Let’s recall the current Miss America

Apparently it wasn’t too cold on stage!!

 

The current Miss AMERICA, Molly Hagan recently told newspapers that she’s probably going to decline on attending the inauguration of the President of the United States of AMERICA because it will be too cold.   The really amazing thing here is that she’s Miss New York, you know that tropical zone where in winter it is so much warmer than it is in Washington, DC.  Oh wait, that’s right, no it’s not!!!!  The temperatures are expected to be cold, in the 30’s a pretty typical temperature for New York this time of year.

What I want to know is where are all of my conservative friends on this issue?  Why isn’t Fox News screaming from the high heavens about Miss AMERICA not willing to attend the inauguration because it will be cold out?  I wonder, were this a Republican administration would they all be so quiet or would she be branded a liberal socialist?  No matter what your political persuasion, how is this anything but insulting and quite frankly un-American.  Don’t get me wrong, she’s a beauty queen, few of the former Miss Americas have been all that impressive, but come on, your title is Miss America, what else don’t we know about her, does Miss New York not like cheesecake, bagels, pizza?  Seriously, if she doesn’t like pizza her and I are going to have a serious problem.

Ok, so before one of you knuckle-heads chimes in with, but she grew up in Alabama let me warn you against that argument.  You see we might draw another conclusion about her reasons should we start exploring her Alabama roots, but then again, suggesting she might be racist, WOULD actually bring out the ire of all of my conservative friends and FOX News would be all over that idea.

Miss AMERICA, go to the damn inauguration and post a picture of you eating a slice!

Why the United States is Doomed

The American experiment has failed, or more precisely is on the precipice of failing.  The sad part of this prognosis is that it’s not the American people who have failed directly, but make no mistake we all share some level of culpability.  We have failed through the poor choices we and our parents have made.  You see we’ve bought into some things and let some things happen that have brought our country to the edge of failure.  We have allowed our government to be about two things, re-electing incumbents and the influence of money.  It has all become solely about power and we have allowed for a system of governance where the determining factor for most elections is how much media can you buy, how many special interests can fund you and through that process how well can you distort reality to make your opponent out to be un-American, a Socialist, out to get senior citizens, planning to ruin our economy, planning to tax the rich, or not planning to tax the rich, not being born in this country, or being of the wrong religion, socio-economic class, or color.

The reason America is doomed is because what we have truly lost in the process of selling out our government is the truth.  You see the truth doesn’t matter any more, science is abhorred, unless of course it is being used to find a new way to get people high, or make your I-phone better, faster, stronger, able to masturbate you while you surf the web with unlimited battery capacity on a 4G network.

How do I know this to be true?  Because routinely when inaccuracies are pointed out by multiple fact checkers the political response is to misdirect or create confusion, to change the focus of the news as soon as possible.  BOTH parties do this, it is the standard operating procedure of today’s politics.  And people on both side of the aisle let pass because the other side does it to.

Also if you notice, both sides are always right, the other side is always wrong.  I would ask you simply, what ideology have you ever encountered that is right 100% of the time.  If that were possible, Fox News and MSNBC are never wrong and their stories, opinions and general bullshit are diametrically opposed, so they can’t both be right.  Poor CNN who actually tries to what FOX News claims to be, fair and balanced, has seen it’s ratings tank in comparison to MSNBC and FOX News, that’s our fault folks, we are the ones who watch the shows, we create the ratings.  We are telling the people who program our news that we are no longer interested in truth, or honest analysis.   We want to watch people argue, make fun of the people of the other view and find out what Marge in Omaha thinks via the anchor’s Twitter feed.

I constantly see television ads that are obvious lies.  If you believe what you see on TV, oil, gas and coal companies care more about local communities, economies and the environment than they do about profits.  Please comment on this piece if you actually believe that to be true, because I have ocean front property for sale in Utah and I want you to have the first crack at it.  This isn’t new folks, for decades people were told to smoke to soothe throat problems and that smoking isn’t bad for you and certainly not addictive.  Tobacco companies, like all big corporations will lie to maximize quarterly profits because they know at the end of the day, the lawsuits mean nothing compared to their profits.  You might think all of those smoking lawsuits destroyed the big tobacco companies, if you believe that, research a company named Altria.  You might know it better by it’s Tobacco company name, Philip Morris.

America may have at one time been truly exceptional, but it wasn’t exceptional by decree of God like most Conservatives seem to believe.  America was exceptional because we solved problems, we compromised when necessary to get things done, we put a priority on educating our children.  That is not a result of a decree from God instead those are the characteristics of a multicultural, evolving and concerned citizenry.   Not the petulant consumer children we have become.

There was a moment, shortly after the tragedy of 9/11 where America seemed like it found itself again.  We put away the partisan bickering, we felt compassion for our fellow Americans.  Except for a few incidents we didn’t go on a nationwide sweep of Muslims and close all of their mosques.  I was proud of America for the first time in my life during that small window of time. 

But that ended, we used the tragedy as a political tool to invade Iraq and it all slowly started to unravel again like a burning flag.  Since that time we have seen nothing but increasing divisiveness, fewer civil liberties, new laws against protest, an ever-increasing home security agency that reaches into every facet of our lives, there are even Homeland Security Documents as part of your loan package when you buy a house.

We have polarized our politics to the point where the minority party will cheer for our economy to fail for their political gain.  My God do you realize what that means?  As the economy tumbles more children go into poverty and therefore more children die due to reduced nutrition and medical care.  So in effect our governmental representatives would rather see children die than compromise 1% of their ideological beliefs.  Maybe we should rename those idiotlogical beliefs.  Now did any of them think that position through to that logical end, of course not, it’s just politics, a game that you win if you and your party get re-elected.

We’ve failed America, we’ve sold our truth, our country and our souls to special interests and corporations.  We did it so we wouldn’t have to think and so we can buy more things.  We abrogated our responsibility and in doing so have sold out our children’s future. 

Two men are running for President of the United States of America and both are probably decent individuals.  Both are the pictures of main stream America, family men, by all accounts good fathers and good husbands both are Christians as so many of you are and yet almost all of you hate one or the other and are willing to accuse them of horrible things.   But both have willingly been manipulated by the political process to put their chances of election, or re-election before their actual core values and it’s too bad. 

However neither of these men are worthy of your scorn or the names you choose to call them.  It is the process that we have condoned that created the polarization in this country.  Liberals are not interested in running this country into a Greek style debt crisis, Conservatives are not awful hateful people who don’t care about poor people.  In fact, I doubt there are many true liberals or conservatives out there.  Most of us have views that range across the spectrum, conservative on some things liberal on others.  If you don’t then you probably aren’t thinking, as I said earlier, no one ideology is right 100% of the time.

America is on the precipice of doom but we can prevent it.  The solution is to be compassionate, considerate of others views, the ability to compromise, a desire to operate off of facts, not opinions.  We need to remove the insane money that drives our politics and maybe even go to open elections instead of primaries and elections pitting one party always against the other.  Unfortunately, I’ve lost faith in this country, we are too selfish to do the things I suggest or to come to agreement on ways to improve things.  It makes me sad that both of my grandfathers fought in World War II for an America Dream that no longer exists.

Sharing a blog post – 10 things Americans don’t realize

A really will written and excellent blog piece on things Americans don’t realize about America, check it out. ~ ZDBlue

http://postmasculine.com/america

America is not the greatest country in the world

I have written a couple of pieces before about how annoying the idea of American Exceptionalism is to me.  You see it takes all thought out of the equation, we’re America and we’re the best just because we’re America, circular bullshit reasoning with no critical analysis.  There are things about America that make it an absolutely wonderful country and there are things about America that make it a shit country.  This idea is not unique either, you could probably say the same thing about every country that has ever or will ever exist on Earth.  Recognizing this fact does not make you un-American, un-Patriotic or someone who doesn’t appreciate our country, it makes you a rationale thinking human being who is willing to look at reality without blinding or deluding yourself through the prism of ideology, or the name of a political position or party.  If your thoughts have to be filtered through your ideology or if you have to hate an idea because the other party came up with it, especially if you loved it five years ago when your party was in favor of it then you have blinders on, take them off, try to see the world the way it really is not how it was report on Fox News or MSNBC last.

A new show came on HBO Sunday night called the Newsroom and the opening scene did a better job of addressing the American Exceptionalism argument than I ever will, the link to the video is below.  The character who makes the speech basically becomes a political pariah, why, because he spoke the truth, exactly what happens to anyone in our country who tries to do the same.  Don’t buck the only political party we truly have, the re-election party, and don’t buck the people truly in charge of our country, the corporations.  Unfortunately what is quickly becoming the best advice I can give anyone is keep your damn head down and try not to be noticed.  That also seems to be advice that goes against everything America is supposed to represent or at least used to represent in the sanitized, virtualized and fantasized “old days.”  Enjoy the video and throw the blinders in the trash.

America is not the greatest country in the world

 

Z Deacon Blue’s Inconsiderate America

Z Deacon Blue’s Inconsiderate America

I was talking with a friend recently and we were talking about the changes we’ve seen over our lifetime, this is what old guys do when they get together.  I had to admit that the biggest change I’d seen in America over my lifetime is something that’s quite disturbing it is that America has become an inconsiderate nation.  It seems to me very often as if people believe they are alone in the world, as if their actions have no impact on another person at the least, and more disturbingly that they just don’t care what impacts they have.

The first place I really began to notice this was in movie theaters, first as VCR’s and then DVD players became widely available people seem to have lost the ability to differentiate between when they are at home and when they are in public.  At home they talk through the movies, make jokes and that’s fine, they are not disturbing anyone but their own family.  However in a theater they are now disrupting other people’s experience and this is completely inconsiderate.

Another place that people seem to have a unique ability to ignore the rest of humanity is the self-checkout line at the grocery store.  Granted grocery stores do a terrible job of clarifying where people should line up, but most people figure it out.  Inevitably, when the store is busy and people are lined up, someone will cluelessly, or so they pretend, stroll up right behind the registers and jump the line.

In these situations I can’t keep my mouth shut, it just seems so ridiculous to me that people should be allowed to benefit from either stupidity or being inconsiderate.  I try to be polite, at the grocery store I’ll say, “excuse me, there’s a line.”  People inevitably act surprised and say, “oh sorry, I didn’t see the line.”  Of course in order to see the line you would have to look for a line.

At the movie theater I also start to be polite, using the universal shh, however I have to admit it rarely works and sometimes people are downright dismissive when you ask them to be quiet.  Now I don’t recommend this but I’ve been known to be a bit militant at this point.  Being, shall we say, extremely verbally direct, even once firing an empty popcorn bucket across the theater.

Now I don’t recommend people react at quite that level, but what I would love is just for one day in America, it would be great if everyone who saw someone being inconsiderate would just say something.  Not get into get in an argument or whip a bucket of popcorn at them but just say excuse me, you’re being inconsiderate please don’t do that.  I think in the end this really does have an effect on people, they might react negatively but later it bothers them to have been an inconsiderate ass.

Unfortunately, I know this would never happen, people are somewhat justifiably afraid that if they say something the person will react angrily, or worse react violently and people don’t want to be involved in a confrontation.  I get this, but the simple fact is if people are never told, if never suffer any negative consequences for their actions, they’ll never change and we get what we have today in America.

How bad, well this is what I saw today at the college I work at.  A student came into the restroom to take a dump, he was chewing tobacco and hadn’t brought a cup to spit in.  So, he laid down some toilet paper on the floor and proceeded to spit onto the paper while he sat on the toilet.  Now that’s not disgusting enough, but after he finished, he got up and left and of course left the tobacco stained paper sitting on the floor.  People just suck and it’s time we do something about it.  So my hope is that he’ll read this piece and realize it’s about him and embarrass the hell out of him, I know a slim chance, but maybe less slim when I post copies in that restroom.

So folks, give me your examples of inconsiderate America and I’ll keep posting mine.  Let’s see if we can’t embarrass America into being more considerate, if not, I may have to resort to carrying an airhorn to movie theaters.

Fun Friday: George Carlin sizes up America

Fun Friday:  George Carlin sizes up America

George Carlin was probably America’s greatest comedian.  For those of you are thinking wait, no, that’s Will Ferrell do not waste your time watching these videos.  This is comedy for thinking humans.  If you’re a raging conservative patriot do not watch these videos, you may stroke out.  George Carlin was never afraid to use a dirty word or a sexual imagery to illustrate his points so this is adult material, you’ve all been warned, click on these links at your own risk, now open your mind and prepare to laugh.

George Carlin on American politics, elections and the public

George Carlin: America likes War

George Carlin: America’s owner don’t want you to think

George Carlin on the Ten Commandments

 

Sending your child to school is a crime in Connecticut

Homelessness is a serious issue in America and I don’t think many of us can imagine the difficulty of living on the street and having to work hard each day just to scrap by with the barest of essentials.  Now, imagine that same situation while being responsible for 6-year-old child.  It brings images of the Will Smith film the Pursuit of Happyness  

Most people in homeless situations have a lot of problems, for some it’s purely financial, for others it’s mental illness and for even others it’s drug and alcohol issues.  Given this reality, a homeless woman in Norwalk, CT, who has taken the responsibility to help her child get educated.  Because she needed an address to enroll the child she used her babysitters address.  Now, her reward for being a responsible parent is to be arrested for theft and her babysitter has been tossed out of her public funded housing for being an accessory to education I guess.  What the hell is wrong with this country?!