Chubby Nickel Audio Vlog

Rush Limbaugh, as everyone should know, is incorrect a lot. It should be no surprise, because almost everything he says is speculation… then he builds on his speculations as if they were logically valid. Which means that if you can prove the first premise incorrect, then the whole argument is false. So I was listening to Rush Limbaugh one day and decided to record him off the radio… onto a hi-tech cassette tape… wow, my technology is advanced.

“Women can give birth without a man around, many of them, hehe, prefer to do so, they work in the Obama administration too.”

So many single mothers are in the Obama administration? Nice. We all know that Rush thinks that Obama is bad and anyone who supports him is bad, so attributing being a single mother to people in the Obama administration is like him saying that being a single mother is bad. While it can be difficult to be a single mother, it should in no way be looked down upon, if anything it should be held high due the amount of effort it takes. But anyway, this is just another ad hominem that Rush loves to use.

“We’re the only ones who know god, who can conceive of god. And all that, that means. Therefor, to the left,  to know god is the single most destructive part of the human mind. That’s what has to be destroyed. Faith in god, belief in god that’s the real, and there are many enemies of the left, but that’s… if you go to any communist country the first thing they do is wipe god and religion out of every bodies mind. The state, becomes god and whoever is running it at the time becomes the messiah.”

Everyone on the “left” wants to destroy god and religion… even the religious ones that believe in god. I can’t help but to question the last part about whoever is running the state is a messiah… like the “left” were so happy and so prone to worshiping Bush when he was in office… oh right, here in a place I like to call reality, they weren’t. It’s like Rush has a problem with universal statements. He can’t see that his own statement doesn’t fit with reality, when he himself was complaining about how the “left” shouldn’t be questioning Bush and should be thanking him.

“If you strip away god, because everybody, a human being has to believe something, a higher power, a human a ha, even atheists they’ve got something that… has a higher power, it’s a tree or whatever. Could be another human being, it could be a, ah ah wu wu, institution, the human beings put together, there’s got to be something, if you strip god out, it has to be the state.”

Everybody has to to what? A human being must believe in a higher power? Really? Because I don’t. There are not one, but two false dichotomies in this one snippet. This is the first: because not everyone has to believe in a higher power, why must we? Atheists believe in a tree? I am sure he just said this to piss people off, but that is seriously retarded. The second false dichotomy is at the end when he says that if you take away god, you must believe in the state. No, no I don’t. I don’t believe that god exists, and I don’t believe that the state will magically work things out on its own.

That was from just 15 minutes of his third hour on 2009-10-20. Out of that 15 minutes there was even more bullshit than I covered. It doesn’t even take much to see that Rush is a blatant liar if someone can spot three deceptions in 15 minutes. So why do people listen to him? Because he blames people (the wrong people), for all the bad stuff that’s happening, and if you aren’t those people being blamed, you feel superior. Even though you would be a mindless automoton drone for not seeing the very clear hypocrisy and lies. If you want to hear the whole thing, then subscribe to his site and download it.

I know how Rush Limbaugh likes free speech, so let me add that this use of his radio show is covered under fair use of the DMCA.

Well, The first goal of Socrates in the apology is simple… to save his ass by discrediting his accusers. He starts the apology by stating that he is not a good speaker and that his accusers are liars, good start. Basically he tries several different ways to work on the jurists, he even says something along the lines of, “I won’t talk about my family, but my family is thus…” What a guy. He also needs to refute the accusation that he is an atheist. Though that might be seen as a good thing for a philosopher to be, in ancient Greece it’s a bad thing and punishable by law. But without saying I believe Melatus. He says it’s impossible to not believe in something that was brought about by the gods without believing in the gods. Kinda smooth way of saying if you believe what you believe and I do too, how can I believe in this without believing in the gods?

The Socratic dialectic is a way of introducing doubt to people who didn’t have any doubt of what they believed, first one has to respond to the question as though it were the answer and continue in that line until the questioner has doubt in his mind. Once doubt is established try to use questions to get to the answer already in the person’s mind. Like Socrates trying to figure out what virtue is with Meno; first Meno thinks he knows what virtue is and how it is established and then after talking to Socrates for a while he begins to doubt and together they decide that virtue is in everyone and cannot be gained, but is continued through anamnesis (or memory from a past life). It is an odd belief that Socrates has that anamnesis is a thing which actually exists and continues belief, though the idea is not altogether crazy except for that Socrates was a sort of monotheistic person and most monotheistic persons which we still have few of today because most Christians are dualists which believe that there’s a god above and a devil below. Monotheists believe that all things good and bad come from one god and that is the belief system that many people believe that Socrates held to.

Basically the reason that in “the Meno” that Socrates brought Meno to such a point of doubt so that he had no more understanding of what was virtue than what the surface of the sun was made of, Socrates brought him to his wits’ end to retrain his mind and to bring him to the same place Socrates was in, because he himself explained in the Meno that he does not know the answer to what is virtue and wishes to explore that with Meno and in order to do that he has to be at the same level.

In the Crito Socrates talks about social agreements and things like the law, and our agreement to abide by it. The conscience of Crito is bugging him because of the fact that he believes that Socrates doesn’t deserve to die, and offers an escape from prison.

And though I know those don’t necessarily flow in a certain way or toward a certain goal, I feel that those are some good points to know about Socrates.

In my life there has been joy’s sweet tears

And loss’ bitterness through the years

Though the loss of anything could not

liken to death, and a siblings lot

my life changed with the loss of blood

too soon was taken from blood

I’ve given up Jesus and as such have given up hope

Not for the future, but for meeting you again

at the end of my life’s journey is nothing

But darkness and dampness and cold

And now that I’ve lost faith I’ve lost you

And though I know that, I can’t deny what’s true

I can’t stop my heart from the longing

but the longing must stop

I know that life will end my cares and sorrows

When you died you took a piece of me along

And the piece off of my heart was cropped

And sometimes I’m found in wallowing sorrow

And my life is found too damn fucking long

But I’ve given up Jesus and have given up God

And with them I’ve given up faith

And the dogma swallowed through gritted teeth

enough to gag, and enough to kill

I’ve decided that in this life I’ve had my fill

and will not be sheep’d with the lies of dead tyrants

I’ve given up Jesus and as such have given up you

And in my heart I know that it’s true

That I will never see you again in any but mem’ry

I love and will always miss the love that you’ve shown

And miss the times that you could’ve watched me grow

But in my heart I can’t help but know

There is no god, no jesus, and no life after death

And in my life I’ll hold true with my last breath.

Though i’ve given up God I’ve given up you

And may we all rest beneath the grass, the stone, and the dew.

To my sibling, long dead, long cold, and for this life, long loved.

The top 1% say; "bend over and take it like a poor person"

How many of you have money to spare? Well since you’re viewing such an abstract and low profile blog you probably have a lot of extra time so that pretty much means you’re unemployed or so rich you don’t have to work. I hope it’s the latter though I know it’s probably not because the majority of people in this country are not even near rich. We may be doing well enough and have enough and some to spare but maybe you’ve noticed that things seem to be getting tighter around the wallet for the past thirty to forty years? Here’s why, the top one percent of people have more money than the combined lower ninety five percent isn’t that wrong? depends if you’re on top or not.

Now, I’m not calling rich people dishonest or saying that they’re doing anything illegal. But there is something to be said about the lack of taxes being paid by the people on top and the huge chunk that the lower end pays, not in dollars but in percentage.

If you’re in the top 20% according to the heritage foundation (here) you pay 70% of income taxes, but when the top 5% make 350% more money than the median household is it really such a burden? and it’s not 70% of their income it’s 70% of the TOTAL tax paid, the average percentage they pay is a lot lower than the median household pays. The median household pays about half of what they make in all taxes combined. The taxes the rich pay are much lower in percentages but higher in dollars. The difference is how much of their income in percentage is being taken out of their pocket? not as much as is taken out of yours.

Sure paying a million dollars of income taxes seems like a lot to you but when you make six million dollars in a year a million in taxes is only one sixth of your income. but if I pay about 20 grand out of my 60 grand yearly salary that’s a third, for all those math wizzes out there it’s twice as much and none of it is disposable income because it leaves 40 grand and not five million dollars. I work with a guy who says, what do you think about redistribution of wealth? and he is seriously outraged that I think that it’s bad one way and good another and since he seems to be conservative at heart (if they have those) he will not be swayed and even though the social mobility in America is seriously less than even Britain he claims that it’s wrong to tax rich people more. So, I said let’s tax them the same. He said they already pay more than I do. Well sure, I said, in dollars. He looked at me as though to say duh! I get the hint and tell him that sure they pay way more dollars than I do in taxes but they pay way less in percentage. The average income family will pay about half of what they make in taxes every year, but an upper income family will pay only around a third or less. To which he made a flummoxed grunt and wandered off to some town hall meeting with his gun and as usual without his brain.

The bottom line (sorry about the pun) is that the top money makers have been gaining wealth since the 60′s and 70′s while the rest have been losing wealth even though the dollar amounts we make are about the same it’s the percentages that matter. And it’s the percentages that are shrinking for us and growing for them.

Whenever I have had the misfortune of being curious about Glenn Beck’s TV show… it has always been a disappointment. I mean at least O’ Reilly and Hannity have some character and are easy to laugh at because they have the look of a douche bag… but Glenn just seems more like a disillusioned sock puppet. The point is, I feel more pity for the man than I am angry at his bare assertions that he claims are facts.

I know, I am letting my emotions get the better of me, because while listening to Glenn, it is very apparent that he is a dishonest jackass. Maybe is not intentionally spreading falsehoods as facts, but he is definitely acting like he knows the facts. So he is either being dishonest about knowing the facts or he is intentionally misleading. Either way, he is dishonest.

For instances: Glenn had this whole series of bare assertions about how the progressive Rockefellers are emanating communism to media stations just because the news stations are inside the Rockefeller plaza… just like his station Fox News is. Glenn on a radio show trying to bash Olberman (who I don’t really like anyway), stated that propaganda is when the state controls the media provided to the public… when any quick reference search shows that propaganda is any one or any group skewing facts to the public with the intent to gain support for something or hurt the public opinion of something. Glenn also a while ago said that America had the worst health care in the world, but now says that America has the best health care in the world, what a difference switching to Fox News makes on ones views. He also says that taking “In God We Trust” off of the money will result in people getting beat to death with railroad pins. There are a lot more… like every single show, but those are just off the top of my head.

Now maybe it’s because he hasn’t been doing this for as long as others, but I vote that he is just a great douche bag. this has been a very opinionated post, but at least you can look up what I am talking about which is a hell of a lot more than you can do for any Fox News show.

Socrates and alcibiades

it seems the dilemma of laws over morals is a major one. Perhaps it is because it is one of those things that has no clear line. Somewhere between people who break the laws for fun and those who keep the laws without question there has to be a middle ground. From the center the view has to be a lot different from the views at either radical end. It would have to be one of a careful balance that has been thought out thoroughly and as unbiased as possible. It would be impossible to know that one point in the line could be the most centered point. It would also be impossible to claim that any one person has this perfect perspective because everyone has their own perspective. There are things in this life that are worth breaking the law for and there are cases where laws must be broken for the sake of morality.

The philosopher Thomas Aquinas said:

thomas aquinas

Law does not profit a man unless he obeys it. But the very fact that a man obeys a law is due to his being good. Therefore in man goodness is presupposed to the law. Therefore the law does not make men good.

This goes a long way into answering the question of always obeying the law or not. In the first sentence it is shown that the laws mean nothing and can be of profit to no person at all unless they are obeyed. There are some in the world who believe that laws are unnecessary and that man would be better off without the restrictions of law. They would be wrong because without laws and people to enforce them the weak would be overcome by the strong and the

dumb by the persuasive. Anarchy is in no way a natural setting either. Humans, animals and bugs all have some sort of social agreements with others of their species otherwise their species would not survive. Ants have queens, Animals have packs or other types of groups in which to maintain their species. Humans however because of the complexity of our species the social interactions are also made more complex. We have groups that start at siblings, friends, family, all the way to nation, world view and religion. It is because of the complexity of our species that we need law enforcement, governing bodies and legislators to provide the good of the people or at least as close to good as we can get.

The Thomas Aquinas quote at the end said “the law does not make men good”. This is true because of the fact that a good man is not good because of the law. The law is good or bad because of the man who made it. Even obeying the law is not a sign of a good man it may only signify a man who is scared of the consequences of the law and there is a difference between a good man and one who is scared of law enforcement. A good man obeys the laws because they are moral and follows his moral compass. A man who has no moral compass can still obey the laws. But because he is lacking in morals he won’t know when to break the laws if necessary and may cause harm in inaction.

The reasons for breaking the law must be good. That is, the benefit must outweigh the cost of breaking the law. Socrates said; “neither injury nor retaliation nor warding off evil by evil is ever right.” . In this many would not agree. The causing of harm to someone who would do you harm is not allowed by this principle. Though I would argue that my children who are in my care still should be protected by any means necessary from people who would do them harm. Of course I am not saying that someone who would do little harm deserves a great deal of harm done to him. That is not my case at all, though I would argue that those who would do evil to my mostly defenseless children would be deserving of as little evil as possible to stop them from harming the innocents that are in my care. For that matter it may be said that it would be moral to save someone who is not in your immediate care from harm by doing harm to the perpetrator.

The damage-benefit analysis is a tough one to measure when weighing the law against the moral. For one, if in breaking the law others may feel inclined to do likewise it may not be in the best interest to break it. Also as Socrates said “Do you imagine that a State can subsist and not be overthrown, in which the decisions of law have no power, but are set aside and overthrown by individuals?”. This would be chaos and anarchy. As previously stated it would not be a good thing for people to live that way. Without laws and enforcers only the strong and the smart would have the upper hand and equality would be a word without meaning. The morals of a man should be the first and foremost consideration and the laws perhaps a close second.

Morals could be misconceived in modern cultures to mean values given by our god(s) or holy writings. But I do not mean morals in this way though many do, but I mean morals in the view of a carefully measuring mind to find the value of actions such as do the most good. Things to keep the equation even or towards the good would be considered moral or at least not immoral. Even holy writings can fail the test of morality and more often than people think. The apostle Peter said that Lot was a just and righteous man yet in Genesis, Lot’s way of saving the angels that came to visit him is offering his two virgin daughters to the crowd of people insisting on raping the angels. I don’t think offering ones children to an angry mob to spare angels would be considered moral or should be for that matter.

In The Apology Socrates said that even if his life was saved and his freedom guaranteed he would not give up philosophy and his investigations. He would not give up his life’s work for the last remnants of his life. Or in other words he would rather give up his life rather than admit to doing wrong where he feels he did none. That decision contributes to the truthfulness and morality of his life. The fact that he would rather die than to break his morals is testimony of his conviction to his beliefs.

In conclusion, morality is more important than law. Law is for a base morality that sometimes does more evil than good but for the most part laws are in place to keep the majority of people on a basic morality. But one’s morality should be paramount to the laws of his nation. The choice between obeying the law and being true to one’s morals is by no means an easy question. But with contemplation and a good moral compass the truth is that the law has and will need to be broken. The morals that one lives by should never be compromised for the sake of the law or the sake of one’s life.

Poor Richard

This first way to begin to save the country is to make all publicly elected officials have a term limit. Have you ever wondered why someone would want to be in public service for most of their life? ’cause it’s not really hard. You only work part of the year and you just have to keep your homosexual extramarital affair even more carefully guarded while in public service.

It would make the government more susceptible to public opinion and would at least keep our supply of crap rotating out. Instead of having this program where people are constantly recycled back into the system and pretty much making it a lifetime career instead of moving on to something better which is what the founding fathers would have predicted would happen, but they couldn’t see the large amount of money senators make and how little they have to work for it.

The life of a public servant should be in service to the public. Not listening to lobbyists and special interest groups, their constituency should be the deciding factor, yet the most powerful people in government are the corporations with the most money which brings me too the next chapter on how to save the country that i will save for another day, ban lobbyists and special interest groups.

This will be a fairly short post though I feel it serves it’s purpose…

God, you know him he’s the guy in the sky to cares about billions of people’s prayers, sins, and services. If you pray to be better in school he hears your prayers right? wrong, the symptom you get after prayer sometimes can be good, and this placebo effect in leaving your problems to another person can actually be good for the outcome of things like school. but that’s not what this post is about.

If God was just and good, then the righteous would be getting some sort of special treatment, now i know that the scriptures say that everything that happens is for your own good but that’s an escape clause and here’s why: a just and good person does not treat good people who have done nothing wrong poorly, he would be extra kind and giving ask Job if that happened for him… thought not.

A just God would not punish the righteous for the sake of the wicked where is the justice in that? the most perfect person on the planet ever is supposed to have died for their sins? but only if you say you believe in him and call him your savior… and give to the donation plate that’s the really important part. Where is the goodness in punishing the good so that the evil will know that when they’re good they too will be punished? but after your dead and gone to where no one can take advantage of you anymore THAT’S when you’ll get your reward of course… I’ve got a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow I’ll sell you if you just one, believe in leprechauns and two, believe that your gold will actually be at the end of the rainbow and don’t believe those scientists and skeptics who tell you that the rainbow is really an optical illusion brought on by the prism effect of the liquid in the air and you can never ever reach the end or your reward, so thanks for the donation.

Stop calling atheists proud and that they think they’re their own God… they don’t they don’t have this sick center of the universe idea that a God would care about every time they picked their nose and lied about it you’re going to hell bugger picker liar! The humble ones are the ones who admit that there may be no ultimate plan for the universe, it may be just a big accident and our only purpose here is to continue the species.

Poor Richard.

There is a misunderstanding going on about competition and businesses. One set of deceptive, dishonest people will say that no company is against competition because competition is good for business and fight to remove regulations, laws and punishments for those companies that seek to abuse the system. The other set of deceptive, dishonest people want a lot of regulation under the guise of protecting the people.

First to clarify: competition is good for business, but not good for a company. Competition results in higher quality products and services at lower costs. This is good for the people purchasing the products and services, but not so good for the companies providing the products and services. A company wants the biggest piece of the consumer pie they can get, and they try to provide high quality services for less than their competitors to attain that goal. This is good for the consumer. What happens if there is no competition? No competition means that a company can provide the same service for as much as they want and do not need to improve their product or service. This is good for the company and bad for the consumer. So competition is good for business but bad for companies.

Regulations are good for the people and small business but are bad for large companies and big business. Regulations do limit the power of big businesses which on a surface common sense level of understanding seem bad for business. Without any regulations, then any company can do whatever they want. Lead painted baby toys, disgusting old rotting meat for dinner and strong arm tactics to remove the competition. So to protect the people and small business, regulations are necessary.

Regulations are a way to relieve the legal system of law suits towards companies and also help to protect competition. Regulations serve to provide a system to prevent companies from doing things that would otherwise result in a law suit. If a company is prevented by a regulation to not allow lead based paint on childrens toys, then that prevents many law suits that would have resulted from making children sick. Regulations also prevent big companies from using their money and influence to wipe out small companies that compete with them.

When is regulation taken too far? That is not such an easy question to answer. My freedom loving side feels that no freedom should be taken unless that is the only way to prevent someone from taking freedom from another.  So my belief is that regulation goes too far when it is taking the freedom from a company for any purpose other than protecting the freedom of people or other companies. Regulation should never be used just for the sake of limiting freedom.

Remember the 8th of September of 2009… do not let your kids go to school, don’t let them watch T.V. don’t let them marry out of the covenant. This coming Tuesday there will be a broadcast to your kids school by a black man so evil so scary, so incredibly slow talking, we made him president.

As it turns out this man who forced the majority of the country to vote for him with his despicably intelligent speeches though I’m sure that if he had not had his prompter he wouldn’t have been able to hypnotize so many people and bend them to his whim. The most terrible thing about this man who calls himself president, Ha! president he hasn’t even declared war without a good reason you can’t call that a president now can you?

When he begins his speech or death panel hypno talk he’ll act like he’s just giving a regular speech to the kids but ohhh no, he’s going to be sending subliminal messages of communistic fascism and socialism so strong your kids will likely pledge on the Koran to become a suicide activist, well not really suicide but activists and that’s worse. It may seem that your kid is perfectly normal for weeks years or even decades but when they start acting strange, and nothing happens for a while, then when nothing happens for a little while longer you can most definitely blame it on Obama and his Hitlerisms.

You have been warned…

Poor Richard.