It's just my opinion, I could be wrong

This opinion piece  is too interesting to ignore, even if it's admittedly sorta fringe in comparison to "real" issues. Salon being an ultra-liberal publication, and the author being a political writer for such, I'd think it's fair to conclude that we're solidly in the mindset of a hardcore liberal here. And that's what I want to focus on, because the gripe expressed is to wacky and left-field, that it really makes you wonder about the mental fitness of liberals in general. Here's the synopsis the train [wreck] of thought, for those too lazy to read the article: Captain America is the quintessential representation of American idealism, in terms of moral compass and judgement The author lauds this expression in the previous films, noting Captain America's loyalty, solid judgement, and [importantly] unequivocal stance that too much government power/control was ripe for abuse, and thus needed to be countered by the people There is praise for Cap...

(Note: This is another area-specific post, so if you don't care about politics in California, this won't be very interesting to you. Consider yourself noted.) Property taxes in California are kinda messed up. For a quick primer, skim the Wikipedia page on Prop 13 ; this is not the only problem, but is the genesis for a lot of the issues. Note that Prop 13 itself was a voter backlash against the inability of the state to constrain its tax & spend addiction, which has not really abated since its passage, and also represents a huge ongoing issue for the state... but that's a topic for another blog post. In this one, I'm going to concentrate on things I would change with property taxes alone, to make that system more sane. I see two fundamental problems with the current taxation scheme, which will be the basis for three changes I would suggest (two to address the issues, and an additional one which I think would just be a great improvement in general), and one subst...

So these ruminations are somewhat prompted by this current event , in which Trump is railing against the RNC establishment for having a rigged system which favors political insiders at the expense of anyone trying to mount a campaign as an outsider. As is typical, Trump is more or less accurate in his assessment, which was delivered with all the political nuance and subtlety of an elephant on PCP covered in feces. But a actually want to examine another aspect of the Trump campaign story, which is the idea that if he does not receive the nomination, he may decide to continue to run as a third party candidate. In the aforementioned linked article, the Washington Post reiterates the perception that this would be devastating for the Republican party, as voters are split between an establishment candidate, and the offensive and dangerous egomaniac who is connecting with the population's distrust and dissatisfaction with the establishment. Yes, such a run would likely split the vote...

So John Brennan, the acting CIA director, made it clear in a recent interview that the CIA would not carry out torture again , even if order to do so by a future president. Presumably, this was somewhat in response to Trump's campaign assertion that he would bring back torture, and even more sever forms of such [violations of international treaties], if elected president. So even if Trump gets elected, the US will not torture people any more. Well, that's the way it's supposed to be interpreted anyway... but as with many things in politics, a careful examination may reveal a different version of the truth than what the headlines are designed to lead you to believe. First, let's note that Brennan, for whatever nobility may be in the stance, isn't taking this stance because he thinks torture is fundamentally wrong, and/or he wouldn't authorize it again in the abstract. His quote, specifically: "I will not agree to carry out some of these tactics and tec...

So Obama was hanging out at SXSW , and has this to say, re the current smartphone encryption debate:  http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-03-11/obama-confronts-a-skeptical-silicon-valley-at-south-by-southwest To summarize the article, the salient point are in these quotes, imho: "The question we now have to ask is, if technologically it is possible to make an impenetrable device or system, where the encryption is so strong there’s no key, there’s no door at all, then how do we apprehend the child pornographer? How do we solve or disrupt a terrorist plot?" Obama said. "If in fact you can’t crack that at all, government can’t get in, then everybody’s walking around with a Swiss bank account in their pocket."  Compromise is possible, he said, and the technology industry must help design it.  "I suspect the answer is going to come down to, how do we create a system that, encryption is as strong as possible, the key is secure as possible...

Several articles recently cite a  recent web study from Johns Hopkins concluding that roughly 60% of Americans wanting to buy a gun would buy a smart gun if one was available. No, wait, that's not actually a correct representation of the study. The actual study found that nearly 59% of people buying guns would consider  purchasing a childproof gun if one was available. Note the subtle, but profound, intentional misrepresentation of the results of the study, by the article about the study itself (compare paragraph one, the summary, to paragraph eight, the actual findings). Also note the heavy dose of unrelated statistics and propaganda, intended to emphasize how vital it presumably is to propagate the use of "smart" guns in society. But that's only the start of the problems around this topic. See, there's no particular definition of "childproof" either, which allows people to extrapolate their own impressions. One could suppose that the 60% who wo...

I was going to not write anything about the SOTU , political drivel as it primarily is, but as usual in reading the text a few things jumped out, and motivated a sort of response. I'm not going to cover every point, of course (most of which are vapid and well-trod by this point), but a few bear mentioning. Obama on "progress" over his term: It’s how we recovered from the worst economic crisis in generations. ... yeah, if by recovered you mean stringing the economy along in a strange sort of limbo, where the Fed keeps housing affordable and stocks mostly positive after printing roughly $3,000,000,000,000 of additional money to buy up all the junk bonds the government created during the housing bubble. The recovery which has brought us to the precipice of another crash, which you're desperately hoping to postpone until you're out of office. Oh, and you has to create another roughly 7 trillion in national debt so that people in the middle class still cannot affo...