the class who either talked too much, or didn't know what to say. I was the one with bizarre fashion sense who was always nearly failing, but squeaked through because I could 're-read' the text books in my head during tests. I was the kid who was never interested in what they were teaching because I either 'blanked out' when dealing with numbers (math/accounting/physics/chemistry) or, for a lot of other subjects had already read everything I could get my hands on, or thought they were teaching at a 'baby level'. After an IQ test (still legal back then!) they 'accelerated' me to a grade above, but that just made the bullying worse and I 'flunked myself' back to the class I had friends in.

I got bullied on and off through grade and high schools until I figured out 'that look' aggressors got on their face when they were going to 'go aggro,' as the Aussies say, and began to learn to joke, cajole, or -- in worst case scenarios -- act crazy enough to scare them off!

In so many ways our current 'PC' (politically correct) culture is producing the exact opposite effects of what today's grossly over-protective 'helicopter parents' intend. While parents are sending the message that 'every child is special' and needs to be protected from the bad feelings associated with losing or failing, there are bullies, often with parents who are no different than their victims' parents, teaching them what life is REALLY like: grossly unfair, brutal, highly prejudiced.

The way that overly protective parents enable this is by insisting on pretending that all kids are equal in all respects, although they realize, rationally and practically, that this clearly isn't the case. When you set up a facade that 'all kids are equal,' the first ones to take advantage of the smokescreen are those sorely lacking in empathy. And here's some news, empathy has to be imposed upon kids at a certain stage of their maturation. I'm almost overly empathetic today, but there was a time I experimented with pushing smaller kids around and got caught by dad tossing a large toad off a bridge with a plastic bag parachute. The spanking I earned for the latter error in judgment taught me something about how doing something unacceptable to society brings personal suffering.

Not even 'your little Johnny' comes pre-packaged with a full understanding and range of empathetic reactions. When kids are abused at home, they abuse at school. I certainly tried bullying on for size because I didn't like taking it and wanted to find out if giving it out was as much fun as it seemed to the highly motivated bullies in my neighbourhood. Bullying turned out to be a non-starter for me, but then I wasn't suffering abuse at home every night, so I had little to 'take out' on other victims.

Today's a new day. Reach out and try to help someone. Anyone. No matter what they look like OR what they're addicted to. What we know today about addiction means that it is 100% true that "There but for the grace of God go you", and you have very likely evidenced addictive problems if you've ever:

Shopped just because it gave you a lift,
Gotten too tanned just because the endorphins made you feel 'healthy',
Taken a bet just because you couldn't resist the thrill of the outcome,
Drank alone to the point of passing out on the couch,
Had a problem getting off the nicotine, or codeine, or Oxycontin,
Passed and stayed over your healthy body mass index upper limit,
Obsessed over some stupid thing that really was of no consequence to your life,

If you've NEVER done anything like the behaviours on this list, you can look down at others and not help, but otherwise it's the obligation of all fellow members of the human race to reach out and help someone.

In Toronto, help the abused, troubled kids who are on the street through no fault of their own:

Covenant House.ca

1-800-435-7308

Once A Country's Debt is at the Point of No Return...

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Lenard) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 14:37:00 +0000

Everyone has an opinion. I share this guy's point of view on Bill Maher's book about the decline of Canada's more powerful Siamese twin to the south. (Canada's advantage is that, with a MUCH smaller population, until the US militarily annexes us, we have virtually unlimited natural resources to exploit.)

Like Nero playing his lyre while Rome burned, citizens who are the most change-averse shout about exceptionalism while the US spends its way into total indebtedness to China. Frightening. Whether you are America or the Canadian province of Ontario, spending to support social programs you can't pay for in cash is a really bad idea, especially when you actually ask who it is who is so willing to loan you the money to do so.

A Review of Bill Maher's Book "The NEW new Rules"

By Herbert Calhoun (about the author)

America's Greatest Satirist has sounded the last alarm before the plunge

One thing this book proves is that when the obituary of the American nation is finally and inevitably written, the historical record will show that from the very beginning only the Satirists have been telling us the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the state of our nation: Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Will Rogers, H.L. Mencken, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Chris Rock, Stephen Colbert, John Stewart and now Bill Maher, have all sounded warnings in their own way, and for their own respective times.

The loudest alarm for our times (arguably one of the most troubled times of all for this young nation), can be taken from the gray pages of this book. It is here that Maher leaves his mark on American history by proving to us that he just may be the greatest American Satirist of them all. His selective creations here would be funny only if these were not such serious times and only if his humor did not have such a sharp edge, one that is so deadly accurate that it cuts beyond the white meat literally to the bone.

Maher has looked deeply into the soul of the America nation and is unafraid to tell us what he sees there. And what he sees there is the same thing that we all see but are pretending not to know (and thus are afraid to acknowledge): that our "faith over facts," sexually repressed, warmongering, economically mindless, and racist nation is finally in serious trouble. And it is not of the simple "fixable kind of trouble;" but is of the systemic "virtually unfixable" kind. What we are pretending not to know about ourselves (even though it is right before our eyes) is, why the nation we love so is turning into a "chest-beating," "war-mongering," "economically hollowed out" racist shell of a Third World country?

In the grey pages of this book, Maher gives us the answer: The reason the American nation is in such trouble is that the "ruling class" has repackaged and then commandeered America's patriotic symbolism and has used it to dumb-down and then to mount and ride the "political class" like a Trojan Horse. That class of political misfits, morally-challenged whores, demagogues and ideologues is now being used to trample the very ground of everything that is meaningful about American culture, values and ideals -- as it makes a beeline straight for the abyss.

As we saw in 2007-8 in the economic crash, the political whores are being ridden right to the edge of the precipice all in the name of Gorton Gecko level greed; to save the proverbial "job-creator's bottom line," as we are told? The problem is that, not only is it that the jobs they are creating are all in the Communist Police State of China, but also that there is no bottom to the bottom line? And even if there were a bottom, there is nothing else meaningful beyond the bottom line but blind, empty, random, mindless, inhuman, greed. All we can see as far out into the future as the eye can see, is the once "all mighty dollar" now chasing its own tail, as that tail changes right before our eyes into the "all mighty Yen."

Maher tells us that we have been divided into two lying classes: dumb and dumber (also known as Republicans and Democrats). The only difference between them is that the Democrats believe the lies that they tell us, while the Republicans do not. In a paroxysm of capitalist greed that feeds only on itself and has no discernable logic, rhyme or reason, the two political parties, thin proxies for the mean-spirited cynical and mindless ruling class, have abandoned the notion of a "common good" trading it in for more endless ideologically-based wars: "wars of choice," wars on terror, wars on drugs, wars on crime, wars on blacks and the poor, and it has finally come home to roost as wars on the white middle class.

The only discernible result of all this warring has been to enrich stateless and loyal-less corporations like Haliburton who along with the political whores running Washington D.C., have helped put the U.S. in hock to a Communist Police state; one that we used to mock and make fun of as being backwards. But all the while we have been beating our chest with our obsolete military hardware, claiming to still be the greatest country on earth, the Communist Police state that we used to mock has proven to be better capitalist than we are. And the best evidence that it is they that are emerging as number one is that they currently hold three trillion dollars of our treasury bonds (and thus also our private parts), in a global economic vise grip.

All Maher is trying to tell us here is that we had better wake up before the Trojan Horse has been driven right over the cliff. With moral wimps like Barack Obama on the left, and the eight stooges running for President on the right, it does not look good for America's long-term survival. It does not look like we are going to be able to stall off our own national suicide. This book is so funny it will make you cry, literally. Five Star

Heavy Handed, Yes, But It's THREE Years Old! The GOP Is Consistent, At Least...

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Lenard) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 14:14:00 +0000

Down With Anyone Who Isn't "Normal" Like Me! Hang on... This Guy Seems "Normal".

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Lenard) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 14:02:00 +0000

Busting the Republicans' 5 Most Recent "Myths"

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Lenard) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 19:34:00 +0000

Posted on MoveOn.Org on November 22, 2011 by Angie

MYTH #1: The congressional Super Committee failed because both sides refuse to compromise.

REALITY: The Super Committee failed because Republicans’ number one, non-negotiable priority is to protect millionaires and billionaires from paying even one more penny in taxes.1 Democrats repeatedly offered deep spending cuts (far deeper than most progressives would like) in exchange for raising taxes on the wealthy and closing corporate loopholes, only to be refused again and again.2 So even though the vast majority of Americans say they want to protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits, and raise taxes on the rich and corporations,3 that won’t happen until Republicans put aside their extremist stance.

MYTH #2: Nobody knows what Occupy Wall Street is about.

REALITY: Occupy Wall Street may not have a formal list of demands, but anyone who’s been paying attention understands the core problems that occupiers are protesting–that corporations have far too much power in our political system, that Wall Street banks crashed our economy but were never held accountable, and that the richest 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans–156 million people–combined.4

MYTH #3: Occupiers should stop protesting and just get a job.

REALITY: As anybody who’s looked for a job in the last few years knows, there just aren’t jobs out there. That’s a big part of why occupiers are protesting. In September, there were four times as many unemployed people as job openings.5 And for those who are lucky enough to find a job, median wages today are lower than they were a decade ago.6

MYTH #4: Occupy Wall Street is intent on provoking violence, especially against banks and the police.

REALITY: Occupations across the country have committed themselves to nonviolent protest, in the greatest traditions of protest movements. Some of their protests have been met with acts of police violence–tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets7–but in many cases, protesters have reminded police that the police are part of the 99%, too.8 And in the few cases when people have shown up at occupations and committed acts of vandalism, other protesters have even repaired their acts of vandalism.9

MYTH #5: The biggest crisis facing our country is out of control government spending.

REALITY: The two biggest drivers of our deficit–by far–are the economic crash and the Bush tax cuts.10 We have millions of people out of work, corporations hoarding cash, and factories sitting idle. If we put all those people back to work–rebuilding infrastructure, educating our children, and researching new technologies–it’ll shrink the deficit and make our economy stronger for the long haul. And we can easily afford it if we make sure the rich–who are taking home a larger percentage of income than any time since 191711–pay their fair share.

Sources:
1. “No, ‘both sides’ aren’t equally to blame for supercommittee failure,” The Washington Post, November 21, 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/no-both-sides-arent-equally-to-blame-for-supercommittee-failure/2011/11/21/gIQAj31ehN_blog.html
2. “Wonkbook: In supercommittee, Dems moved right and Republicans moved righter,” The Washington Post, November 22, 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/wonkbook-which-party-gave-more-ground-in-the-supercommittee/2011/11/22/gIQAVugkkN_blog.html?wprss=ezra-klein
3. “CNN Poll: What The Super Committee Produced Is…Exactly What We Don’t Want,” Talking Points Memo, November 21, 2011
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/11/cnn-poll-what-the-super-committee-produced-isexactly-what-we-dont-want.php
“Medicare, Social Security & The Deficit,” National Committee to Preserve Social Security & Medicare, September 2011
http://www.ncpssm.org/pdf/poll.pdf
4. “Michael Moore says 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined,” Politifact Wisconsin, March 10, 2011
http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2011/mar/10/michael-moore/michael-moore-says-400-americans-have-more-wealth-/
5. “Fact: 4 job seekers per opening in U.S.,” CNN, September 12, 2011
http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/12/fact-4-job-seekers-per-opening-in-u-s/
6. “Median household income,” Wikipedia, Accessed November 22, 2011
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income#Median_household_income_and_the_US_economy
7. “Occupy movement: police reaction in pictures,” The Guardian, November 21, 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2011/nov/22/occupy-movement-police-brutality-pictures
8. “Occupy Demonstrators Mark Two Months of Protests,” NPR, November 17, 2011
http://www.npr.org/2011/11/17/142462305/occupy-demonstrators-mark-two-months-of-protests
9. “Occupy Oakland protesters assist in cleanup efforts,” News 10 ABC, November 3, 2011
http://www.news10.net/news/article/161383/2/Occupy-Oakland-protesters-assist-in-cleanup-efforts-
10. “Economic Downturn and Bush Policies Continue to Drive Large Projected Deficits,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, May 10, 2011
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3490
11. “Income Inequality Is At An All-Time High: STUDY,” The Huffington Post, September 14, 2009
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/14/income-inequality-is-at-a_n_259516.html

A Conservative Solution to Human Equity: The Disadvantaged Should Work Harder!

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Lenard) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 17:29:00 +0000

My conservative buddy has taken a shot at "standing up for conservative support for the status quo" in an email:

Are people ready for the reality check? The current social “safety net” (which coincidentally didn’t exist at all prior to the great depression but has only really only come into force in the 60-80’s) is based on the premise of consistent economic and population growth.

The current generation isn’t “screwed” as you put it, like the generations that preceded it they will need to work for what they believe in and shape the world into what they want. Every proceeding generation has had to overcome their own set of difficulties for what they believe in.

If I were to take issue with the entire Occupy movement is seems they want something for nothing. Nothing gets you nothing and the social experiments of the 20th century have proved that just redistributing wealth does not eliminate homelessness, does not lower the poverty rate (these have remained essentially unchanged since the 60’s). This is simply not the solution.

Further in contrast to Occupy, not all high income earners are bad. The Bill Gates of the world give more to charity than 100 million of us average guys. They created something from nothing that as arguably changed all of our lives and so you want to hang him out to dry. Wealth and social hierarchies have as well been part of human societies for thousands of years. I bet in Egypt 3000 years ago it was a lot less than 1% that held the majority of the wealth. But in our current society don’t you think the rest of us have a much higher standard of living than the slaves building the pyramids did?

I am all for reducing corruption, and properly going after those that take advantage of or manipulate the system…both tall orders given our current Governments and the voting process…but the reality is we need to also encourage people to have greater personal accountability, to work harder and be more creative. These attributes have been the key drivers for advancing our society for the past thousands of years. We need to remind ourselves that we are the architects of this and we are the only ones that will get ourselves out of this.

The occupiers are long on finger pointing but short on solutions…other than more taxation. At least in our society if you want and have the will you can accomplish almost anything. So I would suggest to those who complain get on with it and get to those positions where you can affect the change you want. The processes are already in place.

Hm. Apparently all the Occupy Movement wants, having begun as a protest designed to force those whose actions precipitated the global financial meltdown make some reparations, or at least suffer in some meaningful way, is to get handouts from the government. The rest of us weren't aware of that, but then we've actually been looking into what they are trying to accomplish.

While my friend is clearly 'out to lunch' on the actual overall goals of the Movement, the fact that he honestly believes this at the moment is pretty devastating to those involved in the protests. It strongly suggests they have to withdraw, rethink and try again! The name they chose, all on its own, no longer makes their real (new?) goals clear.

I addressed my problem with the 'strategy' and 'goals' of the Occupy Movement the other day, disagreeing with their 'camping out' efforts as an effective tool to help accomplish their as yet unclear and disjointed objectives. Let's take a look at the conservatives' strategies to undermine and marginalize the Occupy voices calls for what conservatives like least -- change. (Republicans have advocated letting the raft sink rather than changing the way anything is being done! It's like being in a seawater-filled, inflatable life raft that's leaking air -- the conservative who has been bailing furiously in a losing battle against the incoming water for hours will vote to keep bailing as it's what seems to make most sense to empty the interior of water, while the only real lifesaving solution is to try to stop the air from leaking out.)

The easiest way to start a senseless fight is to call someone names -- not just "You're a boo-boo-head", but things that are unproven and even patently untrue, like calling the biggest heterosexual goon in the bar a homosexual. The gibe is not intended to illicit a discussion about the man's sexual history or proclivities, it is a provocation designed only to induce fisticuffs, not a conversation. This is what Michelle Bachmann has done in calling the Occupy protesters "unpatriotic Socialists", a fanciful label given that the Occupy Movement has yet to articulate a clear, unified goal of any kind.

In part, reality has worked very negatively against the movement since those protesters who had the wherewithal to articulate their point of view AND who have the credibility to stand behind it (i.e. they are currently employed taxpayers) have long since stopped camping out and have gone to work at their jobs. The people who are still camping out are the unemployed, the unemployable and the fringe, none of whom the media or authorities are going to take too seriously.

What my friend is doing in his diatribe is to 'whitewash' the entire movement with the brush that the left-over campers are wielding, "We want something for nothing", that is: "We are not currently paying taxes but we're making demands upon those who are." As long as this is the light the Occupy Movement (now turning out to be a very unfortunate choice of name) is spotlighted in, they are never going to accomplish much. To be fair, the original impetus behind the name was "We, the 99% of Americans who got screwed by the financial sector, aren't going to give up until they get punished/pay reparations." This was a laudable goal, the execution of which isn't working out so well....

The Occupy Movement would be well advised to regroup, re-strategize, get clear about their single-minded, simple goal, and re-brand themselves before attempting further messaging. The notion of "occupying", while it seemed it could work as well as it has in places like Liberia and Mexico City, turns out to be less than effective, if not mis-directing, in a country where tax dollars actually ARE the government's largest source of revenue.

Back to my buddy's point of view, however. Using Bill Gates as an example of 'good rich people' is a bit problematic, as Gates spent many, many years accumulating his vast wealth without any overt philanthropic efforts. He only became a philanthropist later in life.

The real issue he ignores is the drop in the 1%'s tax rate over the past 20 years. The seachange that the world is going to go through in the next 20+ years is not that poverty/homelessness is going to be eradicated, but that the wealth of the human species has to be more fairly distributed/shared. At the end of the day, the reality is that there is only so much wealth in natural resources and human work-hours to go around. As the global recession has demonstrated, it is NOT limitless, it is finite. The only way to ensure stability amongst us is to spread the wealth. Even because one child is born with a high IQ and his brother is a dullard, should not entitle Mr. Smarty-pants to vast wealth at the expense of his brother -- both are human beings we should support equally.

As Fareed Zakaria has pointed out, the existence of an 'entrenched upper class' who's members don't actually do anything to entitle them to wealth other than being born into it, makes no real sense to our species, and we have a built-in tendency to embrace entitlement for ourselves. If we are born into circumstances, whether it be a rich daddy or Western-world citizenship, we very aggressively believe we deserve everything we are used to. Like the sons of Mohummar Ghadafi or Saddam Hussien being suddenly impoverished, they don't fundamentally believe they deserve to live an average, much less impoverished, lifestyle because they are 'special'.

In response to my pal, I can only say yes, you raise some valid points about contributing, making an effort and choosing where to focus one's attention, however to suggest that change is not needed to ensure the vastly wealthy are not forced to do what Bill Gates is doing is a bit like putting your head in the sand and hoping things will sort themselves out on their own. Debate and a genuine open-mindedness to change BY EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US is what is going to improve our species' collective lot on this planet. Painting those who have some very valid points with the same brush benefits no one but the status quo. Leaving the vastly wealthy foxes in charge of all the henhouses is not going to lead to anything but more wars fought by the poorest citizens against other poor citizens for the benefit of the wealthy decision-makers.

Just a Bunch of "Unpatriotic Socialists", Who Happen to be YOUR Neighbours

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Lenard) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 14:00:00 +0000

Occupy For What?

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Lenard) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 18:04:00 +0000

While I support the so-called "Occupy" movement's core (though as yet poorly articulated) goal, I don't support their tactics or strategy. Not just their actual occupations of city properties, whether publicly or privately held, but what they are trying to accomplish.

Why not? Firstly because 'camping out', while tons of fun in your parents' backyard as a kid, doesn't really communicate much more than determination. What it says is "Look at the discomfort we're willing to go to in order to keep attention focused on our cause". All well and good, but the next obvious question is "So what do the decision-makers need to do in order to make you happy enough to go home?" The answer from the "Occupy Movement" currently seems to be "We don't really know."

The movement's initial momentum is now winding down as the proverbial wind goes out of their sails. The police and city governments are helping, but as they represent the majority and the "Occupy Movement" has failed to articulate a simple and clear enough message to win over the populace, their removal by the authorities was inevitable.

Right now their occupy tactics are helping to water down their goal. How? The longer they camp out, the more legitimate voices they lose to the reality of life (jobs and families) and the more illegitimate voices are attracted to the promise of a nice campsite, food and resources (the homeless). Street protests like those against the G20 in Toronto in 2010, in this age of instant cellphone communication, face a similar risk of 'hijacking': the moment a bunch of violence loving sociopathic boys with black shirts and ski masks infiltrate a crowd, the original goal of the protest is null and void.

What will be interesting to see is whether the movement dies out, or re-groups and gets serious and effective. Recall that the 'protest movements' of the 50's, 60's and 70's employed large rallies and marches as tactics, bringing out quantities of voters that politicians found hard to ignore, and their goals were simple and clear:

Give women the vote.
Racial equality.
End US participation in the Vietnam war.

Only when the so-called "Occupy Movement" gets crystal clear about it's demands will it become a real force of change. Sadly what started as "Occupy Wall Street" with a simple goal: "Make the people who benefited from the mortgage bubble of 2008 pay for the global crisis they instigated" got side-tracked. What happened seems to be that the financial sector's lobbyists convinced the protesters that it wasn't their sector that were really responsible ("We were just doing our job!"), it was the rich people who hold most of the stock in their firms and steer the government in their best interests. Oops! Not so easy to target a bunch of rich people living everywhere in the country and demand they 'share their wealth'!

To be fair, if the government said "OK, you made your point, we're going to raise taxes on the rich back up to a reasonable rate" most of the smart, focused protesters would consider that they'd won a major victory. The reality is pretty horrifying, as back in 1980 in America the 1% paid 70% income tax, now their rate is 35% and most use loopholes to pay just 17%. The effect on the US economy is devastating, since the top 1%'s portion of total income in the US has risen from 10% to 20%. A more than 50% drop in tax revenues on one fifth of all the income in America is clearly going to have a serious effect on the public purse.

The reality is that nothing short of outright revolution is likely to effect any real change in the US, or anywhere else in the world where the rich run things. (Mexico's Carlos Slim went from being a political sycophant to the richest man in the world by manipulating politics to his advantage -- he and his rich buddies are Mexico's decision-makers, not the politicians or government.) Everyone who is in control in most of the world is rich, and unless they are forced to change, they're not going to. And you can trust human nature -- if you were in their shoes, you wouldn't voluntarily share your wealth either!

Denmark's Mysterious Secret to The World's Highest Standard of Living:

Share the Wealth

There is a simple secret that the few countries with the highest standard of living in the world know and live by. It is called 'share the wealth'. The system is very simple: a sliding tax rate through which the poorest pay nothing and the richest pay a lot.

The reality is that once your family has a reliable disposable income of over a few hundred thousand dollars a year, you really don't NEED any more money. You may want it. You may really, really LIKE it, but you do not need it.

What's Wrong With the World in 2 Minutes

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Lenard) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 17:37:00 +0000

Obama's Biggest Boo-Boo: Not Adopting Change

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Lenard) — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 17:50:00 +0000

All Obama had to do to become a revolutionary new type of president was to keep the one thing going that was so remarkably different about his 2008 election. It was the first thing he abandoned. He has only begun to re-leverage it now for the 2012 campaign -- quite possibly too little, too late.

When Obama got elected back in 2008 I was a big proponent of pointing out how he'd not only leveraged the concept of "Hope for Change" as a consistent platform for his campaign, he'd 'owned it' so successfully no one else could co-opt it (though they all tried -- most pathetically and ironically the province of Ontario's Conservative candidate for Premier in 2011, Tim Hudack, a no-change megalomaniac if ever there was one!). Obama's 2008 campaign embraced change all the way down to changing the tools of campaigning, adopting social media in its then fledgling formats and changing the notion that young people are not interested in voting and electoral issues.

Admittedly, if you could put a 'face of change' on American presidential elections, a younger-than-the-average-presidential-candidate, half-black man was it, but he did bring a new open mind to the process. What he didn't share during the election was that, if elected, it was his intention to try to effect his promise of change from within the Washington status quo system, not by trying to shake it up in any real way.

What the past years, or especially the first year, of Obama's administration have demonstrated was that the ego necessary to take an underdog through to the presidency had to be SO LARGE that he actually believed he was sufficiently messianic to make things happen from within. Oops! Almost anyone, even those unfamiliar with the way politics work, would have told him this was a really stupid conceit. Just because he was very smart, 'fresh' and not 100% white would not make a whit of difference in making things happen in Washington, a place of well-established 'old boy' networking and 'you wash my back, I'll wash yours' deals.

All that this strategy has done is to allow his opponents to leverage the systems/processes they're most familiar with against the young, upstart, 'black' man and attempt to demonize him in the prejudiced minds of their most loyal (and least analytical) constituents. The placards of the "Tea Party" participants demonstrate this, Obama as Hitler, Bin Laden, the devil, the Joker from Batman.

Ironically, the one thing that many of his supporters thought he'd leverage to effect change once he was voted in, one of the biggest things that helped him seem like an 'agent of change' and would actually exert a new kind of influence in Washington was the first thing he walked away from: social media and a deep level of engagement with America's youth. Before his election I predicted that this cohort would help him win because they are colour-blind and open to change, and they did, but he immediately abandoned any further real communication with them (a sad, ineffective little website, change.gov, now whitehouse.gov, is not what I'm talking about), wading deeply into the depths of Congress and backroom dealing.

My point? If Obama had only kept his 'grass roots' social media political machine going during his presidency, using his supporters to organize local 'town hall' meetings in their homes to discuss and promote his health care reform plan, for example, the success of his first term would likely have been much more remarkable, and much more of a guarantee of a second term, than it has been. More thoughts on this point here.

How the Money Disappears

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Lenard) — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 16:40:00 +0000

If you can ignore the over-simplification and blatant 'scare propaganda' (e.g. nuclear plants actually are environmentally safer and cleaner than coal-fired), they point out some interesting things about the 'status quo' of subsidies and lobbying:

The First Truly "Presidential" President Since 1963

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Lenard) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 18:31:00 +0000

There Are No Causes That Trump This One. Do What YOU Can to Stop Human Trafficking and Abuse.

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Lenard) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 18:03:00 +0000

The World's About to Go Through Some Radical Changes

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Lenard) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 18:01:00 +0000

Capitalism is NOT the Natural Outcome of Natural Selection

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Lenard) — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 19:41:00 +0000

Today's reality is that old, simplistic socio-political descriptions will not work in this century. The rules are going to be re-written, though the 'change-averse' (who by nature tend to be conservative) will scream "NO CHANGE!".

A dyed-in-the-wool conservative friend recently suggested that I was hypocritical in being in support of the "Occupy Movement" while suggesting that most companies don't like to hire visibly unhealthy workers (yes, including those with unhealthy body mass indexes), because of a natural human tendency that evolved in our species to marginalize individuals who cannot actively benefit 'the tribe'.

His point is that capitalism seems to be the natural outcome of natural selection, survival of the fittest, as is my point about evolution-affected decision-making bias in hiring employees. I believe that capitalism is not at all the product of NATURAL selection, it is the product of SOCIAL selection and the result of humans having far too much time on their hands over the past 10,000 years. In just 5-10% of our species' existence, we've moved from 190,000 years of living in the natural nomadic, hunter/gatherer, tribal state our genes/instincts most naturally were designed to cope with, to being sedentary, urbanized and living in isolated nuclear families. We no longer live in the shared environment of a tribal village, like these un-contacted cousins of ours photographed in Brazil a couple of months ago:

You'll note obesity is not "normal", it's extremely rare in our natural tribal human state.

The “Darwinian” forces are certainly at work when it comes to selecting genes for generating more wealth for the tribe. In our natural tribal state, the tribes that had the best “entrepreneurs” did better than their neighbours' tribes, for sure. In a tribe, however, wealth was automatically distributed. There were just too many pressures in nomadic human life over our initial 190,000 years of existence for the accumulation of personal wealth at the expense of the tribe.

This was an ongoing "haves-have nots" problem in aboriginal communities: as 'Western influence' began to be adopted and some individuals/families began to become wealthier, the tendency of their fellow tribe members to ‘borrow’ the vehicles of others because they need the truck to go do something they needed (or personally feel inclined) to do, like drive to town. There was no sense of wrong-doing in using someone’s truck without permission as it was considered by the 'have not's' to be part of the tribe’s communal property. The notion that one individual deserved exclusive access to that truck because they had 'worked harder' for it and had taken out a bank loan to buy it was a foreign concept to the rest.

So, yes, the smartest and most aggressive individuals helped their gene pool survive and get passed along. The inherent desire for more than we need is part of the human condition/genome, but we live in times that are totally artificial for our species’ instincts and tendencies. Our species has always only survived to decimate the planet by thinking individually, but acting tribally/socially. The individual drive is ‘I want to have sex with my cousin’s wife’, but the social decision is “if she gets pregnant and they recognize the kid as mine my cousin will hate me and I'll have to provide... Not good.” Or “I want Chief Grok’s shell necklace because it gets him all the chicks, so I’ll stab him and take it” vs. “Hang on! I’m too weak to take over his role as Chief and bring in more food/wealth for the tribe and my own kids might die because of my actions AND I’ll get my ass kicked/killed by the stronger guys in the tribe for doing it, so I better not.”

Living in a society forces us to modify our naturally 'greedy' selfish interests for the benefit of our shared genes. Our 'unnatural' modern societies have long glorified what are actually anti-social tendencies to accumulate personal wealth at the expense of the health of the tribe. Anathema to most 'capitalists' today, yet clearly the most natural state for human beings to survive best in the setting we evolved to live in. From the 'what's best for the tribe' point of view, 'capitalism' is pathological. The ideology of "manifest destiny" continues to pervade the thinking of the Republican party, and is evidenced even more blatantly in all the underpinnings of the Tea Party movement, though they have all learned not to verbalize it.

In recent studies it has been revealed that becoming wealthy alters people's behaviour, making them arrogant, more prone to unethical decisions like taking candy left out for children and cutting people off in traffic. While this phenomenon suggests that ANY one of us who becomes wealthy is likely to also become arrogant, it's not an excuse for their behaviour, but does provide scientific proof for something we all have experienced and know intuitively.

From the natural selection perspective, the tribe had to make tough social decisions. The pair of swans at my boat club chased off their 7th gosling when it reached the age of about one month old last season. Turns out, when the humane society arrived to capture it, that the gosling in question had been born blind. With humans, too, for the vast majority of our long existence, blind or very sick babies, the very old, or those who could not run fast enough, got left behind to their own devices when the herds migrated. Nasty by today's standards, but the entire tribe would have suffered and been killed off, or died off, had the sick or infirm been kept around. The same natural force was at work: the balance between wanting to improve the lot of your tribe and tolerating the weak: greediness at work to effect the long-term benefit one’s own genes in a social species no matter how painful the short-term cost was.

Today what’s begun with the Tea Party movement and carried over to the Occupy Movement is a new revolution amongst the people. The old order of the late 20th century is about to come unglued. The Tea Party is filled with old farts who cling to what worked a half-century ago and expect that will continue to work best to keep themselves and their prodigy alive. It cannot work the same way ever again, but their change-averse, atrophied old brains can’t grasp this fact. The Occupy group is young, flexible and determined (after all, the survival of their genes are at stake). The latter "get" that things have to change, and radically, if their own kids are to survive, let alone do as well as their parent's generation.

The old financial model worked fine when everyone was struggling out of the general poverty of the late 19th century, but post WWII, largely because of “The American Dream”, the entire world’s poor have moved into, or been exposed to the possibility of moving into, the middle and higher classes. Now that the Internet has put every American movie ever made into the hands (literally on smart phones, more broadly on TV’s via DVD players) of even the poorest of the poor via their richer cousin/neighbour, everyone on the planet wants some wealth. (I've lived in 'developing world countries', they learn a lot about what 'normal' can look like with some exposure to Arnold Schwarzenegger's old comedy movies, watching them in the evenings on a communal TV and DVD player on a bunch of folding chairs under a bare light bulb).

The antiquated 19th century model of the ‘landed gentry’ and ‘privileged few’ making all the money from the poor and keeping it for themselves isn’t going to cut it anymore. What this newly wealthy and fairly well-educated (in part by Hollywood) group is starting to demand is fair distribution of all the wealth that exists on the planet. Most of that wealth comes from the privileged few paying off the politicos in power to get natural resources for virtually free (oil, gas, minerals, forests, etc.), processing it and selling it to the masses. There’s really zero reason that these privileged few are entitled to the cash. Really none. They did not work any harder to become the owner of the diamond mine than the poorest poor worker putting in 80-100 hours a week for years without a day off down in the muck doing the mining, but there they are, spitting down on the workers. Many of those workers have higher IQ’s than the mine/factory owners, but they have had no access to education.

Mark my words, in your lifetime you are going to witness one of the greatest social upheavals in our species’ history (watch this video clip from a 1985 BBC show). Shit is going to go down and the idea that the entire global human population’s fortunes depend on the ‘concerns’ of a bunch of traders on the world’s few stock exchanges is going to be challenged. That system was built in the privileged men’s club rooms of the 19th century (“I say, old boy, if you lend me a million to risk on digging up some diamonds, I’ll cut you in on the potential profits, and I’ll invest a million in your latest venture down the road!”).

Our Species' Biggest Challenge: Our Economic Stability is Based Upon a Global Gambling Pool

What all of this shit is REALLY based upon, is our natural human tendency to very quickly start feeling entitled. Ghaddifi and Hussein’s kids were raping and pillaging, driving around in their Lamborghinis a year ago. (Turns out they aren’t as entitled to be ‘special’ as they’d been brought up to believe!) This new generation (60% of all the population in the Middle East is under 15) isn’t going to stand for a few pathological megalomaniacs holding power over them and keeping them poor. Neither are the Millennials in Canada, the States or other 'developed nations' (and you KNOW that those rich old boys have done their share of assassinating to keep things going their way for the past 200 years).

Join the eventual winning side with all the soldiers in it, or cling to the ancient winners of the past. Your call!

Expectations Are Just Premeditated Resentments!

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Lenard) — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 01:33:00 +0000

Any American Can Become President! But "1%-Level" Wealth Helps...

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Lenard) — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 14:23:00 +0000

Don't worry, 99%! You can trust the guys you've voted in to look after your best interests, not theirs...

The 1%'s Argument: People are Poor Because They Don't Work Hard Enough

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Lenard) — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 14:18:00 +0000

The 1% will argue that the wealth they have attained (and that they'll use to manipulate politicians to allow them to hang onto) has nothing to do with the opportunities their parents, or the society they grew up in, offered them versus their less fortunate neighbours. The hard-working poor, however, will prove to you by their circumstances that no amount of hard work, smarts, dreaming, or even scheming, can overcome lack of opportunity...

Given the IQ bell curve, there are several people on this truck with GENIUS brainpower.

So when you hear the argument that harder work and smarts are the reasons that the wealthy 1% should be entitled to keep MORE of their money than the 99% (i.e. pay the same % in taxes -- or an even smaller % through manipulation of loopholes that politicians have engineered) because they've worked so hard for it and are so darned smart, go have a chat with that great mechanic you use, or the meticulous grass-cutter you like so much, or that 'switched-on' guy working for his family's carpet shop, and look for evidence that they really are lazy and stupid.

The 'story' the 1% will feed you, that they are just naturally smarter and constitutionally harder-working, has to be totally and utterly dispelled upfront to understand the injustice that the "Occupy Movement" of the 99% is fighting against. Genetics have very little to do with high IQ or hyperactivity -- there are equally smart, workaholic-type individuals throughout the population of the middle-class and poor. What you'll find if you look for the examples is that the families of these super-smart, hyperactive individuals couldn't afford to push them in the right direction, or simply never even considered it because it was such a vast distance from the lives they lead on a daily basis.

Members of the 99% who are incredibly smart and extremely hard working are all around you, but before you go thinking that you don't even have daily encounters with anyone in the 1% because they're all millionaires, think about this...

At an 'entry level' of $350k, you interact with business owners (contractors, owners of small business chains, landlords, etc.) and professionals (doctors, accountants, managers, etc.) everyday who are in the 1%. The crux of the matter is not at what level of earnings the wealthy should be taxed more heavily, but rather why they have a pressing need to NOT be taxed more fairly -- why do they need to keep that percentage of their 'hard-earned' cash?

Many experienced doctors work fewer hours as they approach retirement than equally experienced nurses or janitorial staff. Why? The reason they can afford to is principally because they spent more years in school. The same is true for lawyers versus their clerks. These professionals not only made up for the non-working years they went through in university, they have to work less as they age. It's a great deal if you have the chance to get into it, yet most of these people came from privileged backgrounds that allowed them the opportunity. Genetics do not improve IQ, years in school improve IQ. If you grow up in a family that does not believe in and encourage the goal of higher education (for whatever reason -- maybe dad's got mental problems and mom cannot get off the booze), no matter how smart and hard working you are, you will not be steered towards professional school.

Yet once any household had a couple of professionals in it or a business owner or two, regardless of their family history, and when that household passes the $350k income level, what is it, exactly, that they have to pay for that they need to hold onto to the higher percentage of their cash that would go to tax rate increases versus their less educated, less wealthy co-workers? Once anyone is making that amount of money, how would they, the 1%, suffer if their income was reduced by 10%, or 20%? They would make some reductions in payments on their properties and other luxuries, that's all.

Here's what, virtually universally, even the 'least wealthy' of the 1% have:

A large, well-appointed home.
Two fairly new top of the line cars.
Kids in private schools.
A nice vacation home.
Full medical insurance.
Lots of 'toys' like boats and sports equipment.
Yearly vacations to exotic destinations.
Very comfortable retirement investments to ensure they live equally well until they die.

Many, even if they pay the maximum US income tax percentage of 27%, plus state sales and municipal property taxes, do not give a substantial percentage of their wealth to charity causes every year. I'm struggling to understand why they cannot afford to pay double, or triple, the taxes they currently pay? Over the long run, what would that tax burden reduce in terms of their lifestyles? A slightly smaller house? Cheaper cars? Fewer toys?

I've enjoyed an income of close to the 1% for a few years in the past. Since my divorce and the recession of 2008 I've made just enough to keep up payments on my car and home. I certainly liked making a lot more money, but though I'm currently less able to afford medical insurance or retirement savings, I'm not exactly suffering like those people in Sudan on that truck above.

I find it tough to explain to the people with equal or higher IQ's, who are just as willing to put in a lot of hard work to get ahead, but never had the opportunity, why they can't have universal, tax-supported health care anywhere on the planet because their more entitled fellow human beings would really prefer to keep most of their wealth they've been lucky enough to accumulate to themselves. Or why their kids can't have equal opportunities to become wealthy through the support of their more entitled human beings everywhere on the planet.

Oh, you can sputter and curse me for even suggesting this heresy (the tendency to see 'others' as not as worthy as our own 'tribe' and family is integral to human consciousness), but the question remains on the proverbial table:

Who died and made the 1% kings?

In innumerable fundamental ways, the planet's 99% provide the funding/wealth for the 1%. There is a set amount of land and resources on the planet and we all have to share it, yet it is the fact that ALL of us have to pay to use a myriad of products (resources) during our lifetime that the 1% enjoy their vast gap between how much they have versus the 99%. They've figured out ways to scoop cash out of the pockets of the rest of us and they WILL NOT share any of it unless government forces them to do so.