Ok folks, this seems to be something cropping up a bit in the news lately… Once again some other country has some problems and we’re (US) debating whether to do something about it or not.
If you haven’t heard, Syria has been accused and “found” to have used chemical weapons against the rebels trying to overthrow the current government. The US has been siding with the rebels, but only offering humanitarian aid as well as with some European countries. Russia has been backing the operating government for some time as well. So that’s what makes this a sticky situation. Both sides have been reluctant to offer anyone in Syria weapons, though now that the “line has been crossed” with the chemical weapons thing, we might be handing out those too. (that’s another comic for another time)
While we here like to poke fun at current events, this has been a particularly terrible encounter for everyone in that country. Which all comes down to one big question… Should we get involved?
Well, historically, America has been pretty isolationist. Even George Washington (prez#1) said in his 1796 farewell address that getting involved in other peoples’ drama was just asking for trouble. (paraphrased) But on the other side of that, we were overly reluctant to engage in the first 2 world wars, which by the second in retrospect, we should have jumped into the fray much sooner.
I guess the point is, sometimes you can’t be too hesitant to stick your nose in. But then again, we’re not the global police force and there’s real concern that the conflict will spread to the backers of the civil war… which… nothing good will come of.
Anyways… I’m pretty split on this. Sure, we need to help folks and stand behind the underdog if it’s for a good cause, but also be mindful about our intentions and how things effect the world stage.
It’s no surprise to anyone that by and large, politicians are selfish and corrupt. So nobody should really be shocked about the whole furlough thing. And yet, here we are.
The “fiscal cliff” and “sequester” were supposed to be things soooooo bad that not even the childish differences between the only 2 parties in US politics could possibly allow to come to fruition. They had an idealistic vision that when presented with absolute worst case scenarios, these two groups that hate eachother would set aside their differences and create something everyone could agree on.
HA, because that would happen!
And yet, they let the two worst case scenarios happen. They let the things that would be so atrocious and devastating to the people and country, that nobody in their right mind would let it happen, well, happen.
So now we have “furloughs”… basically lots of unpaid days off by government paid employees. This happened across the board to every corner of every program Americans pay for. This included things like air traffic controllers and lawyers to name a few. And it’s not like anybody forgot that it would cause the flow of essential governmental services come to a grinding halt. That was the whole point. But now that it’s happened… Why the hell are people getting angry?
Well, not just people getting angry, but why are the idiots in congress reverting it for “essential” agencies and employees? Oh, I’m sorry, airlines got delayed because your congresspeople screwed up? You (the people) should be mad! But we should live with it until they fix things. That was the point of this entire exercise. Making concessions for some things that inconvenience us and letting other essential services slip into the void isn’t a solution. We’re in bad shape here, folks, and you can thank the people in charge. Don’t like it? Kick them out!
Now, I’m not saying we should just live with the furloughs, no… this was a stupid idea by stupid people and allowed to happen by even stupider people still. But I also don’t think it’s ok to allow certain areas to be given a pass while areas that don’t directly inconvenience people into a furor still suffer from paycuts.
Want to know an easy fix? See, your politicians don’t actually care about us. No, if they did, they wouldn’t have played chicken with the American economy and people who need to put food on the tables for their families. If you want politicians to do the “right thing”, you have to speak their language. That’s why, should we need them to come to a decision that effects thousands or millions of people, then instead of letting the people shoulder the burden like they always do, we should make the politicians carry the load! That’s right! No furloughs for or austerity for the people, rather withhold 20% of the congress’s pay for every time they do not come to a meaningful agreement. Let’s see how they like it! Then they can try again. Screw up 5 times and they get no pay until they figure it out.
Or we could just fire the whole bunch and put in people that can pass morality and IQ tests… That works too.
Sorry for the rant guys, but I’m getting really tired of our government leaders not doing their jobs.
Update:
Hey all, I’ve been pretty sick this last week so it might take me another one to get back up and running again. Sorry for the lack of comics, but hopefully I’ll get to start them again soon.
It’s interesting… the careers we picked as kids are the same that are being shut down by “tough economic times”. Unfortunately, they are also the jobs we really need. But whatever… who needs science? Who needs space exploration? Who needs public servants like firefighters, medics, police officers, etc…
Who needs them when we can outsource, downsize, or streamline?
Besides good news, our unemployment rate is now only 7%! That means one out of 14ish people are unemployed. Chances are, you know someone who’s out of work right now or someone who has been struggling. Granted, it’s better than the 14% and up we had before, still… the problem with these stats is that they don’t take into account people who have had to go into work outside their field “just to have a job” or just given up on searching. Also, you’d think these stats came from the unemployment office… but alas, it’s just a general random calling campaign asking people. Excellent source of quality stats! Uhg… (meaning, actual figures are probably much higher)
So this is one of those really weird side effects of growing technology. Once upon a time, you had to buy all your media on tape or cd (or record). These you could freely resell without any restrictions. You buy it, you own it, you can do what you want with it except copy it. Simple as that.
But at some point we stopped wearing bright neon and gallons of hair spray and they digital age was upon us. With it, came great accomplishments like digital media and electronic networking. But at what cost? Ownership laws became muddy and ambiguous. Various file sharing companies rose and fell. And we are left with a disconnect between the physical and digital worlds.
So you like Steam / Digital Download games? You like MP3s from iTunes or Amazon? You like to buy movies to download online? That’s great! But you don’t own them… not really…
In the light of the most recent events, further cementing the anti-digital rights movement, we have precedent and law that makes it illegal to sell any digital media. Basically, the outcome said that you would have to sell the physical object in which you downloaded it onto… meaning your harddrive. It was meant to be an obnoxious way to snub digital rights proponents.
Never mind Europe now allows the resale of some digital goods… this just really makes it harder for our future generations to overcome these kinds of restrictions.
The cute way around this is to download your movies, mp3s, ebooks, and games to a cd or external thumbdrive first, then copy them to your harddrive or whatever. That way, you can say you never had them on the harddrive first and be able to sell the media! Take that legal system!
But we shouldn’t have to circumvent the law. We purchase a good or service, an mp3 or game isn’t a digital service as they would like to believe, it’s a digital good, thus, we should be allowed to do with it as we please.
ALSO:
Wow Insider just wrote up a nice article about What’s Shakin!! Take a look! I’m a big fan of their articles and they helped both my sites get their start, so check em out!!
Comeon, you have to admit… Kim Jong Un, supreme dictator of North Korea, is the cutest baby faced little ruler ever! Just want to pinch his cheeks! A shame we’ll probably have to nuke him first…
So once again, NK is going insane and provoking the world with nuclear weapons. Granted, their rocket technology is deplorable. Hell, I had more success with a homemade model rocket than 2 decades of their ICBM trials. Still, they’re bound to get lucky one of these days. Lucky in the sense that it’ll land them at the rotten end of the ugly stick when every nation in the world just gets fed up with their shenanigans.
Heck, even China, long time neutral backer of NK has started getting irritated…. probably cause all of this bombing nonsense will end up involving them as well. My hopes are that when all this goes down, South Korea as well as the US (we’re in a pact now) and our allies AND countries like China will group up for a raid. It really is about time we bury the hatchet with big red and do some joint missions. Our freakin’ economies are tied up enough, might as well as act like buddies.
Anywho, pictured above are Park Geun-hye of South Korea and Shinzō Abe of Japan. Both of which will be involved with this conflict.
In other news, NK decided to make a propaganda video about them nuking the US… That’s fine and all, but they used both a Disney soundtrack and video clips from Call of Duty games! I say, the next CoD game should be us fighting North Korea!!! XD Comeon, they keep having us go against poor Russia, why not fight a country that really deserves it?
Well folks, you may be just shocked that we were never able to come to a decision for those budget cut things because we have a 2 party system and neither side can agree. Thus, spending cuts across the board! Woot! The system has failed!
Good thing this was just over a measly what, $85 billion and hundreds of thousands of jobs being lost AND potential leap into yet another recession… Nothing important right? Uhg!
So what the heck is this comic about? Well, in 867 years, on March 16th 2880 A.D., either 1 of 2 things will happen… If we’re still alive by then… a LARGE meteoroid named 1950DA will either be billions of miles out into the abyss OR collide with earth. Kind of a big gap… but it was discovered and observed a long time ago and they didn’t get a good look at it. However, it will come into view again in about 2o years. At that point, we can figure out what it’s going to do.
Now… there is, unfortunately, a very high chance this thing could hit us. If it does, we’re talking about absolute devastation. This thing is big… like, a kilometer big… like, dinosaur killing mass extinction big. Ok, that one was like 4x bigger than this thing… but still, it has the potential to have the equivalent of 46,300 megaton bomb going off. Hiroshima, that was 16 kiloton. So… think of a nuke times 2.89 MILLION!! That’s big.
But on the plus side, we have 800+ years to prepare! And if we look at the current pace of politics and science, we’ll probably… well… not survive. Let’s face it, folks, the idiots in charge will bicker and argue back and forth, denying it would hit us, diverting the topic, pigeon holing the topic, or just ignoring it altogether. And since we like to cut funding for math and science in this country, our space program will consist of bottle rockets by then.
Oh, don’t worry… I’m sure by then some other smart country with less restrictive politics and large investments in technology will have something ready to save us. Maybe that 1998 movie Armageddon should have been shot in China or Bollywood to be more accurate. >)
Uhg… Not this again! Fiscal Cliff v2.o!!! Guess we have until Friday to make a decision or we get big cuts across the board in government spending. Sure, sounds ok at first, we don’t need to spend $10,000 on a single hammer, but when you look at it hitting everything with the same percent, bad things happen. Such as, if you cut a program that’s been highly scaled down and leaned, then there’s not a lot more room for any reductions.
So… we’ll see what happens…
But so far, the Prez has been dropping some serious gloom and doom lately with some real pessimistic views of post cut America. The folks over at Politifacts have sorted out what our lovely politicians have been spouting and analyzing the validity of their claims. Spoiler Alert: The a good bit of what they say to us is bubkiss!
In other news!
I found out that I’ll be at booth Purple 15 at the Orlando Megacon this March 15, 16, & 17! Stop on by! And tell me that you’re a reader for special lootz! >D
I was totally surprised by the news this last week that women are now allowed to join in military combat!
Well… not shocked because they shouldn’t be there, but because they weren’t there already. I mean, what the heck, America?! I know we’re a bit chauvinistic on these shores but I’m surprised it took them this long to get it sorted out. Never mind that women have already been in combat situations already… but now it can be official!
The funny thing about the US economy is that if we treated it like it were a teenager, we’d have taken away it’s credit cards decades ago!
Think about it. This whole issue with Financial Cliffs and Debt Ceilings is because we all decided that it’s much easier to borrow lots of cash, spend lots of cash, and not really pay the bills. To the tune of trillions of dollars. That was essentially what that ceiling was supposed to be, but whatever, we just raised the credit limit and put the whole thing off for a little while more. No worries. We’ll let the next generation deal with it. Sorry kids, not our problem!
In all fairness, some debt is good. Well… that’s what my finance and economics teachers always said. Personally, I’d rather only buy something if I new I could pay for it… But what do I know? Honestly, I wouldn’t mind paying a bit more taxes for a few years if it meant that it would be spent to kill off the debt in like a decade. Then, of course, NEVER let it get that bad again! Wishful thinking, I know, but what can ya do?
So, who out there is getting kinda worried about the state of affairs here? Any thoughts on how we could go about fixing things?
While Varok and Vol’jin had a good clean running, and ultimately Varok Saurfang took the popular vote by a hair, the final decision was overturned by the electoral college after watching Fox News who declared a different winner. So sharpen your blades and hitch up your girdles, men, our newly appointed Horde leader, Richard M. Nixon and headless body of a mechanical harvester, declares all out war on… um… everything! Things are certainly going to get a bit… checkered… >)
Well, if we’re going to go down, at least we can take a few fat cats with us!
You might have heard from all the buzz lately about this whole Fiscal Cliff stuff. Basically, it means that the Bush era tax cuts come to an end soon and the President and Congress have to make a better plan to balance taxing with spending and both sides of this are pretty divided. What will happen is that the tax cuts we were getting will go up across the board and government spending will go down. With their powers together, economists say it’ll make us go back into a major recession (cause you know, we were so out of the last one…).
But never fear, all that needs to happen is for the Republicans and Democrats to work together in a short amount of time, to set their differences aside, and do what’s right for the greater good-
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA!! Oh man, I almost didn’t make it through that! So yeah, I’ll be amazed if we don’t go “over the cliff”. Too many things need to be in sync with people that don’t get along.
But if it’s any consolation, at least we’ll be forcing that nice wealthy class over the cliff with us! Though that probably won’t mean a hill of beans cause they’re rich for a reason and will probably squirrel it away anyways. We can dream though, right?
Well… as of writing this, my vote didn’t count. Last night they called the election and good ol Florida still decided to count hanging chads or whatever it was they were doing. And no matter how put out I feel about it, think of poor Hawaii; who has the lowest voter turnout because, well, the elections are usually called by the time they go to vote. Seriously, that’s not cool ‘merica!
But beyond even that, we here in the states have something called an “electoral college”. And it’s not like one of those prestigious colleges either. It’s like one of those mail correspondence unaccredited art colleges you see on tv in between reality shows.
No! The electoral college was set up to help us dumb folks to not just vote for the wrong person. Because the electoralites (that’s what we’re calling them now) know who the president should be, and of course making a decision based on that. The system was set up way back in 1787 really to assist with the problem of an ill-informed voting public. But with a technologically advanced society we have now, where the other day we had hundreds of thousands of tweets per second, there is absolutely no reason to hold on to an antiquated system that assumes we don’t know why these people are. Hell, most of us are TOO INFORMED! Really now, I was tired of the ad campaigns months ago (and my sincerest condolences for those caught in the big battleground states).
And what was an attempt to even out representation because of population, became the ultimate inequality. Your votes are not as equal as someone else from another state (as a result of how many electoral votes each state has). So not only is someone else voting for you, and that they don’t really need your vote to win (like Hawaii), but the votes you do cast aren’t even as important as someone else’s! Really?! That’s fair? That’s democracy?
So what’s the plan? Well, we don’t need the electoral college. That’s just bollocks. What we need is a purely POPULAR VOTE driven election. Not just that, I say we do away with it being advertised even at the county level or state for that matter. What I mean is, all votes go into a single pot and at the end they are counted up and released; none of this “winning certain states” bologna. Really now, elementary school elections are more democratic than the real thing. This would solve the whole college thing and the feeling of votes not mattering. And to that point, I’d have Hawaii voting a day early. No reason not to have them feeling left out.
Anyways… I’m pretty tired of voting not mattering. At least the local stuff makes a difference and amendments too, but as for general presidential elections, you might as well as write in Mickey Mouse because it won’t make any less of an impact.
Well, it’s that time once again where the most important election in the world takes place! Who will be the next Warchief of the Horde?
Many great choices here, even some oldies have come into the fray. So who knows? Maybe we’ll finally get someone a little less insane as our glorious leader. What says you, good peoples of Azeroth?
Decision 2012
Here are the Candidates: Garrosh Hellscream – Definitely the conservative of the group. He pushes a “grass roots” movement of the Orcs’, well, at least when they were blood thirsty minions of the Burning legion. Garrosh is power hungry with bloodlust and promises to return the Orcs to glory through battle.
Varok Saurfang – Honored Veteran of the first, second, and third wars, as well as the conflict against the Lich King. Varok carries the banner of peace and strong relations between all nations. Critics claim his passive method of international politics would weaken the Horde’s position amongst the other nations.
Sylvanas Windrunner – Forsaken Leader and Miss Banshee Queen 1984, Sylvanas stands as one of the most powerful and sympathetic candidates. While she commands a legion of faithful and strong undead warriors, she has taken great strides as to not allow the other nations of the world to come to harm from the same curse. When one of her own rebelled and attempted to create a new Forsaken army, she and the leadership of the Horde worked together to bring justice to those who threaten the peace and stability of the Horde nation. Opponents say that while her intervention against the Forsaken mutiny was “admirable”, he loyalties come into question as she is technically a “dirty hipster Night Elf”.
Vol’jin – Leader of the Darkspear Tribe and architect of the now exiled people of the Darkspear Isle. After an encounter with Garrosh, he and his people have had to seek refuge outside of the Orgrimmar walls. Vol’jin, while not favored by the current administration, is a proponent of equal rights and representation of all nationalities of the Horde and its peoples. There are rumors of Vol’jin’s involvement with illicit incense use without proper medical papers.
Baine Bloodhoof – Son of Carnie, the former leader of the Tauren people. Like his father, he promotes wisdom, peace, patience, and honor. His platform includes strengthening the relations of the Horde nation while promoting respect for nature. Claims against his campaign say that his “go green” environmentalism is just an unobtainable idealist dream that would be overly expensive for the budget and destabilize the economy.
Lor’themar Theron – Reluctant leader of the shattered Blood Elf people, Lor’themar might not have asked to be the leader, but he does so with dignity and purpose. He joined alliances with Sylvanas to help his starving people after the fall of the Sun Well. Many question his allegiances as merely “just out of necessity, not loyalty”, and given the chance, he would seek alliances with anyone willing to provide a little magic juice.
Thrall – Few can argue that Thrall has been the greatest leader of the Horde to date. He has brought strength and solidarity to his people, no matter the race, and has taken great strides in the stabilization of international relations. However, due to the events of the Cataclysm, he left in order to help the world in other ways. This action has lead to criticism of his abandonment of his people during their most vulnerable time. There are also rumors that he stepped down after allegations of an affair with a certain blonde Human from Theramore Isle.
Richard M. Nixon’s Head – With the Headless Body of Agnu, Nixon vows to enslave all people of Azeroth and bring down upon them a tyrannical rule they have never known.
Cast your vote now! Polls end in 2 weeks (19th)!! At the end of November! Eh, if Florida can wait a week, we can extend this as well. >)
Well, I’ve rewritten this thing like half a dozen times now, so here’s attempt #7! In light of recent events, the freedom of speech has once again come under attack. This time, however, there have been atrocious and vile consequences as innocent people have lost their lives to vicious mobs expressing their outrage to a single, unimaginably bad, inflammatory, trolling, Youtube video. I won’t get into this exact event too much, but lets just say that I can’t find reason in these actions. It is beyond any kind of sensible comprehension that a single piece of media could cause the loss of innocent human lives. I feel much pain for those that have suffered by the hand of blind animalistic violence. And that’s all we’ll get into that for now.
But this event has spurred much debate with what is covered by the freedom of speech. Does everything get covered or is it selective? Do certain things need to be censored or is it an everything goes type thing? Ever since we as people have carried a voice, or written down our thoughts, or even currently, created interactive medias, there have been others who want to silence the messages they carry. There is power in voice. Not just literally speech, but all forms of media; music, art, literature, performances, and the interactive (gaming). And all of which, have been the subject to heated scrutiny as to the validity of their existence. Some feel that “words” can hurt; they can incite or degrade. This is true. A good speech could rally troops to victory, or upstart a revolution to crush a kingdom. They can be visual and be graphic; they can show us the things we fear, we hate, and cause us to be outraged. Speech has great great power. And that is why it is one of the most sacred tennants of our society; the first in fact. It is our most basic right of being a sentient creature, the right of free expression of one’s self. It is not always a reflection of our mind and soul, but sometimes a critique, a shared understanding, and most definitely, an immutable voice to be heard. Our species has waged wars for the rights of free expression, and the attacks from those who wish to silence us has never ceased.
Granted, among the vast majority of great works out there that are the epitome of this freedom, there are, lets just say, things that are less than savory. Some of the byproducts of free speech are, well, utter crap. While you have those that use it to voice creativity, celebration, or criticism, there are still many that use it in some misguided ways. If you’ve been on the internet for more than 5 minutes, you’ll probably know what I mean. There are many things out there that are total rubbish and some are just plane wrong. But there’s the problem. For there to be a society of free peoples who are granted the rights of self expression, then all of it must be valid*. (note here… all is a funny word, if it violates basic laws or directly causes un-consensual harm to others, then it can not be valid. But I guess that’s probably debatable as well.) We must stand firm, together, for every idiotic word, for every offensive video, for every disgusting art, or downright pure filth of a attempt to troll, we must protect it. It isn’t a matter of what we like or if we find it to be a valid form of art or not, as a society, we have to defend its right to exist. And that’s where we have to ( no matter how much it pains us to do so) stand up for our constitution and philosophies that no matter how much we may hate what you say, we will with every last breath, uphold your right to say it.
At the end of the day, “sticks and stones may break our bones, but words can never harm us”. Hurt, yes; harm, no. Sure, we might be offended or offput by certain things. Hell, I have no desire to watch The Human Centipede, but I’m not going to go on a crusade to have it erased from the annals of history. Nor will I riot in the streets. There is absolutely zero justification for ever harming an innocent person because of your outrage over something. Zero. So there should be no other reaction to offensive media other than feeling putout or just embarrassed that you are genetically related to the species of the creator of the work. That is all. While we reserve the right to freely express ourselves, we also have the right to ignore what others are expressing. It doesn’t effect you. Only the actions and reactions of others does, and while the venn diagrams might touch a little, they never overlap. People, supposedly, have brains, so the actions they take based on the expressions of others is solely their own. It is just that clear and simple. So the fact that creative expression has ever tried to be squelched is beyond incomprehensible.
So keep all that in mind next time you see something on the news about this or that being the cause of some sort of outrage that threatens the freedoms of others… because if you start to silence just one, then before long nobody will have a voice.
Right, so earlier this year, around January, the issue of unmanned drones being used in areas of the middle east came up in the news. The central theme of the issue being that Iraqi officials were upset that even though troops were officially withdrawing, the drones were still being used and causing all kinds of damage. Our side underplayed it saying they were only surveillance. In the same breath, they confirmed that they were being used in Pakistan but they were trying really really hard not to kill civilians. Glad they’re making an attempt at not killing innocent folks in another country…
Anyways, turns out they’ve been a bit more prolific than the earlier report, with somewhere around 281 attacks in Pakistan causing 1299 militant deaths and at least 153 civilian deaths. That’s about 10% of the deaths being civilians. Imagine if there was a crazy group of people here in the US that was attacking people in other countries; terrorists if you will. Now also imagine if the country retaliated with remote control bombs that took out members of that organization but accidentally killed 1 civilian out of every one of their targets… Now imagine the mass outrage and the number of nukes we’d drop on that country… Yeah, no wonder other countries hate us.
And what the heck guys? Isn’t the guy signing off on all these attacks the same one who won a Nobel prize for his peaceful conflict resolutions and whatnot?
