TumbleRead

Untrammeled rants by and for the plebeian

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Vows are for the Common Folk

August 8th, 2008 by muteDonkey
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I don’t know about you, but when I married my wife, I made a vow to be faithful to her in good times and bad, in sickness and in health, etc.  I assume that John Edwards did the same.  But John Edwards, like most politicians, has proven that he can’t keep that vow.  Having to admit that he had an affair, Edwards joins the long list of politicians that could not be faithful to the person that should be the closest to them.

So, that makes me wonder.  If John Edwards makes a vow to me, a voter that he will never even see face to face, will he keep it?  It is a rhetorical question, because we all know that the answer is “no.”

Sadly, I am not surprised or even disappointed by this revelation because this is the type of decay that I expect from our politicians.  The higher the level they have attained, the greater the degree of decay I expect.

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What a divided coward…

July 14th, 2008 by trossi
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From Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said on Sunday he used “poor phrasing” in a speech supporting Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel.

“You know, the truth is that this was an example where we had some poor phrasing in the speech. And we immediately tried to correct the interpretation that was given,” he said in an interview aired on Sunday on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria — GPS.”

“The point we were simply making was, is that we don’t want barbed wire running through Jerusalem, similar to the way it was prior to the ‘67 war, that it is possible for us to create a Jerusalem that is cohesive and coherent,” Obama said.

Obama’s campaign has issued similar clarifications since the candidate’s speech to pro-Israel lobby group after he clinched the Democratic presidential nomination early last month.

In the speech, Obama told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that if elected president in November, he would work for peace with a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

“Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided,” the Illinois senator said. Palestinian leaders reacted with anger and dismay.

Israel calls the city its undivided and eternal capital, but this status has never been recognized internationally. Palestinians want East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, for a future capital.

The U.S. Congress passed a law in 1995 describing Jerusalem as capital of Israel and saying it should not be divided, but successive presidents have used their foreign policy powers to maintain the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv and to back negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians on the status of Jerusalem.

Obama, who plans a trip to the Mideast this summer, has faced wariness among some Jewish voters over his commitment to Israel, fueled by suspicion over his comments indicating willingness to talk to Iranian leaders.

Gee, I wonder why there is wariness? Maybe it’s because he talks out of both sides of his mouth. The best thing is, if his speech isn’t written for him, he always spends the next day clarifying what was said. Just another example of him not saying what he means and not meaning what he says.

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McCain shakeup

July 13th, 2008 by trossi
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For this edition of Satire Sunday I wanted to post a satirical blog from Scott Ott over at Scrappleface.

When political campaigns reorganize to revitalize a struggling effort, heads roll. However, aides say Sen. John McCain has survived this week’s shakeup in the McCain for President campaign.

Under new management by Steve Schmidt, a former political operative for George Bush, the GOP presidential campaign was expected to jettison everyone who has failed to consistently, and effectively communicate the conservative message to voters.

While Sen. McCain’s name reportedly showed up on the “short list” he has apparently weathered the most recent round of cuts.

I laugh out loud every time I read it, so I just thought I’d share. 

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Tourism is so gay!!!!

July 11th, 2008 by trossi
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I actually laughed out loud while shaking my head when I read the following article.

From WTLX:

South Carolina’s state tourism agency has dropped out of an effort to attract gay tourists.

The State newspaper of Columbia reported Monday the Parks, Recreation and Tourism Department had joined a campaign tied to gay pride week celebrations in London that included ads saying “South Carolina is so gay.”

The newspaper says Atlanta, Boston and New Orleans were also part of the campaign. The state agency said Thursday it would not pay a fee of nearly $5,000 to participate in the ad campaign.

Director Chad Prosser says an agency advertising manager had signed off on the contract proposed by the state’s London advertising coordinator. Prosser says the agency will require more review of future overseas advertising.

Hahahaha…”South Carolina is so gay”, gets me every time. Now, imagine the uproar if they switched the slogan. “South Carolina is so straight” would probably get them thrown out of the “United” States yesterday. It’s so funny how many people you exclude when you try to include everybody.

This post is so gay!!!! 

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EmPATHETIC judges

July 11th, 2008 by trossi
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I really wanted to share this article from Frontpagemag.com written by Henry Mark Holzer. You can read the article in it’s entirety by clicking on the headline.

Obama’s Supreme Court  

Which bring us to the current election and presumptive Democrat Party nominee, Barack Obama.

There are some serious concerns if the fate of the federal judiciary, let alone the Supreme Court, falls into Obama’s hands (especially with a compliant Senate). Let’s take a look at the words of Obama himself:

On July 17, 2007, Obama made a speech in Washington, D.C. to the country’s leading abortion-meisters, “Planned Parenthood.” In the words of NBC reporter Carrie Dean, Obama not only “leveled harsh words at conservative Supreme Court justices,” but “he offered his own intention to appoint justices with ‘empathy’.”

“Empathy,” according to Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, is “the projection of one’s own personality into the personality of another in order to understand him better; ability to share in another’s emotions or feelings.”

Thus, we have been unmistakably warned that Obama will appoint Supreme Court justices who will not honestly interpret the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Fourteenth Amendment—let alone on the basis of what they say and meant to those who wrote them—but who, instead, will project their own personalities into others to understand them better; justices who can share in those others’ emotions or feelings.

And who might Obama’s empathy-receivers be?

Obama himself told us in that same 2007 Planned Parenthood speech: “We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.” (My emphasis.)

So much for the classical liberal philosophy that was at the founding’s core and in its fundamental documents. From now on, constitutional interpretation Obama-style is to be through the eyes of whom he sees as society’s alleged victims.

Obama’s confession drops Brennan’s Living Constitutionalism into yet a lower rung of hell. His confession reveals that while the Brennanites fed the Living Constitution’s voracious appetite in order to achieve the amorphous goals of “social justice, brotherhood, and human dignity,” Obama will nurture the beast with what’s left of limited government and individual rights, all in the name of “empathy”—a code word for something much darker: sacrifice of constitutionalism to the needs of society’s perceived victims.

This perversion of America’s essence—individuals as supreme, with government as their servant—is Brennanism squared. While our Nation has been able to survive Brennanism—though with the recent Guantanamo decisions, especially Boumediene v. Bush, who knows?— will it be able to survive Obama-appointed Supreme Court justices?

Scary.

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Political Correctness enchilada style…

July 10th, 2008 by trossi
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I have no PC in me, so this next story REALLY bothers me. Maybe I am overreacting, but seriously, this is beyond ridiculous. 

From CNN:

HOUSTON, Texas (CNN) – A comic-book character popular in Mexico for generations has run into a cultural barrier at the border, where Americans see him as a racist caricature.

For more than 60 years Mexicans have followed the adventures of “Memin Pinguin.” But the dark-skinned Memin’s exaggerated features in “Memin for President” came as a shock to Houston, Texas, Wal-Mart shopper Shawnedria McGinty.

“I was like, OK, is that a monkey or a boy?” McGinty said. “To me it was an insult.”

…”So I asked my boyfriend, does that look like a monkey to you?” she said. “And we went back and forth and he was like, no, that’s a black woman,” referring to the character’s Aunt Jemima-like mother.

McGinty and Houston community activist Quannel X want the comic books removed from the stores.

“This is absolutely insensitive toward race, in particular the African-American culture, and also people of color,” Quannel X said. “This is poking fun at the physical features of an entire people.”

But Mexican readers who grew up following the shenanigans of Memin say critics need to look beyond the cover and understand the stories.

“They will bring a smile to their face because we’re so fond of that character,” said Javier Salas, a Spanish-language talk show host on Chicago radio station WRTO. “We respect him, we love him. And that’s why it’s so absurd for us to hear complaints from people who don’t know, don’t understand Memin.”

Memin is a poor Cuban-Mexican kid with bug eyes, thick lips and protruding ears. The mischievous and caring boy helps his mother by selling newspapers and shining shoes.

“We grew up reading, learning and educating ourselves with a lot of the topics they always touched on, which was honesty, justice, tolerance. He was a very unique character,” Salas said.

Wal-Mart spokesman Lorenzo Lopez said the retailer has instructed stores to remove the books from shelves and discontinue sales.

“We received the customer complaint regarding the book, which we knew was based on a popular cartoon character in Mexico. We looked into it further, and we decided to no longer distribute the book and are in the process of removing the books from the stores.”

Really? I have to go to a man by the name of Quannel X for my sensitivity training? It may be a stretch here, but I’m pretty sure Quannel took his “last name” from a man named Malcom. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with that, but I’m not saying that it’s right either. Oh that’s right, Malcom X was Mr. PC, he never said anything that would be considered racist or offensive. I really hope that you are picking up what I’m putting down.

Soon, we are going to be like the UK, where you have to walk on eggshells and not speak to your neighbor so you can avoid offending anyone. The problem with being PC is that when you talk, the next words out of your mouth always have to be “I’m sorry”. When you think about it, somebody somewhere is going to take offensive to every word or image out there.

Last time I checked, we weren’t the land of censorship.

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Act 1, Scene pathetic

July 9th, 2008 by trossi
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This has to be the worst news of the day…

From BBC:

The smaller of Hollywood’s two acting unions has approved a new prime time TV contract with Hollywood studios.

The American Federation of TV and Radio Artists (AFTRA), which represents 70,000 people, said 62.4% of those who voted had accepted the three-year deal.

But the larger Screen Actors Guild (SAG) claimed the agreement undermined its own talks for a richer deal, which are ongoing.

…The Guild is disputing some of the same issues that led to a 14-week screenwriters strike last year, especially how artists should be paid for work created for and distributed over the internet.

SAG plans to deliver its formal response to the studios on 10 July.

“We will continue to address the issues of importance to actors that AFTRA left on the table,” SAG president Alan Rosenberg said in a statement.

“We remain committed to achieving a fair contract for SAG actors.”

The contracts of both unions expired June 30, but both agreed with the studios to keep working under the old terms to avoid a shutdown of the entertainment industry.

Nonetheless, Hollywood has already slipped into a “de facto strike” mode, as major studios have halted most of their film production to avoid the possibility of costly labour disruptions.

I was really looking forward to no new crap coming out of Hollywood. Hopefully SAG sticks to their guns for a couple more years. Maybe then, families would actually start communicating instead of sitting around a box with flashing lights and sound every night. A boy can dream…

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Honor Killing III

July 8th, 2008 by trossi
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From CNN:

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) – A Pakistani man accused of killing his daughter because she wanted out of an arranged marriage told a judge Tuesday that he had done nothing wrong.

Chaudhry Rashid, 54, later said he was “very disturbed” and “not in a state of mind” to talk because of the death of his daughter, Sandeela Kanwal.

A somber and tearful Rashid made his first court appearance Tuesday. He was advised through an Urdu interpreter of the murder charge and his legal rights.

A judge also admonished Rashid, of Jonesboro, Georgia, to not make any statements without clearing them with his attorney.

“My client is going through a difficult time. As you can imagine, he is distraught,” attorney Tammi Long said after the hearing.

…Rashid’s wife told authorities that Kanwal recently had wed in Pakistan in an arranged marriage. The young woman’s husband was living in Chicago, Illinois, police said, but Kanwal remained at her father’s home and worked at a metro Atlanta Wal-Mart for a brief time.

“The victim was not interested in marrying, nor remaining married to her husband,” the police report said, citing information authorities received from Rashid’s wife. “This was causing a great deal of friction between the victim and her father,” so much so that the two had not spoken in two months, the report said

…”Honor killings” — the slaying by family members of a woman or girl thought to be bringing them shame — are usually kept quiet, making it difficult to determine how frequently they occur.

The United Nations Population Fund estimated in September 2000 that as many as 5,000 women and girls fall victim to such killings each year.

Nowhere in this article does it mention what religion was practiced in this household. Was this left out intentionally? I wouldn’t bet that it wasn’t.

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23.7 billion reasons for the government to not run healthcare

July 3rd, 2008 by trossi
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Here’s just another reason that I don’t want the government running my healthcare.

From cnsnews.com:

(CNSNews.com) - Medicaid and Medicare combined made an estimated $23.7 billion in “improper payments” last year, according to government audits.

These included $12.9 billion in improper payments by Medicaid and $10.8 billion in improper payments by Medicare.

The estimate for improper payments in Medicare included only those improper payments in the Medicare fee-for-service program. The government did not estimate the improper payments made in fiscal 2007 in the Medicare Advantage program, which spent $75.1 billion last year, or in the Medicare prescription drug program, which spent the $49.3 billion, according to the GAO.

Total federal spending for Medicaid was $190.6 billion in 2007, according to the Office Management and Budget, and $370.7 billion for Medicare.

I know what we should do, let’s give them more money to waste! At some point I hope the people wake up and realize that anything the government does gets screwed up. And you want me to put my health in their hands? No thank you.

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If your not white, you must be black

July 1st, 2008 by trossi
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This article from the BBC left me speechless. Things just seem to be getting dumber and dumber.

The High Court in South Africa has ruled that Chinese South Africans are to be reclassified as black people.

It made the order so that ethnic Chinese can benefit from government policies aimed at ending white domination in the private sector.

The Chinese Association of South Africa took the government to court, saying its members had been discriminated against.

An estimated 200,000 ethnic Chinese live in South Africa.

The association said their members often failed to qualify for business contracts and job promotions because they were regarded as whites.

Affirmative action just means that you always have to say you’re sorry and give it to the other guy (assuming he’s not white). This however has taken it to a whole new level when they start assigning you a race that you are clearly not for the expressed reason of opening doors for you. Crazy.

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