Obama Is Un-American

There, I said it. He refused to salute the flag during the Pledge of Allegiance!!! How in the hell can a man like this expect to be our next Commander-in-Chief???? This man, this Barack Hussein Obama. Oh, wait, this was debunked by Snopes and the Washington Post’s Fact Checker. I first heard about this chain email when my roommate came into my room and casually said, “Hey, I heard that Obama won’t say the pledge of allegiance because it’s against his religion.” 1st response: “You mean Christianity?” 2nd response: Google.

So he didn’t put his hand over his heart during a single national anthem. So what? Since when was clasping your hands solemnly in front of you not a sign of respect? I read comments on a number of right-wing blogs and left-wing debunkings. Suddenly everybody is an EXPERT on flag code – you know, Title 36 of the U.S. Code! “During a rendition of the national anthem, when the flag is displayed (A) all present except those in uniform should stand at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart; (B) men not in uniform should remove their headdress with their right hand and hold the headdress at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart.” After the sadness passed, I found it hilarious that a large percentage of people citing this code mistook it for actual law.

NEVER FORGET (Ron Paul ‘08?)

(The sole point of this blog is to get you to read a series of articles published soon after 9/11. It quickly devolves to me whining about Republicans.)

I’ve been using this phrase more and more frequently, to refer to increasingly mundane situations. Chicken salad for lunch, 12-18-07: Never Forget. Not sure if I forgot what we weren’t supposed to forget, or if I never knew. I think some airplanes were intentionally crashed into a couple buildings, but nobody was going to forget that. Don’t forget to blame Arabs? Don’t forget irrational fear and lust for vengeance? It never made sense to me, always sounded like propaganda, and the further removed we are the more ridiculous “Never Forget” becomes.

Get Your Tanks & Grab Your Guns

In my last blog, I referenced a months-long drug-fueled research binge that has left the conspiracy theorists down the street on the brink (?) of paranoid insanity. If you’re going to become obsessed with a topic to the extent that you spend the majority of your waking hours consumed by it, I strongly suggest a component of substance abuse. It’s useful to render yourself an emotional wreck as days and weeks bleed into one another.

I’ve been on a kick myself the last couple months. It started innocently enough – I wanted to be able to properly dismiss the outlandish claims my roommate was bringing back from the conspiracy house. I read about central banking, monetary supply, global economics, the weakening of the U.S. dollar, the impact of shifts in currency valuation, arguments for and against the gold standard, and a wide variety of tangential issues. On my birthday, in the beginning of November, I started referring to the “Ron Paul Survivalist Movement.” If economic doom and gloom predictions are believed, then survivalism is the only logical conclusion: get as much land and as many guns as you can afford, and get ready to bunker down.

Stupid Rappers Trying to Be All Political

“The fourth branch of the government AKA the media
Seems to now have a retirement plan for ex-military officials
As if their opinion was at all unbiased
A machine shouldn’t speak for men
So shut the fuck up you mindless drone!
And you know it’s serious
When these same media outfits are spending millions of dollars on a PR campaign
To try to convince you they’re fair and balanced
When they’re some of the most ignorant, and racist people
Giving that type of mentality a safe haven
We act like we share in the spoils of war that they do
We die in wars, we don’t get the contracts to make money off ‘em afterwards!
We don’t get weapons contracts, nigga!
We don’t get cheap labor for our companies, nigga!
We are cheap labor, nigga!”
-Immortal Technique, The 4th Branch

Felipe Coronel, aka Immortal Technique, raises the age-old question: is it ok for a white man (me) to quote a Latino/hispanic/Peruvian-American’s use of the n-bomb? This song was playing on a mix CD in my car while I was running errands with a friend. He heard an anti-Bush line that jerked his conservative chain and made an indignant comment along the lines of “Hah! This stupid rapper thinks he’s political or something.”

Robert Kiyosaki: Pathological Hack

This is one of the tangential issues I came across while researching multi-level marketing schemes. Kiyosaki’s name came up a handful of times as one of the authors whose books are typically a part of the Amway “system”. His name sounded vaguely familiar and I assumed that he was just some motivational donkey promoting style over substance. Kiyosaki seems to support the MLM business model, but it was pointed out that he is really just a chameleon telling people whatever they want to hear. He either assumes his audience is too stupid to realize he’s spouting nonsense, or he is too self-deluded to realize his own inanity.

It turns out Kiyosaki is the author of the very popular book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad“. Multiple people have recommended this book to me, claiming it contained good investing advice. It’s not surprising that MLM scams/cults embrace his books. He has an intense hatred for education and even wrote a book titled “If You Want to Be Rich & Happy: Don’t Go to School”. Cults don’t like their members educated, much like motivational speakers masquerading as real-estate gurus such as Kiyosaki. Education and bothersome things like “the truth” tend to reduce their profits.