"OF COURSE!!!!" -Cenk Uygur

Typical conversation with an all-too-common YouTube asshole who disagreed with FairEconomics about MannixThePirate's retarded response to Gary's response to MannixThePirate's fail-plagued rant about taxation and economics. Whew. Did you get through that sentence alright? Here's a video for context:



One message that was sent to me after I made a nasty comment replying to a follower of MannixThePirate was:

your a communist

its capitalism its not fair

lifes not fair

I was also indulged with mind-blowing comments such as this one:

in capitalism the more you put into society the more you get out of it, so if you want equality your probabely just lazy

I'm not even going to address these comments because the person writing them is an absolutely retarded weasel and a simp. This person is most likely a high-school retard who is some how acting out and on some kind of trip about how cool cars and and fireworks and beavis and butthead kind of humor are. Looking at his most recently posted comments, he actually directs people to false-flag Gary's video response to MannixThePirate as you can see, temporarily, here:
blah

Yeah, just another typical "Libertarian" retard out there who gives the party a bad name. I'm telling you, actual Libertarians ought to be more upset than they are about having people butcher what they believe in and falsely align themselves with them.

Snapshots from my phone

Taken on the Metrolink coming into Downtown. They buffed out the graffiti on the sides of the LA river. It's a shame because a lot of the art down there was actually pretty good. It looks way uglier with those splotches of paint rather than something interesting and colorful. I guess that's how the City likes it... drab, dirty, and grimy. I guess that's a better image to convey to the world somehow.

This is a photo of a cat, Tang, who hung out with me while I was in Hawaii. She was a weird cat and didn't like when you touched her paws for some reason. She'd freak out and run away, only to come back a couple of minutes later. She sat with me as I would watch the waves and smoke.

This is a very typical late-night college meal consisting of ramen, potato chips, hot tea, and iced tea. With the exception of the potato chips, everything is made from various powders, so it's basically an Instant Dinner. All it requires is a microwave and some water.

Hope you enjoyed these quick snapshots of my life.

New Favorites on YouTube

Okay, time for another edition of what I will call the YouTube Roundup. Since I struggle to keep this updated, I might as well repackage the things I favorite on YouTube into a "best of favorites" type of deal.


One of my friends showed me this song and it kicks ass.


This is an interesting Japanese animation. Worth watching.


I loved the Boondocks Season 1. I haven't seen Season 2 yet, but Season 3 starts May 2 on Adult Swim.


A funny dog behavior video. This dog is pretty interesting and there are a few other videos featuring it, along with several other animals that this person owns. The owner of this channel seems to like animals a lot, which is cool because I also like animals, interacting with them, and watching their behavior.


A funny satire video about alternative medicine and homeopathy. I can't believe people still buy shit like this at the grocery store and the drug store.


This video has a good message behind it, and it's pretty catchy. It's also visually stunning in HD.


James Randi is a funny guy and he's worth watching because he's very clear and has the ability to emulate many of the "impossible" feats of "magic" that knuckleheads do to amaze a crowd of people.

Gifted Unlimited Rhymes Universal (GURU): Rest in Peace

VANCOUVER — Rapper Guru, who co-founded the band Gang Starr, is dead at 43.

The musician, who mixed rap with jazz stylings, succumbed to cancer Monday night, his management said. His real name was Keith Elam.

The rapper had suffered from cancer for over a year.

MTV said in a release: “According to [producer] Solar, Guru suffered from the malicious illness for over a year and after numerous special treatments under the supervision of medical specialists failed, the legendary MC succumbed to the disease. Guru always tried to keep this harrowing diagnosis in private but in early 2010 he had to admit himself to hospital due to serious effects caused by the disease.”

Guru and DJ Premier founded Gang Starr in 1985, producing six albums. The two had a falling out and Guru went on to make solo albums.
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/Rapper+Guru+succumbs+cancer/2930006/story.html#ixzz0lnr9Ku9C

Guru was a LEGEND and was on countless ill tracks. He extended himself beyond hip-hop to jazz and other types of music. His legacy goes back decades. It is hard to even fathom how much of an influence he was on the development of hip-hop, since he had been through it all... You will be missed.

Stating the obvious but I feel like it needs to be said

Republicans are on the side of the bankers because they don't support financial reform. The system is very unstable as-is. Most people don't realize how big of an issue naked credit default swaps and derivatives are.

The Democrats need to frame this issue in November as "Sen. XX didn't support financial reform" and then attack that person based upon those beliefs that are so misguided and so blatantly in favor of special interests.

November 2012, then again, the world will blow up and who cares

Sometimes I feel like if I were able to gamble on politics I would be a very rich man. Me and every other cynical person out there. But if I were breaking down the 2012 Presidential Election and analyzing the Republican contenders, I would talk about the top five Republicans in the Straw Poll at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as well as some other contenders.

And y’know I don’t think it is too early to start talking about the republican nominees. Because in gearing up for the 2008 election, everyone was spreading all kinds of rumors about who was going to run for president, was it Hillary, was it Barack, etc, etc, at this same point in time in the presidency when we look at the 2012 election.

But y’know these predictions are somewhat ludicrous to make right now. Given the current political climate it is very unlikely that any Republican contender will be able to challenge Barack if the election were to happen today. But honestly I can’t predict what the President will be able to accomplish or if an international news story will break about Obama praying to Allah (WTF? Or something just as devastating but more believable). So that’s why I’m going to just rag on the current GOP contenders, because there’s already so many things stacked against all of these people that they’d be hard-pressed to get over the steaming BS they’d piled so high. I might as well just give a rundown on why none of these people are capable of running the country at all. They are all dumber than your average bear, believe in a lot of crazy stuff that would ruin the country, and have all been trumped up as popular candidates because of all the things in the news about them these days.

Sarah Palin: half-term governor, failed VP nominee for a trainwreck of a campaign, annoying “hockey mom”. Come on, you know it’s too easy to bag on her. She has a gaffe list a mile long and her name itself is at the heart of so many scandals. She is the most brainless of all the candidates.

Newt Gingrich: extreme, crotchety, past-his-prime-oh-wait-he-never-had-one, failure. Hawkish.

Ron Paul: right on some issues but has no understanding of economics and is adamant about it

Mitt Romney: annoying family values conservative who reminds me of Reagan 2.0: more religious, more bereft of intelligence, more boring, quite possibly more wives

Bobby Jindal: the candidate favored among, and I use this term very loosely, “intellectual Republicans”. I call this guy the hawk in disguise, but I don’t think he has enough popular support and I think that he might piss off some Rednecks.

Reflection upon middle school issues

I was inspired to write this because of some news headline about the ex-boyfriend (1) of this one celebrity saw her at the same club or social function he was attending and send out some "tweet" about how she was fat, when, in fact, she would be considered very slender for anyone outside Hollywood.

Well this "one celebrity" turned out to be Mischa Barton, a teen idol and star on the hit FOX show "The O.C." Back in middle school (7th/8th grade), all the girls would stay talking about that particular television program nonstop, including during class. I was unfortunate enough to be in the same Spanish (Spanish 1.5???? That's how I spoke of it back then...) as many of these annoying girls who held these conversations, so of course I had an earful of it back then.

I'm not going to mention how certain people clowned me and singled me out for laughter at a time when that meant something to me during these years, because it might stir up some unnecessarily hostile words on my part and because it's off topic. But I feel that this relates to what I'm talking about because if it hadn't been for my desire to feel like I was part of the "cool crowd," I would not have given two shits about who Mischa Barton was and what she meant to these impressionable girls who were my classmates. I would not have been able to recognize something important that I will discuss now.

Starting.... now.

Yeah. Now.

If it hadn't been for me wanting to fit in so badly (and if it hadn't been for teacher, whose brain did not wake up in time for class), I would not have been able to, first of all, listen in and and actually participate occasionally (in my unconventional manner) in these discussions back when I was a kid. Also, I would not have been able to finally make sense about some of the issues facing young adolescents today. I need not delve into how delicate a stage this can be for some youth with regard to the formation of these notions of what it is that makes a woman, according to a particular society. I am obviously waxing on about the U.S. here, hence the emphasis on the word "woman"; there is no need to get testy.

Anyways, the popular girls, who had come to the conclusion that Mischa Barton was the epitome of all things sexy about a woman, projected her as an idol to which any "cool", much less reasonable boy of that age would find themselves physically attracted. They would accomplish this by asking certain questions of the male students who participated in the conversations that were held during the Spanish class (and ostensibly outside of class as well). They would do things like transition from the topic of celebrities to which celebrities a certain male student found attractive. Speaking from experience, I had NO IDEA who any of these celebrities were. I couldn't put a name to Ms. Barton's face to save my dog's life. And I'm pretty sure the male students didn't know who these people were either. But the popular cliquish girls would always end up asking the question, "What about Mischa Barton?" and then start singing the praises of how great she looked in some bullshit magazine that they were reading during the Spanish class under the table and whatnot. I distinctly remember the magazines being a big part of the Spanish class, and our teacher did nothing to stop this behavior; in fact, she seemed more interested in celebrities than teaching the damn class. She would turn most classes into chit-chat about "bullshit, balloons, and Looney Tunes" to quote my e-pal DoNotGod Gary. This behavior of identifying Mischa Barton, among other celebrities who were clones of her, happened so frequently that I'm sure that the male students had to have been influenced somewhat by what happened during that year of Spanish. Being constantly inundated by peers who purportedly have style and fashion sense (not to mention teachers) about which celebrities are hot and which are not would seem like it would make a lasting impression upon someone just forming an idea of what sexuality is supposed to be about. Obviously my view is that stick-women are distorted-looking and many suffer from the whole throwing-up thing and the not eating thing. So obviously I don't want to put too much blame on any individual actor/actress for being some kind of example about this because I might be speculating about someone who might have a legitimate condition where they magically see themselves as fat (2). But I do want to point out that it's not healthy for both men and women to desire that image and idolize people who manage to pull it off (but only temporarily of course, beauty only lasts so long!)

I believe that this shaped much of the daily chit-chat discussed by the "cool" crowd in the halls and/or the locker room. I want to specifically point out that many of the male students in the grade came to be known as people who were specifically attracted to the celebrity known as Mischa Barton to the extent that other girls in the grade were not even on their radars. It was almost as if this notion that mischaB.equals("sex god") was inadvertently given too much credibility by the same girls who manufactured it in the first place, whilst chit-chatting about it during Spanish.

I'm not going to say that this show is any more responsible for how our youth is being told that it is okay for women to act sluttily compared to other shows I've seen out there. People are being misled by the bling and the shiny things and the "beautiful" things when these are just washed-up norms created by our society, which is probably a notoriously poor judge of what it means to be in a meaningful relationship, seeing as how more than 50% of marriages in CA end in divorce. So society must have people trippin' about what love and commitment is really all about. People discover after much undue pain and heartache (and even then, some still don't discover) that getting along with someone and having a meaningful exchange is more than this skin-deep fraud that is being perpetuated by many elements of the "entertainment" business.

Notes

(1) Brandon F**king Davis

(2) I'm not trying to belittle bulimia or anorexia, that's just how I see it... feel free to correct me if you think I'm messing up here.

Faux News indirectly responds to TYT

Fox News "criticizes" Republicans... what'll it come to next? Well clearly it's engineered by Democrats!

Rethinking capitalism

It's a well-known fact that political buzzwords thrown around today to describe different political ideologies do not correspond to reality. Words like Socialist, Nazi, Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian, Communist, Anarchist, Totalitarian, and Fascist are all used to malign someone's image in a certain way. People try to use these buzzwords to try and discredit someone's argument. For example, "WE can't have a public option cuz that's Socialist." Calling it Socialist immediately makes it explicit that the policy about which we are debating cannot work for Amerikkka because it is fundamentally against our way of life and traditional American values.

That's why today I wanted to talk about another word: capitalism. Libertarians and Republicans have a very different understanding about the way in which capitalism is supposed to function. Republicans, as believers in Reagan's agenda, posit that capitalism is merely self-interested parties trying to accrue duckets by any means necessary. For Republicans (and Democrats too), being a big corporation implies that that corporation exerts a lot of influence in Washington. In other words, mixing politics and the economy is okay.

For Libertarians, the free market should remain "free" in the sense that no one should exert undue influence on the market such that another individual is not free to start a competing proprietorship or corporation. This means that no one company can become so large as to completely dominate a sector of the economy. According to Libertarians, this usually happens when a corporation tries to mix with government to get special favors or dispensations.

So, to clarify, the Republican conception of capitalism couldn't be farther off from what Libertarians believe. Republicans are big believers in corporations like Enron, who pretty much became so large that they created their own private markets or dominated the ones that were already in existence. They thrive on corporate handouts, and the Citizens United ruling probably made them want to go out and dance in the street. I hate when Republicans tout "free market ideals", as if those were synonymous with the version of capitalism to which Republicans actually subscribe. It's time for Republicans to own up to the fact that they're not really pro-free-market at all. If anything, they're against the free market the most. Was it not Adam Smith who postulated that capitalists are the worst for the free market, because they are the ones who look to profit by any means necessary?

People are confused by economic and political terms. It doesn't help that the Republicans throw around buzzwords so that it appears that they support free-market principles when in fact they hate the free market. It is reminiscent of 1984, where the language itself becomes so muddled and "refined" that if people start to hear pro-capitalist rhetoric couched in terms of the "free market," people will start to think that increases in numbers of House/Senate Republicans will correlate to how free the market is, when in fact it's just the opposite.

Who is the fool

Conspiracy theorists
Religious nuts
Hardcore right-wing free marketers

These are somewhat distinct categories. One needn't fall into any one category to fit in any other. Yet all these categories share the fact that they require one to believe in all these ridiculous assumptions in order to make their story believable. I think a great deal of arguments put out by people who would fall into one or more of these categories should be met with a lot of skepticism and, yes, questioning assumptions.