I kid you not, I have been summoned to my son’s (hereafter referred to as T2) school today. He has, apparently, become a discipline case. He has been sent to the Principal’s office twice in the last week. Did I mention that he’s three?

Apparently, the latest offense is the most serious, warranting a parent teacher conference. His latest crime? (Again, I kid you not) He was recruiting a group of other toddlers in opposition to Circle Time. That’s right. My son the community organizer was no longer content to simply sit out of Circle Time. He was actively recruiting other children to join him in his non-conformity. I think the school is afraid my little cult leader may stage a coup.

While I am concerned about his long term development on many fronts, this really isn’t one of them. I just don’t know if it’s a great idea to teach toddlers that a) they must conform to what everyone else is doing, b) they must be a happy part of the collective, and c) they must never question that authority that demands they go along.

On many levels, I find it amusing, and even reassuring that T2, at a very young age, is displaying the traits of an organizer. The ability to not only refuse to be a sheep, but to also teach others not to follow blindly, is quite admirable. From a teacher’s perspective, I get that it can be quite challenging. On many occasions, I have been trying to get his sister to focus on something only to have him lead her away. It’s annoying, to be sure.

Also, from a teacher’s point of view, conformity is key. If the kids were expressing individuality, and pursuing only those things that interest them, we might end up with a world of innovative thinkers. It’s good to have teachers who will choke out the weed of self-expression and creativity. The productivity of the collective demands that we create a workforce of nimrods capable of simply pushing a button all day because they were told to. I get it.

From my point of view, however, I’m strangely proud of my child for resisting the brainwashing. I’m actually excited that he won’t simply go along with the crowd. I have even considered introducing him to Facebook and setting up the group “One Million Strong Against Circle Time”.

Well… maybe that can wait until he’s four.

I received a Google alert today because my name popped up in a blog post. When I first read the alert, I thought it was probably me. It was a blog dedicated to “Fighting the Right Wing Nuts”. When I saw my name, I thought for sure it was about me.

When I clicked through, though, I was disappointed. The article, in fact, has nothing to do with me – not even casually. Instead, it focuses on right wing nuts that donated to the Pro-8 movement in California.

I have long known that there is at least one Michael Turk in CA. He’s a physical therapist with a shitty website. I’m not sure if he’s the one that appears on this site. There are apparently four listings for Michael Turk in Cali, and only one of them seems to be the nut in question.

For those who might stumble upon that list, and think it’s me, let me again state for the record that I think my party is completely backwards on the gay marriage question. We’ve staked out territory in a really bad place, and need to pack up and move the tent.

I have not now, nor will I ever, contribute to a cause that wants to allow the government to decide who can marry. As a matter of fact, I would be more than happy to have the government get out of all marriages – gay straight or otherwise.

So as the title says, “Just to be clear, I’m not the right wing nut in question.” Thanks for listening.

On another note, if you’re the physical therapist version of Michael Turk that is mentioned above: Dude, I’ll redo your shitty website for free just so people who accidentally confuse us don’t think I did that. Contact me through the link to the right to discuss.

For the last hour or so, I have been discussing character alignment paradoxes with Aaron Brazell (@technosailor on Twitter) on Facebook. It all started with a simple status update.

Aaron is in a Chaotic Neutral mood.

For those who don’t get the reference, chaotic neutral refers to one of nine character “alignments” in Dungeons & Dragons. Think of them like a matrix. Lawfulness versus Chaos is essentially your adherence to the laws of society, whereas Good and Evil are your moral/ethical disposition.

Now here’s the problem, and the jumping off point for the discussion with Aaron. I contend that chaotic good and chaotic evil are false choices. Good and evil, just like law and lawlessness, lie on a continuum. That is, there is an order to them. There are degrees between them.

Chaos, on the other hand, is completely random. There is no order at all. Therefore, a chaotic character would be just as likely to be good as evil. As Aaron said, everything becomes situational. A chaotic good character would always tend toward the good. If they are chaotic evil, they would always tend toward evil. By that logic, they have applied order to their own lives. They have chosen a path, and a path, by nature, is not chaotic.

It’s like Johnny Depp’s line from Pirates of the Caribbean.

Me? I’m dishonest, and a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest.

A truly chaotic person can always be counted on to be chaotic, and that means they’re just as lokely as not to swing toward good or evil. As Paul Rodriguez (@pjrodriguez) said, “[A] Chaotic Neutral person might hit you in the face one day and gave you a $100 bill the next and then borrow your car, use all the gas, but [leave] a TV in the back seat.”

That’s pretty much exactly it. In a fight against long odds, a chaotic person would be just as likely to stay with you and fight as they would be to stab you in the leg so they could outrun you in retreat. They’re chaotic, and chaos defies patterns. If they always tend toward good (or evil for that matter) you could always know what they would do within a certain range.

So do chaotic good and chaotic evil exist? I don’t believe they can, and therefore the whole D&D continuum is off. I think the continuum should look more like this:

Anything below neutrality in regard to morals (good and evil) and lawfulness would fall into a base category of Chaotic. You would have no idea what they would do or what their moral leanings would be. I think it would be a much better framework. Frankly, with people stabbing each other in the leg, I think it would make the game more interesting.

Let’s be clear about one thing. The economic disaster we find ourselves in is not entirely the making of Wall Street. For the Democrats in the audience, it is not entirely the fault of Republicans. For the Republicans in the audience, this is not entirely the fault of Democrats. This is, to put it plainly, the net result of the perfect storm of stupidity.

If you have ever read The Perfect Storm, there is a great explanation of the three weather phenomenon that came together to create the system that is the focus of the book. The movie glosses over the explanation, so read the book instead.

What we are witnessing this week is the same interaction of three deadly factors. Any one of the three would be destructive. In total, however, they have just cost you and I a trillion dollars. And don’t for a moment think the total will end there. Mark my words, this bailout has only begun to cost us.

The Three Factors

Under a Republican congress and Democratic President, Washington expanded a Carter era relic called the Community Reinvestment Act.

The Community Reinvestment Act is intended to encourage depository institutions to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they operate, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, consistent with safe and sound banking operations.

In other words, banks will make loans for houses to people who are ill-equipped to pay them back. The “encouragement” came in the form of penalties for not doing so.

Add to that another bill passed by a GOP controlled Congress with a Democratic President. That bill, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act sought to:

Enhance competition in the financial services industry by providing a prudential framework for the affiliation of banks, securities firms, insurance companies, and other financial service providers, and for other purposes.

In other words, prior to the law, Insurance companies could sell insurance, banks could do loans, securities firms sold stock, and never the three should meet. After the law, it was a free for all. Banks created securities out of the shitty loans they issued under the CRA, Insurance companies under wrote those while creating their own shitty securities, etc, etc.

Now into the mix you have to throw the American people. They look at the news and see home values going through the roof. The react the same way they did during the Beanie Baby craze. They rush out to get a piece of that action. They can buy a $5 stuffed animal and sell it for $300 on eBay, so they buy the hell out of Beanie Babies.

Unfortunately, economic laws will only support that for so long. The company will make more (thereby reducing demand for the things), people will lose interest, or some other force will enter the market and suddenly your left with crates full of stuffed animals rotting in closets. Beanie Babies were an artificial market.

In the same way, people saw home ownership as a great way to make money. Home flipping became the rage, people took out second mortgages to buy second homes, and suddenly everyone had to buy a house.

The Perfect Storm

The trouble is when you have people who can’t afford to buy houses meeting up with people who have to sell houses to keep from running afoul of laws designed to promote home ownership among the poor, you wind up with a) a guy who will lie about his income or b) a guy who will lie about the value of the house or the terms of the loan.

So suddenly a lot of people are invested in houses they can barely afford anyway, and the real terms of those notes go into effect. People can’t pay, so the value of that note becomes worthless.

Since you have built shitty securities on the value of that house, the value of those securities go into the toilet. When that happens, the debt that the mortgage company is carrying becomes unsustainable and the house of cards comes tumbling down.

This is exactly what we’re witnessing. We’re seeing exactly what happens when an artificial market comes tumbling down. There never was a market for housing for people who can’t afford it. The government created one, took their eyes of the guys who were managing it, and is now asking us to throw another deck on the house of cards so people who can’t afford to borrow can keep doing so.

DC is Fundamentally Broken

I have said that Washington DC is so fundamentally broken it is going to drag the rest of the country down with it. I am more convinced of that than ever today.

With this bailout, we’re solving nothing. We’re simply allowing people who shouldn’t have credit to keep on borrowing. We’re enabling addictive behavior. The Congressmen who voted for the bailout should be tried as traitors.

Despite all of that, I was forced to watch to politicians on TV last night both of whom blamed “the greed and corruption of Wall Street” for the mess while giving a pass to the incompetence and stupidity of Washington. Make no mistake. This dismal situation was the result of horrible policy that started with, and was supposed to be overseen by, Congress. They passed the laws that allowed this to happen and ARE TAKING ABSOLUTELY NO RESPONSIBILITY for the mess they created.

What’s worse, is both candidates for President, and both candidates for Vice President, appear to have learned absolutely nothing from watching this happen and are pursuing the same ridculous policies that have crippled our nation.

I believe you can absolutely count on two things.

First, when the next Administration is about 6 months or a year into its term, they will have to deal with an economic disaster of Biblical proportions. This is a band-aid fix for a missing leg. It’s stupid and will do nothing but punt the problem into an off-year when the sheep aren’t watching.

Second, if you think we dodged a bullet with this bill today, you haven’t seen anything yet.

The Blog World Expo is bringing people together across the partisan divide. I have had some really interesting discussions with some people on the left. As a result, it seems I owe Matt Stoller an apology.

I had previously posted on Matt Stoller’s late spring run in with the business end of a fist, and didn’t have the story quite right. My earlier post was based on a report that Matt had an argument with someone that turned violent. While I still stand by the person who gave me the story, it seems there was a little more to it than meets the eye.

Matt has always claimed that the guy sucker punched him. When he made that claim here, I pointed out that I have been in a lot of fights, have never been hit or thrown a punch without knowing exactly why that happened, and was pretty sure Matt knew why he got hit.

Well it turns out that Matt did get hit out of the blue, but the story of why was still untold – but I was right, Matt knows why.

The story was the ex-boyfriend of Matt’s then girlfriend saw the two of them together, and punched Matt in the face. That appears to be true.

Sources, however, tell me there was a bit more going on. It seems Matt was banging the assailant’s girlfriend while she and he were engaged to be married. Mr. Fisticuffs was apparently a little upset that trust fund baby was nailing his fiance. When given the opportunity to exact a little payback on Stoller, he took it.

As I said at the time of the original post, “I suspect there is at least a fair probability that it was provoked.” Turns out I was right.

On a related note, conversation also turned to a psychoanalysis of the type of girl that would date Matt to begin with. There was heated debate over whether she must have serious daddy issues or simply massively low self-esteem.

Consensus was reached on one point, however. In trying to describe the awkward thought of Matt and his paramour being in union, everyone agreed it probably went something like this:

(As young lass is trying to pleasure Matt, she hears) No. Nobody does it that way. Anyone who does it like that must be stupid and not worth my time… It feels awkward… Like knowing that John McCain will die of cancer in office… By the way, did I mention that Republicans are all racist? They are…

One note of caution, Matt. Watch out for those teeth when your girl wakes up to your bullshit.