leftfielder.org

We disapprove of the invasion of Iraq…
… so we’ll protest against the leaders of countries that mostly opposed the invasion, including the current US president who both opposed the invasion at the time, and has set a timetable for withdrawal.

We disapprove of corporate greed…
… so we’ll protest against a summit aimed at more closely monitoring financial services.

We disapprove of health insurance being denied to all…
… so we protest a meeting of nations which have nationalized health care, and a current US administration which has been pushing for health care reform.

G-20 protesters – you’re a bunch of idiots.

Barrack Obama recently was defending mandatory health care coverage by explicitly stating that it was not a backdoor tax. Not only is that deceptive, but its stupid. The people who (correctly) consider it a tax will still consider it a tax despite his statement – all that he’s doing is losing credibility. Consider to situations:

1) You give $X to the government, and the government provides a service that you don’t want.

2) The government mandates that you spend $X on a service you don’t want in the private market.

In both cases the government is forcing you to spend your money on something you don’t want. The only distinction is that in the latter case because the government never actually touches the money they don’t have to call it a “tax”. Its a semantic distinction.

I’m against mandatory coverage for libertarian reasons. But I’m willing to stomach it because I would get health care coverage anyway (so its not really forcing me to do something I don’t want to) and because in the grand scheme of thing its a small violation of my individual freedoms. But I would prefer my politicians tell me the truth about something distasteful they’re going to do, instead of issuing a boldfaced lie. Makes me wonder what else Obama is twisting the truth about…

I have a new hobby: actually listening to the ads on the radio. In the past, I’ve ignored them when they come on, and apparently so does everybody else, or they wouldn’t be able to get away with some of the things I’ve heard this weekend:

1) This dietary supplement is healthy, because its made with real ingredients (some foods may be made with fictional ingredients…)

2) This wrinkle cream works so well, it was handed out in a gift basket at a film festival (This would be useless anyway because they didn’t tell us which film festival, but that’s beside the point. The fact that the company gave away their product doesn’t actually tell us anything about how well it works).

3) This product is only available by calling this number, because demand is so high stores can’t keep it on their shelves. (It seems unlikely that a product I’ve never heard of until this ad has been causing runs at stores. But if it were, then the stores would order more, and it would be back on the shelves next week.)

4) We have a simple rule for beating credit card debt that we want to give you for free – so call this toll free number (if you wanted to give it away for free, why not just say it in your ad and then everyone would know and you wouldn’t have to hire people to man the phones…)

5) This acne cream is 100% guaranteed – if you don’t see improvements in 90 days, we’ll send you another bottle. (If it doesn’t work, what good is another bottle of it? A guarantee only works if you’ll give me my money back…)

Sort of makes you wonder about the people who are responding to these ads… it makes me nostalgic for the days when the ads for things reliable and believable things like comfort proteins –