Wow…it’s certainly has been awhile since I’ve posted here regularly. As I’m sure you’ve already noticed, I’ve made a few changes to the blog. The most noticeable of them being the new layout and color scheme. As much as I loved the dark and brooding black/orange halloween colors of the previous template, I decided to go with something a bit sleeker and more professional looking.

Anyways, for those new readers finding their way to my blog for the first time I’ve decided to use this (re)introductory post to highlight some of the most popular blog entries I’ve written. For my always loyal readers who have been following me throughout the years, consider this a stroll down memory lane. A Cognitive Dissonance “Hall of Fame” if you will. I’m leaving out the political stuff because I doubt anyone wants to read that. Here you go:

My Conversations Are Way Funnier Than Yours

Transitive Property Is A Bitch

Fire Ants and Unprotected Sex

Race Relations and Turkey Basters 

The Stripper on My Couch

Lewd Pictures and The Sheer Awesomeness of The Random

Sometimes I Say Inappropriate Things

Sometimes I Say Inappropriate Things Part II

Sex, Drugs, and… Crudeness

Your Mother Hates You -The Twitter Version

How To Be an Asshole Like Me

Apparently I’m Kind of An Asshole

Remember That Time I Almost Got Kicked Out of A Focus Group?

Or The Time I Almost Got Banned From My Logic Class And Didn’t Graduate from College

My DIY Guide To Picking Up Girls Online

25 Interesting And Funny But True Facts About Me

Apparently I was an Asshole Even In 6th Grade

A Random Collection of Funny Internet Shit

WoW WhAt a L0s3r … The World of Warcraft freakout (Video)

The Micro Economics of The Pimp Hand

Woman Starts Fight Over Chicken McNuggets (Video)

The Creepiest Sex Ad Ever?

Those Racist HP Webcams (Video)

What Your Boss Is Saying About You

Girls Are Immature! (Video)

Michael Bay Eating A Bowl of Cereal (Video)

The Star Wars Lego Parody (Eddie Izzard Comedy) (Video)

REJECTED CARTOONS! (A Classic) (Video)

I feel like a simple no would have sufficed, haha.

Not sure if I posted this one before but here it is anyways:

And for the finale:

If the Republicans just wanted negotiations, the Obama administration would be happy to oblige them. The White House, after all, has repeatedly said they’re willing to negotiate with the Republicans over the deficit, over jobs, over sequestration, and much else. Republicans haven’t been interested in those kinds of negotiations for some time. Indeed, after the fiscal cliff, Speaker John Boehner told Republicans that he was finished negotiating directly with Obama.

The reason Republicans aren’t interested in those negotiations is they don’t want to give anything up to get the things they want. That’s why they like negotiating over the debt ceiling: Since they also don’t want the the U.S. to lose its creditworthiness and fall back into financial crisis, raising the debt ceiling is not actually giving anything up. It’s releasing a hostage they never wanted to shoot.

It’s been clear for sometime that the ongoing debates in Washington have absolutely nothing to do with government spending or raising the debt ceiling as many conservatives would like to believe. If Republicans were concerned about on going government spending , the concessions they would seek would revolve around their proposals to reduce the deficit. Of course there are no proposals of any kind coming from the House GOP and the only demand John Boehner has asked for involve the defunding and delay of Obamacare.

But a look deeper into the politics of the House GOP reveals that the impending government shutdown isn’t even about Obamacare care as much as its about the political divisions within the Tea Party, House GOP.

House Speaker John Boehner has tried to convince conservatives to abandon their idea to use the threat of a government shutdown to force President Obama to defund Obamacare, telling them instead to wait and use the debt limit to force Obamacare concessions.

…

In a conference call with House Republicans last week, Boehner said they would push Obama on the debt limit, but not the continuing resolution to fund the government. Some weren’t pleased, The National Review‘s Jonathan Strong reports, and the call turned “ugly.” Georgia Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, for example, “told Boehner to ‘go back to the drawing board.'”

The New York Times also chimes in:

Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio faced a critical decision this weekend: Accept a bill passed by the Senate on Friday to keep the government funded and the health care law intact and risk a conservative revolt that could threaten his speakership, or make one more effort to undermine the president’s signature domestic initiative and hope that a shutdown would not do serious political harm to his party.

With no guarantee that Democrats would help him, he chose the shutdown option. The House’s unruly conservatives had more than enough votes to defeat a spending bill that would not do significant damage to the health care law, unless Democrats were willing to bail out the speaker. And Democrats showed little inclination to alleviate the Republicans’ intraparty warfare.

It’s important to take note of the actual causes of this government shutdown instead of the apparent causes. The predominant strategy of Republicans in Congress over the past two decades has been hostage negotiations over policy negotiations. From their record number of filibusters to their ardent refusal to approve the President’s nominee’s for key administrative positions, Republicans have all but abandoned their legislative duties in lieu of childish obstructionism. While it’s tempting to deal with false equivalencies and place blame on both Democrats and Republicans, the actions of both parties does not bare this out in truth. No where is this more evident than in the chambers of House Republicans where inter party divisions are currently holding the entire government hostage.

However… there was light at the end of the tunnel. Because a few days after Django Unchained was released, a trailer for an upcoming Steve McQueen slavery film surfaced on the internet.  Although technically not a slavery movie in the fashion of Amistad, “12 years a Slave” is based on the true story of  Solomon Northup, a free born African American living in upstate New York who was kidnapped and sold into slavery for 12 years before …well I don’t want to spoil the ending.

Now, a full year later, the reviews are in and it looks like we have a winner:

If you are an Oscar hound and festival fiend such as myself, you have likely heard of the ecstatic response Steve McQueen’s newest film, 12 Years a Slave, has received on the internet. The film had a momentous response in the mountains of Telluride, where many Oscar pundits declared the Best Picture race over and done with. Then, the film made the trek north of border to Toronto, where it got an equally warm response from the more “general audience”, movie-going public at TIFF, where it won that festival’s People’s Choice Award as the festival’s best film, an award usually given to more upbeat film’s such as last year’s winner, Silver Linings Playbook.

But decided for yourself by checking out the trailer below:

27 Food hacks that will change the way you eat

(no facebook access required)

Enjoy!

House Republican leaders — bowing to the demands of their conservative wing — will put to a vote on Friday a stopgap spending measure that would strip all funding from President Obama’s signature health care law, increasing the likelihood that the government will shut down in two weeks.

 The fact that Tea Party members have chosen Obamacare as their so called “red line” is further evidence that House Republicans are far more interested in ideology and elections than governing.  If conservatives were rallying their government shutdown threats around social security reform, job creation, or preparing for the inevitable zombocalypse  (IE something important) instead of their self indulging masterbatory jihad to defund Obamacare, they would have a lot more credibility with the American people. Instead we’re left to watch as the once proud American democratic system is hijacked by people who refuse to believe that the President is an American citizen but insist that the world is only 2,000 years old.

*sigh*

With some government insiders saying there’s about a 40% likelihood that federal employees are going to get at least a few unscheduled days off from work, it’s important to note how we got here.  As much as I would love spending hours writing about the oh so interesting intricacies of government budgetary regulations, Dylan Matthews of the Washington Post has (sadly) beat me to it. In all seriousness, Matthews’ “Everything you need to know about why the government might shut down” is both a well written and accessible explanation about the countdown to Sept 30th.

]]> https://thechairman66.wordpress.com/2013/09/18/inevitable-zombocalypse-ignored-while-house-republicans-threaten-government-shutdown/feed/ 0 The Chairman https://thechairman66.wordpress.com/2013/09/17/neil-degrasse-tyson-thinks-intelligent-design-is-stupid-and-you-should-too/ https://thechairman66.wordpress.com/2013/09/17/neil-degrasse-tyson-thinks-intelligent-design-is-stupid-and-you-should-too/#respond Tue, 17 Sep 2013 19:00:50 +0000 http://thechairman66.wordpress.com/?p=2493 Just watch and learn

…uhh any questions?

The only way this would’ve been better is if he would’ve dropped a microphone and walked off stage.

Ehhh….this trailer doesn’t leave me feeling very optimistic about the remake to the 1987 action classic. The original RoboCop was a masterpiece. The perfect combination of originality, satire, and political commentary wrapped up in 102 minutes of pulse pounding badassery. Originally written as a critique of the corporatist culture of the Reagan era, the original RoboCop’s message has a timeless appeal. The trailer for this remake demonstrate none of that, looking to instead replace the well crafted commentary with explosions and Samuel Jackson. Don’t get me wrong, I love explosions and Sam Jackson, but the hacks in Hollywood didn’t need to use the RoboCop franchise to make that kind of movie. Hopefully this isn’t just another one of Hollywood’s attempts to cash in on another one of my beloved  childhood franchises, but at this point i’m skeptical.

A network would be justified in firing a sports broadcaster for expressing controversial moral or political views during an entertainment telecast that had nothing to do with the subject. But to not hire someone for prior remarks made amid civic debate, and that are indistinguishable from the position taken by almost half of all Americans at the time?

That action strengthens a suboptimal norm, even if Fox Sports is acting within its legal rights.

America is always going to be a diverse country that encompasses people with very different political views and moral values. In order to get along, despite our differences, it is useful to debate divisive issues openly through the civic process, and to establish spheres where what divides us is set aside as irrelevant. Fox Sports’s actions undermine society’s ability to do both things

I tend to agree with this point. It would be one thing if James had made a roaring inflammatory remark like the infamous “You’re a sodomite. I hope you get AIDS and die.” comment made by then MSNBC talk show host Michael Savage. But James’ statement that homosexuals will have to “answer to the Lord for their actions” isn’t even in the same solar plane of existence.

The first amendment arguments against the firing of James are obvious.  This is America, a country where individuals have the right to express their personal beliefs in an open and  civilized manner regardless of how unpopular they might be. To that extent, every free speech organization should be rallying around James and pressuring Fox Sports to reconsider their decision. (ACLU are you listening?)

The larger first amendment issues arising from this incident are even more alarming. Christians…well let’s be honest…Christian CONSERVATIVES… have often complained about a so called “War on Christianity” being waged in America. While most of their claims of discrimination are plain and utter BS, our attempts to ensure political equality has on occasion lead to pointless over reaching.  There’s enough real and significant issues of discrimination occurring in America that we don’t need to persecute schools who say “Merry Christmas” or fire football analysts for expressing their beliefs off air. The right to religious freedom is not the right to be free of religion. Religious freedom guarantees every American the right to exercise their religious beliefs, or lack there of, as long as those beliefs are not forced upon those around them.  Defenders of religious freedom would be best served to keep that in mind before the public discussion shifts focus from equality for the minority to discrimination against the majority.

]]> https://thechairman66.wordpress.com/2013/09/17/craig-james-fired/feed/ 1 The Chairman https://thechairman66.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/socialism-the-answer-to-all-our-economic-woes/ https://thechairman66.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/socialism-the-answer-to-all-our-economic-woes/#comments Mon, 05 Sep 2011 17:12:09 +0000 http://thechairman66.wordpress.com/?p=2473 Continue reading →]]> “Businesses don’t hire because taxes are lower. That’s because taxes represent a relatively small part of the cost of hiring. And if taxes did make a difference then it would stand to reason that hiring would have been much lower under Bill Clinton’s presidency when rates were higher than they were under George W. Bush when taxes were slashed. Unfortunately, the truth is quite the opposite — under Clinton, companies hired nearly eight times more workers – 22.2 million — while Bush presided over the creation of 3 million jobs – the worst performance in the last 60 years. “

— Peter Cohan, Socialism today…aka Forbes Magazine

Wow. Businesses don’t automatically create jobs when you give them huge tax breaks?! My whole life perspective…shattered…

The paragraph above comes from that crazy crazy leftist Forbes magazine (what the fuck do they know about business, i know.) But their ultimate conclusion is even more interesting:

Companies hire only when not hiring means they can’t satisfy customer demand. Put another way, companies hire when the profits missed from not hiring exceed the cost of adding a new worker.

For those of you who have trouble following the bouncing ball let me paraphrase and simplify.

It’s the demand stupid.

Conservatives often claim that businesses must be given incentives to hire people. This is 90% false and 10% true. As with any rational actor, businesses, like people, respond to incentives. But the equivocation that conservatives make occurs when they confuse market based incentives with government incentives. Government incentives only save profit. Consumer demand creates profit.  And if we want businesses to grow, IE hire more people, then we must cultivate a larger buyers market by financially empowering people and not big business.