We can't leave because our energy bills are too high. Let's call Mike Slocumb!

I’m going to return to my roots and complain about commercials.

There is one for some energy company. A husband and wife are forced to stay inside their home FOREVER because their electric bills are too high and can’t afford to go out. After looking up another provider, they realize they could switch over and save tons of money.

Why can’t they leave their house (the guy said “I’m getting cabin fever”)? Do they work from home? There are plenty of things you can do outside the house without paying (take a walk). And if they can’t afford to go out to eat, why do they have a pizza delivered by computer? Shopping for groceries and making meals your self would be cheaper. Oh of course, they can’t afford the gas to go because their rates are so high!

Wouldn’t staying at home and constantly using electricity be more expensive than going out for a walk? They use a freakin’ computer to order a pizza and might work from home. Isn’t that a waste of electricity? I get the message: “Our prices are lower!” But geeze, make some sense.

One of my favorites has to be for the Mike Slocumb Personal Injury Law Firm. Think of every Personal Injury Law Firm commercial, and multiply the camp value by 100.

Here is the typical scenario:

I’m the head of an evil Insurance Company! You want us to pay your hospital bills after someone ran a red light and hit you and you’re clearly covered by our insurance? Don’t make me laugh! HA HA HA HA HA! What are you going to do about it? We have trillions of dollars at our disposal to bleed you dry! Who is representing you? M- M- M- Mike Slocumb? <some sort of electro-gong noise> We’ll settle! <he craps his pants and curls in the fetal position>

This lawyer is sooooo good, he doesn’t even need to sue. His name is enough to make the insurance companies squirm.

And how could this get any cheesier? They have William Shatner.

Apparently, there are a lot law firms around the country that use nearly identical commercials, because this one from Tulsa, is JUST LIKE the one here in DC.

No Deaths = CONSPIRACY!!!

You think you’ve heard of everything.

I was not expecting this today.

“Japan is paying millions if not billions of dollars to CNN to not show footage of the recent disasters to make the world think they are doing better than they are”.

A f#cking conspiracy theory? You know I don’t like conspiracy theories. Well you would if I had gotten around to publishing that post about the subject.

How many problems can I find with this?

Japan’s debt is 200% of its GDP. That means the value of one year of economic output is half the value of their debt (That’s not good as they are the third largest economy). After the Asian economic downturn of the 1980s and 1990s, Japan pumped a lot of money into its economy. The economy hasn’t really grown that fast since then.

Where the f#ck are they getting this money from and why would they spend that much (billions???) on censoring the news (and not, you know, on REBUILDING)? Is Japan really spending billions of dollars per news organization to shut them up? The idiot didn’t mention all news organizations, just CNN. If they are only paying off CNN, why just one (and the least popular cable news station)? They would have to pay off every news organization in the world if they wanted to cover up the incident. Spending billions per organization would mean trillions of dollars spent on shutting everyone up.

If Japan is paying off CNN (and everyone else), they should get their money back. Look at any news website and tell me how many pictures and video clips of destruction you can see. Yeah, that’s a lot. The pictures have been all over the Washington Post. I don't even need to provide a link because they are everywhere. If you are reading this in the future, just look up videos in the archives.

What is this jackass’s proof of this huge cover up attempt?

“Every time they showed footage of a wave of water about to kill some people, it would cut away!”

NO FUCKING KIDDING!!! (and yes, I meant to leave that uncensored). Maybe it isn’t tasteful to show real people dying in a cycle over and over again. Maybe witnessing that could be a little traumatic? Maybe CNN made a conscious decision not to show people dying on TV.

Back in January, a bank robber took a woman hostage. As he was walking backwards outside, he slipped off a curb and the woman got away. As he pursued her, he must have forgotten about the two dozen police officers with their guns on him. They then shot and killed the suspect. When they played the footage on the news, THEY CUT AWAY RIGHT BEFORE THE POLICE OPENED FIRE! (I know the clip in the link shows everything, but I swear they didn't show him being shot on Channel 7). You can’t show someone being shot and fatally wounded on TV?

I really don’t understand how people think. “I didn’t see people dying on TV; therefore, it must be a cover up!” It was like another co-worker. She received the new Presidential Dollar coin with Andrew Johnson. She asked my dad if he was ever President and he said yes. She thought it was a misprint because she had never heard of him. Why did she come to the conclusion that it was a rare misprint, not that she just never heard of him?

I swear, I really want to tell him off if he brings this up again. This is the second day in a row he brought this up. I can tell the other co-workers didn’t really believe him or care as their response was “smile and nod”.

Here is a great Conspiracy Theory Video for you to enjoy.

The Right way is the wrong way.

Republican hopefuls (and I mean really hopeful, we’re talking bottom of the barrel here) met in Iowa last week to pander to voters. Iowa is no stranger to Presidential politics. They hold the first caucus in the race for the presidency. With the economy slowly recovering and the debt growing (the issues the Republicans claim put them in power), these were the issues the prospective candidates talked about. Wait, sorry. They talked about social issues.

Who can blame them when one woman said, “I vote social issues, that's my main thing. That's our moral fiber. I'm so anti-abortion and pro-God in our government and our country”

I give you the most dangerous voter in the country, the religious one!

But can you blame her? Here is what one of the speakers of the event told the crowd, “We are concerned that a country that was founded on European-style Christian moral values has now become a multicultural haven for every weird and kinky lifestyle”

Is this really what Republicans/Christians believe? This nation is only for white Christians and immigrants ruin the country? Is this a meeting of the Know Nothing/National Union Party?

I knew I hated Fillmore for a reason.

This bigoted language is greeted with applause from the audience and five people who want to lead this country? Really???

Let us see how much they like to revise history,

Tim Pawlenty, “We need to remember this and always remember it: The Constitution was designed to protect people of faith from government, not to protect government from people of faith."

Ha Ha, WRONG! Separation of Church and State is a two way street. Government does not interfere with Religion and Religion does not interfere with Government. Our Founders knew what happened in England and Europe when religion played a dominant in influencing government (Henry VIII, Oliver Cromwell, James II, Mary Queen of Scots, the Thirty Years’ War). You can find all sorts of anti-religion quotes by our founding fathers (Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers is a good read). If Jefferson was so Christian, why did he create his own New Testament Bible by cutting up others and omitting all miracles and supernatural acts?

What issues does Gingrich think are important?

“Gingrich called on the next president to re-authorize the Reagan administration's "Mexico City Policy" that banned taxpayer money from abortion services abroad; to sign an order allowing health care workers to refuse to perform any procedure they deem "morally or ethically objectionable"; and to re-locate the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.”

But these issues are important, right Steve King?

“If we get the culture right, the economy will be right eventually.”

Yes, because stopping abortion with get us out of debt. "Eventually", as in it will take much longer for the economy to improve because we were so concerned about gay marriage.

This is why I really dislike Republicans. They are so out of touch with reality. They are like Don Quixote, going after these imaginary or overblown issues while the debt grows bigger, and the economy painfully tries to recover. Wages have been stagnant for years. Less Americans feel the benefits of prosperity as the rich get more and more money. When will they revert back into Eisenhower Republicans, when they weren’t crazy? It's a sad day when Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels wants to hold off on social issues, and is ridiculed for it.

Do I offend?

I seem to have lost a follower.

I hope I didn't offend anybody... I really would hate to think that I upset someone that much. (That sentence doesn't roll off the tongue well.) I know I shouldn't take this personally, but there is just a small feeling at the bottom of my stomach that seems off. It's stupid and I shouldn't care. Snap out of it.

Oh well. This is America. If you don't like something, don't read it. I have my opinion and you have yours. I just wish someone would use the comments section to encourage a dialogue. The only way to learn and grow intellectually is to have someone question your beliefs. You need to learn how to defend your ideas and hear out the other side.

I've grown so much over the years just by listening to an opposing viewpoint and understanding why I don't agree with it. The Death Penalty is a prime example of how my opinion has changed over the years through education and self reflection.

Well, at this point I'm just going to be repeating myself. I hope y'all have enjoyed reading this as much as I have had in writing it (No, this is not an "I'm ending this blog" post. I will continue to write).

For the Hell of it, here is my "Little Red Hood AVGN Ending" video for some laughs.

Change! You got Change!? Aw come on, help a guy out!

I forgot to mention.

There was something I wanted to address in my last post that I forgot. I don’t want to re-edit the post, I’m kind of a stickler for keeping things the way they were.

 ...uuuuuugh...

Along the lines of “We were founded when women were thought of as inferior”, we need to realize that the concept of women being equal is fairly new. Women didn’t start to leave the household until the 1940s-50s. And it wasn’t until the 1960s and 70s that the idea that women were genuinely equal was accepted in mainstream America. We have only had about forty years of this idea of accepting women in jobs and roles that were once reserved to men. Change takes time. We still have a lot of people who remember the days before the 1960s. But with each new generation, we move past the injustices of yesteryear and grow a little. The pay gap is shrinking and more women are moving up the ladder. I just don’t think it’s fair to compare the wages of a woman manager of five years to a male manager of 20 years.

We cannot have sudden radical change overnight.

Put yourself in this picture: You, your father and his father were slave owners. Society has been dictated by 200 years of tradition. It has been clear for generations that you as a white land-owner are superior to your black slave. The hierarchy is clearly defined. Then one day you wake up and suddenly find out slavery is now morally wrong and has been abolished. All of your slaves have been freed. And now, you are told that your former slave is now equal under the law and could potentially be your boss or elected leader.

I’ll let you pick up your jaw from the ground.

This is what happened during Reconstruction after the Civil War (although the change wasn’t “overnight” and there was obviously a lot of anti-slavery sentiment in the years leading to the war). Add to the fact that your nation just lost a war, your money is worthless, your property was destroyed, and it may be given to your former slaves. The reaction of the white southerners to Radical Republican rule is hardly surprising. Even though it was in the 1870s when the first African-Americans were elected to Congress (in states backed by the US army and set up to be loyal to Radical Republicans in Congress), it was about another hundred years before another African-American entered the halls of Congress not as a cleaning man. The reaction to Reconstruction gave us Jim Crow laws, Plessy v. Ferguson, and 80 years of segregation. We are still trying to overcome these injustices.

We could not have a sudden overnight transformation of the American woman led by Congress. As the Feminist Movement in America entered the 1970s, it started to get more radical (“only lesbians can be feminist” beliefs) and we got people like Phyllis Schlafly. The “Big Government can solve all problems” welfare state of Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s gave us the “Government is not the solution, Government is the Problem” Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Roe v. Wade gave us the immediate pro-life movement, creating more opponents to abortion as it was slowly becoming acceptable state by state.

Look at Egypt. Do they have a fully functioning democracy with institutions and fully formed political parties yet?

Change takes time. It can be reversed but with vigilance, we will continue to move forward.

Remember, Breaking the glass Ceiling means the glass is going to fall on you...

Well, it’s Women's History month. Since February, I’ve been in white male reactionary mode. Can you blame me? I’ve been raised in a typical Silent Majority household in which the last 40 years of trying to reverse the hundreds of years of injustices committed against minorities and women makes me, the white male, the new victim of persecution.

Woe is me! I now only make 11¢ more per dollar than my female colleague instead of the 19¢ a few years ago! The slight inconvenience of not getting a scholarship is the same as hundreds of years of forced bondage and a hundred years of second-class citizenship!

With sarcasm out of the way, I do have a problem with some feminist complaints:

“There are not enough women in politics! These country’s have more women in their Parliament/Congress/Representative body than the US!”.

What I really hate is the numbers game. First, I would like to point out that some of these countries have small Parliaments. Second, how does having women in power make a country better? Ok, Rwanda is #1 (It only has 80 seats in their Parliament). Although the country has improved since that whole ethnic cleansing thing in the 90s, I still wouldn’t go there. Let us look at other countries on that list that beat the US:

#4 Cuba

#11 Angola (tied with Costa Rica)

#15 Tanzania

#23 Belarus

#24 Uganda

#35 Mexico

#37 Viet Nam (37???)

#38 Sudan

#55 China (tied with Italy)

#58 Nicaragua

#62 El Salvador

#69 Kazakhstan (Dude!)

#71 Venezuela

How many of these countries either have one or a combination of these problems: massive electoral fraud, corruption, dictatorship, censorship, ethnic cleansing, drug wars that have left thousands dead? Yes, Germany, France, the UK, and Canada did beat us out too. The point is, the number of women in your parliament does not make you a better country. The USA did beat out Russia, Brazil, BOTH Korea’s, Japan, Ireland, India, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.

“It took until 1920 for women to vote!”

It is true that Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and even Germany beat us to the punch. But we did give women the right to vote before Britain (1928), France (1944), Mexico and Japan (1947), China (1949, do they even have a right to vote or free elections?), Switzerland (1971), South Africa (1994), and the United Arab Emirates (2006!).

“The US has never had a female head of state/government!”

There might be a reason why a woman has not been elected President. The US was founded at a time when women were not considered equal to men. They were too emotional to be allowed to vote and their duty was to stay home and raise and educate the kids. So, this notion persisted for quite some time. If you look at most of the countries that have female Heads of State/Government, most of them are new countries (India, Indonesia, Israel, former Soviet states). At the time of their Independence, the idea that all people (men and women) were equal was more common. Coming off of colonial rule, they embraced this idea. Of course these nations and their people/customs have existed farther back then their date of independence. India still faces problems with women’s rights. I’m not sure if I understand this argument as well, but it’s a thought that popped into my head as I tried to drown out my coworkers.

We did elect a woman as Speaker of the House in 2007, Nancy Pelosi. And I think (I have not done a lot of research) we were the first to elect a woman to our legislative branch, Jeannette Rankin 1917-1919 and 1941-1943 (Beating out the UK and Australia!). 229 women have served in Congress since 1917 (hey, it’s better than zero…).

France has never had a female President. Russia/USSR hasn't (if you don't count Czars). Many other nations have never had a female head of state/government. Germany and the UK has had one Chancellor and Prime Minister respectively.

A friend told me after the Democratic Primaries finished in 2008 that it proved the US was more sexist than racist.

Hold on.

Timeout.

This is a horribly over simplified analysis of the Democratic Primaries.

One, An African-American and a Caucasian Woman beat out a handful of white men. That sounds like some progress to me.

Two, the last two candidates were a black man and a white woman. If Clinton had won, my friend would have told me it proved we were more racist than sexist. I’m sorry but we can only choose one person to run, SOMEONE would have to lose. Clinton happened to be the loser (and now she is Secretary of State, not a bad job. In fact, three of the last four Secretaries of State were women).

Three, Clinton had baggage. Saying her very name is enough to anger some people. She had high name recognition in 2007, but was very unpopular. She was infamous. Eight years under her husband (or should I say Monica was under her husband? Ha Ha Ha. Sorry…) and her failed Healthcare proposal in 1994 gained the ire of conservatives and Republicans. She was the butt of jokes, like mine up there. Obama was an unknown with charisma and had no real baggage.

“We need a law mandating an X amount of seats in Congress should be held by women!”

I hate “equality of results”. We should not force women into Congress just to fill a quota and make us feel less guilty about the past. Like I said before, the numbers game means nothing. I don’t know what stops a woman from running for office. If there are high barriers to women being able to run, then they should be torn down to allow for the “equality of opportunity”. I hate this phrase but “the best person for the job”. I hate it because it makes it sound like women (and minorities) are not the best qualified for a job and that it will always go to the white male. That is not true. It made me sick when a woman said that women in the military should not serve in combat duties because, on average, women are weaker and smaller than men. What about the number of women who CAN perform the duties associated with combat, no matter how statistically small the numbers? Why should some women be denied the right for advancement because others cannot? Yes, do not force unqualified women into combat roles, just as you shouldn’t force unqualified men (like me!) into combat roles. But give them the opportunity if they are capable!

I think women should be more involved in politics. A lot of women suffered to obtain the right to vote. More suffered to demand equality and enjoy rights like divorce and property ownership. There are a lot of intelligent and ambitious women in this country that I think would make a good elected leader.

I have no objections to voting for a woman. My first election, I chose Hillary Clinton for the Senate in 2006, because I thought she was the best candidate. All you Liberal Women out there; would you vote for Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, or Christine O’Donnell just to have them be the first female president? No, you wouldn’t. You would not like these candidates because you care about more than gender. Issues and experience matter.