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i don’t understand anymore. 

lose a bid for the olympic games to come to chicago = hooray! 

win the nobel peace prize = this is terrible!

what the fuck?  seriously, i don’t understand anymore.  not that certain lunatics hold idiotic opinions like this.  more that such blatherings are picked by the media and treated as valid, rational and representative of public opinion. 

times like this, repeatingly banging my head against a brick wall seems the only sensible thing to do.

likely i’ve mentioned my loathing of politics before.  still, one cannot escape it, since nearly every medium blares the godawful stuff at you constantly.  mind you, that is one of the reasons for my loathing.  another would be the oxymoronic lunacy that shat itself onto my tv last night, in the form of a paid political advertisment (for some silly PAC, as far as i could tell).  i have this annoying habit of paying attention to what people say, even if it is a commerical.  what these people were saying (via a bad actress dressed as a doctor) was stupid.  they are against health care reform and spewed forth the typical talking points about government rationing of care (cause insurance companies don’t) and fabrications about existing systems of socialized medicine (ie: canadians wait up to a year for “vital” surgeries, if, by “vital”, you mean “elective, non-emergency” surgery.  and by “a year” you mean “about 2 months”).  what really got me, though, was the take-away message: don’t let the goverment get between you and your doctor [by reforming health care to include a public option], tell your congressperson to focus on funding medicare.  i’ll let that sink in a bit, before the befuddled “what the fuck?”.

 i’ll admit to be a regionalist.  frankly, i consider the northeast too intelligent for this crap to fly here.  apparently i think too highly of my fellow new englanders. 

back to the message.  i just don’t understand how groups like this think.  what are they trying to say?  no government run health care, except for the elderly?  it makes my brain hurt, to try and unravel the madness.  now, my understanding of a public healthcare option might be off, but it is just that: an option.  the government sets basic criteria for insurance plans (which, um they already regulate), offers a public plan that is the baseline and people have the option to choose the public plan or a private plan.  i know the fear: it will put private companies out of business.  kind of like how public universities have done away with private ones (wait, they haven’t?). 

 well, so fucking what?  hey, i work for an insurance company (not health insurance, but insurance nonetheless).  they exist to make money by investing your premiums.  insurance is a hedged bet, particularly health and property/casualty insurance.  term life insurance too.  you pay to have coverage in case something bad happens.  the more likely it is that something bad (sickness, car accident, etc.) and covered will actually befall you, the more you are going to have to pay.  if a company feels you probably won’t ever make a claim, they are fine with charging you lower premiums.  lower risk, after all.  the ideal form of the business model is that people pay for insurance and never make a claim.   the goal is to avoid paying out.  this is something we should strive to preserve…why, again?  consider, if you will, what happens if insurance companies don’t make money off a particular form of coverage.  flood damage, for instance.  homeowners insurance never covers it.  you have to buy government flood insurance.  why?  because the risk is too high for insurance companies to want to cover it.  no profit in it.  why, again, would we want to make sure these companies thrive?

the whole thing makes me angry.  like education and dependable public transportaion, health is something we should consider part of the nation’s infrastructure.  i’m not a fan of having to pay taxes, but since i have to, the things i want them spent on are making sure everyone can get an education (free, up to a bachelors, if they desire), get to where they need to and receive the care they need to stay healthy.  maybe thinking the government should provide the baseline for these things makes me a socialist.  so be it.  public versions of education and transportation haven’t eliminated private versions.  i see no reason why the same shouldn’t hold true for health care.

a poor member of the blogosphere i’d be, were i remiss in weighing in on yesterday’s historic election (yes, yes…would have been historic regardless.  shut up).  actually, i’ve already been docked 150 blogging points and an additional 50 general internet points for waiting till the afternoon.  as opposed to posting at, say, 1AM EST.

 so, let me just say: thank the god, goddess, ancestor spirt, nature spirt or ineffable, undefined universal spiritual being of your choice the election swung to obama.  you may notice i’m not fervantly political.  however, given the state of the nation right now, had the vote gone republican, again, i’d have given expatiriation a serious consideration.  policies, ideologies, theologies, philosophies and any other -ology and -sophosy aside, the current ruling party has fucked up.  seriously fucked up.  whomever breaks it does not get to fix it. 

so, we leave steering through what are surely the darkest times of my life: war galore and the global economy imploding (to give the highlights), to a new captain.  i say good.  the onion sums it up nicely, as usual. 

in other news, residents of CT remained sensible and did not vote to let a mob rewrite the state’s constitution (mostly because the idea of gays marrying and having some measure of happiness freaks them out).  good news as well.  true democracy is neither efficient, nor particularly desireable.  that’s why we have a representative republic.  works better.

or does the design of mccain’s political propaganda resemble the label of mccain potato products just a bit too much?

regardless, every time i see one of his ads, i wind up with a craving for fries.

my penchant for reading newsweek on the can inspires a political rant.  read it at quiblit.com.

and once again, on the subject of iraq 7 terrorism, the statement that “we fight them over there, so we don’t have to fight them here” has been tossed out by our prez. i’m sure this has been mentioned before, but doesn’t that just translate, directly, to “we don’t care about iraqis, and would rather they die than any americans”.

and people wonder why we’re not universally loved.

i haven’t written about the VT murders, because what else is there to say? personally, i don’t understand why someone would do such a thing. perhaps there is no way to understand it. yet that doesn’t stop people from trying. why? because, for some reason, we think if we understand why, then another, similar, future act can be prevented. unfortunately, even if we understand the motivation and reason behind such action, we can never prevent something like it from ever happening again. the price of being a free people is the risk of some taking advantage of that freedom.

after the fact, our human desire to discern patterns kicks into high gear. with hindsight, it becomes inevitable. here was a man who was highly anti-social. he’d stalked. he wrote twisted plays and stories. he’d been in counselling for a spell. apparently, he was a mean bastard. it all seems so obvious, doesn’t it? why didn’t anyone act prior to this?

the answer to that is simple: there are thousands, perhaps millions of people just like this who don’t go on killing sprees. we cannot suspect or prosecute people for being extremely quiet. we cannot do so even for writing horrible things. i could write twisted stories if i wished. doesn’t mean i’m describing what i want to, or plan to do (incidently, his plays do not include anyone being shot. killed, yes; shot, no). simply put, there is no sure way to predict whether someone is going to become a murderer, mass or otherwise.

what we forget when these things happen is just how rare they are. look at the numbers. if we consider something like a school shooting, we can assume we are dealing with an age range of about 15-24, likely male. using the 2005 census data, this is about 14% of the male population: approximately 19,778,495 people. if we had a mass murder from this demographic every day of the year, it would still only be about 0.002% of the demographic that were murdering bastards. that’s 0.002% of a 14% slice of the total US population. applied to the total population, an exceedingly small percentage of people decide to go on shooting sprees.

perspective does not diminish tragedy. but, in deciding how to respond to tragedy like this, we need to keep our perspective. everyday, nearly 20 million males between the ages of 15-24 decide not to walk into their classroom and start shooting people. law is a system, and systems need to be designed for normal functioning, not for abberations. an act such as the murders at VT is an abberration. the horror we feel in response to it shows just how rare a thing it is. indeed, what is surprising is that this sort of atrocity doesn’t happen more often. we need to remember that. the proper response to acts such as this is grief, horror, shock. the proper response is personal, not legal.

in reading an article on our brave government’s continuing crusade to protect kids from the “dangers” of porn being dealt another slap back, i came across this little quote:

“It is not reasonable for the government to expect all parents to shoulder the burden to cut off every possible source of adult content for their children, rather than the government’s addressing the problem at its source,” a government attorney, Peter D. Keisler, argued in a post-trial brief.

it might be just me, but i find this statement extremely disturbing. essentially, this lawyer is saying it is not reasonable to expect parents to be, well, parents. i’ll grant him that it is unreasonable to expect to cut a kid (particularly a dertermined one) off from all access to “adult content”, regardless of whether one is a parent or a government agency. particularly as the internet is not the only place to find it (just typically the most convienent). but what disturbs me is the underlying message here: it’s the government’s job to protect “our children”. this is a wrong and, frankly, dangerous idea. it’s a parent’s job to protect and raise their kids. that means, if one doesn’t think there is any harm in, say, your 16 year old looking at porn, then the government doesn’t have the right to tell you there is.

repeat after me: it is not the place of the government to be a parent. got that? good.

i may have posted about this elsewhere, before. or i just thought about writing this post. in anycase, i’m writing it now. forgive the lack of links; i don’t feel like looking this stuff up again.

seems that some rep. in brooklyn wants to propose a bill making it illegal to cross the street while listening to an iPod. stop laughing, he was serious. why? it seems the reasoning behind this madness is that 3 people in brooklyn were killed crossing the street while listening to iPods, between september 2006 and january 2007. one even, apparently, did not heed the warning cries of onlookers, as the volume was apparently too loud.

this is a horrible, stupid idea. why, one might ask? it could save lives! the problem is, well, there are many problems with this sort of law. the first is, it is not the government’s business to save people from their own stupidity. certainly not in a free country. freedom means you are free to make your own errors in judgement, even if they get you killed. but that opinion aside, 3 pedestrian deaths in approximately 4 months is, well, insignificant. i know, i know, every fucking life is precious, yadda, yadda. thing is, there are about 8 million people living in new york. the number of pedestrian deaths last year was, if i remember correctly, 252. and that was low. still, it works out to almost 5 people being run over every week. yet on the basis of 3 of those deaths, new legislation is called for, to fine a specific action that rarely increases the odds of someone getting killed? if you believe the hype, everysingleperson on the planet has an iPod by now. that only 3 of the teeming mass have gotten hit by cars in the pedestrian friendly streets of brooklyn is a minor miracle.

let’s say this does get passed into law. how is it enforcable? do the earphones have to be out, or just the music off? how does one tell, if the later? if the problem is people not being able to hear oncoming traffic, should we also fine the deaf for crossing the street? why did we never have this problem with walkmans? and so on.

this sort of bill faces the same problems as those that ban cell phone use while driving. that is, they rely on anecdotal evidence and miss the point anyway. the root problem is that when a human performs a potentially dangerous activity (such as driving, or crossing a city street) whilst distracted by some other activity (such as talking on a phone, listening to music, talking to another person, eating, searching pockets for loose change, etc.) the chances of getting killed increase. what is causing the distraction is not relevant. the point is they are distracted. focusing on specific distractions might look, politically, like one is actually doing something “for the people”. but really all one is doing is furthering one’s career and furthering the gap twixt law and reason.

EDIT: hehe…keif, this is exactly what i’m talking about (well, in my comments, at least).

remember that bullshit line from clinton? sure you didn’t inhale bill, we believe you.

well, sad to say, bill’s line is far more believable than this bullshit: Evangelical leader says he bought meth but ‘never used it’. this is laughably stupid. it’s one thing to claim that you just pretended to inhale when someone passed you a joint at a party, to look “cool”. we know it’s bullshit, but there is at least a scant bit of plausibility to the lie.

this, however…i mean, come the fuck on. who buys drugs and then throws them away? was he just curious as to what meth looked like? got enough of a high from the illicit thrill of buying meth? was going to smoke it (crap, do you smoke meth? i stay away from this sort of thing) but then had a change of heart? bought it for a friend?

really. i mean, when you get caught, fess up. people will forgive fucking up; they are less inclined to forgive blatant lies about fucking up.