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Glitter, Partial Nudity, and Piracy: It’s Like a Ke$ha Music Video Became Reality
Basically a photo representation of everything this blog post is about.
I really really hate glitter bombers, there haven’t been any for a while, but I had to mention them for that title to work.
Plus I’m quoting one of my old rants about glitter bombing.
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
If you would appreciate a handful of glitter in your face, a slashed cornea, and a painkiller/eye-patch fashion combo, then, by all means, keep throwing glitter at people.
If you would appreciate Bible’s being thrown at you because you are gay, and the street preachers thought that physical violence would change that, then, by all means, keep assaulting others to get them to change their opinions.
If, however, you realize how much you would not appreciate either one of those things.
Then please, give it a rest, put down the craft box, screw the lid back on the glitter container, and go write a blog or something.
Glitter bombing is completely useless for changing anyone’s opinion.
I guarantee you that if you threw glitter on me because I don’t support gay marriage I would do two things, I would report you to the police and then I would press charges. What I wouldn’t do? Start supporting gay marriage. I don’t respond well to threats and bullying.
The people who resort to this sort of “persuasion” clearly never paid attention in their “How To Win Friends and Influence People” class, because I guarantee that assault, chanting, nasty graffiti and letters and tweets, partial nudity, and theft were not on the approved list of suggestions.
But somewhere along the line they decided that temper tantrums were the way to get their point across.
What’s even worse is that, what would have been a bratty temper tantrum when a 4 year old does it, is basically assault (among other things) when a grown adult, who should know better, does it.
This is what happens when we don’t spank our children.
In Belgium a group of half naked protesters from the organization FEMEN accosted a Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard while he was praying. They doused him with water from bottles shaped like the Virgin Mary and shouted at him. He remained silent and praying throughout the attack.
What prompted the attack?
Leonard had told a Belgian newspaper in March that homosexuality is “a given that people find in themselves and whose origins remain somewhat mysterious,” and said he urges Christian homosexuals to adopt a life of celibacy.
Okay, so I disagree with the Archbishop on a personal level. I also disagree with his interpretation of the Bible, but he is not trying to control anyone or force anyone to do anything. He’s not going out and assaulting gay people and shouting at them to change their wicked ways. He’s not dumping holy water on them.
Why do these protesters from FEMEN feel that this mode of protest is going to change anyone’s opinion? If my church was telling me that homosexuals are wicked and sinful and vulgar (which this Archbishop wasn’t, but for the sake of argument please play along) and the sermon was interrupted by a bunch of topless, screaming women, throwing water on us and telling us not the be homophobes…you know what my reaction would be?
Yeah, that’s right, I would believe everything my pastor was saying, because those women could not possibly have proven his point more effectively.
You aren’t being helpful FEMEN, at all.
I give them credit for being one of the few feminist organizations to actually actively call out Islam on it’s treatment of women, but their tactics are all shock and very little awe. They aren’t going to change hearts or minds.
Oh and piracy isn’t very effective at changing people either Greenpeace.
Using inflatable boats from Greenpeace’s ship the Rainbow Warrior, six activists boarded the Korean-owned coal ship MV Meister at dawn on Wednesday and presented a letter to the ship’s captain explaining why they were there. The activists set up camp on the ship’s bow.
I don’t care how wonderful your intentions are (even if your intentions are dumb as hell, I’ll admit that you think they are good) taking over private property and doing…what exactly? What are they doing on the bow of this ship?
I think it’s the equivalent of chaining themselves to a tree for publicity.
Anyway, it’s not effective and if I was the captain I would throw them all overboard and douse their “camp” in gasoline, but that’s just me.
You know what’s even worse though?
Those FEMEN protesters and Greenpeace pirates are probably the sort of people that actually feel that Lena Dunham deserves an “Award for Media Excellence”.
Yeah…
Yuck, I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.
I’m telling you, this is what happens when you don’t spank your kids.
Seriously though, this is not an effective way to get your point across. Glitter belongs in your craft box, water is meant to hydrate your body, and camping out on Korean coal vessels without permission is not an acceptable way to spend your spring break.
Go learn how to communicate in the real world and then come back with a civilized debate. You’re only hurting your own cause otherwise.
The Conservative New Ager and The Snark Who Hunts Back Review The Dark Knight Rises: A Tale of Heroes, Politics and Death
This last week we (The Snark Who Hunts Back and The Conservative New Ager) went to go see The Dark Knight Rises together for the second time (the first being a trilogy marathon on opening night). We delayed writing a blog then because it became obvious there was so much we would have to see it again to fully appreciate the depth…and even on a second viewing we realized there is more than a single blog here.
But let’s get the overture out of the way. The final piece of this spectacular trilogy, like almost all of director Christopher Nolan’s recent work is thematically based off a work of literature…A Tale of Two Cities, in the case of The Dark Knight Rises. And while it might be hard to find the undercurrents of Othello in The Dark Knight, Faust in The Prestige, or Zorro in Batman Begins (which for symmetry should be renamed The Dark Knight Begins).
But it’s not just literary, it’s political…or at least it appears to be. The Dark Knight seemed pretty obviously a defense of the War on Terror, and The Dark Knight Rises seems a pretty striking assault on the morals of leftist economics. Now Nolan claims that his works aren’t political (a common defense by those who want to survive in a hostile political environment) and Occupy Wall Street thugs think they’re really smart in pointing out that the movie was written before OWS so it can’t be about them (this poor argument ignores that their rhetoric of evil has been spouted by the left quite vehemently in the last few years and also they clearly are so ignorant of the history of their own ideas that they don’t know their filth was spouted by demagogues in ancient Athens, and shown to be stupid then…so just because Nolan didn’t know about OWS doesn’t mean he wasn’t responding to the evil)…and even if Nolan is telling the truth that he didn’t intend it to a political statement (which I doubt) it works too well as one not to make some comments about the philosophy of the work.
Now ignoring the message of the trilogy taken as a whole (that’s another blog for another time) we think there are three main philosophical statements to this film: The nature of heroism, the politics of progressivism, envy and “social justice”, and the fear of death.
The Nature of the Hero
“A hero can be anyone. Even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat over a little boy’s shoulder to let him know the world hadn’t ended.”
One of the more unbelievable complaints I’ve heard about The Dark Knight Rises was that it made it look like the common man can’t do anything for themselves, that they need the rich to save them. Never mind the fact that, by the end, Bruce Wayne barely had a cent to his name or that his money certainly didn’t help him climb out of the pit. We would just want to know if the person who made the complaint was even watching the same movie that we saw with our friends.
Not long after Bruce Wayne loses all his money, due to Bane’s attack on the stock exchange, he has a conversation with John Blake, a police officer who knows Wayne’s identity as Batman. Wayne tells Blake that the whole point of Batman was that he could be anyone, Batman was meant to be an inspiration to the people of Gotham, something that is repeated in both of the previous movies.
In Batman Begins Bruce Wayne tell Alfred:
“People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy. And I can’t do that as Bruce Wayne. As a man I’m just flesh and blood, I can be ignored, destroyed. But a symbol….as a symbol I can be incorruptible, everlasting…..”
In The Dark Knight, the Joker asks the fake Batman, Brian what batman means to him. Brian answers “He’s a symbol … that we don’t have to be afraid of scum like you”. And the whole point of Batman, as we see come to fruition at the beginning of The Dark Knight Rises, was not to create a legion of caped crusaders, but an army of men like Harvey Dent (before his psychotic break) and Jim Gordon—a group of people willing to stand up for what is right.
But we digress. The point is what made the average person a hero in The Dark Knight Rises.
At no point did John Blake, Commissioner Gordon, or the other members of the resistance, sit down and go ‘well, I’m just a common person, I’m just going to wait for the government or Batman to come save us’ (except for the character of Foley, who was rightly called out for being a coward). They worked tirelessly to find a way out on their own, they realized they were on their own the moment Bane took over the city and began to look for ways to free the city’s police force from the sewers.
When Batman did come back, in an a miraculous 11th hour miracle, they didn’t wait for him to clean up the mess. The police banded together and marched on Bane’s army, many of them dying in the fighting to save their city.
Selina Kyle, despite telling Batman that she was leaving the city as soon as she destroyed the debris blocking the tunnel, turned around and risked her life to fight for the city and to save Batman’s life.
Lucius Fox risked death and drowning , trying to find a way to stop the nuclear bomb from detonating.
Even Ra’s al Ghul (don’t you hate it when you agree with the words, if not the actions, of a villain?) says, during Bruce’s training, “The training is nothing! The will is everything! The will to act.”
The heroes who kept Gotham alive while Batman fought his way out of the pit
Every one of these people, training or no, had the will to act. They were all willing to give everything for their city, for their freedom. What could possibly be more heroic than that?
Fancy toys, nice cars, and a cool suit will only get you so far if you don’t have the will to do what is necessary, even when what is necessary may end your life.
Heroism isn’t about money, toys, or good looks; it’s a state of mind and living life, not with no fear of death, but with a willingness to die to defend others and defend your beliefs.
You may not be a superhero, but anyone can be a hero. That’s what The Dark Knight Rises shows us about heroism.
Politics, Socialism and evils of envy
“Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend, will keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof shuts out the sky.’”—A Tale of Two Cities*
You would have to have been pretty dense not to get that this movie was thematically inspired by A Tale of Two Cities. Even Dickens, for all of his sickeningly naïve progressive rhetoric, had an inkling of the evil of the French Revolution. A quick review of history if it’s been too long since that high school history class. Louis XVI in response to economic woes and civil unrest had given the public everything they wanted: an assembly, power of due process of law, and abdicated much of the absolute power of the monarchy. And while many where happy with these changes, the ignorant rabble who were open to the rhetoric of the most extreme thought it wasn’t enough. They stormed the Bastille, arrested Louis and his wife (who if you actually study history was not the vapid slut a layman’s understand of history tries to depict her as), and placed power in the hands of radicals like Robespierre and Marat. The Terror, Madam Guillotine, rivers of blood, atrocities on a scale that wouldn’t be seen again in France until the Nazi’s allowed the French to revel in their anti-Semitism. (A similar pattern would be seen when the Russians replaced the Tsar with a democratic government…but soon got rid of that in favor of a psychotically evil government).
She learned to hate her “ideal” world quickly enough.
This history lesson is important because this is the same pattern Nolan shows in Gotham. For all of it’s corruption in the first two films, Gotham at the beginning of The Dark Knight Rises was a city that had everything it wanted: Clean streets, an efficient police force (a city of 12 million with only 3,000 uniformed officers means an obscenely low crime rate), a healthy economy (the city could afford multiple simultaneous construction projects by Dagget, that means an incredibly good tax base, ergo strong economy…and football stadiums aren’t packed to the brim with every last seat filled during hard times), a mayor who has survived for over 8 years in office (usually a sign of prosperity) Even Selina Kyle’s words of decrying inequality ring hollow, he “old town” (suggestive of the gutter) apartment is hardly a shabby SRO or the slum heap of “the narrows” from the first film—and while in Batman Begins criminals could carry on with their nefarious dealings out in the open, or hide them in the vast slums, this is a Gotham where there are so few places to hide your activities you literally have skulk in the sewers (everywhere else is too bright and too well off to hide such activities)…Like the French they had everything they had asked for. And, like France, it took only a little fear and few mad men to stir the lowest rungs of society and bring about anarchy.
There are of course differences between A Tale of Two Cities and the Revolution it describes and the events of The Dark Knight Rises. The Bastille was stormed not to free prisoners (there were hardly any left in the Bastille by the time of the Revolution) but to gain weapons to take over the city. And even if you buy the myth of the Storming of the Bastille, the prisoners released from the Bastille were primarily political prisoners…not hardened thugs of organized crime. The fact that the Dent Law in The Dark Knight Rises was passed because there was a martyr to push through the law, does not change the fact that it, like all three-strikes laws and mandatory sentencing laws, are a particular point of hatred for the progressive who think it’s unfair that people who do evil and horrific things should, heaven forbid, be locked up where they can’t do any harm. But be it the Bastille and the release of a mere seven political prisoners or the opening of Blackgate Prison and letting a host of violent criminals go free, the result was ironically the same: The Terror.
The terror: a system where justice and trials are a mockery and the innocent are held as guilty for crimes they never committed…and where there is only one punishment: death. The terror, a system that provides so much that it makes everyone so equal that they are all starving and tearing at each other for daily sustenance (or like the Soviet Union or Gotham you could have food imported from the capitalistic society because you can’t produce any on your own). The terror: the utopia every half brained progressive idealist praises, only to lead to their own downfall.
In the real French Revolution the villain was Robespierre who used high rhetoric to justify rank thugery as a progressive march to fraternity and equality. In A Tale of Two Cities the villain was Madame De Farge, a woman so hell bent on avenging her family’s murders that she will see the whole world burn to get her pound of flesh. Nolan gives us both villains in the form of Bane and Talia al Ghul. Which of course leads us into the villainy of their perverse understanding of economics.
Let me spout the politics of envy and class warfare knowing it will only lead to your eventual destruction!
Before we get into showing how Nolan destroys the ideals of progressivism by showing what it brings, let’s dismiss one semi-intelligent objection: Bane and Talia don’t believe in progressivism, they’re trying to show how it is a failed system and how people must reject it. That’s not entirely an incorrect point…but what you need to also realize is that just because the villains may be a tool they don’t really believe in doesn’t mean that it isn’t showing the flaws of progressivism…and that just because they don’t believe in progressivism doesn’t mean they’re capitalist. Point in fact, the entire League of Shadows from Ra’s Al Ghul’s first words to Talia’s last is a world view based on feudalism and cronyism. The League believes it should be the one who decides who shall be successful and who shall fail. Bane says as much when he tells Wayne, “I learned here that there can be no true despair without hope. So, as I terrorize Gotham, I will feed its people hope to poison their souls. I will let them believe they can survive so that you can watch them clamoring over each other to “stay in the sun.” You can watch me torture an entire city and when you have truly understood the depth of your failure, we will fulfill Ra’s al Ghul’s destiny… We will destroy Gotham and then, when it is done and Gotham is ashes, then you have my permission to die.” As we stated above they rule through terror, not reason, not ethics, not law, justice—they dress their words up in the clothes of these higher ideals but their actions show them to be as hollow and lacking in substance on the inside as any scarecrow (especially if said Scarecrow sets himself up as the instrument of justice).
Politically speaking, there is much that is applicable to our current political situation in our country. Now, to be fair, I don’t believe that Christopher Nolan’s intent was to create a modern political allegory. This movie was written and being filmed long before the Occupy Wall Street movement, which shares many of the villains sentiments, began.
During the first few weeks of the Occupy movement we both remember having many conversations about the similarities between that movement and the early days of the French Revolution. Which is why the connection between The Dark Knight Rises and OWS comes so easily.
The views of Occupy Wall Street were shown almost perfectly in Bane’s and Catwoman’s words, as well as the actions of the people who jump at the chance to drag the rich out and punish them for their success.
Bane’s entire speech outside of Black Gate Prison is so reminiscent of something from a ‘mic check’ at Occupy Wall Street
“We take power from the corrupt, who, for generations, have kept you down with myths of…opportunity and we give it back to you, the people. Gotham is yours, none shall interfere, do as you please. We’ll start by storming Black Gate and freeing the oppressed…an army will be raised, the powerful will be ripped from their decadence and cast out into the cold where we all have endured, courts will be convened, spoils will be enjoyed…”
-Bane (apologies for mistakes, I was working from a VERY scratchy audio clip)
and for those of you who remember the scenes that accompanied the final lines of that speech, the violence is so similar to the rioting at Occupy Oakland that is was almost frightening, especially when you realize that this movie was written months before any of that every happened.
Selina Kyle (Catwoman) starts out with the same exact rhetoric as many an Occupy Wall Street supporter. In a conversation with Bruce Wayne she says “You think this is gonna last? There’s a storm coming Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches. ‘Cause when it hits, you’re all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large, and leave so little for the rest of us.”
Though after her betrayal of Batman she appears to change her tone in a way that OWS never did. Upon entering a home that had been ransacked after Bane’s Black Gate speech she comments on the fact that ‘this used to be someone’s home’ when she looks at a smashed family photo. Her friend says ‘now it’s everyone’s home.’ Kyle, unlike just about everyone in OWS who only has to look to the failure of the Soviet Union, the collapse of Greece or the repression of China and North Korea to know what a failed system socialism, when she saw what her ideals brought about very quickly had no problem seeing their evil and abandoning them.
The Dark Knight Rises shows what happens when give us capitalisms for anarchy or socialism. You have perversion of justice. You have to survive on the handouts and scraps provided to you. There is no growth. No prosperity. No civilization. Only blood and the terror.
Now on to a slightly more hilarious turn of events.
Shortly before the movie came out the Obama campaign (and liberals in general) noticed something they thought they could use as a brilliant attack against Romney.
Did you know that Romney had a business named Bain Capital?
Bain/Bane…get it?**
One of these guys is someone rich who could easily leave others to fend for themselves but doesn’t…the other is named Bane. Which one reminds you the most of the presidential challenger?
“It has been observed that movies can reflect the national mood,” said Democratic advisor and former Clinton aide Christopher Lehane. “Whether it is spelled Bain and being put out by the Obama campaign or Bane and being out by Hollywood, the narratives are similar: a highly intelligent villain with offshore interests and a past both are seeking to cover up who had a powerful father and is set on pillaging society,” he added.
As the Friday release date has neared, liberal blogs were the first to connect Batman’s toughest foe with Romney’s firm.
- Christopher Lehane (via Washington Examiner)
Yeah, they actually did that.
Hilariously, when Rush Limbaugh dared to point out the name similarities, liberal bloggers thought he was being insane and completely ignored that their side was the one who made the comparison first.
Luckily conservatives had a fellow conservative Chuck Dixon, comic book creator, and coincidentally, the co-creator of the villain Bane, to smack some sense into liberals.
In an interview with ComicBook.com Dixon had this to say.
“The idea that there’s some kind of liberal agenda behind the use of Bane in the new movie is silly…I refuted this within hours of the article in the Washington Examiner suggesting that Bane would be tied to Bain Capital and Mitt Romney appearing. Bane was created by me and Graham Nolan and we are lifelong conservatives and as far from left-wing mouthpieces as you are likely to find in comics…As for his appearance in The Dark Knight Rises, Bane is a force for evil and the destruction of the status quo. He’s far more akin to an Occupy Wall Street type if you’re looking to cast him politically. And if there ever was a Bruce Wayne running for the White House it would have to be Romney.”
-Chuck Dixon (Via ComicBook.com)
Romney is Bruce Wayne? That’s the best pseudo-endorsement I’ve heard all year. If I wasn’t voting for Romney before, I sure am now.
The Fear of Death
Blind Prisoner: You do not fear death. You think this makes you strong. It makes you weak.
Bruce Wayne: Why?
Blind Prisoner: How can you move faster than possible, fight longer than possible without the most powerful impulse of the spirit: the fear of death.
Bruce Wayne: I do fear death. I fear dying in here, while my city burns, and there’s no one there to save it.
Blind Prisoner: Then make the climb.
Bruce Wayne: How?
Blind Prisoner: As the child did. Without the rope. Then fear will find you again.
Now on the Conservative New Ager we have a fairly low opinion of the fear of death. In numerous blogs it has been ridiculed as the foolish, childish, ignorant paralytic it is. However, it must be admitted, that in the rush of these blogs to point out that “Wise men at their end know [death] is right” and that it is nothing to be feared but merely a natural part of life, that the wise also “do not go gentle into that good night.”
Bruce Wayne doesn’t fear death for the first half of the movie, that is true. He is not hindered by the fears that he once was. The problem is that in this attempt to rid himself of fear he went too far and rid himself of the desire for life as well. While the movie only uses the phrase “fear death” it might seem that it is encouraging people to embrace fear. But from context the movie is not telling people to embrace the paralyzing fear of death because it is this fear that encourages the federal government and the people of Gotham to stand ideally by, and the fear that causes Modine’s Foley to hide, while a terrorist takes over the city. Rather, the movie is encouraging a balance—that the proper way is to rid one’s self of the paralyzing fear of death of Wayne did in the first film, but to maintain the love of live, and the appreciation of death and knowledge that each moment could be your last and must be fought for, that comes with this love of life. It is only this appreciation of death, that pushes Wayne to make a jump that he could not otherwise make, because he knows that if he is to live he must push himself—and he cannot push himself without both the knowledge that there is no turning back or without the desire to do something other than seek his own end.
And then of course, as a final thought we can’t forget how wonderfully patriotic this film is. Okay maybe not so much in it showing the President to be a sniveling coward who gives into terrorist demands (patriotic or not that might be an accurate assessment)…or in how cowardly the bureaucracy is when they blow the bridge condemning many to die (again might be an accurate conservative message). But you will notice that the people of Gotham (not the scum the who follow Bain mind you, but the people who are terrorized by them) stand for “The Star Spangled Banner” and the only person shown to not have his hand over his heart is the scummy mayor (who apparently is close to an even scummier Congressmen…again perhaps an accurate assessment of current events). And along with the police it is these people who fight against Bain. And you’ll notice that on the day of the battle even a British director like Nolan knows to show the tattered remains of the flag still flying, still offering hope, and as a symbol that on that day evil will fall. Finally the last words about Gotham, which they say is America’s greatest city, is that it will rise from the ashes of this act of terrorism…you would have to be pretty dense not to see this as a reference to New York, and a testament to how quickly America did pick itself up.
You don’t owe these people anymore. You’ve given them everything.
Not everything. Not Yet.
And the sad fact is that we’ve only scratched the surface of this film…
*On a side note, it should be said that, for all of Dickens’ flaws, A Tale of Two Cities is Dickens’ best work…too bad he stole half the plot from Victor Hugo’s Ninety-Three.
** Oh and if you want to to play the silly let’s compare political figures to fictional ones…I see your Bane/Bain…and raise you…
(Romney Ryan photos thanks to Heather Parsons)
How much education can you afford?
I don’t usually discuss education, though I feel strongly about the subject, but as a college student who isn’t exactly rolling in cash, this topic had to be written about.
ThinkProgress (a “news” site that always leaves me wondering exactly how many “glaucoma” patients they have on staff*) has apparently taken issue with something that Romney said recently (surprise, surprise…not). Specifically they had a problem with this part of his speech on the 27th in Virginia.
I think this is a land of opportunity for every single person, every single citizen of this great nation. And I want to make sure that we keep America a place of opportunity, where everyone has a fair shot. They get as much education as they can afford and with their time they’re able to get and if they have a willingness to work hard and the right values, they ought to be able to provide for their family and have a shot of realizing their dreams.
Oh I get what they think they are upset about, but honestly they are just looking for a reason to dislike Romney. If they were paying any attention to his record they would know they were being ridiculous, but really…if a website posts an article named “Four Reasons Why The Court’s Decision To Uphold Obamacare Is Good News For The Economy” they aren’t really trying to be taken seriously anymore.
But I digress.
People are trying to make this statement look like Romney doesn’t care about the poor and don’t want them to get an education, but that’s just ridiculous!
This is the comparison they are making. God, I hope I’m never this stupid.
See the key word here is “afford” and that word doesn’t mean what you think it means.**
The definition of afford:
1. To be able to do, manage, or bear without serious consequence or adverse effect.2. To be able to meet the expense of; have or be able to spare the price of.
When you bring this term into a conversation of “can I afford this 60″ flat screen TV” it actually means “Do I have this money in my bank account right now?” Or “Will I be able to pay this off with the job I have?”
When you are talking about something such as a smart investment opportunity or education, the question becomes “can I spare the money right now for the pay off later?”
When I went back to school I weighed the cost very carefully. I was very aware of the amount I would have to take out in federal and private loans and I considered whether I could afford the cost and then decided that I couldn’t afford to not return to school.
Then, of course, you run into people *cough99%’scough* who complain that they spent SO much money that they couldn’t afford on their education and now they can’t find jobs and they can’t pay back all those loans they took out while getting degrees in Underwater Basket-weaving and Canadian Studies and Music Therapy. (Those last two are actual degrees…I sincerely hope that the first one is not.) Or perhaps one of these other, equally pointless and wasteful, degrees.
Can these people afford to get these degrees? (Well clearly they couldn’t, or they wouldn’t have been camping out in New York City, protesting other people’s better college choices). The only people who could afford that sort of degree would be someone like Paris Hilton, with outrageous amounts of family money (and even Paris isn’t that stupid, she, to my knowledge, never went to college. Instead she just started her own companies and became successful…without college, imagine that.) Instead maybe they should have gone to get a degree in something that could help them get a good career. Instead of dicking around in Women’s Studies majors, maybe they should have gone to nursing school. Instead of majoring in Religion (sorry Dylan***) maybe they should have gone to Business school or at the very least gotten a teaching degree.
Yes, I’m aware that the cost of college is outrageous, but you can only blame the government for that. You can’t blame them for your stupid choice of major, but youcanblame the government for subsidizing every stupid degree that colleges make available.
Wait, you say, I had to get a college degree to get a good job.
Bullshit. I’ve had good paying, full time jobs, that never once cared about whether I had a degree or not. You either haven’t looked in the right place, or you are looking for a job you will “enjoy”. I will admit, those full time jobs were boring as hell and I hate them, but I was also independent and made plenty of money to do whatever I wanted after paying my rent and saving a little.
But, you say, I want a job I will enjoy. I want a career, so I have to get a degree because those jobs won’t hire me without a degree.
Once again, blame the government and the subsidization of colleges. 50 years ago, people got college degrees for jobs that needed serious training. Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers, (some) Scientists. General jobs didn’t all come with a “those without college degree need not apply” disclaimer. The government subsidized and then degrees, the likes of which wouldneverget you a job, began popping up all over the place just to reel in the students.
So even if your broke can you ‘afford’ college? Well that depends on whether you have a plan and whether you know what degree to get to carry out that plan and whether you are willing to do the work to become successful. If you have those three things anyone can afford to go to college, that’s what Romney meant.
____________________________________________________________________________________
*No offense to those people I know who have LEGITIMATE pain management issues that are helped by a little mary-jane, but I think it’s clear this stuff (or whatever they are taking) is not helping the writer’s at ThinkProgress to ‘progress’ anywhere but the snack food aisle.
**Sort of like how the word “fair” and “equal” have somehow gained new, interesting, twisted definitions for liberals.
***That is what my brother majored in…
Time for another glitter-bombing post.
Back to my roots, complaining about the liberal gay left.
Also Occupy Wall Street/any city they can get to, because they seem to be doing a bit of the glitter slinging these days as well.
I’ve talked about glitter bombing before, but I thought it was time for another go at it, since people still seem to consider it a good way to deal with their issues….instead of, y’know, actually having civilized discussions.
Because throwing things was so helpful in solving disputes in kindergarten. *eye roll*
So last time I talked, it was mostly about how childish the concept of throwing glitter at your opponents makes you look.
But I’ve changed my mind (don’t faint, it happens). It still makes you look irreparably stupid, but there is nothing childish about it.
Nothing is childish about assault.
Yes, you heard me right. Glitter bombing is assault.
Here is the definition of assault.
noun
verb
- In criminal and tort law, an act, usually consisting of a threat or attempt to inflict bodily injury upon another person, coupled with the apparent present ability to succeed in carrying out the threat or the attempt if not prevented, that causes the person to have a reasonable fear or apprehension of immediate harmful or offensive contact. No intent to cause battery or the fear or apprehension is required so long as the victim is placed in reasonable apprehension or fear. No actual physical injury is needed to establish an assault, but if there is any physical contact, the act constitutes both an assault and a battery.
- In criminal law, in some states, the term includes battery and attempted battery.
- Any attack .
- The act of inflicting bodily injury upon another. See also mayhem.
The parts in bold are what I want you to look at.
Sure you didn’t mean to glitter in that senator/aid/candidate/judge’s eye. You didn’t mean to lacerate their cornea or cause major injury or disability.
But you still did…or you risk doing so with every handful of glitter that you throw.
[A] Washington, D.C., optometrist warns that it is possible to injure someone with glitter.
“If it gets into the eyes, the best scenario is it can irritate, it can scratch. Worst scenario is it can actually create a cut,” Stephen Glasser told The Hill. He also noted that breathing glitter into your nose and sinuses could cause an infection.
- NPR
So it’s not childish. It’s criminal.
As 20 year old intern, Peter Smith, found out last Tuesday.
Tuesday’s glitter bombing, however, is different. The student who tossed the glitter was charged with “throwing a missile” and “unlawful acts on campus grounds.” If convicted, 20-year-old Peter Smith could face up to 6 months in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Smith, who was working as an unpaid intern for the Colorado Senate Democrats, was promptly fired and also faced possible expulsion from University of Colorado Denver. Although UCD chose to take no disciplinary action, Smith still faces the other charges.
The IDS paper is calling the charges “a little disproportionate.”
Claiming that being fired was appropriate, but expulsion and jail time/a fine was a punishment unfit to the crime.
One has to wonder…would they be so tolerant if this was another situation.
Here’s one for you.
My school gets a lot of these “street preachers” who show up with megaphones and stupid t-shirts and big signs quoting Biblical verses (all out of context) that talk about hellfire and damnation. I’m not impressed by this…I grew up in the Southern Baptist church. I cut my teeth on fire and brimstone preaching.
However, what if this group took things a step farther. What if, instead of just shouting abuse at us, they started throwing pamphlets at us and spraying super-soakers filled holy water on the students.
Pamphlets can give people paper cuts and certainly carry the danger of cutting someone in a dangerous place…like…I don’t know…the eye.
A super-soaker on campus could, similarly, have bad results.
So, we could legitimately claim this as assault. It fits the legal definition I quoted in enough ways to make that feasible.
So would these same writers feel it was “disproportionate” to charge the speakers, with their loud protests about how being gay and masturbating will send you to hell, with assault?
Well?
I don’t know, but I have a feeling that they would be fine with it.
And just for reference. Here is the golden rule again. (I’ve quoted it before)
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
If you would appreciate a handful of glitter in your face, a slashed cornea, and a painkiller/eye-patch fashion combo, then, by all means, keep throwing glitter at people.
If you would appreciate Bible’s being thrown at you because you are gay, and the street preachers thought that physical violence would change that, then, by all means, keep assaulting others to get them to change their opinions.
If, however, you realize how much you would not appreciate either one of those things.
Then please, give it a rest, put down the craft box, screw the lid back on the glitter container, and go write a blog or something.
A follow up to a post I wrote on January 17th. (A note on how checking the facts can lead to interesting results.)
I have recently taken a lot of heat for a post that I wrote about a 99% protestor. A good portion of that heat came from the person pictured in this post and the friends that he brought over from his blog and his own facebook page.
Under normal circumstances I would have had no problem dealing with each argument and commenter individually, however I woke up to nearly 20 comments the morning after he posted the link to my blog and as I read through them I came across one that shook me.
I’ve been insulted and made fun of because of my beliefs, both in comments and emails related to this blog, and occasionally in real life as well. I have never before received a death threat from a commenter though and that, even though the threat was mostly implied, made me take a step back and assess how I was going to deal with the situation. I contacted my friends, spoke to them, some of whom have experienced death threats and threats of physical violence before as well because of their political ideals. I left my own place of residence and went to stay with my parents, because the idea of being in a house with people who both have loaded guns and know how to use them, was much more appealing than being by myself at the time.
The threat itself, is visible on the comments of the original blog. The IP address it was sent from was 74.226.73.216 and it was sent to the blog after the blogger in question posted links to my article (and my photo) on his blog and facebook.
Granted we can’t be held responsible for the actions of all of our followers, I do not know all of my followers and readers personally, but I promise you if any one of my readers ever threatened the life of someone I was in an argument with, and I was made aware of it, I would condemn then in harshest possible terms and do whatever I could to see them prosecuted for making such threat. What the 99% blogger in question will do is up to them…but if you choose silence please refrain from ever taking the moral high ground.
I spent several days assessing my situation and going over both the original blog entry and the comments that I received. My conclusion was this, I stand by the contents of my article.
Though perhaps calling him a liar was too far, but from the facts given he did seem to be lying based on reality. Perhaps I will change my comment to “he is clearly a very poor communicator”. Either that, or he intentionally used half-truths and cherry picked his facts to change what the situation sounds like…which, according to my family’s house rules, is lying.
The commenters on that post are right, I do not know the life story of the man in question. I do not know him, I do not know where he lives, what he currently does for a living, nor do I honestly care. The content of what he wrote was what I was analyzing and he did not give all the facts, in fact he worded (intentionally or unintentionally) his words in a way that did not give all facts about his situation. And then he criticizes me for not including certain facts in my analyses, when those facts themselves were not included in the information he gave.
That is not my fault.
My analyses, based on the information given, was perfectly sound. Even the incomparable Sherlock Holmes could not deduce something correctly without all the information. “Data, data, data, I cannot make bricks without clay.”
Some of the commenters complained that I glossed over the facts of my own neurological condition, some saying that my glossing over the details meant that I had been cured and knew nothing of living with long term health concerns. I would first like to point out that I have, on several occasions, spoken about my health concerns on this blog and that there was no need to go over them again as MY health issues were not what the blog was about.
I will say here that I have not been cured. There is, in fact, no known cause or cure for my disorder. I suffer from Pseudo-tumor Cerebri, which basically means that (unless it stops on its own) I will be one at least two medications, every day, for the rest of my life. The increased intracranial pressure could have damaged my eyesight permanently or damaged my brain, if it had not been discoverd. If I do not take the medication I suffer from debilitating migraines, which before I was diagnosed, kept me from working more and more as the situation grew worse. The pain was so bad that I was forced to lay in the dark, with no noise, no interaction, for hours at a time. I would go to work and leave halfway through the day after throwing up multiple times because the pain was so intense.
I am not telling you this to gain your sympathy, merely to answer your questions, I don’t want your sympathy, nor do I need it. I have friends who care about me and they are my friends because they are people of character. As to the defenders of the 99%, please don’t feel sorry for me or my medical condition.
Others questioned if my neurological disorder had damaged my brain, affecting my ability to think and hurt my intelligence. I assure you that my friends, family, neurologist, and MRIs can tell you that this is not the case. That is the only response you will get to that accusation.
Other commenters addressed my compassion, or lack thereof. Compassion has nothing to do with facts, compassion does not alter facts. Compassion is not an advantage in analyzing the facts.
Others commented on my grammar and spelling. Yes, I will admit that I do not always edit my posts as well as I should. I also do not always have my posts proofread before posting them. My brain, unfortunately, usually runs faster than my hands can type and on occasion that means that I will skip words, use homophones, or get letters out of order or missing entirely. It is a flaw that I am continuously trying to break myself of, but it does not always happen. However my spelling and grammar have absolutely no bearing on my actual facts or arguments.
Those of you who know this man personally have every right to defend him on a personal level, but you must understand that he did not give all the facts in the first place and those facts that he did give, did not connect with reality. While my post may have lacked for style and compassion, his lacked facts, who committed the greater offense?
The post has been taken off its private settings and all the comments, even the one that gave me pause about the situation, have been approved. I will not be replying to the comments, as this reply is a blanket one covering the issues that I felt needed to be addressed.
Lastly, I would like to thank my friends and family for both supporting me and going over the situation with me, to analyze the issues. I would also like to thank one of my very best friends for writing a post that addresses some issues of the 99% movement that I have not addressed and far more eloquently than I could.
A note on how checking the facts can lead to interesting results.
Here is a follow up I wrote to this article after a lot of controversy arose because of it.
This is one of the numerous “I am the 99%” photographs that is floating around the internet. I got this one from facebook, when a friend of a friend posted it.
I haven’t spent a lot of time pulling these posters apart, because it just seems like a waste of time. These people aren’t interested in listening to logic or truth, but this one was so blatantly ridiculous that I had to deal with it. Also because it is about my state and about issues that are close to me, as I also had difficulty getting on AHCCCS last year when I had to have several tests done to diagnose a neurological disorder that I have.
So we’ll start small and end up proving that, whatever else the man in the above picture is, he is a liar.
He says that he made minimum wage, which up until recently was $7.35 an hour in this state. He also says that he worked part time, so 30 hours or less. (If your definition of part time is different from that, please let me know. That is the definition at my current job.)
If he worked 30 hours a week, ever week, he would make $882 dollars a month, before taxes. I’m going from what he has said, though I find it quite unbelievable that he was actually paid minimum wage. Most pizza delivery jobs pay less than minimum wage because of tips.
Which are not including in the income information that AHCCCS asks for. I should know. I spent enough time staring at those forms.
The maximum amount that an adult single person can make and still qualify for AHCCCS is $908, before taxes. The man in the picture does not mention having any family, so that is the amount I will use in this analysis.
So at this point we have found that if he was working full time at minimum wage, as he says, that he would in fact be in the right income level to be accepted by AHCCCS.
Now we move into the realm of why, even if he was making more than $908 a month, he would still be lying through his teeth, or he just wasn’t trying very hard to get AHCCCS coverage.
I made slightly over $1000 a month at the job I had when I was trying to get AHCCCS coverage. As a single female, that was over the limit and I was told that I would be denied AHCCCS unless I included the bills for the procedures that I had already had (at that point I think it was several trips to a Neurologist, 2 MRIs, and a Lumbar puncture) and they would be pro-rated against the amount I made each month.
I did exactly that (or my dad did, I wast still recovering from the lumbar puncture). At one point I had to stand in line for 2 hours at the local AHCCCS office to talk about my policy, but guess what? I got a bright shiny AHCCCS card. The coverage only lasted about 6 months, but it significantly helped me with my bills and prescriptions for medication.
As for his assumption about Churches and Private Institutions not paying for medical bills. I wouldn’t know, I never tried to get one to pay my bills. However, despite some of my issues with religious organizations I have been a part of in the past, I will say one thing. There was not a single time that a call went out for assistance on medical (or other monetary issues) where the members of the church did not give willingly to help those in their congregation. Even those that had only a little more than those in question, gave willingly.
As for private institutions, a 20 second google search found several lists(1, 2, 3) of private, federal, and state organizations for cancer patients. (I stuck with cancer as that is the same disease that that the man in the picture had). I do not know how affective these organizations are, nor how difficult it is to get assistance from these programs, but they are there. So his statement that churches and private organizations will not pay your medical bills (or help at the very least) is completely false.
There, I feel better.
Check the facts more often. It reveals interesting things.
Tea Party vs OWS (Patriots vs. Thugs) – (Via The Conservative New Ager)
I am getting tired of people comparing the Tea Party to Occupy Wall Street. Now I am not fully in support of the Tea Party, while I like what they stand for they need to prove to me that they can last beyond a single election…at that point I will whole heartedly say I am a Tea Party member (also assuming it stays solely focused on economics and ignores social issues). And the Tea Party hates the fact that the government gave bailouts to banks because it was a bad economic move…Occupy Wall Street hates that banks took the money (not so much with the government giving money)…but this is really the only place where the two movements kinda sorta touch…as an example of a Venn Diagram these two movements are a poor case. The Tea Party is asking for government to get out of the economy, the Occupy idiots are asking for the government to take charge.
Occupy Wall Street = Nothing like the Tea Party. There, now can we move on from making these comparisons CNN and MSNBC?
The Majority vs. The Minority
“Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities “
Who said that quote?
No, don’t google it if you don’t know. You’ll know if you read the post.
It sounds like something Martin Luther King Jr. could have said in a speech about Civil Rights, or something one of the founding fathers could have said. It sounds like something you could hear in an Human Rights Council email about equality for GLBT people.
It sounds like something we could all agree with yes?
The majority has never been able to make the right decisions to protect the rights of the minority. I think that has been basically established in American and International history.
So why is there is a group demanding that the “99%” (and really, do you honestly think 99% of this country is behind this group?) be able to take away the rights of the “1%”?
You might ask which rights I’m talking about? Well in response I say that my pursuit of happiness is severely curtailed when people want to take more of my money than I keep (or close to it) as I get successful.
And then I’ll ask when marriage became a right? Yet most liberals and many conservatives, including myself, seem to think that all people have the right to be treated equally in those cases. That the ‘minority’ should not have their rights rights curtailed by the majority. Equal treatment under the law, we agree with that do we not?
So why can’t we agree on equal taxation?
Oh…as for the quote, I didn’t quote the entire thing. The full quote is:
“Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).“
And as for who said it.
Well it wasn’t one of the founding fathers, or Martin Luther King Jr. or an email for the HRC.
It was Ayn Rand.
Honestly can’t figure out if this #OccupyWallstreet supporter on twitter is serious or satire.
I’m hoping it’s satire of the #OccupyWallstreet movement, since if it’s not…this person is quite honestly one of the most stupid and a bit, in his stupidy, evil.
I’ll let his time line speak for him.
Just take a few minutes to peruse these tweets. Get pissed off, rip out some hair, scream, or just laugh…that’s what I did.
Here are a few of my responses to him.
Now, keep in mind. This could be a parody so good that it could create and corollary to Poe’s Law. That it’s difficult to distinguish between parodies of extreme left socialists and its genuine proponents, since they both seem equally insane.
I certainly can’t tell. Unless the owner of the twitter account admits to being a parody of socialists, then I doubt anyone will be able to tell.
I also know that this person’s complete and utter stupidity (which can’t be cured) and ignorance (which could be cured…if they weren’t stupid) are not indicative of the entire movement. Unlike liberals I understand that one person in a group can be a racist/idiot/homophobe/religious fundamentalist/etc. without that meaning the entire group suffers from those shortcomings.
In fact I had a, slightly, more intelligent exchange on the Occupy Arkansas facebook page. More intelligent in that the main contributor seemed to at least understand math and had the ability to research to some degree, not more intelligent in any way that I would consider grand. After all, this is still a person that is “organizing” a protest against other people making money and creating jobs.
Then again, the person I was talking to still didn’t have much respect for freedom of speech, as he deleted all of my comments and blocked me from commenting on the page later that day. That’s why I can’t show you that exchange.
When it comes right down to it, I’ve conversed with enough of these people by this point and seen enough video and posters from the protest, that I can make an educated opinion of the movement as a whole.
And believe me, that opinion is very, very unflattering.
And that’s pretty much where my coverage of the Occupy Wallstreet protests will end, unless something big happens with it.
