Archive for the 'News' Category

08
Sep

Congrats, North Carolina

Welcome back from the fucking stone ages.

For more than 10 years, North Carolina law required teachers to tell teenagers they were “expected” to abstain from “sexual activity outside of marriage.” But abstinence-only education didn’t have the lasting effect on teenagers that lawmakers hoped.

According to the state health department, from 2003 to 2007, the teen pregnancy rate rose more than 12 percent. North Carolina now has the ninth-highest teen pregnancy rate in the country.

Beginning with the 2010 school year, school districts must begin offering broader information, which includes lessons on contraceptives and preventing sexually transmitted diseases. Parents can elect to remove their children from these lessons.

04
May

LA Times: For her an uproar, for him a whisper

They were killed on the same day, in the same way. One of the deaths captured the attention of a city and spurred the Los Angeles Police Department into overdrive. The other slipped by unnoticed, leaving a lone detective with little more to go on than hope.

Some stories don’t even need commentary.

22
Apr

Wyatt Cenac makes a pilgrimage

What Mecca is for Islam, Sweden is for white woman.  I can’t believe The Daily Show fell for the whole Socialism angle. Well played, my brother.

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11
Feb

A Memo to America

Barack Obama is not your favorite uncle.

He’s not your BFF. He’s not a rock star. He’s not the short, but scrappy white guy who comes off the bench for your college basketball team to the delight of the student section.

He’s an elected official. He’s a civil servant. He works for you. It is both your right and your responsibility to scrutinize and question every single policy decision he makes. It is both your right and your responsibility to parse every public statement he gives. Our population’s failure to do these things is what gave BushCo the freedom to lie, cheat and steal this country into both the financial and moral bankruptcy. Failure to do so under the current administration will only make it worse. What we need from you is not knee-jerk defense of Barack Obama. What we need from you, fellow citizen, is vigilance.

A quick recap of what’s at stake:

  • The financial sector is a shambles of foreclosed homes, insolvent banks and hundreds of thousands of recently unemployed men and women. Once again, the big guy has bent the little guy over and sodomized him with rolled up hundred dollar bills. Once again, he’s going to get away with it.
  • Speaking of financial matters, half of all bankruptcies in this country are caused by medical bills. The wealthiest nation in history has a health care system which The World Health Organization ranked lower than Costa Rica, Morocco, Colombia and 33 other countries when it last produced it’s rankings in 2000. Silly socialists.
  • Our love affair with rockets and tanks has left us with a bloated defense budget that is almost as large as the military expenditures of all the other countries in the world combined. We’ve been in Iraq longer than we were in WW II. During that time, we’ve murdered and/or caused the deaths of as many as a million people, displaced hundreds of thousands more, made cannon fodder of 4,000 Americans, created countless terrorists and spent as many as $3 trillion, according to some estimates. But if we leave too soon, you know…things might really fall apart.
  • Despite our legal, moral and tactical failing in Iraq, we’re poised to redouble our efforts in that other illegal, immoral war of aggression in Afghanistan with a troop surge for that specific campaign and an increase in military spending in general. If at first you don’t succeed…
  • Some Americans still hold on to the arrogant, ignorant notion that our homosexual brothers and sisters do not have the exact same rights as everyone else. (Do you think Barack and Michelle would have settled for a civil union?) While the nation’s gaze was focused on the passage of Proposition 8 in California—a heinous and hateful piece of legislation, to be sure—Arkansas, Florida and Arizona passed laws making it illegal for homosexual couples to adopt. Much better that thousands of children continue to be shuffled to and from various foster homes and orphanages, lest they end of living with a couple of dikes, huh?
  • Oh yeah. Cops are still murdering Black men in the street.

Excuse the fuck out of me if I take a second from admiring how Black and cool my president is to spend time worrying about the actual issues.

“But, Nick. Obama just got into the White House! He didn’t cause all that other stuff!”

As a United States Senator, Obama was complicit in and/or did absolutely nothing to resolve most of the aforementioned issues. (The fact that he was not in the Senate for the Iraq war vote and has said repeatedly that he would not have voted for it is balanced out by the fact that he voted to give President Bush every single dollar he wanted to fight the war.) He may not have been the guy holding Jodie Foster down on the pool table, but he was definitely cheering by the bar.

If I have to hear, read or see one more pundit falling back on some version of that toothless “he just got elected” canard, I’m going to challenge Stephon Marbury to a head-butting competition.

The next friend or family member who allows that idiotic, “He just said that to get elected”, The Spook Who Sat by the Door theory to escape their lips should be given the Ludovico technique from A Clockwork Orange with the violent images replaced with Noam Chomsky speeches.

Yes, the Obamas seem to be a well-adjusted, loving, beautiful family. Who gives a fuck? We have more important things to talk about than what sort of dog Malia and Sasha will get or whether or not Barack is smoking again.

The campaign is over. “Yes we can” should be removed from your vocabulary and deposited in the dust bin of political propaganda forever. Take that limited edition Shepard Fairy print down off your fucking wall, roll it up really tight, and shove it up your ass. You don’t make idols out of employees. The time has come for Americans to stop being cheerleaders and start being play by play analysts. (Think Hubie Brown, not Dick Vitale.)

What America needs is more informed, passionate debate on the merits of the issues. What America does not need is more mealy-mouthed defenses of Barack Obama.

27
Jan

I couldn’t agree more

01
Dec

Obama voters react to his cabinet appointments

24
Oct

The dumbest shit I’ve ever read in my life

Someone is already bending over backwards to defend this moron, Ashley Todd.  A blogger named CajunTechie writes:

I don’t think Ms. Todd is psycho. I think she’s someone with good intentions and who deeply loves her country. She is, like many people, concerned about the direction her country will take if the wrong person becomes president. I believe she sees this election on a moral ground and, as such, all bets are off.

In an odd way, I understand her thoughts..
In an odd way, I actually respect her.

This woman faked a savage attack for the sole purpose of creating more racial hatred for Barack Obama, but somehow she had good intentions and loves her country?  While law enforcement officials could have been out working to keep the streets safe, they had to waste their time and energy dealing with this racist bullshit, but he understands her thoughts?  Given the history of abuse that Black men have suffered at the hands of police, there was a strong chance that some innocent guy could have been arrested and assaulted himself before everyone figured out that this was a hoax, but he respects her?    If only we all got the same benefit of the doubt that America sees fit to extend to white women.

Dumbest shit I’ve ever read in my life.

I’ll tell you this, I think for the next month every Black man that sees Ashley Todd on the street should punch her in her face and then walk to the nearest police station and turn themselves in.  I’d be more than willing to take an assault beef to teach that racist troglodyte a lesson.

10
Oct

Another email to Wax Man, D Fine, and Boxy Lady

Rep. Henry Waxman

Senator Dianne Feinstein

Senator Barbara Boxer

Representatives,

It’s me, Nick Adams, again. I’m sure you guys are well aware of the report issued by the Global Cannabis Commission. You know, the international group of scientists who studied the issue of global cannabis policy and then released their findings in a 226-page paper, Cannabis Policy: Moving Beyond Stalemate? Just in case you haven’t gotten around to reading all about it, I thought I’d point out some of the highlights of their report.

The enforcement effort has not had much success in deterring use.

Translation: With regards to marijuana, the drug war has been a failure.

The probability and scale of harm among heavy cannabis users is modest

compared with that caused by many other psychoactive substances, both

legal and illegal, in common use, namely, alcohol, tobacco, amphetamines,

cocaine and heroin.

Translation: It’s less harmful than alcohol and tobacco.

The rationale for severe penalties for possession offenses is weak on both

normative and practical grounds. In many developed countries a majority of

adults born in the past half-century have used cannabis. Control regimes that

criminalize users are intrusive on privacy, socially divisive and expensive.

Thus it is worth considering alternatives.

Translation: Our current marijuana laws are costly and infringe on our civil liberties.

In countries where data are available, arrest rates are sharply higher for many

minority and socially disadvantaged groups.

Translation: The war on marijuana disproportionately effects minorities and poor people.

Given this data, I’m sure that you will all immediately reconsider your illogical and counter-productive stance on the continued criminalization of marijuana.

03
Oct

So, California needs $7 billion?

Image via Flickr Thomas Hawk

At least, that’s what The Governator thinks.  The LA Times has the scoop:

In a letter obtained by The Times, the governor warns that tight credit has dried up funds California routinely relies on and it may have to seek emergency aid within weeks.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, alarmed by the ongoing national financial crisis, warned Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson on Thursday that the state might need an emergency loan of as much as $7 billion from the federal government within weeks.

Where in the world could California possibly get $7 billion from?  If only there was a substance that could be grown easily across the entire state, that we could then tax and export around the country at a premium price.  Something that could easily bring in billions of dollars to the state’s economy.  Also, it would be great if it didn’t do as much harm to society as alcohol and tobacco, and there was already a demonstrated demand for it.  Wouldn’t that be great?  I’m gonna go smoke a joint and think about this some more.

29
Sep

Stupidity comes to Brunswick County, NC

In the form of the old “let’s teach Creationism in schools too” debate.  The article isn’t very long, but there are still several precious gems of ignorance that make it a worthwhile read.  Pearls of wisdom like this:

“It’s really a disgrace for the state school board to impose evolution on our students without teaching creationism,” county school board member Jimmy Hobbs said at Tuesday’s meeting. “The law says we can’t have Bibles in schools, but we can have evolution, of the atheists.”

How are you supposed to have a conversation with someone who actually thinks of evolution as an imposition?  How dare those “science” teachers force their “scientific” ideas on our young people?  There’s also this gem:

“I wasn’t here 2 million years ago,” Fanti said. “If evolution is so slow, why don’t we see anything evolving now?”

Yes.  In 2008 in North Carolina there is an adult of voting age who actually wonders why he can’t watch evolution taking place.  I should just print this out, laminate it and carry it around with me.  I’ll whip it out when I met someone who tells me how “charming” they think the south is.




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