Three of the four words on this tag are lies.

The problem basically is this: even with my tax dollars, the airlines are apparently unable to turn a profit. So they decided to start charging people to check bags. Consequently, everyone stopped checking bags. So now there is no longer enough room on the plane for all the carry-on luggage. Especially when the plane is full – or, technically, more than full. (Sidebar: How hard is it to count the fucking seats, and only sell that many tickets?) Of course, two of my four flights were actually not full; once we all got seated the overhead compartments were totally empty. They didn’t care about that argument either. From which I’m forced to conclude that this policy has nothing to do with the bags themselves.

The simple solution would be to return to the status quo and allow people to check bags for free. But that doesn’t help keep your company from hemorrhaging money, so the airlines decided to go a different way. Now they make passengers wait in a freezing jetway, in the hopes that some will just pony up the cash to avoid the hassle. I call that a shakedown. The airline calls it “valet carry-on service”.

1. This is not a “carry-on” bag. I wanted it to be a carry-on bag, but you wouldn’t let me. It’s a checked bag.
2. This is not “valet” service. A valet is someone who parks your car for you, not someone who walks up and takes your car away before you can park it yourself. Actually, there is an automotive analogy for that situation, but it isn’t valet service. It’s carjacking.

Fuck you, “valet” “carry-on” baggage.

Apparently Republicans are sore losers.

The actions of the health insurance industry over the past few decades amount to profiteering at best, and collusion at worst (not that that matters, since the health insurance industry is immune to antitrust prosecution). So I, and a gazillion other people, voted in favor of a massive, sweeping change in Washington, because a year and a half ago, Democrats sure as hell were talking the talk. By god, there was going to be change. Instead we got this. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that an industry that hires six lobbyists per Congressman would get a sweetheart deal. And by and large, it seems like the American people agree. While most of the individual elements of the Senate bill are supported by a majority of voters, the bill itself polls more like 22%. Americans want a reform bill – as long as it isn’t this bill.

So why are Senate Democrats so afraid of a Republican (or wishy-washy independent) filibuster? Why is the election of Scott Brown the death knell for health care legislation? Why, when the bill has been watered down to a massively expensive exercise in legislatorial masturbation, is there even an opposition left? In thinking about it, I’ve come to the conclusion that the reason has nothing to do with health care. Or politics, or economics, or anything really. The reason is that Democrats have no balls. You want to cement your 60-seat majority and keep the House? Then get out there and do what the American people elected you to do.

First of all, let this abominable camel of a bill die in conference. Then draft a new one, with all the trimmings: individual mandate; public option; Medicare and Medicaid expansions; employer plan portability, antitrust; death panels… er, you get the idea. Get it out of committee and onto the floor. Then let the bastards filibuster, for as long as they want. One day, three, ten, a month… no cloture, no suspension, just Republican after Republican passing out at the podium. Then have your damn vote, go home, and stump about how the big bad Republicans ground the government to a halt because they hate poor people. The ads practically write themselves. There are really only two groups who reliably vote Republican: rich white dudes; and rural “values voters”. Most of whom, coincidentally, would probably like to be able to afford a doctor for the first time in their lives.

It’s Napoleon’s Battle Plan:

1. Show up.
2. See what happens.

It’s high time Congressional Democrats sack up, show up, and see what happens.

He's actually giving a thumbs-up to the slave trade.

I guess I led off with that as a way of hedging my bets re: eternal damnation. Just kidding! When you die, the chemical reactions that kept other things from eating you stop, and you decay into a puddle of organic sludge.

What I’m really talking about is this article, forwarded to me by Mazur. In it Bill Donohue, notorious dipshit and president of The Catholic League, takes time out from his busy schedule of defending child rapists and threatening Bill Maher with assault to bitch about how a lot of people don’t like him much.

It’s sort of hard to follow, frankly, but I think his central thesis is that blacks, Jews, gays, atheists, the liberal media, the ACLU, and Hollywood are quite literally carrying us all to hell in a hand basket. Why the Post would publish it, I don’t know, but whatever; I love the Bill of Rights and will defend to the death Bill Donohue’s right to publicly wipe his ass with six hundred years of social progress. Except that apparently we don’t agree on that either. Fuck free speech, Bull – oops, I mean Bill – Donohue says, I live in a bubble and it would be much more convenient if I didn’t have to deal with anything else. Rather than learning to live in peace with people who disagree with me, I will argue that they shouldn’t exist.

Which is just one good bowl of hash away from being a suicide bomber.

Secularists within Catholicism and Protestantism are so out of control that it makes one wonder how any serious-minded person would ever accuse these religions of being oppressive. Insubordination of the most flagrant kind is routinely tolerated in a way that would never be countenanced at the New York Times, yet the bad rap always goes to Christians. We’re not talking about those pushing for moderate reforms: we’re talking about termites eating away from within.

Asshats like Donohue would have you believe that atheists, agnostics, and people who just don’t take religion that seriously – all of us who live in the real world, in other words – are flushing the whole of society down the toilet. Sorry, Bill. You don’t get to decide what is and is not culture. Why is that hard to understand? Culture is, by definition, “the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior” – in other words, it’s whatever people are doing. You can disagree with anything and anyone you like, but to claim they’re interfering with culture just betrays the ignorance that forms the cornerstone of your entire outlook on life. Society is what it is, and we won’t let you and your friends on the lunatic fringe drag the whole spectrum down with you.

Back to hedging my bets. On balance, since World War Two, the Catholic Church has probably done more good than harm in the world. They’re full of shit, but their hearts are in the right place. And brainless, spineless, dickless, holier-than-thou douchebags like Bill Donohue are a perversion of all of that. The Catholic League can catho-lick my balls.

Fuck you, Bill Donohue.

Lesbian and gay students kissing in front of protesters from Westboro Baptist Church at Oberlin College

On the one hand, you have to kind of admire their perverse doggedness (they apparently do this thousands of times a year, and always outnumbered); on the other hand, you can’t deny they give religion as a whole a bad name. Just think what a legitimate church could do with $250,000 a year. But can we be so sure religion doesn’t deserve it? After all, among the scores of counter-protesters in tie-dyed t-shirts and jeans and suits, there was no priest in cassock and collar, no minister waving a bible, no signs saying “I DON’T LIKE HOMOSEXUALITY EITHER, BUT I’M NOT A DICK ABOUT IT” – no religious response at all, in fact. Every single one of my fellow counter-protesters, so far as I could tell, was there to take a principled, secular stand in favor of gay rights.

It’s the same thing that happens when jihadists blow up a bus, or a doctor who performed abortions gets shot, or a high school kid gets dragged to death behind a pickup truck. There are memorials and wakes and tears and soul-searching, and condemnations of damn near everything, but somehow no one ever quite says it: religion itself is at fault. If the bible contradicts itself, and you choose to follow one passage while these asshats choose to follow another, how can you really say their interpretation is any less valid? Stop taking fairy tales seriously and I promise you’ll see a lot less of this crap.

Atheism: We may not have all the answers, but at least we don’t kill each other.

Until recently, I had only used the word "revolting" in jest.

You know how when you vomit, you can tell what you ate originally, but the vomit is always a subtly different color? iTunes 9 looks like someone ate a bunch of #2 pencil lead and then vomited all over the old iTunes interface. The text is in two different shades of gray. Every widget in the entire application has its own individual grayscale gradient, most of which don’t match – plus a second grayscale gradient for when it’s a background application. Every time I glance at that side of the screen, my eyes get drawn into an infinite loop of grayscale gradients. It’s literally nauseating.

Anyway, without further ado, a very special edition of… UI Theater:

Apple iTunes Team Meeting, Mid-2009

Manager: OK, team, it’s time to gear up. Let’s brainstorm some features for iTunes 9.
Programmer 1: Faster Genius playlist generation?
Manager: Very good! One of our biggest complaints.
Programmer 2: What about better iPhone integration? App management and upgrades on the desktop.
Manager: Yes, I like it.
Programmer 3: How about we finally bring a wishlist into the Store?
Manager: Of course, top priority.
Programmer 2: Special features in movie rentals?
Manager: Fine, fine, but come on, people, this isn’t a point release! We need something huge! We need… grayscale.
Programmer 3: Grayscale?
Manager: Yes! Solid colors in a GUI are going to go the way of the dinosaurs, and we can be on the cutting edge! Attention-grabbing visual patterns everywhere in the interface!
Programmer 1: Won’t that just make it really hard to, you know, use?
Manager: Come on, that isn’t the Apple spirit! What do we always say?
Programmers: [In unison] Function follows form.
Manager: That’s right! Now get out there and gradient it up!

And… scene.

Even those social policies, however, are fundamentally flawed. I’m going to use two of the most egregious examples to demonstrate (and remonstrate). First, mandatory minimum sentencing. At best, this is a case of needless government intervention that disrupts a tradition of jurisprudence dating back to the Magna Carta; at worst it’s good old-fashioned racism. By forcing judges to impose harsher punishments for chewing a plant than for, say, stealing a car, sentencing guidelines require our elected and appointed legal professionals, by law, to set aside logic in certain situations. And that’s pretty much the definition of a “slippery slope”. Judicial discretion is one of the bywords of a free society, exemplified by Judge Gregory Presnell’s decision in Avista Management, Inc. v. Waussau Underwriters Insurance Company:

Upon consideration of the Motion – the latest in a series of Gordian knots that the parties have been unable to untangle without enlisting the assistance of the federal courts – it is ORDERED that said Motion is DENIED. Instead, the Court will fashion a new form of alternative dispute resolution, to wit: at 4:00 P.M. on Friday, June 30, 2006, counsel shall convene at a neutral site agreeable to both parties. If counsel cannot agree on a neutral site, they shall meet on the front steps of the Sam M. Gibbons U.S. Courthouse, 801 North Florida Ave., Tampa, Florida 33602. Each lawyer shall be entitled to be accompanied by one paralegal who shall act as an attendant and witness. At that time and location, counsel shall engage in one (1) game of “rock, paper, scissors.” The winner of this engagement shall be entitled to select the location for the 30(b)(6) deposition to be held somewhere in Hillsborough County during the period July 11-12, 2006.

The second example is the entire category of crimes known as “possession with intent to sell”. The legal concept of intent is viable and well established; it provides the distinction between murder and manslaughter, for example. But burden of proof in such a case rests on the prosecution. Contemporary drug laws are the equivalent of charging someone who owns a sports car with “intent to speed”. There is a presupposition of action which leaves the accused with no recourse. It is quite literally the presumption of guilt, without means of proving innocence.

Let’s get one thing straight: the War on Drugs, were we to commit to actually fighting it, could be won quickly, cheaply, and with minimal losses, certainly when compared to the “War on Terror”. Militarily, 24-hour combat air patrols of South American and Asian growing regions, employing napalm strikes as needed, would essentially eliminate global supply in a matter of days. Politically, our troops would need to be supported at a level commensurate with any other small-scale but high-intensity combat operation. For FY2009, the Office of National Drug Control Policy will oversee a budget of about $14 billion. That’s at least an order of magnitude less than Americans will spend on illegal drugs this year. We fund both sides of this war, simultaneously, but we’re giving the other guys ten times as much money. Socially, we would have to acknowledge that even mandatory minimums don’t provide a deterrent. Treating drug users as non-uniformed enemy combatants would allow them to be tried as spies and executed rather than imprisoned.

The problem is that societally, there is no will to do any of those things. So we muddle along; politicians pay lip service to the “war” without actually laying out a strategy for winning it, in an effort to court the votes of both law enforcement unions and their liberal constituents; and the 800-pound gorilla in the room, the prescription drug industry whose products kill four times as many people as all illegal drugs combined, looks down on us and laughs. So yes, there is a war being waged in this country, by our governments and our industries; its victims are not coca farmers or cigarette boat drivers or even San Diego surfers, but taxpayers and prisoners and ordinary citizens like you and me who yearn to breathe free – even if we would like to breathe smoke.