We’re all so tired of the Cheney’s setting up their tent and giving us their little show. It never lives up to the hype and always costs much more after we get inside. Now they’d like to scrap all pretense of a trial and just go straight to the hang’uns.
I’ve begun to question the benefit to government-sanctioned marriages. Not just for those who don’t want one, or those who aren’t allowed one, but even for those who fit the criteria and want it, there seems no sensible purpose to it in the modern world. A religious-sanctioned marriage makes perfect sense for those who want it. But a government-sanctioned one seems to be giving the government some sort of mystical power to bless (and often dissolve) a relationship.
I understand the original purpose, when women were chattel and men needed an heir, but surely that’s changed for most people. Even for those who still see things that way, I don’t want the government sanctioning such an unhealthy relationship in the 21st century. Again, marriage, perfectly fine; it’s just not a government thing.
Basically, from a government standpoint marriage is a shared power of attorney with shared assets and debt. Surely such a document could be made available to everyone who wants it, possibly include some simple opt-ins and opt-outs for those who’d prefer not to commingle all their assets. For the more complicated arrangements there’d still be lawyers and priests.
Leave a comment if I’ve missed anything.
Greenwash products address carbon footprint guilt, giving all the benefits of a green self-image without hampering your “in the pink pleasures.”
Similar to the notion of a self-dissolving condom, you get the peace of mind when you first decide to use it but after it desolves your real sense of pleasure isn’t dulled or hampered.
Unlike unprotected sex, with greenwash products any nasty side effects happen only after you die. It’s like your grandkids children get the disease instead of you. In a sense, greenwash products are better than risky sex, at least in personal consequences.
Savvy companies know that many humans want to do something to maintain a little piece of the planet for possible future generations. Smart companies have figured out that this desire can be dealt with verbally rather than actually. Greenwashing is the ability and practice of turning environmentally destructive products into green products with little to nothing more than a word processor and a missing or errant shame gene on the part of the manufacturer.
Consider that hybrid SUV touted to cart kids off to school, soccer practice and play dates. “Hybrid” tagged onto an SUV that gets 20 miles to the gallon sounds good for the environment—at least good enough for busy people. It’s not like it’s a Hummer or something “really” bad for the environment.
It’s useful to simply believe a national brand with “Green” in its name and a printed green philosophy doesn’t contain stuff like butyl cellosolve in its cleaning products.
Avoid trying to distinguish between terms like:
Figure all products that cost more and sound green are good enough to assuage any feelings of guilt and leave it to the government to sort it all out. Or yes, no fluorocarbons though—everyone knows those are bad for the ozone layer.
Buying products or packaging labeled “Recyclable,” “Biodegradable” or “Compostable” does wonders for the eco-ego and are reward enough without having to bother with recycling or composting them. The landfills will sort it all out after you people are gone anyway.
On the plus side for roach revolution, organic material in landfills will probably break down into biogas and add to the Earth’s rapidly growing greenhouse gases. Click to read more on wikipedia.
So, the great news is that even real “earth-friendly” items like food scraps, biodegradable bags and packaging, pet poop and other “organic” garbage pose a promise for roach revolution. Is there a difference? Maybe one choice is better or worse for immediate mammalian doom. If your curious, click to read what greanlivingtips.com thinks.
We roaches think you should just avoid the whole mess and go about your human business unencumbered and as you please. Or at the extreme, buy products that make you feel good and then drop your worrying you silly people you.
Please comment, maybe with any products/services that you think of as greenwash.
Is second-hand smoke a health hazard? If you think it is, why? For most people, the belief is based in propaganda. Propaganda is the systematic method to quickly spread a point of view through the use of partial information, appeals to emotion over intellect, and creating an atmosphere where opposing dialogue has no voice. If you think that there can be no argument against the idea that second-hand smoke is a serious health danger, you prove the point. If there is no room left for debate, or consideration, it’s propaganda. It’s not just smoking, or pot, or a healthy diet. Propaganda stretches far and deep into our lives.
I can remember the ads admonishing us not to be a “Litter Bug.” (As if bugs did anything but clean away debris!) The anti-litter campaigns were propaganda. They didn’t tell us not to consume to reduce real waste, they told us how to hide it all from our view.
I also remember the anti-pot ads that first told us that pot made people crazy. When that attempt failed, the message changed to pot leads to heroine. Okay, that failed too. Then came the notion that people who smoke pot are destined to become underachievers. Plenty of people who smoke pot buy into that one. Lots of company executives check their wage employees for dope use (including pot), while toking fairly regularly themselves. Personally, I think the age for pot smoking is between 19 and 23 years old, after you’re old enough to really decide for yourself about taking on a habit and before you can afford to buy quality whiskey and cigars. I don’t know what the latest pot propaganda is; I’m no longer their target audience.
But for me, the most irritating propaganda ever underway is this notion that America is a great country and we are all so lucky because we have full access to information and a free and open election to choose whichever leaders we want. We always have the same two choices. Way back when, the League of Women Voters was even thrown out of the debate game because the two parties didn’t want to answer questions they hadn’t prepared for, and neither saw any point in letting other parties in on the press coverage—a third party candidate might say something that sounded good to the people. So, we are free to vote for whomever we want, but unlike other democratic countries, with several national parties all with a voice, we get to choose between vanilla and French vanilla. I swear to God, I’ve never been able to tell the two apart.
But, what do you think?
A study last year showed that health-related issues, mostly medical bills, caused 62% of America’s bankruptcies in 2007. Private health insurance wasn’t enough protection: 78% of the healthcare related bankruptcies were to people covered by health insurance. People lose their house, their savings, and their credit just because we have a faulty healthcare system. This study was done for the year 2007, it’s expected that those numbers are higher in today’s economy.
Even worse, if one or more major heath insurance companies ever go bankrupt, personal bankruptcies will skyrocket, as people are forced to pay the bills they’d expected to be paid by those defunct insurance companies. If an insurance company doesn’t pay the hospital, the debt is passed on to the patient, and ultimately the estate. There just aren’t any guarantees with private insurance companies: If your family experiences a serious illness, you could lose everything you own. Only after all the money’s gone, can you expect some sort of government aid under today’s flawed system.
How likely is it that a major insurance company could go bankrupt in the near future? There are several possible scenarios. If the company assets were over-leveraged, like the recent bank problems, seems a likely risk, given the similar corporate structures of banks and insurance companies. But there could also be a national epidemic that might trigger insurance company bankruptcies. Regardless of the reason, anyone covered by a bankrupt insurer would not be able to find another company willing to take on their medical bills. In fact, surviving insurance companies would probably stop taking any new clients, in the way that surviving banks have been reluctant to loan money in the current economy.
But even if we can count on never facing a serious national health epidemic, or we trust in the perfect management skills of the people who run the insurance companies, the fact remains that people with health insurance today have their assets at risk. Once the money’s gone, it will be too late to fix the system. You can’t eat from an empty storehouse.
References:
LA Times
Business Week
I’ve always liked the idea of people making a statement with actions like the Million Man March. I imagine if the people who want options in healthcare show who they are, it could influence some action to get us a better choice than just the insurance companies. At any rate, it worth a try. I’d prefer to have a healthcare choice.
While America struggles to find an answer to massive unemployment, the solution may already be available within its borders. Employment is on the rise in prisons across the United States, and American produced goods are now not only more available in the US, but are making their way overseas to countries that don’t have a ban against the use of prisoner labor. America has one fourth of the world’s prison population, more—much more in most cases—than any other nation, giving it the best possible position as the world leader in a prison based economic system. Even China, a country always thought to have a great number of prisoners (many political) has half a million fewer in jail despite a population of four and a half times the USA. It means that America already is in a position to provide the world with the majority of cheap labor, and an increase in numbers looks very promising.
The use of prison labor is very beneficial for companies that want to do business in the US. Citizens of America, through their taxes, cover the costs for worker housing, food, and healthcare. This cuts the financial burden for business down to only paying wages, and those at a true fraction of minimum wage. The manufactured goods can be marked, “Made in America,” which gives patriotic appeal, and still be very price competitive with countries that do and certainly those that don’t keep their workers in prisons. By shifting the burden of living expenses onto taxpayers without including those taxpayers in the profits, business can expect a great boost to the bottom line and, in turn, increased stock values. It is a win situation.
But if it’s good for business, it may be as good for those who are incarcerated. Most people enter the prison system without the security of consistent shelter, food, or healthcare. In prison, all needs are taken care of by the state. It’s something no one who hasn’t been convicted of a crime can even hope for in America—socialized medicine. If that weren’t enough, the prison workweek is about 45 hours and there is no commute. By contrast, Americans who have a job often contribute 60 or more hours a week; some for good pay and benefits, others just to pay rent, utilities, and for a little fun money to buy food. Add to those prison laborer financial benefits, the fact that there is small chance that a prison will file Chapter 11, or little risk of having their fringe benefits cut, and it’s clear to see what’s in this for them. So it is, in fact, a win-win situation.
Considering the benefits, the obvious objective for America needs to be focused on shifting from a union-based, work for hire economic system, to a prison-based one. It needs to extend beyond telemarketing and light manufacturing into full-blown production. Only in this way will American companies be able to compete globally, maintain profit goals, and continue to pay bonuses sufficient enough to lure the right people into employment to run things on the outside.
How should these prison jobs be doled out to the population? Well, not everyone could be incarcerated right away; it will take time for the old economy to completely crumble. At first, job seekers will need to continue to apply by holding up a bank or other such place. Alternatively, they can obtain and carry with them a sufficient enough quantity of any one of several controlled substances. (What, and how much is sufficient, will vary by state: check local laws.) Even acts of raw vandalism may be good enough to show a person is a serious candidate. And, third-time rehires in most states are eligible for tenure. Those who apply but aren’t contacted by law enforcement for a follow-up interview will have a few extra dollars income from their attempt, and they can always try again once the money runs out.
Obviously, priority for prison applications will continue to be given first to the poor and undereducated (both of which are in themselves a growth industry in the US), but it is essential to bring the middle class in as quickly as possible after that. Frankly, they just can’t handle it on the outside for much longer.
The term, “birth defects,” is a troublesome one. Presumably a person born with them is defective. Strange concept: defective people. Is there a specific register you take them to, or can you get a refund from any cashier? Everyone has things that push him or her out of the normal range. What makes one thing a birth defect and the other—well, just a thing?
It boils down to what the needs of society are at the moment, and that is always subject to change. What at one time seems to be a defect of birth, changes over time, and sometimes, back again. Left-handedness was once considered a defect that had to be overcome. So too were critical reasoning, large feet on women, and homosexuality—which, it seems, continues to some degree today.
How seemingly useless was someone with the ability to write good code, but born fifty years before computers? There had to be some of them around in the seventeenth century. What the heck did they do for a living? Maybe they were locked away in the asylums, left to scribble away at their mad and meaningless modules and subroutines.
There was a girl born recently with a functioning third arm and hand. It was reported that doctors successfully removed the offending appendage. In truth, that girl might’ve had a big advantage over others, yet the societal disadvantage of being a freak made it seem a good thing to remove that extra arm. So it seems that the gene for third arms is among us. Will we ever get them, or will we keep hacking them off?
It’s so simple to recognize errors of others through the perspective of our own culture; it’s even easier when the errors occurred in the past. Most people in America today find irony in the fact that several of our freedom-loving founding fathers were also slave owners—maybe not laugh-out-loud humor, more of a head-shaking sort of thing. But, the fact remains that it’s hard to understand why they didn’t take a break from writing all those lovely words, and grant freedom to their slaves. Grant is probably not even the right word. They should’ve acknowledged the horrible thing they’d been doing, divided up their property among the slaves, and asked forgiveness. But they definitely didn’t do that.
The truth is that slaves were property; they were a part of a man’s wealth. Slaves were no different than a house, a horse, or a diamond is today. Slaves were security and wealth. Asking an estate to simply release its property without benefit, indeed with a substantial loss, would seem absolutely crazy—then, and now. Think of the example of a family of five living a four-bedroom house on the same night someone dies while sleeping in a box on the street—we wouldn’t expect the family with the home to live in something smaller just to give the beggar a few more years. The providers of the family no doubt came from families that worked hard to invest in their children’s future, and the providers themselves probably worked just as hard. So, what they own, they paid for. How they got the money is irrelevant, it’s theirs to spend, keep, or pass on. Of course, they can also give it away freely. If they choose to help others, that’s their right—but it remains their choice. The situation of others just doesn’t come into it; it is up to each individual to decide what to do with his or her property.
Which brings the topic back to slave owners. They spent their capital to purchase slaves, and without them their businesses and household couldn’t function as needed to provide a return on their investment. Judging them from our place today, reviling them for not simply giving their money away—even though it would’ve been the right thing to do—is ridiculous. It would be like someone two hundred years from now judging our priorities today.
Is PETA an organization created by the meat industry, or at the least highly infiltrated by it? Is there a saboteur high in the PETA ranks that makes certain to mix in over-the-top ideology with the more or less sensible press releases? (Yes they have sensible releases, but they are clearly over-shadowed by the nonsense). Think about it. In the week one of the PETA offices is going to release a statement about local chickens waiting out their pitiful “lives” in the dark with less than an inch of space around them, the PETA home office releases a statement condemning the President for killing a fly on national television.
The latest press release to get media attention dealt with a PETA objection over the use of Punxsutawney Phil to predict weather. This is the same organization that protests the needless torture of animals in a stockyard. For me, this is the problem. Organizations that start out with one objective that could seem sensible to many people and would end up being realized, are steered off course headed in too many directions. It’s as though they’re trying to find reasons to be exclusive, or ridiculed.
In the past, most charities relied on growing in scope to support a heavy infrastructure through more and more donations; it’s like the restaurant that keeps adding crap to it’s menu rather than concentrate on what it does best. But with what we saw with respect to Haiti, I think this might change. Through small donations via Paypal or cell phones, people will be able to make a difference by directly supporting specific causes they believe in, rather than large organizations that merely reflect a percentage of what they believe.
That brings me back to the discussion of PETA and animal rights. While I am totally in favor of humane treatment of farm animals (something like the shepherd guys mentioned in the Bible), I don’t believe that raising animals, or hunting them, for meat is inherently bad. Nor do I think that the screwy opinions PETA occasionally expresses lets me off the hook when it comes to giving a damn about how living creatures are treated. I support the SPCA where I can, because they more closely reflect my beliefs and because they focus on things that can be done right now-in the real world.
Now, here’s my favorite recipe for oven cooked baby back ribs:
(Dry Rub Mix)
(1st Liquids)
(2nd Liquids)
(The night before is good)
Advance Prep:
Ready to Cook?
Last Step:
Eat, maybe with some beans or potato salad.