Taupe Hat Systems

I've been following the issue of Mr. Obama choosing Rick Warren with some alarm for a while, but I've lately gotten to the point where I view it with the same contempt I have for public pronouncements of religiosity in general rather than my previous deep concern for whether I'd been taken for a ride politically.

There's been a lot written about this from all corners, gay, straight, right-wing, left-wing, religious, non-religious, etc. It's been an interesting deal, to be sure - right-wingers confused about whether to criticize Warren for accepting the gig, Obama for pandering/posing, liberals for pandering/posing, or liberals for opposing this choice. Right now, I'm not sure what the trend is of the right-wing propagandistrocracy is, but it's a good bet "liberal" is in there. But if you criticize liberals of making nice to the church, you're basically admitting that you belong to an exclusive club, which lies in direct contrast to Jesus's message of reaching out to everybody. And Warren is well-respected in churchy-people circles as well, so there's a cost to throwing mud in that direction.

Politically, that's checkmate. Anytime you give an opponent a situation where there are multiple answers available, each with strong negatives associated with that answer, you've been able to "make the circuitous direct" as it were, which will have the effect of amplifying disarray by giving multiple voices opportunity to suggest proposed solutions with roughly equal weight, and raising the stakes for any decision.

But for my thinking, that alone wouldn't be enough. Is it not good enough from a position of strength to carry the direct route towards a goal? Why pander to those who have stood for so much that is vile?

I think what moved me toward the accommodation I have now is encompassed in a quote by Melissa Etheridge, who in this post said:

Brothers and sisters the choice is ours now. We have the world's attention. We have the capability to create change, awesome change in this world, but before we change minds we must change hearts. Sure, there are plenty of hateful people who will always hold on to their bigotry like a child to a blanket. But there are also good people out there, Christian and otherwise that are beginning to listen. They don't hate us, they fear change. Maybe in our anger, as we consider marches and boycotts, perhaps we can consider stretching out our hands. Maybe instead of marching on his church, we can show up en mass and volunteer for one of the many organizations affiliated with his church that work for HIV/AIDS causes all around the world.

Maybe if they get to know us, they wont fear us.

Reading that, I can well remember my own experience of growing out of homophobia. I was sixteen and worked at a fast-food restaurant. Among the closing-shift employees I worked with were a couple of women who eventually came out to me as a couple. Up to that point, I'd seen no reason not to adopt the narrow and often hateful views of my suburban peers. But now, confronted by two people who were solid co-workers and good people to be around, it was a tectonic shift. Over the months we'd worked together, I'd been happy enough not knowing some particular issue that distinguished them from what I'd known about anybody else. And because - THANKFULLY - I didn't have some power-mad preacher man trying to brainwash me into believing otherwise, I took the logical route and decided that the fact that these two women were gay and in fact lovers - it just didn't matter to me anymore. And if it didn't matter in the case of my friends at work, then it didn't matter anywhere else.

But it's also fair to say I don't know what it's like to be gay in this country or anywhere else, for that matter. Just as I don't know what it's like to be a member of a racial minority, physically or mentally disabled, etc... there's a lot of world out there that has a lot of grievances, and I was not socialized to have a complete understanding of the nuances. I can try...

So is this just a matter of some breeder agreeing with the first famous-sounding sell-out to hit the media? No. Let's get back to politics for a minute. There are people who have been preached at for their entire lives, with no reason to think any other way than what their well-coordinated preachers have been telling them. That kind of "knowledge" is every bit as quick-spreading as it is aggressive - a really bad cancer on the psyche of this nation, especially over the past few decades. So anyhow, you have here a guy named Rick Warren who, well, let's just say he's aware of his audience, shall we? During Prop8, he was pretty darn clear, and now he says "I didn't mean it that way, really..."

OK, here's a guy who likes power. If he were truly sincere in his fairy-tale trip, he'd have stood his guns about it and said "We should send our wives and daughters out to be raped to death by an angry mob rather than turn away from these here fairy tales!" (Judges 19:22-29). Nah, he said "Oh, that guy's in charge? Well then, whatever he said, I agree with it!" Perhaps he recognizes that the current generation of evangelical leaders is facing a shrinking population of elderly white people from various backwaters and armpits as constituents, and would like not to have to suffer obsolescence right alongside the old-timers.

Now most smart people will quickly see this for what it is. Many millions of people won't, though: to be led to believe, with current knowledge being what it is, that the universe is only 6,000 years old, is conclusive evidence of a broken mind (as is the belief in the notion that blowing up people trying to do grocery shopping will lead to eternal indecencies with virgins, a thread often found in cult-of-Yahweh belief systems). So anyhow, here are millions of people who are ready to be led by the nose to any form of idiocy, so long as the right sort of person (white, male, southern accent, talks about the bible a lot) says there's a biblical thing that says so.

HOW HARD IS IT TO GET THROUGH TO THESE PEOPLE??? Well, watch the next six months and find out. It promises to be a fun show! I might drop a few hints along the way, or say "My guess was horribly wrong, sorry!" I certainly hope the former occurs, mainly because the long-term outcome if I'm right is such a great opportunity for the world as humanity matures beyond needing Pater Noster to tell us what to think all the time...

First off, I'm glad that copy-paste works. This particular issue is only my fault but for whatever reason, I find that typing "Blagojevich" ends up in gibberish. All those years studying Russian and I end up preferring Cyrillic for spelling such names. Go figure.

ANYhow, way I figure it is, Democrats supporting Blagojevich would be pretty much akin to Repulblicans supporting George W. Bush. Amazingly, Bush is going to wander off to a future of lucrative brush-clearing speeches, while Governor Blagojevich is wincing at some well-earned bus treadmarks on his back. Frankly, they both deserved to be thrown in front of the express bus to historical asteriskism, but guess which party went ahead and did the right thing? Amazing!

Hey, they'd make a cute couple as cellmates...

First off, happy turkey day. I sincerely hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, surrounded by family and loved ones, and that the food was good. Such was the case for myself and my child this year, and that alone is worth giving thanks for.

Now, listen: your book of fairy tales is stupid. I won't criticize the historical parts of your mythology - I happen to personally believe in the historical fact of a rabbi named Jesus of Nazareth and that he had a lot of very important things to say. But I will for sure criticize your drooling insistence that every word penned in that book of fairy tales before and since is true. Grow the fuck up. Paul was the victim of a head injury, and even if you ignore that, the best that can be said about him was that he was sincerely trying to stop people from slaughtering each other - suffice to say the mysticism he inserted into the New Testament had nothing to do with the facts on the ground when Jesus walked the earth, and everything to do with the political realities of Paul's day.

I could go on a long rant here, and might someday, but suffice to say this: if you sincerely believe the universe is only six thousand years old, not only do I have zero respect for you, but I think you've been successfully gamed. Anyone who could fall for such patent and obvious horseshit can be led to believe anything, and I'd not be surprised to hear that you'd been talked into putting on a suicide vest after that. Seriously, it's the logical progression of brainwashing: back in the seventies, it was lethal kool-aid. Now the religious whack-jobs murder people.

Happy Holidays! Remember, Jesus hates the church that stole his name!

Look, I know a lot sucks, and I've written in some pretty strong language about that fact on this website, but seriously, look around, and what? Uh, from where I sit, things don't look that different now from what they looked like on November 3rd, or six months ago, or a year ago. Honestly, the biggest changes I can see are that the weather is getting colder (I'm supposed to welcome the onset of winter for some reason, but even now I still don't know what that is), and my daughter is getting big enough that picking her up is risking a trip to the hernia clinic.

But the really fun stuff is out there. I mean, did you not see Governor Palin's turkey pardon yesterday? That itself was worthy of a Coen brothers movie about people from somewhere remote and culturally distinctive, but then she followed it up with what in other circumstances would have been a pretty generic pre-Thanksgiving interview - "I'm thankful for this and that, I cook the turkey this year, yadda yadda..." - if it were not for the fact that she was conducting the interview in front of a guy who was slitting the throats of the turkeys who had not been pardoned in between staring surprisedly at the cameras pointed his way. Seriously, search on YouTube or whatever for "Palin turkey" and you'll see what I mean. It looks more like a Saturday Night Live skit than real life. Like, don't get me wrong - we raised animals for food when I was a kid, and I have no illusions about what it means for me to eat meat (which happens daily), but to conduct an interview in front of an abattoir is, like, wow. You can't make this stuff up.

Yes, I do in fact use the word like "that way." It's a product of the generational dialect I speak, and has a grammatical purpose. If you come from another generation or region, sorry, but not so much. Deal with it.

Anyhow, what's been seriously amusing is the circular firing squad that is the Republican Party ever since they got their asses handed to them in the election. Funny me, I thought that was the duty of Democrats. Guess not. Even better is that the far-out conservative rightists have won the leadership battle. Can you guys possibly do a more effective job of showing the world why your philosophy is morally and intellectually bankrupt? I guess we'll get to sit back and enjoy the show.

Meanwhile, President-elect Obama has done an amazing job of picking a team. I'm far from being a flag-waving member of the Hillary Clinton fan club, and would have greatly preferred to see Bill Richardson get the Secretary of State nod, and my feelings on Senator Lieberman are crystal clear if you read an earlier post of mine, but damn. It's a good mix of highly-intelligent, pragmatic people, and the complete opposite of what was happening eight years ago when Carl Rove was hand-picking his favorite toe-the-line ideologues. Well, we've seen how well that worked out, haven't we? Anyhow, it's damn good that we're seeing serious-minded adults running the show, as these have become "interesting times" in the traditional meaning of the phrase, and it's going to take hard work and a lot more smarts than you or I have to set things right.

But I digress - this stream-of-thought post was going to be about comedy. Well, here's one: watch a show with Rachael Maddow, Bill O'Reilly,and Jon Stewart, in that order (it's possible that Mr. Stewart will be your "unicorn chaser" after watching O'Reilly, particularly if you fall for the trap he's laid). Anyhow, strip away your political leanings for the purpose of doing an analysis of comedic content of each of the three shows, and see if you can really raise one of the three above the other. Probably not. Don't get me wrong, Rachael Maddow is one of my heroes and if it were not totally insulting to do so, I'd send her flowers and a heartfelt proposal, and O'Reilly's a complete asshat whose blood pressure concerns me, but damn. They're all comedians at some level. The only difference is that Jon Stewart is the most honest about it. And O'Reilly is in danger of experiencing exploding head syndrome as he apoplectically attempts to blame the fact that the US public has firmly rejected the line of Edsels he's paid to promote on anything other than the fact that his brand is a fundamental failure.

Hey Bill O'Rovvey, is it "Mission Accomplished" yet? Keep trying, though - you're doing a fantastic job in the time-honored and traditional role of muggins, and I for one am enjoying the show.

One of the fear-points bandied around by the extremists on the right, and to some extent bought into by more moderate folks, is the notion that if an Obama administration is combined with a "liberal" Congress and a "liberal" Supreme Court, then this country is doomed to fall into the pit of hardship and evil that is "socialism."

Huh. No, really, huh?

Unlike most of the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy, I've actually spent some time in a country they'd describe as socialist. It was called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, in fact, so it wasn't like it was kept on the down-low what was going on there.

It was an awful place. Over the years, I've described it as "an industrialized third-world country." Any kind of technology that was in the least bit modern was imported, especially in the realm of consumer goods - the best and brightest of that country had either flown off for a better life elsewhere, or were immured within one of the "new cities" near the Ural Mountains - where they managed to create some truly amazing fighter jets, for example. One of the images that sticks in my mind after all these years was that of a supposedly-fancy hotel in Kiev, with the fire-escape literally hanging off the side of the building because the bolts hadn't been anchored to anything more substantial than decorative fascia. The afternoon before, as we were departing Moscow via train, we drove past an immeasurable number of flatbed cars loaded with T-72 battle tanks all dry-humping one another so more could fit on the rail cars. It's possible that our Soviet minders put on this display deliberately (nothing like impressing 300 teenagers to help fix foreign policy from afar), but there was no doubt of the lethality and power that those machines represented.

Yes, the government was completely incompetent. I really can not begin to describe here the number of ways the controlling system of governance managed to screw things up. Suffice to say, people were extremely poor, and damn scared of their minders. There is and was a good reason that the top Soviet export product was really good vodka - the place was awash in it, and not especially out of happiness.

Having said the above, what was truly evil, awful, and insidious about the Soviet State wasn't their economic policy, but instead their iron grip over the social lives of the people who lived in that nation. Want to travel out of town? "Motherland Security Wishes You To Show Papers." Want to get married? If the People's Local Committee approves. Do you wish to travel outside the country? For why you want to leave this glorious world-leading nation? Want to know what is happening around the world? The big newspaper "Truth" (Pravda) will give you fair, balanced account of world events.

Seriously, there are far more comparisons that can be made between the worst excess of the Soviets and what the far-right types in this country want to create. The biggest difference is the names assigned to the parlor-tricks used. In the USSR, it was Party this, Party that, committee and apparatchiks. In the Republican Party, it is Christianity this, Christianity that, and deacons and pastors. But the goal is the same: total social and economic control over the masses. And given our recent history, the economic and sociopolitical outcome would be the same.

Fortunately, I think people in this country are too damn stubborn, too damn strong-willed, and too independent-minded to fall for that kind of rubbish. Fortunately, we got smart before the monsters fully pulled the wool over our eyes, but we need to stay smart, stubborn, and independent-minded, and waste no time in throwing the demagogues over the rail and dumping stale tea on them as they fall into the murky waters below.

I will say this: if I thought for a fraction of a second that a candidate for office would want to create the conditions I list above, I'd be first in line volunteering for his or her opposition. Think about it.

Now that the election is mostly sewn up, I have a modest proposal on the question of Senator Joseph Lieberman, and the fuckwads who put him into office after the WATB stunt he pulled in the Democratic primary election. For those of you with poor memory, he lost to another democrat in 2006, whined mightily, won the general election as an independent, and then became an ardent and very visible supporter of Senator McCain's campaign for the White House.

1. Strip him of all committee assignments. Not just chair positions, anything and everything. If he's nice, he can get a job as assistant third class night-soil removal technician.

2. Anything Connecticut wants, it doesn't get. The voters of that state are the ones who put that Judas-faced motherfucker into office, and they deserve the consequence for falling prey to his bullshit. I don't care if it's a new bridge, improvements to the statehouse, or funding for a thousand new state troopers. Nothing for that state until the next election cycle.

I don't care if Holy Joe wants to play nice now. He is a turncoat in the great tradition of scum-sucking turncoats, and found himself on the wrong side of the power play. Not only did he back the losing horse, he backed the wrong horse, proving his credentials as a supporter of maniacal evil and bombastic arrogance in this country. I frankly question the motivation behind his apparent support for attacking any country which contains Muslims... he supports the stupid, evil, unprovoked and murderous war in Iraq, wants to bomb Iran, and has a lot of tough talk against Syria. We've had enough of such thoughtless war hawks in this world.

Yes, he's entitled to his opinions and the opportunity to support whatever or whomever he likes. And yes, he's entitled to his just desserts. Starting now, Senator Reid. Starting now. Please.

First off, let me be very, even excessively clear: I wish John McCain a long, happy life, one that is surrounded for many years to come by people who love him and whose company he enjoys. By all appearances, he has every opportunity to do so, and I firmly believe he should be allowed that opportunity - he's certainly earned it.

Having said that, we "US Americans" need to ponder for a moment the fact that he's getting along in years, running for the nation's highest office at an age where people frankly aren't expected to stick around much longer.

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Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

Despite that, Jesus loves you, even if he probably also thinks you're a bunch of assholes.

UPDATE 2 9/4/08:
Got a copy and pasted brush-off letter from the Newegg support person. My reply went to the sender as well as to a couple of other Newegg email addresses I have stashed. Brush-off reproduced in full:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for contacting Newegg.

We are aware that there is always some room for improvement, which is why we value your thoughts. Rest assured that your feedback will receive the attention it deserves and Newegg will continue striving to offer high quality products at low, affordable prices and only the finest in customer service. Please allow us more time to process your issue. Our related department will write back to you directly for this issue once they finish processing it.

If you have any further questions or concerns, please visit our FAQs page. If you still need assistance, please feel free to email me directly and I will be happy to assist you.

Thank you,

Ruby Luo

UPDATE 9/4/08:
Finally got a reply of sorts from Newegg. Not sure how to parse the key portions, as the English is broken in exactly the wrong part:

Reference number: {redacted} Please use this ticket number in any correspondence with Newegg.com.

Subject: Newegg.com - >(Mail #{redacted})*

Dear Customer,

Thank you for contacting Newegg.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Due to the large volume of the emails. We should have not processed your email yet. We will not release the contact information to any other party. Please forward the entire email to us and we will do further investigation for it.

Thank you for your patience and understanding. If you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to let us know.

Sincerely,

(Newegg Tech's Name)

UPDATE 9/2/08:
Still no reply from NewEgg, but hits on other fora suggest that I'm far from being the only person thus mistreated. So I used their customer contact link to inform them of such:

I emailed "abuse@newegg.com" over 24 hours ago, and didn't receive so much as a bot reply. Since nobody monitors that email address, I decided it was time to contact you here.

Your webform does not contain sufficient space for me to post specific details of my complaint. Fortunately, I posted a blog entry on the subject, which contains all the details you'll need. The short version is that some dickwad in your organization sold the email address I ONLY use for NewEgg purchases to a spammer calling himself "*******.com" Anyhow, here's the URL:
http://www.taupehat.com/index.php/tech/2008/09/01/newegg_hacked

Put it on Digg, of course:
http://digg.com/security/Newegg_Hacked

And apparently I'm not at all the only one who one of your employees whored out to a spammer:
http://tinyurl.com/newegg-hacked

In short, you guys have a problem. Ignoring it, or blaming the messenger, will only make it much, much worse. I expect a reply tomorrow.

The following is an email I am sending to the newegg abuse team. Will report how they reply if/when it happens. For the record, I really like newegg.com, and it sucks that this has happened to them. However, I've found that posts like this one seem to work better at getting an actual human to reply. Some abuse desks are pretty bad about doing their job.

Oh, and I'm also munging the spamvertized domain to avoid giving the pricks any free advertising. Assholes. Needless to say, I never authorized Newegg to give my email address out to anybody, and have never done business with the spammer, nor will I.

Dear abuse team,

The following email was sent to an address which I have ONLY ever used to do business with newegg.com. As the sole user of taupehat.com, I wildcard the address and use that method to see who spams me.

In this instance, I'm pretty sure newegg.com had no direct involvement in the spam run, but I am positive that your company had indirect involvement, as the spam run was targeted at tech users, and used my newegg-only email address as its target.

IN OTHER WORDS, YOU HAVE A LEAK. SOMEONE SOLD MY ADDRESS (AND WHO KNOWS HOW MANY OTHERS) TO A SPAMMER.

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