(Obviously, the following is satire)

God, in an extremely rare public appearance, admitted Tuesday morning that He hadn’t been consciously present during the past 1000 years.

“I know a lot of people assumed I was up there, listening and guiding and all, but I was actually in somewhat of an extended nap,” said the Supreme Being. “Honestly, it’s a little embarrassing.”

The Almighty, who had previously been diligently involved in all earthly events, stated He “got a little bored of the same old wars and silly empires.”

“It’s not that I didn’t appreciate everything the humans were doing, it just got a little predictable after a while,” said the Divine. “So around the time when that Caligula was assassinated, I kicked back, threw on some De-Phazz and sort of dozed off. Next thing I know, it’s 2009.”

Shortly after God awoke, He called a press conference and politely asked to be brought up-to-date on everything He had missed.

“We plan to hold a special seminar at the Holiday Inn tomorrow at noon,” said renowned historian Paul Burkadeli. “During the seminar I’ll do my best to highlight the historical events I think God will deem significant. I’ll try to focus on the really crazy stuff like the Crusades, World Wars, the Enlightenment. He’ll love it.”

However, God’s revelation has made some people very upset. Many well-known athletes and musicians are protesting the seminar, citing that they are angry God wasn’t actually overseeing each of their games or award ceremonies.

“When I scored the winning touchdown at last week’s game I thanked God for helping me do it,” said Adrian Peterson, Running Back for Minnesota. “But it turns out He wasn’t even watching, much less divinely assisting me. Lazy bastard.”

God hasn’t addressed these accusations, but He did express genuine surprise when he spoke to some of his believers.

“I have to say, I was little worried people would have gotten over me by now,” said the Heavenly Father. “But what do you know? People love me!”

In light of the recent development, a group of prominent political figures have gathered from across the globe to discuss what God’s previous absence means for certain important wars and confrontations.

“I said that God was on our side when we went to Iraq,” said former president George W. Bush. “But now that I know he wasn’t really paying attention, I’m a little confused.”

“If he was awake then he totally would have been on our side,” said Abida Akbari, former member of the Taliban. “It’s a no-brainer. I’m going to ask him tomorrow, but I’ve already taken bets.”

After tomorrow’s seminar, God says he plans to continue his former position as ruler of the universe. He has already purchased some Adderall to help him stay alert, and plans to avoid succumbing to a siesta at all costs.

“I slipped man, and it won’t happen again,” said His Holyness. “I just hope I don’t get too bored, although it seems like things are getting a little nuts out here, so that’s good. But don’t count on me watching all your football games, I’ve got better things to do.”

AP Photo.

Let’s start with some little-known facts:

1. An Iran armed with a nuclear weapon would be bad, but not nearly as bad as most Americans think.
2. It is likely that there is something fishy going on with Iran’s nuclear program, but there is absolutely no proof of this that we know of.
3. There is a strong possibility that Iran is working towards nuclear capability, but it is unlikely that they will actually develop a bomb.
4. A nuclear-armed Iran would pose a threat to the United States, but only indirectly.

If the second half of any of these facts are surprising to you, you’re not alone. Iran is perhaps the country the most misunderstood by and misrepresented to the American public, the vast majority of whom write it off as simply another crackpot Arab dictatorship to deal with.

Besides being completely untrue, the situation is far more nuanced than that. A history lesson for most Americans would go a long way towards assuaging the tensions between our two (very similar) nations.The similarities that many Americans see between Iran and the Arab world are almost entirely superficial.

Iranians are in fact not even Arab; they’re Persian. They do not speak Arabic, but a completely unrelated (it has far more in common with English or French than Arabic. E.g. the word for father: padayr, mother: madayr) and far older language called Farsi. They do not practice Sunni Islam, as the vast majority of the Arab world does, but are Shia. Iran’s history and culture are far older and – many Iranians believe – more sophisticated than that originating in Arabia, which some Iranians look down upon. Iran has, at best, a suspicious and distant relationship with its Arab neighbors.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hi America!

It didn’t take a trip to the real Chinatown for me to realize that our future is now deeply linked to Asia’s success. I found this out all on my own after realizing that my home is so close to Russia, which is close to China, which means that China is close to Alaska, which means you should be interested in my trip to this foreign pagan land. As a service to the American people, I have decided to share my many experiences and disappointments uncovered in Hong Kong with them. Well, here goes!

When I first arrived at my hotel I was disappointed to find that the toilet was broken; the thing was shooting water up my behind! Confucius says: No rain, no rainbow! It’s too bad that there was no Joe the Plumber right down the overcrowded dirty street to fix it.

I have to say, the women here all look like the ones I keep finding Todd watching on the Internets, it’s amazing what technology can do these days.

I decided to go rogue after exploring the streets a little while and eat at a local, real Main Street China, restaurant. I was excited to find that they were interested in saving money just like small-town Americans, their tea was clear, I think cause they wanted to re-use their one teabag for the whole night. The restaurant was covered in bright colors, dragons, and witchcraft, nothing like the good ol’ red, white, and blue American style diner. After a night of talking with the Chinese people about death panels and my higher calling, I decided to call it a night; I had to get some beauty sleep before my big speech.

Don’tcha know it, I wasn’t sure if I’d even go until that morning. Sure I had my speech written and questions pre-arranged, but did I really have to do that whole talking thing? I could tell them that I never got an invitation… Then I remembered that the gotcha media wouldn’t be there, so I went on with it, actually, I think God was calling me to it.

What’d I talk about? Common sense conservatism and freedom. That’s me. Absolutely. Yup. Yup. And after that I was ready to go; those chopping sticks were too hard to use and the fortune cookies tasted like they had paper inside of them.

The liberal media had to show up on the way out. They’re attracted to me like flies to poo. One of ‘em asked me about running in 2012. Well, if God opens the door…

Y’know, some Democrats have said that I am the best thing that could happen to them in 2012. Well, I’m not a Democrat, and I’m telling you right now that running with the baby-killers is out of the question.

It’s probably just because I’m incredibly nerdy, but I’m positively tickled pink that we still have a few wackjobs running the governments of countries like Libya and Iran (as long as we don’t have one running our country any more), at least for comedic purposes. During the annual UN General Assembly Opening Ceremony the other day, they were on full display.

If the global community of world leaders can be thought of as one big family, then these are the crazy uncles who always find a way to bring up how Barack Obama is really a hypnotist who went to school in a madrasa or your step-grandma who politely informs you at your high school graduation that the Rapture is coming in 2012, so it’s a shame that you wasted all this time on an education (both have actually happened to me). While completely crazy, at least they give family more pizazz.

So that’s why I don’t mind actually sitting through some of the inanely boring speeches of world leaders every year around this time, because without fail you will eventually get to hear something absurdly offensive.

Like when the almost certainly illegitimately elected President of Iran very earnestly blamed Jews for the bad weather (not literally, but he did blame them for about everything else) and once again claimed that the Holocaust was an elaborate fabrication that someone made up just for shits and giggles, both of which (among other deranged utterances) prompted the annual exodus of all lucid leaders from the room in protest.

Or maybe one that’s not so much offensive as just completely crazy: Read the rest of this entry »

A New York Times article from last week proposed the idea of increasing the number of members in the House of Representatives to alleviate the disproportional level of representation given to different electoral districts around the country (for example, the approximately one million people living in the Las Vegas area get one vote in Congress while the 500,000-or-so people living in Providence, Rhode Island, get the same).

This is a good idea, but it doesn’t address what I think is an even bigger issue: the fact that neither the 3.9 million U.S. citizens living in Puerto Rico, nor the 600,000 U.S. citizens in Washington, D.C., nor anyone living in any of the United States’ other territories (most of whom are legally considered full U.S. citizens) even have members of Congress that can vote, and Puerto Ricans are specifically barred from voting in Presidential elections from the island (if they want to vote, they have to travel all the way to the U.S. mainland, unlike U.S. citizens in other foreign countries who are allowed to mail in a ballot).

Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), the non-voting delegate representing DC, addressing the Democratic National Convention. AP

While each of these territories has a Delegate representing them in Congress, these Delegates are not allowed to vote on the final passage of a bill and are only allowed to vote in Congressional Committees if their doing so will not change the outcome of the vote – in other words, they can only vote when it doesn’t matter whether they voted.

Needless to say, this is inherently undemocratic and – I believe – completely unconstitutional. Before Congress even thinks about increasing the number of politicians in the House of Representatives, they should fix this more pressing and unfair problem and allow all of the current members to vote.

Upon viewing this footage of the 9/12  protests, I was reminded of the adage -”it is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt”.

These protests also highlight the dangers of a misinformed public, effectively tricked into believing the lies of a small group of loud white radio and tv “pundits” with an agenda.

There were a few things in particular that caught my eye: including the abortion guy who informed us that apparently abortion is worse than slavery, the kid with mom, who I have to wonder if she told him she’d buy him the newest Halo or Rock Band if he tagged along, and the punk kid , which also brings up the question whether people stopped listening to the words of punk rock bands? Unless he’s into either the most trivial pop punk, or the racist skinhead punk, if he thinks Obama is too liberal, then he really needs to pay more attention to the lyrics of The Clash, Dead Kennedys, Anti-Flag, The Sex Pistols, and effectively every other band in that entire genre that he could possibly listen to.  But then again, when you’re as well informed as this bunch,  I could see how you would miss the subtlety of such tracks as “Nazi Punks Fuck Off”, “Kill the Poor”, “California Uber Alles” , “London’s Burning”, or “Idiot, son of an asshole”.  Of course, those are just  tracks by three of the most well known and influential punk bands of the last 30 years. So I could see how you would miss those.

If you have not yet seen or read Obama’s address to congress about health care (or perhaps you better know it as the Joe Wilson “You Lie!” scandal) then please, do yourself a favor and look it over – beginning to end.

AP Photo of Obama addressing a joint congress on health care - Sept. 9, 2009

Obama’s Health Care Address to Congress

Until this afternoon, I had just read the summary and the hype surrounding Joe Wilson’s Tourette’s-like outburst. Big mistake. I didn’t realize how powerful and thoughtful that address was until today. Although I lean left (and not just to fit in with the acceptable swagger of the majority of IU’s student body), I like to believe that I have a level head — that I can (even if I don’t always agree with it) see the other point of view and balance my own opinions. That said, I just can’t imagine how the right has such a problem with Obama.

While I’m mostly pointing out the extremists, I know a lot of very unhappy (albeit misinformed) conservatives; but, Obama has come out with a health care plan that promotes business and economic development. His idea of a public option is well researched and actually a compromise to the extreme left’s desire for one, government-run option. While I can see why this would scare some into thinking that a larger government is going to control our nation and strip us of our freedoms (business and enterprise freedoms specifically) – a public option is hardly a socialist movement. I think that people get so caught up in the idea of a “free market” that they forget the need for regulation to stop monopolies from destroying the industry. Current health care providers have monopolized the system. They set the prices they decide (not the market) and they select the people to provide for (and believe me – it’s not the most sickly or needy individuals). Money and power dictate the market and frankly, allowing the sick to get treated for a reasonable price isn’t what gets leaders of companies like WellPoint big houses and nice cars.

A change needs to be made and Obama is not afraid of it. What’s more admirable is that he’s also not afraid to say that he doesn’t have all the answers. I hope people from both parties are able to take advantage of this opportunity to enhance the lives of Americans and profit from the health of our nation.

Obama said it best:

We did not come here to fear the future. We came here to shape it.

I wanted to avoid redundancy in this blog, as Ashley had just written about Glenn Beck,  and this didn’t start out as a post about him but when I walked out to the mailbox today, who should be staring back at me from the cover of Time magazine but the  Mad Man himself.   Time asks “Is Glenn Beck bad for America?” The answer; short answer yes with an “if”,  long answer no with a “but”.

Yes, if you value civility,  rational logic and facts in your political media.  No, if you value entertainment, but it devalues the merits of the aforementioned aspects of the media.

I’ll leave some of my stronger words regarding this man and his…”movement”…for personal discussion, however, he does remind of a quote I hadn’t thought in some time until recently, by a man infinitely more intelligent than Beck (though I was always told any number times zero is zero)  – ” ..Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids..They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us…”

Ashley Ames notes in her latest post, that

There are a lot of things that can be argued about health care. That America has the best system is not one of them.

A lot of people from Canada who leave their country for American healthcare when they get a tumor might try to argue that.

America has the highest survival rate in the world for most types of cancer.

- Telegraph

According to the first study of survival rates by country, Read the rest of this entry »

There are a lot of things that can be argued about health care. That America has the best system is not one of them. Just like the many Americans who think they love their coverage until they actually need it, Glenn Beck seems to go through the process in reverse. Maybe instead of health reform, we should just all get a job at Fox News. That seems to fix the problem of our mangled health care system right up.