You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December 2011.
Just as in the Sandusky case, everybody knew Philadelphia sports writer Bill Conlin was a child molester.
And nobody stopped him or called the police.
Speaking of Women’s Rights has crossposted my I am the 51% piece. Thanks guys!
Note the white lady who posts some racist shit in her comment. WTF is up with racist white “feminists” and their tired predictability? Boooorrring.
I recently read Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. I pulled out some interesting quotes that seem relevant to America’s current political situation.
Occupy Wall Street’s critique of the superrich and wealth inequality
“The picture of American society has, if I may so speak, a surface covering of democracy, beneath which the old aristocratic colors sometimes peep out.” Pg.47
“But beneath this artificial enthusiasm and these obsequious attentions to the preponderating power [the interests of the middle & working classes], it is easy to perceive that the rich have a a hearty dislike of the democratic institutions of their country.” Pg.187
Centralizing power and removing citizens’ rights
” “The will of the nation” is one of those phrases that have been most largely abused by the wily and the despotic of every age. Some have seen the expression of it in the purchased suffrages of a few of the satellites of power; others, in the votes of a timid or an interested minority; and some have even discovered it in the silence of a people, on the supposition that the fact of submission established the right to command.” Pg.57
“Unlimited power is in itself a bad and dangerous thing. Human beings are not competent to exercise it with discretion.” Pg.270
Jingoism and nationalism
“Patriotism… is frequently a mere extension of individual selfishness.” Pg.402
Intolerance of difference
“In the United States… all parties are willing to recognize the rights of the majority, because they all hope at some time to be able to exercise them to their own advantage. The majority in that country, therefore, exercise a prodigious actual authority, and a power of opinion which is nearly as great; no obstacles exist which can impede or even retard its progress, so as to make it heed the complaints of those whom it crushes upon its path. This state of things is harmful in itself and dangerous for the future.” Pg.266
Some sound advice from George Washington that should be applied to Israel & Palestine
“…Washington makes this admirable and just remark: “The nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.” ” Pg.242
Perhaps you have already had the good/bad fortune to come upon an article at Forbes.com called If I Were a Poor Black Kid. This article is written by a “middle class” white accountant, consulting firm owner, business technology columnist, and former senior manager at KPMG named Gene Marks. Sounds totally “middle class”. Probably an income of $60k a year, you think?
You can see where this is going. My personal additional annoyance beyond the many more obvious ones is: does he really expect to be reaching poor black kids by publishing a blog post on Forbes.com? Obviously not. He never intended for this “advice” to reach a real world poor black kid. He is writing for wealthy white people, at the expense of poor black kids, in an attempt to unearth a dead horse and beat it some more: i.e. the myth that blacks wouldn’t be so poor if they just worked harder. Note of hilarity: This column was originally titled “If I Was a Poor Black Kid”, but so many people were amused by his poor grammar that someone corrected it.
So read it for yourself if you enjoy bathing in a rich froth of righteous privilege and oblivion as to how the real world works.
OR, read one of these amazing and insightful rebuttals, which attempt to relieve Mr. Marks of his embarrassing ignorance.
If I Were a Rich White Dude by Jeff Yang
Trolling The Internet With ‘If I Were A Poor Black Kid’ by Kashmir Hill
A Muscular Empathy by Ta-Nehisi Coates
If I Were the Middle Class White Guy Gene Marks by Kelly Virella
An Ode to a ‘Poor Black Kid’ I Never Knew: How Forbes Gets Poverty Wrong by Cord Jefferson
If I Were Gene Marks by Carolyn Edgar
If I were a wealthy white suburbanite by DN Lee
If Gene Marks Were a Poor Black Kid Who Went to Ballou In 2003 by Shani Hilton
If I Was A Poor Black Kid, I’d Key Gene Marks’s Car by Peter Vidani
H/t ES
Newt Gingrich helpfully informed the confused world that there need be no more concern about the Palestinians displaced and mistreated by the Israeli state, because Palestinians don’t exist.
Remember, there was no Palestine existing as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. We’ve had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, and were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places.
He went ahead and renamed these 11 million non-people, “a group of terrorists that are firing missiles every day.”
Somebody go tell all those confused fake Palestinians with their totally fake grievances! My Palestinian friends are going to be pretty surprised to hear that they don’t exist, but that they nevertheless spend their days firing missiles!
Fun fact: Israel as a state didn’t exist until 1948. Does this mean that Israelis are an “invented people” too?
In related news, The Learning Channel (TLC) is running a reality show about 5 Muslim families in Michigan called “All-American Muslim”. EVERYBODY PANIC!
The Florida Family Association, for one, is panicking.
The Learning Channel’s new show All-American Muslim is propaganda clearly designed to counter legitimate and present-day concerns about many Muslims who are advancing Islamic fundamentalism and Sharia law. The show profiles only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks while excluding many Islamic believers whose agenda poses a clear and present danger to liberties and traditional values that the majority of Americans cherish.
Wow. They don’t even address how many of the people featured on the show don’t even exist, because of their fake Palestinian roots.
The FFA has started a boycott campaign to erase this threat of tolerance and diversity from television. Lowe’s has enthusiastically jumped on board, saying that “there are certain programs that do not meet Lowe’s advertising guidelines, including the show you [the FFA] brought to our attention.”
I would love to hear a more thorough explanation of exactly why that is. No really. I’m sure it would be fascinating.
The FFA kindly provides a list of companies that have dared to continue advertising, even after they were warned that the show depicts MUSLIMS. I recommend taking time out of your day to support those companies or send them a note of thanks.
Assess the danger level yourself:
Hobson’s Bay has elected a new mayor, Tony Briffa. This interests me because Briffa is open about being intersex.
He tells his story in depth on his website. In part, he writes:
I feel very comfortable having accepted my true nature. I am not male or female, but both. I am grateful for the years I lived as a woman and the insight and experiences it gave me. I am still “Antoinette” and have now also incorporated and accepted my male (“Anthony” or “Tony”) side. I feel whole. I’ll continue to live as Tony but I feel I am now at a point in my life where I can celebrate being different.
He also provides a long list of links relating to media surrounding his journey. He discusses the mistreatment that the medical status quo visited upon him as an infant:
They diagnosed me with an intersex condition called “Partial Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome” and the treatment paradigm – likely elsewhere in the world – dictated that I was to be raised as a girl, any male physical attributes had to be surgically removed if possible, and I was not to be told the truth about my condition.
Doctors castrated him, told his parents to raise him as a girl, and to never reveal the truth to him. Some doctoring.
[I] lived as a woman until I learned the truth about my condition and sought to find out who I would have been had the medical profession not sought to “normalise” me.
This (mis)treatment is common for babies born intersex. Western medicine has a pathological need to force cultural beliefs about gender onto non-conforming infants’ bodies. THE GENDER BINARY MUST BE MAINTAINED AT ALL COSTS! Even if that cost is medically-unnecessary infant genital mutilation.
To learn more about what happens to intersex babies and children, I recommend the website of the Intersex Society of North America. Their definition of intersex is quite good.
Did you know the NAACP is going to petition the UN about the USA restricting the right to vote for voters of color? Year check: 2011.
Fourteen states have passed a total of 25 measures that will unfairly restrict the right to vote, among black and Hispanic voters in particular.
In addition, the lawmakers of Texas would like to demonstrate their priorities, once again, to the world at large:
In Texas, a law has been passed that prevents students from voting on the basis of their college ID cards, while allowing anyone to cast their ballot if they can show a permit to carry a concealed handgun.
From July to September, a period of time that covers summer break for New York City students, the police arrested 63 students in schools. 59 of those students were Black or Latino.
And for some reason the police department was reluctant to release the demographic breakdown of their in-school arrests. They have not provided similar information regarding the 182 summonses they issued during this period, though the Student Safety Act requires it.
“Really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works so they have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day, they have no habit of I do this and you give me cash, unless it is illegal.”
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