Reichsbürgers. Mmmm, bürgers….

 Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, history, Hmm..., politics, ಠ_ಠ  8 Responses »
Nov 122016
 

Y’all have heard of “Sovereign Citizens,” I assume. In the US there are two basic types:

  1. Nutty white folks living out in the boonies on their farms and such, who claim that US Federal laws (such as income tax and the like) don’t apply to them.
  2. Nutty black folks living in urban areas, typically squatting in other people homes and apartments, who claim that US Federal laws don’t apply to them because they are Moors.

Both groups are nutty and tend to make a mess of the courts, tying up the system with bullcrap lawsuits and claim filing sand such. Both groups also tend to get a pretty thorough whalloping by the legal system, though it takes some time and taxpayer dollars to get it done.

Here’s the good news: it’s not a uniquely American form of nuttiness. Gentlemen, behold:

Hundreds of Germans are living as if the Reich never ended

Here we have the German equivalent, the “Imperial Citizen.”

The so-called Reichsbürger are convinced that the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) does not exist. In its place the old German Empire endures, which in their telling was never properly abolished and persists in the borders of either 1871 or 1937.

There is one way in which the Imperial Citizen is even whackier than the Soviereign Citizen. In the US, the SC’s believe that they are, as one might expect, sovereign. They have no ruler (though I suspect there’s a lot of cultishness and leaders probably exist). But in Germany…

it is not clear even to the Reichsbürger who the true imperial government-in-waiting is. There are about 30 rival imperial chancellors, several princes and at least one king.

Oy.

Ya gotta wonder about the sanity of people who deny the reality of the world.

 

 Posted by at 4:25 pm

Go see “Arrival”

 art, awesomeness, blather, science fiction  15 Responses »
Nov 112016
 

It’s a really, really good movie. There are Important Plot Twists that I won’t get into, so this’ll be lean on details.

It’s a rare *smart* science fiction movie. The plot is driven by the effort to communicate with a species that communicates very, very differently from humans. There is little of the usual interpersonal drama… yes, there’s the standard “Army Guy runs the Show, with CIA Spook in the corner, in charge of Science Guys. But the Army Guy *isn’t* the angry, blow-em-up dumbass; the Spook isn’t there to screw people over, and the Science Guys aren’t flighty dimwits.

One of the problems people had with the trailer some months back was that it showed Chinese fighters on US ships. This makes sense… not that it’d make sense for that to actually happen, but the scene in the movie lasts about *one* second. The budget for the flick is less than $50 million, so doing some quick digital tinkering makes a lot more sense than building a complete navy.

The aliens are, indeed, alien. You do eventually get a reasonably good look at them, and they make sense in the context of an utterly alien evolution in a low gravity environment. They are not A Guy In A Digital Suit. While they are not explicitly Lovecraftian, I don’t think he would’ve sneered at their design.

There aren’t really any Villains here, apart from some random jackasses here and there… which you’d certainly have.

The characters on the whole don’t do stupid things to advance the plot. Interestingly, one character does something almost exactly like something that brought out howls of “that’s friggen’ stupid” when people watched “Prometheus,” but here it was done not because the character is an idiot, but because the character sees it as a necessity, and does so with full knowledge.

The aliens technology is not explored. Very little is shown… about all we find out is that they’re pretty good at manipulating gravity. They also have something one might consider a superpower, and this plays into the Big Twist. The science-guy in me grumbled a bit at that ability, but willing suspension of disbelief is juuuust possible here.

The movie is subdued. No chases, dogfights, running around with hair on fire. It is also pretty melancholic… there is a personal tragedy that runs through the movie from beginning to end.

So if you like splodey, this isn’t really your movie. If you like a good solid effort at serious sci-fi… here ya go.

 

PS: one of the characters who really helps sell the mood of the movie is the setting. Supposedly Montana, I believe this was actually somewhere in Quebec. It would surprise me not at all if this place winds up a tourist spot like the Field of Dreams in Iowa.

 Posted by at 4:29 pm

Let the autopsies begin

 blather, Forward!, Hmm..., politics  13 Responses »
Nov 102016
 

After Mitt Romney lost in 2012, the Republican party had an “autopsy” to try to figure out why a popular and successful candidate lost to an incompetent boob. One of the big conclusions drawn was that Republicans were the “party of white people” and that they could not win if they were perceived to support enforcing immigration laws; in the future the only way a Republican could win would be if he or she supported amnesty. Well… Tuesday kinda took a dump on that conclusion, obviously. But not as much as some might suppose… Trump got 59,937,338 votes against Hillarys 60,274,974 (these numbers are subject to modest adjustments), and only won the White House due to the magic of the Electoral College. In 2012, Obama got 65,915,795 to Romneys 60,933,504. Trump got fewer votes than Romney… and that’s not even taking into account the increase in population since then. Don’t get too puffed up, Trump fans… Trump didn’t so much *win* as Hillary *lost.* It would be a good idea for Republicans to start figuring things out.

Of course, Democrats are also trying to figure things out. A lot of them are leaping to the absolutely wrong conclusion… that Hillary lost because White Americans are racist, sexist, Islamophobic, transphobic monsters who somehow though Obama was just neato. The more thoughtful Dems are noting that Hillary got more than five and a half million fewer votes than Obama ’12… and about eight and a half million fewer than Obama ’12.

People on both sides can rightly say “How is is possible that my candidate lost to/got fewer votes than *that* candidate, who is so clearly terrible?” And the answer, of course, is that both candidates were terrible. Either candidate, put up against a generic, bland version of the sort of candidate the opposing party would normally put up, would have lost *badly.* Either candidate should have been easily defeated, because they both sucked.

As I said, some Dems are putting a bit of thought into the analysis, beyond “white people are teh eebil.” Such as here:

The Democratic Party Deserved To Die

The commenter there points out that both sides looked at places in the midwest/rust belt/flyover country that have lost industrial jobs and are cryign out for help. Both sides responded to those un/underemployed poor white folks with utter BS. But where Trumps BS at least *kinda* sounds good (we can fix the problem through sheer force of will), the Dems basically insulted those people:

Well, those jobs are actually gone for good, we knowingly told them. And we offered a fantastical non-solution. We will retrain you for good jobs! Never mind that these “good jobs” didn’t exist in East Kentucky or Cleveland. And as a final insult, we lectured a struggling people watching their kids die of drug overdoses about their white privilege.

An honest assessment of the situation is “your jobs are gone… not so much to offshoring but to robots. They are not coming back.” Neither side wants to face that. For the Republicans, answers such as a basic universal income or enforced Luddism are anathema. For the Democrats, deporting illegals so that the bottom rung of Americans can have jobs is equally unpalatable.

I think Trump is kinda up the creek here, if he actually wants to win re-election in ’20. Making better deals and setting up tariffs isn’t going to do a damn thing to restore jobs that are now technologically obsolete. The Dems are up the creek if they continue to insist on their culture of sneering at the middle of the county (i.e. “white people,” since there’s no chance they’d sneer at People Of Any Color Other Than White).

Either the whole thing is going to collapse, or someone will come up with a workable solution. As much as the ethics of the situation gives me the uncomfortables, I expect that, long term, the answer will come in the form of a welfare state that embraces slavery… a universal basic income with highly advanced humanoid robots doing many of the jobs currently being done by lower and middle income people today.

 

 Posted by at 6:36 pm

President GMF’s First 100 days

 blather, Hmm..., news, politics  8 Responses »
Nov 102016
 

President-Elect Giant Middle Finger posted some time ago his plan for his first 100 days. As the saying goes no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy, so even if he really wants to do all this he almost certainly won’t be able to. And of course it’s an open question whether he really wants to… and how much was lip service to conservatives. We shall see, I guess. Anyway, his plan is HERE. While it was posted somewhere around October 22, it seems to be only getting much press in the last day or so. Unsurprising… the plans of a guy you expect to lose aren’t worth a whole lot of effort to examine. But once he actually won, it suddenly became kinda important to look at what he wants to do.

So, what we got? The bolding is mine… some stuff I think is worthy of discussion.

Therefore, on the first day of my term of office, my administration will immediately pursue the following six measures to clean up the corruption and special interest collusion in Washington, DC:

* FIRST, propose a Constitutional Amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress; (Comment: A *great* idea. it’ll never pass.)

* SECOND, a hiring freeze on all federal employees to reduce federal workforce through attrition (exempting military, public safety, and public health); (Comment: A good idea overall, but realistically problematical.)

* THIRD, a requirement that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated; (Comment: Another great idea.)

* FOURTH, a 5 year-ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service;

* FIFTH, a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government;

* SIXTH, a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections.

On the same day, I will begin taking the following 7 actions to protect American workers:

* FIRST, I will announce my intention to renegotiate NAFTA or withdraw from the deal under Article 2205

* SECOND, I will announce our withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership

* THIRD, I will direct my Secretary of the Treasury to label China a currency manipulator

* FOURTH, I will direct the Secretary of Commerce and U.S. Trade Representative to identify all foreign trading abuses that unfairly impact American workers and direct them to use every tool under American and international law to end those abuses immediately

* FIFTH, I will lift the restrictions on the production of $50 trillion dollars’ worth of job-producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal. (Comment: Hey! What about the nukes??!?!)

* SIXTH, lift the Obama-Clinton roadblocks and allow vital energy infrastructure projects, like the Keystone Pipeline, to move forward

* SEVENTH, cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs and use the money to fix America’s water and environmental infrastructure (Comment: heh.)

Additionally, on the first day, I will take the following five actions to restore security and the constitutional rule of law:

* FIRST, cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama (Comment: Good.)

* SECOND, begin the process of selecting a replacement for Justice Scalia from one of the 20 judges on my list, who will uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States (Comment: Good. His list has been out there for a while, but it was unclear whether he’d actually pick from the list)

* THIRD, cancel all federal funding to Sanctuary Cities (Comment: Great idea, but I’m uncertain that that is within the Presidents power)

* FOURTH, begin removing the more than 2 million criminal illegal immigrants from the country and cancel visas to foreign countries that won’t take them back (Comment: Good luck with that.)

* FIFTH, suspend immigration from terror-prone regions where vetting cannot safely occur. All vetting of people coming into our country will be considered extreme vetting. (Comment: WTF is “Extreme vetting?”)

Next, I will work with Congress to introduce the following broader legislative measures and fight for their passage within the first 100 days of my Administration:

Middle Class Tax Relief And Simplification Act. An economic plan designed to grow the economy 4% per year and create at least 25 million new jobs through massive tax reduction and simplification, in combination with trade reform, regulatory relief, and lifting the restrictions on American energy. The largest tax reductions are for the middle class. A middle-class family with 2 children will get a 35% tax cut. The current number of brackets will be reduced from 7 to 3, and tax forms will likewise be greatly simplified. The business rate will be lowered from 35 to 15 percent, and the trillions of dollars of American corporate money overseas can now be brought back at a 10 percent rate. (Comment: About friggen’ time.)

End The Offshoring Act. Establishes tariffs to discourage companies from laying off their workers in order to relocate in other countries and ship their products back to the U.S. tax-free. (Comment: When  do tariffs ever wind up being a good idea?)

American Energy & Infrastructure Act. Leverages public-private partnerships, and private investments through tax incentives, to spur $1 trillion in infrastructure investment over 10 years. It is revenue neutral.

School Choice And Education Opportunity Act. Redirects education dollars to give parents the right to send their kid to the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school of their choice. Ends common core, brings education supervision to local communities. It expands vocational and technical education, and make 2 and 4-year college more affordable.

Repeal and Replace Obamacare Act. Fully repeals Obamacare and replaces it with Health Savings Accounts, the ability to purchase health insurance across state lines, and lets states manage Medicaid funds. Reforms will also include cutting the red tape at the FDA: there are over 4,000 drugs awaiting approval, and we especially want to speed the approval of life-saving medications. (Comment: yay, chaos! Though insurance crossing state lines is mind-bogglingly obvious.)

Affordable Childcare and Eldercare Act. Allows Americans to deduct childcare and elder care from their taxes, incentivizes employers to provide on-side childcare services, and creates tax-free Dependent Care Savings Accounts for both young and elderly dependents, with matching contributions for low-income families.

End Illegal Immigration Act Fully-funds the construction of a wall on our southern border with the full understanding that the country Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such wall; establishes a 2-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering the U.S. after a previous deportation, and a 5-year mandatory minimum for illegally re-entering for those with felony convictions, multiple misdemeanor convictions or two or more prior deportations; also reforms visa rules to enhance penalties for overstaying and to ensure open jobs are offered to American workers first. (Comment: Yeah, Sure. That’ll happen.)

Restoring Community Safety Act. Reduces surging crime, drugs and violence by creating a Task Force On Violent Crime and increasing funding for programs that train and assist local police; increases resources for federal law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors to dismantle criminal gangs and put violent offenders behind bars. (Comment: “Surging crime?” Crime has been declining for twenty years.)

Restoring National Security Act. Rebuilds our military by eliminating the defense sequester and expanding military investment; provides Veterans with the ability to receive public VA treatment or attend the private doctor of their choice; protects our vital infrastructure from cyber-attack; establishes new screening procedures for immigration to ensure those who are admitted to our country support our people and our values

Clean up Corruption in Washington Act. Enacts new ethics reforms to Drain the Swamp and reduce the corrupting influence of special interests on our politics.

To get much of this passed, he’ll have to have all the Republicans in the House and Senate on board. Some of these stand approximately zero chance of that happening, such as getting them to agree to being term limited.

On the whole it *seems* pretty good, but there are some things that are definitely missing. Such as:

  • Refurbish the existing nuclear arsenal and restore the infrastructure to design and manufacture *entirely* new nuclear warheads
  • Install four terawatts of electrical power via breeder reactors, thorium reactors, advanced new generation American nuclear reactors within ten years.
  • Fully fund development of systems such as thermal depolymerization to turn biowaste into petroleum

Some other things that would be nice to see:

  • Make military bases on the moon, and military scouting outposts on Mars, a priority within 8 years. To be supplied via American launch and transport systems.
  • Make “Mock Political Correctness Day” a Federal Holiday.
  • Declare Manhattan, San Francisco and other major urban areas National Parks. No further development, construction or demolishing allowed without the prior approval of the states of Utah and Nevada.
  • Replace Common Core with Basic Firearms Safety and Marksmanship Training.
 Posted by at 10:05 am
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