What the Hell Happened to Europe?/Wilders Case

Why am I not surprised?

The country that barred Geert Wilders welcomes those with ties to Hezbollah.

A quote from the linked to article states: “Exclusion decisions are based on hard evidence not hearsay, and are targeted at those who seek to stir up tension and provoke others to violence regardless of their origins and beliefs.”

Uh-huh...so why was Wilders denied entry? How is producing a video that consists of video tapes of imams making speeches provoking others to violence?

Another excerpt, concerning the Geert-banning Home Secretary Jacqui Smith: "...she stopped right wing Dutch MP Geert Wilders from coming into the UK to protect ‘community harmony’."

Since when is an undefined level of 'harmony' more important that freedom of speech?

Impossible to Please

Damn it, us racist whiteys just can't do anything right. Looks like having Black History Month, as well as discounting corn bread, is now racist. I wonder if it's more or less racist than NOT having Black History Month?

The author of the first article does touch on some points I might agree with, but still I have no real problem with having a Black History month. However, the author coughed up a few infuriating quotes I simply cannot let go unchallenged. They concern -of course- that damned school system of mine:

"What little we know about our nation’s past has been transmitted by Hollywood, so schoolchildren know that the Pilgrims invented Thanksgiving, all Indians wore feathers and George Washington Carver invented the peanut".

"... giving us our own month of “Black History” makes matters worse. For one thing, it lets the academy off the hook, allowing textbook writers and history teachers to continue their superficial history lessons that gloss over Reconstruction and Jim Crow, ignore the 19th century’s black entrepreneurs and pretend that GI Joe was always white."

Good Lord woman, have you ever actually set foot inside an American school? Or have I just been living a bizarrely unusual school life? For years and years I have been indoctrinated with unremitting facts about slavery and Jim Crow and how the pilgrims screwed over that poor heroic Squanto. My present history class can't stop gushing about what a genius G.W. Carver was. 80% of my education concerning Vietnam concerned how corrupt rich whites left the fighting to downtrodden blacks. And, even more oddly, this same school system won't stop telling me that all throughout my years in school I have been indoctrinated with racist and overly patriotic propaganda, when the truth is that I can count yearly on having a somewhat moonbat-ish history teacher bemoaning the plight of everybody Whitey has ever wronged. Glossing over Reconstruction? I SPENT THE LAST TWO MONTHS ON THAT DAMN TOPIC!

People, slavery was evil, so was Jim Crow, and the civil rights movement is something this country can be damn proud of. Blacks have, historically, overcome massive obstacles fighting for equality. I recognize that fully - even if the media and the schools seem to want me to believe that I don't recognize this. Even if I've learned about nothing else in history class for the last near-decade.

However, on a side note, the ignorance of some of my classmates on topics of equal importance does frighten me on occasion. My present history teacher recently offended me greatly by saying that myself and my classmates were to young to remember either 9/11 (Not even eight years ago!) or the Abu Ghraib scandal. For the record, I can remember exactly what I did, saw, and even said the morning of 9/11, and I blurted out right there in class that "YES, we remember Abu Ghraib". However, I quickly realized that everyone sitting nearby was looking about confusedly, with one or two whispering, "Abu Gray-ub? What's that?"

Sad. Very sad.

An F in Psychic Ability Class

I've ranted before on the topic of the failings of my school system, but I also noted in the linked-to post with some optimism that the local high school I attend seemed many times more sensible than the middle school I suffered through (I think my entire anti-paternalistic attitude about government was brought about by that ugly uber-modern paternalistic place). I was waiting for my high school administration to do something to tick me off - it did not last year- so I guess it was to be expected that THIS year they start with the wackiness.

Most people get a trumped-up religious exemption to avoid health class, but I decided I would just be a...man? a woman?... and get the semester-long class over with.

Some points have stood out from the literature given to me in said class. Apparently, meat and dairy are evil, the only negative side effect of sluttiness is the risk of STIs, all alcohol consumption is bad, and believing that you have psychic ability is healthy. Seriously. We were recently given a questionnaire to evaluate our 'spiritual health', one consisting of questions such as, "Do you often feel an overwhelming oneness with the world, as if all aspects of nature were part of a single organism?", "Do you believe you have a sixth sense that allows you to predict events?" and "Do you believe you have experienced extra-sensory perception (ESP)?" The more questions you answered with 'yes', the greater your spiritual health (They were not all quite as bizarre as the ones I listed). I am happy to say that my score was very, very low and that the evaluation of the quiz deemed me as 'resistant to spiritual growth' or something like that.

At least I was surprised by the method of ticking-offing the school used against me this time. I went into health class expecting to be lectured about condoms and about my being a fat, unhealthy American that eats to much junk food - turns out I'm an underweight, spiritually dead American that eats to much fruit (?). Variety is the spice of life, no?

"Post" Racial America Reaches New Heights of Ditzy Racism

Oh good God. Michelle Obama may get a formal appeal filed against her office by the Black Artists Association for wearing clothes designed by Asian and Cuban designers (Because Asians and Cubans are not black, of course). As this article illustrates, America is in no way becoming a 'post-racial' society but an overwhelmingly race-conscious one. As stated in the comments, why should anyone choose their clothes based on the race of the designer? If we were truly past racism, people, we wouldn't even think of race when it came to choosing gowns for the Inaugurational balls - or people for jobs, students for colleges, etc. Bah, I say. Bah!

Geert Wilders

Geert Wilders case? You should have heard about it - and probably have - but in case you haven't,read about it here and then come back and humor me while I rant.

I've just about had it trying to use logic against Europe/Canada. They've tossed essential freedoms out the window and they seem to be damn proud of it. Here we have yet another case of a white defendant being prosecuted for voicing an opinion by Nazis who go about accusing others of being Nazis simply because they notice faults in minorities. It no longer matters of those faults are there or not. Not that it should anyways, but this blatant suppression of speech, true or not, adds yet another dimension of skin-crawlingness the attitudes of these people. As stated in the linked-to article:

"Geert Wilders could be going to jail for making admittedly harsh criticisms of Islam that actually echo statements made by Muslims," To jail. JAIL!

So in place of spelling my arguments in favor of freedom yet again I will simply ask: Europe, what the hell happened to you? Britain- have you forgotten that the basis of the entire free Western system was founded by yourself? And now you have frikking Sharia courts operating within your borders? Netherlands- you drove Ayaan Hirsi Ali out? What the hell is wrong with you? Sorry to be crude, but I have also been wanting to ask all the Euro-Canadian fascists/dhimmis/etc. this for a long time - where have your balls got to? I know you had them at one point.

Inauguration Footnote: Bye to Bush

Another irking factoid that Inauguration Day has reminded me of must be ranted about. While I stated in the previous post how irritated I was at the media for falling all over Obama, I must also state my irritation at the right-wing attitude towards Bush here at the end of his presidency. Here's one example. It seems that that some right-wingers are so cheesed at the thought of an Obama presidency that they've grabbed onto the nearest Republican entity, in this case the departing Bush, and started wailing about how wonderful it is.

I consider myself conservative, and I'm more or less glad to see Bush go. I'm not really glad to see Obama become president either, but I'm not going to suddenly start acting like Bush was a great leader either. He's still That President who took us into another Vietnam-style war in Iraq, which has not been handled well, even if it has not been handled particularly horribly (in my opinion) either. He still ticked me off with the Patriot Act, he still refused to do anything to attempt to fix the immigration problem, he still said a lot of really stupid things during the 2004 electoral debates, and he's still a bad public speaker. And perhaps most importantly, he's still NOT A CONSERVATIVE. I don't give a damn if his party is the Republican one- I've said before that one of the reasons I dislike Obama is that he seemes to want to bring about 'change' by expanding/helping to enable Bush's big-government policies.

In short, I suppose, every politician out there sucks and nothing will ever go right until I'M elected president and everyone does exactly what I want them to. Happy Inauguration day, y'all.

Inauguration Day

Okay then, people, Obama is completely and officially the acting president of the U.S. as of today. The way the media has been spinning it, this is the only important thing to have happened in the world for the last two weeks. Oh, there may have been some tussling in Gaza and maybe a little teensy resurgence of the human strain of bird flu, but nothing worth covering, not when we could be dribbling endlessly about the Lincoln theme and the pointless attending pop stars and what Michelle Obama is going to wear.

Watching Obamamania spiral out of control in the last month or two, I've seen people trying to name streets and towns after Obama (Not only while the man is still alive, or while he's still done nothing as President, but while he was not even President at the time), hawk creepy commemorative plates, and more recently take a vow to be a 'servant' to Obama. Nice democratic sentiment, dipwads.

On a less creepy note, I found a funny article at The Black Informant that sums things up pretty well. Hey, we're already most of the way toward the Obama-infused school system the comedian imagines - my high school boasts kids nick-named 'Barack' and 'Obama', plus legions more who walk around in Obama T-Shirts sporting Yes We Can bags.

Scary Three-Letter Word

Great. Here we go again with silly atheists making a big stink for no logical reason.

The Pledge of Allegiance has, in the past, come under attack for containing the words "under God" - and now with Obama's inauguration fast approaching, a group of atheists is trying to get the phrase "so help me God" removed from the Oath of Office. One of them (Dan Barker) is quoted in the article as saying that the phrase:

"...makes those of us good Americans who don't believe in God second-class citizens. It's unfair."

I don't get it. How exactly does it turn non-believers into second-class citizens? Does it impose a religion on anybody? No, it's just a piece of text read out at a traditional ceremony. Does it somehow take religious freedom/freedom to be non-religious away from atheists? Again, it does not. It also does not mean the separation between Church and State has been broken - America still has no national church or religion, it just has a piece of traditional text.

Plus, you wouldn't edit the Iliad or some such piece of literature to bring it in line with, for instance, modern grammar, or PC prudishness, would you? While it may not be a famous epic poem, the Oath of Office (and the Pledge of Allegiance, for that matter) strikes me as the same sort of thing; you wouldn't want to change the way it was written historically, because it would no longer be THE Oath of Office. Especially since, you know, it doesn't actually oppress anybody.

The Right Idea

Yes! Someone finally has the right idea.

Article summary: Some schools are now teaching students to fight back when an armed invader breaks into the school. I'm hoping that this is a sign that the lessons from Columbine and Virginia Tech are finally getting though: When you have an entire school pitted against one or few armed individuals, the odds are in the favor of the school. While some students may be hurt or killed in taking down the armed attackers, massacres will -and have, repeatedly- result if people simply comply with the wishes of crazed gunmen. No one can shoot onto a classroom full of targets at once, especially if those targets are in the act of attacking.

Of course, some people are objecting:

“You’re telling kids to do what a tactical officer is trained to do, and they have a lot of guns and ballistic shields ... If my school was teaching that, I’d be upset, frankly.”

"If kids are killed, people are going to wonder who’s to blame ... How much common sense will a student have in a time of panic?"

So what is the alternative? As stated in the atricle; “At Columbine, teachers told students to get down and get on the floors, and gunmen went around and shot people on the floors,”...“Getting under desks and praying for rescue from professionals is not a recipe for success”...

I also hope that this is a sign of a backlash against the whole trend of wimpish appeasement that the American school system seems to have been following of late. Throughout my elementary and middle school years I was taught to appease violent bullies verbally and never lift a finger in self defense during a physical attack, because defending yourself was evil; I was taught that all bullies are bullies because they themselves are maltreated and therefore deserve to get away with anything. Until I actually researched the topic, I fully believed the Columbine apologists who popularized the (completely false) tale that the two gunmen went on a killing spree because they were bullied and excluded by their peers.

So on that cheery note, have a happy New Year.

Obligatory Xmas Post

I guess I wouldn't be a proper wingnut if I didn't take a minute to say something in the defense of Christmas this holiday season. Although I can't really be a full blown wingnut because of my non-Christian-ness, I can still take advantage of my athieism to say that SENSIBLE ATHEISTS ARE NOT OFFENDED BY CHRISTMAS, dammit. I for one love the holiday, religious trappings and all (Christians worship Jesus, I worship evergreens. Nobody touches my Christmas tree). I would also like to take several minutes to address some rant-worthy issues that came up in one article on the anti-Christmas movement I read on Xmas eve:


From the comments:
“Christmas is a secular holiday and the Christian right needs to understand that...”

Christ's mass, secular? Christ as in the founder of Christianity (a religion)? Perfectly secular.

Next, a liberal takes aim at 'Christian wackos' -“Up until about 1985 a Christian couldn't marry another person unless both had a baptism certificate!”

That's... just not true.

From the article:
“...Brimelow’s writers dared to name the true anti-Christian Grinch: Jews. The winner of Brimelow’s 2001 War on Christmas competition, a “paleoconservative” writer named Tom Piatak, insisted that those behind the assault on Christmas “evidently prefer” Hanukkah, which he called the “Jewish Kwanzaa,”....”

For the record, I've never heard of Jew who was offended by Christmas. The only people I've seen actively participating in the “War on Christmas” have been Anglo liberals of Christian background. I'm sure there are examples of non-Christians participating in the effort to snuff out public Christmas celebrating, but I've yet to find them. Secondly, the 'assault on Christmas' certainly does not prefer Hanukkah - it just prefers anything that isn't based on Whitey's usual Christian beliefs. Plus, Hanukkah is in no way a Jewish Kwanzaa... the celebration is authentic and ancient, where as Kwanzaa is a 1950's invention that claims to be African despite the fact it was invented by an American dude.

Okay then...ranting time over, peppermint bark time is now.

And of course, Merry Christmas.