Close Gitmo and bring them here.

Ok, there is a lot of bullshit flying around about closing Guantanamo. The people being held there are just that, people. They are just flesh and blood. They do not have superpowers like in X-men that would make them likely to escape.

He have super max prisons here in the US that holds a variety of extremely dangerous people.

The prisoners in Gitmo would not be able to escape. Period. Yet there are a lot of people that are under the assumption that by “bringing them here” the prisoners will be let loose in their backyards, jumping over fences and blowing up their supermarkets. This is total bullshit. Nobody is even thinking of letting these guys walk around freely. It’s a totally ridiculous notion drummed up by republican fear mongers. Unfortunately, not to many of their listeners are smart enough to stop and realize just how absurd this idea is.

Notice I keep saying “prisoners” and not “terrorists”. There is one huge glowing problem with labeling everyone in Gitmo a “terrorist”, not all of them are.

There are some idiot self-righteous hicks out there that are like “Look! It’s an A-rab! He’s a terrorist! Get ‘im!” These people are so positive that they are always in the right, that they couldn’t possibly fuck up, that they god’s chosen warriors in a holy war, that there is no room to entertain the possibility that they might be wrong.

But they have been wrong! Just recently 2 men where found not to be terrorists and were released from Gitmo. Ablikin Turahun and Helil Mamut are just happy to be out of the hell they were imprisoned in for 7 years. They are now living peaceful lives in Bermuda.

You see, there are plenty of people being held in Gitmo without trials. The right to a fair trial is an inalienable human right. You cannot just assume that all of them are terrorists. You must give them their day in court. You must provide evidence of their guilt. (Innocent until proven guilty? Remember that radical hair brained idea?)

Now this is the point where I expect those same ignorant self righteous buffoons to throw up a straw man argument of “You either want these terrorists to be punished or you hate America!” No. No and stfu! It is not either this or that. If the person is given a fair trial and found to be a terrorist, then yes, by all means punish them. However, if they are given a fair trail and found innocent, let them go.

Yet there is a problem even if they are innocent. Back under Bush and the republicans, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the principles enshrined therein was used simply as paper with which to wipe one’s ass.

As a result of mistreatment and torture many of the people who were found innocent and freed have taken up arms against the U.S., and nobody can blame them for it. Hell, you would too if some country broke into your house, cuffed you, and dragged you half way around the planet only to lock you up in a shack and fake drown you for years without a trial.

So what do we do? We’ve totally fucked the lives of those who are innocent. If we release them with nothing, they will most naturally seek revenge. The only thing we can do is deeply apologize and try to compensate them by providing for their families.

Self-righteous buffoon: “Wut?!?!? Hell no! I ain’t givin em nuttin! And I sure as hell ain’t apologizin to no dirty A-rab. Kill ’em all! Let God sort em out!”

This sort of mentality will never make us safe. The only way they would be “safe” following that line of “thinking” would be to kill everyone on the planet who might not be like them. I’m sure plenty of them would be willing to do just that.

No, we need to at least try to make up for the mistakes America made under Bush. Huburous and arrogance will never bring security and peace. We are not infallible super humans. A little humility and respect would go a long way in solving our problems overseas.

Gitmo is a beacon for terrorists. It lets them say to regular people who would not normally support them “Look! Look at that evil empire! Look how they kidnap our people, imprison us unjustly, and torture us! The great Satan must be stopped!”

This is what we get when we abandon the moral high ground and sink to torture and disregarding human rights. By closing Gitmo, ending torture, and stopping the injustice, we regain that high ground. We cut the legs out from under those bastards. If we show some humility and respect we disarm the terrorists. We take away any justification they might have. In short, we win.

The calm before the storm

Trollsmyth‘s new Labyrinth Lord game is approximately 70 hours. ( I spent an hour trying to find a countdown timer that works on wordpress, but to no avail)

Needless to say even without a computer counter, I will be keeping track of the hours. I’m pretty pysched. This will be my first actual campaign with people other than the girlfriend. I got so excited that I not only made one character, but three. (Though I have been playing around with 2 other possibles)

It’s not that I think he’s going to kill off all the players very quickly, it was just that I wanted something to actively do before the game started.

The setting is pretty cool. Check this out: We’re starting out on this sunny and safe vacation island, Dreng Bdan, in the town of Pitsh, the hot get away spot for Russian Mafia playboys. There’s going to be lots of vodka, techno, and women.

What could go wrong? ~_^

The first character I’m going to play is Afya, a witch with a waterbuffalo….

I think she’ll be pretty cool to play with. She’s mainly a support character. Not overly focused on combat, but good at brewing up a potion. Yet this bad girl’s got a secret.

The next character is Darastrix, a lizardman. He used to be part of the Lizardfolk army before getting kicked out for being the Lizard equivalent of a furry….(he had an affiar with a human)

(unfortunately I don’t have any crapy home made concept art for him. Yet I imagine it would be something like this:

The last character is perhaps the most inventive.  Meet Vicare! The flying gnome!

That’s right ladies and gentlemen, he may only be 2.5 feet tall, but it’s 2.5 feet of densely packed awesome. This bitch is equipped with 4 trained parrots that pull his small and adventurous body up and into the heavens!

Wargamers

The other night I was talking to Trollsmyth and the subject of wargamers came up. He mentioned how he loved the setting of Warhammer 40k, but he just could not deal with the “I attack, then you attack” rules, “especially with aerial bombardments….”

I had a bad experience the first time I tried wargaming with a couple of people, and I’ve never gone back. I was in a room with 7 other players, (all vastly more experienced than I), sitting around a huge table that had miniature scenery set up. It took half an hour for my turn to come. I just sat there watching them argue the rules and moving their pieces, bored out of my mind. When my turn finally did come, I didn’t say “fire” (by accident) and so my line of troops was over run, and I was pretty much out of the game. Wasted 3 hours for a 5 minute mistake. Yeah, no thanks. Besides, I just saw the miniatures as another expensive hobby I couldn’t afford.

But you see, I guess I was predisposed not to like miniature wargaming. I grew up playing Real Time Strategy games like Age of Empires and Starcraft. Most of the guys I was playing with that one time were in their 40s+. Not surprising since they probably started playing in wargaming’s golden years, the 70’s.

I couldn’t help but think the entire time I was playing “why bother with this? I can hop on my computer and play Total War, and start playing instantly, and get instant results.”

Yes, to me the Total War series is far superior to wargaming miniatures. The computer handles all the rules so there is no flipping through books for half an hour, and most importantly everything is in real time. A battle is much more exciting when everything is happening now. Quick! Calvary are trying to outflank you and take out your archers! Pikemen, divert! Double time!

Everything is much more thrilling when you feel the pressure to act quickly and make split decisions. Not to mention the fact that the games are MUCH cheaper. You don’t have to buy a million different unit miniatures and paint them. Nor do you have to worry about building terrain. The games offer you much more variety for a cheaper price.

Plus, the computer games are much more immersive. The miniatures are always stuck in one position, always doing just one thing. When they die you take them off the table. The scenery doesn’t change at all. But looks at WH40k on the computer:

Dead bodies, firefights, blood on the ground, craters from explosions, destroyed buildings. The troops are alive and move. They scream and fall when they die. I mean hell, you don’t have shit like this with table top gaming:

Female armor

Sexy female armor is ridiculous. Plain and simple. To quote Savage Garden, it’s like swimming in a raincoat.

The whole point of wearing armor is to protect your body, especially vital organs. As you can see, all three women have their sexy stomachs exposed. Often sexy armor covers even less.

As sexy as this armor is, It offers you almost no protection from weapons. It’s like the idea is that a force field of sexyness is supposed to protect the wearer from harm.

But on second thought, maybe the strength in sexy armor is not physical, perhaps it’s mental. Maybe the idea behind it is to make a male opponent falter, if only for a split second. If I turned around in a fight and was confronted by a woman wearing this, I would surely stop to admire. Every guy would, it’s automatic and we can’t help it. It would only take a second, but anyone who spars knows that a second is all that’s needed. On the bright side, I’m sure plenty of guys would love to die at the hands of such a beautiful enemy… ^_^

Huckabee-Palin 2012 god’s ticket

There was recently a CNN poll among conservatives as to possible 2012 presidential candidates. With a +/-4 margin of error , Palin, Huckabee, and Romney would be locked in a dead heat.

Needless to say, the concept of a Huckabee-Palin administration terrifies me. Both of these candidates are christian fundamentalists. Huckabee, as you might well know, is a baptist minister, and Palin

“spent most of her life in the Assemblies of God, a denomination with an apocalyptic outlook. Members of the Assemblies of God believe the world will end in a fiery battle sooner rather than later; that the forces of good (that is, Christians) will win, and Jesus will return to earth to reign for a thousand years.”

(There is an old Newsweek article on Palin and her religious beliefs here. It also mentions a Pew Forum poll that found a third of American evangelicals believe the world will end in their lifetime. According to a September piece on Salon.com, Palin told a political opponent in Wasilla she believes the same.)

What incentive would this ticket have for giving a damn about peace and stability in the world if they believe it’s all going to end soon? Honestly, do you want someone with this mentality hoding the keys to our nuclear arsenal? Think about it.

I say Huckabee-Palin instead of Palin-Huckabee because I’m assuming that since both of these people are biblical literalists they will obey 1 Timothy 2:11-12 : “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.”

Biblical literalists. They honestly think the world is no more than 6,000 years old, that snakes can talk, that all the animals in the world conviently lived within walking distance of Noah’s ark, and both reject the scientific fact that is evolution.

Back in September of 2008, the Huffington post reported a June 1997 conversation between Wasilla resident Philip Munger and Palin where Mr. Munger asked Palin about her religious beliefs. Palin told him that “dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time.” Holy crap, this lady saw the Flintstones and thought she was watching a documentary!

What affect would an administration like this have on education in this country? We’re already falling behind other countries, how are we going to stay competitive economically if we replace science with theology?

There is a sect of conservatives that want to turn the United States into a christian version of Iran, a christian theocracy. Huckabee is one of them. Here he is saying he wants to change the constitution to be more in line with “god’s laws.”

Here is Palin saying the war in Iraq is god’s plan:

Here’s something else interesting about Palin. During her run for the mayorship of Wasilla Palin’s campaign slogan was “The first christian mayor.” Her definition of what it means to be a christian is so narrow that she didn’t consider any of the other previous mayors, who were christians, as actual christians.

Here is an interesting video on her rise in Alaska:

What would healthcare be like in this country with an administration like this. Under Palin’s mayorship, her church took over the local Mat-Su regional hospital board of directors. One of the first things they did was to make reproductive services like abortion unavailable at the hospital, a decision later overturned by the Alaska supreme court. (Palin even opposes a woman’s right to choose even in cases of rape. She even said she would oppose her daughter having an abortion if she was raped.

I know I’ve talked mainly about Palin so far, so here’s a bit more on Huckabee.

In 1997, Huckabee said that “I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ.” He was talking about how then recent school shootings were symptoms of a nation that had given up on religion. Given up on religion? When 90% of the U.S. population believes in god?

Here he is saying he wouldn’t push his religion on the government, but that’s a direct contradiction of what he said in the previous video.

I found this interesting discussion on yahoo answers when one person asked about the possibility of a Huckabee-Palin 2012 ticket.  Best answer chosen by voters?

“I’d seriously [sic] voting for Huckabee in 2012, I like the man and his views of the country, with its economic issues. Many people say Palin isn’t fit to be vice-president, but with her cute winks and nods her sex appeal won over many. If she can do what she did for Alaska, for the United States then yes I’d vote for Huckabee-Palin 2012, hell yeah!”

So you like Huckabee’s extreme religious views and his desire to change the constitution, and Palin’s total lack of experience and apocalyptic beliefs are fine because she’s hot? People like this make me lose faith in humanity….

I hate Sunday’s affect on TV.

Have you ever noticed that there is nothing good on TV on Sundays? Now I honestly don’t watch much TV at all, but when I’m flipping though the channels on Sunday I do notice a difference in programing. There are not action shows, no smut, nothing but re-runs of family friendly shows and televangelists.

Now I’m not saying there should be hardcore smut and action on TV, especially during hours when children might be watching, but it just seems that TV land try to put on its fake family best for this one day, pretending to “clean up” to the religious’ standards….

Anybody else notice this?

Who has the healthier atmosphere?

I know my blog is not supposed to be about politics, but this is something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. My girlfriend lives in Northern Virginia (the most liberal part of Virginia) and was raised in a very liberal family. I on the other hand live in a very conservative part of Virginia, and while my mother claims to be liberal, I was raised mildly conservative.

We went to church every Sunday, ate (and still eat) a relatively narrow range of foods, and belonged to the local country club. I know these might sound like stupid examples, but they all contributed to a general air of conservatism. Now that my sister and I have grown up, our family is very dysfunctional. Nobody trusts one another, food is a weapon, and everyone is always monitoring everyone else’s business. It’s a very restrictive and hostile environment.

My girlfriend on the other hand lives with a wonderful open and trusting family. Nobody is spying on anyone in her house, there is no sneaking around, and they eat a much wider variety of extremely tasty food. I just love going up to visit her because I feel like I can breath and relax up there. Back at my house, I’m always looking over my shoulder and having to deal with probing questions.

Now this could just be a symptom of our two different families, mine being dysfunctional, but it’s led me to think about the different atmospheres between liberalism and conservatism.

To me, social conservatism seems all about restricting people.  You MUST act this way, you must dress within these limits. Exotic, alien foods are un-American and bad. I feel like it’s all a bunch of narrowly defined views that must be abided, or else you face punishment. It’s suffocating really.

Liberalism on the other hand seems to be just the opposite. So much so that I understand how it can make a conservative uneasy. I know I was when I slowly started to make the transition from born-again christian conservative to liberal Atheist. This new and unknown world scared me. I was distrustful of the friendly and accepting atmosphere. Surely these people must be secret evil pedophiles or something. I guess the whole socially liberal thing revolves around the “live and let live” concept. You don’t get on me about the way I live and I won’t get on you.

I just makes me wonder why nobody recognizes the oppressive nature of the “my way or the highway” concept in social conservatism. Perhaps the only people who notice it are those who are being oppressed by it.

Religion is a symptom of mental disorders

This is amazing! Please check it out. It’s a lecture by Dr. Robert Sapolsky professor of Biological Sciences, and Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, and by courtesy, Neurosurgery, at Stanford.

Video

It talks about the OCD and schizophrenic background to religion and rituals.

How the religious sound to me.

The giant teapot in the sky, the father of us all, the giver of all morals and the TRUTH tells us that it is an abomination for a man and a woman to lie together. If we don’t get this country back to the moral foundations laid out by the giant teapot, the creator all the founding fathers worshiped and acknowledged, then we will most certainly face our destruction. Just look at how society has strayed from the teachings of the giant teapot. Public education, automobiles, and hats, all go against the moral teachings found in the giant teapot’s book, the TRUTH. I pray for the poor ignorant souls of those who have not yet been saved by the giant teapot. If they would only let him into their hearts. They must be so sad leading their pointless lives without his comforting tea. May the giant teapot have pity on them. I know I could not make it through a single day without the giant teapot’s love.

Naturally, this is all absurd. That’s the point. When theists start going off about their god, a magical, invisible man in the sky, who decrees laws and morals, it sounds just as absurd to me as the above rant.

Anti-womans rights groups would kill more people than pro-choice groups

In 2006 researchers from the Guttmacher Institute found that 68,000 women die every year from botched abortions, usually preformed in developing countries where the procedure is illegal. If anti-womans’ rights groups had their way and abortion was banned in the United States, we would suffer the same consequences.

There is something very simple that these people do not understand. Try and comprehend this: There are some things in life people are always going to do. These things include having premarital sex, drinking, smoking, gambling, and abortion, among others. You cannot stop them from doing these activities. Making something illegal only sends the activity underground, where it then becomes more dangerous to the people who engage in it; and they will engage in it.

If these “pro-lifers” as they call themselves actually cared about life, they would work to lower the number of abortions each year by fighting for better sex education and the empowerment of women. If people were better educated on birth control and its proper use, there would be fewer unintended pregnancies. Fewer unintended pregnancies = Fewer abortions!