Sunday, March 27, 2011

"I know how to spend your money better than you do!"


To the people who think they can spend the government’s money better than the government.

To the left who explains that X amount of schools and hospitals could have been built with the money spent on Iraq and Afghanistan, and to the right who thinks the Stimulus would have been better spent if $50,000 were given to each individual…

…WE WOULD STILL HAVE SPENT THE SAME AMOUNT OF MONEY AND WE WOULD STILL HAVE THE SAME AMOUNT OF DEBT!

I don’t know how the discussion of the debt should include these arguments. “We spent a lot of money and now we are in the hole. We should have spent a lot of money!” It bothers me when someone discussing the debt has to add that statistic of how many computers for children could have been bought with the amount spent on the Iraq War. Just say something like “Iraq was an unnecessary war that drained the resources of this nation” without adding “but here is another unnecessary expense that would have cost the same amount but pretend that wouldn’t contribute to the debt!” Just stick to the argument that it was an unfunded war.

Even if you did spend that money on a million schools, we would still have to pay to run those schools! That would cost even more in the long run! Of course, you could just build them without ever using them, which would be a huge waste!

To the right, why is it that the people most against government spending like this idea of giving every middle class person (In America, EVERYONE thinks they are middle class…) $50,000? “Government handouts don’t work, but I think government handouts will work!” These people bitch and complain when someone get $800 a month ($9,600 a year) or their kids get free school lunches, but have no problem with the government giving out 50 grand for a one time stimulus. Safety net=evil, money to blow=great! Look at this website touting this idea. I found some flaws in their reasoning:

“Jane needs a car; she spends $5,000 on a used one because she doesn’t want spend it all.” Who is going to have that kind of self control? How many Lottery winners blow through their money really quickly? How many celebrities with hundreds of millions of dollars have blown through their cash? *cough* Mike Tyson… *cough* MC Hammer…

“Joe buys a TV. Wal Mart makes money, Magnavox makes money. Everyone is happy.” How long could this stimulus last? Blowing this money on TVs, cars, boats, and other worthless luxury items you don’t need will only be a short term fix that would put us back at square one. Now that everyone has a big screen plasma TV, no one will need a TV for awhile, which means the industry will slow down. Economics 101. The market will be saturated and will crash (too many refrigerators, cars, and radios sat on the shelf/on the lot in the 1920s which caused the economy to nosedive in ’29. Too many video games caused that market to crash in ’83). $50,000 could cover a $1000 a month mortgage for about four years. Then what? Saving money will be good in the long term, but it won’t help in the short term.

I now have a plasma TV, a state of the art entertainment system, a high-end car, and every game system in the word. But I still have no job and my house will soon be foreclosed. After seeing a slight boom, industries will slow down again. Great idea! Do we need another stimulus/bailout?

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Killer Coke!!!


Yes, Coke is Evil. A whole “fair” and “balanced” website is devoted to that topic.

So what are the problems with America’s favorite drink?

“Coke kills workers in South America!”

According to the site “killercoke.org”, Coke hires mercenary thugs in South America to kill off, torture, and rough up union leaders, approximately 13 by the site’s count. Although that sounds bad, let me put it this way; various state governments killed about 30 in the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. Nine people died in the Homestead Strike of 1892. The Government killed 13 and wounded 57 in the Pullman strike of 1894. Chicago police killed 10 unarmed demonstrators in May 1937. The eviction of the Bonus Army in 1932 killed 4 and wounded 1017.

This is not a new thing that has just started to happen. Labor and Management have always conflicted. Why do you think the cabinet position of Commerce and Labor only lasted a few years? Yes, Coca Cola should do something about it as it is their company, but they are not in direct control down there. It’s the managers of these plants authorizing these attacks, not the CEOs in Atlanta. And really, are you surprised about Death Squads in South America? It wouldn’t be South America without it! That’s how most business mergers take place!

“Coke Pollutes rivers in 3rd World Nations!”

This is true. Coke has been dumping its waste into the Ganges River, the most sacred river in Hinduism, making it polluted. Also, they have been depleting the ground water to make their soda. Coke is evil for desecrating the sacred rivers of India! We should stop drinking their soda and drink Pepsi, the ethical company…oh wait, THEY ARE POLLUTING THE SAME RIVERS AS COCA-COLA! That’s right, Pepsi is guilty of the same thing as Coca-Cola! So why is Coke bad but Pepsi isn’t? Because Pepsi isn’t Coca Cola! Duh! This is a problem with India’s regulations. They can make laws and enforce them to stop Coke and Pepsi. We once had a problem with polluted rivers, some caught fire so many times that pictures of the event were basically stock photos used in the newspapers for the next fire.

But we passed laws to protect our environment. The Cuyahoga River in Ohio has recovered nicely.

“Coke worked for the Nazi’s!”
 Fanta was made for Nazis, so drinking it makes you a Nazi!



Oh boy, where do I begin? Well, seeing how the clip is from Michael Moore, red flags should be going up.

First, how does producing Fanta cause people to die? Pulling out wouldn’t have saved anyone’s life! After the war broke out, the people in Atlanta had no communication with the German bottling plants and couldn’t do anything. They didn’t see a dime from those plants until after the war ended. Like in South America, distance hinders communication and sometimes they are not in full control.

Second, shouldn’t we be happy that Coca-Cola decided to take war materials and turn them into drinks instead of making bombs? Didn’t the factories keep men off of the battlefield and stop them from A) killing us and B) dying on the field?

"This watch...it could have produced a thousand more bottles of Fanta!"

Third, The manager of the German branch of Coca-Cola, Max Keith, resisted the Nazis every chance he could get and endured hardships because of it. He worked hard to keep the Nazi government out of the company and often got in trouble.

 I couldn’t find a picture of Max Keith so I used Max Planck, a German physicist. Sue me…

Finally, working with Nazi Germany doesn’t make your company evil! In the 1930s, working with a prosperous industrial nation like Germany was not an issue, until 1939. It was a country like any other. If you don’t want to support a company that did business with the Nazi’s, stay away from Bayer, IBM, and Volkswagen. PS, don’t use the Interstate system; it was designed after the Autobahn, the highway Hitler and the Nazi’s built… And Mitsubishi made the planes that bombed Pearl Harbor! Oh and Henry Ford was a big Nazi supporter. George Eastman has a signed photo and letter from Mussolini.


The problem is that these people aren’t thinking. I had a friend tell me that for every 20 oz bottle or can of soda made 12 people died to make it. Another friend immediately called bullshit and explained that A LOT of people would have died to make all the Coke in the world. Friend A immediately withdrew his statistic and claimed that it might be lower. If his fact were true, 1.8 Billion people would have died to supply half the US population (~150 Million) with one can each. If half the US population bought a twelve pack; 21.6 Billion people would have died, or about THREE TIMES THE ENTIRE WORLD POPULATION RIGHT NOW!

Activists never seem to think, they just want to hate the big guy because they are big. That is why no one cares about Pepsi or why everyone blames McDonalds for making us fat but not Burger King. It is because Coke is Goliath and we want to be the David to take him down. If you have a problem with corporate practices, complain about corporate practices! Don’t single out one bully in a schoolyard full of bullies as the cause of all you problems.

Bottled Frustration

If you want to be a Liberal, here is one tip: Hate random things.

Just look around your room and find something to hate. Oh look a bottle of water. Hate it. Hate it NOW!

Over think everything about it. “Why do I need to buy water from some corporation when I have a faucet? It’s just tap water. The Plastic can kill you; I read it in an email. They take a million years to decompose!”

Next, act smug. “Consumerist pigs are such gullible sheep! I use a ‘green’ bottle made from corn that I bought at an earth-friendly store. It cost me $120, but it was worth it!”

Now go out and start yelling into people’s faces about the evils of bottle water. Give them taste tests that prove that bottled water is just tap water!

Really? Bottled Water? Is this really something to get bent out of shape over?

“It’s just tap water!”

Most companies probably don’t get their water from a spring in Vermont. I don’t like false advertising, but as long as they aren’t overly exaggerating anything, who cares?

I really thought we as a society had moved past this…

“Why do I need to buy water from some corporation when I have a faucet?!”

If you don’t have your own water bottle, this is convenient. How many street vendors have access to a faucet? How hard/expensive would it be to have a huge jug of water to dispense from for a vendor? If they did, you would be complaining about the Styrofoam or paper cups they would use to serve the water.


This image might seem silly, but what if you needed water on the go and don’t have your own water bottle?

Also, what if you don’t have access to fresh water from a tap? You know, like in JAPAN? Radiation made drinking tap water unsafe for babies. Or how about Africa and India? These places don’t have access to indoor plumbing or clean water. Until that can be delivered, bottled water is the best chance a lot of impoverished people can get clean water. Or what about after any disaster in any part of the world? Clean water is scarce, in comes the bottled water! What about the homeless?

“They take a million years to decompose!”

Maybe not that long, but yes, plastic bottles will be around for many years. Tons of Plastic is currently floating in the middle of the Pacific. But is that the plastics fault? We humans developed plastic to be around for a long time. Lots of us choose to litter and not recycle. We CAN recycle if we wanted to and fix this problem.

“The Plastic can kill you!”

Snopes.com gives a good answer here.

With everything wrong in the world, why do Liberals have to complain about every little thing? Bottled Water is evil? What about slavery? That does still exist in the world. Or what about human sex trafficking? Dictators? AIDS?

Next you will be telling me Coke is Evil…

Monday, March 21, 2011

Strange bedfellows

There was this ad I remember from a political science class in college:


I like the photoshop work but I don’t like the message. “The US doesn’t talk to dictators or terrorists! If we do, it makes us weaker! Obama will be the first President to talk with a dictator!”

Oh really?

 Franklin Roosevelt meeting with Joseph Stalin

 Harry S Truman meeting with Stalin


 Eisenhower with Spanish Dictator Francisco Franco


 Eisenhower with South Vietnamese President Diem

 Kennedy with Soviet Premier Khrushchev

Lyndon Johnson (far right) with Philippine President Marcos (Center, in white)

 Richard Nixon with Mao Zedong

 Richard Nixon with the President of Zaire, Mobutu

 Vice President Ford and President Nixon with Romanian leader Nicolae CeauÅŸescu

 Jimmy Carter with the Shah of Iran

 Reagan with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak

Reagan with Pakistani President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq

Reagan with Indonesian leader Suharto 

 George H. W. Bush with Mobutu

 Then-Vice President Bush with Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega

President Clinton meeting with Nobel Prize winning terrorist Yasser Arafat.

 George W. Bush with Saudi King Abdullah

So what was the point of that ad again? "Let's ignore history to make a political point!" I have pictures of EVERY President from Franklin Roosevelt to George W. Bush with a non democrat. As leader of the free world, the President does have to meet with other world leaders. This does not mean we are surrendering anything to anybody. Yes, in a perfect world we wouldn't talk to dictators, strong-men, or mass murders. But this isn't a perfect world.

And just so you don't think I'm excluding him:

 Obama with Mubarak

Obama with Hugo Chavez

Sunday, March 20, 2011

A 'Christian' Nation?


I’ve been told time and time again that the US is a ‘Christian Nation’. We have been founded on ‘Christian principles’.

But what is ‘Christian’?

If you were not aware, there are three major branches of Christianity. Two of which, Catholicism and Protestantism, comprise about 78% of the American population. ~51% are Protestants and 25% are Catholics. Catholics make up the largest Christian denomination if you break up Protestantism (Source). Protestants are broken down into (from largest to smallest) Baptists, Pentecostal, Lutheran, Presbyterian/Reformed, Methodist, Anglican/Episcopal, Adventist, and others smaller groups (Source).

Even those groups can be broken down further. Supposedly, there are 40 different branches of Methodism alone.

Why do we have so many different branches of one religion? Some man at some point in his life didn’t like how things were done so he challenged authority and unintentionally formed a new church. Then someone else didn’t like the new way things were done, so he branched off. Repeat a hundred times.

 This is the simplified version.

We have all these churches because someone didn’t like how something was interpreted or being run. People have different beliefs. Even though all these people believed that Jesus Christ was their lord and savior, people couldn’t agree on the 'small' things (baptism, the trinity, was Jesus more man than god or more god than man, road to personal salvation, who should read the bible, how the church should be lead, who can join, who can be a priest/minister, how much religion should run our daily lives, free will, etc.)

So what does all of this have to do with the USA?

How can we call ourselves ‘Christian’ when we don’t have a collective Christian identity? I don’t have the time to explain every branch of Christianity and how they are different from each other. Some believe in evolution, some don’t. Some support gay marriage, some don’t. And those are just the political issues. Like I said earlier, there are a lot of theological issues that greatly divide the many factions. There is almost a five-way tie in opinion on what it means to be Christian and how to obtain salvation in the US.

So any politician who claims to want to bring our nation back to its roots, ask him or her their theological position on something, like baptism. If they say baptism should be done at birth, kiss the Baptists goodbye. What about communion? Once a week, once a month, or no need for it? Is the bread and wine at communion a metaphor or the actual body and blood of Christ? Ask them the previously mentioned ‘how to obtain salvation?’ question and you will guarantee upsetting 80% of Christians no matter how you answer. And the best thing is, they will look like hypocrites if they respond “Religion is a personal matter and none of your business” but keep trying to force religious beliefs into their arguments! How can you claim religion is personal but keep trying to force it into the public sphere?

So many colors!
 (Source)

The USA is a melting pot. Even though this term is used for race and ethnicities, it also applies to religion. We have the First Amendment guaranteeing the separation of Church and State (and that’s not just my belief, Jefferson said it). We know what happens when one Christian group tries to take over. We have religious freedom; the right to worship, or not worship, without government interference. If the government is highly influenced by one religious group, how can it fairly protect the rights of all? The US does not have a single Christian identity and therefore cannot profess to be one. We are a hodgepodge of a diverse group of religions and beliefs. We are only ‘Christian’ in the sense that most of us believe in the divinity of Christ. After that, it gets complicated.