It's all about the Unions and the Minimum Wage

Well sort of. I recently finished reading Thomas Frank's book, What's the Matter with Kansas, thanks to a fellow liberal drinker. I finally came to the realization that the Democratic Party has to become more vocal in supporting labor, namely increasing union membership and laber union power. We also need to keep this all simple. The way conservatives have become the party of moral supremacy, without actually doing anything in the form of legislation. They do not allow the connection to be made between Big Business and the immorality we see on TV and in our general culture. These are the two main ideas I took from this book, the manner in which republican politicians grandstand about moral issues yet do almost nothing legislatively in response and how they actually incourage the immorality by allowing Big Business to run free and unchecked. In response, we need to campaign for an absurdly high minimum wage and unionization of all workers to ensure higher standards(also possibly higher taxes for companies with high % of outsourced labor and imported manufactured goods). While these issues will never see the light of day in the current Congress(they actually might never see the light of day in a Democratic Controlled congress, especially if the DLC is involved), these issues will allow people to at least make the choice between economic interests and moral issues. The Democratic party needs to be the party of the laborers in order to be relevant today. In a related story the popular blog Rubber Hose by upyernoz has finally linked to me!

Festivus for the restuvus

Actually found an article I enjoyed on CNN.com today. It was a story of a nativity scene accompanied by a festivus sign, both were posted on public sites. Freedom of expression. I think this would be a good idea to promote everyone's beliefs, if you see a nativity scene, the ten commandments, or any other such religious item on government/public property, it would be a good idea to put a festivus pole or other non-denominational symbol right next to it. Here is the article

An Off Topic South Park Thesis

Here is a great paper on my favorite show South Park. It highlights one of my favorite issues I have with the people who blame our problems on TV and Video Games. If your children are violent because of what they watch on television or do in a video game it is not the show or the games fault, it is the parents fault for not being a good parent and explaining the issues clearly to their children. Parents do not want to take fault for their failure to raise their children, thus they must blame someone else, the tv networks and video game producers. This is one big theme I find with the reasoning of our citizens and leaders. We never attack the root of problems, we always attack the symptoms, i.e. the drug war, drug violence occurs because of the market created by making drugs illegal, so if you legalize drugs you eliminate the root of the problem.

Now to what I was looking for on CNN education

The story I was looking for. The more our education system fails, the more we will rely on our military to dominate the world as opposed to relying on innovators. I guess the depressing thing is, we have pretty much always relied on our military to ensure our dominance in the world, since we became a hegemonic power. It would be encouraging if we could rely on our innovation and knowledge, and use our military to defend on our interests and not create our interests.

Some CNN props for my alma mater

Doing a search on cnn for education related news and I came across this story Those were the days.

Maria Full of Grace

This past weekend I was at my parents for chanukkah and we watched an amazing movie called Maria Full of Grace. It follows the travels of an eighteen year old girl in Columbia who becomes a drug mule. It is a great portrait of the illegal drug trade and one of the many symptons of our war on drugs is that poverty stricken people are forced to go to extreme measures in order to live and support their family. One thing that is always on my mind is the amount of problems that would be eliminated by legalizing drugs, while also the amount of jobs that would be created. It seems to be one of those touchy subjects that no one will ever go near, but I can since I am no one of consequence.

"Terrorist Lasers" said Dr. Evil

From the people who brought us such intelligence as "Iraq has the capability to make Nuclear Weapons" and "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction" But failed to realize that terrorists were learning to fly in our own flight schools and to realize that box cutters and other low-tech wonders could be used to turn our own planes into weapons of mass distruction. Comes the astounding new piece of intelligence that terrorists will be using "lasers" to bring down our planes now. It almost seems like our intelligence is picturing Dr. Evil when making these reports and not Osama Bin Laden. Also it seems that our intelligence or at least the current administration is infatuated with the terrorists targeting planes. They believe the terrorists to be as predictable as Dr. Evil as well. Let me go out on a limb here, as long as we continue to focus on the planes I am pretty sure that the terrorists will find some other way to get us. It will be somewhere where we should be protecting but neglect to protect, due to lack of money. Anyways I am done blathering about our stupid media and our stupid intelligence(oxymoron). Here is the story for all your reading enjoyment

When all else fails use fear

Comprehensive sex education=Homosexual education This is according to a recent article in the agape press. The article attacks California Congressman Henry Waxman's report on abstinence-only education. One would expect this attack from the religious community. My problem with the article is the final paragraph. By some convoluded logic they reach the conclusion that the movement to have comprehensive sex education is motivated by our desire to have homosexuality and same-sex marriage taught in schools. If we use their logic, either we teach only the benefits of not having sex, ignoring the fact that kids are still going to have sex or we will be teaching safe sex to homosexuals. Using their logic hurts my head. Here is the article, if i am reading this wrong please tell me

I return, if anyone actually reads this!

I have returned to my blog. I will continue to post political rants. I have also decided to expand to other topics, maybe sports and movies and TV. And whatever else. Not sure if anyone reads this page, but if you do I have returned to write again.