Voting Rights Act

Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Human and Civil Rights

 I wanted to write something about all of the cool things that happened this past week, DOMA getting killed, Wendy Davis, or Barack's energy speech, but I think the invalidation of the Voting Rights Act really kills the mood. You know, the law that stops African Americans and every other person from being discriminated against at the voting booth? The supreme court got rid of the key parts of that law, with the opinion that America doesn't need anti-racist laws, because it's 2013, and we aren't racist anymore. 

This wasn't unanimous, the supreme court barely passed this racist bullshit five votes to four, so I at least take some solace in knowing that almost half of the judges in the highest court in my country aren't bigots wearing robes. Immediately following the decision, Texas announced that they will be implementing their redistricting and voter identification laws that had previously been blocked federally on grounds that, AND I QUOTE, "They discriminated against African Americans." Yep, and Supreme Court Judge Scolia said that were don't need this protection anymore, because our country has grown-up. 

The laws that these Texans are implementing now do two things. The voter identification law forces the voter to show extra forms of identification that most minorities simply do not have, and the redistricting law lets the republican controlled Texan senate to redraw district maps across the state anyway they see fit. Their new redistricted map kicks two black mayors out of office, increases the number of voting booths in rural white areas, and decreases the number of voting booths in ethnic metropolitan areas. So, increase the average wait in law for a black Texas voter from one hour to twelve, and when they do get to the front of the line, they may not even be able to vote, because they don't have a fishing license. The question is, is this a republican thing, or a Texas thing? Certainly the republican party, who is in the throws of begging latinos to vote for them, realize that people watch tv right? Do you really think that minorities who already don't vote for you can't turn on their tv and see what you're doing? I get it, blacks don't vote republican, so stop blacks from voting, I see the logic, but wouldn't an election be so much more meaningful if the majority of the population liked you, instead of a majority of the population you allowed to vote liking you? That would be better, right?

Carl Grimes: Atheist Vanguard

I have always found it kinda backwards when people get so religious during zombie apocalypses. Even if the universe magician is real, why would you promote that kind of behavior? Why would you attempt to find solace with the guy who just made your baby eat your other baby? Enter Carl, who doesn't bother with unnecessarily complicated philosophy, or complex talking points, he simply tells the truth, and tells it effectively.

Hit play, and applaud Walking Dead's true champion, Carl, the atheist voice of reason in a group of god-fearing idiots. Bravo sir, now, if you could only stay in the fucking house.

Free Iphone Games You Have To Play

The Iphone has yet to prove to me that it can be a legitimate gaming console on the 3DS or Vita's level, but it has a couple things going for it: The games are cheap and sometimes free, and developers get to do wacky shit on the Iphone that a 1st party company wouldn't risk the money on. Here are some very free games that I highly, highly recommend. All pictures here have been taken with my phone.

Marvel Avengers Alliance

I am a DC guy, but this game is really, really good. It's an rpg where you play as a generic agent of SHIELD, recruiting Marvel heroes and leveling them up in turn based combat. The fights are fast, very fun, and every level-up brings with it an exciting ability that is genuinely useful. You also have to upgrade your SHIELD headquarters, maintain your jets, and make money to fund your missions.

As you can see, I have only unlocked Iron Man, Widow and Hawkeye so far, and Whiplash is the first boss fight that is a serious challenge. I can't wait to unlock Cyclops, he will be my ace of spades.

World 1-1

The game's title is a reference to Mario, and the game itself certainly plays like it. A couple differences, you're a pizza delivery guy, who won't let an annoying alien invasion stop him from delivering pies on time. I love this game, from the badass 8bit music, to the little touches that make it so much more fun than a standard side-scroll platformer. It's worth your time.

Block X 3

It's a puzzle game that gives you a certain amount of moves to get the blocks in a straight line. Crazy addictive.

Layton Brothers: Mystery Room

If you like any of the Professor Layton games for the DS, or Phoenix Wright, then you MUST download this game. It's a blend of both games, high stakes murder investigations with super challenging brain puzzles. This is a true gem, with the only downside being the hysterical typos and mistranslations. I took pictures of them.

Sonic: Dash

There isn't much to explain, you've played this game before, and it's a copy of Temple Run. Still, the game is done well, and there are a buttload of unlockables.

I Love Trolling World News Daily

Whenever I am feeling particularly stressed out, I go to that beautiful American website, WND.com, and troll the shit out of their Tea Party message boards. Here are some excerpts of the conversations I entered into, and if it isn't totally obvious, my name is AtheistDad. (They hate that.)

Just thought I'd share some of my joy with you all this morning. Remember, when the apocalypse comes, pick dragon!

Ronald Reagan: The Almighty Satan

When asked which president I disapprove of the most, I usually say Nixon, and if I'm in a silly mood, I'll say Truman, but I never take the opportunity to blast Reagan. There's a reason, despite Ronald Reagan being a world class douche, he's loved. It's blind love, and it's hypocritical. Do you hate Nixon? Yes? Then you should hate Reagan too, because he has accomplished the same terrible acts, the only difference is, (and I think this is more horrifying) Reagan genuinely thought his actions were justified.

Edmund Morris, who wrote a biography on Ron Ron said, "Once he made an emotional commitment to this or that policy or story, no amount of disproof would cause him to alter his belief in it." Ronald Reagan was an actor, a proud propagandist who didn't let annoying facts get in the way of a good story. He was probably the most gifted speaker and speechwriter, a man who could fill your heart with American patriotic poetry, and every word was shit. Ronald Reagan would say such unchecked nonsense like, "Welfare queens are driving around the south side of Chicago in Cadillacs, you can get an apartment with eleven foot ceilings and twenty-foot balcony, a swimming pool, laundry and play rooms on welfare and other Federal programs that states should be administering. Tax-free!" Was any of this true? No, of course not, but it sure made a blue collar family man nod his head and shake his fist.

Reagan got elected by pretending that he was upset at "How weak America appeared to the rest of the world." We had just bugged out of Vietnam, and the new generation of Americans didn't see war as something we should be focusing on as a nation. However, Ronald knew how to spin us back in his direction, and he started with feigned outrage at Ford giving the Panama Canal back to Panamanian leader Gen. Torrijos. "The canal zone is not a colonial possession. It is not a long-term lease. It is sovereign United States territory every bit the same as Alaska and all the other states carved from the Louisiana purchase. We should end these negotiations and tell the general: We bought, we paid for it, and we intend to keep it!"

Oh man, that last sentence is a whopper, doesn't it just make your chest swell with pride? Don't be distracted by the fact that the Panama Canal is in no way shape or form a sovereign United States territory, and not giving it back is in full violation of dozens of UN sanctions and bi-laws that we signed, don't draw your attention to the massive outcry of journalists, Time magazine articles and major media outlets screaming that we had already promised to give Panama back the land we mugged them for, just listen to that line, "We bought it, we paid for it, and we intend to keep it!" 

What Reagan had done was capitalize on the post-Vietnam embarrassment that every American felt. We got pushed around over in Asia, and we certainly weren't going to get pushed around in our own hemisphere. Reagan went on to say in that speech that won him North Carolina, "South Americans respect the macho, I think if we respond with firmness, we might not earn their love, but we will earn their respect." What a dick.

These aren't opinions, these are lies, and the difference between them can be seen with Ronald's huge exaggeration of the Soviet threat. Here are some quoties from a 90 minute television special that Reagan purchased, free from debate, free from counter arguments, just 90 minutes one on one, America and The Gipper:

"There is one problem that must be solved or everything else is meaningless. I am speaking of the problem of our national security. Our nation is in danger, and the danger grows greater with each passing day. The Ford administration is asleep at the wheel while Cuba's communist strongman Fidel Castro continues to export revolution to Puerto Rico and Angola and a score of places in between. We sacrificed democratic Taiwan to China,. Then there was the Panama Canal give-away. Worst of all, the Soviets are cleaning our clocks when it comes to war making capabilities. The Soviet army outnumbers our 2 to 1, and with reserves 4 to 1. They outspend us on weapons by 50 percent. Their Navy outnumbers ours in ships 2 to 1. We're outgunned in artillery 3 to 1 and their tanks outnumber us 4 to 1. Their strategic nuclear missiles are larger, more powerful, and more numerous than ours."

None of these statements about Soviet military superiority were true, in fact the Soviet Union was a mess. The infrastructure was collapsing, the lack of social safety nets were starting to take their toll on the Russian elderly population, hunger was rampant, murder an epidemic, their army was a tattered shell of what it once was. Reagan didn't like all that truth mumbo jumbo though, red scares were good for buisiness, good for America, so he responded to these truth facts by saying, "The evidence mounts to the fact that we are #2 in our world where it has been proven that it is dangerous, often fatal, to be 2nd best." 2nd best!? Fuck that, this is the USA! We are 2nd to nobody! See how that works? Pretty smart stuff.

The Iran-Contra scandal is obviously a terrible abuse of power and an example of how privatizing a war for personal gain is an impeachable offense for a president, but aside from that there is another human rights violation that Ronald commited. Grenada. The Isle of Spice. The island where 45 US college students were housed on a university campus that Reagan wanted to save. Did the kids need saving? No, but rescuing these kids from a country that talked to Fidel on the phone every couple of months would look so good on Reagan's re-election campaign resume'. So, without telling Congress, (they would tell him no anyway). Ronald Reagan got the Navy SEALs to launch a covert and highly secret attack on the island of Grenada, to save these perfectly happy and perfectly safe college kids. The only problem was that Reagan was so afraid of Congress finding out, (because, you know, it was illegal), that not even the pilots of the drop planes knew what was up. The result was 8 Navy SEALs killed in action, dropped in the middle of the Carribean Sea in the middle of the night, drowning in their parachutes, because not enough information had been exchanged. They weren't even allowed maps! This is why Ronald Reagan is the worst president that we've ever had, he literally killed American soldiers, to promote his own fame and public stature. It's a good thing that we haven't had any president do anything similar since then.

Oh shit.

Chris Kluwe Is My Hero

Chris Kluwe is an idol of mine, with his gay rights activism, successful World of Warcraft career, intellectual anti-republican debates, and oh yeah, he's been the punter for the Minnesota Vikings for the past 8 seasons. (He actually just got signed by the Raiders like, a week ago.) If you're scratching your head wondering why you've never heard of this beautiful man before, here are some reasons you should be a Chris Kluwe fan too.

Kluwe was a member of the legendary World of Warcraft guild The Flying Hellfish, that dominated global leaderboards for 4 years, Chris played a troll named Loate, and is a very serious PC gamer. He is also a Magic fan, playing through Unlimited and Mirage, returning to the game a few years later for Commander decks. ""I really enjoy seeing all the rare and unlikely to be played in normal format cards you can put in a Commander deck," Kluwe said in an interview with Star City Games, yeah, he's that hardcore. Also in that interview, Chris was asked if he played Magic with anyone else in the NFL and he responded, "I wouldn't be surprised if there were one or two others around the league that played. I think that as kids that have grown up with gaming enter the sports world it's slowly starting to change the cultural perception of jocks and geeks."

When Maryland state assembly delegate Emmett Burns wrote the Baltimore Ravens a letter condemning Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo for publicly supporting gay marriage, Kluwe wrote a letter of his own. The letter, also sent to Deadspin, tears Burns apart, calling out his homophobia and declaring that supporting equality "Won't magically turn you into a lustful cockmonster." Kluwe also publicly challenged former Vikings player Matt Birk's support of a same-sex marriage ban, and has even appeared in the documentary The Last Barrier in which he spoke about his feelings on equality. Chris, along with Ayanbadejo filed a amnicus brief to the Supreme Court opposing California's infamous Proposition 8, and he was also Ellen Degeneres's first inductee to her defense of same sex marriage hall of fame!

When the 2011 NFL lockout happened, Kluwe tweeted that Peyton Manning, Drew Brees, Vincent Jackson and Logan Mankins were "douchebags" for holding up the season. Nate Jackson criticized Kluwe for "talking out of turn", to which Kluwe said that, in his opinion, "four people endangering the livelihoods of the 1,900 affected by the dispute was pretty much the definition of greed." Awesome.

Yes, Chris Kluwe is spectacular, and he just wrote a book called Beautiful Unique Sparkleponies. I will post here an excerpt from the book in which Kluwe debates Libertarian thinking, and Ayn Rand specifically. Thanks for reading, and go out and buy a Kluwe jersey, let's make it a new pro-gay thing to wear.

Excerpted from "Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies"

So I forced myself to read “Atlas Shrugged.” Apparently I harbor masochistic tendencies; it was a long, hard slog, and by the end I felt as if Ayn Rand had violently beaten me about the head and shoulders with words. I feel I would be doing all of you a disservice (especially those who think Rand is really super-duper awesome) if I didn’t share some thoughts on this weighty tome.

Who is John Galt?

John Galt (as written in said novel) is a deeply flawed, sociopathic ideal of the perfect human. John Galt does not recognize the societal structure surrounding him that allows him to exist. John Galt, to be frank, is a turd.

However, John Galt is also very close to greatness. The only thing he is missing, the only thing Ayn Rand forgot to take into account when writing “Atlas Shrugged,” is empathy.

John Galt talks about intelligence and education without discussing who will pay for the schools, who will teach the teachers. John Galt has no thought for his children, or their children, or what kind of world they will have to occupy when the mines run out and the streams dry up. John Galt expects an army to protect him but has no concern about how it’s funded or staffed. John Galt spends his time in a valley where no disasters occur, no accidents happen, and no real life takes place.

John Galt lives in a giant fantasy that’s no different from an idealistic communist paradise or an anarchist’s playground or a capitalist utopia. His world is flat and two-dimensional. His world is not real, and that is the huge, glaring flaw with objectivism.

John Galt does not live in reality.

In reality, hurricanes hit coastlines, earthquakes knock down buildings, people crash cars or trip over rocks or get sick and miss work. In reality, humans make good choices and bad choices based on forces even they sometimes don’t understand. To live with other human beings, to live in society, requires that we understand that shit happens and sometimes people need a safety net. Empathy teaches us that contributing to this safety net is beneficial for all, because we never know when it will be our turn.

If an earthquake destroys half the merchandise in my store or levels my house, that’s something I can’t control; it doesn’t matter how prepared I was or how hard I worked. Trying to recover from something like that can cripple a person, both financially and mentally, unless he has some help from those who understand that we’re all in this together, we need each other to function as a society, and the next earthquake might hit one of our houses.

If a volcano erupts and takes out vital transportation and infrastructure, should we just throw our hands up in the air and say, “not my responsibility”? No, because it is our responsibility.

It’s our responsibility as members of a societal group to take care of the underlying foundations of peace and security — to ensure that the roads and rails are protected because they provide a collective good.

To be fair to John Galt, though, the safety net cannot be a security blanket. if you hand one person everything in life by taking it away from someone else, then the will to succeed rapidly fades on both sides; why work when it doesn’t matter? Look at any of the idle rich, the spoiled children of privilege, the welfare collectors who churn out babies because it means another weekly check to buy shoes or purses. Ayn Rand got it right up to that point but fails to make the next logical step.

If you want to get rid of the moocher, you don’t do it by excluding everyone you think could be a moocher, by building your own private jail with yourself as both warden and prisoner. No, if you want to rid yourself of the moocher, you do it by focusing on and teaching rational empathy. If you treat other people the way you want to be treated, you’ll never want someone else to live your life for you, because shackling others means you’ve chosen to shackle yourself. We’re all free, or we’re all slaves.

No one wants to take care of someone who does nothing in return, provides no value for society (I’m ignoring babies and children here, because they’re kind of necessary to the long-term survival of humanity), and so the corollary applies — if you feel that everyone should be free to live his or her own life, the safety net can never become a permanent solution, because if you rely over-much on it, then you’re no longer living your own life.

Just as you don’t want other people to be an unnecessary burden on you, you should desire just as much not to be an unnecessary burden on others. if you take handouts when you no longer need them, you’ve turned yourself into a slave to someone else. If you think that other people have to take care of you but that you don’t have to take care of them in return, you’re trying to enslave those who would provide for you. If you make people dependent on you by limiting their opportunities for education and work and requiring them to subsist on a dole, you’ve taken away their chance at free will, at making their own lives.

John Galt as written lacks this rational empathy. John Galt is brilliant but doesn’t have the long-term vision to maintain the society that allowed his brilliance to flourish. John Galt is self-motivated but has no concern for the effects of his actions on other people. John Galt is a lone individual living in a world filled with countless teeming masses, and just as John Galt plants his feet on the backs of all those who came before him, he must provide a surface for future generations to plant their feet as well, not through sacrificing everything he owns but by realizing a stable society is ultimately a productive society.

But that’s not John Galt. A world full of Ayn Rand’s John Galts is a world that will eventually consist of only one person, and then none, once his lifespan concludes. John Galt doesn’t care for the disasters that affect his neighbors — they can sink or swim on their own (and they’ll sink). John Galt doesn’t care for the public good, because all he can see is his own good (and he’ll wonder why it gets harder and harder to get the resources he needs). John Galt doesn’t recognize that genius arises under any circumstances (and he’ll never know how many geniuses he excluded from paradise because their parents didn’t fit his ideals, or why the population keeps shrinking).

John Galt is a remorseless shark feeding on those unable to get out of his way, the blood-churned waters boiling around him as he takes in everything he requires for his own happiness without thought of the cost to others, rending and tearing the stability of social interactions until his once-teeming world is barren and lifeless, collapsed under the gluttonous appetite of self.

Then he starves, and no one is left to mourn his passing.

Are you John Galt?

Excerpted from the book “Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies” by Chris Kluwe. Copyright © 2013 by Chris Kluwe. Reprinted with permission of Little, Brown and Co.

EDIT: I forgot to mention the Donovan McNabb business. When Donovan was traded to the Vikings, he wanted #5, which Kluwe was wearing. Chris said that he would gladly give McNabb the #5 jersey, but under the condition that Donovan mention Kluwe's band 5 times on the air, donate 5,000$ to charity, and buy Kluwe an ice cream cone. What a patriot.

Oliver

Just a couple random dad things I wanted to put up, like this picture of me reading Ollie The Very Hungry Caterpillar 

Olls rolling his eyes as I explain why DC will always be better than Marvel

I love this little video, Oliver asks me what a picture is, he hears the answer, stares into the distance for a minute, thinking about it, then moves on.

More in-depth stuff coming this week I swear, I am writing a piece about Chris Kluwe, I'm playing a new Ron Gilbert game, and of course, more republican stuff. Stay tuned!