Penitent State

I just listened to Bob Costas’ interview with Jerry Sandusky and it made me want to vomit. His nonchalant attitude made me positive he deserves a public castration. If you were falsely accused of this horrific thing I think you would be a little more vehement in your denial. Bravo Bob for calling him a monster to his face.
As many as 18 boys are accusing him of molestation and/or rape and he has the audacity to deny it instead of putting a gun in his mouth? And calling rape ‘horseplay’ makes me wish a slow agonizing death on this man. Ever see or read “A Time To Kill?” I’m not threatening Mr. Sandusky, but I hope he is not protected when he goes to jail and the other prisoners dish out some real justice.
Anyone with knoledge of these crimes deserves a lifetime of shame and derision for not acting. McQueary may not deserve jail time by law, but anyone with a conscience knows he should have stopped what he saw.
I have been a long-time admirer of Penn State football and Paterno’s adherence to the ‘purity’ of the game, but fuck him and fuck all Penn State fans that protested his firing, because putting the “program” before the welfare of a child is a hell-worthy trespass.

It's About F--king Time

Today marks the official end of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy of the United States military. This is of course long overdue, as DADT and has forced many heroes and hard-working Americans to resign their posts. Still, I applaud the Pentagon, Pres Obama and Congress for finally making it happen. The truth is, whether or not someone is gay has been a non-issue for most soldiers (airmen, marines, sailors, etc) for quite some time. If you do your job well, no one worries about your gender, race, religion or sexual orientation. Being in the military forces people to get to know their peers very well, and they know who is gay and for the most part, they just don't care. The only problem was the DADT policy forcing military personnel to continually lie to their commanding officers, which of course violates their code of conduct, creating a Catch-22. I think that prejudice has a half-life and I'm optimistic that it will continue to degrade with each generation.

Arrogant Cartography

I was looking something up on Google Maps today when something significant struck me. Most countries spell and pronounce the name of their country completely different from the American/English version. I dunno...seems pretty disrestpectful in this modern globally interconnected world.

Check out Europe for a taste of what I mean. -I do give Google props for putting the correct name in a larger font.
http://maps.google.com/?ll=45.336702,17.094727&spn=24.427528,46.494141&z=5

I'm Feeling Judgmental

I believe people hide behind cultural sensitivity in order to avoid being judgmental of those who need judging. The word ‘judgmental’ most often has a negative connotation, but when it comes to human rights, I think we all need to get a lot more judgmental. We don't have to be tolerant of a cultural practice of repressing women or philandering with the knowledge of your positive HIV status. This is not about perpetuating ethnocentric dogma; this is about knowing right from wrong.

People like to go on diatribes about crossing lines into gray areas and descending slippery slopes, but that’s bullshit. Human rights are black and white. If you abuse the rights of others as a country or a culture or an individual, then you should be punished. I’m not saying we send missile strikes against all ethically archaic cultures, just stop financially supporting evil. Stop turning a blind eye to dictators that have dissenters killed and theocracies that punish women for having the audacity to learn.

The U.S. gives billions in foreign aid to countries that condone female circumcision, allow mobs to murder religious rule-breakers (no irony there), and even tolerate modern slavery. As educated citizens of humanity we should say, “Hey, we used to make these mistakes, but now we are more evolved and we’re not going to tolerate these abuses from anyone else. Knock off the murdering, repression, and mutilation or you get nothing from us.”

America and other progressive nations don’t do this because they don’t want to upset the fragile balance of their key allies. I say call their bluff- they need us much more than we need them. We can pull the plug on foreign oil or key shipping partners and still survive as a nation long enough to get our point across. How long do you think it would take for them to start leaving pathetic messages on Obama’s voicemail promising they’ll change if we’ll only take them back?

Does Smaller Equal Efficient?

If so, then I pity Marge the time when fake Homer gave her a night of "efficient" German sex. I'm pondering the small size of many items here and questioning the notion of German efficiency. Cars I understand; the roads are narrow and gas is expensive. But why are appliances small? German washers and dryers have 1/3 the load capacity of American models. Our built in fridge is small and freezerless, so we just turned it off and use it as a spice rack. Luckily, we have U.S.-style loaner appliances courtesy of Uncle Sam. The lawn mower I just purchased is roughly the size of one I owned at age 5 (it blew bubbles). I have been mowing my overgrown lawn for 3 days and I'm still not done...c'est la vive.

A Plea for Cooperation

I am currently disgusted with both US political parties because the members of congress are not doing their job, which is to act in the best interest of those that elected them. They are acting only in their own self-interest in a fruitless effort to consolidate power for their respective parties. It has been the same scenario for decades-as soon as an election is over the losing party gets to work to derail the winner’s agenda. Even if that agenda will benefit America, it will be subverted to make the incumbent politician look incompetent and therefore unelectable. When will they realize this will not work? The only thing that American voters have shown consistently is that they don’t want one ideology to have complete power. That makes us strong because checks and balances prevent oppression, but unfortunately it has also bred stagnation. If we can not fix our problems because no one can agree on the method, then the U.S. will become unsustainable.

Run Sarah, Run

Well, your friendly neighborhood political junkie is back. I’ve been on hiatus dealing with the complications of moving my family to a foreign country. Things have finally calmed down, so I decided to check in on US politics today. It looks like my boy Barry had a majority of “approval” for a fleeting moment recently. Hopefully, by the end of the year more Americans will realize that Black + CINC ≠ 3rd anti-Christ, and that he is pretty damn good at doing the toughest job in the world.
It’s too bad that Sarah Palin is fading away and being dismissed (even by conservatives) as the uneducated narcissist that she happens to be. The 2012 Presidential debates would be highly entertaining if she was the pachyderm candidate, and Obama deserves to play a little wiffle ball after all the stressful issues he’s been handed.
I guess it is up to the Mormons to produce an easily defeatable GOP candidate. Jon Huntsman Jr. and Mitt Romney are both intelligent men, but let’s face it-a Mormon is unelectable. I’m not saying it’s right; I think it is just as wrong that a Jew, Muslim, or atheist (heaven forbid our leader make decisions based on logic as opposed to divine providence) is unelectable. Mitt is a good businessman, but he is also a power-hungry snake oil salesman that tells whatever constituency he is speaking to whatever they want to hear. Jon Huntsman seems like a good leader with a tendency to find the middle ground on issues-Evangelicals and Tea Partiers hate that.

Fahrvegnugen

I don’t mean to sound like slaggy Eurotrash already, but the German driving laws are much better than the U.S. They are actually designed to keep traffic moving. There are yield signs unless a STOP sign is absolutely necessary, their traffic lights turn yellow before green so you can prepare to get moving and then there is the fabulous autobahns, which are equivalent to U.S. freeways. Here, the right lane is the cruising lane and the left lanes are passing lanes, not fast lanes. Trucks are not allowed to pass cars if there are only 2 lanes, which is sweet and keeps everything moving. Contrary to popular belief, there are speed limits on many autobahns, but when there is no reason for a speed limit, there is none. And damn, people do haul ass.

Germans take driving very seriously. No one eats, smokes, talks on a phone, or texts while driving. You don’t have to be aggressive to survive the roads in Germany (unlike Las Vegas), but you do have to be very alert.
To sum up in a very stereotypical way, the Germans are just more efficient when it comes to driving.