It will never cease to amaze me that in the United States of America, the world's bastion of anti-Communism, nearly 70% of the people polled consistently think that our Constitution includes the dictate "[f]rom each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."
All Hail Marx and Lenin! (Karl and Vladimir, not Groucho and John--Lennon, that is--and with apologies to Firesign Theater.)
But there is a reason that Marx, Karl, was wrong: he never bothered to answer or even consider the question "Who decides?"
One person's evaluation of his talents and needs can differ markedly from another person's assessment of same for that first person. It's not going to happen that we all happily agree 100% on these assessments for everyone, including ourselves. That's just not human nature. So the person who gets to make the determination is the person with the power . . . and that way lies dictatorship, not the withering away of the state. It's more like the concentration of the state.
So either people simply do not understand what Marx meant, or they have a major mental disconnect between believing in what Marx was getting at but still voting for people like Dubya.
If you've read "What's The Matter With Kansas?" by Thomas Frank, you'll become a firm believer in the disconnect.
I am trying to take comfort in the fact that Dubya really is officially a lame duck, and that since even his staunchest allies in the GOP-controlled Congress all eventually have to face reelection, Dubya's perceived power will wither away quickly in this, his second term . . . but I don't know. Everything has been going so wrong for so long that I am of two minds: either the pendulum will swing back, or we'll go over the edge and all will be lost forever.
***
The entire debate on Creationism (or Intelligent Design, or whatever you want to call it) vs. Evolution is a false argument. There really is no serious conflict between science and religion if one thinks clearly: they are not designed to answer the same question. Science asks "How?" Religion, "Why?"
But the continued popular confusion/fuzzy thinking on this and other such matters just illustrates another of my fundamental tenets: there is a reason that a grade of "C" is average. The vast majority of the world's population is operating at that level or below.
***
For once, the Super Bowl was better and more interesting than the vast majority of the commercials debuting during the game. I have to confess to liking the Budweiser commercial wherein all the wild animals come to audition for spots on the Clydesdale hitch, with the driver saying to the little burro, "See what you've started!"
***
The publiciation of Jose Canseco's book (with all its allegations of steroid use by both current and former players) has been timed to coincide with the beginning of Spring Training. How original! (She said, sarcastically.) I wonder just how much of what he is claiming is true. I usually try to evaluate someone's credibility by asking myself which party in a dispute has more to GAIN by lying, but here, the equities are about equal. Jose will get a lot more sales by asserting his lurid claims of players helping each other shoot up steroids; but the players named have a lot to gain by denying the truth of Jose's claims.
In fine, it's just plain sad. Baseball deserves better.
Monday, February 14, 2005
Bright College Days?
I have been following, with some trepidation, the newest Far Right assault on Life, the Universe, and Everything . . . also known as the college educational experience.
(And behavior like the Colorado professor who asserts that the victims of the Twin Towers assaults on Sept. 11 deserved it don't help. >>sigh<< As the late, great Jeff MacNelly once noted in "Shoe," "If you're going to have freedom of speech, you have to put up with a lot of dumbness of speech.")
It seems that college is nothing more than an indoctrination into left wing politics. And students who disagree live in constant fear that if their opinions become known, they will be failed by their Machievellian/Marxist professors, and thus not get their coveted sheepskins.
Furthermore, it seems that colleges and universities are havens for the left wing because they are the only places where it is acceptible to be left wing. Birds of a feather flocking together, I guess.
My somewhat peckish thoughts:
(1) If college is so dangerous intellectually, why is a college degree still so highly valued?
(2) Is it just possible that left wing views tend to prevail in colleges and universities (IF they do--I am not about to concede that point without a lot more evidence than some Neocon's assertions) because (>>gasp!<<) education opens one's mind?
(3) Since the prevailing attitude in child-rearing in this country currently seems to be to teach children WHAT to think, and not HOW to think, what in the world makes anyone think that 18 years of indoctrination at home can be erased by a mere 8 semesters of exposure to different ideas?
Unless, of course, those 8 semesters of exposure to different ideas show the utter bankruptcy of the ideas one entertained in the 18 years coming in?
I guess it's really not unlike the Neocons' collective attitude toward government: they say "Big Government" is bad, but what they mean is that "Big Government" is bad only when its aims, goals, and programs disagree with their preferred aims, goals, and programs.
Look at Dubya's just-submitted budget if you doubt it. Isn't the Republican Party the supposed bastion of fiscal responsibility? And yet we are running record deficits under Dubya. The defecits would be even worse than they appear if certain aspects of the budget, like Iraq and Afghanistan military spending, would be put in with the main budget instead of continuously being hidden in supplemental budget requests . . . which are supposed to be used for unforeseen emergency spending needs, like the recent tsunami disaster, not for foreseeable expenses like ongoing military expenditures.
I am beginning to think I can understand how Lord Cornwallis felt at Yorktown when the band struck up "The World Turned Upside Down."
(And behavior like the Colorado professor who asserts that the victims of the Twin Towers assaults on Sept. 11 deserved it don't help. >>sigh<< As the late, great Jeff MacNelly once noted in "Shoe," "If you're going to have freedom of speech, you have to put up with a lot of dumbness of speech.")
It seems that college is nothing more than an indoctrination into left wing politics. And students who disagree live in constant fear that if their opinions become known, they will be failed by their Machievellian/Marxist professors, and thus not get their coveted sheepskins.
Furthermore, it seems that colleges and universities are havens for the left wing because they are the only places where it is acceptible to be left wing. Birds of a feather flocking together, I guess.
My somewhat peckish thoughts:
(1) If college is so dangerous intellectually, why is a college degree still so highly valued?
(2) Is it just possible that left wing views tend to prevail in colleges and universities (IF they do--I am not about to concede that point without a lot more evidence than some Neocon's assertions) because (>>gasp!<<) education opens one's mind?
(3) Since the prevailing attitude in child-rearing in this country currently seems to be to teach children WHAT to think, and not HOW to think, what in the world makes anyone think that 18 years of indoctrination at home can be erased by a mere 8 semesters of exposure to different ideas?
Unless, of course, those 8 semesters of exposure to different ideas show the utter bankruptcy of the ideas one entertained in the 18 years coming in?
I guess it's really not unlike the Neocons' collective attitude toward government: they say "Big Government" is bad, but what they mean is that "Big Government" is bad only when its aims, goals, and programs disagree with their preferred aims, goals, and programs.
Look at Dubya's just-submitted budget if you doubt it. Isn't the Republican Party the supposed bastion of fiscal responsibility? And yet we are running record deficits under Dubya. The defecits would be even worse than they appear if certain aspects of the budget, like Iraq and Afghanistan military spending, would be put in with the main budget instead of continuously being hidden in supplemental budget requests . . . which are supposed to be used for unforeseen emergency spending needs, like the recent tsunami disaster, not for foreseeable expenses like ongoing military expenditures.
I am beginning to think I can understand how Lord Cornwallis felt at Yorktown when the band struck up "The World Turned Upside Down."
Saturday, February 05, 2005
More Random Observations On The Passing Scene
Sammy Sosa playing for the Baltimore Orioles?!? No one named Caray doing Cubs play-by-play in the WGN TV booth?!?!? What is the world coming to????
Ann Coulter is blond. Res ipsa loquitur.
So far, the news reports about what Condaleeza Rice said about Iran have emphasized that we are not going to attack. Shouldn't they be emphasizing what she added, to wit: "at this time"? (emphasis added)
For Dubya's proposed private investment accounts for Social Security to do as well as the benefit structure currently in place, the economy will have to do so well that we won't need to tweak the Social Security system to protect against the so-called coming catastrophe in the first place. Yet there seems to be a lot of support for Dubya's proposal. Step right up, folks! Smoke and mirrors work as well here as they did for the WMDs in Iraq. And they reflect the truth about as well, too.
Just because someone cannot identify an object flying by doesn't mean that that object necessarily is manned by members of some advanced alien civilization. Heck, we dealt regularly with unidentified frying objects in the high school cafeteria. We never turned into or got eaten by BEMs.
Dogs are pack animals, which crave leadership and tight social structure. Cats are independent and solitary hunters. Neocons love dogs. People who aren't afraid of people who don't think just like they do love cats. As a rule. (There are always exceptions.)
Every state has its own requirements for qualifying for Medicaid. In Nebraska, for example, your income is judged against a master expenses list. Your actual rent is not allowed. If you are paying more than $385/month for your lodgings, only $385 is subtracted from your income to check your qualifications. In other words, you are SOL. One of the Omaha-area Medicaid reps confirmed for me recently that that figure has not been adjusted at all, for inflation or otherwise, since 1985. In 2005, I doubt that you could rent a single garage stall for $385/month or less, let alone an apartment/house. So it becomes virtually impossible, as a practical matter, to qualify for Medicaid. And yet Donald Trump can declare bankruptcy many, many times and he never seems to be living on less than $100,000.00 or more per month.
Just another shining example of my current maxim for life: Them what has, gets; the rest of us get screwed.
What with the federal gov't budget deficits, changes in tax laws to favor the rich, deregulation of securities markets and utilities, and the like, 90% of the wealth in this country is now concentrated in the hands of fewer than 9% of the population. This is the worst it has ever been, even worse than during the 1880s and 90s. I love history, but except for the chance to talk to Mark Twain, I never wanted to live in the Gilded Age!
A friend shrugs his shoulders and says philosophically, "Well, even Rome fell."
OK, but does it have to happen while we're around?
Ann Coulter is blond. Res ipsa loquitur.
So far, the news reports about what Condaleeza Rice said about Iran have emphasized that we are not going to attack. Shouldn't they be emphasizing what she added, to wit: "at this time"? (emphasis added)
For Dubya's proposed private investment accounts for Social Security to do as well as the benefit structure currently in place, the economy will have to do so well that we won't need to tweak the Social Security system to protect against the so-called coming catastrophe in the first place. Yet there seems to be a lot of support for Dubya's proposal. Step right up, folks! Smoke and mirrors work as well here as they did for the WMDs in Iraq. And they reflect the truth about as well, too.
Just because someone cannot identify an object flying by doesn't mean that that object necessarily is manned by members of some advanced alien civilization. Heck, we dealt regularly with unidentified frying objects in the high school cafeteria. We never turned into or got eaten by BEMs.
Dogs are pack animals, which crave leadership and tight social structure. Cats are independent and solitary hunters. Neocons love dogs. People who aren't afraid of people who don't think just like they do love cats. As a rule. (There are always exceptions.)
Every state has its own requirements for qualifying for Medicaid. In Nebraska, for example, your income is judged against a master expenses list. Your actual rent is not allowed. If you are paying more than $385/month for your lodgings, only $385 is subtracted from your income to check your qualifications. In other words, you are SOL. One of the Omaha-area Medicaid reps confirmed for me recently that that figure has not been adjusted at all, for inflation or otherwise, since 1985. In 2005, I doubt that you could rent a single garage stall for $385/month or less, let alone an apartment/house. So it becomes virtually impossible, as a practical matter, to qualify for Medicaid. And yet Donald Trump can declare bankruptcy many, many times and he never seems to be living on less than $100,000.00 or more per month.
Just another shining example of my current maxim for life: Them what has, gets; the rest of us get screwed.
What with the federal gov't budget deficits, changes in tax laws to favor the rich, deregulation of securities markets and utilities, and the like, 90% of the wealth in this country is now concentrated in the hands of fewer than 9% of the population. This is the worst it has ever been, even worse than during the 1880s and 90s. I love history, but except for the chance to talk to Mark Twain, I never wanted to live in the Gilded Age!
A friend shrugs his shoulders and says philosophically, "Well, even Rome fell."
OK, but does it have to happen while we're around?
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