*I mean "you" in the less frequently used sense of "no one in particular."

**And a suprisingly poor grasp of modern video editing software!

At its heart, Social Security is an insurance program. (And a public option buy-in, at that.) But what other insurance program pays out, even if you don't need it?

That's like buying fire insurance and then getting a payout even if your house never burns down. Social Security is the only insurance program that pays out if things DON'T go badly for you. It's death insurance. It pays out if you, through no fault of your own, don't die.

How crazy is that?

People who are rich, don't need Social Security. The idea that we continue to give money to people who don't need it, in an era of deficits and debt, is just ridiculous. Heck! It'd be ridiculous in an era of surpluses.

Democrats are supposed to be the party that fights against income inequality. Democrats are supposed to be taking a stand against taking money from the working class and giving it to the rich.

Why do the 99% pay payroll taxes to give Social Security to the 1%?

I'm sure this won't happen, but what I really want to see in STAR TREK 2 is:

Older Spock, realizing time won't rip apart if he tells the new crew about his timeline, spills about Khan. Khan, in this timeline, is still in suspended animation in his spaceship (The Botany Bay) drifting lost in space. So Kirk and crew decide to secure the ship before Khan can wake up, get crazy evil, kill Kirk's son and sort of briefly kill Spock.

(Older Spock's perspective allows us to trade not just on how big of a threat Khan was in his first appearance, but on the threat he turned into years later in Wrath of Khan.)

Meanwhile, the crew of a Klingon ship have also identified the Botany Bay, and they want to dissect Khan to learn more about genetic augmentation. The crew of the Klingon ship are sort of a Bizarro Enterprise, both in terms of casting (get Kal Pen to play a sword-wielding Klingon) and character/competency.

Basically, it's crew against crew in a tactical battle in the middle of a dangerous area of space, and the ticking time bomb is "What if Khan wakes up." Which of course he does, forcing the Enterprise and the Klingon crew to team up in the third act.

I figure the Klingons "beat" the Enterprise, "win" Khan, and then he wakes up, takes over their ship, kills half of them, and then the Enterprise have to work with the survivors to beat Khan.

STAR TREK 2 is in pre-production now, and will presumably not remotely resemble any of the above.

The priest places a hand on his shoulder and smiles and says, "Remember, my son, this too shall pass."

"You're right," the man concedes, and he leaves.

A few weeks later, the man returns. "Father," he says, "I caught my wife cheating on me with another man! I think she's going to leave me!"

The priest places a hand on his shoulder and smiles and says, "Remember, my son, this too shall pass."

"You're right," the man concedes, and he leaves.

A few weeks later, the man returns. "Father," he says, "My wife has left me, and I've caught my son doing drugs! I worry that he will end up in jail or dead!"

The priest places a hand on his shoulder and smiles and says, "Remember, my son, this too shall pass."

"You're right," the man concedes, and he leaves.

A few weeks later, the man returns. "Father," he says, "You were right about everything! I've found a new job! My wife and I have reconciled, and our marriage is better than ever! My son has gone to rehab and has sworn never to do drugs again!"

The priest places a hand on his shoulder and smiles and says, "Remember, my son, this too shall pass."

And there's new merchandise this year via Le Cafe Press, just in case you always wanted a Double Steak Day tote bag or a clock:

DC Comics and other comic book publishers sell digital comics through a service called Comixology. You can buy comics through their website or an app. And starting right about now, Comixology is offering physical comic book stores the opportunity to host Comixology storefronts through their websites.

So you could go to the Comixology website and buy your digital comics, or you could go to your retailer's website and buy your comics there. But Hibbs doesn't like Comixology's terms.

Wait. What?

What’s really interesting isn’t that all of DC’s comics will be available digitally the same day they’re released in print. What’s really interesting is that ALL of DC’s comics will be available digitally the same day they’re released in print.

Oh, nevermind. Point being, GREEN LANTERN wasn't a great movie. A lot of people are coming out and saying "This proves that superheroes are done for in Hollywood!" or "This proves that B-list heroes can't carry a movie!" or "This proves that comic book types shouldn't muck around in filmmakers' business!"

To the last point: I certainly can't prove that Geoff Johns wasn't to blame for everything wrong with the new GL movie, but I can tell you that his GREEN LANTERN: SECRET ORIGIN trade is light years better than what we got in theaters last week. So you'll have to do the math for yourself.

In the meantime, here's a short list of what they could have done better to make GL really fly:

[Because he flies, get it?]

And there's the other side to this to. In the hours after the shooting, a lot of liberals were jumping to the (somewhat understandable) conclusion that this was a political shooting. That the person behind this WAS a Tea Party radical. If that had been the case, it would have played to their political advantage. It would have validated a lot of liberal concerns about Tea Party rhetoric and code words like "Second Amendment Solutions."

And it would have been wrong.

I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's talk about this case. The best evidence so far suggests that the shooter was just a mentally ill kid. If you find his YouTube page, you'll find a video that outlines his incoherent philosophy, conveyed with grammar and a wavering grasp of logical argument. (The kid makes bizarre use of "If > Then" constructions.)

As a non-mental health professional, this certainly looks to me like someone who's either mentally ill or perhaps doing a LOT of drugs. In either case, it's a tragedy that there was no one to reach out to this kid and get him on the right path.

It's too soon to excuse him of any moral culpability, but from the little I've seen, it doesn't seem like he had a clear grasp on reality.

But even if this kid WAS affiliated with the Tea Party, would that mean that the Tea Party was to blame? I don't think so. Because, let's be honest, the Tea Party, for all it's rhetoric, hasn't produced any killers. (I know that's a little bit of a circular argument, but bare with me.)

The Tea Party is a broad movement with large pockets or radicalism and presumably other, quieter pockets of comparative moderation. They've been around for a couple of years and, despite some politics I disagree with and some occasionally troubling rhetoric, nobody's assassinated anyone. That means that, despite the anger, despite their frustration, despite a lot of people thinking or at least saying that they think that Obama is a Muslim or a Marxist or a Marxist Muslim, these people, deep down, know it's not OK to shoot someone.

To the extent that someone actually picks up a gun and kills someone and says it's because the Tea Party made them do it? Well, I'd submit that there has to be something more involved. Something that went wrong with that particular human being. And that, and not their political affiliations, is what's really to blame.

I guess the problem is that when what you're dealing with is one broken kid, you don't really have anyone to punish. And when people are dead, when a little girl is dead, you want someone to punish. So you pick something about the person who did it, and you make that "the reason" and you find other people with that thing in common and you make them "part of the problem" and then you punish them.

It's a small blessing, perhaps, that in this case, it's not so easy to find a scapegoat.

I think we're best off dealing with these shootings as the freak occurrences that they are. Horrible. Tragic. But not something that we can base our understanding of the world around. Not something that we can pivot our ideologies on. And certainly not something that we should shape whole blocks of public policy on.

But I suspect it's going to be unavoidable.

For more on this outrageously awesome holiday/minor medical health risk, check out the official website at DoubleSteakDay.com. You'll note that there's no new merchandise this year (i.e. all the T-Shirts still say "2009") but that'll make the 2010 shirts super-rare and valuable and something something when they finally roll out in early 2011!

New rulings for this year:

• Carne Asada: OK
  
• Cubed Steak: OK (provisionally)
  
• Salisbury Steak: Absolutely Not!

• Take Out: OK
  
• Splitting a Steak: No
  
• Both Steaks at 1 Meal: No & No

Here's a picture of my first steak today, a simple 8 oz. from Chez Pizzeria Uno:

 

 

Expect a second update later today! And possibly some tweets!

First steak of the day today

I found my hard drive! Yay! Pretty great news, right? So great that you probably don't want to ask any additional que--

Right. Good question. Yes, well, as it turns out...

...THEY WERE ON MY HEAD THE ENTIRE TIME! I know, right? I was all like "where's my hard drive?" And you were all like, "Did you check to see if you were currently wearing them? Like, in the headal region?" And I was like, "Don't be ridiculous!"

And then you were all pointing to your heads, and miming sliding them down over your eyes, but I wasn't paying attention, because I was on the phone with Amtrak saying, "How could you have lost my beloved hard drive! Your probably stole them, didn't you!" Ha! That must have been pretty funny.

Good thing that I didn't offer a reward! You probably would have just taken a picture of me to collect the money!

Oh well. Fun's over, boys and girls! You can all go about your business now.

*Sigh*

Man, I haven't been this embarrassed since that time I forgot I left a pair of glasses in the side pocket of my backpack...

Case in point, compare the percentages in the graph below (from her 11/16 show) to the size of the bars used.

 

 

In her segment tonight, Rachel wanted to demonstrate that Republican Presidents increase the debt far more (by percentage) that Democrats do. And the numbers bare her out.

But Rachel (and her staff) weren't content to stick to the pure numbers. Instead, they distorted the graph to make the disparity between Republicans and Democrats even larger.

The first distortion that you may notice is that the band covering "0 to 50%" is noticeably shorter than the higher bands. George W. Bush increased the debt by 77.4% vs. his father's 53.8%, but if you compare the size of their "stacks," you'd think that Bush had more than doubled his father's record!

Now, compare that to the Democrats (both admirably under 50%) and you'll see not only is the 0 to 50% band shorter, but Bill Clinton's stack in no way matches his percentage. Why is his 40.6 less than half the height of George Sr's 53.8%? Why is it a mere 25% of George W's 77.4%? Heck, why is it more than a hair's width off from Jimmy Carter's 41.5%?

Well, obviously it's because Team Maddow wanted to make a graphical point that exaggerated the difference between the Republicans and Democrats. Clinton's numbers have to be made extra tiny to make W's look extra big.

Here's my crude photoshop cut and paste to underscore my point:

 

 

Note that we can fit 7 of Jimmy Carter's stacks into one Reagan stack (41.3% times 7 = 186.1%?) and over 4 of Clinton's stacks into one W stack (40.6% times 4 = 77.4%)? Really?

Well, here's a graph especially for Team Maddow, because I understand that they like data:

 

 

Needless to say, if you happen to have found this website based on a URL you found in files on a hard drive you just found, I'd really like it back.

Or if anyone happens across a red and white portable hard drive that's just laying out discarded on the street somewhere...

I can be reached by email at harddriveless @ drewmelbourne.com. (Actually, you can put anything before the @ sign and it will get to me.)

Will go curl into a ball and cry now.

(In lieu of flowers, Drew would like the last year of his life back.)

Just finished reading SUPERMAN: EARTH 1, which is interesting but also a failure on almost every level.

That probably deserves an explanation, right?

Everyone else, if you need to get a hold of me, be advised that I only check the email address attached to this website about once a week. If you need to get a hold of me faster than that, you will need to intuit the super-secret, spam-proof new way to email Drew at drewmelbourne.com.

Hint, hint.