Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Thoughts On The Fort Hood Shooting

It would be extremely nice if journalists would bother using their degrees for something other than spouting more hate mongering bullshit at Muslims.

The New York Times seems to be the only news organization that has even bothered reporting some of the disturbing statistics of violent crimes committed by soldiers and former soldiers on the largest military base in the United States and in Killeen, Texas:

1. Staff Sgt. Gilberto Mota, 35, and his wife, Diana, 30, an Army specialist, had returned to Fort Hood from Iraq last year when he used his gun to kill her, and then took his own life, the authorities say
2. That same month, Staff Sgt. Justin Lee Garza, 28, under stress from two deployments, killed himself in a friend’s apartment outside Fort Hood
3. Reports of domestic abuse have grown by 75 percent since 2001. At the same time, violent crime in Killeen has risen 22 percent while declining 7 percent in towns of similar size in other parts of the country
4. Since 2003, there have been 76 suicides by personnel assigned to Fort Hood, with 10 this year, according to military officials
5. A crisis center on base is averaging 60 phone calls a week from soldiers and family members seeking various help for problems from suicide to anger management, with about the same volume of walk-ins and scheduled appointments

Source

While I realize that this country did not learn much from Vietnam, you would have thought the military's treatment of the mental disorders caused by the stress of combat would have improved beyond the token level that they are today. Unfortunately, raising a stink about religion is much easier than looking at violent crime statistics when they relate to soldiers.

It was also nice of the Times to not investigate rape as part of this piece. Way to educate your readership!

Monday, November 09, 2009

Random Thought

Naked people should not play with swords.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Send Me Your Money...

If you want financial security, being a "New Age" Guru is the way to go. All you really have to do is bastardize a few American Indian ceremonies, essentially urinating on a people's belief structure, and then you tell people that they too can be rich if they give you an assload of money.

You see, while this confidence game is only mildly effective for Christian televangelists, once you remove any mention of a dead Jew, all references to Hebraic, Aramaic, and Greek texts, sprinkle around a few "New Agey" words like harmony, peace, and light and pander your bullshit to Oprah's massive audience, the con-game becomes far more lucrative as your marks will have no ingrained resistance to the idea of purchasing enlightenment as they do to the idea of purchasing their way into heaven.

Oh and do not worry about offending the people whose belief system you are urinating on, they are too busy trying to survive third world poverty conditions to offer much in the way of resistance to your bullshit. However, if any American Indians do raise a fuss you can just call them "Negative" or "Un-enlightened" and your marks will continue to send you their money as you are obviously more enlightened than those savages.

Here comes another con hiding behind a collar
His only god is the almighty dollar
He aint no prophet, he aint no healer
He's just a two bit goddamn money stealer

Send me your money
Send it, you got to send it
Send me your money
You hear what I'm saying?
Send it, send it
Send me your money

Now how much you give is your own choice
But to me it's the difference between a Porsche and a Rolls Royce
I want you to make it hurt when you dig into your pocket
I want you to make it hurt!
We'll take cash, we'll take checks
We'll take credit cards, we'll take jewelry
We'll take your momma's dentures if they got gold in them

So whose gonna be the next king of the fakers
Whose gonna take the place of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker?
See my momma, she didn't raise no fool
Cause you can't put a price on a miracle
Amen

-Mike Muir (C) 1990
"Send Me Your Money" from the Suicidal Tendencies Album "Lights... Camera... Revolution"

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

A Second Opinion

The New England Journal of Medicine, you know, that nefarious communist periodical that dares to publish papers for peer review using such things as hard reproducible facts and statistics, had the nerve to publish the results of a survey on where Medical Practitioners stood in the health care argument in which the American Public is looking forward to once again getting the shaft from their elected officials:

Overall, a majority of physicians (62.9%) supported public and private options. Only 27.3% supported offering private options only. Respondents — across all demographic subgroups, specialties, practice locations, and practice types — showed majority support (>57.4%) for the inclusion of a public option. Primary care providers were the most likely to support a public option (65.2%); among the other specialty groups, the “other” physicians — those in fields that generally have less regular direct contact with patients, such as radiology, anesthesiology, and nuclear medicine — were the least likely to support a public option, though 57.4% did so. Physicians in every census region showed majority support for a public option, with percentages in favor ranging from 58.9% in the South to 69.7% in the Northeast. Practice owners were less likely than nonowners to support a public option (59.7% vs. 67.1%, P<0.001), but a majority still supported it. Finally, there was also majority support for a public option among AMA members (62.2%).

Source

However will Democracy survive with these Pinkos supporting universal health care? Oh, woe is us... wait what?

Isn't it time congress pulled their heads out of the insurance provider's asses and started working for their constituents and listen to the majority that want single payer, universal coverage?

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Why is there No Single Payer Option in the Baucus Bill?

Why is Senator Baucus unwilling to let a single payer option into his health care reform bill? Bill Moyers pointed out the reason why Baucus is shafting the American Public:

Take a close look at that woman sitting behind Montana Senator Max Baucus. He's the Democrat who's the Chairman of the Finance Committee. Liz Fowler is her name. And now get this. She used to work for WellPoint, the largest health insurer in the country. She was Vice President of Public Policy. And now she's working for the very committee with the most power to give her old company and the entire industry exactly what they want: higher profits, and no competition from alternative non-profit coverage that could lower costs and premiums.

I'm not making this up. Here's another little eye-opener. The woman who was Baucus' top health advisor before he hired Liz Fowler? Her name is Michelle Easton. Why did she leave the Committee? To go to work -- where else? -- at a firm representing the same company Liz Fowler worked for WellPoint. As a lobbyist.

[snip]

They can't get 60 votes. Not when the people who want a public alternative can't possibly scrape up the millions of dollars Baucus has received from the health sector during his political career.

Over the last two decades, the current members of the Senate Finance Committee - you're looking at them -- have collected nearly 50 million dollars from the health sector. A long-term investment that's now paying off like a busted slot machine.

Transcript, Full Show

Is this the change that we can believe in? Allowing the insurance industry to draft legislation that is supposed to help us while while only increasing their own profits?

Friday, October 02, 2009

Concise Statement to Capital Hill

Get off your lazy asses and give us single payer health care, you over paid and over insured jerks.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Why Aren't More Women Involved in Open Source?

A fairly simple question with an equally simple answer: Only a sociopath would want to work in an abusive atmosphere.

When a person in a position of leadership within the "community" tells a room full of males at a tech conference that an "EMACS virgin" is a woman who has never used EMACS and it is a sacred duty for the listeners to relieve them of their virginity, he is creating an abusive atmosphere.

When the multi-millionaire founder of the most popular repackaging of Debian insinuates at another tech conference that women can't possibly understand technical matters, he is creating an abusive atmosphere.

As this is the attitude espoused by the leaders of the "community" is there any wonder why women avoid contributing to open source projects? Until people within the "community" start holding these "leaders" and the other niggling assholes to task for their abusive behavior, the situation will not change.