Random Rants from a Space Nut

The Guardian asks this question in a column published yesterday: "Aren't gun lovers just like book lovers -- buying the object of their affection not to use , but to enjoy being around ?  Wouldn't you hate it if the government came after your books?" Meanwhile, in reality... (1) The government comes after books all the freaking time.  Have fun trying to find a public school that doesn't have a list of banned books, judged to be too harmful to developing minds.  Have fun trying to find a single state that allows unrestricted advertising of pornography.  The government regulates what is written, sometimes heavily. (2) Books don't kill people.  People don't go to the trouble of acquiring books with which they can commit mass murder.  To date, there have been precisely zero mass bookings in all of human history.  No one is rushed to a hospital, requiring emergency surgery due to their encounter with a book.  Toddlers and pets don't accidenta...

I wish I lived in a world where we had an actual liberal bias in the media -- where accusations from conservative pundits to that effect were correct , not simply a claim based on being upset that the media still doesn't quite lie enough to support a right-wing narrative. For example, Pelosi and other high-ranking Democrats are being asked (somewhat relentlessly) about the mess in Virginia -- which is odd, because (1) it's not their state, and (2) they don't have the political means to do much about it directly.  The questions, as such, have zero good answers; the only truthful answers will upset people, and there are no answers that have any real, demonstrable influence.  And yet, these questions are coming from the supposed "liberal media". The media is about shock and awe, fear, pain, and violence -- and getting audiences to pay for it (and want to pay for more).  That's not liberal by any stretch.  That's just naked sensationalism overlaid with t...

I have to admit that it's really something to hear the assertion that God chose Trump from people who apparently manage to tie their own shoes and walk upright. But it explains a lot. Consider Sarah Huckabee Sanders' statement .  It explains why she is constantly lying and working to obscure the truth; if you are working for God's Chosen Leader, you can rationalize that away easily enough in service to making things better or easier for some higher purpose, and to do otherwise might put you right in God's crosshairs.  It probably also lets you sleep at night. But let's see where this kind of reasoning goes.  God wanted Trump to be President, and therefore, he is.  Does that mean God wanted Obama to be President for eight years?  That God wanted Bill Clinton to be President for eight years?  That God wanted Nixon to be President?  That God wanted Nancy Pelosi to be Speaker of the House?  That God wanted Democrats to take the majority in the ...

Billionaire Michael Dell doesn't like AOC's proposal to hike the highest marginal tax rate to 70%.  His reasons why not were mostly addressed and destroyed by an economist on the panel who pointed out that the United States had that rate for quite a while during a time when growth was quite strong(*). But one claim he made stuck out to me: He asserted that he donated more to his charitable foundation than the new tax rate would take from him. This... ran counter to my general understanding of human nature, so I looked it up .  I can't make a perfect comparison, since Forbes gives some fraction that it doesn't really explain.  I might, for example, be looking at lifetime earnings here, whereas income tax is (obviously) a fraction of yearly earnings.  But the number Forbes gives as a fraction of charitable giving is 5%. I don't think Dell gives as much as he thinks he does.  Or, rather, as much as he wants us to think that he does. He also says that he ...

I've read this series of tweets on conservative thought, and why it is currently the weird thing it is right now.  It's insightful, but I don't think I completely buy it, because:  * I don't think it's just intent vs. consequences.  That smacks of grace vs. works, and the current Evangelical take on that question was a response to the question of the morality of slavery, attempting to allow people to quiet and soothe their own consciences after doing one of the worst things it's possible to do to another human being (or group of human beings).  The consequences and the intent were both terrible -- so it can't be as simple as one versus the other. It seems more likely that intent vs. consequences is a result of some prior axiom of conservativism -- one I've often heard expressed as "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".  The problem liberals have is not the result of some compulsion to change the way we do everything; it's the...

One of Fox News' latest tactics is to claim that "toxic masculinity" is the notion that masculinity itself is dangerous and bad, rather than that there are notions of masculinity (or facets of the way that "masculinity" is portrayed and discussed) that are toxic.  Then they pretend that all who use the term want to see even the good parts of our cultural ideas about masculinity done away with, and cast themselves as proud and good defenders of the good stuff, so that they can be the heroes without ever engaging in discussion. In much the same way, Steve King is out and proud using "white nationalism" to refer to all nations founded by white people, and demanding that he be allowed to defend the virtues and accomplishments of Western civilization.  He doesn't see the problem with "white supremacy", either. "White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization—how did that language become offensive?" King asked the Ti...