Chuck-ese

So, I was at my grandmother’s house today, and she was watching Fox “News.” The headline they showed on the bottom-middle of the screen read:

THE COST OF FREEDOM
LA Plans to Ban New Fast Food Chains: Threat to Free Society?

I was speechless. This is a threat to a free society? Not illegal surveilance of Americans? Not politicization of the Justice Department? Not telecom companies clamoring to censor the internet?

Fox seems to be using the tactic of whipping people into a frenzy about something small to distract them from what’s actually the problem. A standard Republican tactic.

…how before Obama’s trip to the middle east, everyone on the Democratic side said that it was a terrible idea, but now now the general consensus seems to be that it worked out pretty well?

The moral of this story: Not only are political predictions nearly meaningless, but most people don’t have the attention span to notice.

Through sheer force of awesomeness, I provided universal healthcare, capped greenhouse gas levels, made No Child Left Behind work, and still managed to reduce the Federal Debt by 70%. This was all through the application of a few “tough love” taxes (like a $1/gal tax on gas) as well as repealing the Bush tax cuts. But yeah, if we balance the budget, we’ll be getting more money every year to spend due to the reduced amount of interest we would have to pay on the national debt.

Do better. I dare you.

Breakdown:

Debt: $8,400,000,000,000.00 –> 2,500,000,000,000.00

Budget Bust: 2033 –> 2070

Size of Government: 20.0% of GDP –> 19.5% of GDP

Badges: Health and Wellness (Achieved), Green (Achieved), Safety Net (Achieved)

Policies:

Defense and Diplomacy: Bring troops home soon, More for diplomacy and foreign aid, Spend more to fight AIDS overseas, End spending on missile defense.

Schools and Kids: Spend to educate disabled children, Fully fund NCLB, Educate disadvantaged children, More help to needy college students, More for after-school learning.

Science and Nature: Increase NASA funds by 50%, Double funds for weather science, Increase EPA budget by 50%, Increase NSF grants by 50%, Double funds for alternative energy.

Housing and Living: More rental assistance for poor, Increase food stamp benefits, More money for child care.

Misc.: Eliminate pork barrel projects (as if that would ever happen), Double FDA funding, Tighten production oversignt.

Infrastructure: Increase mass transit funding, Increase funding for Amtrak.

Health Care: Offer government health plan to all, Computerize health information, Increase Medicare costs for wealthy, Open Medicare to people 62 to 64.

Social Security: More low-income worker benefits, Cut SS for wealthy.

Taxes: Repeal Bush tax cuts/tax the rich, Add 50 cents to the gas tax, Increase SS taxes for wealthy, Cap and limit greenhouse gases, Reform and hike corporate taxes, Raise tobacco taxes, Raise taxes on multinationals, No breaks for extractive industries, Tax toxic industries, End breaks for big oil, Let everyone deduct property taxes (raise money by betting on people being too lazy to itemize), Tax private equity/hedge fund managers.

I bet it’s pretty aparent how I spent all that money and still managed to get the debt down.

Everytime you go to the grocery store, you take with you your empty bottles and cans to recycle. You’re recycling and you feel good about yourself (or you just really need your deposit back). Then you go, merrily on your way, completely absolved of any responsibility for your waste. What you fail to realize is that those bottles and cans aren’t magically transported to some sort of Fairy Recycling Center. The glass bottles have to be sorted into clear and colored ([Insert dated apartheid joke here]) by hand. The rest have to be dragged out of the machine and taken back to the large bins. So, as a favor to the dragging hands like us, here are some do’s and don’t’s regarding your recyclables.

1. Rinse the fucking things out. There’s nothing worse than having to crawl on the floor, getting the cans and bottles that overflowed from the recepticle, in a puddle of four or five different sodas/beers.

2. If it came with a cap, return it with a cap. (Yes, even if you washed it out.) Helps prevent the above. I’ve noticed that the only glass bottles that come in with caps on them are the big 40s and the non-alcoholic beverages. (The latter being a pretty small percentage of the total. The former not so much.)

3. Bottles are not mini-garbage cans. Nobody should have to deal with any cigarettes, used fireworks, or mutant space aliens you decide to shove in there.

That’s all I got. Mostly a set up for another post.

Link

You’d think that the main-stream media, or even someone like NPR, would have made at least a small mention that the Lakota Sioux have declared their independence from the United States! But, alas, I’ve heard nothing about it on the news or on the radio since I first ran across this article on reddit.

Further Reading:

Lakota People

Republic of Lakotah

Republic of Lakotah official web site 

So, I was browsing the list of blog post “drafts” I had, and I found this one, wich simply contained a list of sex-related links. I don’t know quite where I was going with this, but some of the articles are rather interesting. So, I’ll just annotate them and leave them to you.
Intercourse and Intelligence: This article explores the correlation between one’s IQ and the likelihood that one is still a virgin. The data shows that the smarter the individual, the less likely they were at any given age to have engaged in various romantic interactions. According to this nifty chart, there is a 62% chance that I will still be a virgin at the end of college. The percentage of arts majors who are virgins isn’t any big surprise to me, the little sluts.
<http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/04/intercourse-and-intelligence.php>

Why Porn Turns Men Off the Real Thing: A rather intreaguing article about…well, what the title says. I’ve seen this talked about before from a radically different kind of source, so there might be something to it afterall. (I mean, if not for an endorsement of this idea on the Tucker Max Message board a bit ago, I’d dismiss this as crazy feminist ranting.)
<http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/trends/n_9437/>

Pornography and the End of Masculinity: Does porn cause violence against woman? This seems to be a slightly contradictory theory than the one presented in the abover article.
<http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/62833>

Sex Dreams Equal 8% of Adult’s Dreams: Masturbation accounts for 6% of all reported dreams, if I’m reading this correctly. What the hell is up with that? You’re dreaming about fantasizing about someone…
<http://www.webmd.com/sex-relationships/news/20070614/sex-dreams-equal-8-percent-of-adults-dreams?src=rss_psychtoday>

Is Pornography a Catalyst of Sexual Violence?: Same general idea as #3.
<http://www.reason.com/news/show/123330.html?>

How Porn Ruined Sex: A recap of #2.
<http://jezebel.com/gossip/how-porn-ruined-sex/how-about-you-dont-come-on-my-face-on-the-first-date-333148.php>

Despite the amount of stuff I had in that draft, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of content here. Surprise surprise…