Food Products, Essentially

So apparently, on a recent episode of Bill O'Reilly's television show on Fox News ("The O'Reilly Factor", series working title: "An Embittered, Privileged, Middle-Aged White Man Complains About Everyone Who Is Not Him") Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly visited to discuss the forced dispersal of Occupy UC Davis protestors from a campus quad by police. Including egregious use of large quantities of pepper spray on unarmed, peaceful protestors (uh oh, if sitting is a sprayable offense, I'm going to get pepper DRENCHED some day!). Megyn, whose name Bill O'Reilly would probably complain was intolerable if she had any other job besides Fox News Anchor, informed us that pepper spray is, in fact, "a food product essentially". You know, because it's made from pepper. OK Megyn, let's play by your rules. Here's a few other substances that are food products, essentially, and by your logic must be at least somewhat OK to use on peaceful citizens, in moderation.

1) Nutraloaf - A food amalgam that provides nutrition while effectively functioning as a punishment in prison. It is so bad that the legality of feeding it to inmates is regularly questioned as cruel and unusual punishment. Feeding it to people is tantamount to depriving them of food, even though it sustains life. It is probably the worst thing someone can be forced to eat that is still technically food. But it is, of course, "a food product, essentially."

2) Rock Salt - The stuff you use so you don't slip and break your neck on your outdoor stairs contains the stuff (sodium chloride) that you use with malt vinegar to make french fries extra awesome. This is the same stuff Budd uses as shotgun ammo in Kill Bill to incapacitate The Bride. But apparently this is just fine. I mean, "it's a food product, essentially."

3) Blowfish Toxin - In several Asian cuisines, knowledgeable chefs are able to prepare highly toxic fish for human consumption. For example, the puffer fish or fugu is considered a delicacy in Japan. Well, the parts that aren't fatal anyway. The parts that are fatal are really damn fatal. Puffer fish are some of the most poisonous animals on the planet. But, since they can be eaten, I guess we must consider their toxin "a food product, essentially."

4) Cyanide - Cyanide, a poison so well known for being poisonous it doesn't need to be explained when it kills people in shitty cop shows, can be found in trace amounts in almonds, apple pips, cherry, peach, and apricot pits, and the cassava root. In most of those, the amount is negligible, and easily dealt with by the digestive system, although the cassava, if prepared improperly, can be toxic. However, I'd say it easily meets Megyn Kelly's criteria for "a food product, essentially."

5) Human Entrails - Cannibalism is a thing, a thing that is done sometimes. Probably as long as there have been people, some of those people have opted to eat others of those people. Maybe due to starvation, maybe due to religious belief, maybe due to bizarre curiosity. It would be nice if we could believe that every instance of cannibalism was basically a Uruguayan rugby team in the Andes sort of incident, but we all know that's not true. Some people choose to eat other people even though other non-people foods are present. So I guess that makes chunks of human flesh food. Or at least, "a food product, essentially." If the cops start lobbing human heads at the protestors via catapult like it was Minas Tirith or some shit, it's nice to know we'll be able to count on Fox News to spin that damage.

You damnable, twisted, partisan hacks.

Let's not mince words. My personal reaction to nearly every action the Republican Party has taken in the past decade or so has fallen somewhere between "confused" and "aghast". My own views are fairly staunchly to the left, and I know that on certain issues, neither I nor those I disagree with will budge because the differences come down to sincere but deeply personal beliefs about the proper way to govern the nation. Fair enough. However, sometimes politicians (on both sides and everywhere between, but you can guess who I tend to be angrier at) take actions that, for lack of nuance I'd like to refer to as "evil", "stupid", or some ratio of the two for no reason other than politics itself. This is an atrocious betrayal of the trust of the citizenry.

Americans from every walk of political ideology all came together to some extent following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Say what you will about the way the tragedy was subsequently exploited by politics and media to gain viewers or voters or push agendas, but for a brief time during and immediately following the attacks, we were all Americans, united in the face of a shared horror.

While we all felt the fear, the anger, the uncertainty of that day, for some individuals the tragedy was profoundly personal. For them, it happened in their very city - in their home. And to the great credit of the citizens of New York City and surrounding areas, they turned out in droves to do the backbreaking, emotionally-toxic work of digging through the rubble, providing aid, comfort and safety where ever they could. I challenge anyone to say that the rescue workers who turned out on that day and in the days to follow are anything other than heroes. (On an aside, I want to give some notable credit to Steve Buscemi, who worked tirelessly and anonymously that day as a volunteer firefighter, because he knew that they needed all the help they could get out there. I love you, Steve Buscemi.)

Of course, being a first responder to this tragedy was dangerous, and many of those who helped that day now struggle with lasting health issues as a direct result of their heroism that day. The US House of Representatives has spent the past nine years or so working on, re-working, and fighting over a bill to provide those first responders with the health care necessary to treat the health problems they incurred working in the ashes and rubble. There really could be no more appropriate, reasonable, and merited cost than to provide this care for the people who were literally our American heroes.

The. Bill. Failed.

How did it fail? How could it fail? Well, you can blame some of it on anti-tax rhetoric. Some opponents simply didn't think we should foot the bill. They'd favor the bill if the health care was magically paid for by nobody ever. Because, you know, that's realistic. Now, some tiny selfish part of even you, my kind and intelligent readers, might be saying deep in your brain "well yeah, I'd support it too if I didn't have to pay for it, money is tight lately and I don't really want to pay more taxes, even if it'd just be a tiny increase," and of course the rest of your compassionate and values-governed brain is chiding that tiny selfish part, but the fact is, you can relate just a tiny bit to not wanting to place the tax burden on the average citizen.

The funding for the bill was to come from closing the loophole that allows people to use overseas tax havens to avoid paying the taxes they rightfully owe. It wasn't going to burden anyone unduly, and would only in fact make those who are currently evading paying their fair share through a legal loophole of dubious ethical premise actually start to pitch in. So, the anti-tax crowd is either factually ignorant on this one, aware but trying to score political points, or is just so vehemently anti-tax that they believe nobody should ever pay taxes for anything, no matter what it is. In fact, the third option is really the only way to oppose this bill on principles related to taxation and not be a shill or an asshole. Just an unrealistic prick.

Further troubles for the bill came when the GOP wanted to introduce an unrelated amendment dealing with illegal immigration. Now, I know that's a hot button issue with a lot of people. As I understand it, specifically the Republicans wanted to make sure that nobody in the country illegally could claim benefit from the bill. Now, I don't know about you, but in my book, if somebody bravely responded to the tragedy on 9/11, I don't care where they're from. They're heroes. They deserve our gratitude, our respect, and yes, their directly-related ailments treated. So I would oppose this amendment, both because I disagree with it, and because I think it's either evil or stupid to propose it in the first place. You have to be obsessed with illegal immigration (or just think your voters are) to have your brain go there when this is the bill before you. Seriously! We want to reward people for their rescue work, and all you can think is "YEAH BUT DID THEY COME FROM MEX-EE-CO? AHYUCK!" You're an ass-faced animal if this is some variant on your response.

So the Democrats, not wanting to actually deal with this amendment because it could be costly to their political image when they could've just killed the amendment, eaten the flack for it, and helped our American heroes, tried to pass the bill in a way that requires a 2/3 majority instead of a simple majority. The rest is (recent) history. The bill had over 50% of the House in support, but not 2/3.

And so, a chance to do some very tangible, very reasonable good for eminently deserving individuals in the nation who acted selflessly on behalf of their neighbors is killed. Because of a lunatic fringe, a party that courts that fringe, and another party that won't face the first party head-on out of fear. If you voted no on this bill, you are morally bankrupt, or a ludicrous ideologue. At the very least, you've learned to shove whatever conscience you had into some deep corner of yourself and act without regard to it, maybe only taking it out on weekends and holidays. Your petty political one-upsmanship has cost those who not only deserve our aid but have flat-out EARNED it very real assistance. I hope you're happy, you damnable, twisted, partisan hacks.

Do Your Damn Homework!

There's a lot of contentious issues being tossed around in the world of US politics right now (as always). The biggest one at the moment is health care, and that's certainly what's been getting the most press recently. I have been watching, reading, and listening about the health care debate, and I am getting pretty annoyed and angry. This has nothing to do with my views on the actual issue (I am in favor of a more socialized version of health care, but am undecided as to whether a program styled after the Canadian single-payer system, the British NHS, or, as I learned about earlier today, the Dutch government-mandated bare minimum coverage from private insurers would be best for us to adopt) and everything to do with the nature of the debate taking place.

I think it's great when people get angry and impassioned about politics. This is our country and our lives, we should be impassioned about it. And regardless of your political views, there's been plenty in the past decade or so to be angry about. So if you feel compelled to speak with passion about one of the issues on the table, such as health care, great! However (here comes the title of this post), do your damn homework first. I am sick and tired of hearing people full of passion but lacking any sort of knowledge on the topic. Death panels? The NHS would've killed Stephen Hawking? Are you people shitting me? There's two possible explanations for the ridiculous, juvenile, and counter-productive level of debate going on about health care recently that I can think of.

First, it is possible that a large number of American citizens are idiots, or crazy, or crazy idiots. Certainly there's a lot of cynics or comics playing the cynic out there who have claimed this one for years (probably as long as there's been American citizens, and before that about citizens of any and all nations, states, nation-states, tribes, clans, etc.). So this theory would roughly go that stupid ideas and claims are being spontaneously generated in the vacuum-like minds of stupid people. It's tempting to think this way because it removes all blame from the process. "Oh, people will be people, stupidity is part of the deal, let's accept it." I call bullshit on this explanation.

The second, more probable option, is that a relative few intelligent, powerful, and prickish folks feel that they are entitled to lie, mislead, and misdirect normal people to support ends that are inimical to the average person, but beneficial to the select few. Yes, I'm pointing the finger at some politicians here. And yes, I'm pointing at some heads of industry. But I'm pointing the biggest finger (the middle finger, baby) at the media. The journalists. The so-called "4th branch of government" who needs to learn to do THEIR damn homework, grow a backbone, and start placing a little more emphasis on journalistic integrity.

The most egregious offender that I've seen is Fox News, although they're not the only ones culpable. The people who stand to make money off of Fox News know that sensationalism, anger, and fear mean big money. So they play into the feelings of paranoid alienation that plague angry white men and pander to their need to blame shitty education or job prospects on some shadowy (read: black) other because hey, it puts money in the bank. And we all get taken for a ride. Do you think the pundits who rule the Fox kingdom can truly be as odious as they seem? I doubt it. They just know where their next paycheck is coming from. That kind of cynical "vitriol for cash" mentality keeps journalism at its basest, lowest form.

And they're not alone, they're just the most obvious offender. All of the media has been fanning the flames of this absurd "birther" movement. It's crazy, and all the coverage of it detracts from actual political reporting. We have actual issues to deal with, like the economy, like getting a better health care system, like the fact that we still have our armed forces to look after. We need journalism that reports hard truths, well-researched facts, and does so in a way that is unbiased and not sensationalized. We need information to come not from the source with the best marketing or the most cash, but from the source with the most untainted, empirical approach possible (true impartiality is impossible, but we could still make great strides in this direction).

When journalism does its job for once, and gives people facts instead of puffed up talking heads to listen to, then maybe, just maybe, the public will be able to do their damn homework and participate in civic debates that are productive and that serve the best interests of the citizenry instead of serving the unfounded fears of a hostile, vocal minority that have been whipped into a frenzy by greedy, irresponsible leadership.

(No links this time, but google the Stephen Hawking thing, it's unreal.)

Tantamount to Treason

What I'm about to say will make me zero (0) amount of friends in Red States. I prefer the UN to the US. Madness, some would say. The UN isn't exactly known for its efficacy or efficiency, it's true. However, I believe that the UN is the current precursor to an effective global union. This, of course, should be the end goal of the world: to unite the human race, no matter what geographic boundaries intervene. In my opinion, the current United Nations is largely the global equivalent of the Articles of Confederation. As anyone who passed US History in high school knows, these Articles were the forerunner of our Constitution, and were ineffective due to their non-binding nature. Likewise, just as the US government used the Articles as a springboard to the more binding and effective Constitution, I believe the UN is a springboard to an effective global government. I wholly denounce the current US administration in its reluctance to cooperate internationally, and I believe all nations should be seeking to reduce their own sovereignty (not completely) to become to the UN what States are to the US. I guess my ideas aren't so treasonous after all, seeing as my idea really is just to push a model that works (usually) here in the States to an international level. Maybe I'm the most patriotic one of all. (Probably not.)

Also, I'm gonna miss this guy, and I hope his successor will continue the proud mission of the UN.