As Crystal Bernard (of “Master Ninja II” fame) once sang :

I’m no kin to the monkey no-no-no
The monkey’s no kin to me yeah-yeah-yeah
I don’t know much about his ancestors
but mine didn’t swing from a tree

Well Crystal, I hate to break it to ya, but there’s a few scientists who might disagree with you :

Scientists from the Wayne State University, School of Medicine, Detroit, US, examined key genes in humans and several ape species and found our “life code” to be 99.4% the same as chimps.

They propose moving common chimps and another very closely related ape, bonobos, into the genus, Homo, the taxonomic grouping researchers use to classify people in the animal kingdom.

Personally I’m more likely to trust the scientific opinions of scientists versus former sitcom stars, but that’s just me…

Conventional wisdom states that Democrats are the party of big spending and social programs, while the Republicans are the party of fiscal responibility. In case Dubya’s turning a record budget surplus into a record budget deficit wasn’t evidence enough for you, DailyKos proves it once and for all :

I’ve made hay about how the GOP is actually BAD for fiscal responsibility — how both Bush presidencies have been marked by record deficits. How GOP governors are currently leading the way with tax increases while most of their newly elected Dem counterparts avoid raising taxes. How the stock market performs best during senate administrations.

But the myth persists that the GOP is a better steward of the taxpayer’s money. Reality is quite different. Those days are long past, the roles reversed.

State legislatures controlled by Republicans increased spending an average of 6.54% per year from 1997 to 2002, compared with 6.17% for legislatures run by Democrats […]
At a time when states are facing severe budget problems, many Republicans are blaming shortfalls on runaway spending by Democrats during the economic boom of the late 1990s. USA TODAY’s analysis suggests otherwise. It matched spending changes in states from 1997 to 2002 with which party controlled the legislature and governor’s mansion.

This is one of those facts that needs to be hammered home and burned into the brains of every registered voter. The Republicans are fiscally irresponsible. Maybe Churchill was wrong when he said “Anyone that is 20 years old and not a liberal doesn’t have a heart. Anyone that is 40 years old and is not a conservative doesn’t have a brain.” The GOP has proven that the Democrats have bigger hearts and brains.

Jeez. So Nicole Kidman smokes a cigarette and the world is brought to its knees. I don’t know where to start responding in less than 4,000 words …

I’m a lot irritated by the antismoking lobby. More specifically, by the way the antismoking lobby handles itself. I mean, probably eight out of every ten points it tries to make are valid: Smoking is dangerous, it’s bad for people who do it, and it’s bad for people who spend a lot of time around people who do it. Perhaps worst of all, it continues to make some of the worst people in the entire world obscenely wealthy, people whose attitude toward the people who buy their products is reminiscent of the WWII-era Nazis.

(NOTE: I don’t make this invocation lightly, because I hate it when people do that. But seriously, what I’ve heard of these guys’ private memos to each other read like greeting cards from Hitler to Goerring.)

Anyway, so there are plenty of good reasons not to smoke, and not to publicly promote smoking. (In the interest of full disclosure [like I matter enough to need to disclose anything fully], I smoked for several years, and have since quit, though often when I’m drinking I’ll have a smoke or two.)

That said, though, you’ve gotta draw the line somewhere, and my problem with many staunch antismokers is that they apparently don’t believe a word of that — their rights, they seem to believe, trump those of everyone who disagrees with them, and so you have things like city- or statewide smoking bans, of the type New York City recently enacted.

Yes, everyone has a right not to breathe carcinogens in against their will. But if individuals make a choice to do so, as they have since long before there was a tobacco industry, they shouldn’t be marginalized or socially outcast because of that choice, so long as it’s not directly harming anyone else.

“Aha,” you say, “but in smoking restaurants and bars, they ARE harming other people!” Bars, yes. Fine. There are definitely bars that even I’ve been to where the smoke gets so thick, you literally can’t see across the room, and it gets downright oppressive. Restaurants, however, generally have what’s referred to as a “smoking section” and a “nonsmoking section,” and assuming the former is properly separated and vented (which it can be, pretty easily), it’s obnoxious and intrusive to demand that even these separate sections be removed. Basically, by doing so, you become what you yourself, staunch antismoker, have despised all these years about people who blow their smoke in your face and laugh — by alienating another group of people, you do to them what you see them as having done to you all these years. And two wrongs, despite what pro-death penalty people will tell you, still don’t make a right.

Similarly, I’m all for smoking bars and nonsmoking bars, or bars with separate smoking sections — if you can do it successfully in a restaurant, you can do it successfully in a bar. But by completely outlawing that choice, by taking that decision out of the hands of the business owner, you basically state that your personal feelings, and those of the people who agree with you, are the final word, period, and everybody who disagrees with you becomes an outlaw, should they choose to stick to their guns.

This has very little to do with Nicole Kidman, who, in short, is a celebrity but not necessarily a role model, and who besides that is allowed to have bad habits. Even if one is unfortunate enough to consider an actor a role model, what moron thinks role models can be perfect? It’s a sticky, ridiculous slope. Statemenst like this:

Anti-smoking campaigners said the Oscar-winning actor was one of Australia’s greatest success stories who, as a role model for young women, has a duty to not promote the habit.

“We accept that Nicole Kidman has a right to smoke, but with celebrity comes a responsibility to avoid promoting lethal and addictive products to young people,” said Anne Jones, of the Action on Smoking and Health group in Australia.

“Mass media coverage of celebrity smokers, like Nicole Kidman, is priceless for the tobacco industry in their drive to addict new smokers, most of whom are children,” Jones said in a statement.

And so here’s the biggest problem with picking a role model for your kid, instead of ferchrissake BEING ONE YOURSELF: You can’t control how these people behave. Whereas you can, I don’t know, act like a responsible adult and talk with your kids about why you think smoking is wrong, what you don’t like about it, etc.

Anyway. ‘Nuff said. T’much said, probably.

What a bunch of babies :

A New York Times reporter cut short a keynote address to graduates at a private Illinois college over the weekend after audience members shouted down his comments about the war in Iraq.

Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize winner and author of a recent book that describes war as an addiction, was booed Saturday at Rockford College, a small liberal arts school 80 miles northwest of Chicago. After protesters rushed the stage and twice cut power to the microphone, Hedges cut his speech short.

Considering all the religious bullshit I’ve had to sit through at various graduation ceremonies, the least these students could so is show a little respect.

Tom Tomorrow has a link to the transcript here.

Kevin Drum has an great response to Warren Buffet’s article :

Yes, rich people are often rich because of their innate talents and hard work. But as Buffett points out, they are also rich because the culture they live in helped them along. If Bill Gates had grown up in Pakistan, he might be worth a few million dollars, but growing up in Seattle he ended up worth $50 billion. So of that $50 billion, how much is due to his innate talent and hard work and how much is due to the fact that he grew up in America?

The answer is obvious. America was responsible for a big chunk of Bill Gates’ fortune, which is why it makes sense that he should be asked to pay more to keep the country going. But instead the ultra-rich fight tooth and nail these days to pay as little as they possibly can. Why are they so begrudging about paying back a country that has given them so much?/dd>

Quiddity states the question well in the comments section of Kevin’s post :

Actually, it’s a rather interesting - and easy to state issue: Should people with good fortune be obligated to share that with those who experience bad fortune?

Of course, determining what is Luck and what is Hard Work can become difficult. But there are many cases which are unambiguously not the result of one’s character. Consider the poor person hit by a car. That’s clearly bad luck. Or that millionaire who won the $300 million lottery last year. Not only was he clearly lucky, but this additional luck was bestowed on a very rich man.

Most conservatives will argue that their wealth is generally accumulated through hard work (as opposed to luck, fate, or natural advantages like being a white, male American). That said, I think many conservatives and liberals could probably agree that it’s more fair to tax wealth accumulated through luck than through hard work. So how do we determine whether money has been earned through luck or hard work?

Before we answer that question, let me ask another one : How much is hard work worth? Since conservatives are constantly blocking any attempts to raise the minimum wage, then I guess we can assume that $5.15 /hr. is a fair price for hard work. If it’s not, then there’s no good reason to keep from raising it. I’ve spent plenty of days stuck in long, stressful meetings and they weren’t half as bad as working the concession stand at a movie theater on a Friday night.

Now that we’ve got a cost, we can calculate how much of one’s wealth was earned through hard work and how much was accumulated through good fortune. Let’s assume that Bill Gates works 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. If he were getting paid the fair price for all those hours worked, then his annual salary should be a little over $45,000. Of course a more reasonable cost would be to assume 40 hours a week and 52 weeks a year (you do the math, it’s depressing), but Bill obviously works really hard, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

So if someone does “hard work” every hour of every day for a year and only earns $45,000, can we assume that any wealth earned over that amount was earned by something other than hard work? If we can, then maybe we should leave Bill’s first 45 grand untouched and then tax the hell out of the remaining $49,999,955,000.

Yeah, it pays at least $10.5 billion :

MCI, the former WorldCom, agreed today to settle accusations of fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission by paying a $500 million penalty that will ultimately be given to investors.

The penalty was the largest ever sought by the commission, and the agreement resolves the biggest fraud case ever filed by the agency. If it is approved by a federal judge in Manhattan, it will also remove one of the last significant obstacles to MCI’s emerging from the largest Chapter 11 bankruptcy ever filed.
. . .
But some of MCI’s industry rivals said that the settlement was too small and ineffective. “This is a pittance compared to the significant financial harm they’ve caused investors, pension funds, the marketplace and even their own customers,” SBC Communications said in a statement this afternoon. “We’re disappointed a company that can instigate this much trouble gets away with a slap on the wrist as a cost of doing illegal business.”

And lawyers representing investors led by the New York State employees’ pension fund who have filed a class-action lawsuit said that the $500 million would not satisfy claims of shareholders who say they have lost “tens of billions of dollars” from MCI’s misleading accounting.

“Yes your honor, my client did rob the bank, but according to U.S. vs. Worldcom, a defendant should only have to return a maximum of 4.5% of the money stolen…”

Talkleft posted the other day about a movement in New York to seek a posthumous pardon for Lenny Bruce :

Bruce, widely considered the father of comic realism, had been harassed for his ribald act in other cities, yet he felt comfortable enough in his native New York to deliver unfettered his bits about sex, politics and religion. (He called one of his more popular riffs “How to Relax Your Colored Friends at Parties.”)

But on three occasions in Cafe au Go Go during March 1964, the authorities thought he went too far with talk about bestiality and body parts. He was arrested and, after a six-month trial in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, convicted on misdemeanor obscenity charges for “word crimes.”
. . .
At the time of his death, some of Bruce’s friends mourned him as a suicide victim driven to desperation while trying to appeal the guilty verdict.

After he was sentenced to four months on Rikers Island, a jail term he had not yet begun to serve, Bruce grew distrustful of the law and lawyers and insisted on representing himself.

But a good appellate lawyer he was not. Bruce wanted to build a case based on his free speech rights, showing how the First Amendment protected his comedy routines. But he goofed on technicalities and missed deadlines. And so he died a convicted man.

The movement to pardon Lenny Bruce is “better late than never, from my point of view,” said Joan Bertin, the executive director of the Manhattan-based National Coalition Against Censorship. “Lenny Bruce was really ahead of his time, and a very substantial unfairness was done to him. For ultimately random reasons, this injustice was never righted.”

Since the 2001 tax cuts did such a great job of reviving the economy, the GOP decided to make a sequel. In this one, like the first, they give most of the money to to people making more than $374,000/yr. (the top 1%) but this one (which includes the elimination of dividend taxes) is being hailed as the “third-largest tax cut in the history of the country”. If it’s that big, then it’ll really help the economy, right? Not if you believe Warren Buffet (who’s worth $36 billion and known as “the world’s savviest investor”) :

What it has put in motion, though, is clear: If enacted, these changes would further tilt the tax scales toward the rich. Let me, as a member of that non-endangered species, give you an example of how the scales are currently balanced. The taxes I pay to the federal government, including the payroll tax that is paid for me by my employer, Berkshire Hathaway, are roughly the same proportion of my income — about 30 percent — as that paid by the receptionist in our office. My case is not atypical — my earnings, like those of many rich people, are a mix of capital gains and ordinary income — nor is it affected by tax shelters (I’ve never used any). As it works out, I pay a somewhat higher rate for my combination of salary, investment and capital gain income than our receptionist does. But she pays a far higher portion of her income in payroll taxes than I do.
. . .
Now the senate says that dividends should be tax-free to recipients. Suppose this measure goes through and the directors of Berkshire Hathaway (which does not now pay a dividend) therefore decide to pay $1 billion in dividends next year. Owning 31 percent of Berkshire, I would receive $310 million in additional income, owe not another dime in federal tax, and see my tax rate plunge to 3 percent.

And our receptionist? She’d still be paying about 30 percent, which means she would be contributing about 10 times the proportion of her income that I would to such government pursuits as fighting terrorism, waging wars and supporting the elderly. Let me repeat the point: Her overall federal tax rate would be 10 times what my rate would be.
. . .
Administration officials say that the $310 million suddenly added to my wallet would stimulate the economy because I would invest it and thereby create jobs. But they conveniently forget that if Berkshire kept the money, it would invest that same amount, creating jobs as well.
. . .
Proponents of cutting tax rates on dividends argue that the move will stimulate the economy. A large amount of stimulus, of course, should already be on the way from the huge and growing deficit the government is now running. I have no strong views on whether more action on this front is warranted. But if it is, don’t cut the taxes of people with huge portfolios of stocks held directly. (Small investors owning stock held through 401(k)s are already tax-favored.) Instead, give reductions to those who both need and will spend the money gained. Enact a Social Security tax “holiday” or give a flat-sum rebate to people with low incomes. Putting $1,000 in the pockets of 310,000 families with urgent needs is going to provide far more stimulus to the economy than putting the same $310 million in my pockets.

When you listen to tax-cut rhetoric, remember that giving one class of taxpayer a “break” requires — now or down the line — that an equivalent burden be imposed on other parties. In other words, if I get a break, someone else pays. Government can’t deliver a free lunch to the country as a whole. It can, however, determine who pays for lunch. And last week the senate handed the bill to the wrong party.

Supporters of making dividends tax-free like to paint critics as promoters of class warfare. The fact is, however, that their proposal promotes class welfare. For my class.

If conservatives are so sure their tax cuts will create jobs, why not add some conditions to the cuts? Instead of cutting taxes, how about giving major tax credits to businesses who want to reinvest in their companies and create jobs? Isn’t that what the tax cuts are supposed to be doing anyways?

You know, if even for a moment I get marginally proud of my home state for doing something reasonable like hosting those fun-loving fugitive Texan lawmakers, I’m almost immediately taken down a few pegs by, oh, let’s say the state’s continuing committment to showing how much it wants to kill Terry Nichols :

Nichols, 48, is already serving life in a federal prison for the 1995 bombing that killed 168 people and injured hundreds of others. He was convicted on federal conspiracy and involuntary manslaughter charges for the deaths of eight federal law enforcement officers.

But he now faces a state trial involving all other victims, including two fetuses whose mothers died in the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building.

Defense attorneys also asked for a jury trial, saying it will be difficult if not impossible to find an impartial jury in Oklahoma.

Hermanson, who has asked judges “to shut this case down” and dismiss the charges, said publicity has stripped Nichols of his constitutional right to a presumption of innocence on the state charges.

It’s not important, mind you, that Nichols will never walk free during the rest of his entire natural life; apparently that’s not considered punishment anymore. The really important thing is that criminals need to be killed as often as possible.

It’s also crucial that we make damn sure that every single thing we do includes some kind of covert anti-abortion agenda — see the inclusion of murder charges against Nichols for the two fetuses he killed that day, who had left their mothers’ wombs to go downtown to the Federal building and pay their income taxes.

By gar, this’ll put Oklahoma on the map again. That durn World Trade Center thing made everybody forget how we got blowed up back in ‘95, but we’ll damn well keep reminding everybody about it ad nauseam.

Seriously, I hesitate to make the “MY TAX DOLLARS …!” argument, but (A) the protracted trial this will undoubtedly involve, (B) the cost of housing Nichols at a separate high-security cell here in Oklahoma, and (C) the possible cost of keeping him alive through the appeals process (in OK, rather than in Federal prison) is gonna eat up a really fucking fat chunk of my state taxes, even though we’re firing school librarians and teachers left and right to keep our schools open. Again, remember: What’s important is that the state continue to kill people.

Oh no!! We’re at Orange Alert again!! We need to….uhh….what the hell are we supposed to do again? Maintain a “high level of alert”? Well, until I figure out what that means I’m going to wash my hands, drive home, and listen to rock music.