Entries Tagged 'RAGE' ↓

A bill amendment in the senate was voted on to remove funding from Haliburton, Blackwater, and other companies contracting overseas if they require mandatory binding arbitration for absolutely  anything that goes wrong. No chance of litigation, trial, anything, just arbitration. Arbitration is already known to go very much in favor of the company, seeing as they pay the bills. It’s bad enough on civil suits, but this is applying it to criminal issues.

Like rape.

In fact that is, specifically, what brought this vote up.

Three years ago, because that’’s how long getting past the arbitration clause has taken, Jamie Leigh Jones was, allegedly, I still have to say allegedly legally but it’s kinda “fucking duh”, gang-raped by her co-workers at KBR/Haliburton, in Baghdad. Her contract declared this to be “personal injury arising in the workplace.” That includes the part where she was stuffed into a shipping crate afterwards.

Now that alone is pretty outrageous, and the fact they tried to say it was contractually bound to arbitration moreso. Not like Haliburton is considered a company of good guys, right? But it goes on from there.

Senator Al Franken (I love saying that) put in a bill to withdraw funding from companies with those clauses. The vote passed 70-28-2. Two abstentions, 70 yay, 28 nay.

28 people voted that what happened should never go to trial, effectively. That companies with mandatory arbitration clauses deserve government contracts, regardless of the truly serious crimes happening.

They voted that hey, if you’re raped, that’s too bad, and a company representative will decide what happens to you and the assailants. If anything. They can just fire the victim for false claims against the company without seeing any evidence either way, and they’re completely free of accountability. Isn’t that wonderful?

So, 28 senators, all men, all Republican, have voted that rape is just fine with them, because the free market said so. Notorious assholes John Ensign, Mitch McConnel, Jon Kyl, and David Vitter all are included on the list of nays.

How crazy is that? Michele Bachmann supported the amendment in the house. So out of touch, this is a real quote of hers. “I am so proud to be from the state of Minnesota. We’re the workingest state in the country, and the reason why we are, we have more people that are working longer hours. We have people that are working two jobs.” Yet she realizes that mandatory arbitration is a bad idea.

But not these guys:

In the interest of fairness, ten Republican senators voted against rape:

All the rest of you, however, deserve a lifetime of being skullfucked by a kakapo.

I don’t get too political here for the most part (though it’s not hard to guess I lean way left, by any means). I can usually just laugh at death panels and the other lies going around.

Today, thanks to a sign I just saw at the “tea party march” down DC way, I have to make a political post. And it’s going to have some seriously offensive content. Fortunately, some of these people are just stupid, like the one holding a sign covered in stars that said

“I am not a Terroist [sic], Socialist or Extreemist [sic]. I am a PATRIOT.”

Really, they did put in a lot of effort. A circle of stars, nice color work, just uh…well, not so much with the spelling. And right now I’m looking at someone walking with a “Fair Tax” flag (now that I could write plenty about later). He’s holding it backwards. And there’s signs saying “Who is John Galt?” from the objectivists who forget someone has to scrub the toilets, to quote Frank Fontaine. The standard implication Obama is a Nazi, via a sign saying “Got Swastika?” Most of the time, we can just be amused by these signs. And an interview with a woman who said “We have some people in talk radio that are tellin’ us the truth!”

This time, one sign really concerned me.

“Obama,

We have waken[sic] up to your evil plans to destroy our country. Take your racist, un-American *ACORN* group and arrogent[sic] wife back to your own country and strip their rights away.”

Now granted, there were plenty of insane signs as always, but something about this one just really gets my attention, probably the racist undercurrent combined with general Beckian (Comma Glennian) batshittery.

“We have waken[sic] up to your evil plans to destroy our country.”

Now honestly, I’ve never been a fan of say, GW. But I don’t remember people in such large, visible numbers declaring he had evil plans to destroy the country. Was he fucking up? Sure. Were members of his administration war profiteers? You bet. But did he have an “evil plan to destroy the country”? No, he really didn’t. He just was shitty at the job.

Now how in the world have people come to the conclusion Obama’s got active, malevolent intent? What would be the point, even, of actively destroying the US if he even had that ability?

I hear a lot of “take the country back.” From what? Who? I heard a claim of Obama’s secret government, and cries of socialism (and frankly, as someone who’s just fine with some socialism, we’re nowhere close to it anyway, seeing as the government doesn’t control any means of production).

Let’s just visit the next piece of the quote.

“Take your racist, un-American *ACORN* group and arrogent[sic] wife back to your own country and strip their rights away.”

Oh.

I guess that fits with the self-contradictory “Muslim Marxist” claim. Not that Marxism and religion match, or that Obama is Muslim. Or that ACORN is un-American, even. I’d dare say any group which gets more voters to the polls is pretty damn American on either side. But, since ACORN has a tendency to push minorities to the polls, they helped change the balance of power. And as for his arrogant wife and own country…well, if the scary black man really is from Kenya (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary), we can send him away! It’ll be okay, and take his wife too, she’s another negro. Obviously that means she’s not American, because if she was, she wouldn’t be getting uppity, because let’s face it, that’s the word they’re wanting to use.

Oh, and the whole of ACORN. We don’t need those darkies in the US either. I used to wonder why the hatred for an organization that encourages voting. I don’t now.

Just what rights have been stripped away, anyway? Over the last eight years old white conservative men have given us DHS, the PATRIOT act, warrant-less wire tapping, torture, and a suspension of habeus corpus. That was all under the watch of George W. Bush. Some of those programs have ended already, thus restoring our rights since President Obama’s election.

The nasty underbelly has shown itself, and it’s racism, plain and simple. From claims the president isn’t born in the US (A claim that people had the decency to leave alone when it came to John McCain, despite having been born to US parents in Panama because they understood a US parent makes him a natural born citizen), to that he’s a Muslim (fine if he is, we don’t have a religious test to hold office, but he’s not), to overtly racist propaganda.

This one came from Doctor David McKalip. A Tea Party activist, Beckian extraordinaire, and member of American Medical Association’s house of delegates. I’m sticking this one under a thumbnail because holy shit, it’s vitriolic, racist, and pretty damn shocking.

This is where we are as a nation. A group that’s had power for 30 years, effectively, has finally been totally put out of power and has shown its true colors. Ad hominem attack, overt racism, panic and lies.

When Barack got elected, I thought “wow, we really HAVE made it somewhere. Racism is still there, but I think it really might not be the problem it used to be.”

I was wrong.

Am I saying everyone against health care reform is racist? Absolutely not. Am I saying everyone who was against the stimulus package, or other policies from the administration is racist? Certainly not.

But it’s become very, very clear a large amount of the people fighting are, even in congress, where you can’t get most of the Republicans to say “Barack Obama is constitutionally eligible to be president” even. At best, they’re playing to an extremist base. At worst, they are that base, and this shit has to end. Now.

Sure, there’s all the flagging options, but really, when a post is just insulting there’s no good option, all you have is “Spam/Overpost.”

Craigslist needs a button labeled “Fuck you!” Might not be bad in the personals section, admittedly, when you have your incredibly unappealing individuals demanding perfection, but mostly it’s needed for the jobs section, particularly the creative ones. Let me provide an example post of why it’s needed.

“We are a small local firm seeking a couple research assistants to help with the editing and revising of textbooks, which will be published shortly. The subject matter is varied, but the current project deals with emerging threats and homeland security.

This is an unpaid position, but a credit will be awarded to those who contribute and this is a definite resume builder. The schedule is very flexible and the only requirements are excellent writing skills and a laptop.

Interested? Let’s talk.”

“Do our work for free! We’ll put your name in small print in return, where it’ll never be seen and we’ll take all the credit for your research.”

“Fuck you!”

See how that works? It’s cathartic, and I think if someone get hammered with the “Fuck you!” button, they’ll quickly come to understand there’s something about their offer that doesn’t jive with the market.

Cox commercials are certainly known for being shitty. Low budget, misleading, usually starring the wife of whoever was around (this is completely true, historically Cox Commercials have used the wife of someone). Lately Cox has made an effort to have a budget, license some really really shitty indie songs, and be appealing.

Now they just have stupidity on a higher budget.

I just saw a commercial that said “Dish Network’s commercial may tell you “come on, get happy”, but what they don’t tell you is they’ve raised their prices for the last nine years. But Cox gives you hundreds of channels and no extra charge for high definition!” The latter is a lie, as you’re forced to pay for a more expensive cable box (7 dollars worth, in fact, which is the price of most additional tiers). However, that’s not important.

“We’re describing the price raises of the competitor, but we’re not going to actually talk about prices even though we used “but” to indicate a comparison.”

This might have something to do with the fact Cox has also raised prices for the last nine years, and dish network has those same hundreds of channels.

Once again, fuck marketers and their abuse of all common sense, as in reality the commercial should be “Dish network raises their prices! But so do we! So you’re screwed no matter what!”

This one is dedicated to my friends suffering through it daily in retail.

Read the god damn signs around you. They’re everywhere, and they’re important. Not just stop signs. Signs that say “this item cannot be returned”, “please do not leave movies here”, or signs that have a price on them.

Just a few hours ago, I visited a Pizza Hut, wherein the man in line in front of me kept pointing to items on the display in front of the counter and asking how much they were. “How much are the pizza rolls? How much is the pizza mia?” His finger, each time, touched the price clearly displayed on said sign while the man behind the counter had to figure out what he was pointing at. Turns out that light doesn’t bend around the pointer’s finger and reflect back to the clerk’s eyes so he can magically see what’s being poked on the other side of the counter.

This isn’t uncommon, of course. When I worked at a video store, once a day I’d have someone walk up to the display for used movies and ask how much they cost. Each movie was not only individually labelled with a very large sticker on the front, but the sign above them said “$14.99, 2 for $25!” And yet, they asked. Truly when Clerks asked “How much are these muffins?” Kevin Smith was channeling the frustrations of everyone to work a register.

Every day, people put videos in front of the sign that says “Do not place movies here, place them in drop box”, or more often, they’d look at the sign and just reach around it to drop movies on the other side, a behavior I always found pretty unexplainable. Some ridiculous “rules don’t apply to me” sense of entitlement?

A few weeks ago, my doctor, my DOCTOR, was guilty of this. A woman who performed surgery on my toe couldn’t read a sign in front of her.

You see, the video store I worked at has an outside, drive-through drop box, but it’s in a very bad neighborhood. Someone destroyed the lock and access panel, so we taped the drop-slot up, put a sign that says “Do not use, out of order” in front of it. Rather than read the words on this paper and tape blocking her from using the drop-box, she tore it off. Three days later when informed her movies haven’t been returned (because they couldn’t be removed from the box), she chose to start yelling at the cashier and manager. Apparently, she was “doing a million things at once and didn’t have time to read fucking sign.” I’m concerned that one of these things was driving, certainly, but she had time to rip off the sign and tape. Because she’s special, like everyone else ignoring a sign.

And that’s a doctor. Someone who I’ve personally witness cut open a part of my body and remove things.

How do these people survive? How do they keep jobs or businesses? How do they not get hit in traffic? Are they the ones who just keep rolling when they turn right from a side street to a main street, forcing you to slam the brakes?

Please, people. Start looking at the signs around you. It’ll not only make everyone not hate you, but you just might live longer.

Of course, it’s never the idiot who dies, is it? So please, read the signs around you so the person who deserves to live gets to. And so he doesn’t spend 15 minutes waiting on your dumb ass to ask how much everything you’re touching costs, despite the fact your thumb is on the sticker that tells you.

Oh, and take a sign into the office to make sure your doctor isn’t totally oblivious on the job. You don’t want a nicked artery.

SilverSonic XL, one of many of the same product that works as a small overear audio amplifier (so, a hearing aid shaped like a bluetooth headset).

The ad asks the question “Do you wish you had sonic hearing?”

That is not a misquote.

Sonic hearing.

son·ic (snk)
adj.
1. Of or relating to audible sound: a sonic wave.
2. Having a speed approaching or being that of sound in air, about 1,220 kilometers (760 miles) per hour at sea level.
3. Slang Extremely exciting and fast-paced: a sonic lifestyle.

Do you wish you had hearing related to audible sounds? Do you wish your hearing had a speed approaching that of 1,220 KMPH? Do you consider hearing a lifestyle?

Unless you’re deaf, this commecial is selling you WHAT YOU ALREADY HAVE.

I wish I could make this angrier, but the only way to do that is start typing “DAMNIT DAMNIT FUCK” for several pages. I say typing because copy-pasting doesn’t release the fury I feel right now. So just envision R Lee Ermy neckpunching someone, and you’ll know how I feel.

Oh, and after, it says “The SilverSonic XL is discreet, so nobody will know you have sonic hearing!”

Why are there tons of writers, good ones, who can’t find jobs in advertising, but that idiot did? Also, why isn’t he currently being stabbed with a pen?