Feeling like he has a grip on Health Care Reform, President Obama now wants to legalize millions of illegal aliens. The abject stupidity of such a notion is beyond belief. The only way he could hope to make social medicine affordable is to kick out all illegal immigrants. All of those wonderful social systems in Europe and to the north of us have draconian immigration policies that keep third world immigrants from driving up the cost of socialized medicine. But trying to legalize 12-20 million Latin Americans is like pouring gasoline all over your house and then sitting down for a cigarette afterwards.

It is a mix that we cannot afford. But the president is so clueless about Latin America and Mexico specifically that he has chosen to push this now- right after ensuring every illegal that they will get free AMERICAN health care if they choose to rush the border. It is almost as if he wants to destroy the American economy. No, I don't go in for conspiracy theory and that's not what I believe. He is sincere and means well- he's also just incredibly naive and ignorant.

Love the Government

The main reason i am against government run health care isn't that it's inefficient- which it is. it isn't that it will cost way more than they tell us- which it will.

The real problem is that the government long ago stopped remembering that it served the people. Instead they act and function as if we exist for them. The state of New York has stopped sending out tax refunds. California did this last year. Actually California sent out a sort of IOU. I told my friend who still lives in that dark corner of the earth he should have asked them what kind of interest and late penalty payment would be involved... He actually did, but they hung up on him. It's a legitimate question because you know that while both states default on the people (giving them what is rightfully theirs) and don't pay interest or late penalties, they are at the same time chasing down citizens who "owe the state." AND charging them late penalties and interest, while holding out on those citizens who did pay their taxes.

Is there anyone who can't see this happening with Health Care? Because it has... in Canada, England, France, Greece, Masachusetts, the list goes on.

We lost another future professor

If Joe Stack was a leftist bomber in the tradition of Bill Ayers he could have reasonably expected to obtain a well paying tenured position some 20 years later- had he survived. If he was a leftist he could have expected his story to die down rather quickly like Amy Bishop. But since he might be a right wing nut job, we can expect his story to dominate media- at least until evidence turns up that he's not a right- winger, at which point we can expect the story to suffer sudden death.

Does anybody even care anymore? Major Hasan can run around killing more people than Joe shouting "Allahu Akbar" and the establishment will have poignant moments wondering as to what the source of his murderous hate... hmm, pre-traumatic stress syndrome sounds nice. Couldn't have anything to do with those Muslim extremist he associated with. Amy Bishop goes berserk and the story is dead before it hits the air. Bill Ayers is reformed. But some nut job flies a plane into the IRS and leaves what may be a right wing suicide note, and we've got a serious problem! This Newsweek blog entry is hilarious. Does anyone even know how many acts of domestic terrorism environmental extremists commit each year? In 1985 alone over 11,000 trees were spiked just in British Colombia. Even the book I linked to argues that tree spiking is relatively benign because environmentalists always let lumber companies know where they have spiked... sure. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" But we really have to worry about 1 lone deranged lunatic even though environmental extremists demonstrate the organization and intellectual committment more often associated with the term "terrorism." Finding any date about environmental extremism is next to impossible because the Media and Academia don't care how people get killed by them. The western establishment shows no signs of returning to reality any time soon, and I am more and more conviced that they will not no matter what happens. They would rather see the West die and a Global Caliphate enacted than give up their precious ideologies.

Boston makes history... again

Ok, so maybe Boston didn't play as big of role is this revolution as it did for the one back in 1776, but there is definitely something beautiful and appropriate about seeing the state of Massachusetts be the first state to send an overwhelming message to those leaders who would fundamentally change the country that was born in Boston, Massachusetts.

Socially and culturally America has been steadily leaving its intellectual and philosophical roots since Woodrow Wilson's presidency. But this evolution got fasttracked in the sixties and has culminated in the presidency of the first post-American president, Barack Obama. By post-American I mean a president whose rejection of the Founding Fathers beliefs is conscious and deliberate. All of Obama's influences and favorite books listed in both his autobiographies are writers and thinkers who have rejected the Founder's ideas for a more progressive, socialist notion of human governance and society. Fair enough. They may be right.

Unfortunately, the dissolution of these ideas has been subversive and dishonest, rather than forthright and open. Leftists and radicals began the slow process of commandeering our educational institutions for their own purposes back in the mid-twentieth century. Instead of pursuing the classical liberal approach of western thought their approach the education was solidly Marxist and totalitarian. Progressive education reformer John Dewey noted, " Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society where everyone is interdependent." Dewey and the rest of the progressive left envision a society of good distinctly and in many foundational ways, antithetical to the society of independence and liberty the Founders wanted.

But rather than carry this debate openly and honestly, they followed a policy that subverted the values of the Founders slowly and in such a way that the average American was never given the chance for independent thought. Simply think of the average college leftist radical to understand how the counter American revolution worked its way into the minds and hearts of the average American. In the college leftist we see plainly what we don't see as plainly in the every day American who has been conditioned to think of "health care" as a right by the establishment institutions around them.

It would be wonderful if the left has actually jumped the gun and awakened enough Americans who remember an education that was classical and can actually begin telling younger Americans that there are other ways of thinking about themselves and their society than just standard leftist orthodoxy. Unfortunately, all of the energy and excitement surrounding the Scott Brown election shows no sign of being transferred to the longer and more arduous battle of reforming our educational institutions. But that is ground zero in the battle for America's soul.

Sixth Sense tech makes sci fi real

Tech World Still Ripe for Conservative Thinking

The greatest failure to date of conservatives and center right thinkers is their unwillingness and inability to see how easily they could make deep inroads into the traditionally liberal bastion of the tech community.

Because the tech community is NOT fooled by politics as usual and is not willing to put up with the phoniness and corruption that other traditional liberal voting blocs have become used to. Techdirt has a great article on the failure of the Obama administration to live up to one of its many campaign promises. What's truly important here is that they are cutting at the core of the Obama image and campaign: Change you can believe in. In essence, Techdirt knows the Change has not come, and they are not willing to accept business as usual.

This is critically important, but when you add this sense of disullusion to the natural free market instincts of the tech community as demonstrated here, you have a real recipe for major social and political change. Too bad it probably wont happen.

Stupid is as Stupid Does

I had no idea what to title this post. It is too funny, sad, pathetic, and above all- STOOPID! This is the first time in the history of rap music that rap has actually saved the lives of cops! it reminds me a scene in a Punisher comic where the Punisher gets caught undergunned by a bunch of thugs, but wins anyway. The final pane in the scene is a close up of the barrel of the Punisher's .45 held corrrectly as he tells the last thug to get killed, "They put the sights on the top for a reason."

A simple fact that went unnoticed by this idiot who jammed his Mac 10 knock-off by shooting it sideways. Man's gotta look good when he's getting gunned down.

Signs of Leadership are starting to develop

I have listened and read a lot of different opinions about the President's speech and Afghan strategy last night, but so far noe of them have mentioned explicitly that this was the first real sign of leadership and sacrifive we have seen from him. For me at least, he started earning back some of the respect that he had completely lost by June.

Because it was very gutsy and showed that he does have the ability to make the type of hard, unpopular decisions Bush made. For that I give him credit and hope to see more of this spine and backbone in the future. Yes, it took too long to make, but he has already been criticized by his most ardent supporters for giving in and doing it in the presence of "the enemy." Chris Matthews has somehow managed to suddenly leave Olberman in the dust...

But I digress. Obama actually did the right thing and listened to his generals rather than to his base. This is the first real bipartisan moment of his presidency. Yes, he made the strategic blunder Chris Matthews rightly identified of telling the REAL enemy (get a clue Chris) when they can expect us to pack up and leave. But Obama also left the door open to staying.

The worst criticism came from Der Spiegel (I thought Obama was popular in Europe?). To be sure, Gabor Steingart delivers the beatdown in a way the would make Krauthammer proud. But most of the substantial criticism is strategic and realpolitik stuff I agree with. There is also the incredible dishonesty of blaming Bush, shifting blame, and then implementing the same Bush surge that he voted against! Talk about low and despicable... But at least he is doing it. For 18 months. The student body president made his first baby steps towards being the real President.

Stoopid, Very Stoopid

Well now we know gamers and lawyers have something in common! What kind of idiot sues WoW?

Climate Research Unit scandal getting worse

Because I am not a scientist I don't like weighing in on the "scandal" surrounding the hacked emails from the Climate Research Unit at University of East Anglia. Primarily because a number of the explanations provided by the pro Global Warming crowd seemed reasonable. But that was until someone who follows and believes in Global Warming as a significant threat made a rare assessment of how damning the hacked emails actually are. Yes, he still affirms his core beliefs and attacks skeptics, but he admits that the emails are very dangerous and distressing. I would love to know what he would say now that the story had become even uglier, as the CRU has admitted all the original data its research was based on was destroyed, so we can't scientifically verify their conclusions. Unfrikkin believable.

Disconnect between Elite and People in Europe too?

This is a fascinating article because it suggests that Europeans- at least the nonelite ones- are facing a similar disconnect between them and their leaders.

Too Funny not to Post

The Language is a bit spicy, but this little incident is hilarious:

more Signs of Cultural Upheaval

The Video Game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has broken every sales record for an entertainment property. We are not talking about video games only, but movies, music, and everything else in the entertainment world. A video game has blown away the competition during a global recession.

This little fact will go largely undigested in mainstream culture. This is after games sales fell dramatically last October from the previous year. Now I have managed to squeeze in a few hours on Modern Warfare 2 between work, the immanent birth of my first child, skating, and applying for a doctoral program. In a nutshell: It Rocks. And pushes the envelope in a way no other game has. The crude ethical problems of games like Grand Theft Auto have nothing on the Russian Airport scene. Discussing it with my hardcore gamer students have resulted in similar impressions. All of us were a bit disturbed by playing an undercover CIA character who has to massacre innocent civilians in an airport in order to protect his cover. Some of us even tried to figure out ways around it, to no avail.

This is extremely disturbing. So disturbing that the developers actually allow you to set up campaign mode with a bypass of the airport massacre. But it got me thinking. More than any other game this game can break long held double standards of our culture just as easily as it breaks sales records.

Why is it ok for actors, and movie makers, writers, and musicians to engage is such flights of fancy, but not the rest of us? In western culture we have long allowed certain exceptions for "artists" because there is a purpose to their work. That's why a child rapist like Polanski should not be prosecuted. Yet he will sneer down at us plebeians for engaging in even a virtual version of violent and unethical behavior. As I walked through the airport slowly killing civilians in a scene perfectly orchestrated to highlight the terror and horror such an event would surely create, coolly shooting down a desperate civilian crawling for safety (the scene even has slow mo moments perfectly copied from Hollywood) it occurred to me that this truly is unhealthy for society and is probably one of the psychological sources of the extreme degrees of privilege and hypocrisy in Hollywood and the Entertainment industry. Actors go one step beyond what I was doing and actually point a real gun and shoot blanks and other live people who reenact these same types of scenes every year for "art." I don't think I will ever play the level again, unless its necessary for the Ethics class we are trying to embed the game in...

But Hollywood is better, more humanitarian. I mean, for gosh sakes, they bleed compassion. They are more human than the rest of us and so its ok for them. One of Tom Friedman's only good ideas in The World is Flat was the equalizing effect technology has on society. Look, we know its not his idea, but its still true. And Modern Warfare 2 is taking this equalizing into its next natural step. Now we can all engage in the same kind of visceral play acting movie stars call "avant garde." How much you wanna bet Rock Star is going to incorporate rape, or something equally ugly into the next iteration of Grand Theft? Because if its ok for Hollywood to simulate rape and other heinous acts then its certainly ok for the rest of us.

Oh Brave new world that has such people in it.

Jedi mind Tricks

So far in all the justifiable outrage over our Establishment's total failure to recognize the Fort Hood killer as nothing more than an Islamic extremist no one has brought up the case of Scott Roeder who killed abortion doctor George Tiller less than a year ago. Remember that incident? Our courageous leaders in the Media were willing to talk religion then. Because, you know, since Roe V Wade became law Christians have killed less people than one Islamic extremist managed to kill in one day at Ft Hood.

There were no discussions about how Scott Roeder's worldview (religion) taught him that since abortion became legal America has seen a holocaust of millions of innocent deaths. Imagine what Major Hasan would do if that were floating around in his mind. He might want to build a nuclear weapon and wipe out his enemies... Nah. Remember the IEA told us two years ago the Iranians weren't trying to build a bomb. Whoops. Little oversight there.

The most perverse aspect of human nature is its ability to lie to itself. When the Jedi mind trick is on yourself, you are sick.

Ereaders are taking over fast

No better proof that ereaders will soon be as ubiquitous as video games than how many are in development. Even tire maker Goodyear is working on one.