Michael Ryan Makes a Really Stupid Analogy About the War on Drugs

Re: "Casualties of the drug war," from the May 25th edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

Michael Ryan thinks the argument that laws against drugs cause violence is preposterous because that's like saying laws against rape cause rape.

This is one of the stupidest analogies I've ever read or heard. The illegality of rape doesn't cause rape. Rapists don't commit rape because it's against the law. They commit rape in spite of the law. But it is the illegality of drugs that causes violence. Drug dealers, the people responsible for a large share of the violence caused by the illegality of drugs, wouldn't even exist, if drugs were legalized. If rape was made legal, the incidence of rape would likely increase. If drugs were made legal, violence would greatly decline. Of this there is no doubt.

Like I pointed out last week, Mr. Ryan needs a lesson in common sense.

I still can't get over his editorial last week when he refused to make sense of an opinion opposite his own. He just wrote, "blah, blah, blah." That's like someone starting an argument, and when the other person states their point of view, he puts his fingers in his ears and sings, "la, la, la," so he doesn't have to hear it.

How immature.

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Re: "Two disasters, two responses," from the May 24th edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

Mr. Ryan claims that the oil spill disaster was caused by people not doing their jobs. He wrote, "no amount of regulations would have changed that."

How ridiculous and ignorant to boot?

There were certain safety devices that would have prevented this disaster. The Bush administration allowed oil companies to write the government regulations. They wrote these regulations so that they were allowed to use inferior equipment, thus saving them money. It was the failure of this inferior equipment that caused the disaster.

Better regulations would have prevented this disaster. But we have the fox watching the chicken coop here.

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Re: "Everything, all the time: The era of unlimited government arrives," by Deroy Murdock.

This writer is a fellow of the Hoover Institution--a right wing think tank. Or as I prefer to call it, industry-funded shitheads.

How twisted is this?: He thinks the government spending money to save teacher's jobs is a bad thing.

Why do conservatives hate education? Why do they want poor people to starve to death.

All of the items he mentions as supposedly bad, I think are good.

He whines that regulations forcing an increase in gas mileage will make cars on average $926 more expensive. Yeah, but they will more than make up for that in gas savings. This is a good regulation that will save consumers money and it's good for the environment and the economy.

Sheesh, what a perverse idiot. And so is Mr. Ryan for running this garbage on his editorial page.

Michael Ryan writes "Blah, blah, blah."

Re: "On the tip of his tongue," from the May 22nd edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

Mr. Ryan laments the supposed inability of the U.S. attorney general from saying the words, radical Islam.

To make his point, Mr. Ryan starts quoting what Holder said during one interview, then finishes it with substituting the words, "blah, blah, blah." He also refers to what Holder was saying as "gobbeledygook."

This is an admission that someone with a different point of view is too nuanced for him to understand. To put it bluntly, this is an example of Mr. Ryan's close-mindedness. He admits he doesn't bother to understand the other side's position. That kind of makes for an easy cheap rebuttal. By using this strategy, Mr. Ryan doesn't have to strain his brain to figure out what the other position is. He can just write, "blah, blah, blah."

BTW, his call for the resignation of Eric Holder is completely unfounded and ridiculous.

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Re: "Vote 'no' on school bond issue-for the kids" from the May 23rd edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

Mr. Ryan expresses a Neanderthal attitude here. Somehow in his twisted mind he thinks we can't afford to spend money on kids' education. That somehow spending money on education is bad for the kids.

The taxes are tiny, but some greedy businessmen are complaining, and the Chronicle, as usual, sides with greed.

I really don't see how people can be opposed to funding education with such low levels of taxation.

One other note about this column. Mr. Ryan makes the unfair claim that European social democracies are failing. This is untrue. It's only Greece that's in trouble. Countries like Germany, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland, and most others are doing well.

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Re: The bottom line from the above mentioned edition. Mr. Ryan falsely claims that Arizona's law expressly forbids racial profiling. I have read the law. What the law says is that race can't be the only criteria police use when they choose to harass somebody. But it can be a factor. Anyway, what other factor would they use? Mr. Ryan needs a lesson in common sense.

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The idiotic southern lost causers are writing daily letters to the editor condemning Eugene Robinson as a racist, simply because he correctly interpets Civil War history. These guys need to get over it. The facts are clear: The Civil War was strictly about slavery. (In a previous blog entry I've already explained how all other reasons for the war related directly to slavery .) And the South lost. It's not racist to point these FACTS out.

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Retarded letter of the week award goes to Helen Skinner. Here's the retarded part. She writes, "With only a small percentage of Americans paying taxes..."

What? Every working American pays social security taxes. The employment rate is over 90%. That means over 90% of workers are paying payroll taxes. Plus, all home-owners pay property taxes. And everytime we buy something at the store, we pay sales taxes.

Helen Skinner--what a shithead.

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Michael Ryan Allows Personal Attacks on His Editorial Page

Re: "Rap against conservatives was dishonest," by Ron Kazen from the May 10th edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

Not only did Mr. Ryan allow this letter on his editorial page, but it was the featured letter of the day.

Ron Kazen wrote a rebuttal to a letter published in the Chronicle about a week earlier that had been written by Kevin Palmer. Here is the quote that is nothing other than a personal attack.

"He (Kevin Palmer) needs to reflect on his diatribe and consider retaining friends of a higher social caliber than with whom he apparently associates."

What an outrage! Because he has a different political philosophy than Mr. Kazen, supposedly he associates with low lifes?

The rest of Kazen's letter falsely accuses Mr. Palmer of racism, Marxism, and promoting racial divisiveness.

It should not have been published, let alone featured.

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This was actually a slow week. Last week, I didn't comment on an editorial from that week in which Mr. Ryan accused those of opposing the new discriminatory anti-immigrant law of being emotional while those in favor of it being rational.

Oh yeah, that's right. If you disagree with me, you're being emotional.

I did actually read the law and it's pretty stupid. Obviously, it was written to oppress hispanics. But besides that, it's just a bad law. Arizona orders local law enforcement agents not to refrain from enforcing existing federal law. So the police are ordered to enforce an unenforceable law. If it's proven to be already unenforceable, how are they going to enforce it? Will passing a state law repeating a federal law make it more enforceable? I doubt it.

But that's not even the stupidest part of this law. Arizona invited private parties to sue government parties for not enforcing the unenforceable law. Considering how state's are already strapped for money, this sets an incredibly bad precedent that will lead to mountains of frivolous lawsuits. Plus the constitutionality of the law will be challenged in courts. Can anyone say bankruptcy caused by legal fees.

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Rick Mckee drew a couple of stupid cartoons this week.

On Friday May 14th a cartoon compared Obama's health care reform with the oil spill.

McKee has given the health care reform bill a whole month before calling it a disaster. What a race to judgement.

In today's (May 15th) cartoon he shows the media blaming Bush for the oil spill, as if that's some kind of joke.

A week of testimony at capital hill clearly illustrates that Halliburton cut corners, thus contributing to the oil spill disaster. In secret meetings with Dick Cheney the oil companies wrote rules later put in by the Bush administration so that standards were relaxed and shortcuts were allowed. Bush is at fault. Rational people don't need the media to inform us of this fact.

BTW, Obama is also at fault. It is his administration that is continuing the bad environmental policies of the Bush administration, and they're the ones who approved the permit for this ill-fated oil rig.

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Re: "First Grade? No, first rate!" from the May 15th edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

Mr. Ryan needs to stick to English, not Yiddish. He misused the Yiddish word, chutzpah, in the subtitle, "Hephzibah teacher Kristi Davis shows chutzpah in protecting kids."

Chutzpah is not a synonym for courage. Chutzpah means gall. As in someone offering $250 for a car worth $10,000. Nobody would call that brave. The car dealer might say, "that guy has a lot of gall," but he would never call him courageous.

Misusing a foreign language shows embarrassing ignorance.

Michael Ryan's Xenophic Confusion

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This blog is becoming more of a weekly one than a near daily. If you follow this blog, check back on most Saturdays for a new entry. I'm just getting too busy promoting my book at http://markgelbart.wordpress.com/

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Re: "V-A-T spells disaster," from the Friday May 7th edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

Mr. Ryan must have realized his opposition to a VAT was contradictory to his long-time support for the National Consumption Tax. He spells out the differences but is completely unconvincing. He points out that the European VATs tax items at every level of distribution. For this reason the National Sales Tax he supports is supposedly superior because it only taxes at the point of purchase. But what Mr. Ryan doesn't realize is that at least 21 western countries, including those in Europe, already tried taxing just at the point of purchase and every system failed because there were too many loopholes creating black markets. Taxing at just the point of purchase is a proven failed method of taxation. That's why European countries switched to the VAT.

He also points out another difference--that the National Sales Tax would supposedly replace income taxes, corporate taxes, and social security taxes. As I've demonstrated on previous posts, this is not at all realistic. A National Sales Tax is so regressive that even conservatives admit universal rebates would be needed to prevent mass starvation. Here's my simple chart debunking this stupid idea:
Income from National Sales Tax minus Universal Tax Rebates to make up for paying sales taxes=Zero revenue.

To make matters worse, Mr. Ryan adds a xenophobic criticism equating the VAT with "European" socialism. I think this is evidence of simple-minded bigotry.

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Re: "We've had enough--of this," from the May 2nd edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

Mr. Ryan asks what income ceiling should there be as if it's so unfair for government to put limits on how obscenely wealthy a person can get in one year.

How about $300,000? I see no reason why any one individual needs to make more than $300 K a year. I can't imagine why any one individual needs to make more than that. If they are, they are hogging money.

Mr. Ryan's defense of the freedom to make obscene amounts of money is that to take the right away would ruin people's dreams. Oh wow! So we explode someone's ridiculous fantasies in order to eliminate poverty? The horrors!

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I didn't save this edition but in one of Mr. Ryan's recent columns he was whining about how the liberal media hopes terrorists are right wing rather than Arab. And he goes on to attack Muslims the same way Archie Bunker would. He asks when there is going to be a Timothy McVeigh II.

How about Jim Adkisson who in 2008 shot up a church in Tennessee, killing 2 and wounding 6, because they were two liberal. Or how about the Hutaree militia in Michigan whose plot was thwarted just in time.

Does Mr. Ryan actually read his own newspaper?

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Lee Herron wrote another idiotic defense of the Confederacy on May 3rd.

He brings up the those two old standbys that supposedly disprove slavery caused the Civil War: tariffs and states rights. Either he wears a lead helmet to prevent logic from entering his brain or he is just stupid because both issues were directly related to slavery. The south was taxed because they made their profits off the backs of slave. And the only states rights southerners cared about was the right to own slaves.

Mr. Herron tries to justify the Confederacy by pointing out the miniscule number of African-Americans who fought on the side of the Confederacy, and the even smaller number who owned slaves themselves. I don't see how that justifies such a holocaust.

To make himself even more ridiculous, he accuses people of criticizing the Confederacy of racism.

Man, he makes Augusta look so backwards.