Truthy Slips

Romney was making a speech in Illinois and I think the truth finally came out when he was quoting Obama.

"We are inventors, we are builders, we are makers of things. We are Thomas Edison, we are the Wright Brothers, we're Bill Gates, we are steal jobs...wait, I missed that, we are Steve Jobs. That's who we are. That's who we need to be right now. That's true. But the problem is: he's still Barack Obama."

Steal jobs. This coming from a vulture capitalist.

Password, Please

This is something that's been bugging me for around a month now. Employers screen applicants with background checks, fine. I can understand that to a point; you don't want to hire a serial rapist/murderer/cannibal, I get it. Employers also screen for drug use, which I don't get. Is there some skill that you only have when not stoned out of your gourd that allows you to work a cash register correctly?

Eh, whatever.

But when I heard about employers asking applicants for their social networking names and passwords, I have to wonder "who the fuck do you think you are?"

They say it's just a suggestion, that the applicant is only volunteering this information. But that in itself a load of shit.

To quote Lori Andrews on this subject:

Lori Andrews, a law professor at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law specializing in Internet privacy, is concerned about the pressure placed on applicants, even if they voluntarily provide access to social sites.

"Volunteering is coercion if you need a job," Andrews said.

Let's look at it this way. If you don't get a job soon, you'll be on the street. This makes you desperate for work, any kind of work. This employer knows this. They also know that with the unemployment rate still sitting high at 8.3% as of March 21st, 2012 there are millions of people just as desperate as you. So, they ask you to give up your privacy in exchange for the hope that they might hire you when it's just as likely that they'll hire the other guy who'll not only take their privacy raping dick up his ass but will likely turn around and say "You don't even have to give me a kiss."

How is it that employers can get away with this? High unemployment breeds masses of desperate people. Is this unethical? Yes, of course, but since when has a business ever been over burdened with ethics? Is it illegal? No, but just fucking barely.

That may well change. Maryland (pdf) and Illinois are introducing bills that would "prevent employers from discriminating against prospective employees who don't give them their password."

That's a step in the right direction, but as the Maryland Department of Corrections have proved, they'll just make you log in to your Facebook account and tell you where to click just to skirt those laws.

See, one is an invasion of privacy while the other is an invasion of privacy as well as a nice bag of humiliation.

Privacy is not a dirty word and people need to remember why it is such an important right.

Damn Queer-o-sexuals and their Rights

So, it seems that some people have been on me to update, noting (rightly) that I haven't updated since November.

So, here I am again, not even sure why I took such a long break after all the crap that I've seen to annoy the piss out of me. I think today, I am gonna talk about marriage.

No, I am not going to talk about "gay marriage" because same sex couples don't send out invitations to their "gay marriage" and they don't say their gay vows at the gay altar and then have a gay wedding reception. They get married. End of story.

Is it a civil right? Yes, I do believe it is in much the same way that interracial marriages are a civil right. I hear people saying it isn't like interracial, surprisingly quite often coming from African Americans themselves. To anyone who says that I have but one thing to say:

You have no idea what you're talking about.

You don't think it's a civil right to be able to marry the person you love? Seriously? You don't believe it's a civil right to be able to raise a family with the person you're in a committed relationship with? If you think that, you're a moron; plain and simple.

Reading, Writing & XXX-Rated

I'm going to leave coverage of Occupy Wall Street for a few minutes to talk about something else: literacy.

According to the Central Intelligence Agency's World Fact Book, the United States has a 99% literacy rate. Sounds pretty damn good, doesn't it? Well, it is. But stop and consider for a moment, Poland has a literacy rate of 99.3%, Cuba has a literacy rate of 99.8%, and Georgia (the nation) has a literacy rate of 100%. This is the United States, we can do better than 99%.

So, to that end, we've got a program called Read Across America, which has the goal of trying to get kids interested in reading. See, a simple truth is that you can teach a kid how to read, but unless they want to read they won't remember how to do it. A part of how they can do that is get celebrities and other famous people to come in, read to the kids and make a day of it and hopefully get them excited enough that they'll want to keep reading.

This would be wonderful, right? Well, it seems a few parental units out there are pissed off. Not about the program, it seems, but because Sasha Grey was a guest reader at one of the schools.

Known for years as one of the greatest porn-stars of all time, these days she's retired from porn (stop crying) and is now getting largely mainstream roles in TV shows and films. In that vein I'm glad to see she's not letting herself be defined by a career in porn. She's also something of an activist, she's a supporter of PETA (but I won't hold that against her) and is also a fan of Occupy Wall Street. And she's also a supporter of education and literacy.

An article from Huffington Post:

How would you feel if an adult film star read to your seven year old child? Believe it or not, some parents in California are pretty angry that it happened in their kids' classroom.

Porn legend Sasha Grey was a guest reader at Emerson Elementary School in Compton, California earlier this month, joining first and third grade students in their Read Across America day. Grey certainly enjoyed the experience, tweeting, "Spent the am with Read Across America Compton, reading to the sweetest 1st & 3rd grade students @ Emerson Elementary!"

The problem, TMZ reports, is that parents aren't happy -- and that school officials, instead of addressing the issue, are claiming it never happened. Of course, it'd be silly for Grey to tweet about it if it hadn't happened, and more importantly, TMZ has a photo of the event (as they always seem to do).

After this ruckus went up, Grey has been getting pressure to drop out of the program, all because of things she's done in the past. Now, from the reaction this is getting, as well as the school's weak-ass attempt at a cover-up, you'd think she's have probably showed up to the classroom in a corset and fishnets and was preforming a fan dance with Green Eggs and Ham and Clifford the Big Red Dog. Well, that'd get my ass interested in reading, to be sure. That sort of thing would make the outcry from these people understandable. Except, this is what she wore (as provided by TMZ):








By all accounts the kids enjoyed her time at the school, and she did too. So, what was the problem? She did porn. The only problem here is with the parents because, remember, these kids are 1st and 3rd graders. I doubt that it would make much difference to them if they did know she'd done porn but in all likelihood, they don't. I know its hard to believe, but porn stars can, in fact, be active members of the community and want to help others if they can. See, they're human, subject to all the virtues and faults of humanity.

So, I have to quote my friend Cait because she summed it up better than I could have:

I just have to point out that without already knowing beforehand that she's a pornstar, it wouldn't even occur to you. So obviously the people making a big messy stink over the whole business have to be aware she was a pornstar. And how did they know that, hm? Just an innocent bit of research or did someone use the last of the hand lotion again?

Beyond the parentals reactions, I'm especially pleased with a statement Grey released not too long ago:

"I am proud to have participated in the "Read Across America" program at Emerson Elementary School in Compton, CA. I read “Dog Breath” by Dav Pilkey to the sweetest 1st and 3rd grade children.

"Read Across America" is a program that was designed to promote literacy and instill a lifelong love of reading in elementary school students. Promoting education is an effort that is close to my heart. Illiteracy contributes to poverty; encouraging children to pick up a book is fundamental.

I believe education is a universal right. I committed to this program with the understanding that people would have their own opinions about what I have done, who I am and what I represent.

I am an actor. I am an artist. I am a daughter. I am a sister. I am a partner. I have a past that some people may not agree with, but it does not define who I am.

I will not live in fear of it. To challenge non-profit education programs is an exercise in futility, counter-productive and anti-educational.

I cannot thank my fans and 'Read Across America' enough for supporting my decision. Your support and kind words continue to inspire me. I believe in the future of our children, and I will remain an active supporter and participant in education-focused initiatives."

Yes, I'll applaud Sasha Grey for this. Education is an important aspect to a person's life and I'll give a pat on the back to anyone who'd want to further a kid's education and literacy. Too few people out there these days place an importance on a quality education and some even seem to hold ignorance as a virtue and I feel that we should encourage and treasure anyone who wants to help the next generation better themselves; even if that person has a past we may not agree with.

...of course, if you're a kiddy diddler then you can fuck right the hell on off.

7 billion and Counting

Last Halloween we found the world's population had finally hit 7 billion people. This week, we found out Michelle Duggar is pregnant yet again. This makes #20. No, I'm not providing links to articles about it this time, it disgusts me.

Now, allow me to venture on for a little bit. See, over on the FSTDT.com forums, a thread about this got started up and people are ranting. One user, Rime, even pointed out this little sarcastic quote:

This will be a sad testament to "GOD IS THE ULTIMATE OPENER AND CLOSER OF THE WOMB!"

Now, according to all the research I didn't do, their last brat had to be delivered premature because her god fearing mother came down with a case of pre-eclampsia. What exactly is pre-eclampsia? It's basically where your body freaks the fuck out and says "Get this brat out of me or I'm killing fucking all of us!" Yes, this is one of the dangerous medical complications and also the most common. So, to Rime, I had to pop off with a reply:

Except, from what I understand, God has tried to close that fucking portal to the Realm of the Eldritch Creatures more than once now but it's our fucking human science that's keeping that Cave of the Dark Side open and pumping out the squealing spawn of the Black Horseman of the Apocalypse.

Fucking Duggars are hypocrites. If they actually believed what they preached, that dumbass woman would have told the doctors after the first complication: "Your having to give me surgery to keep me fertile and/or from dying is a sign that God wants me to stop pumping out more oxygen wasting crap factories. Tie my tubes."

Okay, I confess, I've done a little more research since then, but the basic gist stands. Now, I want to take it a little farther. Remember a while back I had some fun with math? Let's do this again because this is a wonderful argument in favor of limiting the number of children a family can have.

We'll look at the extreme example and ask: "What would happen if every one of these brats had 20 kids and kept that tradition going?" Let's keep it a short example and just say five generations. This is also an amazing example of what happens when you keep doubling numbers.

20 kids have 20 kids and they go on to have 20 kids on down the line to generation five. Want to know how many Duggars that'll make?

3,200,000. Yes. 3 million 200 thousand Duggars running around in 5 generations. Let's tack on two more generations. Ya know, for shits and giggles.

After 7 generations (lucky number, huh?) we'll have 1,280,000,000 Duggars running around.

1 BILLION 280 MILLION people from 1 fucking family. And we're already bumping up on the edge of the limits to the planet's resources.

Congratulations you selfish hypocrites. You can't survive without the charity of your church and the fame from your TV show; you've robbed your children of their childhoods because they're too busy raising the last crotch spawn you've shot across the room (and I have no illusions that by now it's less "giving birth" and more "baby's first slip-n-slide") and now you're contributing and promoting an ideal that will fuck up the planet very quickly all because you read in a book that you should "be fruitful and multiply" that was penned in a time when people were told to have 20 kids because 18 of them would die before they could walk and you're doing this because "God will decide."

You know what that passage would look like if it was written today?

"And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Closeth thou fucking legs, and let the earth have a medamned breather, and remember you won't get another if you fuck this one up:"

Valley Wall Pictorial

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, here's ten thousand worth.

Spent

On the FSTDT forums, the user Smurfette Principle posted a link to the browser game Spent. In this game you apply for a job that will put you below the poverty line. It'll give you a random daily choice with the ultimate goal of being able to make it through one month.

I've played it four times so far, only ran out of money once and the other three times I've ended the month with triple digit funds. Even though I'd be able to make it through the month three times out of four, it's enough to give you an insight into what it is like to try and make it not just month-to-month, but paycheck-to-paycheck.

People go a long time without needed medical treatment, proper food or housing and basic necessities. Back in the '50's, the idolized time for Republicans, there was a 90% tax rate on the top earners and people lived.

These days, there's a 34% tax rate on the top earners and people can't even survive.

The Revolution Will Be Trademarked!

I know I've been talking a LOT about Occupy Wall Street, and this actually makes me something of a hypocrite because I was criticizing IrregularTimes.com for getting a case of tunnel vision and only reporting on a select few things, such as Americans Elect to the exclusion of most everything else. Now here I am, reporting on little else besides Occupy Wall Street. However this post, while involving Occupy Wall Street, is less about the movement and more about people using them for a money grab. Capitalism strikes again! The revolution will not be televised! It will be trademarked!

Robert and Diane Maresca of Long Island are seeking trademark protection for the phrase “Occupy Wall Street,” with the intention of placing it on products, according to a report on The Smoking Gun website, which recently obtained a copy of the couple’s application to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Robert Maresca said the OWS slogan is “important,” and expressed interest in having the supporters of the movement get the benefit of the trademarked brand, going so far as to say it is his hope to transfer ownership of the trademark to OWS, “if it’s feasible,” CNN reported.

They know damn well that it isn't feasible. OWS doesn't have a central leadership or anything resembling a hierarchy, so there's no entity to transfer the trademark to. This is such a transparent money grab I can't even laugh about it. As reported by CNN.com;

"The goal of OWS is not to become a profitable business," said Tyler Combelic, an Occupy Wall Street spokesman. "Anything that misconstrues it as such, such as trademarking for the sake of profiting, is missing the point of protest."

This seems to be a case of not seeing the forest for the trees. And maybe this guy has all the best intentions of trying to protect OWS (doubtful, considering he wants to put it on T-shirts and bumper stickers and all sorts of shit to sell), but how can one not see the mind-boggling money grab behind this?

He's trying to profit off of people who are protesting income inequality.

Florida's Welfare Drug Testing Halted

A law in Florida would have required anyone on welfare to submit to drug testing. The law, however, was blocked by a Federal judge.

Gov. Rick Scott, who signed the measure into law on May 31, touted it as a way to ensure taxpayer money isn’t “wasted” on those who use drugs. “Hopefully more people will focus on not using illegal drugs,” he said then.

But, in her order, Scriven issued a scathing assessment of the state’s argument in favor of the drug tests, saying the state failed to prove “special needs” as to why it should conduct such searches without probable cause or reasonable suspicion, as the law requires.

“If invoking an interest in preventing public funds from potentially being used to fund drug use were the only requirement to establish a special need,” Scriven wrote, “the state could impose drug testing as an eligibility requirement for every beneficiary of every government program. Such blanket intrusions cannot be countenanced under the Fourth Amendment.”

This is one of those things you'd expect the people who crafted the law to maybe give some thought to before drafting and passing it. Maybe, just maybe, being poor isn't reason enough to force needy people to piss into a cup.

But then again, that is the kind of mentality that views being impoverished as a crime. This is what they spend your tax dollars on.

Housing for the Homeless

Something we all know about but take very little action to rectify is the problem of cheap or free housing for the nation's homeless. Most all of the shelters for the homeless are owned or operated by religious charities with few (if any) being run by a government agency. And some of our biggest questions are simply; where do we put them?

An idea I've had in my head for a while now is to put the United States' Reserve Fleets to this use. Instead of maintaining these inactive ships to be recalled to active duty (unlikely, considering the age of some of these ships), why not convert them to be used as cheap or free housing for the nation's homeless? Here, I'll give you examples as to why this would be a good idea:

In the James River Reserve Fleet there are about 60 ships laid up. In the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet, there are around 80 ships just sitting around.

• Four Forrestal-class aircraft carriers were built, each one with a crew compliment of 4,378.

• Four Kitty Hawk-class aircraft carriers were built, each one with around 5,624 crew members.

• The USS Enterprise is nearing the end of her service life, and her compliment is around 5,828

Nine ships that the Navy doesn't want anymore could put a roof over the heads of 45,836 people who would otherwise be living on the street.

Now, if we still had all of the Midway-class aircraft carriers, that would have been three more ships that could carry a total of 12,312 people.

The battleship USS Iowa embarked with a crew of 2788 people.

There are 4 Ticonderoga-class cruisers laid up currently, each with a compliment of around 400 crew.

I have just listed 17 ships that are sitting and rusting when they could be used to keep 62,536 people off of the streets and alleyways, could give them a roof, warmth, shower and food facilities and, most importantly, mailing addresses for employment and getting themselves a chance for a better opportunity. The homeless problem is easy to solve.

I just listed what we could have done with 17 ships, had a number of them not been scrapped or sunk and with no modifications to them at all.

What could we do with the 140 ships laid up in those two reserve fleets I just mentioned? How many people could we get off the streets and give a chance to find employment if we used all of our reserve fleets?

Unions and Why We Need Them

Trade Guild, Collective Bargaining Association; a Union by any other name. Whatever you want to call it, we still need them even in this day and age, regardless of what anyone says.

In 1970, President Richard Nixon signed the Occupational Safety and Health Act, which led to the formation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). OSHA has been around for 41 years now and it was tasked with a simple premise; ensure health and safety rules are followed in the workplace. If businesses don't follow these rules, OSHA can seek criminal penalties against the CEO's. So how has this worked out? Frankly, it's laughable.

OSHA has come under considerable criticism for the ineffectiveness of its penalties, particularly its criminal penalties. OSHA is only able to pursue a criminal penalty when a willful violation of an OSHA standard results in the death of a worker. The maximum penalty is a misdemeanor with a maximum of 6-months in jail. In response to the criticism, OSHA, in conjunction with the Department of Justice, has pursued several high-profile criminal prosecutions for violations under the Act, and has announced a joint enforcement initiative between OSHA and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which has the ability to issue much higher fines than OSHA. Meanwhile, Congressional Democrats, labor unions and community safety and health advocates are attempting to revise the OSH Act to make it a felony with much higher penalties to commit a willful violation that results in the death of a worker. Some local prosecutors are charging company executives with manslaughter and other felonies when criminal negligence leads to the death of a worker.

During its more than 30 years of existence, OSHA has secured only 12 criminal convictions.

Some people believe that OSHA's all we need to protect worker rights. Those people are dead wrong. Others think that Unions had a place back during the Industrial Revolution, but those times are behind us so Unions are obsolete/outdated. Those people aren't just wrong, they're dangerously wrong.

Corporations are not people; they do not learn from their mistakes or feel empathy for those they wronged. They are entities with one goal: Make More Money. That is it, all things are second to the pursuit of the Almighty Dollar and they are very often run by psychopaths. If you think Unions aren't needed and that corporations have empathy then ask yourself why Dead Peasant Insurance Policies exist.

In the corporate practice dubbed "Dead Peasants" life insurance, companies wager on employees' lives, expecting to make money when they die.

And it's pervasive, said Mike Myers, an attorney who has uncovered many of these cases and helped angry relatives sue.

"Life insurance is traditionally used to guard against the death of breadwinners. This is an investment scheme," he said.

Dozens of blue chip companies have these policies, according to Myers. But only banks are forced to reveal them, and several have billions of dollars worth of policies.

"The driving force behind it is the tax deductions," he said.

In the corporate practice dubbed "Dead Peasants" life insurance, companies wager on employees' lives, expecting to make money when they die.

The life insurance policies were designed to allow companies to insure a few crucial executives. Savvy companies then realized they could also get a tax break by insuring many lower-level employees.

The financial scheme doesn't actually cost the employees anything, except, some say, their trust.

Still don't think Unions are needed in this day and age? What is the differences between these photos:








And these pictures:









Any ideas? If you said "Time and distance" then you're right. If you said "The fact that we'd NEVER let that happen here in THIS day and age like it does overseas!" then congratulations; you're dangerously wrong.

Republicans are working to weaken or abolish child labor laws in at least two states, one of which is Missouri.

Cunningham views Missouri’s laws, which limit the number of hours young people can work and ban them from working past 9 p.m., as an intrusion on parent’s rights.

Actually, they are a help to parents. Without those restrictions, you have a scenario in which Susie, 13, is working at a sub shop. She has homework and she’s supposed to get off at 8 p.m., but the shift manager needs her to stay and close up because Fred didn’t show up for work. Susie calls her mom, who protests, but the boss is adamant and Susie really wants to keep her job so mom agrees, just this once. And pretty soon “just this once” becomes the routine.

I have watched this happen with a 16-year-old, and only the labor laws keep employers from demanding unreasonable service from the under-16 workforce.

Oh, but that Missouri loony's bill is just an isolated incident, isn't it? Haha, no.

Maine State Rep. David Burns is the latest of many Republican lawmakers concerned that employers aren’t allowed to do enough to exploit child workers:

LD 1346 suggests several significant changes to Maine’s child labor law, most notably a 180-day period during which workers under age 20 would earn $5.25 an hour.

The state’s current minimum wage is $7.50 an hour.

Rep. David Burns, R-Whiting, is sponsoring the bill, which also would eliminate the maximum number of hours a minor over 16 can work during school days.

Burns’ bill is particularly insidious, because it directly encourages employers to hire children or teenagers instead of adult workers. Because workers under 20 could be paid less than adults under this GOP proposal, minimum wage workers throughout Maine would likely receive a pink slip as their twentieth birthday present so that their boss could replace them with someone younger and cheaper.

And Burns is just one of many prominent Republicans who believe that America’s robust protections against the exploitation of children are wrongheaded:

• Maine State Sen. Debra Plowman (R) introduced a separate bill that would extend the number of hours employers can require a minor to work. Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) backs this proposal.
• Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) delivered a lengthy lecture where he claimed that federal child labor laws violate the Constitution. His Republican colleagues in the Senate rewarded him with a seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee — the committee with jurisdiction over constitutional questions.
• Missouri State Sen. Jane Cunningham (R) introduced a bill which would “eliminate[] the prohibition on employment of children under age fourteen. Restrictions on the number of hours and restrictions on when a child may work during the day are also removed.”
• Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s (R) most recent brief attacking the Affordable Care Act relies heavily on a discredited Supreme Court decision striking down a federal child labor law that was overruled decades ago.
• Judges Roger Vinson and Henry Hudson, the two outlier judges who struck down the ACA, also relied heavily on this discredited anti-child labor decision in their decisions.

The only reason why these things are (mostly) in the past for the USA is because of strong Labor Unions fighting for better pay and conditions. You want to eliminate Unions? Don't be surprised to see rows of 12 year old kids working for below minimum wage in abhorrent environments.

Don't think it can happen in the USA? It can and it will without Unions.

Ahh, Kids; I Love How They Know Everything

When I was just popping into my teenage years, I remember being very, very upset when I would have some good advice or knowledge but adults would write me off out of hand just because of my age. I hated that, it constantly made me feel as though I didn't matter and that no one cared what I had to say just because I was young. After all, youth obviously equals stupidity in their eyes. As I got older, I promised myself that if anyone had something to say; advice, wisdom, a quote, whatever, then I would not form my opinion based on their age. And to that end, I have been very successful. So I can say with honesty, I have not formed my opinion of this person because she is young; I have formed my opinion because the things she's saying are fucking retarded.

If you've been following Occupy Wall Street then you've probably seen this girl; the 13-year old girl who's telling the dirty hippies they should have gotten a "useful degree" (even though many of them did) and to get a job at McDonald's and to live beneath their means. I'd rather not post a picture of her just because I don't want it on my blog; click the link if you want to see but I've pretty much summed it up.

At any rate, it seems she's back and bitching once again. It seems now she's pissed off at all of us unwashed liberals for daring to criticize her (and to be fair, if people were making violent threats: not cool, people, not cool) and she's also telling all of us poor ignorant folks that if we have time to trespass in a private park (that was created through negations with the city and is, in fact, a publicly accessible park) then we obviously have time to work. And she seems to wants to "take this country back!" Gee, how far back do you think she wants to take the USA?

Do you think she knows that people are protesting in pretty much all 50 states? And that the reason they have time to protest is because they can't find a fucking job? Do you think she knows that on average there are 6.3 applicants for every job opening? Do you think she cares, or do you think she's enjoying being a republican shill?

Also, she seems to have a real hate-on for Apple products. I'm a PC guy myself, but seriously, what gives? I can find all sorts of apple stuff on Craig's List for around $125 to $400 bucks; a lot of people can afford that.

I know that at the age of 13 a lot of people are forming their own opinions, but I can't help but think she's just parroting her conservative parents' talking points.

Do the Commies Have a Point?

A personal saying I try to follow is; "If advice is good, its good, regardless of where it came from." This is true of quotes, as well. So to that end, I have to ask; do the damn dirty commies have a point when it comes to Occupy Wall Street and the American government's reaction to it? For clarification, I have to point to two clips, one from the Chinese state news agency Xinhua and the other from former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev.

Protests reveal US 'messy house'
Xinhua said they showed "a clear need for Washington, which habitually rushes to demand other governments to change when there are popular protests in their countries, to put its own house in order."

Gorbachev calls Wall Street protests just; Flaherty says they have a point

The Americans, he [Gorbachev] said, need to ensure that everything is right in their own country "before trying to put the house in order in other countries."

In Ottawa, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said the American protesters decrying the income gap between rich and poor have a point.

Stop and give thought to the dawn of the Arab Spring. Remember when we first started hearing about the uprisings in Iran? The USA told them to listen to the people. Same then happened with Yemen, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Libya. When the people there started taking to the streets and demanding a change to their systems, the USA was behind them every step of the way whether they wanted it or not. And now our own people are rising up, demanding change and equality and economic security so loudly and so passionately that the fires of anger we've started have spread to every state in the USA and has kindled on the other side of the Atlantic to spread through Europe...

...and the American government is turning a blind eye to the suffering and demands of it's own people.

No Still Means No Even if The Person Saying It Has A Dick

I was linked to a story that was one of those times where the blatant double-standards risked blowing a vessel in my head. I want to point at the states of Florida and Michigan scream "FUCK YOU!" but I can't really pin the blame on just those state. I also have to fault most everyone who's commented on this story in the main article.

I'm looking at you; Men-can't-be-raped troglodytes.

The story I was linked to is about a young man now 23, who was raped when he was 17 by his then 18 year old girlfriend. That alone would be bad enough, but things seemed to take a turn for the truly bizarre.

On Jan. 6, 2006, when he was still 17 and she was 18, they had sex in the back seat of a car and made a baby she named Joshua.

A paternity test confirmed Kris was the father.

Kris was not present at Joshua's birth.

He did not contribute anything — not time, not money — to Joshua's care.

Jessica never asked Kris for help.

In March 2009, Kris got a letter from the state of Michigan. Jessica had moved there and gone on welfare and Michigan wanted Kris to start paying child support.

Kris hired a lawyer. He said he shouldn't have to pay child support because he never wanted the baby.

Jessica, he said, raped him.

Stop and try to picture this for a moment or three. You're going about your business, doing your best to put that time of your life behind you, wanting little more than to forget The Night when you find a piece of mail in the box addressed to you from the government of another state. They're wanting you to pay your attacker. Wow. Honestly, I can't imagine anything more surreal than that.

Well, no...there is something more, also from the same article.

Around the country there are plenty of cases of underage boys who got a woman pregnant and then tried to avoid paying child support. The 15-year-old in California who was seduced by the 34-year-old mom next door. The 13-year-old boy in Kansas who had sex with his 17-year-old baby­sitter. The 15-year-old boy in Florida who impregnated a 20-year-old.

It baffles me that the courts would actually order minors to pay child support. I'm sure the 13-year-old's school lunch money will pay for a few bottle of apple sauce.

But that aside, let's go back to the issue at hand. Let's reverse the genders, shall we? If this was a man who was fingered as the aggressor and it was a woman who was being coerced, would we even be debating whether or not it was even rape? No, of course not. But, you see, men suffer from a mind-boggling double-standard. See, because a male has Tab A to insert into Slot B, somehow that means that only we can insert Tab A into Slot B but never, ever can Slot B be wrapped around Tab A without Tab A's permission. That's just for guys in general, but what about this kid? While the public at large may dismiss his claims, surely his parents would support him or at least give him the benefit of the doubt...right?

In February 2006, Kris said, he and Jessica sat down on the soft brown couch in the living room of his parents' home in Brooksville.

They told his parents that Jessica was pregnant.

How did this happen? his mother asked. The doctor had told them to be careful. They had agreed to refrain from sex.

Kris, his mother and his father all say that at that moment, Jessica admitted that she forced Kris to have sex against his will.

"I made him," Connie Bucher recalls her saying.

Kris' dad, Steve Bucher, was initially skeptical, but he didn't say anything.

"How does a girl rape a guy? I just couldn't see that," he said in a recent interview.

Well...hmm...you know, that's a good point dad. Let's see...how could a woman rape a teenage male? I must be a freak of nature, but I could remember back then it would seem to come up on it's own. I mean, I didn't look at those old National Geographic pictures of the Honkin' Hooter Tribe of East Africa and think "Wow, look at those cans!" in fact, I wasn't ever really attracted by those pics but I'll be damned if pinky didn't pop up anyway for a look. Surely it must be a purely voluntary thing, right? Here's let's preform an experiment;

"ARISE, PENIS!"

...huh, nothing. Odd. Let's try something else.

"GO, GO, GADGET GIGGLE STICK!"

Well I'll be damned...nothing. Okay, one more.

"PENOR! I CHOOSE YOU!"

Well shit...maybe it's not voice activated. Maybe it's touch activated. Let's see, they call it a Belly Button, maybe if I press it I can trigger the Cock Up ability...surely that's the key. Hmm...no, nothing. Well, I kinda gotta pee now. Oh, wait, what's this?

Experts say it is physically possible for a man to be raped by a woman, or, put another way, to get an erection without wanting to have sex.

"Teenagers, in particular, often have an uncontrollable genital response," says Debby Herbenick, a research scientist in sexual health at Indiana University and author of Because It Feels Good.

"Many men, for example, recall getting erections when they felt scared, angry, or even nervous — like having to go up to the chalkboard to write out a math problem," she said. "And certainly seeing someone naked could lead them to get an erection."

Well, fuck me sideways. You mean a cock coming up isn't always within the man's ability to control? Why, shocking! Scandalous! Unheard of! That time I got hard looking at the tile in the bathroom wasn't because of some involuntary bodily function that just happened to strike when I was washing my hands, it was because that tile was trying to seduce me! It's nothing but a white hexagonal hussy, I tell you! Or, maybe, just maybe, guys get hard for no fucking reason, so it's not a stretch to see a guy can get it up when someone's pawing at his crotch, even if he doesn't really want to. Still want to debate it? Let's see the fucking definition of rape:

Rape
[reyp]   Origin
rape
1    [reyp] IPA noun, verb, raped, rap·ing.
noun
1. the unlawful compelling of a person through physical force or duress to have sexual intercourse.
2. any act of sexual intercourse that is forced upon a person.
3. statutory rape.
4. an act of plunder, violent seizure, or abuse; despoliation; violation: the rape of the countryside.
5. Archaic . the act of seizing and carrying off by force.
verb (used with object)
6. to force to have sexual intercourse.
7. to plunder (a place); despoil.
8. to seize, take, or carry off by force.
verb (used without object)
9. to commit rape.
Origin:
1250–1300; (v.) Middle English rapen < Anglo-French raper < Latin rapere to seize, carry off by force, plunder; (noun) Middle English < Anglo-French ra ( a ) p ( e ), derivative of raper

Okay, okay, so, why didn't he fight back? Well...

What happened in the weeks after the miscarriage, and specifically on the night of Jan. 6, 2006, is where the couple's stories begin to diverge. Kris told his version at a child support hearing in Brooksville in 2010. Jessica was not present.

Kris testified he wasn't ready to be a father. And the doctor told them Jessica would now be particularly fertile, so they decided to avoid sex.

On Jan. 6, 2006, Jessica and Kris fought and she broke up with him again. He was in love, he said, and he begged her not to leave him. So she invited him to her church youth group meeting that night.

Their friends drove, but the church was closed, so they headed to Hudson Beach in Pasco County. The other couple went for a walk.

Kris and Jessica sat in the back seat. He said he was looking out the window at the smooth water when she got on top of him and said: "You know you want me."

The passenger seat in front of him was tilted back at a 45-degree angle. She used one arm to pin him down, he said, the other to unzip his pants. At the time, he said, he was 5-foot-7 and 150 pounds and she was heavier.

"At any time do you make a statement to her about you will not have sexual intercourse with her?" asked his lawyer, Kerry O'Connor, at the hearing.

"I told her, 'No, I do not want this.' And that's when she said, 'It's going to happen.' "

"And did you specifically use the word 'no'? "

"Absolutely . . . several times."

He said he tried to push Jessica off. He said he tried to pull the door handle to open the car door. He said she slammed her hand over the lock. He said it was over pretty fast.

He got out of the car, sat on the tailgate with his head in his hands. Their friends returned and he said nothing. They dropped him at his house.

Okay, sure, but why didn't he go to the cops? Well...

Did you go to the police immediately? his lawyer asked.

"No, I did not," he responded. Kris said he called the Sheriff's Office a few weeks later and spoke to a deputy. The deputy seemed to doubt him but said he would follow up. He never did and neither did Kris.

"At this point, I was a senior in high school. I didn't want to lose respect amongst friends. I was in a respected position in JROTC. I didn't want to lose that. I didn't want any kind of unwanted attention drawn to me."

Now, I feel I must provide a little background as to the effects of rape on men. I could paraphrase an articlefrom the National Center for Victims of Crime, but for fear of botching it up, I'll simply quote it;

Male Rape
Victims' Response

It is not uncommon for a male rape victim to blame himself for the rape, believing that he in some way gave permission to the rapist (Brochman, 1991). Male rape victims suffer a similar fear that female rape victims face -- that people will believe the myth that they may have enjoyed being raped. Some men may believe they were not raped or that they gave consent because they became sexually aroused, had an erection, or ejaculated during the sexual assault. These are normal, involuntary physiological reactions. It does not mean that the victim wanted to be raped or sexually assaulted, or that the survivor enjoyed the traumatic experience. Sexual arousal does not necessarily mean there was consent.

According to Groth, some assailants may try to get their victim to ejaculate because for the rapist, it symbolizes their complete sexual control over their victim's body. Since ejaculation is not always within conscious control but rather an involuntary physiological reaction, rapists frequently succeed at getting their male victims to ejaculate. As Groth and Burgess have found in their research, this aspect of the attack is extremely stressful and confusing to the victim. In misidentifying ejaculation with orgasm, the victim may be bewildered by his physiological response during the sexual assault and, therefore, may be discouraged from reporting the assault for fear his sexuality may become suspect (Groth & Burgess, 1980).

Another major concern facing male rape victims is society's belief that men should be able to protect themselves and, therefore, it is somehow their fault that they were raped. The experience of a rape may affect gay and heterosexual men differently. Most rape counselors point out that gay men have difficulties in their sexual and emotional relationships with other men and think that the assault occurred because they are gay, whereas straight men often begin to question their sexual identity and are more disturbed by the sexual aspect of the assault than the violence involved (Brochman, 1991).

To say it simply, there are many factors as to why this wasn't investigated; not the least of which was being met with disbelief by the fucking authorities. There's also the very real feeling that he not only wouldn't be taken seriously by others (as was evidenced by the sheriff and his own fucking father) but the real chance of facing ridicule from his peers, a possible own engrained belief of his own in the old Men-Can't-Be-Raped bullshit among other things. To be honest, after all this, I find it amazing that not only could he move on, but have gotten married to a woman with two kids of her own. And he's trying to support them on about $21K a year.

And now he's being hit with an order from another state to pay child support to his attacker.

Wow.

Just...wow.

Burn Bright and Flicker Out

According to The Daily Beast by way of Yahoor News, it seems that the rage that has driven the Teabaggers so far is fizzling out. This alone is enough to make me laugh, and when all is said and done, I'm not surprised. On another forum I frequent, a member there by the name of Sandman made a very concise and, to my opinion, insightful post explaining why the Tea Party as it stands now will not last. Well written as it is, I want to call attention to the third reason he gives:

Reason 3: It is a political movement based on anger.

You can get a lot of stuff done in politics when you get people pissed off at something. What you can't do is maintain that long term. Political motivation by anger is a lot like shock comedy, you have to keep topping yourself in order to keep the momentum going. What all shock comedians eventually discover, and what the Tea Party will eventually discover, is that you can't keep escalating things forever. Eventually you will get to the point where you simply can't go any further without appearing genuinely insane even to the most hardened of your followers, and the momentum falls apart.

In order to keep the anger-momentum going, the Tea Party has been reduced to incitement, exaggeration, and bald-faced lies to keep people pissed. Everything from "death-panels" to Obama "not being born in the USA" to Obama is a "socialist" to the blatant lie that Americans are being taxed to death. None of it is true, but that doesn't matter. The Tea Party "leaders" don't even care if these things are true, that's not the point. The point is that these lies can be used to keep the rank-and-file Tea Party member frothing at the mouth with righteous fury.

The Tea Party is based on anger, and while this is effective in the short-term, is impossible to maintain in the long run.

Shortly after that, another member, gyeonghwa, was kind enough to share an article he found on the New York Times.

But in fact the Tea Party is increasingly swimming against the tide of public opinion: among most Americans, even before the furor over the debt limit, its brand was becoming toxic. To embrace the Tea Party carries great political risk for Republicans, but perhaps not for the reason you might think.

Polls show that disapproval of the Tea Party is climbing. In April 2010, a New York Times/CBS News survey found that 18 percent of Americans had an unfavorable opinion of it, 21 percent had a favorable opinion and 46 percent had not heard enough. Now, 14 months later, Tea Party supporters have slipped to 20 percent, while their opponents have more than doubled, to 40 percent. Of course, politicians of all stripes are not faring well among the public these days. But in data we have recently collected, the Tea Party ranks lower than any of the 23 other groups we asked about — lower than both Republicans and Democrats. It is even less popular than much maligned groups like “atheists” and “Muslims.” Interestingly, one group that approaches it in unpopularity is the Christian Right.

More and more I am seeing signs that the Teabaggers are ringing their own death knell. They're trying to go in a direction that the majority of Americans don't want, and a lot of the people who voted for them didn't realize. But what I fear right now is the damage they'll inflict before they finally flicker and die. Do I think they're malicious? Not intentionally. Do I think they're mentally unhinged? The evidence is getting more difficult to ignore.

Consider for a moment this article from the Southern Poverty Law Center:

A new Tea Party group in Florida is boldly going where no Tea Parties have gone before – space.

Tea Party in Space, an offshoot of the South Florida Tea Party, is, of all things, pushing to end the government’s supposed monopoly on space exploration.

“Our goal is nothing less than the expansion of American civilization into the solar system,” says the group’s platform. “We must return to traditional American free-market principles to expand permanently into space.”

Tea Party in Space is complaining that, as its founder Andrew Gasser said, “NASA is being forced to fund programs that are behind schedule and ridiculously over budget.” But that’s not all. Gasser sees a great ideological principle here: “It is socialism when you have the government coming down and saying, ‘this is what we want to build, and this is how we want you to build it.’”

According to Tea Party in Space logic, the Erie Canal, Hoover Dam, our national highway system, and Mount Rushmore are all just examples of unnecessary government socialism.

Of course, Tea Party in Space has a rock-solid standard bearer, proudly noted in its “Core Values”: “I am a child of Ronald Regan [sic], Ronaldus Magnus. ”

Houston, we have a problem.

As NASA recounted in its statement in honor of Reagan’s death in 2004, “President Reagan spoke … about how the shuttles were the modern day equivalent of the Yankee Clipper ships that opened new horizons for our young nation.” In his 1984 State of the Union Address, the statement continues, Reagan “announced plans for a permanent human presence in space with the construction of a space station, and he tasked NASA to including the international community to be part of a project designed for the benefit of everyone on Earth.”

But it seems the intellectual disconnect doesn't end at the Final Frontier. Teabagger and GOP favorite (and sane person's favorite chimp) Michelle Bachmann has shown us that there is an aspect of ignorant and malicious thinking when she made it a point to block anti-gay bullying legislation for public schools in her district. The result of that? Let Mother Jones tell you:

The first was TJ. Then came Samantha, Aaron, Nick, and Kevin. Over the past two years, a total of nine teenagers have committed suicide in a Minnesota school district represented by Rep. Michele Bachmann—the latest in May—and many more students have attempted to take their lives. State public health officials have labeled the area a "suicide contagion area" because of the unusually high death rate.

Some of the victims were gay, or perceived to be by their classmates, and many were reportedly bullied. And the anti-gay activists who are some of the congresswoman's closest allies stand accused of blocking an effective response to the crisis and fostering a climate of intolerance that allowed bullying to flourish. Bachmann, meanwhile, has been uncharacteristically silent on the tragic deaths that have roiled her district—including the high school that she attended.

Bachmann, who began her political career as an education activist, has described gay rights as an "earthquake issue," and she and her allies have made public schools the front lines of their fight against the "homosexual agenda." They have opposed efforts in the state to promote tolerance for gays and lesbians in the classroom, seeing such initiatives as a way of allowing gays to recruit impressionable youths into an unhealthy and un-Christian lifestyle.

Later on, we get this:

As civil rights groups have pushed the Minnesota school district to do more to increase tolerance of LGBT students, conservative religious groups fought to keep them away from public schools. After Samantha's suicide and several others, students in Anoka-Hennepin schools participated in the Day of Silence. The event, organized by the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network, encourages kids to remain silent for the day in recognition of the effect of anti-gay bullying and harassment. In response, religious activists took up the "Day of Truth" an event championed by the "ex-gay ministry" Exodus International that's usually held the day before the Day of Silence. Students who participated were encouraged to engage their classmates in discussions of homosexuality from a Christian perspective.

Fifteen-year-old Justin Aaberg appears to have been one of the targets of this initiative. One day last year Justin came home and told his mom, Tammy, that another student had told him he would to go to hell because he was gay. "That did something to his brain," she says. He hanged himself in his bedroom last summer. Only after his suicide did Tammy learn that the Parents Action League had reportedly worked with area churches to hand out T-shirts promoting the "Day of Truth" to students at his high school (which is also Bachmann's alma mater). The students were also instructed to "preach to the gay kids," Aaberg says. (No one from the Parents Action League responded to a request for comment.)

A favorite cry of these people has been "What about the children?!" Well, the children are killing themselves because they're not accepted for who they are and you're not just doing nothing to change that, you're obstructing efforts to reach out to these kids.

These are the sorts of things I am talking about. I have no doubt that the Teabaggers will die out, likely they'll fade into a distant memory as the Baby Boomers start dying off. But I am scared, very scared, of what they will do before then.

Fight for the Future or Watch NASCAR?

The following is a repost from an entry I made on the IrregularTimes guestbook.

---

I'm quirky. I'm one of those rare and elusive creatures known to anthropologists as a Gun Toting Liberal (guntotus liberus).

Something I have wanted for years is to own an AR-15 rifle but I have never been in a financial position to acquire one of my own. Hopefully, I would be able to build one from one of the many kits available online. My financial position recently changed and I ordered a stripped AR-15 lower receiver online and then waited for the company to ship it to my local FFL dealer so I could fill out the forums and have my background checked and be all legal.

This was happening during the debt ceiling debate, during which I saw the Teabaggers on capitol hill basically taking America hostage and threatening to kill said hostage. As the days turned into weeks of this, I occasionally found myself thinking: "I better hurry up and build that AR-15 before these idiots destroy the economy and I have to end up shooting things for food."

Well, they didn't blow Uncle Sam's head off, thanks to Obama snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Not long ago, I put in an order for a full length AR-15 kit and am waiting for it to be shipped. Now, I've taken the time to look at these people, their actions, their mentality, their goals and I find myself thinking; "I better hurry up and build that AR-15 before these fuckers trigger the civil war they want so badly."

And then I remember Americans are too apathetic to actually take up arms, so I go look at what else is on TV.

Objective Sociopathy

Anyone familiar with Ayn Rand will know of her politics but in this case, I want to focus on her armchair philosophical movement known as "Objectivism." From an outward perspective and, admittedly after having only given it a passing glance (and discovering it's not worth my time), I have noticed one glaring problem here. The ultimate goal of the "objectivist" is to maintain their own personal happiness.

And fuck everyone else.

Why should the objectivist help that puppy that's about to get run over? It might endanger their own life and happiness, so fuck the puppy. Why should they help anyone? It's not going to make them happy, fuck 'em. Doing the right thing simply because it's the right thing to do? What's the benefit to the objectivist? If it doesn't benefit them, then fuck it. It's a way of thinking that says any act of altruism is unimportant if it means putting yourself second for the sake of another individual in need. Any act of altruism is enough to render Objectivism invalid. But when you start thinking in those terms, it reminds me of another, psychological condition.

Sociopathy.

Now, unlike the popular conception, being a sociopath does not automatically make a person bad. Of course, it doesn't make them good, either. A sociopath is a person without a conscience or empathy, so they need a logical reason to preform an act of altruism for the simple fact that they can't feel on a gut level when something is wrong. Again, this does not make them bad in it's own right because, by and large, they can play by society's rules. However, it does make them prone to manipulation. But, conversations about sociopaths are best left to others.

From my own perspective, I have a lot of trouble telling the difference between Objectivism and Sociopathy. Both discount altruistic acts unless it brings benefit to the person preforming the act and both seek only their own personal happiness. Please, show me the difference between being an Objectivist and being a Sociopath.

Someone best said: "Ayn Rand is for self-centered douchebags who just don't want to admit they're self-centered douchebags."