Tag: Culture

The best arguments for, and against, Obama’s executive action on immigration – Vox

Any day now the president will make his move on the issue of immigration……and of course there will be a flurry of opposition….days upon mind numbing days of media analysis.

Of course the conservs are being gigantic douches over the issue……

How angry are opponents of immigration reform about President Obama’s upcoming executive order? Enough to riot, according to Sen. Tom Coburn. “The country’s going to go nuts, because they’re going to see it as a move outside the authority of the president, and it’s going to be a very serious situation,” the Oklahoma Republican tells USA Today. “You’re going to see—hopefully not—but you could see instances of anarchy,” he says. “You could see violence.” He accuses Obama of acting like an “autocratic leader,” in a way that is the “total antithesis of what this country was founded on.”

Wait!  There is more……..

Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly believes that President Obama’s upcoming announcement on new steps to relieve some undocumented immigrants from the threat of deportation could trigger a second Civil War.

She told WorldNetDaily’s Paul Bremmer yesterday that Obama’s executive action on immigration resembles the Southern bombardment of Fort Sumter, which led to the beginning of the Civil War, adding that the move is even more inscrutable than Pearl Harbor bombing because “with Pearl Harbor, the American people knew what was happening.”

None of this gloom and doom is helping people understand what is going on………these people are our ‘leaders’….not one of them is worthy of that title.

Since most people get there information from sites that reinforce their personal opinion because of that not many understand the issue…..this article looks at the issue from both sides and hopefully readers will check it out with the hope of understanding a complex issue.

That is my intention…….we will see, huh?

 

The best arguments for, and against, Obama’s executive action on immigration – Vox.

Am I Being Too Hard On Americans?

The military-industrial complex has got what it desired the most….all out war !  The fun…..has begun!

I have been hard on my state because of their inconsistency in their patterns of voting……they are always voting against their best interests…..something I cannot understand…..either it is stupidity or they just do not acre enough to keep up with the issues of the day………I am thinking the later……

Then after bitching about Mississippi voters I read several pieces that illustrate the Mississippi is not an isolated example…..it appears Americans, in general, are not that sharp either…….

Annenberg Public Policy Center released a survey on Constitution Day that reveals Americans know very little about their government.

Some of the findings are:

• While little more than a third of respondents (36 percent) could name all three branches of the U.S. government, just as many (35 percent) could not name a single one.

• Just over a quarter of Americans (27 percent) know it takes a two-thirds vote of the House and Senate to override a presidential veto.

• One in five Americans (21 percent) incorrectly thinks that a 5-4 Supreme Court decision is sent back to Congress for reconsideration.

And it gets worse…

Read more

I do believe that education should emphasize Civics more than it does today…….the American voter is ill-informed and it shows in their voting habits……

Then there is Scotland…..it recently voted against independence….in other words they were trying to secede from the United kingdom………what do Americans think of secession……..

Could the US see a Scotland-like secession vote of its own? Nearly a quarter of Americans wouldn’t have a problem with that, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. Some 23.9% of us strongly or somewhat support secession for our states, Reuters reports. That’s compared to 53.3% who strongly oppose, or tend to oppose, the idea. The idea of leaving the country is most popular among Republicans and rural Americans in the Western US, and President Obama’s policies are a major reason for it. But plenty of Democrats—some 21%—would also lean toward seceding.

“When I say secede, I’m not like (ex-NRA head) Charlton Heston with my gun up in the air … It’s more like we could do it if we had to,” and it’s a way of getting Washington to listen up, says a Texas Democrat. Some 29% of Republicans, meanwhile, back the idea. “I have totally, completely lost faith in the federal government, the people running it, whether Republican, Democrat, independent, whatever,” notes one. Geographically, Americans in the Southwest are most supportive of the idea, with some 34.1% of people backing it; New England is least supportive, at 17.4%.

Do Americans think about the consequences?

Do white people really know how to have more than one black friend? | Rebecca Carroll | Comment is free | theguardian.com

Thanx to the tragic death of Michael brown the country is having that awkward race conversation.  Don’t get me wrong I believe we have needed an honest conversation on race for decades and so far all we have done is talk and the crap still carries on and on……

News media has 3 white guys debating race….kinda like 3 men debating birth control…….we Americans truly want to have this conversation but none of us know how to have it……where to start……

I read a piece in the UK’s Guardian and thought it asked some interesting questions…I think we all need to read it…….and please let me know what you think……

 

Do white people really know how to have more than one black friend? | Rebecca Carroll | Comment is free | theguardian.com.

Horse Of A Different Color

There re so many trends that we can observe……but there is another disturbing piece of news……

remember the days when you mentioned heroin and it conjured up visions of jazz musicians or maybe the flop house seen with whack out junkies lying around being incoherent?  But that is changing….and not or the better……..

Not too long ago, the profile of the typical heroin user was pretty straightforward: an inner-city male about age 16. No more, says a new study in JAMA Psychiatry. Thanks in part to the surging use of prescription painkillers such as OxyContin and Vicodin, today’s typical first-time heroin user is more likely to be a white 20-something, either male or female, from the suburbs or a more rural area, reports Bloomberg. The link to the prescription drugs? People get hooked on them but can’t afford to sustain the habit and so turn to cheaper, easier-to-get heroin.

“The price on the street for prescription painkillers, like OxyContin, got very expensive,” says the study’s author in Forbes. “It has sold for up to a dollar per milligram, so an 80 milligram tablet would cost $80. Meanwhile, they can get heroin for $10.” The result is that 90% of new heroin users in the last decade were white, with the average age of first use at 23. Three-quarters of them got started on prescription meds. The shift to heroin has become even more pronounced as the makers of the prescription drugs take steps to curb abuse, such as making their pills harder to crush. “The crackdown in prescription narcotics has pushed more people over to heroin,” an expert at the Cleveland Clinic not involved with the study tells NBC News. (Click to read how how NYPD officers are going to start carrying a heroin antidote.)

Society is not progressing toward a brighter future…..there are too many problems and stumbling blocks…..and the answers are becoming way too easily acquired….

How can we change the direction?  thoughts please.

Facebook Better Than Sex?

It is Saturday and the weekend begins.  Time to take a much needed break from the dullness of the after election dialog…….and now for something completely different…….

A great question…it seems to answer itself….but……..

(Newser) – It might not be better than sex, but Facebook—along with checking email and surfing the web—is apparently more irresistible, a new study has found. The smartphone-based survey of mostly college-aged respondents tracked their most irresistible desires several times a day. While most reported that sex was a stronger desire, subjects were more likely to give in to their desire to check out media, including things like email and Facebook, the survey found. “Media desires, such as social networking, checking emails, surfing the web, or watching television might be hard to resist in light of the constant availability, huge appeal, and apparent low costs of these activities,” says the study author from the University of Chicago.

One explanation could be that it’s easier and more convenient to check Facebook than it is to have sex, reports ABC News. “The sex drive is much stronger but it’s also much more situational,” says an online expert from the University of Southern California. “We’re training ourselves to check our messages every couple minutes. People are constantly looking down to check their phones. They can’t stop.”

I am an old fuddy duddy…..I do not nave a Facebook account and have desire to ever have one…..so for me it is NOT better than sex….actually I cannot think of anything that is better than SEX!

The Dumbing Down Of America

I have been bitching for years about the population in the US….that they were getting dumber and lazier with every new generation….I have pointed to the popularity of reality shows as an indicator of the dumbness part and then to gadgets like the Salad Shooter, or the egg cracker and the battery powered whisk……and as much as I have bitched….I want to believe that it is just NOT so……but…….

The Repubs have been accused as part of the dumbing down process because of their education stands,,,,,this from Truth Out……

The Republican Party, particularly the rabid Tea Party-influenced majority in the House, is embarked on a juggernaut to take the public out of everything it can in American life, including libraries, elementary and high schools, government workers, environmental protection, even parks and parking meters.The combination of privatizing public services, and thus making them less affordable to the vast majority of Americans, and lowering the wage scale for workers fortunate to have a job is making this a two-class nation.

As much as the GOP and the TP are seemingly attacking education…..the population is not helping either…..why?

From a piece on opinionated.net……..

I sometimes envisage the television set silently and invisibly sucking brain cells and synapses out of my brain the minute I switch it on. I imagine that the longer I watch, the more of my brain matter is methodically extracted. I guess this is just a fantasy, but I really do believe it does indeed make you stupid.

Ways TV Makes You Dumber

  • TV puts you in a mild trance-like state where your brain shuts down and is left unchallenged (I’m pretty sure there have been studies that have shown that TV does have a hypnotic affect on the brain)
  • It rewards you for doing nothing, sort of like a drug, and that can’t be good for you
  • It’s a passive activity, non-interactive, so watching TV is something that is being done to you, not with you, again leaving you completely unchallenged.
  • TV usually panders to the lowest common intellectuall denominator
  • It efficiently and all-too-often takes the place of activities that could potentially expand our intelligence, such as conversing, reading, or project undertakings
  • Television is intimately tied to advertising and consumerism, so the goal of most programs is to promote capitalism (through commercials and actual program content), and not to represent reality. TV often distorts reality and manipulates meanings in a way that benefits advertisers. Since we have a tendency to believe what we see on TV, our minds are susceptible to being influenced in a way that benefits advertisers and promotes the goals of consumerism, which is often at odds with intelligence.
  • TV pushes upon us the erroneous mindset that if we only buy a certain product or service, we’ll be happy. Furthermore, and even more damaging is that this implies that if we are not currently satisfied or happy, then there must be something wrong with us. This is a horrible state of affairs, because as the Buddha so elegantly put it, life is suffering. There is no escape from suffering, and the sooner we accept this, the better off we’ll be. I remember this one commercial I saw for an over-the-counter pain reliever that claimed to be “one more step to a pain-free life”, implying that life is supposed to be pain-free!

In George Leonard’s book Mastery, Leonard explains that TV shapes our thinking in a way that makes us believe that the outcome is more important than the process, that everything can be achieved, resolved or wrapped up within a specified and short period or time. Again, this is a bastardization of reality. Life simply does not work this way. Most things aren’t black and white. And most things that are worthwhile do not take a half hour or hour to achieve. He explains that both TV shows and commercials present viewers with an unrealistic rhythm of life where problems are encountered and then resolved by the end of the commercial or show, and that it is one climax after another. So watching TV distorts our perception of reality, which makes you less intelligently equipped to deal with the real world.

Our minds are further warped by constantly watching beautiful people enjoy wonderful lives, called the Beautiful People Syndrome by Ron Kaufman (http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/commentary/syndrome.html) Thus we tend to erroneously believe that our lives ought te be filled with goodness, perfect looks and perfect lives, and that if we don’t have this, then there is something wrong with us.

Here’s an interesting tidbit of info from http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=805412: Scientists did a calorimetric test to determine energy consumption while watching TV. What they found surprised them. They found that on average people watching TV consumed ten per cent less energy than normal resting energy consumption. That’s right, you actually consume more energy sitting there doing nothing than when you are watching TV. There is a simple explanation. It seems that this is due to the concentration people exert while watching TV reducing the amount of fidgeting and random movement people do. While fidgeting may be a major part of one’s resting energy use, thinking uses up energy, too. The neurons in the brain aren’t very good at holding their own energy for long, so glial cells in the brain constantly transfer energy to the brain cells, energy taken from the blood. So if you keep your body steady but try solving a differential equation, you’ll probably find yourself losing more energy than while sitting and doing nothing at all. Of-course, TV excites neurons in the primary visual areas, but perhaps that’s, on average, as far as it goes ;). We may lose less calories watching TV because we’re not using our brains to think, only to watch.

The population is getting dumber and dumber and they can point to politicians, but ultimately it is their inaction and their mindset that is the most destructive……when they find hunting alligators or dudes cutting down the last of the old growth forest or a bunch a rich self centered housewives less appealing then what is going on around them….then they will get to the point of an idiocracy!  It is fast approaching!

Some Things Are Not Important!

Daily Agitator

There are many sensational subjects that the media fixates on…education….they report and do nothing else…..energy and push the oil stocks……of course they love the international stuff because they can report minutely on the happenings……they report on all the good news in the markets (good only for the rich)…..and they seem to care not about some things or they touch on it for 30 seconds and spend  10 times that on Charlie Sheen…..I have been an outspoken critic of our media and the reporting standards….if it does not help ratings…it is NOT news…….

But there is a story that seems to fall between the cracks because NO one wants to hear it……that subject is poverty and homelessness…..Debra Watson has written a good piece…quoted here in part…..

In the two years since the onset of the financial crisis in the fall of 2008, the number of children living in poverty increased from 14 million to 16 million, the US Census Bureau reports. The US government estimates that 25 percent of children in America will soon be living in poverty.Recently, the National Alliance to End Homelessness reported that between 2008 and 2009 a majority—31 of 50 states and the District of Columbia—had increases in their homeless counts. The nation’s homeless population increased by approximately 20,000 people from 2008 to 2009, a 3 percent increase. There were 656,000 homeless in 2009, up from 636,000 in 2008.

Its new report, State of Homelessness in America, highlights that nearly 4 in 10 homeless were living unsheltered, on the street, in a car, or in another place not intended for human habitation. In Wisconsin, twice as many people experienced homelessness without shelter in 2009 as did in 2008.

Key indicators of housing crisis tracked by the group went through triple-digit increases in vastly disparate locations. In Louisiana, (where Hurricane Katrina and flooding ravaged New Orleans nearly six years ago), the homeless population, sheltered and unsheltered, doubled.

A section of the report looks at the causes of rising homelessness. The fall in wages and other supports at the bottom of the income scale is notable. While real income among all US workers decreased by 1 percent in 2009, poor workers’ income decreased even more, dropping by 2 percent to $9,151. Poor workers in Alaska, the District of Columbia, Maine, and Rhode Island saw their incomes decrease by more than 10 percent.

Homelessness and poverty are growing at an alarming rate and yet NOTHING is being done or even addressed by our elected officials in Washington….as if it does not matter to them…..there is a good possibility that it does NOT matter!

Where is the concern for the poor?  They (Reps) spend an inordinate amount of time fixated (God I love that word) on the plight of business….this society is dying slowly…..and with the help of those we elected to protect us from disaster….the American people are SO SCREWED!

What Is The American Dream?

College of Political Knowledge

Subject:  American Society

I have spent a lot of time trying to people, readers in this case, to think about what they believe when it comes to politics and theory…..I begin the new year continuing my pursuit of making people stop and think about their political beliefs……are those beliefs what you think they are?

How many times have you heard the term “American Dream”?  Or that he/she is living the American dream?  And how many times have you asked….what the hell is the American Dream?  Does anyone truly have an answer?

Once it was to have a family that consisted of 2.3 kids…….or that you own a ranch style home with a 2 car garage and a patio….but is that really an American dream?  Or could it be that you spend lots more than you actually have?  How about a good retirement at an age where you could actually enjoy your declining years?  Maybe that your children will have a better life than you had?  What is the dream we all talk about?

Maybe we should dream about winning the Lotto….or having a billion dollars and our way with the little people around us…….or is the dream elusive?  A mirage always just out of reach and when we finally get to it…it is nothing but the same life we have now?

Or is it just a slogan thought up by some weepy politician to make it appear that he/she cares more than they really do?  Is it really something that we all aspire to at some point in our lives?

The American dream is subjective, at best…….but there is one thing for sure….. it IS a dream……a pipe dream!  And few actually arrive at their dream (as it is described by most) and the ones that are lucky enough to arrive become whores to greed and envy……some us are better off not ever realizing that American Dream….

So, the question still remains….just what the Hell is the American Dream?  And how does one define something so elusive?

Any thoughts?

2010 Info Ink’s Person Of The Year

Every year we at Info Ink try to award the Assie for the most anal statement of the year and the Person of the Year……it is our way of acknowledging the accomplishments of a few during the course of the year….we try to be fair and unbiased but that is sometimes harder than others…..in the past we have awarded the credit card the honor because it symbolizes the credit crunch that began in 2008 and last year we gave it to Sen. Libermann for his running amok as an independent…this year we had a bunch to choose from….we had Joe miller of Alaska and O’Donnell of Delaware…..we had some in the financial sector and even more in the political arena and after much deliberation we came up with the following as our Person of the Year……

After much deliberation we have looked at all the nominees and we have chosen our pick for person of the year………May I have a drum roll and let the trumpets blare……send in the dancing girls………pole optional…..

Once again the Info Ink Person of the Year is not an actual person but rather a thing….and that thing is……(pause for effect)……the Tea Party Movement……

We chose the TP because……while it started off as a true grassroots movement with anger toward the Washington establishment but somewhere along the way they allowed their message to be hijacked by big money interests and they gave us some memorable candidates…Sharon Angle, Joe miller and Christine O’Donnell, to mention only a few….it also tapped into the growing anxiety of the American people over thew economic situation……it allowed special interests dictate what the issues were…..and it set the stage for an interesting Congress in 2011….

It also gave the purveyors of fear and loathing a venue for their wrapped sense of history and government…..mouths like Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, that Malkin woman, O’Reilly or the biggest wind bag (both literally and physically) Limbaugh…the Tea Party gave them the outlet and the audience to increase their subscribers and their bank accounts…..

The Tea Party chose leaders that represent the very thing that they were fighting against……and any movement that can accomplish that deserves a special recognition……