I saw this video over at Pharyngula and I had to share it. The situation in Iran is truly tragic and people need to hear about it.
There are some friendly internet do-gooders that are helping Iranians bypass the government’s internet blockers. I read those instructions and they look a little scary for a n00bish blogger who does not quite understand the technical side of these things.
I don’t post a lot of youtube videos because that is the laziest blogging that there is. Then again, I haven’t been the slightest bit interested in standing on my internet soap box lately at all. Real life is much more interesting than this lit-up screen. Even though Saskatoon is a really brown, drab and ugly place, I have been reveling in the warm weather and spending all my free time outside. The streets and sidewalks are coated in a layer of thick, dried up mud that was left behind after all the snow melted. There are enormous potholes everywhere. There is a crater on just about every street in my neighborhood. There isn’t a stitch of greenery anywhere. The grass is covered in old leaves, twigs, take-out food wrappers, broken toys, and plastic bags. I haven’t had a whole lot of free time either. Two kids, a full-time job, real-life activism, a horse, a house, piles of dirty laundry, unvacuumed floors, a yard that is beckoning to be raked and planted, and a trucker boyfriend that I miss. Jeez Louise! Nobody would have any business telling me to get a life. I get tired just reading that list.
Driving my little purple car throughout the city of Saskatoon is exactly like navigating an obstacle course. I live in fear of the tiny little tires falling into the bottom of one of those potholes of death, never to be seen again. In case you didn’t already know, I drive a puny little purple Geo Metro. It’s a beautiful, divine way of getting around. She is not a very thirsty little car, only drinking 1 gallon of gas for every 50 miles that she goes as opposed to my boyfriends’ far less efficient 1 gallon for every four point five miles. YIKES! Buggy pwns Fat Freddie’s Kat.
That seems to be what ABC news reporter Emily Friedman wants you to believe. I mean, when I first read this story, I truly couldn’t believe my eyes. Are there people out there earning over $250 000 that do not understand how tax brackets work? Check out this quote:
Dr. Sharon Poczatek, who runs her own dental practice in Boulder, Colo., said that she too is trying to figure out ways to get out of paying the taxes proposed in Obama’s plan.
“I’ve put thought into how to get under $250,000,” said Poczatek. “It would mean working fewer days which means having fewer employees, seeing fewer patients and taking time off.”
“Generally it means being less productive,” she said.
I really should have written this blog post yesterday because it appears that they have updated the article to reflect a tiny amount of common sense. But they still have the fools stating that they would cut back the amount that they work if they had to pay more taxes on the money they earn over $250 000. Cutting back to fewer hours because of this proposal is just ridiculous. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.
If you really want to laugh at some incredibly foolish people, go ahead and check out the faulty logic and reasoning of Instapundit. He is blaming the downturn of the economy exclusively on the election of Obama. C’mon, now. Is anybody buying this nonsense? I sure hope not.
Just in case you don’t understand how tax codes work, go ahead and read this nice summary.
I should also mention that I found this story on Pandagon.
I think I love this web site. They do a wonderful job of poking fun at so-called “rightwing”, patriotic, I-love-America emails. Want to know how they accomplish this enormous task?
They re-print the emails as they come. Here is an excellent example. My nose crinkled up into that “Ew something smells” face as I read this gross joke:
When was the last time you saw an African-American keep The same Job for 4 Years????
Isn’t it the greatest thing to happen to Canadian politics in, like, forever? I have gone from being completely disgusted with the dirty, rotten, lying thieves in power and checking out of politics completely to writing blog posts about politics again. I quit paying attention and watching the news. Really, who cares what the knobs in parliament do? We had a meaniepants for a prime minister and a bunch of cowards in opposition who refuse to call Harper’s bluffs. I had resigned myself to several more years of this crap and another early election. More Harper tantrums and more opposition capitulations. Well, imagine my surprise when the opposition grew a pair and told Harper where to go! Christmas came early this year HALLELUJAH! Now Canada is almost as interesting as the United States. They were getting all full of themselves “down there” because of their historic election of a black man. Now we will be a country run by Liberals and NDP and propped up by separatists. Does it get any better than that?
Yes it does!
You should listen to all the whiny temper tantrums from all those unhappy Conservatives. (Especially from She Who I Shall Never Link.) Just read this from the Edmonton Sun. They seem to lack an understanding of how our fine Canadian government works and seem to believe that they elected Stephen Harper to be Prime Minister. I suppose these people didn’t actually look at their ballots before putting a check mark beside the name of the person that they voted for. Maybe they really believed that they were voting for Harper as Prime Minister when they put an X next to the Conservative candidate on the ballot. But as blogger James Laxer explains, you vote for a candidate to represent your riding, not for the Prime Minister. This isn’t the United States.
I have decided to take Saskboy’s lead and post this graphic on my blog as soon as I figure out how. I am not so good at these technical details, I’m afraid.
Via Violet Socks, a very astute comment.
The rules are different for women than for any other oppressed group. Consider if the shoe were on the other foot: if this were the election of the first (white) woman president, but she’d won by waging a grossly racist campaign against not one but two African-Americans. A campaign where the word “nigger” became the standard term of reference for the two AA candidates. A campaign where the AA candidates were ridiculed and slandered as shiftless and lazy and dumb, where the historic nature of their achievement was completely denied.
In those circumstances, would African-Americans be expected to put all that aside and weep with joy that a (white) woman had finally been elected President? Of course not.
In a patriarchy women are expected to abase themselves utterly. But I don’t play by that rule.
Damn straight. It puts all the joy expressed on many of the feminist blogs I frequent into perspective. I certainly don’t feel right calling myself a “feminist”, if this is what it means.
Found it at Feministing.
I wish I could be happy about the United States electing it’s first black president. I understand that people are happy about it and that it’s a symbolic victory and all that sappy stuff. Obviously, Obama is an imperfect candidate for many reasons that I don’t have the time or the inclination to write about. He loves sexism and had absolutely no problem using it to his advantage against Hillary Clinton. But really, that’s all besides the point right now, isn’t it? What really gets my goat are the gay marriage bans that passed in Arizona, Florida and California.
I truly believe that nobody should get married as it is a highly flawed institution which institutionalizes and legitimizes male dominance and the state meddling in private, non-abusive relationships. Marriage is a tool of the patriarchy! I say it as often as possible and I truly believe it. I stopped accepting wedding invitations this year. I used to use excuses like, “Sorry, I’m going to be busy that day” to get out of going to weddings. Nowadays, I explain my misgivings with the institution of marriage. This is a huge turnaround for me, as I came close to getting married a couple of times in my life and I am really damned lucky I dodged that bullet, as I would have deeply regretted it later.
But I digress.
I am really ticked off that the rights of gay people were up for popular vote in the first place. Should we take rights away from any group of people based on popular opinion? Hell no! The other thing that pisses me off is the fact that so many people think that gay marriage is a bad thing and wanted to take that away from people. While in my ideal perfect world full of puppies and unicorns, marriage would be in the history books, I do not approve of banning gay marriage. It just isn’t right.
On a more positive note, Michigan now has medical marijuana. I would have expected that gay marriage was more acceptable to the populace than medical marijuana, especially when you consider the constant reefer madness campaigns that the American tax payers are subjected to. It’s the only small light for me on a cloudy day.
I’m disappointed in you Americans. A black president does not make up for the further institutionalization of bigotry.
I am so completely sick and tired of elections. Palin this and Obama that. Bigotted anti-French smears and attack ads pervade my mailbox. Luckily I found a radio station on my tape deck, 98.3 FM that does not play attack ads or any political ads of any kind. But still, the blogosphere is full of this crap. KKKate is smearing Dion in a fabricated gotcha moment caused by an incompetent journalist who has not yet mastered the English language. I refuse to link to Kate but I will post the youtube video, as it shows CTV’s coverage. Here is a link to a blog with the original footage.
Seriously, quit falling for this crap. It’s manufactured garbage. This isn’t news and this is not why this election matters. Find out what the parties want to do for you by reading their platforms and deciding who will do the best job of representing your community. Quit watching television. There is no substance to any of it. CTV is nothing but a Conservative propaganda machine. They were trying to make Dion look bad by making the question confusing. I had no idea what the reporter was talking about and English is my first language. No party is perfect on all the issues. For example, I am not thrilled about the long-gun registry but the fact is, the Tories have no intention of undoing the long-gun registry. They are happy to let the left do the dirty work of allienating Western Canadians and stirring up racist and otherist sentiments. We don’t need a long-gun registry but maybe we should do a better job of letting these party hacks know what it is that we want. Demand better. At least Lizzie May has much better ideas about the environment and electoral reform, which is desparately needed so we don’t have to resort to these voter swaps to thwart the really bad evil mini Bush government.
We should just boycott all the propagandists that are running these ads. Enough already! That’s it, no more CTV for you.
This was hilarious and now, since I wasted my Thursday watching the Canadian debates, I will now proceed to watch the “real” debate on youtube.
I was just thinking that there are so many things going on in the world right now. It’s enough to drive a person crazy. Google is promising to give away $10 million to fund a project to make the world a better place. So now I am trying to think of an idea. It would be neat to fund a school or start a medical cannabis garden or something wonderful like that. I wish I had enough imagination to come up with a worthwhile project.
Also, I feel very conflicted about stories like this. A ten year old girl divorces her husband in order to be allowed to go back to school. In the clip, they show her studying the Koran. It’s painful for an atheist like me to see that. I just hope that if we can teach kids to think for themselves, they will be more likely to question their religious beliefs. Hopefully one day religion will disappear. Also, marrying ten year old girls to creepy old men is too horrible for me to contemplate. But I am glad to see that she is back in school and is allowed to have her childhood back.
The financial crisis has been all over the news but I was a little puzzled about how it all came about. I have to admit that economics kind of go over my head but luckily I stumbled upon this explanation of how this sub prime mortgage crisis came to be. Here is a link to a podcast and also the transcript. Basically, the banks were giving loans to mortgage brokers which did not make sure that people could repay the loans before they lent them the money. Unemployed people with unstable jobs were being given over $300 000. Many retirement funds were backed by worthless mortgages with very little chance of the money being repaid. That’s why I laughed out loud at Harper’s suggestion that the economy is going to be fine. We have the exact same situation happening right here in Saskatoon. Our housing prices are way too high. It won’t be long before they come down to earth and a whole lot of people that are mortgaged to the hilt are going to fall on some hard times which affects the whole economy. What a mess! And the U.S. government is going to bail out Wall Street.
I am having a hard time feeling sorry for the whole lot of these immoral lying thieves that let this situation happen. I mean, mortgage broker companies were hiring completely inexperienced people to get as many mortgages as they could sell. They were like Bambi staring into the headlights of an oncoming car. But didn’t somebody see this coming? My mom is continually being offered free credit. My credit card company regularly raises my credit limit without bothering to check that I am employed or have any ability to pay back $6500 if I happen to charge up my credit card. I saw this coming and I am an idiot when it comes to the economy. But I do know that too much fake money makes the economy collapse. The free market at its finest.
