Cop Kills Unarmed Naked College Student?

Boy, it’s almost getting hard to take this stuff seriously, isn’t it?  I mean, how can this possibly be real?  What kind of cop in his right mind would shoot a naked college student?  Here’s the story –

In south Alabama, a college student, named Gil Collar, was doing as college students are want to do, and was running around naked.  Hopefully this wasn’t the result of a stupid Frat pledge or some other dumb thing.  However, this student found his away to a police station.  He was banging on the doors there, and an officer came out.  According to the officer, when he came out, the kid adopted a fighting stance.  The officer claims to have repeatedly tried to back off and “diffuse the situation,” but the kid just kept coming.  It was then that the officer’s next course of action was to draw his gun and kill the kid.  Yeah…this explanation is as bogus as it sounds.

First, let’s look at the facts.  This is a 130lb college student.  He is butt-naked, and has no weapons on him.  He is banging on a police station window at 1 in the morning.  He supposedly took a fighting stance when a cop comes out after he was banging on a window.  This officer, who probably not only had a gun on him, but probably had a taser, or a baton, or some mace, and also his fists (which come equipped with hours upon hours of hand-to-hand combat training), shot and killed this kid.  Seeing the problems?

How could this officer have felt that his life was in danger?  This is a well-trained cop going up against a naked kid.  That is not only ridiculous, it is down-right silly.  And as you can imagine, this story that is filled with plot-holes has not been well-received by the community.  They think that it is just as bogus as this particular blogger.

There is no way, unless this was some idiot rookie who didn’t know that all that training can actually be used for something, this story makes no sense.  And of course, the “horrible” punishment for an officer who appears to have killed someone for no good reason is that he has been put on paid leave while they investigate.  These cases almost universally favor the cops, so you can bet that the officer won’t be punished in any significant way.  In fact, he is probably going to walk away unscathed, as police almost always do.

We have talked about this before, but it bears repeating – something needs to be done about the cops!  Are are giving thugs uniforms, badges, guns, and almost complete legal immunity.  These are a class of people who have no fear of the hammer coming down on them.  That has to go!  We need oversight on these guys!

Every week, it seems, we are hearing stories about the police killing people’s pets, like in Missouri, where the cops killed the family dog, pepper-sprayed the puppies, and were going to kill the puppies, all during what was supposed to be a marijuana bust (and they only found a bag, which was enough for a misdemeanor charge).  And the murdering of pets is nothing new.  There is a blog where it is documented when police kill a family’s animals.

There are a lot of states in this country where people are getting in trouble for filming the police.  That’s interesting.  Why would the police not want to be filmed?  Could it be because they don’t want their thuggish tactics and their blatant abuse of power getting out.

A warning to all cops – you are now being watched.  You are now in the public eye.  You are not safe.  The internet knows who you are, and the internet does not forgive and forget.  The internet will still be here tomorrow.  The public is wise to your game, and we are going to fight back.

We. Are. Watching you.

The Catholic Church, Then and Now

The Catholic Church deserves some credit for what it had done a very long time ago.  Through the power of faith, it is true that we were able to come from the marauding barbarism that had taken over Europe in the Dark Ages.  Societies have been formed since long before Christianity existed by people coming together over a system of beliefs, which are often a ground-work for their continued growth as a culture.

Patton Oswald was right when he said that religion gave us writing and agriculture and fire and civilization.  However, the key thing that isn’t addressed is that what was once then, isn’t now.  The great truth of the Catholic church and what it once stood for has been washed away.  Granted, it has always been a corrupt institution.  There isn’t a single system of power that exists in this entire world that isn’t.  But it’s corruption was once off-set by what it gave back to society.  Such is not the case anymore.

Looking far beyond the Dark Ages, it cannot be denied that the corruption of the Catholic church has consumed it, and now it is nothing more than an institution that does so much more harm than good.  Before looking at the current examples, let’s take a trip back through history, and look at some of the more historically famous things that the Catholic church has been responsible for.

• 17 million African slaves were killed by slavers, which the Catholic church explicitly said was okay in 1836 and 1839.  These were official stances of the church, who favored slavery.
• In the 15th and 16th Century, and probably well after that, there were countless deaths after Pope Innocent VIII was the author of “The Declation Against Witches.”
• The Catholic church killed over 1 million innocent people in their Crusades to conquer The Holy Land (their term, not mine)
• The Spanish Inquisition killed over 350,000 people, all of whom were innocent, in order to suppress and silence those who were not in league with the church.
• The Catholic church had a very large participation in the the Rwanda ethnic cleansing.
• They continued to support a bloody and violent regime in Zimbabwe because they gave the church support.
• They supported the Croatian genocide of the Serbs.

Oh wait, look at the dates of all this.  This goes way back.  This goes all the way back to the Dark Ages.  Huh, well, scrap what I said before.  There was an order given to society, but at the same time, dating back to the beginning, the Catholic church has been nothing more than an organization of corruption and murder.

Today, on the other hand, there isn’t so much murder, but there is still a whole lot of corruption.  What are some of the more famous modern example of their corruption?  Some really modern ones?  Well, here’s another neat bulleted list.

• Mother Teresa, a woman who is revered by Catholics, non-Catholics, and even atheists like myself, advocated for no women’s reproductive rights of any kind.  She advocated for people in Africa not being able to use condoms, which would have exponentially helped in keeping the amount of AIDS cases down.  Her hospitals were poverty-stricken Third World nightmares, even though it has been shown that with the amount of money she had, she could have easily made them into very great palaces of health.  She also advocated poverty, which is why she didn’t funnel any of her untold and vast amounts of money into those hospitals.
• Over 5,000 priests and deacons are currently still active within the Catholic church, with there being public knowledge of their sex crimes against children.
• The Vatican keeps records of all the sexual abuse crimes committed by priests and who has been abused.  They pay off the abuse victims and their families, often adding the threat of excommunication if they go to the authorities.
• The Pope is expressly tied to the conscious efforts to keep the sexual abuse of the church under wraps, showing that this corruption comes down right from the top.
• When SNAP (Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests) came to the International Crimes Court to finally bring the hammer down on the Vatican and make them pay, the Vatican PR machine did everything in their power to vilify SNAP’s lawyers and those who were coming out against the sexual abuse that is rampant in the church.  They almost took a Stockholm Syndrome approach, telling the victims of sexual abuse that it wasn’t as bad as they thought.
• They are still working day and night to stop safe sex in third-world nations, along with abortion rights for women.
• They will let abstinence-only education be taught in Catholic schools (and we wonder why religious areas have the highest rates of teen pregnancy).
• At the Irish Sisters of Mercy, over 13,000 children were found to have been brutally physically abused.
• A plethora of financial crimes associated with the Vatican Bank, such as the laundering of 23, million euros.
• Oh, and the raping of all the kids.  Don’t know if we covered that.

The Catholic church is a corrupt organization, and the simple reality is this – this needs to stop.  It is high-time that the Catholic church felt the long-arm of the law.  They are completely exempt from taxes, yet they and all the other Christian organizations have a stranglehold on government.  This is an organization that couldn’t be more corrupt, yet couldn’t have more power.

On some level, it almost makes sense why the governments of the world are afraid to go after them.  This still is an incredibly powerful organization.  Their giant opulent palaces across the world should be testament to that.  There is a lot of money that governments need to finance their own corruption.  It is a giant network of corruption that infects this entire planet, and nobody will fight back against.

However, there is reason to hope.  There are groups coming together, refusing not to let themselves be ignored, and calling for justice against the Catholic church, until the abuse stops.  This organization needs to feel the hammer of the law, and until that happens, there needs to be a conscious effort against them.

Catholics, remember – we. are. watching you!

PC Liberalism and Islam

How are these two things connected?  Well, let’s take a look at what has happened in the news over the last couple weeks.  There has been an incident where a very crappy video was made mocking Islam and the their prophet, Muhammad.  This video was awful in every way.  Bad cinematography, bad acting, bad writing, there was nothing good about it.  However, in response, the butt-hurt Muslims who won’t let anybody have any opinion about their religion that is in the negative have been rioting all over the world, and have even brutally killed four people.

Meanwhile, back in America, what has been the typical response to this?  Well, ironically, more than should ever been expected, the government and the left-wing public seem to want to demonize these filmmakers, rather than the extremist monsters who have brutally killed four innocent people.  The question that should be asked when hearing that fact is – what?!  Why?

If two people are arguing over which Transformers movie is better (they all suck, but just go with it), and one of them decides to kill the other, was it Michael Bay’s fault for making those crappy movies?  Is he responsible for the murder of one person by other person?  What if the killer brutally raped and them eviscerated the other person?  Would it be Michael Bay’s fault then?  Of course not.  The fault is with the person who killed the other person.  So how is this opinion that the filmmakers of this piece of garbage schlock are being held accountable.

To get to the heart of that, one has to look at a new trend in America.  You see, there are two types of liberal in this country.  The first type of liberal is the kind who believes in fairness, giving power back to the people, and weeding our corruption.  They typically do not side with the Democrats, because they see them for the corporate slaves that they are.  Then there is the other type.  The type who wants nothing more than the help the Democrat Party, believe that these people are someday going to help them, and to make sure that nobody ever has hurt feelings.  As you can imagine, I don’t get along with this group very well.

After the video came out, large chunks of the American population came out in defense of Islam, saying that the filmmakers were in the wrong, and this was all their fault, and that Islam is a great religion, and nobody should ever be allowed their Free Speech rights to have an opinion about it.  That is what actual politicians in this country have said.  Don’t believe that?  Here is a quote from Hillary Clinton on the subject –

To us, to me personally, this video is disgusting and reprehensible.  It appears to have a deeply cynical purpose: to denigrate a great religion and to provoke rage.

Yeah, she is basically blaming the creators of this video for why four people were brutally murdered.  And while many liberals won’t come out and say it, the backlash against the video by the liberal community is amusing.  They are so dedicated to making sure that nobody is mad and nobody is upset that they are ignoring the glaring reality in the room – that this is what free speech is all about.  You will risk offending people.  You will risk making people mad.  You will risk people not liking what you say.  But in the end, the right to free speech is paramount, because if you censor what people can and cannot say, you are opening the door to a dictator taking advantage of that.  They will blanket it with being “politically correct,” but it is dictatorship all the same.

And now, another neat little PC liberal controversy has brewed after Lady Gaga went to a fashion show dressed in a burka-like outfit.  The idea being that she was making a point about how Muslim women are treated.

This needs to be addressed.  In Middle Eastern primarly-Muslim nations, it cannot be argued that women are treated as second-class citizens.  Don’t believe that?  Take a look at this link.  The Human Rights Watch has very good documentation about how primarily Muslim nations treat women in the Middle East, and it is abhorrent.  Yet because the PC liberal community doesn’t want to make Islam mad, there are people who will defend the idea that Lady Gaga is wrong.

Are liberals in this country just too afraid to stand up for anything anymore?  They won’t call Obama out on his lies, his manipulation, his expansion of the Bush Doctrine.  They won’t hold the Democrats feet to the fire for…anything.  Now, they are defending a group of people who, while not all of them are bad, it cannot be argued that many of them are zealots and that primarily Muslim nations have a disgusting mistreatment of women.  Anyone who will defend a group of people who mistreat women are scum.  that is what the PC liberal community is becoming – scum.  Scum who defends zealotry and misogyny.

Congratulations, you are becoming your own own worst enemy.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I am trying to go and fight for things that actually matter.

A Woman Judge Blames a Woman for Being Sexually Assaulted?!

Reading this story was a lot like reading about Clarence Thomas, a Supreme Court Justice who grew up in the Jim Crow days and had to live with the racial segregation that that entailed, thinks that black people shouldn’t have rights.

Here’s the premise of what happened – a cop goes to a bar.  He is drunk.  He flashes his badge at the door so as not to pay the entrance fee.  Once inside, he goes up behind a woman.  He grabs a hold of her, puts his hand up her skirt, and starts rubbing his hands on her genitals.

As you can imagine, it was insane.  The cop, Robb Gary Evans, was immediately fired from the police force, and arrested.  At the trial, he was convicted of sexual assault, and sentenced to two years in prison, and to be put on the sex-offender registry, as is proper.

However, there was a twist.  The judge in this case, Jaqueline Hatch, said that sentencing this ex-cop to jail time was excessive, and instead sentenced him to probation, and 100 hours of community service.  Also, he is not going to be put on the sex offender registry list.  But it doesn’t end there.  Judge Hatch had some choice words for the victim of this crime –

If you wouldn’t have been there that night, none of this would have happened.

That offensive enough?  Well, she continues.

You learned a lesson about friendship and a lesson about vulnerability.

Or maybe this.

When you blame others, you give up your power to change.

Yeah, a woman judge is who is actually telling a victim of sexual assault that she is at fault here.  Yeah, by that logic, if a person chokes on food, it’s there fault for eating.  If a kid gets caught by a stray bullet at a drive-by, it was his fault for being there.  If your house gets destroyed by a hurricane, it’s your fault for living there.

This is offensive.  This is totally and completely offensive on so many levels.  This is a judge, an actual judge, who gives this sexual predator a slap on the wrist, at best, and then decides to make this about a woman being in the wrong place, and painting her as not the victim, but the reason for this to happen.

Where does this judge get off?!  Where does this come from to believe that she has the right to tell this woman that this is her fault?!  The absolute LAST thing that a woman who was in this position needs to hear, from a person in a position of authority, is that this was their fault.  The levels of cruelty in that statement are unforgivable.

But beyond that, it is worse because think about this – she is advocating that men who sexually assault women shouldn’t be accountable for their actions!  How sick is that?  This is one of the most disgusting pieces of inhumanity that has ever been uttered by a federal judge.

Where do people like this come from?  People like Todd Akin, who stupidly enough said that if a woman is “legitimately raped,” the body will just shut it down, and that it isn’t that bad.  Sure, he said that was a dumb thing to say, but here’s the punch line – he never said he was wrong!  And the reason he did that is because of the next voting cycle.  He knows that if he admits that that was a stupid thing to say, his opponent will come in and say that it’s true that a woman who is raped doesn’t need an abortion, because that is what the morally backwards base wants to hear.

Judge Hatch is a disgusting human being.  She is a foul, venereal disease on the zeitgeist of America.  But here is the truly horrifying thing – she is in a position of power.  Her, and people like Todd Akin are getting into positions of power in this country.  Why?  It’s not because of a lack of liberal voting, though that certainly is an issue.  No, it’s because, and we need to accept this, the Republican Party, which makes up half (give or take) of this country’s voting block, is perfectly fine with electing and having these monsters represent them.  That is the kind of people they are.

This country is filled with voters who want to see women suffer, to see women get assaulted and raped, and when they are put in a position to justify their point of view, they will say – it was the woman’s fault, because she was there.  That is what America has produced.

These are the kinds of people who have a voice in this country.  America, there are a lot of days when I find you to be a disgusting place.  Can you blame me?

America and Creationism

There was a video that is getting a LOT of attention right now floating around YouTube.  In it, famous science celebrity, Bill Nye, has his opinion about a trend in America.

Denial of evolution is unique to the United States.

He’s got a very good point.  6 in 10 American do not believe in the Theory of Evolution.  For those who will come at us saying that it is just a theory, you need to understand the definition of a theory.  A lot of people confuse this with a hypothesis.  A hypothesis is when you have an idea about why something is, but have no proof for it, and you mean to test it.  A theory, on the other hand, is something that has been tested and has proof.  So why not call it a law?  Well, while there can be laws of physics, there cannot be laws of science.  We know so little about how the universe truly works that there is no way that we could say that evolution is a law.  We have a mountain of scientific evidence for it, so it is true, yet we cannot say that it is a law because there is always a chance that it could be proven wrong.

But, even with the mountains of evidence that exist for the theory of evolution, 6 out of 10 people in this country believe that it is not true.  So, what do they believe?  Well, in America, the bulk of them believe that a celestial being, either called God, Jehovah, or Yahweh created all the things in the universe.  It took seven days, and it wasn’t millions or billions of years ago, it was thousands of years ago.

They call this “creationism.”  Now, many will deny that, saying that the theory of creationism (which is there word for it.  There is NO proof of this) is that a being, an unnamed being, created the universe.  Or rather, could have.  But which being?  The Christian God?  Well, if that is the case, then your position becomes much, MUCH, more complicated.

For one thing – there is absolutely NO scientific evidence that suggests that the universe is only 10 or however many thousand years old.  The Theory of Evolution has a mountain of evidence, yet 6 out of 10 people believe in a story about the universe coming into being that has no evidence at all.

Another thing – if the “theory” goes that the universe was created, and we are going to say that this theory has proof, then which being?  Was it the Christian God?  Was it the Jewish God?  Was it Allah?  Was it Vishnu?  Was it Ra?  If they are going to try and prove that this universe was created by a heavenly being that left no evidence for its existence, how can you prove that it wasn’t another heavenly being that did it?  Through the course of human history, there have been countless religions and countless stories about the creation of life on Earth.  How can you prove one without proving another?

Bill Nye went on to say that if people wanted to believe that this world came to be from a heavenly being, and not through a process that has a mountain of evidence, that’s fine.  But the problem comes when people are trying to get that taught in classrooms.

Let’s be plain, here – this is not science.  Creationism is a theory in the same way that a tomato is a vegetable.  It simply isn’t.  There is no evidence for it.  But a very solid amount of people in this country want this “theory” to be taught in classrooms.  Well, that is just plain nuts.  Something that has absolutely zero basis in science doesn’t deserve to be in a scientific classroom, and anybody who thinks that they can argue that it does have a place there should see the previous problems.

There is no evidence of a holy being of any kind existing.  All secular evidence that exists about the universe shows that this universe is billions of years old, not thousands.  All secular evidence holds that life on this Earth did not get created at the same time, with humans playing on a swing hanging from a Brontosaurus.  It gradually evolved and changed over time.

Bill Nye is absolutely right.  Creationism has no place in schools.  And if we are teaching our kids that it is okay to ignore science, ignore evidence, and ignore facts, then what kind of future could they possibly have?  America is getting left behind by the rest of the industrialized world.

It amazes me that we don’t get it.

The Republican Mask is Off?

You know, it is getting almost too amusing to watch the modern Republicans and conservatives who are running for office.  This is so ridiculous, yet at the same time, so horrible, that one must actually pause and legitimately think about what it all means for the future of this country, and that causes worry.

Take Frank Szabo, for instance.  He is a New Hampshire candidate running for sheriff.  When asked what his opinion was about abortion, he replied that he would go so far as to use deadly force to stop the abortion from happening.  Let me say that again, because it bears repeating – if he sees a doctor performing a procedure that is completely legal in this country, he would used deadly force against this person.  He would kill them.  A sheriff candidate of New Hampshire wants to murder doctors.  Straight-up, no BS, murder.  In other words, he wants to take what is legal, and make it illegal, at the threat of violence.  He is a protector of the law who wants to make the law.  Think about that for a few.

Next up, we’ve got Tennessee senator, Stacey Campfield.  This guy had some rather interesting thoughts on AIDS, and how it is spread –

Most people realize that AIDS came from the homosexual community. It was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men.  It was an airline pilot, if I recall.  My understanding is that it is virtually – not completely, but virtually – impossible to contract AIDS from heterosexual sex.

Yeah, that’s why there are massive amounts of cases of it in Africa, right?  Take another moment, and take this in.  This is a United States senator, saying something so stupid, and even admitting that they don’t know any better, and saying this on the record.  How stupid can you possibly get?

I mean, for one thing, it is incredibly unlikely that AIDS made the jump from chimps to humans.  That story has been debunked over and over again.  And the fact that this disease is a global pandemic, which has been helped along in Africa thanks to the zealotry of Catholics who refuse to supply condoms to villages where this disease is so bad that 1 in 4 people have it, obviously means nothing to you.

Next up, there is Rep. Steve King.  He has decided to add another point to the laundry-list of stupidity that has come from his mouth.  In a recent interview, he said that he hasn’t heard of a case where a girl got pregnant from statutory rape or incest.  This was in solidarity with the completely idiotic nonsense coming from Todd Akin, and his belief that if a woman gets raped, her body will be able to shut it down.  A statement that he has apologized for, yet hasn’t said is wrong.  Remember that.

This is the same guy who has said in the past that gays should just stay in the closet if they want their jobs, and not be open at all.  Basically saying that all the hate and bigotry of society shouldn’t be something that they get protection from.  They should just hide, and not be honest about who they are.

What interests me about all of these people is this – why are they being so openly evil?  I mean, we all knew that the Republicans were bought and paid for by the banks and Wall Street.  The Democrats are no better in that regard.  But the Democrats are still able to actually convince people that they are the good guys!  That they are on your side.  Heck, they have a huge cabal of liberals who are cheering for Health Care Reform, which, without a public option, is a huge birthday present to the private insurance companies.

I mean, look at Obama.  He has lied, time and time again, and he has massive support all over this country.  He has continued, and even grown the Bush doctrine, both foreign and domestic.  He promised that we wouldn’t be doing the same things with Wall Street and the financial institutions, yet he is taking his cues from the same people who destroyed our economy.  He said that he would go easy on people growing their own pot, yet he has expanded the drug war.  He promised tough reforms on Wall Street, yet he has given us beyond toothless garbage.  He said that he would push for tough health care reform, yet he dropped single-payer and the public option almost in the first day.  He has continued, and even grown ALL of the Bush Tax Cuts.  He swore that he wouldn’t give in to Republican demands on the debt ceiling, yet in the end, he gives them everything they want, and then some.

But all over this country, he has liberals coming out and chanting for him.  For some, it is the reasoning that Mitt Romney would be worse.  The evil they know over the evil they don’t.  For others, they actually seem to think that he is going to come back in the second term and really play hardball (cough*bullshit*cough).  And there are some who think that he has actually done some really good stuff, even though the evidence is massively stacked against him, and Mitt Romney, if he was actually a smart politician, could be beating the stuffing out of him right now with his own policies.  That is grade-A manipulation and lying.

Yet these Republicans are so evil, and wear it so much on their sleeves that I almost expect to see them do the pose that Dr. Evil did in Austin Powers.  I mean, they aren’t even hiding it!

So I guess the question is – how do we satire this?  For real, I am almost feeling bad for the people who write for The Onion.  Their job must be getting so difficult.  This nation and it’s electoral politics is becoming such an entertainment experience that part of me wonders if there are actual issues being talked about anymore.

So, is the Republican mask off?  Hey, when you’ve got Ann Coulter, a prostitute for the conservative line, saying that Todd Akin has crossed the line, part of me has to think that, yeah, they have.

Legitimate Rape? Oh damn…

You know, every time I see something floating around the internet, I think to myself – this has to be the stupidest thing ever.  It just doesn’t get any stupider.  But bless America’s beyond-stupid heart, because every time one thinks this, I am proven dead wrong.  There is a quote that is from an actual congressman serving in the House of Representatives.  This man has said something that, I have to believe, can’t be topped.  This is the stupidest thing said in the history of humanity.  If it gets any dumber than this, I give up.

Here is the quote –

From what I understand from doctors, pregnancy from rape is really rare.  If it’s a legitimate rape (pay attention to this), the female body has ways to try and shut that whole thing down.  -Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO)

Just take a moment.  Take a moment of the stupidity of that quote to sink in to your subconscious.  Take a moment to really try and understand how incredibly stupid this actually is.  And this came from a person who is a member of Congress.  Think about all the education opportunities that this person should have had.  Think about all the chances that this person had to be a little, ever so slightly, bit smarter, and then he says something this stupid.

Got all that?  Now, let’s look between the lines at what has actually been said here.  First, this person either has no understanding of female anatomy, crime, and what things are, or he is straight-up evil.  For one thing, there are countless number of rapes all over the world, not just in America, that end up in the woman getting pregnant.  The female reproductive system doesn’t discriminate based on how the sperm got in there.  It functions all the same.  Whoever these “doctors” are who told this man these facts, they obviously got their education from their parents who probably speak southern-English.

A part of me has to believe that this person is just stupid.  So stupid that they can’t possibly understand how dumb what they said actually is.  Otherwise, what is being said here is evil.  Think about it – is Akin arguing that if the body doesn’t destroy the fetus, it wasn’t legitimate rape?

Is the argument really that the thousands of women in this country who get raped every year and get pregnant from that rape not legitimately raped?  Wow, this person is one of the worst people on Earth!  For real, that’s like saying that when a kid’s puppy died, it’s the kid’s fault because he didn’t love the puppy enough.  That’s how evil this is.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the Republican Party stands for nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  I mean, you have politicians who are making arguments like this, obviously trying to make this an argument for getting rid of abortion in the case of rape.  This person actually arguing that a woman who gets pregnant wasn’t “legitimately” raped.  In theory.  The other option is that this person is too stupid for words.

Yet there is a massive, massive part of this country who follows these morons.  They actually think that what these idiots have to say is worth their time.  They actually think that these people are the kind of people we need in public office.

If anyone asks why I am ashamed, humiliated, and disgusted with my own country, I show them stuff like this.  Seriously, The Onion made a story in response to this, and it was that a woman who was so relieved that her rape wasn’t legitimate.  That’s what it has come to in America.

But you wanna know the truly scary part?  Todd Akin has said that his opinion is wrong, but hasn’t backed down from it.  He has been refuted, time and time again, yet he doesn’t say that he’s wrong.  And half of this country wants that.  Half of this country (or not, depending on who you talk to), wants to hear that this is true.

And if we allow that.  If we let people like this have that opinion, then here is the worst price of all – that the truth is whatever this country wants it to be.  And that should terrify you, America.

It does me.

Paul Ryan: What Needs to be Said?

Well, Mitt Romney has come out with his pick for Vice President.  This pick has turned more than a couple of heads.  Many are confused, some are amused, others actually wonder what this will mean for Mitt Romney.  I am one of the second and third category.  Actually, wait, just second.  I already know what it will do for Mitt Romney’s campaign.

For those who don’t know, Paul Ryan is a Representative with a lot of REALLY stupid ideas.  The first is that the poor need to pay more taxes than the rich.  For real, he has tried to argue that position to his own constituents.  Of course, since people in this country are that stupid, they booed him off like the idiot that he is.

He also believes that Medicare should be completely sacked, replaced instead with a vouchers system.  Man, what kind of idiot is Mitt Romney?  The only, and I do mean only strategy that he can have for this election is to play to the elderly vote.  You think the elderly are going to want to get rid of Medicare?

He also says that Social Security is a ponzi scheme, and he wants to get rid of it.  Again, what was Romney thinking?  The elderly people of this country, who benefit more than any other group from social security, you think that they are just going to jump on board and totally be behind getting rid of something that they benefit from and paid into?  Oh, and he says this while defending Wall Street and the TBTF banks who orchestrated actual ponzi schemes.  Gotta love the consistency there.

He also has called out the military.  When Obama proposed cutting defense spending, and several military generals came out and said that it wouldn’t harm our nation’s military at all, and we could still have a very successful military force.  Ryan said that they are liars.  In doing so, he also hinted that they are cowards.  Simply towing the White House line.  Wow, he is calling our nation’s military leaders cowards.  What conservative will get on board with that?  Well, since facts don’t seem to matter much to them, who knows.

Ryan has also voted against LGBT couples being able to adopt children in D.C.  He has basically said that it is better for a child to be a ward of the state and live in the hell that is our foster system, than it is for a child to have a loving home with loving parents.  That is evil.  That’s like strangling a puppy after killing a kitten evil.

This is the person that Mitt Romney has picked to run with him.  This socially backwards, morally bankrupt, intellectual broke character who cares only about getting his agenda for Wall Street done.  Granted, Obama isn’t much better in being a slave for Wall Street, but still, he isn’t this bad.

So, what effect will this have on Romney’s presidential bid?  Well, it is going to sink it.  More and more, it looks like Romney is deliberately trying to lose.  It’s like he knows that he has no chance, so he just wants to see how much damage he can do to the Republican image before he does.  This is just another nail in the coffin.

For real, liberals across America are going to run as fast as they can to the polls, because these two are so bat-shit crazy that the idea of having them in office is going to scare the crap out of them.  As it should.  These two are horrible people, in every sense of the word.

So, what needs to be said about Paul Ryan?  Well, he’s the gaping hole that is going to sink Mitt Romney’s campaign.

Can we Stop the Corporations Needing to Have Opinions?

It all started when Oreo came out with that ad where they had a cookie with all sorts of rainbow layers.  And I’m against that ad, though not because of the pro-gay message.  I love that.  I am against that ad because I want the cookie, and they aren’t going to let me have it.  That’s not cool.

Then, after Oreo came out with that, Chick-fil-A made headlines because they came out against gay marriage.  And of course, there was a category-5 PR meltdown.  Jim Henson’s company took their toys away, because they are pro-gay.  The public went nuts and started boycotting, not realizing that their boycott is totally useless, because for every customer they lost to their bigotry, they gain a bigot customer.  The most it will hurt their wallets is incidental.  For real, this will be just a bad run.  And since the cycle of how people remember things in the online world is even shorter than in the regular media world, people will forget about the boycott after a while, and business will resume.

An outright lie

Now, Papa John’s, the pizza company, has come out against Health Care Reform, or as the conservatives call it, Obamacare.  Never mind that Obamacare is a dumbed-down version of Romneycare.  The truth is inconsequential to conservatives.  But, after coming out against this, there are liberals across America who are saying that we have to boycott them.  Another useless and completely symbolic act, because it won’t go anywhere past symbolism.  Conservatives will come and eat there, just to give the figurative finger to the liberals.  It isn’t going to hurt Papa John’s bottom line in any significant way.

Man, what is with this?  Why are the corporations choosing to get involved in this now?  What’s next?  Is Target going to come out and say that they are against pre-marital sex?  Is Coke going to say that they are against the use of dildos?

This should really get people’s attention, because here’s a neat reality – the corporations aren’t stupid.  They see the writing on the wall as well as everyone else.  The writing here is that when a corporation comes out and takes a position against or for something, they get business.  When Oreo did it, people who are pro-gay bought Oreos.  When Chick-fil-A did it, they got an entire day to celebrate their bigotry and get the bigots of America to stuff their faces with as much of their food as they could take.  It was documented to be their best day of sales ever.  Now, Papa John’s is going to get a huge influx of business from people who solely went to give their opinion about Health Care Reform as well.

There is a belief that conservative America has.  It is the belief that corporations are people.  And you know what, more and more, they are able to conduct themselves like people.  Corporations are voicing opinions, and they have a pedestal to talk from.  The corporate media is happy to feed this, because it helps their bottom line.  The corporations get brand recognition because of it, which if you think about it, that’s the really nefarious part of this.  People are going to be for these corporations.  They are going to stand with them, and after a while, they aren’t even going to remember why.  They just will, because it is what they remember that they were for.  They will support people who are bigots, and they won’t even know why.

The other worst part about this is that this is, once again, our fault.  Americans, we did this.  We lost our minds over this, and they got brand recognition.  They got loyalty.  They got followers.  They got everything that they wanted.  They are getting huge sales, and all because we had to make this a big issue.  We tried to lash out against them.  Appeal to decency and empathy.  But once-again, that didn’t work.

Just as appealing to decency and compassion hasn’t work with Wall Street, as the Occupy movement has found out.  Just as appealing to decency has done nothing to change the conservative tune in this country.  Something the liberals need to figure out is that there are a LOT of scummy people out there.  And these people don’t get dissuaded by information, by facts, by goodness and by kindness.  They are tied to their bigotry, and that doesn’t change.  Liberals, and socialists like me care about kindness, and doing the best thing for everybody.  These people, on the other hand, only care about themselves, only care about their own opinions, and getting more for themselves.  They don’t want to have to sacrifice.  They don’t want to have to be without, or to include the unfavorable.  That is against their views.  It is all about greed.  That’s the name of the game.

Corporations have gotten a new status as people – opinions.  They have now realized that opinion gives them power over the consumer, and they are going to use that power.  That power will come from everybody.  Especially here in America, where being an evil person gets you far.  Chick-fil-A comes out against gay marriage, they get their best sales EVER.  What does that say?  What does that say about America?  Nothing good.

Now look, my last post railed about this, and a reaction I got was that I didn’t care.  I do care.  It quite frankly pisses me off that an entire corporation can represent the worst of what this country has to offer.  It is the worst thing that these companies have realized what is a fantastic marketing strategy is to play to our bigotry.  But here’s the thing – what people need to keep in mind most is that this is all a trick.  Just like in the 2004 Presidential Election.  A big reason John Kerry lost in that election was that Karl Rove brought gay marriage to the front in states that it was never going to pass, just to get conservatives to the polls.  Just like the constant battle against women’s reproductive rights in this country.  These rights aren’t going anywhere.  The Tea Party was created to do this.  It’s a smokescreen for what they are actually trying to accomplish.

The worst part is that it works.  The conservatives in this country have realized that the liberals will fight tooth and claw against something totally pointless, and will not even notice another rug being torn out from under them.  This has got to change!  And fast, too, because the most stuff like this works, the more that corporate America will truly have control over us.

And that is the worst thing of all.

America and Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day

Three days ago, there was an interesting event that took place in this country.  All over this country, people gathered in lines that sometimes went around a block, in order to celebrate a fast food restaurant.  That alone is stupid enough, but when you hear the reason, it is beyond laughable.

It was called “Chick-fil-A Appreciate Day.”  Like fast food America needs a day to appreciate it.  The ever-growing levels of obesity in this country are a testament enough to how much we love their food (I’m not saying that all people who eat fast food are fat, but come on, that food is about as healthy as sucking down corn syrup).  But you know what is the most interesting and laughably stupid part of this – what it signifies.

The sentiments of the people who partook in this day can be boiled down to this –

I ate some fried chicken because I hate gays.

That’s it.  It really is that simple.  You know it’s America when there is a nation holiday celebrating something this stupid.  This is beyond just pathetic.  This is so dumb that it’s laughable.  This is the stupidest national event that this country has ever made.  We literally are not only celebrating our bigotry, which is pathetic enough, but we are going out and buying fried chicken to celebrate our bigotry.  How do you not see the irony?

Only in America is the celebration of bigotry a national event.  Only in this country are people able to come together and hate and have it be like a big party.  If there are any liberals out there who don’t get why the rest of the industrialized world laughs at us, this should it into perspective.

If that doesn’t do it for you, perhaps this will help –

See that?  That’s the political butt of a joke and the quitter governor of my home state, Sarah Palin.  She refuses to let herself go into the night, so what does she do?  She decides that she is going to whore herself and her image out to Chick-fil-A, just so that she can believe that she is somehow culturally relevant, even though her most recent book has gotten to languish in the limelight of a bargain bin.  Poetic justice to whoever had to ghost-write her book for her.

But this is why the rest of the world is laughing, and you know what, we should be laughing too.

When President Obama came out, several months after being put in office, when the Stock Market had leveled out and we weren’t free-falling into disaster, and said that “America is back,” nobody bought it.  And they were right.  We weren’t back.  We were stalled.  Stalled out and going nowhere.  Now, four years later, we’re still stalled and going nowhere.

For those of you who are too young and too culturally ignorant to know, there was a great boxer.  He went by the name Muhammad Ali.  He was a king when he was in his prime.  He would best any opponent and make it look like art.  But that was in his prime.  As he aged, his skills got lesser.  He was still a fantastic boxer, for a long time.  But towards the end, he wasn’t much.  His last fight, against Trevor Berbick.  He was beaten so badly, but even up until the end, he thought that he was “Ali.”  But the problem was, he wasn’t.

The comparison between Muhammad Ali and America is very fitting.  America and the people in it still seem to think that we are a great fighter, that we are the best.  Only problem is, we aren’t.  The American Society of Civil Engineers gives this country D’s and F’s across the board, looking at our infrastructure.  Our health care is a joke in comparison to all of the other industrialized countries.  Our education is among the worst of the industrialized world.  The only things that we are at the top in, aside from our military strength, is things that we shouldn’t be bragging about, such as our prison populations, the amount of crime that we have, the amount of guns in the general population, and the worst part – we have the most amount of debt than any other country in the entire world.

But America still thinks that we are, metaphorically, Ali.  We still think that we are at the top of our game.  That we are #1.  Only problem is, we aren’t.  We still stand tall, but we are standing on a pile of sinking sand.  We have no reason to brag, at this point.  But the people don’t seem to get there.

Here’s the real truth – this whole pathetic affair with Chick-fil-A should have just been chalked up to a stupid decision that a stupid company stupidly made.  They should never have gotten involved in this whole issue with gay marriage, but apparently, they didn’t get the memo.  Instead, we have decided to make this a giant mountain, with conflicting sides, and the bigots come out in droves to get their food, and show their support.

If you want to know what is wrong with America, and you have had a very outspoken opinion about all of this, here’s a thought – look in the mirror.

You might just learn something.