Category: Cultural Obscenities

How our culture has allowed itself to become twisted

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Alright many Liberal Democrats are officially Obscene!

I’ve seen more dumbass tweets and comments lately that directly say Republicans are the cause of everything from Tornadoes in OK to bridge collapses in Washington.

I’ve got news for you people… 

As a Republican I wish I had that kind of power… If the Republicans had that kind of power do you think President Obama would have won the election? Here’s a better question. If Republican had that kind of power… do yo think they’d unleash it on other Republicans? Uh… NO dumbass they’d have destroyed democratic strongholds!

Ok, So stop with the moronic diatribe. 

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I’m disappointed in, and ashamed of a lot of folks in this country.

In particular I’m ashamed of people who in the midst of a disaster, chose to comment along partisan lines making political points.

Need I remind you that 24 children DIED in Moore OK?

How is this any different from the tragedy of Sandy Hook? Oh yes, one was a tornado the other was an insane guy with guns.

I guess there is a difference… but not to the parents who buried their children.

Where is the wailing and gnashing of teeth? Where is the 24 hour news coverage? Where’s the indignation? Wheres the outrage that a public building wasn’t safe for children to be attending school?

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Within hours of the tornado touching down there were people making comments publicly on Twitter that implied, or directly said somehow a red state like OK was deserving of a tragedy BECAUSE they were a RED state. 

Worse yet were comments saying that because the Republican party had voted against a bill (apparently loaded with pork) to allocate more money for victims of hurricane Sandy, Oklahoma was somehow Karmic payback. 

Frankly, one dumbass comment I could overlook as someones village idiot getting access to a computer.

However, the torrent of similar comments on Twitter and even being posted on major news sites covering the tornado simply made me want to vomit.

I was offended, sickened, and honestly wanted nothing more than to backhand the lot of these people. Including some people I call friends. I haven’t decided yet If I’ll still call them friends… Time will tell.

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How the hell do you figure anyone was deserving of a MILE WIDE tornado?

In a disaster there are no Democrats or Republicans, there are just people who have in many cases lost it all. They’re Americans and they’re hurt and their community is in shambles.

The only thing we as Americans should be saying is “How can we help? How do we get them supplies and medical aid?” Costs be damned! Let the accountants figure it out later. 

Glen Beck, whom I don’t listen to… I know he’s a media personality, I know he’s a conservative, I suspect from what I’ve heard him quoted as saying that he & I will probably not agree on too many points… called on his listeners for unloaded 18 wheelers to load up emergency supplies an hour after the tornado touched down.

He used his fame and media connections to start coordinating relief efforts.

He could have been taking pot shots at FEMA. He could have started flinging shit at the Obama administration. I don’t know if he did.

What I do know is that a Tweet that came from him and was retweeted, gaining momentum and that more and more people were saying great idea! How can we help?

That’s what Americans are supposed to do. 

Political posturing, grandstanding, and bullshit are supposed to evaporate when it comes time for us to pull together.

Maybe we All should remember that.

I’d suggest that the Ultra Liberal Democrats take note…

I’m a Republican who’s not pleased with the Republican party. But I will never switch to the Democratic party if this is what passes for acceptable behavior.

I will however redouble my efforts to help the Republican party repair itself and grow.

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I broke my rule – I watched the Benghazi hearing

UnknownAll I can say is wow!

I don’t suppose it really qualifies as watching the news, I was watching the hearing on C-SPAN, online.

I did get some other work done while it was playing, thanks to my big computer monitor, not nearly as much as I should have gotten done.

The hearing was engrossing and I’d find myself stopping everything else just to listen and watch.

imagesElijah Cummings was an ass in his opening statements.

The Hicks testimony was unbelievably moving. Hearing him take note that Libyans died that night trying to help. I think he said “The Libyans shed blood for us that night“, was something I’ll remember for a long time.

When Mr Hicks described the heroism and the professionalism of the staff I thought he was amazing.

To have a Lt Col. Say “For the first time in my career a Diplomat has more balls than the Military” is telling. It describes just how frustrated the Lt. Col was, and notes the respect Mr Hicks earned by his decisions & actions.

I was really disturbed by how many Democrats were bailing out of the chambers during the hearing.

It was also shameful how many “News” agencies said absolutely nothing about any aspect of the hearing. I thought these people were supposed to keep us informed.

I don’t know if there’s a scandal here, or if the Administration lied, or if there’s anything that was unknown, per se.

I do think that enough questions were raised that further testimony is not unreasonable.

Questions like Who issued the order to the military not to go to Benghazi as re-enforcements?

Why was the compound not up to specification?

Why was the person in charge of security essentially made to feel like he had to stop complaining when he was doing his job in pointing out that security was in fact not what the State Department Rules called for?

Who above Nordstrom signed off on the security as it stood?

Why was the terrorist angle downplayed in favor of saying a dumb-ass video caused the attack. When the Libyan Government was telling our people that this was terrorists and named them?

More important than anything else, why is this political at all?

Truth is never political, it simply is.

I saw some younger Democrats asking reasonable questions, and I saw older Democrats glaring at them. Why?

The people asking well reasoned questions were doing their jobs. The jobs that their constituents sent them to Washington to do.

Unknown-1The Democrat from NY Maloney… Wow!

Ma’am you were so far out of line I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

Mr Thompson was not compelled to speak with you. That he chose not to speak with the Democratic Minority was well within his rights. It wasn’t at all partisan.

That you attempted to get away with such a blatant spin on the truth, trying to paint the Republicans as obstructionistic was embarrassing.

Ms Maloney, you’ve embarrassed yourself, your state, and your country.  I sincerely hope that your constituents vote you out of office in the next election cycle.

I’m hoping that the truth of all of this comes out, not because I want to see the administration blamed. But because I want to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again.

The only way to do that, is to fully understand what happened in the first place.

We do that by dropping the partisan bullshit and asking well reasoned questions.

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Oh for the love of god! The insanity continues!!!

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As a side note this was originally going to publish on Tuesday. Given the events of Monday in Boston and Wednesday in TX I held it up. I’ve thought about it and decided that this still needed to be said.

We as a country cannot and should not get into the habit of “Banning or interfering” as this Senator attempted to do. 

Banning an event or book one group dislikes, places us on the slippery slope to censorship. 

I personally disliked Jesse Jacksons rallies in FL against Zimmerman. However I am duty bound as a citizen under the constitution to protect Rev. Jackson right to free speech.

This is a philosophy that is deeply ingrained in me. As it should be in all American citizens, most especially our politicians.

I understand that the Senator was likely just seeking some publicity, but this method sets a bad precedent. 

All right people I’m going to say some things here that are likely to piss some of you off.

TOUGH!

A Connecticut Senator by the name of Murphy asked that the NRA 500 NASCAR race be Not Aired or cancelled because of the fact that it was sponsored by the NRA.

I don’t even follow or watch NASCAR and this pisses me off.

I see this as nothing more than a spotlight grabbing publicity seeking asshole Senator standing on the Newtown Tragedy in an effort to look, yes look like he’s doing something.

I’m sick of hearing about Newtown. I’m sick of hearing every fucking controversial issue being tied back to Newtown. 

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I’m so fucking over it I can’t see straight and I am equally sick of hearing talking heads and dumbass members of congress blabbing on and on about the pros and cons of various asinine gun control bills.

I’m sick of hearing moronic state representatives blabbing on about things that they have no idea about.

Then trying to make laws that are supposed to be about the safety of the public. When in reality the new laws will not do one fucking thing to make us safer.

If Senator Murphy had been successful in stopping the broadcast or even the race, I’d have been calling for his immediate removal from office for violating his oath of office.

You know… that little bit about upholding the constitution? I might even have been screaming for him to be hauled up on charges of improper use of power and influence peddling.

Why?

Because had he managed to stop the broadcast or the race itself, I believe that would have violated the First Amendment.

Folks… Events like this race are planned at least a year if not two years in advance.

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The NRA PAID their sponsorship money.

The fans paid their money for the tickets.

The advertisers paid for their commercials to run during the broadcast.

The cars and team uniforms were logoed, and purchased.

Thousands of people fed their families because they had jobs associated with the NRA 500.

That doesn’t necessarily mean those people agreed with the NRA on any point.

However, unlike our politicians, those thousands of people did their jobs and were paid for their labor.

No-body could have predicted that a CRAZY person would kill his mother, take guns from his home and kill a bunch of school children.

That this Senator, seemed to think that all that money, and all those jobs should… What?

Give everybody a refund? Take a 400 million or MORE (I’m guessing) dollar loss?

Simply because he disagrees with the sponsor, demonstrates to me personally that Senator Murphy is unfit to be in the Senate.

Clearly he has no clue about how economies work and is more than willing to disrupt the finances of thousands if not hundreds of thousand of people for nothing!

Based on that alone he should be removed from office, he’s unfit to lead in any way.

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Cudos to SendGrid for doing the right thing… Or When Stupid is a crime

Or I could have called this… When Twitter is a weapon.

On Sunday 3/17/2013 a lady attending PyCon in Santa Clara overheard a couple of developers engaging in some sophomoric joking where they were trading sexual innuendos about poorly named devices.

Instead of doing the simple thing like turning around and letting these guys know they were out of line she photographed & tweeted their picture out into the twitterverse.

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Her action caused the two developers to be removed from the convention, one of the guys lost his job and ultimately so did she. This Article is pretty brutal about how they report it.

There is so much that is wrong in this scenario.

This woman had options:

She could have done the human thing and asked the guys to cool it, explaining that they were being offensive.

She could have moved, thereby taking responsibility for her own feelings. (I’m not saying that she should have been required to move, but she could have removed herself from the annoyance.)

She chose to be passive aggressive, snap a photo of the guys (without their knowledge / consent or modeling release) then broadcast that photo to a presumably wide public audience captioned with something identifying them as pigs. Saying essentially HELP ME THEY’RE SEXUALLY HARASSING ME! 

We’ve all sat through sexual harassment training. As I’ve sat through those classes I’ve often thought that the Harassment brush was just a little too broad and biased against men. Women have far greater latitude in what they can say to men and we men have to take it.

I’ve been asked in the workplace if I was circumcised, and how big my dick was by crude Women. I’ve also listened to endless gay jokes and disparaging remarks, from men.

Hell, I’ve been present in rooms where the evil of the WHITE man was being discussed and the suggested solution was that all the white people should be punished. Yeah racism isn’t solely the domain of white people. Racists come in all colors shapes and sizes.

So WHAT?

Next! I simply exited the area when the conversation turned to stuff I didn’t want or need to hear.

I’ve watched woman after woman end good mens careers with the corporate Nuclear weapon of “Harassment” it’s not a new phenomena. I’ve also seen men laughed out of an HR department when they decided to report a woman that was harassing them.

I remember laughing my ass off several years ago when after considerable publicity a female sports reporter was allowed in the locker rooms of male professional teams.

She was then offended by naked men walking around in the locker room. I thought it was a joke, but quickly it escalated into something more. After gaining access to the male locker rooms, she decided that the men should be clothed when she was there. The insanity came to a halt when the teams simply stopped talking to her.

I remember thinking, “Lady that’s why we built locker rooms. Guys would be just as happy changing clothes and showering outside. We created the space so that women and children wouldn’t be offended.”

At the time a number of male sports reported speculated about gaining access to female locker rooms but that was considered creepy.

This situation is also about our collective thin skin, and our psychotic enforcement of  Politically Correct standards on steroids.

You can reasonably expect to be offended by something anytime you’re out in public.

For that matter you can expect to be offended by the crap that passes for entertainment on TV, not to mention the commercials. KIAs booming hip hop commercials come to mind. The Kardashians, uhh hello???

It’s the kid with his pants hanging down his butt.

Or the morbidly obese guy sweating like Niagara Falls in front of you at a fast food joint ordering 2 mega cheese burgers super size fries and a gallon cup of diet coke.

It’s the plumber proudly showing off a hairy plumbers crack.

The gang member flashing signs at an opposing gang in front of a crowd of kids, daring someone in the opposing gang to shoot him, thoughtless of the collateral damage.

It’s the past middle aged woman whose been around the block once too often, braless dressed like a teenage slut.

And it’s the teenager dressed like a slut being upset because people treat her badly.

It’s the Middle Eastern guy screaming and shaking his fist at a veiled woman in a mall, as she shrinks away.

It’s the profane, the obscene, the morally ambiguous.

It’s the self centered dumbasses more interested in texting while they’re driving or walking expecting you to move out of their way because they can’t be bothered to pay attention to someone as lowly as you.

It’s signs with messages you find offensive. Do I need to see salacious advertising for the latest “Falling Star” from Hollywood?

How about booming music with lyrics talking about killing whitie or slappin dat ho ’cause she don’t suck you right.

It’s the gas pump TVs screaming at you while you’re just trying to put gas in your car. while you’re thinking, “why am I paying 4.80 a gallon to be forced to hear this shit?”

In short it’s all the things that we each find offensive, yet put up with and ignore.

These things we take no action about because after all it’s about freedom of expression. Well, freedom… and the undercurrent of fear of getting involved. 

But two men, having a laugh at bawdy innuendo at a convention in public who happen to be in earshot of a woman… and the shit hits the fan.

I think that SendGrid did the right thing firing this woman, I also think they should apologize to the developers who were removed from the conference and they should pay the developers companies for the lost conference fees.

Moreover, I think this should serve as a call to arms.

The time for draconian Politically Correct enforcement is past. it’s time for some of us to grow thicker skins, and stop trying to see offense in every situation.

It’s also time to stop denigrating being Male.

Face it men are different. Aside from our cocks and balls. We think differently and look at the world differently. As a result our jokes and what we find funny will be reflective of those differences. 

It’s time to let men be men.

Ladies, believe it or not, if you simply ask us to play nice… We will.

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Can we now safely say its gone too far?

I caught this headline yesterday, the NRA picked it up this morning on Twitter.

7-year-old Maryland boy suspended for shaping pastry into gun – (via @WashTimes)

This boggles my mind. It’s almost as bad as the boy being suspended from making a gun with his index finger.

Or the Canadian boy last year whose parents home was raided because the boy drew a picture of a gun in school on a piece of paper. Uh… hello? It was a picture! (There’s more to the story and I’m oversimplifying the Canadian case a little. If you’re interested, you can find the original article in the archive section of this blog.)

20130303-094656.jpg Folks lets get a fucking clue!

Guns are in our culture, they are in every cop show, they’re romanticized, demonized, and endlessly discussed in the media.

As an aside, I happened to catch an episode of Hawaii Five-O a few weeks back.

There was a very interesting exchange between the two main characters, I don’t remember the whole thing exactly but it was something like “you’re a cop how can you not like guns?”, The other characters said “I use a gun as part of my job but that doesn’t mean I have to like guns.”

I remember that caught my attention because it was unusual for a cop show to address the gun issue and I wondered if the actor(s) or writers were taking a bit of a stand. I wondered if the actor who played the character not liking guns was making a personal statement for himself in the show with the help of the writers.

Either way, I liked the delivery. I thought it was reasonable, not preachy and pretty adult in it’s message. It also happened that it mirrors my own opinions about guns. They’re tools. Shooting at a target range is fun, a gun is a tool that facilitates shooting at the target range. I might like a particular gun, or a certain gun might have sentimental value to me. But that’s about as far as it goes. I am by no means and don’t anticipate becoming a collector / ammo hoarder with a walk in gun safe

There are pictures of guns almost daily in the newspapers in this country.

We shouldn’t be surprised that our kids would be curious.

The problem I see with the irrational behavior exhibited in these instances is that we add to the mystique of guns.

What lesson are we teaching a 7 year old by suspending him? Are we saying that guns are mysterious, forbidden, frightening, and therefore ultimately desirable?

Will this child learn the lesson that he can get out of school anytime he wants by presenting any remotely pseudo gun like object in class? Where will that lead?

Will this child and his peers ultimately decide that a gun is the most sought after object they can acquire? If so, doesn’t that logically increase the probability of children accidentally shooting each other?

20130303-094712.jpg It’s time for us to dial it down a few notches.

Water pistols will soon be making their annual appearance.

How do we as a society justify water guns being sold at Toys r Us and Walgreens, as toys and at the same time suspend kids for making croissant or finger guns?

I personally think making gang hand signs is far more damaging and deserving of sanction but that’s my opinion.

How about the schools, instead of freaking out, do something like actually teach the kids why they’re concerned?

Why not teach children what guns are used for, (hunting, law enforcement, military actions,) etc?

How about teaching kids the dangers of guns and that they’re loud and smelly. (Gunpowder smoke isn’t all that pleasant, when I was a kid I didn’t like the smell, now… Well it’s not a problem.)

I’d say get law enforcement involved, have them speak to the kids about guns and why they carry them.

Have local gun clubs or ranges put on demonstrations so the kids have a very clear idea about what a gun is, how much damage a gun can cause and why the children should be very careful if they find themselves around guns.

Even if none of the above was possible, I think it would be far more responsible for schools to teach kids something useful, like what to do if they happen to find an unattended gun or even just bullets.

Useful information like;

Don’t touch
Leave the area
Go find an adult and tell them where the gun/bullets are.

It’s not necessary to dwell on the negative. Criminals will provide ample examples of misuse via the daily news.

Instead of increasing the mystique, lets dispel it.

Lets teach the kids that a gun is a tool. Most children are less than interested in operating a shovel, rake, or lawnmower.

If we could put guns in the same context it would be far more effective at curbing children’s curiosity than completely disproportionate and frankly silly responses from adults and educators.

I swear! I’d no sooner pressed “Publish” on this entry when I saw this in Twitter.

A sixteen year old student has been suspended for disarming another student on a school bus.

But wait it gets better! Our suspended student was one of three suspended for disarming a fellow student that was pointing a loaded .22 caliber at another students head and threatening to kill him.

The gun toting student was arrested.

The referral slip for the kid that disarmed the would-be shooter, stated that he’d been suspended for being involved in an incident with a gun.

Ok… WTF?

Again what are we trying to teach our children? We say you should be responsible, get involved, prevent bullying, and when kids actually do behave bravely and with honor doing what we tell them is the right thing…

We punish them!

Folks this really is not the way to instill higher values in our children or in our society.