Epilogue to Black Tuesday

Just thought I'd update you on the election and how it came out here....

U. S. Senate.  Claire McCaskill won, helping the Dems take over Congress.  Feh.  My candidate, Libertarian Frank Gilmour, got 2.2% of the vote.

Amendment 2, the Stem Cell initiative.  Passed by a narrow margin, 51.2%.  Oh well, but no biggie.

Amendment 3, the Tobacco Tax Increase.  Failed by a narrow margin, 48.5%.  Yea!!

Amendment 6, Tax Exemption for Non-profits and Veterans groups.  Passed by a wide margin, 61.3%.  Yea!!

Amendment 7, State official pension cut-off (if impeached, convicted of a crime, or removed from office for misconduct, cuts them off from the state pension).  Passed by a gigantic margin, 84.1%.  Yea!!

Proposition B, Increase in state minimum wage.  Passed by a wide margin, 75.9%.  Oh well.


All told, not a bad election for my votes.  As for the Democrats in charge of the Congress, we'll see I suppose.  At least it will be different.

It's Hold Yer Nose and Vote Day

Yuck.

It is the 4-times annually day I call Hold-Yer-Nose-and-Vote Day, also called Election Day.  The last time we had an election, I was apparently one of 38 people in Jefferson County who voted a straight Libertarian ticket.  This year, they've abolished straight-party voting, so I will actually have to go and dig up the candidates, because I don't want to get into the middle of the whole Jim Talent / Claire McCaskill senate thing and get something on my shoe.

We also get to vote on, well, I don't know what the hell we're voting on, and by the sound of it the proponents and opponents don't really seem to know either.  It's called Amendment 2, and it's become the target of a fair amount of national debate.  Amendment 2 *claims* to protect stem cell research in Missouri.  I'm not sure why it's necessary, to tell you the truth, and it's filled enough with weasel words that who the hell knows what it will really end up doing.

The proponents of Amendment 2 say it will ensure that Missourians get access to the same cures (that word comes up a lot in their speeches) as other Americans if they come from stem cell research.  This has me scratching my head, seeing as a state cannot regulate medical practices.  The regulation of medical treatments is regulated by the FDA, and so it appears to be an empty gesture in this regard.  The proponents have been saying the fundie wacko wingnuts have been trying to ban those cures in Missouri.  But even if they managed to do that, it would be unconstitutional, albeit only after a huge legal row where it would be challenged and have to go through the Federal court system. 

Problem is, there are no cures.  We're talking about being able to do stem cell research.  Ain't no treatments or cures even in existence yet, but the rhetoric from that side seems to be as strident as if the fundie wacko wingnuts had proposed to ban aspirin or something.

The proponents of Amendment 2 also say that the measure would, at the same time, ban cloning.  Well, I'm not against cloning.  Maybe that puts me in the minority, but from a legal perspective I'm not sure why banning cloning is so damned important.

The opponents of Amendment 2, the aforementioned fundie wacko wingnuts, swear up and down that it really actually enshrined cloning in the state constitution, explicit wording to the contrary.  They claim that the scientific name of the procedure is protected, but "cloning" -- which does not have a set defined medical or scientific definition -- is banned.  So they say that down the road, the "real" cloning technique name will be protected, and they'll turn around and say "well, the ban on cloning actually isn't enforceable because nobody can agree on what cloning is, so it's so vague as to have no meaning".  Ironically, having seen some of the governmental clusterf8cks of legislation in the past, I can see how this complaint might actually have merit.  One thing I've learned about government is that what the law says isn't always what the law says, and usually the outcome is not what was intended.

With this whole Senate thing, man what an ugly campaign.  They've stopped slinging mud long ago and have been chucking cowpies for some time now.  Jim Talent is the incumbent Republican, and while I'm not too keen on Republicans, he doesn't appear to be a total lying sack of dren.  He says in a letter back to me that he thinks current anti-trust regulations will preserve network neutrality on the Internet.  I think he's wrong, and terribly naive, about that.  That or he's a lying sack of dren and he's on the take from the telcos.  Claire McCaskill has her own problem: She married someone in an industry she is charged with regulating.  As Secretary of State she regulates nursing homes in Missouri.  Then she married the biggest nursing home operator in the state.  Shortly after that, audits of nursing homes came to a screeching halt.  Can you say "blatant conflict of interest"?  The rest of the mud being slung, I really don't care much about, as it's the same crap Republicans do anyway.  I don't care about her vacation house and whether or not she paid taxes on it, because Republicans typically have good enough tax lawyers that they don't either, especially if they're savvy or wicked enough to gain national public office.  But the nursing home conflict of interest thing does bother me.  Please, please let there be a Libertarian candidate for the Senate race, or I might actually have to write myself in.

Amendment 3 is a massive increase in the cigarette tax.  I oppose this, even though I am a non-smoker.  I experienced what happens with this sort of thing out in Oregon.  Out there in 1998, Proposition 44 jacked up cigarette taxes, with the proceeds to go into the Oregon Health Plan, a relatively new plan for people in the gap between health insurance and Medicaid.  They said it would cut medical costs long-term by making people quit smoking to avoid the tax, and it would raise money for the OHP so they could expand service.

The problem was, it worked too well.  People quit smoking in the *short-term*, while it was supposed to cut health care costs in the *long-term*.  Do you see where this is going?  The OHP expanded but the cigarette tax money never came in because -- doh! -- people quit smoking!!!!  So the folks who run the OHP declared a funding emergency!  They need more tax money to replace the money that they thought they would get from (their assumption) knuckleheaded, addicted smokers who would pay the tax because they were knuckleheaded and addicted.  They didn't count on people ACTUALLY QUITTING SMOKING!!!!!

So, Amendment 3.  They're claiming that the money is going to campaigns against smoking.  Well, that's okay....if people quit smoking because of it, they won't need as much money for quitting-smoking campaigns.  Kind of a self-contained thing.  Problem is, I've also heard rumblings that it will go to help poor Missourians who don't have health insurance.  Doh!  Right now, it's just mentioned as "oh by the way it will also do this", but rest assured if it passes, the new Missouri Health Plan will suddenly spring to the forefront of the discussion.  If the same things happens and what did in Oregon, people in Missouri *will* quit smoking.  Will there then be an outcry for more money to support the suddenly flagging Missouri Health Plan, just as what happened in Oregon?  They say only cigarette smokers will pay the proposed tax, but if history repeats itself, the smokers will have the last laugh as we all end up paying more.

And by the way, what the heck happened with all that money from the big Federal tobacco settlement? 

I will be so happy when tomorrow gets here.

Thais, be careful and stick to your ideals

CNN and other world media are reporting that Thailand has fallen to a military coup.

This is a sad day, anytime a functioning democracy is unplugged by armed thugs.  Yes, they claim rampant corruption in the government.  After all, they don't want to be compared to their thug neighbor, Burma.  (Screw the military fatheads there, by the way, I won't call it 'Myanmar' any more than I was inclined to do what Pol Pot said and call his country 'Kampuchea'.  We all know how <i>that</i> turned out.)  But they did the ultimate cowardly thing, and waited until the prime minister was out of the country.  This tyrant, Sonthi Boonyaratkalin, didn't even have the cojones to do it with his boss in the house.

What caught my eye in the article was something in the first paragraph of the Reuters report (which appears on Yahoo! News, where I saw this originally): "The Thai army took control of Bangkok on Tuesday without a shot being fired, dismissed Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, revoked the constitution and promised a swift return to democracy after political reforms."

What's wrong here is "revoked the constitution".  This is a common misconception among tyrants and enemies of the people.  A democratic constitution cannot be "revoked", nor can it be "suspended".  Nor bent, folded, spindled, or mutilated.  The United States Constitution cannot be suspended.  Wanna know why?  Because if a mechanism existed to do so, every time an election, a decision, a judgment went against what someone wanted as the outcome, they would be looking for that button.  Saying a national constitution is "revoked" is akin to saying it didn't matter in the first place. 

Constitutions are not a "let's see if this works out" kind of thing in a democracy.  It is <i><b>everything</b></i>.  The Thai army thug claims "rampant corruption".  By whose measure?  From what the news article said, the duly elected leader, Thaksin Shinawatra, was re-elected twice.  When his government was questioned, he <i>volunteered</i> to have elections taken again.  A rational person would conclude that Mr. Thaksin has this democracy thing figured out to a fault (what American president would dare to call an early election just to show he really deserved to be there?) and that he figured on winning the election a third time.

The Thai opposition, though, claimed that "he had skewed neutral bodies such as the Election Commission in his favor and boycotted the poll. That rendered the election result invalid."  This statement also speaks volumes.  The Thai opposition party, the so-called "Party of Democratic Reform", is in charge with the army.  In a democracy, this is anathema.  So one must wonder what they meant by "neutral bodies".  Certainly not the military, apparently.  They also assumed that since elections have been coming out against them, the Election Commission must be biased in some fashion.  This is another misunderstanding: as the Democratic Party in America has had to come to grips with, you're not "correct" by default, and so losing elections does not mean everyone is out to keep you down.  So when Mr. Thaksin cheekily called a third election early (and he was either overly optimistic or kinda dense to do so, really) the opposition really didn't want to lose a third time.  The best way to make an election seem invalid is to not show up.  This is the third mistake in judgment by the opposition.  In America, elections are valid even if only 8 percent of registered voters show up.  We raise our own local taxes with such ridiculously low participation with alarming regularity.

Militaries in democracies are always dicey things.  Any military is, by definition, <i>not</i> a democracy by necessity.  Militaries have efficient chains of command, and we would like to think that advancement in the military is merit-based.  That's a dream, of course, but any country with sense and a conscience should try.  And who is selected to run the military should be someone who is sworn to uphold that country's constitution, and not take judgment into his own hands whenever he thinks the country isn't being run right.  Democracy does not exist because the military deigns to permit it, but because the people will it to be so.  The purpose of the military is to keep other countries out so the people can run this democracy stuff.

Anything that smells of mixture between military and civilian makes me nervous.  America set a horrible precedent when they named the former head of Military Intelligence the head of the CIA.  It was, in my mind and heart, an unforgivable mix, especially considering that this person did not resign their commission in the military.  When you look around the world, you see daily proof that this intermingling is a bad idea.  (It's also a really bad thing when two family members run both the military and the government, but that's a different story.)

A couple of paragraphs in the CNN article on this caught my eye as well, such as this little gem quoting a press release from the coup perpetrators:  "The armed forces commander and the national police commander have successfully taken over Bangkok and the surrounding area in order to maintain peace and order. There has been no struggle," the coup announcement said, according to The Associated Press. "We ask for the cooperation of the public and ask your pardon for the inconvenience."

<i>Pardon the inconvenience?!?</i>  "We're really sorry if our tanks screw up morning rush hour."  So this is apparently a <i>polite</i> coup!  Oh, well that's okay then.  If I'm a Thai citizen, what am I supposed to think of this?  As long as it doesn't get in my way, the forcible turnover of my duly elected government is just a minor annoyance.  Just keep the armored personnel carriers out of the McDonald's drive-thru....

And CNN makes this off-the-cuff observation:  "Sonthi, who is known to be close to Thailand's revered constitutional monarch, will serve as acting prime minister, army spokesman Col. Akarat Chitroj said, according to The AP. Sonthi is a Muslim in this Buddhist-dominated nation, AP reported."

Things that make you go "Hmmm".  (See my previous blog entry for relevance.)

So what happens now?  The response of the international community will be very interesting.  Will they roundly condemn this act of subversion, as they should?  Or will they use the fact that Mr. Thaksin is wealthy as a rationalization for his removal?  The United States government should pull out the stops, cutting off this rogue government and insisting that Mr. Thaksin be restored to office, and suspending diplomatic relations until they do so.  We tolerate this crap far too frequently.

America is a beacon of freedom and democracy.  It is exactly times like now that we should use our might to set a good example, and refuse to deal with countries that just don't get it.  If Thais get this democracy thing, they should call for Mr. Sonthi's execution as a traitor.

Violent religion threatens more violence over accusations of violence

It's times like this that I marvel at the sheer idiocy of people in the world.

Pope Benedict quoted a medieval writer who criticized Mohammed for spreading Islam "by the sword", and Moslems worldwide were outraged.

Of course they were. Muslims exist to be outraged. Outrage is their normal state of being. Mostly over not having what they want, which is for everyone to be Muslim. As a group, Muslims are pretty outrageable. Most Americans outgrow the typical Muslim response to criticism by the time they're 3 years old.

When Muslims were outraged over the (mostly factually accurate) cartoons of Mohammed that ran in several European newspapers, they did what Muslims do -- they got outraged. They got outraged enough to kill several hundred of their own people and then blame everyone else for it. What was really telling was when a few smartass Muslims decided to get back at us, and draw their own cartoons!! The shock! The horror! Ho hum. Excuse me, Mr. Ayn-Ghatta Klu, your cartoons were pitiful. They're nothing compared to the cartoons we draw about our own leaders. Heck not even anything compared to some of the cartoons that get drawn about Jesus Christ. And we almost never kill anyone in response.

I've figured out what's wrong with Muslims. The entirety of Islam, from Morocco to Indonesia, has an anger management problem. And the solution is simple: More pornography.

In America we understand this. Heck, Europeans downright embrace it. In Scandanavia, where the pacifism runs to the point of trying to be neutral in World War II, the age of consent in many places is a mere 13. Who the heck has time to be outraged when they can only type with one hand? Here, you notice that people have either their gun or their penis in their hand at any given time, but not both. Why? Well, it would look ridiculous to try holding and shooting both at the same time, not to mention a coordination problem. Most Americans own guns, this is true, but their first option in terms of actual deployment is usually the penis.

In the Muslim world, the most idiotically primitive of them cover their women from head to toe. They also are the most repressive, and the most violent when they don't get what they want. Cover up women less, and civilizations get more civilized. Heck, the most stable, prosperous Muslim countries are those that let women dress the same amount as men. I think the correlation is clear: Without porn, men can only get their jollies with guns.

Now, somewhere along the line a non-violent Muslim person (I'm sure there are at least several dozen in the world) will read this and be offended. Rings empty with me, buddy boy. Because I'll ask you the same thing I ask idiot fundie Christians in this country: Where's your voice? Where's your criticism of the nutbags getting all the press coverage? Silence equals endorsement. Ultimately most Christians will only believe something if everyone else around them believes it. If they're criticized, they'll run crying to their fellow fundie wingnuts for emotional support. But if their fundie wingnut friends are not there, they might -- just might -- think to themselves, "if I'm the only one thinking this sack-o-hammers shit, maybe I'm wrong after all". Then there will be just a little less violence in the world.

Richard Nixon, in explaining why people supported him with all visible evidence to the contrary -- as well as tin-foil beanie babies like Jerry Falwell and Ralph Reed -- claim the existence of a "silent majority". Well, I would hypothesize that Islam has a "silent majority" as well, and it's high time that they set aside for a moment the observation that American and western Europe have been dicking with them for the last 500 years and think, "maybe we should clean up our own mess first". Muslims bitch about Israel because it's trendy, it's easy to get accepted by your fellow insane Muslim neighbors, but your real problem is your own religious leadership. If Islam is not a violent religion, then prove it. Do something about it.

What I propose is radical, because while I think that the vast majority of people don't really think much about religion at all, they should be horrified at what the people claiming to govern them have done to them in the Middle East and elsewhere. Sure, Sharia looks good in the short term, not unlike the War on Drugs and War on Terror here: eliminate crime, restore order, end chaos. It's easy. It requires no thought or self control. The problem is, once its proponents actually get into power, they tend to concentrate on their real agenda, which is shoving their religious views down their throats -- by the sword if necessary.

C'mon guys, when the Pope quoted it, the problem was not that he quoted it and you got your big spiritual wedgie. The problem was that 500 years later, most of the rest of the world nodded and said, "huh, yeah even back then violent Islam was an issue". Of course, violent Christianity was a problem for a good long while, but for the most part, they stopped it. You must have missed the memo on that. So for the record, let me say it: You can stop being violent now.

It's not like Americans aren't familiar with the phenomenon. Bill Clinton campaigned on the economy, and then the first words out of his mouth were "gays in the military" (WTF?) Convince people to let you into power by telling them what they want to hear, then when you're in charge, do what you want. George W. Bush told Bob Jones University inmates that he wanted to delist Wicca as a religion recognized by the Armed Forces, then utterly ignored it in office, choosing to concentrate on other things like ignoring all inconvenient foreign intelligence and practically inviting 9/11 to happen.

Iran got to experience this first hand. President Athingamabob ran on helping the poor, then once elected, shifted his attention to the important task of building nuclear bombs. I'm sure the Taliban looked pretty good in the aftermath of Soviet occupation, right up to the point before soccer fields stopped being used for soccer and started being used for beheadings of women impudent enough to show bare ankles. Somalia is right on the cusp of getting to learn this lesson the hard way. The Islamists there are pasting the warlords (who at least took care of their own gang members), and as soon as they unite the country, they'll get to the more important task of pasting the general population. Somaliland (the northern part) got a clue and self-organized -- and the Western leaders of the world had better get their heads out of their asses and recognize them as an independent country and stop worrying about the impact on the global mapping industry -- and hopefully will spare the fate of the south. The south will get the Taliban treatment. And guess what, Al Qaeda and every other sociopath will beat a path to Mogadishu and we'll have to invade them too. Sigh, will people never learn?

So Muslims of the world, if you really believe the shit being spewed by your muftis, then you get what you deserve. But do us a favor and keep it in your own country, and don't get all indignant when you threaten us and we come over and kick your asses. You're lucky the fringe elements in this country didn't push The Button after 9/11 and turn the entire Middle East into a plate glass parking lot. Violence begets violence, but if America isn't going to stop first, it's your obligation to be mature Men and Women and just say no to any violence in Islam, rather than throw yet another histrionic temper tantrum.

And anyone who threatens to kill me over this article, well, you prove my point.