Jaded Times

Amazingly, this study shows that women who are not dependent on their pot-bellied, abusive, drunken husbands tend to leave more than ones who are dependent on them. Mind-blowing.

Not to editorialize (who am I kidding?), but that article is awful, and they do a great job of ignoring the obvious: 1) ANYONE is happier if they don’t have to work; 2) the main reason a woman who works is more likely to leave/cheat is that she will actually see some of what life has to offer other than her time at home with the laundry and the kids. Plus she’s not subservient. So there’s that.

I’d rewrite that article to be saying “women with careers more likely to leave abusive spouses than non-career women”, because that’s probably a more honest result of the statistics. Though I doubt the misogynists at Forbes would run that piece…

This MSNBC report from the currently quiet Israeli/Hezbollah conflict had a noteworthy pull quote:

“The text will be improved, and I am working to improve the text.”

I just love that, it’s like someting out of MST3K.

No, this is not a satirical piece. Well, not entirely. And no, it is not a critical or rhetorical question.

If you have a spare minute, watch this clip of Scarborough Country, archived by the good folks at onegoodmove.org. Now, ignoring the hilarious irony of this guy calling out the President on being inarticulate, there is a valid point to be made: is our president, well, stupid? Answer: of course. To be more tactful, he is simple. A simple puppet who projects the image of a man who cannot see past his ridiculous notion of god to actually comprehend the consequences of his actions. This is obvious to anyone observing the past five and a half years of American governance.

But is he qualified to be president? Sure. The president is a figurehead. Much like the Buddha (but with far less in the noggin), anyone can be the president. The bigger question is how relevant the whole thought is in the first place, which brings us to the point of this piece: why is GWB our president?

The answer is relatively simple: we are not a smart nation. That is not to say that we are not an intelligent nation; intelligence is an innate quality, and I honestly believe that the majority of this country is far more intelligent than it is given credit for. But smart? Hell no; for one thing, we don’t care about education. And we aren’t the first generation not to, which is pretty evident, since we don’t care about education. Take this for example:

In a 2003 study conducted by UNICEF that took the averages from five different international education studies, the researchers ranked the United States No. 18 out of 24 nations in terms of the relative effectiveness of its educational system. [source]

So does it matter that our president is “simple”? No, because the majority of the people (or at least a large enough portion to be portrayed by the media and the compromised ballot boxes in several states) elected a simpleton. Because they wanted one in office.

Which brings me to my point: the real reason GWB is the president of our country is, put simply, birth rate. Yes, birth rate; look at the history of the world, the conqueror/victor has almost ALWAYS been determined by birth rate. Conquering nations, uprisings, mobs, all determined by numbers, which in turn are a result of the larger surviving birthrate.

The brilliant (though rather pugnacious) Gary Brecher has pointed out this trend in several of his War Nerd columns in the Exile; birthrate determines the true victor, as though the “stronger” force may win out initially, the kids who grow up as the minority eventually just by sheer number become the majority. And if our schools aren’t educating our kids (which, come on, we all know is as true as truth gets these days), then our parents and communities are. And how strong are they? Not very, because they are populated by the products of a failing educational system and a decrepid social structure. So the ignorant (not stupid, mind) are educating the ignorant, and archaic beliefs overrule logical approaches, religion overtakes rational thought, and concern for truth and progress are overrun by a simplistic greed, masked as “purity”.

But now, the real problem: think of how many of your friends who are highly intelligent, well-educated, and strongly logical have kids. If they do, I bet it’s one or two. Now think of how many thick-looking teens you saw today pushing strollers on your way to work, and think of how many stupid people you know who are one of eight or so children. Yup, the simple are simply outbreeding the intelligent, and that is who has grabbed control of all of our branches of government (at least on the figurehead level, I don’t think anyone could impune Cheney’s intelligence, for example).

So you whiney liberals want a real solution? Stop bitching and start educating, because a smarter populace elects smarter officials. And start fucking, because the stupid are outbreeding you several times over.

Nice to see, methinks.

Have we mentioned yet that Joe Leiberman is a douchebag?

It’s never a good sign when you check the RSS feed for the BBC and it has those arrows, as in “there are too many recent headlines to fit on the screen”. There’s a lot to look at, but the two biggest things on my mind are, of course, Lebanon and the foiled terror attack (the word “foiled” always makes me think of a dude akin to the Hamburgler, wringing his hands and saying “curses!”). It’s hard to poke fun at these events, but that’s my job, so I’ll give it the old college try (or so I vaguely recall through the haze of pot, alcohol, and promiscuous sex that made up my college years).

So first up, President Bush used last night’s harrowing events in the UK to further cement his “we’re right, they’re wrong” policy on his linguistically inaccurate War on Terror, again pointing to “Islamic Fascists”. This is one of the sneakiest tools of the domesticated primate: propaganda. See, by continually adding “Islamic” to every reference to the terrorist organizations, it helps the American public associate terrorism with Islam. Which, in turn, helps to fuel further support for war in Iraq, Syria, and Iran, the monkey-man’s wet dream triumvirate. It also washes America’s hands of any responsibility for inspiring acts of terrorism, as if it’s their “crazy Oil God Religion”, not the previous five decades of western foreign policy, that has driven these people to such lengths.

Not that I sympathize with terrorism, of course. I just feel that the past fifteen or so years of media and political incompetence have led me to a point where saying something like that compels me to open the next paragraph with “Not that I sympathize with terrorism, of course”.

At any rate, the liquid bomb plot was foiled by some smart, hard-working people over in the UK, from the police all the way up to their intelligence agencies (are you watching this, Washington?), which Bush used as a photo op. From Wisconsin.

I was going to touch on Lebanon in this post, but it’s getting a bit long (and isn’t very funny–but hey, you want humor, check out the pic of Bush in the above link), so I’ll get to that in a later post.

Well, to be fair, the Republicans tacked on a rider that essentially waved the finger at the lowest paid workers of this country. It would have tied it to a bill cutting inheritance taxes for the wealthiest in the nation, which is sort of akin to saying “Aww, are you hungry? Here’s an old smelly cod, now could you pass me my caviar, you poor fuck?”.

Honestly though, the levels of poverty in this country are growing so severe that I would have preferred it passing, even with the Republican bullshit bill attached. I mean, I expect it out of the Republicans, they are soulless assholes who only care about themselves, and we all know this. But the bigger issue to me is that the Senate could have passed this (the House already did) and dealt with the inheritance tax issue later, though I suppose that would have required doing more work, which is something your average senator fears about as much as the words “indictment handed down” or, if they are from Oregon, “paternity suit”.

So fuck you, Senators; if you weren’t so afraid of actually having to do your job in the future, many of the hardest working Americans could be that much closer to earning a livable wage.

Israel/Hezbollah. Neither side is right, both sides have reasons (which they call “justification”), and really, both are led by liars and murderers. So screw the conflict (and, sadly, the innocent people dying in scores, but you’re most likely an American if you’re reading this, so there is only a 47% chance you even care about them), and let’s compare two news services: the BBC, an arguably “neutral” state-run news service, has as its headlining RSS article “Israeli border strike ‘kills 26′”, while FOX news, which is essentially Bush’s Aljazeera, ran with “Hezbollah Launches Deep Rocket Strike on Israel”. Now, the irony? They are the same report.

Yes, the report is on the same news item, an item that MSNBC saw fit to title “Israeli Strikes Reportedly Trap Up To 50 In Rubble”. MSNBC focused on the damage in Lebanon. MSNBC. The corporation who owned Seinfeld and, if you’ll notice, whose tenth anniversary candles look suspiciously like those found in a menorah.

Meanwhile, more dead in Iraq, and where is the focus of the nation, including our president? On Castro’s tummy ache.

Yes, FOX news has a headline RSS story which reads “Thousands of Shittes Rally in Baghdad for Hezbollah”.  Source article here, though it will likely be edited shortly.

We understand, FOX.  It’s hard to do things like, oh, edit, when you have so many White House announcements to not research.