A few months ago I had to go to Emergency because of a case of scleritis, swelling in the sclera of the eye, several eye drops later I am fine, I think the Mid-Term elections were about to give me an aneurism. Anyway, I had to wait for a few hours and met a lady who had possibly broken her ankle and would not stop talking to me probably to keep her mind off the pain. She told me her teenage kids were showing her a Utube video about how ringing cell phones arranged in a circle around a pile of pop corn kernels would pop them into pop corn. My skeptical mind is too, well... skeptical, to believe such claims, I told her it's probably a hoax, it seems too far fetched to believe, it's probably a trick, but she saw it on the internet so it's true, right?
I finally got around to looking up the cell phone pop corn videos recently and lo and behold many more videos about how you too can create this trick at home, just as I thought, this lady was one walking gullible ankle injury victim, a victim of gravity and victim of Utube at the same time. The trick works by taking the magnetron out of a microwave oven, rigging it under a table, and placing kernels and cell phones accordingly I did a lot of reading about microwave ovens, turns out one should never take the magnetron out of a microwave, that's the bit that creates the microwaves, they contain beryllium oxide a known carcinogen in humans if crushed and inhaled and really should not be handled with bare hands at all, do not try this at home kids! Although you can get detailed instructions about how to do it online, despite electrocution, berylliosis from the beryllium, and the possibility of microwaving parts of your body by accident, do not do this, even if it's fun to trick the gullible.
I was going to write a piece about the dumb things people believe based on something they heard or saw somewhere, like microwave ovens are radioactive, they aren't, microwaves are used in many ways including WiFi but do not cause ion reversal in living cells like radiation, or, cell phone towers have mysterious waves coming out of them that will cause cancer and make your children stupid. Turns out the science is not in on this, maybe yes, maybe no, probably not, there are other proven reasons for cancer and your stupid children. Whenever I hear something outrageous like the Koran verse 9:11 says something about the World Trade Centers, I often check out the website Snopes that debunks most crazy claims one gets as chain email, or just go to the source myself, you can look up the Koran if you want and it surprisingly does not contain what the email said it did! I love and use the internet as a sort of virtual Encyclopedia, it's maybe the best thing about our times. One must be careful though, don't just believe anything, maybe check multiple sources, one can probably trust an article on the chemical chain of Vitamin D but probably not one about gun control or abortion, you might get a lot of differing facts. Consider the source darlings!
Did you hear about a potential bomb plot last Martin Luther King Day in Spokane Washington? Probably not, but I bet you know who William and Kate's Wedding planner is by now! Turns out someone left a very sophisticated cell phone triggered bomb with shrapnel and rat poison on a park bench along the parade route that the FBI are calling "the most sophisticated and potentially dangerous bomb in US history", it was noticed by someone and thankfully didn't go off, the FBI is still looking for suspects. This brings me to thinking about all the very destructive things intent angry or possibly insane people can find on the internet like how to make a shrapnel filled bomb. People seem to get very upset about sex on the internet and there are ways to block these sites, I have heard, I don't have kids so I don't worry about it, but people don't seem to get upset about all the other dangerous things online. When I looked up Jared Laughners videos on Utube I saw many links to Neo Nazi and White Supremacist videos, his weird video with the American Flag and Guns seemed to put him in a "if you like this video you may also enjoy these..." category. As a Canadian, the content of Neo Nazi videos violates your Charter Rights and is supposed to be banned in our country. There are many vile things on the internet that should probably be banned from your children seeing, as well as the criminally intent, yet there is no body to monitor this. I don't agree with rating movies or censorship in many cases but I do agree that hate speech and how to make a bomb should not be viewed by anyone. We seem to have accepted the internet as a Wild West of images and ideas yet do not accept the same notion for television and radio, remember all the furor over a little nipple slip at the Super Bowl concert? The Americans may take a different view of freedom of expression but I thought we agreed in Canada to not give a public platform to Nazis and radical groups like the Westboro Baptist Church? I guess all our middle aged politicians are too busy serenading us with Classic Rock songs to even know what the internet is used for these days?
Besides harmful content what else is the age of internet giving us and/or doing to our children? I think it's decreasing the level of patience, when entertainment is reduced to a minute or two Utube clip, can you sit thru an hours long movie? Like one that isn't all explosions and Angelina Jolie? Can anyone under 30 spell anything? I cannot tell you how many times I have seen the incorrect usage of then and than, apparently the word "than" does not exist anymore, nor do the forms of to and too, I'm sure kids don't even know one can spell two, it's already a number on my keypad! So, yay, we are raising a generation of illiterates who have no patience, this will help us in the future? How about all the texting these days? I cannot go anywhere without seeing the youth click-clicking away meaningless messages to their friends because being in the world, walking, eating, shopping, waiting for something is sooo boring :( Uh, kids, I was your age once and I know the dumb shit you are talking about, in my day we passed notes in math class, OMG Tammy is such a bitch! Look what she's wearing! One day you'll know this a total waste of time and phone companies are making a fortune! I hope that our society can place temporary fountains everywhere, for the walking and texting to fall into, can something be so important that you lose awareness of your surroundings, it's maybe not so funny, in my city people have walked into trains wearing Ipods.
Even though Betty White is close to 50 years older than me I very much agree with her joke "I have to admit I didn't know what Facebook was, and now that I know, I think it's a huge waste of time."
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
State of the Canada Address
I rarely talk about Canadian politics here, it's just not as fun as American, more complicated, in two languages and our pundits suck! Tomorrow's State of the Union Address is a big event in my house, there will be cocktails and pizza, I've watched most of them since the Reagan years, I wish our Prime Ministers (PM's) had to do them. Apparently we have suffered 5 long years under the Stephen Harper regime, if this were America we would be watching clips galore and the talkosphere would be non stop, are you any better off? If I were to write an actual serious article about Harper I would have needed at least a week of reading to prepare. Where I live, in a colder version of Texas, criticizing Harper is tantamount to treason, the right-wing here just can't get enough of the secretive, yet sinister, overweight gopher-like PM we call Right Honourable. For my American friends "Right Honourable" is a British term that predates right-left ideology, from a time when Parliamentarians were considered to have more rights than anyone and honourable because they were related to the Royal Family which also had the same rights as God. We Canadians come from a proud and polite tradition, raise my taxes? Thank you! Would you like that in 50's or 100's?
There were little pieces on our News about Harper, mostly showing how he can play piano and mangle Classic Rock songs, he is the kind of asshole who knowingly cannot sing yet just like Vladimir Putin destroying Blueberry Hill recently, this ain't gonna stop him. While shoring up the Classic Rock vote this also apparently makes Canadians forget just what a truly mean spirited anti-Canadian he really is. I went thru some quotes of Harper's today, I remember when they were in the news that day but I think many of my countrymen forget all about them. My favourite is when he said "...West of Winnipeg the ridings the Liberals hold are dominated by people who are either recent Asian immigrants or recent migrants from Eastern Canada: people who live in ghettos and are not integrated into Western Canadian Society." -The Report, January 2001. Wow, and you thought Obama's clinging to "religion and guns" thing was bad? So, in one sentence Harper insulted the West, Asians, Liberals, Eastern Canadians, and ghettos. Actually we don't really have ghettos in the West, not by US standards anyway, we have areas that that fat white guys might stand out like a sore thumb but they are by no means ghettos. Downtown Vancouver is a ghetto?, a gay ghetto maybe. I didn't see him complaining about Vancouver ghettos during all the patriotism displayed by him during the Winter Olympics. There are many quotes available online if you'd like to take a walk a down memory lane, too many to list here but I think he's insulted pretty much everyone except straight white men yet still gets elected, he even said bilingualism was a failure and the Quebecois did not declare war?
Harper says a lot of things he doesn't mean though, remember when he said he wouldn't tax Income Trust funds? and then he did! A 34% tax on (mostly) seniors savings, I remember when one of my more wealthy friends who voted Conservative for years wrote his MP an angry letter and probably still casts a vote for the Green Party in protest. Then there was the get rid of the Senate talk, it was once the most destructive and money wasting ventures in Canadian History according to Harper, until he started filling vacancies with every friend and agreeable personality from CTV News, like Mike Duffy could afford to gain more weight! I guess a new Senate seat will be coming up soon? Maybe he can peruse his Rolodex for Corporate Heads or Religious leaders? Those are two of my favourites, one could fill a book with this stuff, send me yours!
Flip-flopping politics aside, the most telling and chilling aspect of the PM is his relationship to Darell Reid, Deputy Chief of Staff and longtime associate of The Reform Party. This Darell Reid, who is never talked about in our media, has very close associations to American radical-religious leader James Dobson and was former President of Focus On The Family Canada. Please look them up. In a nutshell this group is dead set against Abortion in any form, Gay Rights, and Activist Judges, they believe it is up to every Christian to change laws to reflect the views of the Bible, yet we are at war against the Taliban because their view of religion is "too dark" for us? I think this explains pretty much everything Harper is really trying to accomplish, don't let the tone deaf rendition of Lennon's Imagine lead you astray. This explains the defunding of family planning programs for the Third World recently, the KAIROS program, the defunding of the Court Challenges program, the failed vote on rescinding Gay Marriage, the defunding of Toronto's Gay Pride Parade, the largest in the World and huge cash generator for Toronto, I'm going to add trying to roll back gun control in here too; I know from the religious right in the states that we can't have God without Guns for some reason that I cannot find in my Bible. Let's also add the funding of several Christian groups and Christian Youth Centres while ignoring the need for Native Youth Centres, or anyone else for that matter. I'm sorry, I thought Churches already had tax exempt status? Why am I funding such "Special Interests" with my tax dollars? Yes, darlings, it goes both ways, especially in the secular world I thought we lived in!?!? All this after Harper said to the National Post in 2004 "I don't believe in imposing values in people." Oh OK! I think we have many words and expressions for what that is!
Don't even get me started on the 5.96 Billion $ debt, after the budget was balanced in 1997, hmmm, there was a lot of that going on in the 90's! The Helena Guergis prostitute cocaine fueled lobbyist influencing scandal. The Billion dollar G20 BS, where Conservative ridings got fancy new toilets in Public Parks, yet they say they hate gay cruising (I'm looking at you Tony Clement). Or the largest mass arrest of Canadian citizens in our history when thousands were rounded up because they might be protesting while carrying Macy's bags. There are just so many examples of right-wing ideology creeping into our once nice little country that even the UN didn't vote for Canada having a Security Council seat for the first time in it's history. It's got to be pretty bad if the world community thinks Portugal deserves a seat over Canada!
By the by Mr. Harper, since you've made such a show of worshiping our Canadian Forces fighting for freedom in Afghanistan, it's only one more year until you can send your son.
There were little pieces on our News about Harper, mostly showing how he can play piano and mangle Classic Rock songs, he is the kind of asshole who knowingly cannot sing yet just like Vladimir Putin destroying Blueberry Hill recently, this ain't gonna stop him. While shoring up the Classic Rock vote this also apparently makes Canadians forget just what a truly mean spirited anti-Canadian he really is. I went thru some quotes of Harper's today, I remember when they were in the news that day but I think many of my countrymen forget all about them. My favourite is when he said "...West of Winnipeg the ridings the Liberals hold are dominated by people who are either recent Asian immigrants or recent migrants from Eastern Canada: people who live in ghettos and are not integrated into Western Canadian Society." -The Report, January 2001. Wow, and you thought Obama's clinging to "religion and guns" thing was bad? So, in one sentence Harper insulted the West, Asians, Liberals, Eastern Canadians, and ghettos. Actually we don't really have ghettos in the West, not by US standards anyway, we have areas that that fat white guys might stand out like a sore thumb but they are by no means ghettos. Downtown Vancouver is a ghetto?, a gay ghetto maybe. I didn't see him complaining about Vancouver ghettos during all the patriotism displayed by him during the Winter Olympics. There are many quotes available online if you'd like to take a walk a down memory lane, too many to list here but I think he's insulted pretty much everyone except straight white men yet still gets elected, he even said bilingualism was a failure and the Quebecois did not declare war?
Harper says a lot of things he doesn't mean though, remember when he said he wouldn't tax Income Trust funds? and then he did! A 34% tax on (mostly) seniors savings, I remember when one of my more wealthy friends who voted Conservative for years wrote his MP an angry letter and probably still casts a vote for the Green Party in protest. Then there was the get rid of the Senate talk, it was once the most destructive and money wasting ventures in Canadian History according to Harper, until he started filling vacancies with every friend and agreeable personality from CTV News, like Mike Duffy could afford to gain more weight! I guess a new Senate seat will be coming up soon? Maybe he can peruse his Rolodex for Corporate Heads or Religious leaders? Those are two of my favourites, one could fill a book with this stuff, send me yours!
Flip-flopping politics aside, the most telling and chilling aspect of the PM is his relationship to Darell Reid, Deputy Chief of Staff and longtime associate of The Reform Party. This Darell Reid, who is never talked about in our media, has very close associations to American radical-religious leader James Dobson and was former President of Focus On The Family Canada. Please look them up. In a nutshell this group is dead set against Abortion in any form, Gay Rights, and Activist Judges, they believe it is up to every Christian to change laws to reflect the views of the Bible, yet we are at war against the Taliban because their view of religion is "too dark" for us? I think this explains pretty much everything Harper is really trying to accomplish, don't let the tone deaf rendition of Lennon's Imagine lead you astray. This explains the defunding of family planning programs for the Third World recently, the KAIROS program, the defunding of the Court Challenges program, the failed vote on rescinding Gay Marriage, the defunding of Toronto's Gay Pride Parade, the largest in the World and huge cash generator for Toronto, I'm going to add trying to roll back gun control in here too; I know from the religious right in the states that we can't have God without Guns for some reason that I cannot find in my Bible. Let's also add the funding of several Christian groups and Christian Youth Centres while ignoring the need for Native Youth Centres, or anyone else for that matter. I'm sorry, I thought Churches already had tax exempt status? Why am I funding such "Special Interests" with my tax dollars? Yes, darlings, it goes both ways, especially in the secular world I thought we lived in!?!? All this after Harper said to the National Post in 2004 "I don't believe in imposing values in people." Oh OK! I think we have many words and expressions for what that is!
Don't even get me started on the 5.96 Billion $ debt, after the budget was balanced in 1997, hmmm, there was a lot of that going on in the 90's! The Helena Guergis prostitute cocaine fueled lobbyist influencing scandal. The Billion dollar G20 BS, where Conservative ridings got fancy new toilets in Public Parks, yet they say they hate gay cruising (I'm looking at you Tony Clement). Or the largest mass arrest of Canadian citizens in our history when thousands were rounded up because they might be protesting while carrying Macy's bags. There are just so many examples of right-wing ideology creeping into our once nice little country that even the UN didn't vote for Canada having a Security Council seat for the first time in it's history. It's got to be pretty bad if the world community thinks Portugal deserves a seat over Canada!
By the by Mr. Harper, since you've made such a show of worshiping our Canadian Forces fighting for freedom in Afghanistan, it's only one more year until you can send your son.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Anne Frank's Alaska
I listened to Sarah Palin's "State of My Livingroom Address" (thank you Colbert for that!) last week, about the Tucson shootings and yeah we're all against violence, we hate mass shootings, all of us bears can agree with that. However, her high-pitched mom-style let's talk basic sense telepromted address went way off the rails with the "Blood Libel" talk. Excuse me but WTF!?!? I read about Blood Libel in a Sam Harris book several years ago, it was partly about how religion can push humanity into dark places, of which the Catholic Church has many examples, blaming the Jewish for the murder of Christ and starting vicious rumours about them all over the Middle Ages and one could argue into the Nazi Era too. It is a term the Jewish get to claim alongside Holocaust and probably not to be used lightly and not to be used by those who haven't read anything other than their ratings for their own Reality show!
Many pundits, not "pundiNts" as Palin pronounced it in her address, have been wondering where and how did the term Blood Libel get into that speech? Chris Matthews pondered that someone obviously wrote it and Palin was too ignorant to know what it meant, as anyone in their right mind would have left it out. Yesterday Matthews pointed out that the term was used in a recent right-wing newspaper article, ahh that explains it all. It's just not a term that is on anyone's mind, until now, even I had to search hard in my collection of neurons to remember exactly what it was. It ties into a broader narrative the right uses and has used for a long time, namely, the idea that white Christian folk are being persecuted by so called special interest groups and the non white Christians that are taking over America and stealing our jobs! In Palin's recent fireside chat she claimed a blood libel was placed on herself and all her friends in the radical right-wing talkosphere, like radio hosts and FOX News hosts. I'm sorry but I do not have enough space or time on this blog to go thru the insane rants of people like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck who encourage violent rhetoric against Obama daily, but I can tell you that these guys are constantly bringing up the words Nazi, Socialist, Fascist and Communist when talking about the President. All of these radical right talking heads claim victim everyday. Most of the time I can't believe what comes out of Palin's mouth but claiming that she is the victim in the Tucson shootings is beyond the pale, to put it politely. If you have put crosshairs on the district of an actual shooting victim there is going to be some fallout, people are going to notice. Yesterday's interview with FOX's Sean Hannity, Palin said she took the crosshair image off her site for reasons unrelated to the shooting and she hasn't even looked at her website in a few days. Come on, take some responsibility, a child could spot that lie a mile away! Just say, maybe this was in poor taste and we took it down and we're sorry. Man up Sarah!
Anyway, I was talking about how the right always claims victim hood. Take any gay rights issue for example, the argument is always, why should the gays get special treatment? Why should they have parades? We don't have straight parades. (except we have Mother's Day and Fathers Day, and Family Day in Canada) Or the constant BS every December about "the War on Christmas" as if not assuming everyone was a Christian by saying, holiday, is a full assault on Christians. No, we just live in a increasingly pluralistic society, I think it's pretty hard for non-Christians to escape the all enveloping mass marketing of Christmas, I get pretty sick of it by December 15 myself! More recently we have people like Glenn Beck constantly saying the word Nazi or comparing Democrats or the President to Nazi's, I think they are trying to compare themselves to the struggles of the Jewish people. I find it completely disgusting, call me crazy. Having a warped political viewpoint does not make you a victim here, being born a race or sexuality that is not popular, can make you a victim, but really, unless you were in a concentration camp please do not go around comparing yourself to that! Being a Tea Partier does not put you on the level of Anne Frank or Jesus Christ so please stop the Nazi and Blood Libel talk, it's as ridiculous as it is patronizing. Do you know who uses self-victimization? People seeking attention, people with personality disorders, alcoholics and drug addicts, those with Munchausen Syndrome and those who are unfit to become President of the United States.
Many pundits, not "pundiNts" as Palin pronounced it in her address, have been wondering where and how did the term Blood Libel get into that speech? Chris Matthews pondered that someone obviously wrote it and Palin was too ignorant to know what it meant, as anyone in their right mind would have left it out. Yesterday Matthews pointed out that the term was used in a recent right-wing newspaper article, ahh that explains it all. It's just not a term that is on anyone's mind, until now, even I had to search hard in my collection of neurons to remember exactly what it was. It ties into a broader narrative the right uses and has used for a long time, namely, the idea that white Christian folk are being persecuted by so called special interest groups and the non white Christians that are taking over America and stealing our jobs! In Palin's recent fireside chat she claimed a blood libel was placed on herself and all her friends in the radical right-wing talkosphere, like radio hosts and FOX News hosts. I'm sorry but I do not have enough space or time on this blog to go thru the insane rants of people like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck who encourage violent rhetoric against Obama daily, but I can tell you that these guys are constantly bringing up the words Nazi, Socialist, Fascist and Communist when talking about the President. All of these radical right talking heads claim victim everyday. Most of the time I can't believe what comes out of Palin's mouth but claiming that she is the victim in the Tucson shootings is beyond the pale, to put it politely. If you have put crosshairs on the district of an actual shooting victim there is going to be some fallout, people are going to notice. Yesterday's interview with FOX's Sean Hannity, Palin said she took the crosshair image off her site for reasons unrelated to the shooting and she hasn't even looked at her website in a few days. Come on, take some responsibility, a child could spot that lie a mile away! Just say, maybe this was in poor taste and we took it down and we're sorry. Man up Sarah!
Anyway, I was talking about how the right always claims victim hood. Take any gay rights issue for example, the argument is always, why should the gays get special treatment? Why should they have parades? We don't have straight parades. (except we have Mother's Day and Fathers Day, and Family Day in Canada) Or the constant BS every December about "the War on Christmas" as if not assuming everyone was a Christian by saying, holiday, is a full assault on Christians. No, we just live in a increasingly pluralistic society, I think it's pretty hard for non-Christians to escape the all enveloping mass marketing of Christmas, I get pretty sick of it by December 15 myself! More recently we have people like Glenn Beck constantly saying the word Nazi or comparing Democrats or the President to Nazi's, I think they are trying to compare themselves to the struggles of the Jewish people. I find it completely disgusting, call me crazy. Having a warped political viewpoint does not make you a victim here, being born a race or sexuality that is not popular, can make you a victim, but really, unless you were in a concentration camp please do not go around comparing yourself to that! Being a Tea Partier does not put you on the level of Anne Frank or Jesus Christ so please stop the Nazi and Blood Libel talk, it's as ridiculous as it is patronizing. Do you know who uses self-victimization? People seeking attention, people with personality disorders, alcoholics and drug addicts, those with Munchausen Syndrome and those who are unfit to become President of the United States.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammo
I haven't been to Arizona since I was a boy several decades ago, and certainly don't remember the political climate at that time. I have been following a little about Jan Brewer, Governor of Arizona, recently, her lucrative connection to State run prisons, her false charge that Mexican drug lords were responsible for "hundreds of headless bodies" in the Arizona desert and her more recent refusal to fund transplant surgeries causing the death of two people in the last few weeks. Please remind me who was accused of having "Death Panels" now? Perhaps Jan could pull the measly few million dollars it would take to save the lives of those waiting for a kidney or heart transplant from the State prison system? It was even more gob smacking to learn on the Saturday of the shooting in Tucson that the upcoming Arizona Legislature's first order of business is to pass a law allowing guns in schools and Colleges, after Columbine and Virginia Tech? Really? What planet are these people coming from?
When I turned on the TV Saturday morning and heard about a shooting I actually thought someone had shot Jan Brewer, maybe over the death of transplant patients or perhaps over Immigration policies, oh yeah, almost forgot about that one, the "show me your papers" law that smacked of racism and internment camps, the Federal government didn't let them pass it but it shows the kind of mentality we are dealing with here.
I am still a recovering Breaking News Addict so I accidentally watched the News all Saturday. Since a political figure was shot I just automatically assumed the whole thing was politically motivated. I looked at the shooters UTube postings that day and really could not make head nor tail of his bizarre postings. There was mention of government mind control and currency systems being backed by gold, that's weird because I just saw uber right-wing Rand Paul supporting gold based currency on The Colbert Report a week earlier! There were postings of his favourite literature, among them The Communist Manifesto, Mein Kampf and Ayn Rand, but it seemed to me he was so caught up in semantics and this A=B so B=C logic that this guy is clearly verging on schizophrenia. So it probably doesn't matter what books he read because he's going to come up with an insane conclusion. I don't watch or subscribe to FOX News so I don't know how long it took them to come up their twisted view of the whole thing and lay blame, apparently their new narrative is the gunman was a left-wing lunatic who read The Communist Manifesto, see it proves it, that's all you need to know, Fair and Balanced if you only have a smidgen of the facts. We will probably never know or understand a motive, because these kinds of people have a mental disorder.
Excuse those of us who remember the recent Health Care debate in the US last summer and took a lot of the violence and calls to violence as threatening such as the 1000 posters at a Tea Party rally that read "Bury Obama Care With Kennedy". Remember when outraged Tea Partiers publicly released the home phone numbers and address of Democrats who were supporting Health Care and called for protests on their front lawns, how about when somebody mistakenly targeted the home of a Congressman's brother? And of course the famous Palin website that pictured gun sights over Congressional districts, one of them over Congresswoman Gifford's district, as well as the "don't retreat, reload" comments? Palin also echoed this on her ridiculous reality TV show, Palin's Alaska, I saw it in a clip somewhere, I cannot stand to watch it for more than 35 seconds but she said it again when recreational shooting with one of her kids. I certainly remember the Republicans cheering on the Tea Party protesters on the day of the Health Care signing, when they were yelling "faggot" and "nigger" at certain Congressmen, it's not like John Boehner said tone it down then. Who can forget the Ground Zero Mosque uproar? I'm sorry but people in the Free World have the right to practice any religion they like, even in the US, it's the First Amendment of your Constitution. It sure seemed like a good time for George W. Bush to call for a tone-down of rhetoric, as he did in the days following 9/11, wow, I sometimes wonder if Americans have the memory capacity of a dog?
There will always be crazy people but God forbid there should be any form of gun control in the US to prevent the multiple tragedies that have occurred over the decades. Have a look at the opening of the Rachael Maddow show from Monday, you can see it online, she pointed out that on the day Jared Loughner was born there was also a mass shooting and then goes through a long list of the mass shootings that have happened over the last two decades. It's total insanity! Does the public really need access to machine gun capabilities? Would you give public access to armoured vehicles? Ground to air missiles? Anthrax? Nuclear Bombs? Of course not. People are not hunting deer with the kind of guns used in most mass shootings and we should all feel more comfortable in the world if criminals or the criminally insane did not have this kind of weapon. I wonder how Americans would feel if a Mexican Drug cartel shot dozens of innocent people at a Safeway in Tucson? I wonder if there would be a step-back from the pro gun lobbyists? You know since they are evil foreigners and not citizens protesting the government.
Of course I am surveying the media in the past few days and as expected everyone is getting way off track with this story, focusing on making sense of the insensible. How about some solutions? What if victims of gun crime were able to sue the gun seller? Would you give your car keys to an obviously very drunk individual? No, and those who sell guns should be held accountable too. This brings me to my second point about banning the unstable from owning guns by checking their Facebook and UTube accounts. It always seems to happen that we find out after the fact how depressed, or delusional, or angry people were before a shooting spree, yet no one bothered to look up their online profiles? Maybe parents, teachers and friends could be the first line of defense here although I would like to see gun shops do an online profile check before handing over merchandise.
Who knows if this Jared Loughner was motivated by left or right ideology, and really does it matter what went thru his mind? We do know, however, that the NRA has a huge influence in the US and recently tried to influence gun laws in Canada, unsuccessfully. Clinton managed to push some gun control back in the 90's, remember the very successful Cash for Guns program? and remember how Bush cancelled it and let any gun control laws expire in 2004? Certainly Arizona's gun laws play a major role here too, egged on by the smokey-whiskey throated Republican Jan Brewer herself. Apparently people can walk around with concealed guns in Arizona, just like the Wild West of movies, do you know what the second place runner up for walking around with guns society is? Yemen. Yes, the super dangerous third world terrorist laden hell hole. You've come a long way baby (Arizona)!
I know most Americans don't give a shit about the rest of the world,or even know of it's existence, although love going around saying they are the "Leaders of the Free World". Well, the rest of us in the free world look on in horror most of the time. We enacted gun control after one mass shooting in Canada in 1989 and as a side note have been political assassination free since 1970, before then 1868! Sure any society has its insane mass murderers but the US is really reaching new heights in the past few years, it gets harder each time to have any respect for American society.
When I turned on the TV Saturday morning and heard about a shooting I actually thought someone had shot Jan Brewer, maybe over the death of transplant patients or perhaps over Immigration policies, oh yeah, almost forgot about that one, the "show me your papers" law that smacked of racism and internment camps, the Federal government didn't let them pass it but it shows the kind of mentality we are dealing with here.
I am still a recovering Breaking News Addict so I accidentally watched the News all Saturday. Since a political figure was shot I just automatically assumed the whole thing was politically motivated. I looked at the shooters UTube postings that day and really could not make head nor tail of his bizarre postings. There was mention of government mind control and currency systems being backed by gold, that's weird because I just saw uber right-wing Rand Paul supporting gold based currency on The Colbert Report a week earlier! There were postings of his favourite literature, among them The Communist Manifesto, Mein Kampf and Ayn Rand, but it seemed to me he was so caught up in semantics and this A=B so B=C logic that this guy is clearly verging on schizophrenia. So it probably doesn't matter what books he read because he's going to come up with an insane conclusion. I don't watch or subscribe to FOX News so I don't know how long it took them to come up their twisted view of the whole thing and lay blame, apparently their new narrative is the gunman was a left-wing lunatic who read The Communist Manifesto, see it proves it, that's all you need to know, Fair and Balanced if you only have a smidgen of the facts. We will probably never know or understand a motive, because these kinds of people have a mental disorder.
Excuse those of us who remember the recent Health Care debate in the US last summer and took a lot of the violence and calls to violence as threatening such as the 1000 posters at a Tea Party rally that read "Bury Obama Care With Kennedy". Remember when outraged Tea Partiers publicly released the home phone numbers and address of Democrats who were supporting Health Care and called for protests on their front lawns, how about when somebody mistakenly targeted the home of a Congressman's brother? And of course the famous Palin website that pictured gun sights over Congressional districts, one of them over Congresswoman Gifford's district, as well as the "don't retreat, reload" comments? Palin also echoed this on her ridiculous reality TV show, Palin's Alaska, I saw it in a clip somewhere, I cannot stand to watch it for more than 35 seconds but she said it again when recreational shooting with one of her kids. I certainly remember the Republicans cheering on the Tea Party protesters on the day of the Health Care signing, when they were yelling "faggot" and "nigger" at certain Congressmen, it's not like John Boehner said tone it down then. Who can forget the Ground Zero Mosque uproar? I'm sorry but people in the Free World have the right to practice any religion they like, even in the US, it's the First Amendment of your Constitution. It sure seemed like a good time for George W. Bush to call for a tone-down of rhetoric, as he did in the days following 9/11, wow, I sometimes wonder if Americans have the memory capacity of a dog?
There will always be crazy people but God forbid there should be any form of gun control in the US to prevent the multiple tragedies that have occurred over the decades. Have a look at the opening of the Rachael Maddow show from Monday, you can see it online, she pointed out that on the day Jared Loughner was born there was also a mass shooting and then goes through a long list of the mass shootings that have happened over the last two decades. It's total insanity! Does the public really need access to machine gun capabilities? Would you give public access to armoured vehicles? Ground to air missiles? Anthrax? Nuclear Bombs? Of course not. People are not hunting deer with the kind of guns used in most mass shootings and we should all feel more comfortable in the world if criminals or the criminally insane did not have this kind of weapon. I wonder how Americans would feel if a Mexican Drug cartel shot dozens of innocent people at a Safeway in Tucson? I wonder if there would be a step-back from the pro gun lobbyists? You know since they are evil foreigners and not citizens protesting the government.
Of course I am surveying the media in the past few days and as expected everyone is getting way off track with this story, focusing on making sense of the insensible. How about some solutions? What if victims of gun crime were able to sue the gun seller? Would you give your car keys to an obviously very drunk individual? No, and those who sell guns should be held accountable too. This brings me to my second point about banning the unstable from owning guns by checking their Facebook and UTube accounts. It always seems to happen that we find out after the fact how depressed, or delusional, or angry people were before a shooting spree, yet no one bothered to look up their online profiles? Maybe parents, teachers and friends could be the first line of defense here although I would like to see gun shops do an online profile check before handing over merchandise.
Who knows if this Jared Loughner was motivated by left or right ideology, and really does it matter what went thru his mind? We do know, however, that the NRA has a huge influence in the US and recently tried to influence gun laws in Canada, unsuccessfully. Clinton managed to push some gun control back in the 90's, remember the very successful Cash for Guns program? and remember how Bush cancelled it and let any gun control laws expire in 2004? Certainly Arizona's gun laws play a major role here too, egged on by the smokey-whiskey throated Republican Jan Brewer herself. Apparently people can walk around with concealed guns in Arizona, just like the Wild West of movies, do you know what the second place runner up for walking around with guns society is? Yemen. Yes, the super dangerous third world terrorist laden hell hole. You've come a long way baby (Arizona)!
I know most Americans don't give a shit about the rest of the world,or even know of it's existence, although love going around saying they are the "Leaders of the Free World". Well, the rest of us in the free world look on in horror most of the time. We enacted gun control after one mass shooting in Canada in 1989 and as a side note have been political assassination free since 1970, before then 1868! Sure any society has its insane mass murderers but the US is really reaching new heights in the past few years, it gets harder each time to have any respect for American society.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Oh Those Russians!
Hopefully you will now have to log in to access this Blog now. After an exhausting Xmas season and now trying to get everything back to normal as well as organize year end tax shit I have discovered that Russians are looking at my Blog now! After 2 hours of researching Investelektrosviaz Ltd, who have viewed my site multiple times last week, I have learned not much. Some postings by other small bloggers, some postings by bigger sites like a Kansas Police Department and some mention of these folks as major players in the World Wide Web of spamming, and there is not a lot one can do about it!!! One can deny IP address by simply reading some Masters Degree Level computer programming sites but the comment threads point out that these spammers change their IP's frequently. The best I can do is have a log in and try to monitor who has access.
It's pretty sad when my site that has up to 8 visitors on a busy day is being sought out by these guys, what are they looking for? Isn't facebook enough for them? Hopefully they are like the Russian spies that were deported last summer who found out nothing after decades of living in the US?
Isn't the Internet Age great? I feel so free. After my ancestors fled Russia, because they were total assholes who blamed all non-Russians for all their problems, now they can come right into my living room virtually. Apparently there are also Chinese and European spammers who do the same thing too, at least I know now.
I thought the future was supposed to be better, since the internet and cell phones and all the garbage that goes along with it life just gets more and more stressful and complicated it seems. I will be keeping my eye on this, let me know if anything suspicious happens and I will be ready to complain to Google.
It's pretty sad when my site that has up to 8 visitors on a busy day is being sought out by these guys, what are they looking for? Isn't facebook enough for them? Hopefully they are like the Russian spies that were deported last summer who found out nothing after decades of living in the US?
Isn't the Internet Age great? I feel so free. After my ancestors fled Russia, because they were total assholes who blamed all non-Russians for all their problems, now they can come right into my living room virtually. Apparently there are also Chinese and European spammers who do the same thing too, at least I know now.
I thought the future was supposed to be better, since the internet and cell phones and all the garbage that goes along with it life just gets more and more stressful and complicated it seems. I will be keeping my eye on this, let me know if anything suspicious happens and I will be ready to complain to Google.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)