I got home from church and lunch, and the news feeds tell me Joe Paterno has died. Such a sad thing, that he should pass with all this turmoil around him, from the realization that it's actually likely that an assistant coach of his was a true pervert to the board of Penn State offering him up as a scapegoat.
To the board: You don't get any points from me for having the "guts" to fire Joe Paterno. I am convinced that you did it in order to try to make a statement along the lines of "Look, we fired the great Joe Paterno, if we would do that, we MUST be the good guys." You are not good guys. You are knee-jerking jerks.
To Joe, if he were here to read this: Thank you, sir, for putting honor first as much as you humanly could over that long, long career. Thank you for not covering up that we are all human, and sometimes fail, and that the right answer to that is to get up and go again. Thank you for standing for values that most of the world think are too old fashioned to even consider.
To Joe's family: I hope and pray I speak the same feelings that the overwhelming majority of Americans feel. Joe Pa was a man among men, who reminded all of us, year after year, that living honorably was the same living today as it was a long time ago; for showing us that honor does not change with public appetites. We will miss him, and what he stood for, because it is extremely rare to find anyone who will stand as he did, especially in the public eye. We are sad for you, and I am pretty sure most of us would take some of your sorrow off your shoulders, if such a thing were possible. Please know that no one who understood the honor that Joe lived thinks that he hid anything.
To Joe's detractors: Believe what you wish, but based on years and years and years of demonstrated honor, I believe that Coach Paterno told the highest campus cop (the administrator that is in charge of the campus police). To believe otherwise is to believe that a man turned against a lifetime of decency, honesty, and honor. I know it is convenient for many of you to make that argument, because it helps you to break down the barriers that have existed since time immemorial to your desired behavior, but your convenience isn't a speck of dust on the globe of honor built up by the Coach. So shut up.
-Al
(a 56 year WVU fan, for what that's worth)
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Friday, January 20, 2012
Thank God It's Friday
Well, SOPA is done, at least in it's current form. It's done for the right reason, I think, but that's difficult to figure out for sure.
See, it's generally good thing when Congress reacts to the voice of the people in a real time sense. One primary question is whether the outcry was the voice of the people or the voice of a few of the people. The other primary question is whether this was one of those rare cases wherein leadership has to say "no" to those that leadership is responsible for, for the good of those they are responsible for.
Personally, I think the answer to the first question is "not likely" and to the second, "it wasn't." I'm not sure enough of the people even knew what SOPA really was to call it a bona fide "voice of the people" and that more especially, because I think most of what "the people" knew - and most of what the people who were protesting knew - was second hand, agendized, tailored information.
I've now read the document (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.3261:) and it occurs to me that it was a fair faith effort to protect intellectual property in the US. That's a Constitutional mandate, by the way, readers. How they were trying to do it was too much like giving someone a Sherman tank and telling them to hunt squirrels, and trusting them to not burn down the woods. So, it's good, I think, that it's off the radar in it's current form.
I am somewhat bothered, however, by much of the justification I've seen around the net about why it was a bad idea. Basically, several of the major players have said things (per news reports) that are essentially "you gotta just let this bad stuff happen." There's a fundamental problem with that, as anyone should be able to see without much argument or question.
Intellectual property piracy is wrong, no matter how you shake it. If any of you make a record, ok, a CD now, with you singing your songs, and someone buys one copy, and makes a gazillion copies and distributes them, by sale or by gift, that's stealing, plain and simple. No matter who does it, no matter where they do it, it's still stealing. The other forms of piracy are equally theft. Ignoring that because it's convenient to ignore it is merely a pointer to the most significant problem in our society: right and wrong mean nothing, but convenience means everything.
While it's good that SOPA in its current form has failed, it's willful neglegence to not mention the other issue that showed its head during the debate. I'll not hold my breath for anyone in power, or anyone I've seen making lots of noise on the net, to take up that banner.
Sad.
Al
See, it's generally good thing when Congress reacts to the voice of the people in a real time sense. One primary question is whether the outcry was the voice of the people or the voice of a few of the people. The other primary question is whether this was one of those rare cases wherein leadership has to say "no" to those that leadership is responsible for, for the good of those they are responsible for.
Personally, I think the answer to the first question is "not likely" and to the second, "it wasn't." I'm not sure enough of the people even knew what SOPA really was to call it a bona fide "voice of the people" and that more especially, because I think most of what "the people" knew - and most of what the people who were protesting knew - was second hand, agendized, tailored information.
I've now read the document (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.3261:) and it occurs to me that it was a fair faith effort to protect intellectual property in the US. That's a Constitutional mandate, by the way, readers. How they were trying to do it was too much like giving someone a Sherman tank and telling them to hunt squirrels, and trusting them to not burn down the woods. So, it's good, I think, that it's off the radar in it's current form.
I am somewhat bothered, however, by much of the justification I've seen around the net about why it was a bad idea. Basically, several of the major players have said things (per news reports) that are essentially "you gotta just let this bad stuff happen." There's a fundamental problem with that, as anyone should be able to see without much argument or question.
Intellectual property piracy is wrong, no matter how you shake it. If any of you make a record, ok, a CD now, with you singing your songs, and someone buys one copy, and makes a gazillion copies and distributes them, by sale or by gift, that's stealing, plain and simple. No matter who does it, no matter where they do it, it's still stealing. The other forms of piracy are equally theft. Ignoring that because it's convenient to ignore it is merely a pointer to the most significant problem in our society: right and wrong mean nothing, but convenience means everything.
While it's good that SOPA in its current form has failed, it's willful neglegence to not mention the other issue that showed its head during the debate. I'll not hold my breath for anyone in power, or anyone I've seen making lots of noise on the net, to take up that banner.
Sad.
Al
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
SOPA
An internet blackout in protest of SOPA (and it's partner in the Senate, I forget what it's called).
First, I neither support nor oppose SOPA. I have not read the bill, and I am not about to blithely believe that it contains what someone so desperately wants me to believe it contains. I have this thing about agendas and whole truth being mutually exclusive way too often. SOPA is supposed to protect intellectual property, the supporters of it are purported to claim (purported by news services). SOPA will enable the government to steal the very breath of life, that of free knowledge and the sanctity of free speech, from all of us, claim the opposing voices (way too many places on the net to make citing any source of any value). Some go on to claim that SOPA will do so, and others talk about how it enables and equips government to do so.
If the bill would indeed do what the opponents say it would do, then I'm all for stopping it. I don't like equipping a government, even mine (shoot, especially mine, in this day and age), to do something such that only the good will and good intents of the government (or whoever makes the decision for the govvie that day) stand between me and the abridging of a right. It's a principle I try to follow, as best I can. So far, so good. Where this issue appears to affect the inalienable right of free speech, I opposed the same efforts regarding another inalienable right, all the way back to 1968. Specifically, the Gun Control Act of 1968.
I find it interesting that the overwhelming bulk of people I encounter who oppose SOPA because it enables the government to encroach on an unalienable right even though the government might not do it now are in the same philosophical camp as those who spend a fair amount of time deriding those who oppose gun control for making exactly the same argument about legislation that enables the government to encroach on another unalienable right.
Tends to make me think that such a philosophical camp cares little about rights, and much about swimming in Lake Me.
Al
First, I neither support nor oppose SOPA. I have not read the bill, and I am not about to blithely believe that it contains what someone so desperately wants me to believe it contains. I have this thing about agendas and whole truth being mutually exclusive way too often. SOPA is supposed to protect intellectual property, the supporters of it are purported to claim (purported by news services). SOPA will enable the government to steal the very breath of life, that of free knowledge and the sanctity of free speech, from all of us, claim the opposing voices (way too many places on the net to make citing any source of any value). Some go on to claim that SOPA will do so, and others talk about how it enables and equips government to do so.
If the bill would indeed do what the opponents say it would do, then I'm all for stopping it. I don't like equipping a government, even mine (shoot, especially mine, in this day and age), to do something such that only the good will and good intents of the government (or whoever makes the decision for the govvie that day) stand between me and the abridging of a right. It's a principle I try to follow, as best I can. So far, so good. Where this issue appears to affect the inalienable right of free speech, I opposed the same efforts regarding another inalienable right, all the way back to 1968. Specifically, the Gun Control Act of 1968.
I find it interesting that the overwhelming bulk of people I encounter who oppose SOPA because it enables the government to encroach on an unalienable right even though the government might not do it now are in the same philosophical camp as those who spend a fair amount of time deriding those who oppose gun control for making exactly the same argument about legislation that enables the government to encroach on another unalienable right.
Tends to make me think that such a philosophical camp cares little about rights, and much about swimming in Lake Me.
Al
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
I See In The News
I see in the news that the Wisconsin Democratic Party has gathered enough signatures to call for a recall election of Governor Walker. In the article I read, the author, in an effort that can only be responsibly understood as an attempt to bolster the Democratic Party effort, made much of the fact that a whole lot more signatures were gathered than were needed. Noted. They'd better do that. If they need (for instance) 537,359 and they get just that, then disallowing even one of those - and you know somebody signed "Mickey Mouse" - makes the petition invalid. According to the article, Gov Davis (Cal) got 18% disallowed when he was challenged. Ergo, a bunch more is merely good political management, not an indicator of any sort of public cohesion.
I expect they will be successful. Walker took on the unions and won. That won't be popular. It will be particularly unpopular during these lean times, when a generation that has been trained that government is Daddy and God both will look to someone to fix it for them. The sad part is that most of the time, union workers merely trade control centers. They make the argument that the company will not take good care of them, so they go find a sugar daddy that will. Enter the union. In their paradigm, either the union owns them or the company owns them. What's sad is that they don't wish for an option to not be owned.
A Wisconsin resident remarked to me during the union vs state government fight that Walker was just put up there by the Republican Party to be a union buster. Setting aside, for now, the point that a party very likely did in fact put him in office, as opposed to the people insisting on being independent enough to have done it themselves, it's as reasonable a bet that he is just that as that he is not that. Who knows? It's simply a sad drift away from common sense (see the below blog) that allows the discussion of whether or not a government can manage employees or whether they have to ask the union's permission to twist into whether or not he was sent up there to be a union buster. It's a dodge, and it was well employed by the Democratic Party. The term "union buster" is an undeniable perjorative to most Americans, and the Party is not above doing whatever is necessary to gain power.
What will be most interesting to watch will be the response of the professional pundits: Limbaugh, Maddow, et al. That is, it will be interesting to see if any of them have any sort of new line of bull to throw at the situation, or whether they will simply recycle some version of "the (pick one) Party is inherently stupid and my Party is inherently right."
Al
I expect they will be successful. Walker took on the unions and won. That won't be popular. It will be particularly unpopular during these lean times, when a generation that has been trained that government is Daddy and God both will look to someone to fix it for them. The sad part is that most of the time, union workers merely trade control centers. They make the argument that the company will not take good care of them, so they go find a sugar daddy that will. Enter the union. In their paradigm, either the union owns them or the company owns them. What's sad is that they don't wish for an option to not be owned.
A Wisconsin resident remarked to me during the union vs state government fight that Walker was just put up there by the Republican Party to be a union buster. Setting aside, for now, the point that a party very likely did in fact put him in office, as opposed to the people insisting on being independent enough to have done it themselves, it's as reasonable a bet that he is just that as that he is not that. Who knows? It's simply a sad drift away from common sense (see the below blog) that allows the discussion of whether or not a government can manage employees or whether they have to ask the union's permission to twist into whether or not he was sent up there to be a union buster. It's a dodge, and it was well employed by the Democratic Party. The term "union buster" is an undeniable perjorative to most Americans, and the Party is not above doing whatever is necessary to gain power.
What will be most interesting to watch will be the response of the professional pundits: Limbaugh, Maddow, et al. That is, it will be interesting to see if any of them have any sort of new line of bull to throw at the situation, or whether they will simply recycle some version of "the (pick one) Party is inherently stupid and my Party is inherently right."
Al
Let's Try This Again
When I started this blog, I was ready to say what I needed to say, but hadn't bothered to say on so many political message boards. On all the conservative message boards I could find or knew or, liberals were held to be the stupid spawn of Satan on an anti-American mission. This makes reasoned discussion of principles impossible. Either it's an echo chamber, or the person who thinks different is tarred, feathered, laughed at, and ridden off the board on a rail.
Then, on the liberal message boards, all conservative people are Republican (they are treated as synonymous) and therefore are the spawn of Satan. No, wait, liberals would never believe there is a Satan, that would require having Biblical beliefs, and I have yet to run across anyone who self-identifies as a liberal who does not either discount the Bible out of hand or water it down until it has no influence. It's more correct, therefore, to say that conservative thinking people are treated as though they were the spawn of the Satan that does not exist and is as much a fable as God is believed to be, but which Satan can be conjured up long enough to condemn someone who is just evil, evil, evil.
Wait, "evil" also presumes the existence of a right and wrong outside human determination, and that's way too close to Bible for them, too, but I think you get the idea.
Oh, and for the record, the tirade against the liberals was so much longer because they make less sense in their opposition to conservatives. For the conservative boards it's simple: you're liberal, you're gone, end of discussion (of discussion with the liberal person and of all other discussion of value). Doesn't take much to say that. Liberals, being creatures of anti-standards - and as a result, near-zero consistency - require much more explanation.
There, that part's done.
We are headed for a bad day, folks. There have always been extreme partisans, at least in the last 56 years that I've been alive. However, there was a level of common sense that prevailed. The extremists had a voice, the huge common sense majority had a laugh, and we all went forward; sometimes in a liberal direction, sometimes in a conservative direction, and sometimes in a direction between them.
Now, not so much. Strike that. Now, basically not at all. Now, common sense is not only frowned upon, common sense is laughed at, and worse, twisted around and applied with a darning needle, as though it only applied to one tiny little convenient part of an argument.
I have three grandchildren now. I fear for them. If they are not liberal, I fear they will be marked as outcasts by society at large. Yes, that sounds pretty "out there" but it's remarkably possible. After all, all of white society marked all the blacks in the south for nearly a hundred years, and for the same reason, because black people showed them something about themselves that they did not want to see. The longer this country goes in the direction of laughing off societal standards and of substituting law for society's self determination, the more and more liberal this society will become, and it's likely to be the brand of liberal we see everywhere today, because both situations are based on each individual doing whatever they want to do, with a premium placed on being the first one to do something that the previous generation would consider abnormal. Rather than pushing ourselves from within to get better, the liberal mindset would push/enable us by the government to get weirder, then to claim that is also better.
Another sad day.
I've rambled, I know, and much probably needs expanding and explaining. I'll be back to do that.
Al
Then, on the liberal message boards, all conservative people are Republican (they are treated as synonymous) and therefore are the spawn of Satan. No, wait, liberals would never believe there is a Satan, that would require having Biblical beliefs, and I have yet to run across anyone who self-identifies as a liberal who does not either discount the Bible out of hand or water it down until it has no influence. It's more correct, therefore, to say that conservative thinking people are treated as though they were the spawn of the Satan that does not exist and is as much a fable as God is believed to be, but which Satan can be conjured up long enough to condemn someone who is just evil, evil, evil.
Wait, "evil" also presumes the existence of a right and wrong outside human determination, and that's way too close to Bible for them, too, but I think you get the idea.
Oh, and for the record, the tirade against the liberals was so much longer because they make less sense in their opposition to conservatives. For the conservative boards it's simple: you're liberal, you're gone, end of discussion (of discussion with the liberal person and of all other discussion of value). Doesn't take much to say that. Liberals, being creatures of anti-standards - and as a result, near-zero consistency - require much more explanation.
There, that part's done.
We are headed for a bad day, folks. There have always been extreme partisans, at least in the last 56 years that I've been alive. However, there was a level of common sense that prevailed. The extremists had a voice, the huge common sense majority had a laugh, and we all went forward; sometimes in a liberal direction, sometimes in a conservative direction, and sometimes in a direction between them.
Now, not so much. Strike that. Now, basically not at all. Now, common sense is not only frowned upon, common sense is laughed at, and worse, twisted around and applied with a darning needle, as though it only applied to one tiny little convenient part of an argument.
I have three grandchildren now. I fear for them. If they are not liberal, I fear they will be marked as outcasts by society at large. Yes, that sounds pretty "out there" but it's remarkably possible. After all, all of white society marked all the blacks in the south for nearly a hundred years, and for the same reason, because black people showed them something about themselves that they did not want to see. The longer this country goes in the direction of laughing off societal standards and of substituting law for society's self determination, the more and more liberal this society will become, and it's likely to be the brand of liberal we see everywhere today, because both situations are based on each individual doing whatever they want to do, with a premium placed on being the first one to do something that the previous generation would consider abnormal. Rather than pushing ourselves from within to get better, the liberal mindset would push/enable us by the government to get weirder, then to claim that is also better.
Another sad day.
I've rambled, I know, and much probably needs expanding and explaining. I'll be back to do that.
Al
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