Stand Your Ground (But don't pee on the electric fence!)

I used to watch the Jerry Springer Show. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking the same thing Maggie thought and voiced. She wondered how I could watch something that not only had no socially redeeming value but which clearly illustrated the worst in human behaviour.

And that is precisely why I used to watch it.

It was like watching a car accident. You know you shouldn't but you can't pull your eyes away. The behaviour is so unbelievable. I used to tell Maggie that the next time she wondered how our countries got into the various messes we were in, she should remember the Jerry Springer Show. I told her I watched it to remind myself that the people on that show could not only breed, they could vote and that explained a lot about what is happening to our societies.

It would be unfair to blame it all on Jerry Springer or his show though. He seems like a reasonably nice, if sometimes somewhat bewildered, sort of guy and his program isn’t the only one that provides a forum for the intellectually and morally bankrupt to celebrate their moment in the sun.

There are lots of opportunities on television, in government, the broader mainstream media and certainly on social media for those who may prove Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is a crock.

Consider this fellow in North Carolina; no doubt a proud American who believes in the Constitution, God and the Bill of Rights. 

Clearly he believes sufficiently in the right of free speech when it comes to his right to express his opinion, he’s just not quite as fanatical about defending that right for others if they express an idea with which he disagrees. He reminds me of the precious dears in the Occupy Movement who talk endlessly about democracy and their rights while trampling all over the rights of those they consider the enemy.

That, of course, is the problem with freedom of speech; at some point you’re going to hear something from someone that you just don’t like. It might be an opposing idea, a hateful message or just plain stupid but they have the right to voice that stupidity just as the rest of us have the right not to listen.

There is a significant difference between choosing to tune out a message you don’t like and shouting it down or, as in this case, standing your ground and treating it like a home invasion.

People express their opinions quite freely and so they should. It is unfortunate that more people don’t bother to actually inform themselves before forming and then expressing that opinion but that’s life in a free society. It’s also life in a free society where some are just so far out there, even being fully informed isn’t going to save them.

  

This may actually be the first time somebody used urination as a tool to help get them elected to public office. Hopefully it won’t be the start of a trend. I would hate to contemplate the nature of those political ads once the big ad companies take a run at creating them. Political advertising is crass enough without bringing bodily functions into the mix.

But it does serve to remind us of how we end up with the extremists, the religious fanatics who protest the funerals of the military, who preach that God hates this group or that and activists who believe that the best way to combat corruption on Wall Street is through vandalism and self-indulgent behaviour.

It reminds us of how we can end up with school officials who ban words like 'dancing', 'dinosour' and 'Halloween" or a government like Egypt which just passed a new law permitting husbands to have sex with their spouse up to six hours after she has died. Now there's a law the world was awaiting breathlessly. It would seem that morgues in Egypt may soon become more like honeymoon hotels than anything else.

It’s also reminds us that it is where the folks who appear on Jerry Springer come from and fortunately for him, it appears that he won’t have to worry about running out of new guests for the foreseeable future. 

I may have been wrong about them voting but clearly they are breeding like hamsters in a cage taking a break from the big wheel. 

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© 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

Teaching Children To Achieve Mediocrity

The most depraved type of human being is the man
without a purpose.

- Ayn Rand

I get up every morning and embrace hope. Honestly I do. I wake up, slowly I admit, but filled with the hope that this new day, I will not stumble over more stupidity beyond government stupidity to which I am pretty much resigned.

I woke up this morning with cautious optimism. I say cautious because I knew Occupy would be on the loose today and who knows what stupidity they’re capable of implementing.

My caution was well placed and my hope was dashed on the rocks of idiocy. No….it wasn’t Occupy, as hard as that is to believe. In fact, it wasn’t even government. It was amateur soccer.

The organizers of children’s soccer in my city are implementing a number of changes to the game in order to make it more ‘inclusive’ and less competitive.

Less competitive? Soccer is a game; it’s supposed to be competitive.

Here are the changes.

1. There will be no goal tenders in order to make it easier for the less skilled player to perhaps have an opportunity to score.

2. Games will be held but score will not be kept to prevent any sense of winning and losing which might hurt the feelings of those on the losing team.

3. The word tournaments will not be used. It will be replaced by the word festival which has a more celebratory, inclusive feel to it and which removes any sense of soccer being a competition of skills.

4. Teams with visible minority players will be expected to ensure that the percentage of goals scored will match the percentage of racial diversity on the team although if they are not tracking goals, I’m unsure how they expect to track this.

5. All teams will receive a trophy at each festival.

There are more changes but you get the picture. These changes come on the heels of their previous ruling that any team which won the game by more than five goals (while they were still keeping score) actually was declared to have lost the game by default. I can’t even begin to explain to you, let alone myself, how people think up stupidity like this.

It isn’t a few wingnuts behind this either. The Chair for Sport Research at Laurentian University is extolling this approach as a better way to teach children and even Sport Canada has come down in favour of making soccer less competitive for players under eight.

It's like deciding that children can be taught how to play chess but they will not be permitted to achieve checkmate. All games will be mandated to end in stalemate. Won't that make chess a much more satisfying game for everyone! I imagine that they will also mandate that both black and white pieces must be removed in equal numbers to maintain proper racial diversity on the board.

Life is nothing, if not competitive. All life competes. All species compete. Surely we have a duty and a responsibility to teach our children how to deal with competition?

Competition is one of the primary drivers that motivate us to strive to achieve. What’s the point in trying if you don’t have to worry about the end result? If everything is boiled down to the lowest common denominator then mediocrity becomes the new standard.

Think about it.

Instead of teaching children how to win gracefully and how to lose with dignity, instead of teaching children the value of working hard to develop skills that will reward them, we are lowering expectations. We are teaching our children that the best and brightest of us, the people who work hardest, strive for the stars don’t deserve any more than those who are average or can't be bothered trying.

It is very much behind the attitude so prevalent today where the successful are being attacked for being....well....successful.

We used to teach our children important things like manners, respect for others, integrity and the value of hard work. We used to teach them self-reliance and how to learn from defeat and to try again.

Now we are preparing our children to have the same entitlement attitude that has become the new normal for too many in our societies.

We are teaching our children that there is no value in hard work, no reward in learning and practicing to be better. We are teaching them to be like too many of us who look for ways to force the achievers to drop down to our level so that we don’t have to strive to reach up to theirs.

We are allowing the stupid thinking of the politically correct and the mediocre to rob our children of their full potential,  their desire and the opportunity to strive to be the very best that they can be.

I hate to admit it because I always found her a little too extreme for my taste but Ayn Rand was right. We are allowing mediocrity to take control and become the new standard by which we will live. I wonder how long it will be before the best of us, the most successful, the most talented and the most creative simply give us the finger and move somewhere else.

I also wonder how mediocrity will serve us then. Where is John Galt when you need him most?

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Sheep! How Much More Stupid Can It Get?
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© 2012 Maggie's Bear

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The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

Honourable Members

Have you ever heard something said that was just so patently stupid you were convinced you hadn’t heard correctly? I heard something like that last week and after I realized that there was nothing wrong with my hearing and I had heard it correctly, I thought my head was going to explode.

The Right Honourable Prime Minister of Canada stood up in Parliament and chided the leader of the Official Opposition for not supporting the war against Hitler.

Where does stupidity like that come from? This is the leader of our government. The Leader of the Opposition wasn’t even born until six years after WWII, the party he leads wasn’t formed until 1961 and didn’t exist during the war and, of course, the war has  been over for more than 60 years.

The Prime Minister’s comments received the usual huzzahs and rah rah’s from the honourable members on his side of the House and boos and derision from the opposition benches.

Personally, I’m surprised that he didn’t hold them responsible for trying to delay construction of the Trans Canada Highway, which finally opened in 1962, with endless environmental assessments. Perhaps that is coming.

While it was the Prime Minister and his trained pit bull, the Minister For Foreign Affairs, this time; the simple fact is that no party in parliament deserves to have its members called 'honourable. Justin Trudeau recently referred to the Minister of Foreign Affairs as a 'piece of shit' in The House while his colleagues cheered him on. 

The opposition parties ask ridiculous questions that are designed less to get answers than to try and embarrass the government while the government trots out responses that ignore the question. In the end, nothing of value is said, nothing of value is accomplished and our honourable members refer to this as representative democracy.

I wasn't so sure about that because it doesn't represent what I believe in so I asked Scottish comedian Danny Bhoy to give us his perspective on how the honourable members in some European parliaments conduct themselves.

Hmmm. It seems thinks aren't any better in Europe and maybe even a little worse in some countries but surely somewhere in the world, honourable members are cognizant of the fact that they represent the people. Surely somewhere, there are politicians who show the proper respect for the people's parliament.

I went further east in my research, all the way to Taiwan to see if I could find honourable members who understood and respected that they were in the people's house, representing the people.

While honourable members in Canada and parts of Europe have devolved parliamentary language and decorum down to an adolescent level, honourable members in Taiwan have dispensed with language all together.

Considering the manner in which most members of parliaments seem to conduct themselves, it kind of makes you wonder how they ever came up with the term 'honourable' members doesn't it?

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© 2012 Maggie's Bear
all rights reserved
The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

We Are Drowning In Stupidity

There are two kinds of people in the world; stupid people and the rest of us and I think the rest of us are slowly being outnumbered.

One of my most-read posts is the satire I wrote on what government would do if it legalized marijuana. The article did not take a position on whether legalization was good or a bad thing, in fact it really wasn’t about marijuana at all. It was about how government bureaucracies overwhelm things with rules, regulations, taxes and fees until it all becomes so complicated and expensive, it’s hardly worth engaging in anymore.

Most people got it and enjoyed the humor behind it. Some didn’t. They either agreed with me that marijuana is a gateway drug even though I didn’t state that is what I believe or they attacked me for being against legalization which is also not a position taken in the article. Some contacted me with an opinion based on having only read the first couple of paragraphs which is kind of like deciding whether or not you agree with the values articulated in the Bible after having only read the first page of Genesis.

 It’s not surprising considering that these days many people actually tend to get their news and information from Twitter or something posted on their wall on Facebook. 

It’s not easy to encapsulate complex ideas in 140 characters but that doesn’t prevent many from basing their opinions on those quick and dirty notes.

But stupidity isn’t reserved for the Twitterverse; government is awash in it and it never ceases to amaze me that so many who are elected to public office can utter such complete absurdities with a straight face. Some think it is because they lack respect for the people the electorate and there is a fair degree of both a lack of respect for the electorate and for themselves but it goes beyond that. The stupidity of government, particularly politicians, is palpable.

Nancy Pelosi

This week, for example, Nancy Pelosi led the congressional democrats in hysterical accusations that Republicans were at war with women. Why? It is because the Republicans, who actually supported the Democratic motion to freeze interest rates on student loans had the temerity to vote the funds to pay for this out of the Preventative Health Care budget. Apparently, despite the $15 trillion dollar debt, the Democrats have not caught up to the fact that the money has to come from somewhere other than more borrowing.

What made this attack all the more ridiculous is that only two tenths of one percent of this budget has anything to do exclusively with women  and both Ms Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic caucus voted to take funds from the same budget in January to maintain the freeze on the payroll tax.

Nonetheless the ladies went with straight face and bent ethics before the cameras to tell the world about the Republican perfidity. We see the same thing up here in the Great White North.

Former Prime Minister
Paul Martin

The Liberal Government put Canada into Afghanistan and were criticized for it by the Conservatives. When the Conservatives were elected to form the government, the Liberals immediately began criticizing the Conservatives for being involved in the war and demanding the government bring home the troops that the Liberals originally sent there. The Conservatives, for their part, defended the war initiated by the Liberals. 

Eventually, bowing to public and parliamentary pressure,  PM Harper announced a firm withdrawal date which caused the Liberals to immediately support staying in Afghanistan until the mission was completed.

Don’t try and understand it, just pretend you do and let's move on. 

Prime Minister Stephen Harper
and the F-35. For $25 million
each, I thought they would
be bigger.

Lately the arguing has been over the acquisition of F-35 fighter jets. This was a development procurement process started by the Liberals who signed the original agreement with a consortium of democratic nations. Once the Conservatives, who had been critical of the acquisition, were elected, both parties switched positions. The Liberals now attack the acquisition of the jets while the Conservatives now defend it.

I used to think politicians were hypocritical because of things like this but even hypocrites would be embarrassed to act this stupidly so I now believe that it is nothing but short attention spans and a complete lack of anything remotely resembling common sense. Only the intellectually lazy or challenged can stand up and publicly state something so completely opposite to what they said previously without embarrassment or the realization of just how stupid they are!

This week the prime minister stood in the House Of Commons and actually accused the Official Opposition of refusing to support the war against Hitler. Aside from the fact that WWII has been over for 60 odd years, the simple fact is that the opposition NDP party did not support the war because they didn’t exist. The party was formed in 1961. Clearly the PM needs better script writers because his ability to ad lib is sadly lacking.

Vic Toews, the Minister of Public Safety, went on a national news program where he berated the opposition for not reading his proposed bill to regulate the Internet. Later, the Right Honourable Vic Toews was forced to admit that he hadn’t actually read the bill either. It makes you wonder who in the hell actually drafted the proposed legislation.

Stupidity is everywhere folks. 

Whether it’s the guy in the car beside you picking his nose because he thinks you can’t see him through the window of his car or the woman trying to put on her makeup while she’s driving, stupidity abounds.

In Canada, where unions do not pay taxes on their membership or investment income, they demand that corporations and the wealthy pay their ‘fair’ share. Their understanding of the word fair seems somewhat limited.

Students protesting tuition increases
in Montreal, Quebec

University students in Quebec riot in the streets to protest an increase in tuition spread out over five years which will see their tuition in 2017 still subsidized by the government to the tune of 83%. Apparently math is not taught to those with self-absorbed adolescent values.

Occupy stands in solidarity with inmates at San Quentin, vandalizes cities, demands free public transportation as a human right and decries any kind of leadership and then wonders why its movement fell out of favour so quickly. With all the time they spend planning their next failed enterprise, it’s a wonder they had the ability to even notice.

Anonymous hacks government and financial computers, steals credit cards, posts anti-Semitic and racist hate material while the enlightened online applaud them as heroes.

All across the web people expose themselves to fraud, the theft of their private data, bullying and being manipulated by the very web sites they use but they protest their government’s attempts to bring some sense of order and protection to the web. These will be the same people who will demand the government do something once they have been victimized.

A provincial government takes the most economically powerful province in the country from a have to a have-not province in just eight years, hires one of the nation’s most respected economists to examine and make recommendations on how to fix things but after publicly thanking him for his efforts and cutting him a handsome check, they promptly shelved his report and ignored its findings.

Ontario Premier McGuinty
leading his province to bankruptcy

Instead they introduced an ‘austerity’ budget designed to bring the province’s finances under control by freezing social assistance payments, public sector salaries and cutting doctors’ incomes. They cut equipment budgets for computers in the classrooms while budgeting $1.5 billion for full-day pre-kindergarten. 

And when all was said and done and the figures added up, spending in the austerity budget will actually increase over last year. The budget has a deficit of $15 billion including $10 billion for interest on the debt they created. The government will be forced to borrow money to pay that interest. Only people so bereft of any level of intelligence could come before the public and call this fiscal prudence with a straight face.

I think I have come to the realization that stupidity is founded more on an unwillingness to become informed more than anything else. How else can you explain the absurd opinions shrieked across social media these days? There is an incredible refusal to consider anyone else’s opinion but their own and it is too often predicated on the fact that people don’t listen to anyone but those who agree with them. I’ve heard so many respond adamantly to something that wasn’t actually said that it makes you sit back and wonder with whom they are actually arguing.

It reminds me of something an old boss of mine told me once in reference to a client that rejected a better deal than the one he originally wanted. “Some people just don’t have the brains to know when to say yes.”

And that too is its own form of stupidity. So many are so busy expressing their point of view, they don’t actually hear those who may have a valid point worth considering or who might even be agreeing with them.

I think what offends me most is that these days though is that too many stupid people have their hands on the levers of power and they treat us like we are as stupid as they are. They’re wrong and I miss the days when stupid people were not able to do so much damage to anyone else but themselves.

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© 2012 Maggie's Bear
all rights reserved
The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

Bev Oda or Roy Orbison? You Be The Judge

"Come on baby let the good times roll - roll all night long." 

- Roy Orbison

Bev Oda, Canada’s Minister For International Aid has once again come under fire for livin’ high on the taxpayers’ dime.....well.....dollars actually. Diamond Bev is no piker when it comes to spending other people’s money.

Cabinet Minister, Diamond Bev Oda - makes you proud
to be Canadian doesn't it?
Photograph by: Screengrab , Google Image

She was in London last year to attend a conference on Vaccines for Developing countries, Diamond Bev cancelled reservations made for her at the five-star Grange St. Paul's Hotel. Instead she had staff book her into the swanky-danky Savoy, you know that hotel where royalty and folks like that enjoy paying $16.00 for a glass of orange juice.  Of course, not staying at the St. Paul where the conference was being held meant that Bev had to rent limousines at an additional cost of $1,000 a day or so, but who’s counting? Clearly not Diamond Bev.

She has, after it was brought to light, reimbursed taxpayers for the orange juice and the difference between what a room at the St. Paul costs versus a room at the Savoy palace. A grateful nation is picking up the tab for the unnecessary limousines.

This isn’t the first time Diamond Bev has been criticized for her lavish lifestyle at taxpayer expense. There was a bit of an uproar after she dropped a few thousand to attend the Juno Awards in Halifax and that’s when it hit me.

I believe Bev Oda is actually Roy Orbison. 

Which is Bev and which is Roy...or are they
the same person?

Now I understand all those limousines and swanky hotels. It’s the rock star lifestyle. Compare the two pictures. Clearly they are the same person. They both have died black hair, wear heavily tinted sunglasses and are never more comfortable than when they are being driven around in a limousine.

I know you're thinking, "Wait a minute, Roy Orbison has been dead for many years", but if you think about it, you never saw Diamond Bev and Roy Orbison together at the same time when he was still performing. Coincidence? How do we know that he didn't actually give up his rock and roll celebrity to become a politician in Canada?

The  plot thickens!

I could never understand why Prime Minister Stephen Harper kept Diamond Bev around after all the mistakes she’s made and the money she’s squandered on her expense account. For all his faults, Stephen Harper is personally squeaky clean and usually that kind of stuff really upsets him. It only took the inference of impropriety for him to all but have former cabinet Minister Helena Geurges publicly flogged and then executed on Parliament Hill right after the changing of the guard ceremony.

PM Harper performing at NAC
photo: Canadian Press

But I get it now.

Our prime  minister has a soft spot for classic rock. He even showed up, unannounced at the National Arts Centre during one benefit to do an impromptu version of The Beatles, “With A Little Help From My Friends.”

And that is what keeps saving Diamond Bev. Stephen Harper, like me, thinks she's Roy Orbison and for that, Stephen Harper can forgive anything. 

Rock on Bev...errr I mean Roy. We haven’t quite run out of taxpayer money yet, despite your best efforts.

Song and video by "ethanjacobs" on YouTube

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© 2012 Maggie's Bear
all rights reserved
The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

Sticks And Stones

photo: community of children.org

Since starting this blog a few months ago, I have received many compliments about what I’ve written which I appreciate although am not convinced are deserved. I have also had more than a few disagree with me and that usually meant that they labeled me in a somewhat less than jovial manner.

I’ve been called a Nazi, a fascist, uninformed, a member of the KKK and my all-time favourite, a capitalist lickspittle. I love that one. It’s somewhat unique and has a sense of style to it. I always appreciate a bit of creativity in all of its forms.

I’m not offended by the negative name-calling, just as I don’t allow the compliments to swell my ego. I accept both in the spirit in which they were intended and then get on with my day.

But here’s the question. What actual purpose does name-calling achieve?

There are many issues facing us these days. Some are self-imposed by things like entitlement addiction, intolerance, fanaticism, greed, hypocrisy and, of course, just plain stupidity.

Other issues are imposed on us by circumstance or by others including political corruption, environmental disasters, F-18s falling out of the sky, crime and, of course, just plain stupidity.

My God but there is an uncommon amount of stupidity around these days.

photo: yourshcoollibrary.wordpress.com

Whatever the issue, most of us form opinions. It is a natural result of having a brain and even living in a totalitarian regime doesn’t prevent people from forming opinions, just from expressing them publicly.

In democracies, we get to express those opinions no matter how ill-informed they may be and that is not a bad thing. The freedom to voice your opinion is a fundamental characteristic of a free society, even if many squander that freedom on the inane, the trite and the absurd.

Sometimes, that freedom is malicious, sometimes it is misused but that is also why we have a brain. It is left to us to sort through the opinion to arrive at fact before we form our own. Not everyone does that, of course, many are too lazy or lack the intellectual discipline or capacity to actually think for themselves  It is these people who have the least secure opinions and who often fall back on name calling to defend them.

I am less offended by these people than I am sorry for them. They are easily manipulated by trends and the opinions of others. It is people like this who bought into the erroneous idea that vaccinations caused autism and because they were too lazy to do their own research, thousands of children were put at risk from diseases like tuberculosis and polio.

That is when uniformed opinion crosses the line from being mildly annoying or entertaining to being dangerous.

It is uninformed opinion that has led many to a rush to judgment in the Trayvon Martin case and seen the trampling of that fundamental American right to presumption of innocence until all the facts are known and adjudicated.

It is uninformed opinion that leads many to believe that some people are poor because other people are wealthy.

Uninformed opinion has caused support for wars, the trampling of human rights, misguided activism, social and political polarization, paranoid conspiracy theories and name calling.

Name calling is the last defense for those whose opinions are as deep as a glass of water.

It also leads to bullying (especially in children), prejudice, intolerance and hate crimes. When we stop seeing people as people and only see them as the labels we give them, intolerance thrives.

I used to think it was the right that mostly resorted to name-calling because I too often heard or saw labels like socialist, communist, leftist or wing nut being applied to those who tend to label themselves as progressives. Then, because I saw the same thing emerging on the other side with labels like fascist, capitalist pig and Nazi directed at the right, I began to think it was the left that did most of the name calling.

photo: wikipedia.org

Now I realize that name calling is the last resort of those whose opinions are not founded on thought but on knee-jerk reaction to issues and that is something from which no part of the political spectrum can claim immunity. Both seem quite content to throw out labels like traitor, treason, bigot, or some other racist or gender-based slur that don't seem to belong to any particular political ideology.

Name calling betrays a lack of respect for the right of all to their opinions and to voice them. It also betrays a serious lack of confidence in the name caller’s own opinions. Arrogance is a poor substitute for knowledge. Because they are uniformed and unable to address the issues and defend their opinions based on facts, they are threatened by contrary opinions and resort to personally attacking those with whom they disagree.

For a very long time, this tended to be the province primarily of politicians who are very accomplished at calling each other names while skillfully avoiding informed debate and discussion of the real issues. Now it is commonplace across social media.

Perhaps that is partly due to the fact that there is little room in 140 character messages for the expression of much more than calling those with whom you disagree some derogatory name but I think it’s something else.

photo: propagandacritic.com

I believe there are two main reasons for it. I believe that there are far too many who have no regard or respect for the opinions of others and can only find security in their own by demeaning others.

I also think it is because too many of us don’t think for ourselves anymore. We have no time to really sit down and think an issue through before arriving at an opinion. We want to be relevant, seen to be in touch with the issues and part of the crowd, so we simply react. We accept the prevailing (or a contrarian) opinion based on an emotional response and then give voice to that opinion. When our opinion is challenged, we react with a shallow defense and when that fails us, we resort to name calling.

It betrays how weak our opinion really is and that is why name calling doesn’t offend me . It is impossible to be angered by those who are that insecure. It is only possible to feel sorry for them and concerned for the success of a society that has so many giving so little thought to the challenges we face together.

It isn’t all bad though. I love words and if nothing else, all this name calling gave me capitalist lickspittle and I just love that phrase. 

Some day, I even hope to learn what it means.

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© 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

There Ain't No Cure For Stupid - Drunk Sings Queen In Squad Car

Whoever it was that started the rumour that Canadians were among the sanest, most reasonable and responsible people on the planet....well....were wrong. Following his arrest for public intoxication, this fellow treated the arresting officers to an A Capela  version of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.

It gives a whole new perspective to the patience required to be a designated driver.

I've had moments in my life where the amount of joy juice I consumed exceeded my ability to contain my enthusiasm for life. I even got so loaded once, I brought home the wrong car. I\m not proud of that and to this day still consider it one of the stupidist things I've ever done. But it was a different era and even back then, we could be pretty stupid.

I have never, however, been arrested for public intoxication and if I was, I doubt I would be sitting in the back seat of a squad car singing Bohemian Rhapsody. There are just so many much better songs out there and quite frankly, even though I'm not a big country music fan, I'd probably have bee more inclined to sing this.

If you're going to have a dummy sing to you, it might as well be a real dummy. 

The police tend to get criticized a lot for how they handle things but now you know some of the darker things they have to put up with. It's not all pepper spray and laughter. Sometimes they encounter the dark side of life where danger is replaced by stupidity. Danger they are trained to handle but just as there ain't no cure for stupid, there's no protection from it or training to prepare you for it either. 

Even pepper spray won't work on a living dummy and you're not allowed to shoot 'em, no matter how much you might wish you were.

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

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The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

Just When You Thought It Couldn't Get More Stupid

In a world filled with great and terrible challenges, there are still those in authority who are so bereft of common sense that it is a wonder they can dress themselves in order to go to work. We're drowning in a sea  of bureaucratic and government stupidity. Some days  I think my head is not only going to explode but it is a signal of the end of civilization as we know it. I thought, however, we had pretty much reached the highest level of stupidity possible and it really couldn't get any worse than it is now......

,,,....but I was wrong.


The NYC Department of Education has created an entirely new level that I wouldn't have thought possible to achieve. Watch this video while I go outside and walk around the yard a few times to try to teach myself how to breathe again.

Back in the 70's, George Carlin identified seven words you couldn't say on television. Today in this 21st Century of enlightenment, The Department of Education for NYC has come up with fifty words and phrases that are to be cleansed from their schools to protect the delicate sensitivities of the children entrusted to their care and thereby rid the world of disease, pestulance and all other manner of evil.

The complete list is at the end of the post but I will highlight a few, beyond those mentioned in the video, for you now my gentle compadres as we make our way together through this reasoned and sensitive policy.

Be not afraid for I will hold your hand and try to keep you safe and connected to reality as you read on.

Bodily Functions: We will all sleep more peacefully now knowing that the children of NYC no longer have bodily functions. They will not require the use of washroom facilities and as a result the Dept. Of Education will save millions through the elimination of the purchase of toilet paper. Children who have to 'go' will simply be reminded that they have no bodily functions and told to return to their seat.

Computers in the home (acceptable in a school or library setting): According to the DOE, there are two types of computers. No, not Macs and PCs. There are politically correct computers and those which are so dangerous, they shall not be mentioned. The politically incorrect computers are those in the home, the birthplace of all evil in this world. Mention of swimming pools at home will also be banned and thus children will be saved from having to deal with the concept of success. It also makes you wonder how they will ever get their computer 'home'work done.

Death and disease: It makes one wonder how the DOE is going to address an outbreak of a highly communicable disease in it's school system if and when it happens. 

Divorce: The DOE has determined that in this era of single parent families and marriage breakdowns, it is more beneficial to children to ignore the fact that many children unfortunately do come from broken hones than it is to help all children learn to understand and destigmatize it.

Evolution and Dinosaur: Apparently the DOE does not want its children to go into professions like paleontology which is the study of the history of the earth. But then, considering that words like slavery, terrorism and war are also banned, it won't be long before the word history itself is also banned.

Rock and Roll Music: What a wonderful celebration of nostalgia for the '50s when rock & roll was considered the Devil's music. Mention of rap music will also be banned but there is no mention of banning music by Yanni or Michael Bolton which probably should be.

Sex: I'm confused about this one. On the one hand the DOE will ban the word sex in all testing even though it  mandated sex education in its schools in 2011. It makes you wonder how they will teach a curriculum that doesn't allow for the use of the word that labels what they are teaching,

One of my favourites is:

In-depth discussions of sports that require prior knowledge: Clearly there is no room for 'knowledge' in the NYC school system and the fine folks at the DOE won't rest until it is expunged from the curriculum.

When I first stumbled on this article, I thought it was an early April Fool’s joke. It is not.

The NYC School Board is absolutely serious. They want to protect the sensitivities of children by trying to hide simple reality from them and they have decided to call this......... education.

Perhaps we should do away with the words man and woman to fix the gender inequality gap in society and, of course, outlaw the phrase ‘common sense’ so that all future decrees and decisions, no matter how stupid they may be, will be seen as great wisdom shining down on the world from the mountain top.

There is stupidity and then there is abject stupidity. This decision is beyond even abject stupidity.

While the video tries to pin this decision on the Left, the simple fact is that stupidity is not constrained by the political divide. You only have to remember that it was a Republican, who thought colonizing the moon and declaring it a state made sense, to help you remember that stupidity is a virus that doesn’t care how you vote.

I used to think that a society that worried more about how soft its toilet paper was than it did about people sleeping in its streets or abused children was in trouble and I still think that. But it is clear that when a society allows a group of people to become so devoid of even a fundamental level of common sense that it bans words like dancing for fear of offending the sensitivities of some group, it has lost its collective mind. 

Someone needs to remind the NYC Department of Education that the key word in their title is Education. They aren’t the censorship board. Their job is not to try and hide the world from children but rather teach them how to live in a world that is filled with diversity.

Better yet, I think the people of New York City should rise up as one and march to the Department of Education offices where they should drag the members of the board out into the streets, spank them in the public square and then make them write 1000 times, “I will not be stupid anymore.”

Of course, by the time the people of NYC arrive, the word stupid will probably be banned as well. After all, if banning the word homelessness can make it go away, no doubt the same people behind this decision will have no difficulty believing that banning the word stupidity will raise society’s collective IQ overnight.

The 50 Words You Can't Say In NYC Schools

Abuse (physical, sexual, emotional, or psychological), Alcohol (beer and liquor), tobacco, or drugs, Birthday celebrations (and birthdays), Bodily functions, Cancer (and other diseases), Catastrophes/disasters (tsunamis and hurricanes), Celebrities, Children dealing with serious issues, Cigarettes (and other smoking paraphernalia), Computers in the home (acceptable in a school or library setting), Crime, Death and disease, Divorce, Evolution, Expensive gifts, vacations, and prizes, Gambling involving money, Halloween, Homelessness, Homes with swimming pools, Hunting, Junk food, In-depth discussions of sports that require prior knowledge, Loss of employment, Nuclear weapons, Occult topics (i.e. fortune-telling), Parapsychology, Politics, Pornography, Poverty, Rap Music, Religion, Religious holidays and festivals (including but not limited to Christmas, Yom Kippur, and Ramadan), Rock-and-Roll music, Running away, Sex, Slavery, Terrorism, Television and video games (excessive use), Traumatic material (including material that may be particularly upsetting such as animal shelters), Vermin (rats and roaches), Violence, War and bloodshed, Weapons (guns, knives, etc.), Witchcraft, sorcery, etc.

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

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The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

Psychotic Penguins

"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."

- George Carlin

Oh…we know alright. We talk among ourselves incessantly passing the fear along and we know the plague is here.

I just watched a video about employers now asking their employees and candidates for employment to provide their passwords to social media networking sites like Facebook. This is an unbelievable level of arrogance and invasion of privacy that is not much different than asking for the keys to your house so they can have a look around. Employers do not and should not have the right to demand access to personal social media pages and email and that needs to be nipped in the bud.

But here is the thing I find the most troubling.

The very first comment posted about the video did not attack these same employers who were violating people’s privacy by engaging in these practices, it attacked government. It actually accused government of creating a false crisis by getting employers to engage in this activity so that it could justify its anti-Internet crime legislation.

Just how stupid a society are we actually becoming?

The mere thought that there are people out there who believe that their own government is capable of organizing something like this with private-sector employers is mind boggling. I read that comment and had to remind myself to breathe.

There is such an absurd fear of our own governments now that I am beginning to wonder if perhaps there is some chemical in the water or in the Big Macs served at MacDonalds that has destroyed brain cells. Our collective ability to think and to reason is plummeting and soon, penguins will be smarter than we are, if they aren’t already. Penguins are so stupid, they chose to live in the coldest place in the world and wear black so that killer whales will see them more easily in contrast to the ice.

In the past month alone, Google, Facebook and Twitter have all been exposed for invasion of the privacy of their users. We don't have laws to protect us from this abuse of personal data because we’re so stupidly afraid of our own governments, we’d rather be raped by online by companies and predators than actually see some regulation and rules put in place to protect us. We’re even prepared to let children continue to be bullied online, threatened and to be abused by pedophiles and porn sites rather than allowing law enforcement the tools they need to combat this perversion.

Just today, I read an article about the latest online fraud wherein those we protect, because of our fear of own governments, are using the Mega Download situation to scam people out of more money.

The Internet is awash in scammers, spammers, terrorist cells, racists, hate-mongers, pedophiles and bullies but it’s our governments of which people are suspicious. There are actually people out there who trust Anonymous more than their government and that’s a leap in logic I can’t even begin to fathom. It’s like trusting a street gang to protect your home rather than the police.

I guess it’s true. You can talk yourself into anything with minimal effort these days and government is the only enemy that matters. It makes me wonder why so many bother to align themselves in the political debate and are so passionate about who does or doesn’t represent them.

We have not only lost our common sense and anything even resembling a sense of community, we have thrown away our basic ability to think beyond the last tweet we saw or web site we visited. In fact, many can’t even think for themselves anymore. I read enough social media messages to see the same stuff being parroted over and over and over again with not an original thought in the mix.

We've become so devoid of common sense and the ability to reason for ourselves that we are becoming as stupid as some of the questions asked of political candidates by CNN. It tnever occurs to us that the people leading the charge against Internet regulation are the very people who benefit most from there being no regulation. We have become so paranoid of government that we just follow along like sheep waiting to be sheared

Freedom of expression is a valuable and cherished freedom and should be protected but it does come with a modicum of responsibility. In a democracy, it is expected that there will always be those who abuse and misuse that right but it is usually expected that they will be the minority. There is a significant difference between exercising your right to freedom of speech and simply acting like a trained Myna bird and parroting garbage. If the best we can do as a society is pass more garbage and paranoia along to each other, what’s the bloody point?

When Gutenberg invented the printing press it revolutionzed communication. For the first time, the great works could be distributed to the masses. No longer was knowledge under the control of the state and the church. Ideas could be shared and they were. Literacy for the common man changed the world and knowledge was no longer available to the privileged few.

Mass media took it to a new level in the 20^th Century and information traveled at the speed of sound. We were better informed, had better access to more information and were able to share ideas on broader basis. It was thought that the Internet would take it up another notch.

What a pipe dream that’s turning out to be.

This powerful medium, this repository of all of the world’s knowledge is so cluttered with garbage and fear that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find the truth anymore. It isn’t making us smarter or drawing us closer together. Instead, it is dumbing down society and polarizing us in a way no politician could have ever hoped to achieve.

The Internet has become the playground for too many who are shallow, a threat, dishonest, the lazy and the just outright paranoid.

We no longer learn, we simply grab whatever bit of nonsense fuels our uninformed opinions and run with that. We shout down any who disagree with us rather than listen to them in the off chance they might actually have a point and we perpetuate this bizarre fear of government.

The Greek word for fear is psychosis which is from where the term psychotic is derived and that, my friends, is a perfect term to define what is happening these days. We are becoming like psychotic penguins squabbling incessantly over little pieces of the beach, babbling about anything and everything except the real threats out there in the big blue sea. Those we ignore.

It's government we fear, not those huge killer whales with their gnarly teeth and never-ending hunger for penguin. We use extreme words like treason and fascist to define the most mundane things about governments with which we disagree as if those words somehow elevate the importance of our argument. 

It is one thing to criticize government, the good Lord knows there is lots for which to criticize any democratic government or leader. But it is something completely different to be so afraid of our government that we talk ourselves into a paranoid delusion.

And it is government we fear….the same government many stand in front of with their hands out because apparently, that fear of government doesn’t extend to lining up to cash in on a few entitlements here and there.

Maybe all those folks, like Occupy, who are constantly demanding things like free tuition and free housing should be asking Anonymous for them instead of demanding the government they don’t trust cough them up. 

There is no doubt that Anonymous has access to lots of credit cards they can use to pay for everything….not their credit cards of course….the credit cards they steal from psychotic penguins too caught up in fear of their own governments to notice the real threat just off shore.

Perhaps it's time we starting culling the flock.


LINKS
Criminals target Megaupload users with fake settlement demands
http://torrentfreak.com/criminals-target-megaupload-users-with-fake-settlement-demands-120321/ 

RELATED POSTS

Those who don't learn from history....

http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/02/those-who-dont-learn-from-history.html 

The demonization ideology of the bourgoisie elite

 http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/02/demonization-ideology-of-bourgoisie.html

 © 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others