Loyalty without truth
is a trail to tyranny.
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a middle-aged George Washington
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Sunday, 10 November 2013 at 17h 50m 15s | Social Mobility in the United States per Country or Municipality |
The chance a child raised in the bottom fifth (the lowest 20%) of income that rose into the top
fifth (upper 20%) of income.
The graph is a New York Times graphic [ Click here ] from a Harvard study released last summer.
The study can be found HERE .
It's called the Equality of Opportunity Project.
Here's a list of more than 10% from the cities with the largest commuting zones --along with Los
Angeles, Detroit, Atlanta, New Orleans, and Memphis.
- Bakersfield California 12.4
- Santa Barbara California 11.8
- Salt Lake City Utah 11.5
- San Francisco California 11.2
- San Jose California 11.2
- Des Moines Iowa 11.1
- Scranton Pennsylvania 11.1
- Toms River New Jersey 10.6
- Seattle Washington 10.4
- San Diego California 10.4
- Santa Rosa California 10.3
- Pittsburgh Pennsylvania 10.3
- Modesto California 10.2
- Madison Wisconsin 10.2
- Reading Pennsylvania 10.2
- Honolulu Hawaii 10.1
- Sacramento California 10
...
Los Angeles California 9.6
New Orleans Louisiana 6.3%
Detroit Michigan 5.1%
Atlanta Georgia 4.0%
Memphis Tennessee 2.6%
Look at San Francisco and San Jose, ranked 4th & 5th, at 11.2 percent. 8 cities in the above list
are from California. Calfornia also represents half
of the complete list above 10% (regardless of size) that isn't part of the Dakota Shale Oil
economy. All the regions with 4% or below are in the deep south, where God is king and poverty
means you are lazy, so why should God-fearing working citizens pay taxes to the welfare state when
people should have the choice to give to charity?
Hmmm, yea that's why you morons hover around 4% and have the worst system of institutionalized
poverty in the entire nation. This is why the rest of the nation has rates above 6 percent. This
is why all those poor folk who live in your regions move somewhere else. What happened? You got
rid of welfare programs and pre-school or after school program subsidies because you thought it made
people dependent on big government and more prone to stay impoverished. Instead the opposite happens.
This is why people live in California. Economic Opportunity and social mobility are at the highest
levels of the entire nation. The economy is also very diversified, and isn't dominated by any one
industry or based on temporary resource extraction profits but on an
economic infrastructure in which the state government actually invests with taxes. Californians as a
whole support building the necessary economic infrastructure and Californians also vote at high
levels to support spending on infrastructure, whether its' roads, education, irrigation canals,
ports, bridges, transportation networks, airports, recreation centers or environmental conservation.
If you want a list of all Metropolitan Areas (regardless of size) , Click here
If you want a list for the top 100 largest cities with the largest commuting zones, Click here
| Sunday, 10 November 2013 at 16h 41m 34s | War is Fun |
Here's a poem I wrote last Thursday.
War is Fun
War is fun
fun fun fun
go get a joystick
and shoot a gun
pretend like you're superior
and when you die
it's just another turn
push the button
and start again
because war is fun
no moral hazard for the babies you kill
no sentimental attachment to the comrades who die
it's just a fucking button man
just push the fucking button man
get that interactive thrill
cuz war is fun
war hidden behind a flat screen Liquid crystal display
war summed up into points
and little trinkets that stack up on the side of the screen
to remind you of just how awesome
you are
war is cool
and you are a stud
a veritable video game monster
this real world stuff is for the birds
you can go beyond the trivial burdens of life and die
because you are the Coptic warrior
the Raven
the Truth Seeker
or whatever you call yourself
the computer code will nevertheless flatter you all the time
scripted by the humans who wrote it
and now it rotates and repeats the same message
and the entity that is your self
is just a nondescript sequence of forgotten events no one will ever see or share
like figments of your imagination
except
it isn't your imagination
because you aren't imagining a fucking thing
all of the images you see are outside of your brain
all the sounds
all of the words
are programmed and saved on the hard drive
and you
you are just a follower who gives it's eyeballs to the master in exchange
for a mirage.
| Wednesday, 23 October 2013 at 1h 22m 20s | Sorry about the lapse |
Yea I know, it's been more than 30 days since my last blog post. Oh dear, I missed out on commenting
about the obvious insanity of some fools who call themselves Republicans.
I've been doing my job as a teacher of 156 high school students and practicing guitar, and so lately
that's enough for what I can handle. Not that it takes much effort to type a blog post, it's just
that the mental energy created when I engage in these expository essays has been too much for me to
handle as of the last 6 weeks or so. I still read the press and the various blogs I like to check
out, but that hasn't translated into a blog post.
If you've paid attention over the last decade to this blog, there are periods of time every year
when I go dark. Then suddenly I react with a spate of blogs and become more consistent. That's
about ready to happen, and this is probably the first in some more regular postings.
| Sunday, 25 August 2013 at 16h 26m 46s | The ridiculousness of it all |
Click here for the whats
up on the NSA / Homeland Security spying megalopolis that is evolving.
Read the comments too. Here is a copy of a comment I liked.
evil is evil 08.24.13 at 6:12 am
Now we will get back to the witches’ trials. Tie them up. Throw them in deep water, if they
float they are guilty and are burned alive. If they sink, they are innocent, and get a xian burial.
Polygraph tests have all of the reliability of drug sniffing dogs (proven beyond a doubt to
respond strictly to the movements of their handlers) and witch sniffers in Africa.
I’ve had 3 polygraph tests in my life. Passed all of them with flying colors and guilty as sin
on every evaluation. Sociopaths can beat any polygraph. I had to tell the “polygraph operator” in
the second “evaluation” where she was supposed to attach the contacts to my skins. Then I coached
her in the correct ways to phrase the questions so the only answer had to be yes or no. If I had
attach the correct points and started asking her questions, I’d have had her confessing to killing
Christ.
Fire every person that pretends to be a polygraph operator. They are all on high paid welfare
and produce nothing but misery for innocent people and have no credibility with we sociopaths that
can fly past them.
Find one single instance of a polygraph outing a traitor and I will consider believing that they
have some use. You will never find one.
Nor will you find a successful NSA operation. If they had a stone cold solid proof of their
usefulness on one single operation, the leaks on those successes would be pouring out cast in solid
gold. What a waste of time, material and treasure. Fire them all, send them home on full pay and
allowances and save money by not paying the exorbitant fees they are paying the Internet providers
for what should cost pennies a day.
Agee was a hero. Ellsberg is a hero. Assange is a hero. Manning is a hero. Snowden is a hero.
The NSA, CIA and the alphabet soup people are all traitors to the constitution, their oaths of
office and their fellow americans. Offer them a promotion and they would pimp their mothers for a
corner office.
Exactly. These methods of algorithmic spying are going to have so many false positives that the
authorities are going to waste countless money and time chasing ghosts and innocent people. The
innocent people will have added costs and pain and suffering. All of the terrorists (both internal
and external, white supremacist groups and international extremists) were ferreted out by
traditional methods, not by the spying apparatus. The effectiveness is less than 10%.
What it's really all about is to provide the elite with a means to keep track of those persons and
groups from which they feel most threatened. Union leaders, journalists, true patriots (like Al
Gore and Brad Friedman -- both of whom were 'spied' upon), and
organizers, for instance. The spokepeople who say otherwise, are delusional (Diane Feinstein), or
(in the case of Clapper) deliberately lying.
[SOURCE: John
Quiggin | Crooked Timber | 24 August 2013]
| Saturday, 17 August 2013 at 18h 36m 57s | NSA privacy violations |
Click here for the Washington Post timeline of NSA privacy violations. There
are plenty of links and other related stories too.
Keep in mind that this stuff is confusing and bureaucratic on purpose. The people who run these
entities are from a small group of interconnected families and friends of the families, or hired
jackals who do the dirty deeds knowing they will have payback for life. It's not an obvious
aristocracy, and is more like a governing class akin to what this country saw in the latter post
civil war 1800's when government patronage was all about kickbacks and bribery schemes that were
used to fund the party war chests.
| Saturday, 17 August 2013 at 18h 17m 21s | The Debunked and Reused bad arguments against common sense |
This goes back to the early 18th century, and the ideas of David Ricardi, and were then refuted in
the same way they can be refuted today.
Here goes. At the systemic level, all those businesses who pay minimum wage will have a labor
increase. Prices might rise, but not necessarily, because in a competitive market, the incentive to
raise prices will become tempered by the incentive to keep and woo customers. Some businesses will
absorb more of the increased labor costs than others, but all businesses will absorb at least some
of the labor costs, because otherwise they would lose revenue by raising prices since consumers will
for the most part shop where goods are cheaper.
People who assume raising the minimum wage kills jobs forget that the cost of labor is not the
motivation behind hiring someone for a job. If there is a revenue stream available, a business will
hire the necessary labor in which to manage the revenue stream. Profits are not going to decrease,
and if they do, such profits might decrease by barely 0.1 percent, and then only in the short term.
Once the market readjusts to the cost of labor, the profit margins will slowly revert back to normal
levels. As Ricardi showed 200 years ago, profit margins are not affected by the cost of labor.
Profit margins are affected by the cost of supplies, resources, transportation, and mismanagement --
not the cost of
labor.
This is an old argument used by the unenlightened elite to justify their foolish exploitation of the
masses. A rising tide can lift all boats, but only if the wealthy are willing to invest in the
distribution of mass society. An elite that prefers to insolate itself and procreate within itself
(like some Chinese and Russian monarchies of the not so distant past) will impoverish the masses and
blindly misunderstand the problem.
| Friday, 12 July 2013 at 21h 4m 2s | Two July Rookie's that I'm very high on |
Stats for Darin Ruf .
http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=9929&position=1B/OF
Minors+MLB 2012 ... 34 2B, 41 homers, 67/114 BB/SO ... 620 PA
Minors only 2011 ... 44 2B, 20 homers, 67/108 BB/S0 ... 629 PA
This year in 83 games at triple A, Ruf had 22 doubles and 7 homers before the call up.
His track record in the minors is a solid .300 hitter, save for one stint of 20 games in early 2011
when he batted .239. He also has an 18% strike out rate and a 10 percent walk rate.
In his 6 games so far, 19 PA, he's got 6 hits and 3 walks with 8 strikeouts. Half of the 6 hits are
extra base hits, 2 doubles and 1 home run. So far only 2 balls that he hits have become outs,
which does point to a little luck on one or two singles, so he could have a .250 batting average
instead of .375. The strikeout percentage is also 42% but it's only 19 plate appearances, and if
these rates hold, I think getting 20 doubles and 10 homers in the remaining 70 games is what the low
end potential can be.
Ruf will also have both OF and 1B eligibility in 4 more games.
The guy looks like he has an idea of the strike zone and looks better later in the game after he's
seen a few pitches. He appears to have the capacity to learn and make adjustments and looks like a
solid hitter to me, and with lots of power potential that you can't ignore. Look at those minor
leagues stats for the last 2 years. That 2012 year when he hit 41 home runs was in the East coast
league -- i.e., not inflated by the dry, high desert air from a lot of the Western league teams.
The power is real.
Howard is out for at least 6 weeks. He won't be in the picture until late August, early September.
The rumors of a Michael/Delmon Young trade notwithstanding.
In a 12 team points league … I'm all in with Ruf as a last OF/UTL spot.
------
Stats for Brad Miller.
http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=12775&position=2B/SS
In 3 years and 5 different stops in the minors, Miller has hit no less than .294, and has clips of
.415, .339, .320, and .356 in the other 4 stops. His ISO is in between .150 and .180 which is great
power for a shortstop. More specifically, during 137 games last year, Miller crashed 40 doubles and
15 homers, at a .325 clip with a 74/105 BB/SO.
In 13 games and 56 PA at the MLB level this year, he is hitting .286 with 14 hits, 5 doubles and
two triples, and a 7/13 BB/SO. That means 22 balls he hit became outs in 13 games. With a 20% Line
drive rate, 4 of those 22 balls hit into play could have been doubles and triples save for the good
defense that caught the balls. So he could have 18 hits out of 49 at bats, or .367 average.
In those 56 plate appearances, he has swung and missed 11.2% of his swings but he makes contact
90.4% of the time when the ball is in the strike zone. He is also swinging 37% of the time at
pitches outside the strike zone, which is above average on the negative side (Pedro Alvarez
territory, who has 38.7%) but since the strike zone contact is 90%, Miller is probably just an
anxious rookie. So far the batting eye and the .300 hitter cannot be discounted by the peripheral
statistics.
He's also got 2 steals in those 13 games, and though he is not a huge SB threat, Miller did go 23
for 30 in 137 games of the 2012 minor league season.
I think he's gonna stick at the top of the Mariners lineup. The Mariners are also a much better
offensive team this year, even if Franklin goes down with a knee injury. At the shortstop position,
there aren't many better chances to get a guy who has the potential of a Jean Segura without the
surplus of stolen bases. Milwaukee and Seattle score the same number of runs, and Seattle is a
better team right now.
Take the plunge.
| Tuesday, 9 July 2013 at 22h 27m 21s | Subsidizing foreign military regimes |
Do you realize how many foreign national regimes the United States tax payers subsidize? It's more
then 50.
We give the Egyptian military 1.5 billion.
Hmm ... but instead the government elites cut education and unemployment insurance.
Of course military contractors get the bulk of 1.5 billion in contracts for weapons, and much of the
"aid" to foreign regimes is packaged in such a way that it gets spent on some contract to provide
weapons or security "services". Aid to Columbia, for instance consists of a lot of sales of
helicopters, jeeps, and automatic guns.
| Friday, 28 June 2013 at 18h 9m 31s | New York Times says |
Click the link. It's a rare 2 page editorial from the New York Times editorial board.
The government claims that under Section 215 it may seize all of our phone call information now
because it might conceivably be relevant to an investigation at some later date, even if there is no
particular reason to believe that any but a tiny fraction of the data collected might possibly be
suspicious. That is a shockingly flimsy argument — any data might be “relevant” to an investigation
eventually, if by “eventually” you mean “sometime before the end of time.” If all data is
“relevant,” it makes a mockery of the already shaky concept of relevance.
[SOURCE: Editorial | New York Times | 27
June 2013]
| Tuesday, 25 June 2013 at 18h 33m 38s | Old slogans without substance |
And when you elect people who think this way, who see government as something that is inherently
negative, then what you get is an insider network of fools who will just use the tax revenue to
pursue their own agenda, rather than their idea of the "people".
Whenever you hear someone say "government is the problem" what they are really saying is "giving
people too much power is the problem". However, it's not just any particular group of "people" that
is the problem but
rather instead
the "right kind" of people that is the problem, otherwise why are they bothering to run for office
or take a position in the government they protest so much.
Government is inherent to a society of people living within whatever boundary of existence you want
to choose. Government is necessary for any group of people to make collective decisions and keep all
of us on the
most beneficial plane of existence. Government should be more powerful than private firms or
individuals, but government should also be accountable and kept in check. Any questions or debates
about government should be around how to account for and keep the power of government in check, not
about some simple syllogism about whether government is or is not the problem. That is childish
nonsense and should not be acceptable for adults over the age of 30.
Those who speak ill of government as a political slogan are
really just trying to use government for their own personal motivations of accumulation. That's why
so many so-called conservatives are corrupt. Very few of them believe the pablum they give the sops
who vote
them into office. They are just used car sales people, selling old decrepit political slogans so
they can get their own slice of the power.
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