About six months ago I announced on one of my other blogs that I was releasing blargen.com.  Truth be told, taking care of a newborn, moving to an unfamiliar town on short notice then having to spend two hours on the road every weekday as a commuter, all while keeping up on my reading, current events and other various studies;  it leaves little time for web development and webbloggery.

So far I’ve installed the basic framework of the site, but need a few more doodads and widgets to get things working properly.  Then there’s the matter of plugging in the site design into the current crude framework.  Needless to say, it’s a long road ahead.

What I have been able to accomplish in my limited time is transfer the articles from my various blogs to this one.  Because I had multiple source to draw from, I didn’t feel comfortable packing up the databases and importing them into the current system.  No sir, here we’re going for database integrity, which means not mucking up the system with files from my old host.

Which, in turn, brings me the main reason I was prompted to migrate from there to here.  Downtime.  Friggin’ downtime.  It was a good, locally-managed place that had much to offer in the way of networking with other local bloggers, but hell, I’ve been paying for this hosting space for months and hadn’t done anything with it.

At any rate, I’ve included the original posting date at the beginning of each transferred article.  The major downside of not doing a direct export is losing the comments associated with each article.  There was plenty of supportive material, plus some informative back-and-forth with my visitors.  There were also comments from random people who I didn’t expect feedback from, such as one of the friends of Rakiem Campbell in response to the post Of Bricks and Ethics.  This type of response is gold in terms of feedback, and really connects the subject matter with the actual event it’s based on.  Stuff like that is priceless;  it adds depth that my words cannot match.  But, it’s gone, and I’m afraid there was no other way.

I have several people interested in participating in a regular webcast show.  One has radio experience, another has studio experience, and both are knowledgeable beyond that.  I guess that makes me the political/tech guy, a role I’m not unfamiliar with.  We’re currently in the process of setting up a test run to see how things go.  If there’s enough chemistry, we just might make it a regular thing, and it’ll be posted on blargen.com.

I suppose that’s all for now.  If you’ve a little patience, stick around.  Good things are going on here.

 Originally Posted on January 21st, 2008:

Whenever I mimic a Jamaican accent for more than a few minutes, it always turns into a semi-Romanian hybrid of “The Count” from Sesame Street.

ONE LOVE! JAH MON! TWO LOVE! AH, AH, AH! THREE LOVE! AH, AH, AH!

Originally Posted on January 19th, 2008:

Since my unfortunate sick leave, while reading through the news and flipping through the channels, I’ve had one recurring thought: What a sad, sad state of affairs. People just don’t get it.

—

We have a recession on our hands, and Bush is asking for a tax cut for businesses while ignoring the blatantly obvious truth: To make money, businesses must make sales. People are not purchasing right now not because of some abstract concept of “consumer confidence,” but because they have no freakin’ money! Believe me, I’d love to purchase a new car, a 60-inch LCD TV, several new computers, a $900,000 house, a private getaway house, stocks and bonds, as well as donate to a hundred charities and sponsor a presidential candidate, but I don’t have the funds to even begin saving for the least of these. Why? Gas. Electricity. Health insurance. School. Low wages… and I’m nowhere near the poverty line.

—

People still find Hillary Clinton appealing. Nevermind the money and support she got from the healthcare industry for her silence after her universal healthcare proposal as First Lady. Nevermind supporting something then calling Barack Obama “naive” or “inexperienced” for suggest the exact same thing (thank you internet, bloggers, newspapers and video archives). Nevermind conveniently claiming Jewish roots right before an election with a large Jewish voting population (oh, PLEASE!). It’s as if her advisors check the polls every morning to see which way the wind is blowing, then brief her on it before she goes out to tell the country what it wants to hear. Not that there’s no place in government for Clinton, just not the White House.

And what about her trying to break “the highest glass ceiling?” Isn’t Obama doing the exact same thing? The first female president of the United States, the first African American president. What a way to benchmark our cultural progress as a nation–it’s a novelty, folks. What should matter is where they stand on the issues, their history, and where they intend to take our country during their time in office. Those are the only things that matter in this race.

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People are still single-issue voters. Abortion is number one. “Forget every other evil the candidate wants to wreak upon us, if they’re Pro-Life, I’m pro-them!” Save your fight for later; think of what is good for the country right now. “But saving our children and protecting the sanctity of life is more important than any other issue.” How noble of you… and how completely useless. It’ll do no good if they’re born into slavery on a planet consumed by war and greed.

—

The idea that a military man should be in charge because it’s a time of war is obsolete indeed. On the surface, it seems to be sound logic. Now, however, is the time to move past that. We need to be less of a war country and more of a peace country. We’ve flexed our muscles and buried our enemies. What else do we need to prove? The question to ask is who would benefit from continuing to wage war. Follow the money, find the answers.

Another question we need to ask ourselves is how we do we want to be remembered? The mightiest warriors? The fiercest civilization of our era? Why not the kindest? Why not the most benevolent? It doesn’t mean we must concede to our enemies, but it does mean we need to identify who our enemies are and whether some of them live among us–and I’m not talking about the terrorists.

—

The Republican candidates are claiming their conservative credentials. Every damn one of them. But how conservative are any of them? In the past seven years we’ve seen an unprecedented expansion of government. We’ve employed a foreign policy more invasive and interloping than has ever been seen by any previous administration–and the “small-government conservatives” consistently endorse and defend it. We have religious people defending candidates who support pre-emptive war and the death penalty and denouncing homosexuals as less than human while shouting from the pulpit,”Judge not, lest ye be judged,” “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone,” or “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord!” and sport bumper stickers that say “No Jesus, No Peace; Know Jesus, Know Peace.” Then, after church, they head down to the gun shop to kill “God’s creations” for pleasure rather than need. What? Why do they talk of being victims of modern persecution when they’re persecutors themselves?

—

John McCain claiming that before granting tax cuts, we need to “stop the spending!” Non-Limbaugh conservatives (as ol’ Rush has quite a distaste for McCain) support this and blame so-called “liberal social programs” which account for a meager percentage of our tax dollars. McCain, meanwhile, condones cutting the budget before offering tax breaks to the elite while supporting a 100-year occupation of Iraq, which will cost untold trillions of dollars. The two simply cannot be reconciled.

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Fox News downplaying the economic recession while conservative pundits blackball others for calling it such. Sure, when you look at the numbers, the economy looks great! The Dow Jones Industrial Average is still above 12,000 (as of now) which was unprecedented a mere decade ago (as I fondly recall the jubilation as it reached and surpassed 10,000). It’s great that the top 1% is doing well–really, it is. Unemployment is down, which is also great. But most workers still aren’t paid a livable wage and are gouged all to hell on what they do earn. The elite are thriving while the rest of us are suffering or struggling to stay afloat. That, to most people, is not the definition of economic stability, let alone economic prosperity.

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People who think their straw-man arguments and examples actually discredit an entire ideology and the like-minded people who buy into it. Neo-Conservatives had a good run. They did. They took the House and the Senate while Clinton was in office, then held onto it until late 2006. In every instance, every possible aspect of their policy has failed, fallen flat on its face. Actual conservatism, however, may still have its merits, but what we’ve seen since Bush took office is corporatism, imperialism and corruption at its worst. As some of the GOP presidential candidates have parroted: The Republicans went to change Washington, but instead, Washington changed them. This couldn’t be more true.

—

Neo-Cons claiming to be “moderate” or that they represent “mainstream America.” This is probably the most important point I have to make in this rant. Listening to the radio one day I remember one Justice on the Supreme Court who is considered by some to be one of the more liberal members (can’t remember which one) saying he’s a staunch Conservative, and that it shows “how much the rest have moved to the right.” The fact of the matter is, unlike Limbaugh and O’Reilly claim, the modern Republican party is on the fringe, not the so-called “left.” In fact, when you look at the non-partisan site, politicalcompass.org, you can see for yourself where all the candidates rank. Notice that only two candidates are left-of-center, they are nowhere near a nomination.

That’s right, not a single leading contender on the Democratic side qualifies as a “Liberal.” Even the much-maligned, ultra-evil, liberal hippie pinko commie lesbo tree-hugging spawn of Satan herself, Hillary Clinton, is the second-most conservative of the bunch, and by a considerable amount the most conservative front-runner of the bunch. The only side that even attempts to be “moderate” is the Democratic side, and even they’re far from “Leftist.”

Now take a look at the leading GOP candidates, as indicated by the red dots. The current leader among them, Mitt Romney, is right up there in the “Authoritarian Right.” This is known in other political compasses I’ve taken as the Fascist sub-quadrant. Go ahead and click that link, I urge you to read the whole thing. Pay special attention to the “Significant Correlations” section. So much for being freedom lovers, eh?

(Chef Kevin — when I say historians will someday look back and say there were signs pointing to where we’re headed, this is the kind of thing I’m talking about.)

—

The fact that the educational system under the Bush Administration has been more about testing than about results. Shouldn’t this be the other way around? Since when did we give in and decide that we’d rather spend our time benchmarking our spiraling failure than delivering the kind of quality education that speaks for itself? What has No Child Left Behind gotten us? More tests. What have those tests shown? That we’re getting worse. Nevermind Bush’s claim that the test scores are better by “our standards” (though he admits they still pale in comparison to international standards).

Mr. Bush, that doesn’t mean teachers are able to give students a quality education. It means they’ve gotten better at preparing them for arbitrary tests. The students aren’t learning more, Mr. President. They’re just getting better at taking them.

—

And that’s that.

Originally Posted on January 18th, 2008:

Are they just now realizing this?

My wife thinks clowns are cute. Most of them anyway. She’s the only person I’ve spoke with on the subject that doesn’t find clowns positively fucking terrifying.

Once upon a time, when I was a young lad, my mother was taking classes and working a third shift job. Because of her odd hours, my brother and I were required to stay with a babysitter overnight. We hated it, but we had no other choice.

We shared a bedroom at this babysitter’s house. Looking back on it now, I’m positive that it was a doorway to the void, much like the house in Poltergeist.

Clowns everywhere. In every corner of the room, there were clowns. Clown wallpaper, clown rug, clown sheets, clown pillowcases, clown pictures, clown lampshades, clown figurines, clown lights and worst of all, one of those dolls with the red and white striped arms–really long arms–that you see strangling people in creepy 80’s horror b-movies. Oh, there was also a jack-in-the-box, which I rightfully expected to jump out and eat me as soon as I fell asleep.

Fortunately, it didn’t. I’m still here, scarred for life.

But for most of my life, this “bozophobia” has been common amongst my peers. This has persisted through the years right down to the generation of kids who were studied. What really ought to be studied is why this is suddenly news to people.

 Originally Posted on January 18th, 2008:

…has anyone seen the new Bill Belichick action figure?  I hear it comes with a video camera and secret black book accessories.  Next month they’re talking about releasing one with an asterisked Super Bowl ring.  This should coincide with the release of the Brett Favre figure, which comes with a walker, dentures, and a bottle of Metamucil.

No announcement has been made for the release of the Rex Grossman action figure.

Originally Posted on January 15th, 2008:The esteemed Chef Kevin replied to my post from a few days ago about the RealID, and he said something that I think is a good point. My reply ended up being a bit long, so I decided to be lazy and make it a blog post. It explains a bit about my philosophy behind some statements as well as how I perceive and make judgments about certain things. Here’s what he had to say:

And for the US Government vs. Nazi Germany. My father grew up and lived through Nazi Germany. 60+ years later he still doesn’t talk about it. Makes you wonder if we are really that close. Not an argument vs. your blog…just a thought.

By all means, argue my blogs! If there’s something wrong with ‘em, I want to know.

No, we’re not Nazi Germany and I hope we never get there. But we are doing a lot of things Nazi Germany did. Aggressive militarism, propaganda spin machines and politicians stirring up belligerent nationalism, the systematic discrediting of opposition as “unpatriotic,” disarming the public, stifling dissent, using the police in, ahem, totalitarian ways… the list goes on and on. I doubt the Germans of that generation thought they’d go down in history as the villains of the age.

Heh, we’re not rounding people up and gassing them (yet), but the troubling part of this is in the resemblance. If it looks like fascism, if it smells like fascism, if it tastes like fascism, it’s probably fascism. The question we need to ask ourselves when these things surface is whether they’ll create more freedom or less? How can it be abused?

Not a single world leader wakes up in the morning and says “It’s a fine day! Means there’s not enough evil being done out there!” People who do evil from conviction usually believe they’re doing something good, whether it’s for “your own good,” “their own good,” or “our own good.” Even though Hitler did some horrendous things, in his mind he must have thought it was for a “greater good”–the worst “good” of them all. The kind in which we’re willing to justify any act of barbarism to achieve that lofty-though-often-ultimately-misguided goal. Notice that it’s never the collective idea of what the greater good ought to be, it’s always the version of one man/small group’s greater good that is sought after.

In fighting terrorism, we’re doing it for the greater good. What that greater good is depends on who you ask. Take a look at what the people (and their sponsors: follow the money) implementing this identification system stand to gain from it. What do the rest of us have to lose? Have the steps we’ve taken to fight terrorism at home led us closer to liberty, or closer to tyranny–and more importantly, is that something we’re actually considering as an option?

What we’re doing in this country is building a castle upon a glass foundation. Sooner or later, something is going to give out. Heh, it’s pretty bad when you actually have to try not to destroy yourself, but such is the human condition: so much potential for good, so much potential for evil.

I believe that in the future, historians will say that there were signs. They will say that there was a pattern to how it all unfolded, something we should have seen but missed; something we should have learned from history. I believe they’ll recollect that the boldest among us didn’t realize the error of their ways until it the moment everything crumbled, and even then, they were too proud to admit it. Future generations will knowingly shake their heads then likely go on to repeat the same mistakes. The lesson they’ll have forgotten is the lesson we seem to have forgotten: the one about greed.

With that, I’ll leave you with the last stanza of T.S. Elliot’s “The Hollow Men:”

This is how the world ends

This is how the world ends

This is how the world ends

Not with a bang, but a whimper

Finally watched this last night. In case you don’t know, this movie is about the fraud that is our health care system. It spends the first part of the movie exposing all the major health insurance companies for their illegal, unethical and, well, downright evil business practices. Then it compares our health care system to that of other countries: Canada, England, France and, of all places, Cuba (the general hospital in Havana makes St. Francis and Methodist look like third-world outhouses). In a nutshell, it basically re-confirmed what I already thought about the crooked American health insurance and drug companies.

You’ve heard the arguments against universal health care. Long waiting lists. Sub-par service. Shoddy procedures, equipment and staff. It’s odd that it all seems to come from the same sources: Republicans, Conservatives, Big Business; most of all from Pharmaceutical companies, Health Insurance companies and the people they pay to spread their propaganda (I believe they gave Bush somewhere in the ballpark of $850,000).

As the film reveals, right before our very eyes, none of it is true. The months-long waiting lists: false. Bad facilities: false. Unqualified, underpaid doctors and staff: false. Poor quality of care: false. I wish the anti-universal health care bunch would just watch the film and see the lies. If they’re smart, they’ll get the drift: if they’re lying to us about that, what else have they lied to us about? More importantly, what is the reason they’re lying?

In the UK and France, they were able to get in and out without any problems. In England, for instance, they take no money for hospital visits, and even give you cash for a cab ride home after you’re done. The prescriptions cost roughly $12–that’s for all prescriptions. Need 30 pills? Twelve dollars. Need 50 pills? Twelve dollars. Need 300? You can see where this is going. In Cuba, they showed a pharmacy that had $120 inhalers for the equivalent of 5 American cents–and at their hospitals the sign-in process took a total of five minutes. All they needed was your name and date of birth.

Why do American companies gouge their countrymen for what our supposed enemies are practically getting for free? Why is it that 16% of our GDP goes towards paying these scumbags? As Moore points out, why are we tolerating the fact that 1 percent of the people on this planet control 80 percent of its wealth? Does anybody see a problem with this? Is anyone else seeing why it’s impossible for people to get ahead? Tell that to your conservative buddies that go on about the “American Way;” Ask them how we’re supposed to “pull ourselves up by the bootstraps” when we can’t afford boots! You might want to ask slowly while accurately enunciating each word so they have more time to comprehend the metaphor in your question.

One thing I wish they’d cover in the documentary that occurred to me while watching it was how they paid for it all. Moore addressed the topic briefly while surveying health care in France. Not surprisingly, “taxes” didn’t come up as a major source of financial worry. Keeping the refrigerator stocked with fresh vegetables, however, did. Surprised?

What occurred to me was this: our national priorities are different. In the United States, we police the world. But in the civilized world, they take care of their own.

The United States has a $481 billion dollar baseline for maintaining its military. This does not include the hundreds of billions of dollars that are used to supplement its wars overseas, nor the war on terror, nor its continued military occupation of other countries, nor the DoHS, nor does it cover the billions and billions of dollars of extra money that is used to line the pockets of private weapons manufacturers. What you end up with is basically 700-800 billion dollars of money spent on the military. Compare that with the piddly 56 billion we spend on education (and, due to NCLB, waste).
The only country that comes anywhere near us is Japan–our ally–at 47 billion dollars. No threat there. France spends about $34 billion. So, France’s baseline is about 1/10th of ours. Their GDP is about a sixth of ours. Percentage-wise, their military spending is comparable. And yet, they’re still able to offer free health care to its citizens. What gives?

The answer: the companies that provide health care for profit–and thereby make money by denying you service–are literally paying politicians to pass legislation that is favorable to the health care industry, and to oppose legislation that would hurt it.

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I’d say that health care and drug companies are just two branches of the few centers of power that control the world. With them are the Defense Industry, the Oil Industry, the Banking Cartel, Wall Street, the gigantic companies that own the media, among others… Quite honestly, I think it’s these bastards who rule the world, not our elected leaders or even foreign dictators and most definitely not “the people.” It’s these assholes. And I’ll bet a bazillion dollars that they’re well aware of it, too.

Originally Posted on January 14th, 2008:I didn’t go bowling. In my town, bowling is apparently a big thing. We called a few hours ahead of the dreaded cosmic bowl and were told that they were already packed.

Not even the bars in downtown Peoria get that kind of love on a Friday night.

What did we do instead? Well, we played the longest game of darts ever. It was a wacky version of cricket where the numbers were all messed up; the darts machine was not user-friendly at all. I won by a hair, but only because my karma was good enough to spare me the mild humiliation of losing an hour-long game against three other people who were just as bad as I was.

After that, we smoked… And talked… And smoked some more. This bar has a “heated smoking area,” though it wasn’t very warm. What puzzles me about its legitimacy is that it’s an enclosed space. It has windows, a roof, and four walls.  It shares one wall with the bar.  Doesn’t that count as “indoors?” Hmph. Not that I’m complaining.

All-in-all, it wasn’t a bad evening.

Originally Posted on January 11th, 2008:

My poor, poor neglected blog. There’s so much that’s happened since last time that.. well, I’m not sure where to start.

RealID. This turd has been floating in the toilet known as Washington D.C. for quite awhile now. Today, I find out that they’re trying to renew efforts to implement it.

Besides the obvious difficulties to overcome with manufacturing and distributing such a thing, getting states to comply and putting in place an infrastructure to get the RealID from the government to the citizen, there’s the ethical argument against it, which goes something like “WHY THE FUCK IS THE U.S. GOVERNMENT ACTING LIKE NAZI GERMANY?!”

Really, folks. They’re talking about requiring one of these things to board aircraft (and possibly trains) and enter federal buildings. Next thing you know, they’ll have traffic stops with armed guards (which are already a well-practiced scam) requiring a RealID to pass through. Police are already infamous for randomly asking for identification without a reason. There’s no question about it, this is awfully reminiscent of WW2 German soldiers stopping people at checkpoints to check their “papers.”

Only, we don’t have papers. Instead, we’ll have an ID card with a sort of microchip inside. This chip will store your personal information (and will quite probably act as a gateway to all sorts of other information, like what books you read, for instance), which is easily attainable by people with what amounts to an RFID snooping device. All they need to do is stand next to you. And we thought identity theft was a problem today!

I understand the concern for protecting against terrorism. I really do. I understand that certain measures can be taken to prevent it, including standard security procedures. But also, not inflaming people’s hatred of our country with belligerent foreign policy while letting our corporations do whatever they damn well please overseas would help.

What other people need to understand is that terrorism, by its very nature, is random and unpredictable. The only way to control that which is random is to have control over everything. The Patriot Act. Gitmo. Checkpoints. Department of Homeland Security. Unauthorized wiretapping. Real ID. This is obviously what they’re trying to accomplish. To that, I say benevolence brings about better conditions that totalitarianism. We, as a nation, need to go back to fighting the good fight rather than trying to justify fighting the bad one.

Even the government itself has been transparent about being opaque. Donald Kerr, our deputy national director of intelligence, says that “Privacy is not synonymous with anonymity.” Well, Mr. Kerr, you cannot maintain freedom through control, nor can you save it by forcing protection upon it. Despotism is synonymous with tyranny.

—–

In other news, women who are planning on voting for Clinton because she’s a woman are sexist idiots.

Originally Posted on January 11th, 2008:

RAWHIDE!

Tonight I shall embark upon a perilous journey.  In the post-smoking ban Illinois, I will attempt to enter the seedy underworld of leisurely sports known as the bowling alley.

Not being a regular bowler, this is usually a yearly event for me.  2007 was a lucky year–there was no bowling excursion.  2008, not so lucky.  Whenever someone brings it up, I think,”Bowling.  Sure, that sounds like fun.”  Then, after I get there, I think,”GOD DAMMIT!  Tricked again!”  I never initiate it, you see.  Instead, some well-meaning friend innocently suggests a Friday night out for a “Cosmic Bowl.”

For those of you who don’t know–or have friends who like you well enough not to ask you to go bowling–a cosmic bowl is what happens on weekends at about 10pm at bowling alleys across the country.  More or less, you have to bowl in the dark.  They turn out the main lights then turn on a combination of black lights, swirling dance lights, and occasionally a strobe light.  There is always a disco ball.  I wouldn’t recommend it for epileptics.

My predictions for tonight are as follows:  I may break 100, but probably not;  I will be blinded at least twice by an over-zealous dance light with a retina vendetta;  I will contract a foot fungus through a rented pair of bowling shoes;  I will drink to kill the pain.

It’s not all doom and gloom.  I’ve come up with a few strategies to keep myself entertained.

1. Ignore bowler etiquette.  Nothing pisses off a league bowler more than walking right up next to them and lobbing your stone down the alley.  Unfortunately, there are no league games during a cosmic bowl night, so I’ll have to hope I’m next to a really uptight casual bowler.
2. Take forever to throw the ball.  As much as I’ll want to get out of there quickly, it’s worth the extra suffering to covertly spread some thorns to my fellow bowlers.  If I’m lucky, they’ll remember it next time they suggest bowling.
3. Be absent when it’s my turn to bowl.  This goes hand in hand with number two.  There’s one in every crowd.  Every time they’re up to bowl, they’re at the concessions stand, or in the bathroom, or at the bar, or saw a friend 30 lanes down and stopped to say hi.  By choosing to be “that guy,” I get to deliver payback for the cumulative hours of my life wasted by waiting for others.  Nine times out of ten, “that guy/girl” is the one who suggested we go out to bowl.  You know it to be true.
4. Find new and inventive ways to throw the ball.  This one is pretty much a mainstay of my bowling outings.  Sometimes I’ll try throwing with my left hand.  Other times, I’ll squat down and roll the ball between my legs–sort of like “granny shot.”  Facing the pins is optional.  Finally, when the night is coming to an end, simply place the ball on the floor, give it a spin, then boot it down the lane.  I’ve had strikes and picked up spares with this method.  Unfortunately, it has never gotten me thrown out before the game was over.  Tsk.

While I’m normally tricked into thinking bowling will be a fun time, this year I’ve come prepared.  I’ll let you know how it turns out.