Xeno's Paradox: history

Sunday, June 26, 2016

Weapons-Grade Feels (Theory of Persistence Hunting)

I want first to begin with a disclaimer for those among us who are incapable of entertaining any discussion without believing that the act of discussing a behavior entails support for that behavior: it does not. While I am attempting to explain, and shed light on, some human behavior patterns here, that doesn't constitute support for those behaviors. I believe that in order to control an instinctive behavior, one must first accept that the behavior exists; without that, one is left woefully ill equipped to make meaningful change.

I'm going to engage here in somewhat lengthy speculation.

I know, I never do that.

But what I'm going to do is take an established theory - persistence predation - and expand on it, in an attempt to explain some current human social constructs of whose existence we may not even be aware.

So, in order to do that, I must begin by explaining the theory of persistence predation.

First, let's abolish for good the idea that humans aren't a predatory species. It has nothing to do with your teeth; the definitive sign that you are a predator is literally looking you right in the face every time you look into a mirror: only predators, in our biosphere, have binocular forward-oriented vision.

This is to provide depth perception, something not nearly as useful for prey animals; prey animals need peripheral vision far more than they need accurate depth perception, so virtually all terrestrial prey species have eyes facing out to the sides, so as to provide the greatest possible sweep for danger. (The depth perception is so that when we leap at our prey, you see, we tend not to miss.)

The reason we got to the top of the food chain - and since we're NOT on the endangered species list, but most of this planet's large predators other than humans ARE, that's clearly the case - is because we developed evolutionary advantages allowing us to use a specific method of hunting no other species can use as effectively.

I say "as effectively," because there are a few other species that use a lesser version of one form of our primary hunting strategy; some wolves, hyenas, there's this one spider, but none of them are as good at it as we are, and for specific evolutionary reasons.

First, humans perspire. This gives us more efficient thermoregulation than most other species, allowing us to cool off, and survive heat, more easily than many animal species, which have to pant in order to cool off.

Second, we have little body hair; this gives us a more effective surface for sweat to evaporate from, thus increasing its cooling effects.

Third, we walk - and run - upright, in a particular way. Specifically, we run in such a way that our breathing isn't regulated, or tied to, our stride.

What that means is that while we may not be as fast over short distances as any given animal - hell, an alligator can move 40 miles an hour when it's pissed off - we can keep up our pace longer than virtually any other terrestrial animal.

Which leads me to persistence predation, and how humans learned to weaponize emotion.

See, we don't have big fangs, or claws, or poison, or built-in projectile weapons; we can't change our skin color at will for camouflage, we can't generate electricity from our skin - all things other species can do - but we're scary nonetheless. Not because of size, or strength, or speed, but because we're creepy.

Imagine yourself as a woolly mammoth. You're huge, you're on top of the world, you're the rock star of rock stars; you've fought off tigers that have attacked you, and while you have some scars, you are still standing.

One day, you notice that near your herd - not too close, just not far enough away for comfort - there's this little biped.

It's staring at you.

It's not making threatening moves, it's not loud, it's just watching you.

The kind of gaze you can feel. It's like a weight between your shoulders, that gaze, and no matter how you try to ignore it, that weight just grows the longer that little biped stares at you.

So, you trumpet to your herd; you take the lead, and you move away. Moving around at midday is hot work; soon enough, you've gone about as far as you want to go; you're panting, your feet hurt, and it's time for a drink and a rest in the shade.

And as you look around, you see that little biped again.

It's staring at you.

You try to ignore it, drink some water, eat some grass; there's some really nice clover over there, but it doesn't taste right, because the whole time you're trying to relax, there's that little monkey, staring at you.

Edging a little closer every time you turn your back on it.

So you trumpet again, and your herd moves with you; now complaining a little, because they, too, are tired and hot and hungry.

Finally, there's another good spot; you settle down, and look around.

There's the little monkey again.

Staring.

This time, you're not going to settle for it, and you charge, trumpeting furiously.

It scampers away, and you settle back down, satisfied that you've scared it away.

Then you look up from your meal, and it's there again.

By now; you're tired, angry, confused, and afraid. This is not what predators do; they jump right on you, and bite and claw; this thing is tiny, it's no threat to you, but it's also not scared of you.

Which means it knows something you don't.

Which means maybe you should be afraid of it.

So you move away.

And it follows you.

Over.

And over.

Each time you try to stop, there it is.

Each time you try to rest, there it is.

Each time you try to cool off, there it is, and each time you get a little more afraid.

Soon enough, you panic, and try to run.

Maybe you overheat and collapse; you can't pant and run at the same time.

Maybe you sprain an ankle.

Maybe you just trip and fall down.

But soon enough, you're immobilized.

And that's when the spears come out.

We have this romanticized vision of cavemen hunting mammoths with thrown spears that's ultimately completely silly. Mammoths have thick skin, and a fat layer, and are generally huge. How is a human arm going to impart enough force to a spear to throw it through elephant hide?

It's not, that's how. But it can sure impart enough force to drive it in when your feet are braced and you're shoving it into a downed elephant.

Or a predator.

Like, say, a lion.

Or a cheetah.

You may at this point be thinking I'm nuts; after all, a cheetah is way, way faster than you or I.

I'd like to introduce you to a small group of Kenyans, whose domesticated goats were being menaced by a pair of cheetahs; they chased the cheetahs down on foot, captured them alive, using just some rope, and turned them in to the government.

In 2013.

Humans can run down antelopes; cheetahs; mammoths; it doesn't matter.

Because we're creepy.

Now, this behavior in humans took two forms; pursuit persistence predation, which is what I just described, and manipulative persistence predation, in which we lull animals into a false sense of security using bait, stillness, and kindness, to induce trust in the animal, at which point we either kill the animal, or domesticate it. There are animals who use one or the other of these tactics to some degree. There are literally none which use both, aside from humans.

Here's where I'm going to depart from the established theory and strike out on my own.

The evidence is in; humans are the primary evolutionary example of pursuit persistence predation.

But there's more to it than simply running.

Humans are the only species that ever evolved to intentionally manipulate the emotions of others as a hunting strategy.

Fear.

Kindness.

Trust.

Anger.

Humans provoke animals intentionally into displays of violence that leave the animals too exhausted to defend themselves.

Humans use trust as a weapon.

We use anger as a weapon.

We use fear as a weapon.

We use love as a weapon.

Only humans directly weaponize emotion.

And here is where we come to human social structures: even though we no longer, by and large, have to chase down antelopes to have dinner, we still have the instincts that lead to that behavior.

So we've turned it on each other, instead.

As an example, look at the phenomenon of catcalling.

A woman walks down a sidewalk. A man calls out to her. Maybe it's lewd, maybe simply unwanted, but for whatever reason, he persists.

What is he shooting for? There's no context in which this is a valid mating strategy.

Literally zero times in ever, has a woman turned around, tackled him to the ground, mated with him, and proceeded to get married.

But it is a valid strategy for predation.

It's scary. It unsettles her emotions - he's looking for her to react, watching to see how much it disturbs her.

If it's a strong enough reaction - regardless of what that reaction is - it's a sign that she perceives herself to be in danger, and thus her emotions are upset; she is, for the purposes of this strategy, a valid target.

His level of aggression goes up.

He tries to disturb her more, maybe resorting to outright threats.

As she becomes more afraid, his level of aggression goes up.

Because this isn't a behavior based in mating. Guys, reading this, you may think it is, but it's not. If you do this, you are engaging in a predatory behavior; one prompted by instincts that end with the death of your target, it is effective, it is menacing - it is an attack.

Let me be clear about that.

This is a use of emotion as a direct attack on another human being.

That's not the only one.

Humans use emotional manipulation on each other all the time; catcalling, gaslighting, guilt-tripping, threats, intimidation, emotional blackmail; they're all behaviors intended to manipulate and control the emotions of others, for predatory reasons.

Those instinct packages are a tricky bunch, particularly since, as a human, you aren't necessarily aware that these behaviors come from the same source.

I'll throw out another one; "the friend zone."

The friend zone isn't a thing, guys.

If you're proclaiming to the world that some woman "friendzoned" you, you're really saying that you tried to use the appearance of friendship to get in her pants, and it didn't work.

So, emotional manipulation.

"What do you mean 'good night,' I bought you dinner, now you owe me....."

Nope. Emotional manipulation as a form of predation.

Women do it just as often, although their predation is a bit more subtle; women tend to manipulate with the goal of securing sustenance for their offspring, instead of as a means of creating offspring, although that does happen as well.

"If you break up with me, I'll kill myself!"

Emotional manipulation.

"That's not really what happened, you're just trying to rewrite history to sound like you're right!"

Emotional manipulation.

We're - in most cases - not out to actually eat each other.

But we practice emotional manipulation as a predatory behavior daily, on everyone around us, mostly because we're not aware that that's what we're doing.

So if you didn't know, now you know.

As a species, we're only able to deal honestly with each other - something other animal species do automatically - by stepping outside our instincts. We're designed for emotional dishonesty; we're designed to use emotions as our weapon, instead of teeth, claws, speed, or poison, and we use it on each other - and it is just as deadly to us as to that fictitious mammoth.

Or the utterly real antelope.

We talk a lot about how the human race can improve itself.

One thing we could do as a first step is to recognize our primary hunting strategy for what it is; accept our nature as predators, accept that that is, and always will be, part of our genetic legacy, because without that recognition, we can't address the issue directly or effectively, and never will.

We can never stop hunting each other while we continue to believe we're supposed to be herbivores.

Thursday, October 02, 2014

[+/-]

So, Upgrading From "That's Interesting" To "Holy Shit, CDC's Making Excuses Already?"

Saturday, September 26, 2009

[+/-]

The True Villain Of The Piece, And Why Our Government Is REALLY Fragmenting

Many years ago - within living memory for the middle-aged folks here, but not so for the younger readers, there was this guy, Lee Iacocca.

Not what you expected me to say, was it?

Don't worry, I promise this will make sense. (Eventually.)

When Lee Iacocca was fired from the Ford Motor Company, he was aggressively courted by Chrysler, which was at that time considered to be on its last legs, both financially and otherwise; it was a disaster.

Don't worry, I'm not going to talk about bailouts. (I know some of you were thinking of this.)

The real worm in the apple is something else.

There were two steps to Iacocca's revival of Chrysler. First, he got money - bailouts, if you will - from the government. (Really, he convinced the government to guarantee a series of huge loans on Chrysler's behalf; in fact THIS aspect, while wrong, worked, because Chrysler was eventually able to pay back the loans, and thus the government's actual expenditure of funds was nothing.)

The second was seemingly more innocuous, but in fact more dangerous by far, and it has gutted our country.

What Iacocca did was institute a promotion philosophy for management called "up or out."

What it meant was that management began undergoing periodic performance reviews... and if they went more than a certain number of reviews without proving themselves worthy of promotion, they were fired. Simple as that.

At Chrysler, it worked, at least in the short term. Chrysler's management at that time was heavily larded with do-nothings and incompetents, and when they failed to merit promotion, they were gone. Within a few years, Chrysler's management team was lean and hungry once again, and the company was saved.

Everyone thought Iacocca was a great guy.

The problem was - and this didn't become evident for years - that while an individual may be brilliant at their current job, that doesn't imply that they can do the job directly above them. They were forced to accept promotions, repeatedly, or lose their jobs - and eventually they rose to a job they simply couldn't do.

And then they left.

And Chrysler started hemorrhaging their best, brightest people, thanks to the Peter Principle.

...Which says that people are eventually promoted to their level of incompetence; they move up until they reach a job they can't do well enough to merit further promotion.

At Chrysler, that meant that a brilliant automotive engineer would get promoted to a team lead; then an engineering manager; then a department lead... And eventually, he or she would reach a point where they would get fired... and the real effect was that Chrysler had lost a brilliant automotive engineer.

But this wasn't immediately apparent. At first blush, it looked great; cutting away the deadwood, those lazy fat cats who used their corner offices only for purposes of sitting in, resulted in a management team that was highly motivated, dedicated, and had their nose to the grindstone.

...And as Chrysler's fortunes rose, the government sat up and took notice.

And borrowed Iacocca's idea.

First instituted in the military, the officer corps became a proving ground for this philosophy; officers failing to make the promotion list after a certain number of mandatory promotion boards were quietly let go.

...Regardless of their expertise in their current position.

This is complicated by the fact that the higher you rise in the ranks, the fewer jobs there are above you; competition became fierce indeed, and by the mid-Eighties, the Army (the area I know most about) was a lot better off for having shed the deadwood from the Seventies and Sixties; again, motivated, dedicated, hardworking men and women became the backbone.

And, just like at Chrysler, the ill effects didn't show up for years and years.

Based on Chrysler, and the turnaround in the Army, the government instituted a similar promotion philosophy in the vast mechanisms of the government bureaucracy, with one critical difference: it is virtually impossible to fire anyone from government service.

Which means that at every level, in every organization, people got promoted, repeatedly, until they were...

... too incompetent to rise higher.

And then they couldn't get fired. So they simply languished in jobs they were incompetent to perform.

Now, when you tie a person's financial well-being, their family's well-being, to their ability to get promoted rather than their ability to do their current job, you give them a massive, institutionalized reason to try their asses off to get promoted.

So.

If you can't do the job above you, and you've ALREADY done the jobs below you, and you can't do more than you already are at your current job, what do you do to demonstrate your merit to your superiors?

...You expand laterally.

Back in the day, when a government program was decided to be a miserable failure, it was scrapped.

...Has anyone noticed that this doesn't happen anymore?

You see, if you can't expand vertically, and you must expand laterally, you take over as many new programs as you can, bring them under your wing, and then fight tooth-and-nail, to the death, to defend them.

What we did, thanks to Lee Iacocca, was create an environment in the federal government in which the self-interest of each government employee rests not with doing their job competently, efficiently, or well, but with having as much responsibility in their current position as possible.

So when a Senator comes to, say, the Park Service, and says "I have a defense appropriations bill that's just crying out for earmarks; what do you need?" the Park Service responds with, "Well, I have this little project..." and a new bureaucracy is born. Some employee's fortunes rise slightly, and all is well.

...And the taxpayer foots the bill.

And here's the thing: that bill grows - automatically - every single year.

You see, costs go up, every year. So in order to provide NEXT year, what they did THIS year, the program requires slightly more money than it had the year before.

This is called baselining: the initial cost of the program is considered a baseline, from which costs for upcoming years are extrapolated, and that's the budget amount they ask for: the baseline, plus their idea of next year's costs. Then, when it IS next year, they take THAT year's budget - again - as a baseline, and add to it for the following year.

To demonstrate:

Let's say that the program the Park Service asked for was a program to fund volunteer work for kids, to have them pick up litter in the national parks. Admirable, right?

At least to a certain mindset.

But let's say the initial funding is $100 million.

That's our baseline; but costs go up by, say, 5% every year.

So the second year, the program will cost $105 million - our new baseline.

The third year, it will cost $110,250,000 - our new baseline.

The tenth year, it will cost $155,132,821.60 - our new baseline.

The twentieth year, it will cost $252,695,019.55 - better than two and a half times its original budget, "just to keep current" - our new baseline.

The thirtieth year, it will cost $411,613,559.55 - more than four times its original budget, and our new baseline.

Note that this assumes that the program does not grow in ANY OTHER WAY AT ALL.

...And it is in the vested interest of the Park Service employees in charge of it to make sure it's a success.

I know, you think I'm kidding.

I never kid™.

In 1940, total benefits paid out by the Social Security Administration were slightly over $35 million.

In 2009, the estimated payout will be just over $650 BILLION DOLLARS.

The Social Security program (including its lesser subsidiaries and inevitable, as discussed here, offshoots,) constitutes approximately 7% of the Gross Domestic Product of the United States, as of this year.

To put that in perspective, the Gross Domestic Product of the United States is roughly estimated by the International Money Fund at $14,264,600,000,000,000. Yeah, that's TRILLIONS.

Which makes Social Security just under a trillion dollars, all by itself.

It started out as a helpful benefits program, paying out only $35 MILLION in benefits, and in 70 years, has turned into...

...Well, exactly what I said above.

How many of these gargantuan programs do you really expect that the taxpayer can support, hmmmm?

President Obama is proposing to create a giant new bureaucracy, under the guise of health-care reform.

The most generous estimates place the cost at a trillion dollars.

So, let's play with that.

The first year, the costs for this program will be $1 trillion.

The tenth, $1,551,328,215,978.52.

The twentieth, $2,526,950,195,375.64.

The thirtieth, $4,116,135,595,381.58.

Note again, this is JUST with baselining, JUST with the inherent nature of government financing; this doesn't take into account the zealous efforts of promotion-seeking government employees to "grow the program," or the numbers of people who will flock to the program as it rapidly and inevitably replaces private insurance; this is what it will look like in 30 years JUST with cost-of-living increases, so to speak.

In 30 years, the proposed legislation will result in a bureaucracy as expensive as the entire federal budget from last year.

Once people get on the program, and start getting their "free" health-care, how many of them do you really think will be willing to vote for any politician who says anything whatsoever about reducing their benefits? Reducing costs, the only way they can? God forbid, eliminating the program?

If you guessed "almost none," you're right.

We as a nation are teetering on the edge of an abyss. If this reform bill passes, we will begin the fall; indeed, we may already have begun to fall without knowing it.

Thirty years, until "health care" has become a third of GDP. All of it taxes. Do you really think our economy will make it that far? I don't.

Our government is much closer to collapse than people seem willing to believe.

And it's all Lee Iacocca's fault.

Does anyone still think "health care reform" in its current incarnation is a GOOD idea?

Friday, February 15, 2008

[+/-]

The MORTGAGE MELTDOWN And Why It's A Bonus For You And Me!

Right.

THE SKY IS FALLING! EVERYBODY PANIC!!

Ok, got that out of your system? Good. Brace yourself; the looming - and I mean looming, as the worst hasn't hit us yet - mortgage "crisis" was engineered from the get-go by the ACLU.

Yeah, I said the American Civil Liberties Union.

Follow along with me, here, and I will explain.

Roll back time to the middle of the 1980's. That ol' way-back machine, working overtime. Groups such as ACORN had drawn the ACLU's interest with accusations of "redlining" - that being the practice of banks of having a line below which a certain loan would simply not be available to a customer because they lacked sufficient income to repay it - on racist grounds. Their argument, disingenuous though it was, went something like this: "Minorities are poor. You don't give loans to people that are poor. Therefore you don't give loans to minorities; therefore you are racist."

Now, in strict point of fact, the banks went out of their way to court minority customers whose income met the standards, precisely because they made great examples of how this wasn't, in fact, true. But nevertheless, the banks were fighting a losing battle; as minorities - despite endless bloviation about it - continue to push for ever greater handouts, and do nothing to actually improve their economic circumstances, the supply of minority buyers capable of meeting the income standards just isn't growing nearly as rapidly as the pool of people unable to afford mortgages.

Now, being the wonderful, shining examples of justice and righteousness that we all know them to be, the ACLU had to get involved. In 1988, they managed to convince some of our drunker, or more gullible, Senators and Congressmen to vote to amend the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act to require banks to collect racial data on buyers. This of course allowed the ACLU to put forth several studies demonstrating the lack of minority home buyers, which - because them darkies, they must be protected 'cuz they can't do it themselves - is inherently racist, because it's only not racist if all black people own houses, or something.

What do I know? I'm white, and rent a one bedroom apartment. Since I haven't done squat to help black people own houses, I'm as racist as they come.

So; given that all banks not lending to poor people hate the black family, and are trying to oppress someone by requiring them to have enough money to actually repay their loans, the ACLU swung into action.

In 1995, the Community Reinvestment Act was amended to require - note that word - banks to "find ways" to loan money for homes to low-income minority families. It required the banks to consider - wait for it - participation in a credit-counseling program - as proof of a family's ability to manage debt burden. And just to give the finger to banks' ability to lend responsibly, the amended CRA allowed "community activists" to hold annual reviews of banks, the results of which could range from denied mergers to direct Department of Justice legal action against the offending, unwilling-to-lend-predatorily bank.

The Fannie Mae Foundation named one bank, complying with the law and cooperating fully with the community activists, as a "paragon of non-discriminatory lending." Can you guess who it was that received this praise?

...Countrywide Financial, which is now bankrupt, and basically took the mortgage market with it when it went, due to mortgage companies' and banks' habit of cross-investing in one another.

Right.

Now, the extent of the danger went basically unremarked for years, because home prices were shooting ever higher - after all, the "relaxed" underwriting standards for home loans meant that you could buy a house that's worth much, much more than you could have afforded if you'd actually have to pay back the loan; thus, prices were allowed to rise far beyond the legitimate value provided by the price system.

But such things never last. As it always happens, the prices eventually reached a point so high that even with some incredibly bizarre loan structures, potential home buyers were simply unable to meet even the minimum payments, on even a minimum house. When that point is reached with any commodity, the price begins to fall, and will continue to drop until it reaches a point at or near the actual "legitimate" value of the commodity - that being translatable ONLY as "the price people are willing to actually pay for it."

Right now, the Fed is fucking things up much worse, by continuing to drop interest rates, which will cause inflation just as in the 70's. Right now, the ACLU - among others - are leading the charge to blame the banks for "taking advantage" of minorities with "predatory lending practices," ALL of which were forced on the banks BY THE ACLU.

Don't blame the banks. Blame our drunkard Congressmen, and the ACLU; the mortgage "crisis" was engineered from the ground up by them as an opportunity to redistribute some wealth.

Will the crisis get worse? Absolutely yes. As long as the Fed can't leave the prime rate alone, it will get worse, and the second - much bigger - wave of mortgage defaults is poised to fall, as homeowners are discovering three facts that are going to make them leap at the chance to screw the banks.

First, so-called "option ARMs" - mortgages in which the buyer can make a minimum payment, but if they do, the principal rises by the remainder of the interest amount - are going to reach a point in the next 1-2 years at which the principals of the majority of these loans have risen so high that the minimum payments are out of the buyer's range as well; they will then have essentially no choice BUT to default, because of fact number two:

Secondly, many home buyers using ARMs and O-ARMs are unable to refinance their loans into more traditional - and repayable - structures, because the combination of rising principal balances and falling home prices means that they owe more than the property value; currently a THIRD of recent home buyers owe more than the property value in principal balances. (39% of the buyers in 2006 have negative equity.) This makes the information in fact number three far more important, namely:

Thirdly, many, many buyers are discovering that the damage to your credit rating from a foreclosure is nowhere near as bad as that from a bankruptcy; walking away from a loan hurts, a lot, but bankruptcy is forever. And that right there guarantees that as the O-ARMs mature, and the principal balances drive the refinance value of the loans far above the property values, more and more buyers are simply going to take the hit and walk away.

What's funny about this is, by causing this mess, the ACLU has hurt their own socialist agenda; as home prices fall, they will become more broadly available to the general public. Not everyone can afford a $180,000 two-bedroom house, but a $55,000 three-bedroom is a lot more reasonable, and more people can buy them. Homeowners tend to be attached to their property - a core Republican value.

It's also created a new trend towards living within one's means - also a core Republican value. And as people learn how to avoid being spendthrifts, they begin to expect totally unreasonable things, like, for instance, that their politicians should act the same way.

Plus, as these Republican values are made more acceptable to the public by the simple fact that they work, it invites curiosity - how much of the rest of what the right-wingers say is true also? And that kind of thinking can only hurt the ACLU; their morally bankrupt ideology only works so long as the people listening possess no critical thinking skills. The first time a hand goes up followed by "And how are you going to PAY for all this?!" they lose.

And they know it; thus their attempts to demonize the banking industry for complying with the law of the land - a law engineered by the ACLU in the name of "equality."

Now you see the truth; the ACLU wants us all to be equally broke, and therefore dependent upon their handouts for sustenance. The right wing, on the other hand, wants you to have a job, a home you own and can pay for, a car you own, and enough money left over to go out and buy stuff for your family, and go eat at a restaurant from time to time.

You know what's really funny? I make way less money than people think; I'm well below the so-called poverty line. But you know what? My family goes out to eat, on my dime, every weekend; we buy DVDs and new books every week; we always have clothes to wear, adequate medical care, a roof over our heads, and arguably from my spare tire, more than enough food on the table for us AND a starving family from Africa.

You know why? Because I don't spend money I don't have. We don't have any credit cards; not one. Both my wife's - and my - student loans are current. We're looking for a second car, for which we plan to pay cash. Our rent, phone, electric, car insurance, and internet bills are not only up to date, but we have credit ahead on everything but the rent. Because I don't spend it if I ain't got it - and I believe firmly in the Army slogan "it's better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it."

And as a result, on a combined "not very much," my wife and I are able to, when necessary, loan money to neighbors in need; go out to eat; buy entertainment; go interesting places - next month we're going to visit with my family in Texas for a week - and do interesting things, because I believe in earning my pay, and work my ass off to get what I want.

I am a right-winger. There's a reason for it. And if you're on the left, you're broke - or living off someone else's dime - and wondering why your Republican factory worker friend always seems to have spending cash, and your liberal buddy who earns $100,000 a year doesn't, you might give that some thought.

The mortgage crisis is a bonus, for me, and people like me; finally, after years of runaway home prices, they may fall back to a level where I might be able to afford a mortgage - and maybe, just maybe, own my own home. But if I can afford it - if I can AFFORD it - it'll be a traditional mortgage, and I will pay it off, and then that house will be MINE, to do with what I choose, and not subject to the whims of the ACLU. Take a look around; as housing prices drop, maybe you can buy one too. And after fixing it up nicely, you can rent it out, and use the rent from that house to pay the mortgage on a second - and you might be surprised how fast you can come into an awful lot of money. This is how the last batch of "nouveau riche" made their money, and the chance has come around to do it again. It's the American dream; grab it if you can. I'm damn sure gonna try.

My name is Xenodox, and I fully endorse and approve this message.

Sunday, January 20, 2008

[+/-]

The Bush Administration

Rating:	★★★
Category:	Other

"It is not enough just to identify the problem, nor just to choose the best course of action, a leader must also convince the people of it. It is on that last part that our current leader has failed. He understood and believed in his decisions with such conviction, that he didn't understand why it would need explanation. His opponents then defined the issue in their own terms." - WOTN

The greatest failure of the Bush administration, in my eyes, was in its stewardship of our individual liberties; it allowed the communists and socialists to redefine things at will, thus weakening our political foundation perhaps irretrievably. The second greatest failure was as described above: knowing the right thing to do, knowing its necessity, President Bush has naively believed that the self-evident nature of his decisions would be sufficient to convince the people of their rightness. He didn't count on the absolutely inevitable vociferous campaign of opposition to his every idea mounted by the socialists, and this has allowed the socialists to portray him, his ideas, and his administration repeatedly in the worst possible lights, so much so that Joe Normal on the street believes, by an overwhelming majority, that he made the WRONG decisions on most of the things he did.

As such, President Bush has failed our country in such a way, and to such an extent, as has never been accomplished by any previous President. (FDR did it on purpose.) The only redeeming value to be found in his administration is that, despite his near-catastrophic public relations failure, he has accomplished most of his national security goals, thus leaving our nation, in his last year in office, safer, despite the weight of public opinion.

Fortunately, his administration has also been marked by the presence of increasingly loony opposition; the socialists have allowed his agenda to smoke them out in the open, where their irrationality can be clearly seen by the public, whose approval of the socialist agenda is even lower than its approval of the Bush administration.

In conclusion, the Bush administration, through its catastrophic failures, has been perhaps the worst Presidency ever; but it has succeeded in weakening dramatically the sources of the greatest external threat the U.S. currently faces, as well as forcing the true nature of the socialist opposition in this country to reveal itself. As such, despite its failures, the Bush administration might well come to be seen in future years as an important POSITIVE turning point in this nation's history. Three stars.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

[+/-]

So, 9/11, Terrorism, Terrorism, Everybody Panic, And Stuff...

...or something. I know everybody and their friends all had to post - again - "remember the victims, blah blah blah."

Fine.

Note that I didn't.

I'm commemorating September 12th, instead; the day America began its slide into becoming a police-state, as opposed to the beacon of freedom it had always been before.

The day we began abrogating Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms "for safety."

The day we began using terrorism as a hobgoblin to silence dissent, the day we began attacking our political leadership en masse based on lies - not from the leadership (they're stupid, not dishonest, or at best stupidly dishonest) but from the media - and the day we began ignoring the things we should have been keeping an eye on outside our borders.

Don't get me wrong.

Islamofascism is a horrifying threat, made worse by the fact that the religious text upon which Islam is based AGREES WITH IT.

But that's not the only thing we should have been paying attention to.

And now, we may have missed our window to stop an old threat from recurring.

Yesterday, Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, dissolved the Russian government, dismissed the Prime Minister and his cabinet, and replaced him with someone of Putin's choosing. Government by diktat has returned to Russia.

This comes after Russia protested the idea of placing missile-defense sites in Europe - why?

This comes after Russia resumes bomber patrols in the Atlantic, Arctic, and Pacific oceans - with nuclear bombers - why?

This comes after Russia rejects a conventional arms treaty with NATO - why?

This comes after Russia announces territorial claims to the Arctic - by sending a nuclear sub under the ice to PLANT A FLAG ON THE SEA BOTTOM - why?

And this comes after Russia announces that they have developed the most powerful non-nuclear bomb ever, as much as 4 times as powerful as the U.S. "Mother of all Bombs" - why?

Either one of two possible reasons, IMO - either Russia is preparing to renew the Cold War, which is possible, but really, really stupid, considering it's taken them 25 years to get their economy sufficiently restored from the last one to play with us again, or... they're "nuking the moon."

I will explain.

Russia is under the same threat from Islamofascism that the U.S. is, and they're geographically closer. I suspect that Putin has hit on a strategy FrankJ from IMAO.us came up with a while back. Nuke the moon - do stuff that seems so utterly crazy that other countries are terrified to do anything to piss you off, because you're batshit insane and have nuclear weapons. Frank's example was to make a world-wide announcement that Martians were trying to steal our green cheese supplies, and fire off a huge volley of nuclear missiles at the moon.

Other countries would absolutely shit themselves in terror - a nation with the power of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, gone raving, batshit crazy?

They'd cave on any diplomatic issue, no matter how important; hostilities would cease worldwide; they'd be running scared, and stay that way, as long as we "kept up the skeer," to quote a really hideous and shitty person who also happened to be a goddamn military genius. (Sad, really, because his personal reputation kept his contributions as a military officer from getting greater recognition; but that's what you get for founding the Ku Klux Klan, I guess.)

Or, at least, that's Frank's theory.

I suspect that Putin's trying it. And we seem, from the reports in the media, to be so completely caught up in "9/11, Terror, Terror, Everbody Panic" that we're missing the show.

That's a damn shame, because if he really IS crazy, and not just nuking the moon, we could be in hipdeep shit very quickly. Putin doesn't exactly have warm and fuzzies in his heart for the USA, and the move to take the Arctic is partcularly disturbing in light of the fact that the Arctic ice cap is the traditional route for Russian ICBMs targetting the USA. If it's owned by Russia - and we've done nothing to stop it - it might be a tad bit difficult to put any future missile defense systems on it, hmmm?

Just a thought.