Maslow's Political Blog

Welcome and welcome back!  This blog has been dormant for some time, and don't expect this post to revitalize it.  It will remain dormant for a while - I am in the midst of a super demanding post-grad program that sucks all my time all the time.  Except for the next few weeks - it's vacation.  Which is excellent news - because I really wanna write a post about Peter Jackson's The Hobbit! I specifically refer to it as Peter Jackson's, and am tempted to refer to Peter Jackson's Middle Earth, but that might be giving him too much credit.  However, the movies are decisively Peter Jackson's, and not much of Tolkien's.  That's no bad thing - the movies are excellent - but let's separate the source material from the interpretation, as wonderful as the interpretation in. I have only some gripes about the movie.  I have lots I really enjoyed.  But my gripes are important.  But first let me explain what isn't a gripe of mine. ...

When the NFL threatened their lockout, they said it was the millionaires (players) VS the billionaires (owners).  The NBA is pretty much the same thing.  As far as I can tell (10 minutes on a google search), the owners want a salary cut of 800 million and to split the revenues with the players 50/50.  The players want to keep the current contract where they get 57% and 2.1 billion in benefits/salaries (I'm not sure if 2.1 billion includes the revenue percentage or not).  2.1 billion divided among 450 players (Each NBA team can have 12-15 players, and there are 30 teams, but let's say there are 15 players on every team which divides that 2.1 billion the most) is about 4.7 million each.  800 million divided by 450 is 1.7 million, so players would make 3 million each. Obviously the distribution is not equal, so some make more and some make less, but you get the idea.  Meanwhile, the 800 million cut would presumably go to the owners, and let's say each team has...

I wrote this in 2011.  I think my wry humor got the best of me, as well as just being a little ridiculous.   The facts are accurate, but my feelings about it were intended as a little over the top and weren't meant to be taken literally.   This rant was to be taken with a pinch of salt, and then forgotten about.  Instead, I got hit with a bunch of antisemitic comments, some of which I deleted but now wish I hadn't.  Who, in 2011, read my blog and was antisemetic?  This was long before our current era where "armies of trolls" is a thing online that people need to worry about. I shouldn't've gotten rid of them.  It just gives them the "you censored me!" card.  Instead I should've allowed it and then pointed a big sign to it saying THIS IS CRAZY, RIGHT???   Oh well.  I did not.  Heads up, read the comments (and my refutation) at your own risk.  They are......... frustrating.  I wonder how they found me. Anyway, in li...

Ron Paul has gone a long way down from being a legitimate independent thinker in 2000 to being another politician hoping for a political victory to a real crisis.  Paul ventured to ask nine questions about WikiLeaks, and made clear ahead of time he intended to defend the leaks as legitimate and righteous. This is not an impossible task, nor is it necessarily wrong.  My personal struggle with Wikileaks is that the original idea is awesome, but Assange is a dick and the way the information was leaked was basically negligent, and the information itself was either diplomatic chatter that wasn't meant for public ears (because it is just chatter) or frighteningly important information that ought to have been kept secret.  Very little of it is valuable information whose leakage doesn't endanger common people.  The only thing that comes to mind for me is the British-US agreement to keep American cluster bombs on British soil despite in defiance of an international treaty ...

This is part 1 in a 2 part post.  Part 2 will respond to Ron Paul's ridiculous " 9 questions ." Julian Assange is an absolute idiot.  There, I said it.  I now know of a man more dangerous and ridiculous than Glenn Beck.  And oh my God is he more dangerous by far! Julian Assange began with a decent idea.  He wanted to make information more readily available.  Unfortunately, he completely underestimated the importance of secrecy, and seems to have made the grave mistake of believing anything secret is inherently sinister. By trying to make the world a more transparent place, he in fact made it wildly more dangerous.  Anyone who was unaware backdoor deals happen is foolhardy and anyone who thinks they are always bad is far too cynical for their own good.  Preconditions to negotiations are equally regular.  Anyone who doesn't realize governments often do one thing while they say another greatly simplify world politics, and an...