Category: Do the Right Thing

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Trick or Treat?

We stopped giving candy to kids who came by several years ago when the normative behavior seemed to have become, “Gimme!” instead of a more polite and appreciative behavior. I’d consider dispensing candy again if I had a couple of these filled with “penny candy” and set to dispense a couple of lil pieces of candy for a quarter.

“Gimme,” indeed. Little monsters. (And I include the parents of those little monsters who went around demanding their candy when I say “little monsters”. At the very least, they have tiny, withered ethics and little positive influence on their children, the front line monsters.)

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OWS: It Fisks Itself

Shooting fish in a barrel, tasking candy from babies: both several orders of magnitude harder than ridiculing OWS, since the OWS crowd does that to itself without even being aware of it. Exhibit #3,476:

She (that is female, isn’t it?) can’t figure this one out on her own? Of course not. Such self-made idiots need to go live in an assisted thinking facility. “Here, dearie, don’t bother with trying to think things through. Let me make all your decisions for you.” After all, it’d just be the next reasonable step from letting the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind and Academic Nut Fruitcakes do their all their so-called “thinking” for them.

And, even given the expenses, I think such a move could be a net gain for society as a whole.

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Are You Sure You Are Qualified to Vote? Hmmm?

OK, so you may have the “right” to vote, but are you really qualified to cast that vote? I’d suggest that at least two things must obtain before a citizen who has a right to vote is right to exercise that right. Those two things are

    1. A working knowledge of the basics of US history, geography and government functions.
    2. A grounding in the facts of the issues and candidates of the day.

Given those two criteria, I doubt more than half (if that) the people who cast their votes on election day(s) throughout America are qualified to do so. Sure, they may have opinions, but opinions informed by ignorance are worth the information that is their basis.

Try these out on friends, acquaintances and associates:

Could you pass a US citizenship test?

and

The SHORT FORM of this Civics Literacy Test

Any of those three linked quizzes should afford an adequate look at one’s basic American civics literacy.

As for adequate knowledge of candidates and issues, the best test is simply this: is your primary source of information the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind? Then, FAIL. *heh*

Just sayin’. (I hate sharing the polling place with people who are too lazy to do their homework before casting their vote. Really hate it.)

If you fail the simple tests of either basic criteria, please stay home the next time the polls are open. Really, it’s for your own good as well as that of society.

Note: the quiz found at Could you pass a US citizenship test? is the least well-framed of the three offerings above, but does accurately reflect the really poor framing of a current real citizenship exam. *sigh* Some of the question/answer combos are reflective of a “history” and “civics” view that is more propaganda than actual history and civics, such as, “What did the Emancipation Proclamation do?” (The real correct answer: Nothing but provide for disingenuous propaganda,” but the “correct” answer according to the test–which I dutifully rendered–was the lie, “Freed the slaves”.)

Still, on that “test” because I have for all my life had a semi-dyslexic recall of the geography of the “Left Coast”, I almost missed a question. (Yes, I said “A question” *heh* Don’t make me brag about my scores. Just let it be with “My eighth grade American Civics class would have been amused to be asked to take tests this simple.” No, seriously.)

Continue reading “Are You Sure You Are Qualified to Vote? Hmmm?”

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Dogs and Bones

I recommend this post highly. Its subject matter is extremely important in almost every area that impacts our lives today, but since it seems to lie outside the issues that are most loudly trumpeted as urgent, critical issues, the fact that the “half-educated” it refers to (or less, actually) are mostly creating the problems that face us mostly disappears in the noise.

The author of the linked post applies the problem of people who think they know more than they do to the influence such people have exerted to bring about the current economic woes we face, but that only touches the very tip-top 1/4 inch of the iceberg, leaving the rest (including that which is submerged*) to bedevil us.

Always remember the importance of a well-informed (as opposed to ignorant or misinformed or DISinformed) electorate in a representative republic, especially one with far too many democratic elements.

“In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history are in the majority and dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance.”

Continue reading “Dogs and Bones”

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Now, Here’s a People With the Right Idea

Iceland’s On-going Revolution

(Go ahead and read. I’ll still be here when you get back… )

Of course, participatory government depends upon a literate and well-informed populace, something Iceland has and the U.S. no longer does.

But were such a thing to take place here–a literate and well-informed electorate to effect a peaceful, constitutional revolution, I’d like to see one thing especially come from it.
I’d like to see a change to the eighth amendment excluding both elected federal officials and “feddle gummint bureaucraps” from protections against “cruel and unusual punishment” so those convicted of abusing their offices/positions could be tarred, feathered and used as “parade torches” on July 4th every year.

Of course, it would take following the amendment process fully, so that such proper and due punishments could be effected legally… 🙂

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Silly Seasoning

I get email offers from Mother Earth News all the time. It’s all because I purchased a set of 40 years of MEN on CDs some time ago (now, that was a good buy: buried in those CDs, along with all the hyperventilating about Evul Capitalizm Destroying the Wurld is also a wealth of very useful how-to stuff… and the hyperventilating is amusing) Yeh, yeh, I know I can unsubscribe, but I find the blatant commercializing of greenie values funny.

Case in point: the most recent mailout featuring–I kid you not–

Exclusive Offer: Eco-Friendly Products for Your Natural Kitchen

So much to mock, so little desire to spend the effort…

Linked in the email is a buncha overpriced crap you can get better versions of at Walmart, “Tarjhay” or Amazon.com, if you really wanted to. But I mean, who really wants reusable grocery bags? Just another thing to throw in the wash all the time. Plastic’s great. Plenty of uses 1 2 3, and anyone who really wants to pour money down a rat hole (instead of pounding sand in it like any sensible person) in today’s economy rather than have a useful resource they’re already paying for is, IMO, an idiot.

Oh, and there’s plenty of oil and more than enough inexpensive energy available with current known reserves and technologies to last mankind into as rich a future as we might want. All that’s required to make use of these things is to stop listening to the greenies, cut them OUT of the political system, let them rot on the vine. Real conservationists (what people who care about clean water, clean air, “clean” soil, renewable resources, and the like were called before the advent of the ‘environmental” religion) USE what is available as widely as they can, not simply crush anyone who wants to use it at all or play the “I’m morally superior because I wear sandals made out of roots and bark by third world slaves,” game.