FIREBLIND.COM

I listen to talk radio a lot. Not as much as the old guy with the big mustache down the street who swears NASA talks to him on his ham radio, but a fair amount of my drive-time is spent listening to tinny AM stations. One of the constant themes is global warming, and on the more conservative stations, how stupid the idea of global warming is.

Granted, the incredibly good-looking jury in my head is still out on whether climate change is caused as much by us (humankind) as we think it is, but I’m very open to the idea. After all, the research for GW is being conducted by some of the most brilliant minds to ever walk the earth using the best technology ever seen. At the very least, I can say that there is incredibly strong intellectual evidence to find a correlation between the stuff we do and climate change.

You would never know this, however, by listening to conservative talk radio. The way these guys talk, you would think GW research is being conducted by blind, semi-retarded anarchist high school students who would like nothing better than to bring down the “Amerikan” economy. (See what I did there? I spelled “America” with a “k”. Take that, Big Business!)

It’s as if Global Warming has driven over to your parent’s house in it’s 1969 Corvette with its sexy hairy chest, climbed in through the second-story window using the ivy on the front porch, and is now having its way with your smokin’ hot and fully-developed, though ignorant and gullible 16-year-old sister. Hey, at least he’s assistant manager at the KFC.

In any event, all i really wanted to say is this: if the scientists are wrong, so what? We’ll have reduced pollution, decreased the pressure on natural resources, and developed much more efficient and long-term energy sources. We’ll make more jobs in the industries that develop the new technologies to replace the jobs lost in the old industries. Maybe I’ll even eventually get my stupid flying car.

On the other hand, if they’re right, and we don’t do this stuff, your sister’s not the only one who’s gonna get screwed. (Editor’s note: Zing!)

I live for arguments over illegal immigration. That, and reruns of Strawberry Shortcake. I’ve already stated elsewhere that illegal immigration is not a simple issue, but it’s worth mentioning again that the debate has been hijacked by nutjobs on both sides of the political spectrum.

In any event, I try and keep an open mind. My basic philosophy is that some immigration is good, too much is bad, and that most people migrate because they want to improve the lives of themselves and those they love. That’s admirable. But, at the same time, you can’t overwhelm the people who are already in the place with massive amounts of poor people. That’s bad for everyone.

Anyways, one of the stronger points against illegal immigration that I hadn’t heard much about until recently is the identity theft part. If employers are verifying that Juan Q. Public has a valid social security number, that means that he’s stolen it from a legal citizen. Nevermind that he’s a good guy everywhere else: he’s just screwed you and your credit history if you’re the victim.

Anyways, I mention this because it seems to get a lot more press now. Go ahead and support all immigrants if you wish, but you at least need to be fair to those who are being hurt as a part of the bigger phenomenon.

There’s a pretty interesting article in a recent issue of Esquire by a guy named Chuck Klosterman. It’s called You Say You Want a Revolution.

The basic premise is that revolution is impossible in the US. That’s not to say that the President and other leaders couldn’t be killed or jailed, or that our houses of power couldn’t be stormed and taken hold of. Rather, even if those things happened, no one would know what to do about it.

So often in revolutions, someone gets shot at, and eventually someone takes control of the government until someone shoots at someone else. Klosterman notes, quite humorously, that there’s no real equivalent here: who, after all, are you going to shoot at? The police? They’re probably your neighbor. The military? Unless you live near a base, you never see military personnel, and even then, why would you shoot at the nice kids with the shaved heads?

No, more than likely, people will continue to update their blogs and talk angrily about how much politicians suck. (Kind of like what I do.)

I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, actually. Since my younger, more idealistic days I’ve been pondering how a watershed change in government could happen, and I haven’t really figured it out despite literally minutes of trying. Unless some crazed madman storms the white house and threatens the country with nuclear destruction, I don’t think anyone would listen to him. The Secret Service would storm the building and kill him. Or, Congress could pass emergency legislation to handle the situation. Or, should the feds get entirely wiped out, we still have strong and well organized state governments. In short, wholesale revolution in these here United States really is impossible, no matter what your slightly disheveled anarchist friend says.

And that’s too bad. Even if we overthrew the government in favor of one that’s more or less like the current one, at least future governments might think twice about screwing with their citizenry.

(By the way: Raise the Fist, the site in the above link, is worth reading even if you don’t agree with most of what they say. You’ll learn a lot if nothing else.)

All the above notwithstanding, the closest and most effective thing we could get to revolution might be having a state or states secede from the Union. At least then those who secede could form a new government of their own making.

I’m not necessarily advocating revolution, but it would be a nice thing to have more responsibility charged to our elected leaders.

Or, perhaps we could pass legislation that lets us bump off one federal leader per year after a national election. The a-hole who writes the most pork-laden spending package or who kills the most [insert your favorite downtrodden group here] could be lined up on national television and put down in the interests of the Union. That would certainly be a lot easier than a messy secession, don’t you think?

Well, maybe it’s not awesome, but I do think it’s something we should start talking about in these here U Ses of A. How many people should be allowed to exist in one geographical area before we feel that we’ve overtaxed the resources available to us? At some point, we’re going to run out of oil, and then we’re all screwed. Is it really that terrible to suggest that there might be an ideal family size for our society, and having more children beyond that number is “detrimental” to the well-being of society? The more people that exist in a limited area, generally speaking, the higher the poverty rate. The higher the population and poverty rate, the more dangerous life is for everyone (crime goes up, disease goes up, traffic fatalities go up, etc.). If oil crashes, won’t this be magnified?

Last time I checked, our brilliant leaders in Washington weren’t providing much leadership in the way way of alternative fuels and nutritional improvement for society. According to its mayor, New York is going to be an utter crap hole in a few years, and other parts of the country already are or are getting there (have you ever been to Los Angeles or New Orleans?). Look at India, China, and many of the Middle Eastern countries. They have huge populations, the majority of which are probably under 30. That’s going to be a major problem in a few decades. Literally huge: unemployment, fires, revolution, anal rape, permanent rush hour, and so on.

If we were to implement population control, it might stall an increasingly decreasing quality of life in the US. And then hopefully, science will catch up with the socio-economic situation and we’ll all be better off, Jetsons-style: flying cars, houses in the sky, 7-course nutrition pills, and sexy robots in maid uniforms.

I know, I know: people will freak out if we ever tried to do something like this. But really, why does someone need to have 11 kids? It makes no sense in today’s day and age. Three of your kids are not going to die from skurvy, indians, or indian pirates with skurvy, so you don’t need to replace ‘em when they die. I swear to Bob though: if your kid dies fording a GD river on the way to Oregon, you are more than welcome to have another kid. Until then, keep your junk in your pants after kid number 2.

Your much more comfortable, lower-tax, pirate-free, oil-guzzling old age will thank you for it.

So there was a protest at UCLA calling for reform of the UC system’s affirmative action policy. As a fairly white skinned kid, affirmative action has always been anathema to me. That, and my Mexican grandparents were able to thrive in a foreign land after they put their sweat and blood into making a better life for themselves and their kids. The second one has always given me great pride, and has always precluded me from sympathizing with AA proponents and beneficiaries.

I still feel that AA is as discriminatory as what it’s trying to help, but there is a darn good argument to support the idea that grades are not the full measure of how a student will do in college. It sucks if you’re a disadvantaged white or Asian kid who gets cut from the line because an AA spot was given to another minority student, but so too does it suck to be a poor black kid who did his damnedest to persevere–and will continue to do this in college–who gets bumped by a rich white kid who had every advantage provided to him.

I’ll talk more about it later, but the whole idea of “diversity” is crap. Universities should not have an obligation to have a genetic makeup resembling that of the community at large. That’s just stupid. The point of college, after all, is to homogenize students along academic lines so that they are able to assimilate more easily into the work force. That is, the point of college is to reduce diversity amongst the student body and the community through English and uniform scientific and artistic training. Don’t call genetic pooling diversity, call it genetic pooling. Diversity would be teaching an advanced calculus class in Tagalog and requiring the students to learn it before starting. That’s diversification.

What universities should do is try and give everyone whom applies a level playing field on which to apply. That’s what AA tries to do, and that’s admirable. But to give primary consideration to the pigmentation of one’s skin as a reason for special consideration is inherently unfair to many others. If a black student has done less well in school than another student, the reason for this might be because he grew up in a poor neighborhood with bad schools. But that’s the same for a poor white or Asian kid. And what if an AA black student bumped a Mexican student who experienced worse social or economic discrimination? Etc….

I personally haven’t read prop 209, so I can’t speak to much of it. But, if it merely exists to prevent admission considerations based on race or ethnicity, I’m all for it. If an AA consideration needs to be made, screen applicants based on income. Chances are, this will result in a higher number of minority students getting special consideration since they are the ones most likely to come from a lower socio-economic past. At the same time, it might help some disadvantaged white and Asian kids get the consideration they deserve.

By no means, however, should university policies be amended simply to get people who look different from the majority into schools simply because they look different. Life is a competition, and so is admittance into a college which has limited resources and space. If a particular community decides that it’s not in its interest to promote the well-being of its youth, other communities shouldn’t be penalized for the sins of the first. If, on the other hand, that community really has suffered from past transgressions against it despite its best efforts to stand up, financial resources and history will bear out the special worthiness of a student without ever having to consider the color of his or her skin.

So Tennie Pierce is being beaten up in the news over his 2.7 million dollar settlement with the city of Los Angeles. Good. His lawsuit is ridiculous, and the idiots on the LA city council have allowed him to set what will become an onerous precedent in future lawsuits.

Even if the dog food incident was racially motivated, 2.7 mil is an awful lot of compensation. LA has one of the worst school systems in the country, a horrible infrastructure, and in general just all around sucks. That money could have been a lot better spent in those endeavors than on payment to one hardly-abused man. Think what that money would have done for multitudes of poor black LA children who face a far harsher legacy of past racial discrimination than Pierce does.

In any event, I just wanted to link to photos published by the John and Ken show. The photos may be completely irrelevant to the facts of this particular case. Nevertheless, they illustrate the myopic nature of the decision by the council to award the money. At the very least, these should have been considered.

Put aging, incompetent managers in charge of the most important problems facing society and what do you get?

This gem of a clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lYiDo0DjSk

You should have seen this clip by now. If not, you should really think about giving up the Internet. I’m just trotting it out again because I love it so much.

While Internet “tubes” are the primary subject of the video, you do need to ask yourself: seriously, what’s wrong with Internet gambling? If the feds want to keep people from feeding gambling addictions through Internet anonymity, they should probably consider banning credit cards at the same time.

At least gambling is up front about stealing your money. Have you actually ever read a credit card’s terms and conditions? I’m surprised they don’t just bust your kneecaps open….

Fortunately, it looks like senile Senator Stevens won’t be getting his tubes unclogged anytime soon.

I’m not sure why everyone is having such a hard time with illegal immigration. Here’s what you should be considering when thinking about this:

1. Too many people moving into a confined geographic space in a limited amount of time will decrease the general welfare for those already there.
2. If you need the labor that cheap migrants offer, don’t pretend that you don’t.
3. Don’t get behind unfettered immigration simply because the people coming over speak the same language as you or look like you. Point 1 still applies. Your life can still be made worse if there are too many people on the freeways, too many people draining public resources, and so on.
4. People migrate. You or someone you know migrated to where you are today. Don’t give me this crap about “we were here first”. Someone or something has always invariably been here before you. You were just able to take it from them in some way. That goes for white Europeans taking land from Indians or Mexicans, white Europeans taking land from other white Europeans, Aztecs taking land from other Mexican tribes, original tribes taking land from animals, etc. Someone takes something from someone else. Simple as that.

I’m third-generation Mexican on one side and like fourth-generation European on the other. You’re all in the same boat one way or the other. Realize that you can’t let everyone in that wants to be, but neither should you keep out all the ones your racist ass wants to. In short, figure out a reasonable number of legal immigrants to allow in based on economic needs and social well being. Stop the rest.

It’s 10:06 pm and CNN is saying that the Democrats are set to take over the House. No big deal to me as an independent. That said, what I find interesting is that the Dems will find themselves in the awkward position having to be somewhat more Republican than the Republicans on certain matters.

Two points stick out: first, there will be strong pressure to get the deficit and spending under control. While Republicans haven’t been strong on this historically, it’s the Democrats who are most often characterized as being the spenders.

Second, if they’re going to survive, the Dems will have to be strong on Iraq and the terrorism bogey man. This may not mean supporting the war forever, but I think all Americans want us to do what’s “right” in Iraq, and it’s going to require a strong policy if the Democrats want any shot at the Presidency. It won’t be enough to just oppose Bush. Americans want a plan that will work out best for everyone.

I’m kind of nervous about what this means for immigration reform, but on the whole I think the change will probably be good for the nation. Sure, we’ll still take it up the rear, but maybe we’ll get some lube this time.