Abortion & Prostitution: Harm Reduction

I’m about as anti-abortion as they come within the pro-choice camp. I don’t like thinking about the difficult decisions that would have to be made if I were to get a woman pregnant at this point in my life when I’m not ready to raise a child. Not that it would be my decision at all, which bothers me from a gender point of view. Since I have no viable solutions to that issue, I’ll leave it as a side-note. The pro-life brigade has all sorts of tactics for trying to lure me to their side. “What if that child was destined to be the next great scientist or world leader?” Actually, that child’s destiny was to be aborted. Funny how people who believe in destiny fundamentally misunderstand how it works.

Abortion isn’t 100% safe for the mother from a physical standpoint. Note the deliberate usage of the words “mother” and “child”. Abortion is even less safe psychologically. No, it doesn’t thrill me and my baby-killing cronies to know that many women suffer as a result. I find it appalling that some women use it as a form of birth control. So how can I be pro-choice? Because the alternative is worse.

Obama Is Un-American

There, I said it. He refused to salute the flag during the Pledge of Allegiance!!! How in the hell can a man like this expect to be our next Commander-in-Chief???? This man, this Barack Hussein Obama. Oh, wait, this was debunked by Snopes and the Washington Post’s Fact Checker. I first heard about this chain email when my roommate came into my room and casually said, “Hey, I heard that Obama won’t say the pledge of allegiance because it’s against his religion.” 1st response: “You mean Christianity?” 2nd response: Google.

So he didn’t put his hand over his heart during a single national anthem. So what? Since when was clasping your hands solemnly in front of you not a sign of respect? I read comments on a number of right-wing blogs and left-wing debunkings. Suddenly everybody is an EXPERT on flag code – you know, Title 36 of the U.S. Code! “During a rendition of the national anthem, when the flag is displayed (A) all present except those in uniform should stand at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart; (B) men not in uniform should remove their headdress with their right hand and hold the headdress at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart.” After the sadness passed, I found it hilarious that a large percentage of people citing this code mistook it for actual law.

Beware “Extreme Ecstasy”

This poorly written article got a Drudge link a few days into the new year. This extreme version of Ecstasy is MDMA cut with methamphetamine. This has been occurring, to varying degrees, ever since Ecstasy was made illegal. MDMA was first synthesized in 1912, saw minor recreational use in the 1960s, was used by some mental health professionals for therapeutic purposes starting in the 1970s, then became popular around Dallas – especially in gay clubs – in the early 1980s. Once the gays get hold of something, it has to go – MDMA was classified Schedule I in the U.S. in 1985.

MDMA isn’t perfectly safe, nor is it nearly as harmful everyone I know believes. It is more dangerous when cut with methamphetamine or other dangerous adulterants. Most of the danger associated with Ecstasy is due to its illegality. Recently, I saw someone sum up drug policy very succinctly: you can put the control of drugs in the hands of the government, private enterprise, or criminals. There is no other option. You cannot curb the demand for drugs, nor can you stop the supply. We know this because we have tried – really, really hard – to do both. By leaving drugs in the hands of criminals, we ensure huge profits for our enemies. Radicals in Afghanistan, paramilitary groups in South America, Mexican kingpins, etc. When we wage silent wars against production strongholds, the supply simply shifts to another area. Hundreds of billions of dollars don’t get left sitting on the table simply because the U.S. wills it so.

NEVER FORGET (Ron Paul ’08?)

(The sole point of this blog is to get you to read a series of articles published soon after 9/11. It quickly devolves to me whining about Republicans.)

I’ve been using this phrase more and more frequently, to refer to increasingly mundane situations. Chicken salad for lunch, 12-18-07: Never Forget. Not sure if I forgot what we weren’t supposed to forget, or if I never knew. I think some airplanes were intentionally crashed into a couple buildings, but nobody was going to forget that. Don’t forget to blame Arabs? Don’t forget irrational fear and lust for vengeance? It never made sense to me, always sounded like propaganda, and the further removed we are the more ridiculous “Never Forget” becomes.

Why Brazil’s Find Doesn’t Matter

The find: “On Nov. 8, Brazil’s state-controlled oil firm Petrobras confirmed the finding of huge oil reserves that could hold up to 8 billion barrels of light crude in the Tupi fields, off Brazil’s southeastern coast.” “Tupi is the world’s biggest oil find since a 12 billion-barrel Kazakh field was discovered in 2000, and the largest ever in deep waters.” “Perhaps more important, Petrobras believes Tupi may be Brazil’s first of several new ‘elephants,’ an industry term for outsize fields of more than 1 billion barrels.”

Ok, it does matter. It’s a huge find for Brazil that will make the nation a major oil exporter for years to come, especially given their booming ethanol industry. It is significant in a world where every year another nation peaks in production or switches from net exporter to net importer. Every drop counts.

Legalize It

Disclaimer: Yes, I blazed regularly for several years. Yes, I still smoke on occasion today. No, I never really enjoyed it. I’ve never identified as a stoner or planned my life around getting high. Why would I engage in behavior I don’t particularly enjoy when it is expensive, among other downsides? The obvious answer is that marijuana is an evil, addictive drug. This is the problem with drug policy and propaganda. Oh, well I know a kid who started smoking a lot of pot and pretty much dropped out of life. Ignore that the drug was a facilitator, not a cause. That it happened despite preexisting illegality. That if it wasn’t weed it would have been something else. That it is not indicative of the overwhelming majority of responsible users. Why tackle complexity when we can settle on an easy answer then hit the bars.

Before you read anything I have to say, I want you to sit back, relax, and read the text of this speech titled “The History of the Non-Medical Use of Drugs in the United States.” I read it every few months like one might a favorite book. If I could force every person to read one thing, it would be this speech. Do it. I read it again, just now. Several times I jumped out of my chair and paced angrily.

Get Your Tanks & Grab Your Guns

In my last blog, I referenced a months-long drug-fueled research binge that has left the conspiracy theorists down the street on the brink (?) of paranoid insanity. If you’re going to become obsessed with a topic to the extent that you spend the majority of your waking hours consumed by it, I strongly suggest a component of substance abuse. It’s useful to render yourself an emotional wreck as days and weeks bleed into one another.

I’ve been on a kick myself the last couple months. It started innocently enough – I wanted to be able to properly dismiss the outlandish claims my roommate was bringing back from the conspiracy house. I read about central banking, monetary supply, global economics, the weakening of the U.S. dollar, the impact of shifts in currency valuation, arguments for and against the gold standard, and a wide variety of tangential issues. On my birthday, in the beginning of November, I started referring to the “Ron Paul Survivalist Movement.” If economic doom and gloom predictions are believed, then survivalism is the only logical conclusion: get as much land and as many guns as you can afford, and get ready to bunker down.

The Internet: Not For Horses

Even the cruelest bully could learn a thing or two from the seasoned vets of the internet playground. I was scanning through Fark comments on a teacher/student sex story with a twist: the student was homeschooled. Before you get the wrong idea… it was a private teacher molesting that poor, abused 14 year old boy – not his parents. The homeschooled crowd took offense to comments indicating that homeschooled children tend to be socially inept. One man knew he’d prove the world wrong with a quick comment and a picture:

“Yea, homeschooling really farked up my life. I’m 25, married, have a mortgage and a job as a web developer for a Fortune 100 company My parents really dropped the ball on that one…

And before you go all crazy about social interaction, this is the woman I married:”

Global Scams: The Jew Banker Files

My roommate has an in with the Young Conspiracists of Orange County, aka our friends and neighbors down the street. It began months ago with “common sense” support for Ron Paul’s libertarian ideals and a strong component of legitimate (if misunderstood) concerns about the future of the U.S. economy. This quickly grew into a marijuana-fueled research binge regarding an Illuminati/NWO-style global conspiracy centered on the Rothschild family.

The theories are full of idiosyncratic beliefs and little catch phrases. Self-identifying libertarians consider the quasi-governmental Federal Reserve an outrage. Why private control over monetary policy? That should be in the hands of the… government… that we otherwise want to privatize. And the income tax should be eliminated because all it does is pay interest on our foreign debts. Debts that, in this framework, we should presumably default on.

U.S. Military Spending

When I watch documentaries that question U.S. military spending being nearly half of the world’s total, I understand it academically and then think “hell yeah.” But to be fair, at least 90% of our expenditures are earmarked for corruption. In real terms, the U.S. military spends no more than other major powers. The corruption is what keeps the U.S. military engine running – there’s nothing we can do about that. Other than spend more, of course.

(Inspired by “Suicide Is Not Painless“. And, in this instance, it will bring on very few changes. The jury is out on whether I can take or leave it, presumably at the pleasure of the president.)