Brian A. Thomas .com

It’s the End of Democracy

Brian A. Thomas — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 12:46:26 +0000

Olbermann’s tendency for hyperbole is actually drastically understated here. In a few years this country will not belong to us, it will belong to the wealthy corporations who will literally rape and pillage the American citizens, and won’t care (corp owners never care) about the death of democracy, the environment or anything else. Time to get the fuck out of the US.

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The one and only hope is an Amendment to the Constitution:

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Sidd and Ari Update

Brian A. Thomas — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 11:42:40 +0000

Okay, the main purpose of the blog is to keep family and friends up to date with what is happening with my family. To that end…
Ari is enjoying Kindergarten and his bus ride home. No real news to report there yet. They went on a field trip to see a ballet of Peter and the Wolf, which “was good but not too good.”
At the moment we have only one car, so Sara and the kids have to take me to work, then she and Sidd have to take Ari to school. Why only one car? The other day Sara calls and says that the truck feels funny, like it has a flat and the brakes weren’t felling right, but she pulled over and the tire didn’t look flat, and decided (against my instructions) to continue on. Later she calls broken down. A friend of hers came and got her and the kids and took them down to their place since that was where she was heading anyhow. We learned that the lug nuts must not have been tight enough and that they came loose (odd thing is, I thought I tightened them, and the truck drove fine for days afterwords). This resulted in one of the bolts getting sheared off. So now we have to replace the 5 bolts… not an easy task. The alternative is to replace the whole hub, but that costs a crap ton and since it only needs bolts, we’ll wait until we can get that fixed…
Meanwhile, Sidd is rolling over both directions really well. His rolls to his back are sometimes met by him bumping his head, but for the most part he does well. He sleeps on his side it seems. He is also starting to get some of the mechanics of crawling… well, scooting. He hasn’t figured out that if he got on his knees that he would be more mobile, but he does try to scoot to get stuff that is out of his reach.
Sidd’s colic is gone. For the most part he cries if hungry, wet, wants attention, is too bored or really tired. Otherwise he is a fairly happy kid. Still needs lots of attention.
The apartment is okay. We are nearly unpacked. The downstairs is cleared of all boxes. Sidd and Ari’s room still has boxes, but not much we can do about those as those hold toys and we can’t have them all over the floor as Ari’s toy box is already full. Lots of boxes in our closets, but nothing we can do there either as there is no room in this place for the stuff to be unpacked.
That should be the quick rundown of all that is going on here.

Baby Dancing Video

Brian A. Thomas — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 21:01:12 +0000

To make up for the far too many political posts, here is a dancing baby.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Brian A. Thomas — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 09:36:00 +0000

Both sides of the political spectrum keeps using words in ways to scare their base from the other side. This became most noticeable recently at the 9/12 tax party and at the ever so scary Value Voters Summit (where Carrie Prejean had the nerve to say” the level of intolerance is unbelievable”, this from a lady who is herself intolerant of those she opposes, and in fact keeps spreading the lie she was fired for said intolerance despite the fact she was fired for not making her public appearances as required by her contract).
At the tax party there were lots of signs and posters accusing Obama of being a Nazi and a Fascist, something pushed by conservative radio/TV hosts. The same thing with Communism and Socialism. All of which are so ridiculous that one has to conclude that the hosts, who probably know better, are using as a scare tactic to scare a gullible group of people into a fury that shouldn’t be. Both terms are misused and overused.
Socialism is confused with State Socialism, which one could argue is in direct violation of the goal of Socialism. In State Socialism the government controls the means of production, and is what people are normally talking about, and what people fear when talking about socialism. However, socialism in reality is where the workers themselves control the means of production. Socialism doesn’t mean the government or anyone else will tell you where to work, how to work and the like. It doesn’t mean that if you work your butt off and Joe Smoe slacks off that you both get the same pay, promotions, raises and rewards. In socialism you get out what you put in, to quote a Marxist ideology of this to each according to his contribution, so if you don’t work, you don’t eat, both of which are contrary to what people think of when they think of socialism and Communism. Socialism moves the power of production from a single owner, or a group of owners in the case of a corporation, and moves it to all the workers. It doesn’t stop you from forming a new company. If you are at a company and you come up with an idea, you need only to convince enough people to follow your lead and you become a project leader and put it into action. The government has nothing to do with it. One’s chances of success is just as good under a true socialist society as they are under a capitalist one. Though to be fair, you couldn’t get as rich under a socialist system, though there would be no need either.
The right likes to talk about how the left want to spread the wealth around. That is they believe the left wants to take money from the rich and give it to the poor. The fear tactic of course is to imply that you take from a hard working person and give it to a lazy person, which socialism and basically most economic and political forms would oppose. True, the Democrats believe in a progressive tax, that is the higher your income the higher your tax burden should be. They then believe the government should have programs to help the poor receive goods and services that they can’t afford, such as health care. And indeed, one way of looking at it is to say they are spreading the wealth around. However, this ignores the fact that one could easily argue the wealthy steal from the workers. The CEO of Wal-Mart makes nearly $7 million a year in total compensation, while he and his fellow executives keep their employees below a living wage. Let’s say the CEO took only $520,000 a year total (which is still excessive, who needs $10,000 a week?), with fellow executives and upper management cutting back as well, we are not forcing this on them, this is their choice. From the CEO’s check alone that gives them over $6 million to provide better health care and pay to the lower level employees. The saving on executive and upper management alone would allow everyone working at Wal-Mart to make a living wage, receive first class health care and still be highly profitable, to a point they could possibly lower prices. However, the executives and upper management choose not to go down that path and take that money away from the workers and give it to themselves. This is spreading the wealth from the workers to the rich.
Communism is another accusation we see a lot. The trouble is we have never seen a true Communist country, perhaps in part Communism as Marx saw it doesn’t really work, nor obviously does it work in the forms we have and still see and those are the ones people think of when they think of the term. While one could accuse the Democrats for pushing for more State Socialism mixed with Capitalism, this is a far cry from Communism in any form. The term is used more to scare the Christian right since Communism suppresses religion. Obama and the Democrats, the ACLU and the like are suggesting to suppress or oppress religion and the free excercise there of. The ACLU has in fact defended Christian rights more often than it has opposed them. However, they do oppose religion having a role in government, which should be agnostic, and a large topic in of itself that I have covered many times. One can be religious and separate their religion from their politics. Anyhow, because said groups tend to support Democrats, the Democrats are linked to such ideas. How fair this is depends on the individual, but even if they don’t believe that religion should play a role in government that they are a Communists. Neither does being a socialist or even a state socialist doesn’t make one a communists. While communism demands socialism, or in the case of the forms we have normally seen communism, state socialism, one can support socialism and even state socialism and be very opposed to communism. As a matter of fact, I would wager that most socialist would argue against communism, especially as we have seen it exercised.
The calling Obama a Fascist or a Nazi is so far off the wall I am at a loss to explain how the accusation got there… The Nazi’s and fascist are forever linked, though being a fascist doesn’t mean they are a Nazi as fascism started in Italy and was adopted by Hitler. Now I have an idea of how the argument goes. The fear is that Obama supports Sate Socialism, and since Hitler’s party was the National Socialist Party, the conservatives pull the word “Socialist” from that and say that makes the Nazi’s a far left position not a far right. I used to make the same argument myself. So once again the focus is on the fear of state socialism. Fascist believe that nations/races (and in theory one could add religion) are in conflict and only the strong survive. Fascist argue against communism. They are dynamically opposed to one another… You can’t argue that somebody is both. Fascist opposes intellectualism, a view normally espoused by the right in this country. Not to say that the right opposes being educated, but some, especially the evangelicals, feel threatened as people learn more facts and take those facts over beliefs. This is noticeable by the evangelical opposition to teaching only scientific theories of origins and wanting to introduce Creationism, or Intelligent Design, neither of which has any actual science (a big issue that I have covered before and beyond the scope of this post). The fear is that if students aren’t taught “alternatives” to the actual science that the students would loose faith. This post is already getting to large, so I suggest reading the Wiki article on Fascism as it is far to complicated to cover here. In short Obama and the Democrats are far from such evil.

Another Example of How Messed up Our Health Care System is

Brian A. Thomas — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 13:44:04 +0000

Just another quick example of how messed up our health care system is. Bush started negotiations with New Zealand…
Now New Zealand, like every other first world “westernized” country has universal health care. Every New Zealand citizen is covered. Also included in that coverage is prescriptions. The government of New Zealand negotiates with the drug companies to get a cheap price on prescriptions. A fair chunk of this price is paid by the government, the citizen then pays a small percentage of that. Basically it is like a prescription plan we may have here, but cheaper, and subsidized by the government instead of an insurance company. If you want to eliminate wait times and other stuff that comes with the universal system, you can buy supplemental private insurance from for profit companies, as I noted before that would be about $80 NZD a month ($55 USD).
Anyhow, one of the main issues the administration had was that the government of New Zealand was subsidizing prescriptions for their citizens and negotiating such cheap rates. They wanted them to not to negotiate such low prices so that American pharmaceutical companies could make more profit. It was Bush’s view then that it is better to see New Zealand citizens suffer and pay more to protect US profits. And I think this helps point out one of the many problems we have here. The fact that too many people care about profits and not enough about sick people.

A Good Health Care Reform Video

Brian A. Thomas — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 13:28:02 +0000

The music on this one is a bit irritating, but the video message is great:

This video is obviously pro-reform. It is odd to see the people who want to keep the system going as it is. As if they want to protect the insane profits that the insurance companies make over the ill health of people, for those who have it. Odd how people like Glen Beck says we have the best health care system in the world, but just a year ago was talking about how all they care about is profit and they don’t care about people and it needs fixed, of course he was just released from a major hospital at that point. It’s crazy how so called “Compassionate” people don’t care that an insurance giant can deny a teenager a liver transplant, and many other fatal decisions every day, letting people die because it is better for their bottom line calling a government board a “death panel” yet that same board making a for profit decision isn’t a death panel.
Socialism isn’t Communism. They are vastly different beasts. The people complaining about socialized medicine don’t complain about other socialized stuff such as the police services, fire fighters, the military and the like. Could you imagine the disaster if the police department worked like our medical system does today?
Is socialized medicine perfect? No. Heck, that’s not what is really being proposed. What is being proposed changes nothing for most people save drastically lower costs and insure the many people who don’t have insurance now. Does it mean a bigger tax on the wealthy? Yes. However, in the end it may lower our health care percentage of our GDP, which right now is one of the highest in the world, despite being no where near the healthiest. The main focus of the bill, beyond the public option is to force insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions and not charge more for them, and this is a good thing, since people like Sara can’t get covered for the thing that most threatens her life because it is pre-existing.

Rachel Maddow Hits the Nail on the Head About Health Care Reform Here

Brian A. Thomas — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 17:56:29 +0000

Rachel Maddow breaks it down simply. These Mobs are not debates with the Town Hall people about Health Care Reform, but mobs of people trying to shut things down. There are other reports about who is funding these mobs, and who is funding the busing of people in to create mobs at these functions which I may post later. We do need a real debate, not hot headed people trying to shut things down that they don’t understand. It is like those idiots who keep pushing for Intelligent Design to be taught in school, have no understanding of the real science, and how we got to where we are today in the science of cosmology, abiogensis and evolution (which they further confuse those three separate things into one). These people in these mobs aren’t educated on the truth of universal health care. They believe the horror stories that come from the systems while turning a blind eye to the many more horror stories coming out of our own system.
Anyhow, check out the video.

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What is amusing is that what is being proposed in Washington isn’t a single payer system like Canada at all.
I do think that things are being rushed through without creating a whole new system that will work for everyone properly. Funny how those on the right are fighting against health care reform when they say they are the compassionate ones, they are the ones with Christ on their side. I say Christ hangs His head in shame over the way these conservatives are treating those that need affordable health care in this country, the country that claims to be the most Christian, but the only one not to provide affordable health care to every citizen, the only one not to guarantee vacation time, and a number of other areas that those who say they are compassionate, have no compassion for.
Are systems like they have in Candada, the UK, New Zealand and the rest of the world perfect? No. Are they better than what we have now? Undoubtedly. There is a great article at Science Blogs about Are patients in Universal Health Care Countries Less Satisfied? that I suggest people read.

Okay I Have a G1, but I Could Still Use a Good Handheld GPS

Brian A. Thomas — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:18:11 +0000

I love geocaching with my G1 using GeoBeagle. It is a great phone with GPS abilities, and of course GeoBeagle is the best program out there for the Android platform for geocaching (plus, it’s free). However, there are times when you exceed the ability to use the program, especially if you need a map to find where to drive to and you are in an area not serviced by T-Mobile. Such was the case the other day when at the family reunion in Minerva.
There was an additional problem, I loaded my G1 up with the 500 caches nearest me, and they stopped just outside of Minerva. This was no fault of the phone, the program or anything other than there being too many caches close to me to include Minerva. I have since ran a search for Minerva and will add those to the list soon.
The big issue while there was the lack of a signal. I couldn’t find places on Google Maps as it requires a good signal, and I couldn’t find new caches in the area to add manually as I didn’t have a signal. At the moment, GeoBeagle doesn’t support offline maps, though it is on the feature request list. Of course even if it did, my lack of foresight wouldn’t have solved the problem of not having caches for the area loaded up. Once again we see the value of the lesson of what happens when you assume something. I assumed that the area would be covered in my 100 mile search radius, but it is just the first 500 in that 100 miles that the query pulls, and in this case I wasn’t loaded in from my full database, which probably includes Minerva already.
Anyhow, the offline maps issue and some others show the value of still needing a good handled unit.
To that end here is the list of handheld units I want… I only need one of them, but if somebody wanted to send me one of each for evaluation comparison by all means feel free.
At the cheap end, and yet one of the best units out there for geocaching is the DeLorme Earthmate PN-40

Next up in price is the Garmin Dakota 20, but that won’t be out to July so I can’t provide an Amazon link yet, the Sugested retail will be $349.99, so perhaps $300 or so on the street… or Amazon price anyhow.
Next up in price is the Garmin Oregon 400T

Finally we get to the Garmin Oregon 550t, which isn’t pulling up in Amazon thought I thought it was out. This one has a suggested retail of nearly $600.
In order of preference, I would probably go PN-40 and Dakota tied for first, the two cheapest units on the list, then the 550t, then the 400t.

Odd Statements from Republicans

Brian A. Thomas — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 11:23:08 +0000

I am constantly confused when Republicans and those on the right talk about how they are the ones for individual liberty. Are they not the ones who oppose legalizing marijuana? Are they not the ones opposed to gay marriage? Was it not a Republican that proposed to have the Pentagon ban Wicca from our armed forces? It was the lack of individual liberty that made me move from the Republicans to the Libertarians long ago.
Of course now I have problems with free market capitalism as well as it suffers the same problem socialism (at least as a form of government economic policy which to me isn’t really socialism but) does, greed. If everyone played fair, true socialism would probably be the best route. It is the means that is most fair to the most number of people, everyone. My problem with it is then where is the motivation to do better? Of course perhaps that gets back to the playing fair part. If everyone played fair under a capitalist situation, then you add the motivation to do better, but then you create castes, and that by itself isn’t fair to the workers. So where I stand on economics is still in the air.
I’ve done lots of those “What kind of…yada yada… are you?” quizzes. I generally end up being an anarchist. This is perhaps true, Libertarians are basically anarchist with a capitalist lean rather than the default socialist lean. I am certainly not a socialist, at least not as it is traditionally practiced. So I find myself drifting without political or economic ties. When I find the near perfect system, I’ll let you know.

What Those on the Right Seem to be Ignoring

Brian A. Thomas — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:02:43 +0000

Later today, more details about the torture the US did on detainees will be released. Those on the right are upset. They think that if the world knows what we did in detail it will threaten our national security. They believe that the release of any photos would do the same thing.
They are missing the point. If we never did those despicable things, there would never be anything to leak out and threaten our national security. We are, at least according to those on the right, the supposed moral leader of the world. Yet we committed immoral acts.
We are the most “Christian” nation in the world and yet we freely engaged in the torture of humans and think we are justified in doing so… the Nazis thought they were justified as well. That is not to say that the torture of those people is anything like the Holocaust. Obviously the murder of millions of people is far worse, but the point is that in both cases the people in power, felt justified in doing what they did.
We are the only industrialized nation not to provide affordable health care. The right can talk how nobody is denied health care all they want, but they again miss the point. Yes you can get health care, but can you afford it afterwords. Nobody is saying the poor can’t get the health care, they are saying people can’t afford to get it so they ignore it.
The US is the only advanced economy in the world that doesn’t guarantee workers get paid vacation time. New Zealand, Australia and much of Europe grantee workers at least 20 days, with some demanding 25 to 30 days, and those don’t count mandatory paid holidays. I get 5 days, and a couple holidays, and I am doing better than 1 in 4 Americans.
I could go on and on, and initially did, but I’ve touched on those subjects before, so I’ll leave them be for this post. How can we be upset the information is coming out? If we didn’t do it, we wouldn’t have anything to be ashamed of. If we didn’t do it, we wouldn’t have a threat to our national security. I think it would be better for our national security to let it all come out, and to swiftly prosecute those responsible. But Bush, Chaney and the rest of those responsible up for war crimes. What puts us at risk is not dealing with the issue honestly and punishing those responsible. If we investigated and punished all those responsible for these reprehensible acts, then we would in fact be more secure, as the world would see us as dealing with it and not willing to put up with it, even when it was us who did it.