Another Letter to the RedEye

I'm doubtful they'll be printing any of this, especially since they just printed something of mine last week and they're not all that keen on conservative viewpoints. (Thanks a lot, Northsiders...) So I figured I'd post it here instead, although it's nothing new from what I've already posted about the immigration debate and the Elvira Arellano debacle. I'll be sure to update if they actually print any of it.

RedEye: How do you think Elvira Arellano's arrest will affect the debate on immigration?

Hopefully Elvira Arellano's arrest will remind the populous that illegal immigration is illegal. I know, it sounds so easy and logical, but apparently there are too many people out there in our country who keep forgetting that simple fact. It's illegal to enter the United States without proper legal documentation. It's also illegal to steal a social security number in order to build an ill-gotten life here, like Arellano did once before.

What saddens me the most about this incident is that the federal agents didn't just enter the church and arrest her back on August 15th of 2006. Instead, they succumbed to the notion of "sanctuary" - which does NOT protect you from a federal agent who's come to deport you. The fact that they backed off and let this continue for an entire year just opened the door for other illegals to pull the same tactic - a tactic that the ICE is supposed to ignore and get the job done, no matter what.

With hope, this will empower the ICE to get back to taking action. Yelling "sanctuary" from inside a church should simply act as a beacon to get federal agents right over to that church and arrest the criminals hiding within, proving that not only is there nowhere to run but also that there is nowhere to hide now.

Yes, arrest the criminals. After all, illegal immigration is illegal. And if you do something illegal, that makes you a criminal. Because you broke the law. It's that simple. Now we just have to keep enforcing that.

Aaron Samuels, 23, Bridgeport

We'll see what happens.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IS ILLEGAL.





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Elvira Arellano Finally Arrested!

That's right! Read 'em and weep, liberals and other amnesty-advocates! Your precious "famous face of the suffering" has been taken into custody and will hopefully be getting deported AGAIN. As for what's going to happen to her son, I still believe she has no right to custody of her son after what she's put him through. Take him back to Chicago and let him live with a foster family that will provide actual parenting that doesn't involve trips across the border to deal with government agencies and policies.

Here's how it went down:

After talking to news media inside the church, Arellano and her supporters got into their van to head north to San Jose, where she was scheduled to speak at another church, Lozano said. Moments after they got in the van, an unmarked vehicle stopped them.

The driver of Arellano's van, Roberto Lopez, poked his head out of the van because he wanted to see why they were being blocked. Several other unmarked vehicles surrounded their van.

Agents came out of all the cars screaming at the top of their lungs for her to get out, Lozano said. Her 8-year-old son, Saul, started to cry, and Arellano said to everyone in the car, "Calm down. Don't have any fear. They can't hurt me."

Then she turned to the people who were about to arrest her and she said, "You're going to have to give me a minute with my son," Lozano said. She spent time with her son in the car, and then surrendered.

It was over in less than two minutes. She was arrested Sunday on Main Street, near Our Lady Queen of Angels, where Arellano slept Saturday night and where she's held several press conferences Saturday and Sunday.

If you have any thought in your head, then you can't argue "how could this happen?" A known fugitive who's been in "hiding" for over a year decides to go in public and start holding press conferences - it's a matter of time before an arrest gets made. I would have preferred that this happen in Chicago, where she was captured and deported once before, to show that breaking the law is a crime and you WILL be brought to justice. Having this takedown finally occur over in Los Angeles worries me.

We all know how lenient Southern California tends to be with its illegals - letting them even take over the cities as "sanctuary cities" where they don't even HAVE to hide because they've abolished all law enforcement.

At least we can finally take solace in the fact that she's been captured again.

Now I'll just wait for news about her deportation - or mock the Chicagoans who will be holding vigils and protests here in Chicago to protest the ICE's decision to deport an illegal immigrant criminal.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IS ILLEGAL.

(The story that tipped me off to this turn of events)







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Kia Vaughn - You Are Now A "Ho"

Pardon my Imusness for a second, but the circumstances have now all changed. This is no longer about an off-color remark made by an alleged racist on public airwaves. THAT particular trial is OVER. Al Sharpton got to huff and puff for a while, a bunch of uppity bitches got pissed, Imus got suspended and then subsequently fired, and that - quite literally - was that. Everyone went about their business with their own respective opinions on the matter, and the case was closed.

So what opened things back up?

A settlement between Imus and CBS, providing not only $20 million but also a welcome back to Imus as he'll once again be on the airwaves. Even Sharpton himself wasn't as rattled by this turn of events. After all, you can't deny that there is no such thing as bad publicity, and scores os sponsors were still waiting at the door to sign up with Imus' returning show. Not even calling for Imus to lose his show again, all Sharpton could offer was advice that he get himself an ombudsman.

So who's taking action in court against Imus, "coincidentally" at the same time he gets his career back AND a cool $20 million?

Kia Vaughn.

You might not recognize the name, though now that it's been used in the same article as Imus, you can no doubt guess she was one of the "nappy-headed hos" who was in that fateful game that I'm sure nobody was watching and didn't even know existed until Imus and his big mouth made it known to us. She, as I predicted in an earlier post that will be moved to this site soon, is filing a lawsuit claiming slander and defamation of character. Which we all know will be IMPOSSIBLE to prove in a court of law.

There are two main points that she'll need to prove in order to have this case stand in a court:

1. That Imus' statements actually led people to believe that she is a "ho" AND that it negatively affected her in an obective way.

2. That Imus' statements were a lie and she is not, in fact, a "ho".

Have fun with that!

Let's tackle the first point. Imus called her a "ho". So? How many people get called a "ho", in either that vernacular or a more proper "whore", and it is taken seriously? Do you think anyone has stopped Kia Vaughn on the street with a $5 bill asking for a handjob in the adjacent alley? Has she been arrested for prostitution by the police based on Imus' "lead" that she is a whore and selling sex for money? No - they haven't. I don't even think she's had her career affected in any way, aside from her maybe playing worse because she's focused too much on name-calling and not "defending the zone" or some other basketball term that she's supposed to be doing as a basketball player. Has the WNBA turned her down because of her "illicit sexual activity"? None of this has happened, because it was a comment made in jest, not to be taken seriously, and it WASN'T taken seriously.

Now about the second point: Was Imus even lying? What if she IS a whore? Is Kia Vaughn really prepared to line up and identify all of her sexual partners to verify that none of them had to pay money in order to have sexual relations with her? How about the defense parading out possible witnesses saying otherwise? Evidence on bathroom walls that seem to compliment Mr. Imus' implications? Borderline perjurers who are willing to risk it just for the media spotlight by taking a comment out of context that makes it seem like they were propositioned by Ms. Vaughn? Sexual pasts can be a tricky thing - and the subjective nature of it all makes for various interesting interpretations of the "facts". Go ahead, Kia, and prove you're not a "ho".

Oh wait, you can't. Because you are.

That's right - I'm calling her out based on a loose definition of the word "ho" or "whore". Just as a "media whore" is willing to do whatever it takes, including dirty and/or dispicable things, just to get the attention of the media - so is a commonplace "whore" willing to do whatever it takes, including dirty and/or dispicable things, just for money. Don Imus gets $20 million in a settlement with NBC. On the same day, Kia Vaughn files a lawsuit against him seeking monetary compensation for the "slander" and "defamation of character" on Imus' part. You do the math. It's not a coincidence in the least. Kia Vaughn is just out to get some money and strike it rich with the most dispicable act in society today: suing the wealthy.

That, Kia Vaughn, makes you a whore.

"The defense rests, your Honor. Mr. Imus' statements are retroactively proven to be truthful, which means there is no grounds for defamation of character or slander in any way. Request that all charges be dropped immediately."

(Some columnist who thinks otherwise)
(Some columnist who's on the right track)
(Fellow blogger's opinion)
(Another fellow blogger's opinion)







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Elvira Arellano, Go Back to Mexico!

Fine, accuse me of being a hateful person for using the phrase "Go back to Mexico." I'll say it as many times as I have to until something gets done and this criminal is back where she belongs: Mexico, her country of origin from which she entered the US illegally. TWICE.

For those of you who aren't aware of the year-long story of The Illegal Who Cried "Sanctuary" - here's a recap:

- In 1997, Arellano attempted to cross the Mexico/US border with fake papers. She was caught and deported back to Mexico.

- In December of 2002, as part of a terrorist sting at O'Hare, Arellano was arrested for working under a false Social Security number.

- In 2003, she was convicted in federal court of Social Security fraud and ordered to leave the country.

- Somehow three years go by, and she decides to hole up in a church here in Chicago, claiming sanctuary to avoid deportation from officials. The date is August 16th, 2006.

So now it's one year later. She's been using her "anchor baby" to literally do her bidding between here in Chicago and Washington D.C., taking an eight-year-old boy and turning him into her personal media-whore. And she's made an announcement: She's going to leave her sanctuary on September 12 to travel to Washington D.C. to lobby for immigration reform.

Feds: It's up to you to catch her.

I say that with just the SLIGHTEST bit of hope that something will actually be done. After all, it's been an entire freakin' year and nobody's bothered to do ANYTHING about it yet. She just stays cooped up in the church, and nobody's deported her yet. Even though they have every right to. That's right! The whole myth of "sanctuary" is pretty much a lie. The only thing that's protecting her in her "sanctuary" is the fact that the public would outcry federal agents breaking into a church.

Which they have every legal right to do. They can bust in there and catch her and deport her ass back to Mexico where she belongs. They just haven't, because of whiny bleeding-heart liberals. And probably some devout Christians. But mostly the liberals.

So here's what needs to happen: On September 12th, there needs to be an operation to arrest her, publicly and openly. I want a van with a federal agent and a newscaster chosen to get the "exclusive story" in the front, and a few local police cars in the vicinity in case they sneak out the back. As soon as she's sighted - go in for the takedown. Make it known on public television that if you are an illegal immigrant, YOU WILL BE DEPORTED!

You know what? Add in that van a person from child protective services! I want that child to be torn from the arms of this abusive and/or neglectful mother to show that not only are "anchor babies" a horrible idea, but you CANNOT make them "do your bidding". For the love of all things good and holy, if I were a single parent in Chicago, I still would not be letting my 8-year-old go to the store to get groceries - let alone allow him to walk to and from school by himself.

I certainly wouldn't let him travel to MEXICO with some woman from a random immigration rights group!

That's called "bad parenting". Hopefully it's bad enough to warrant child services making a case against her. She's a criminal who left her child in the custody of practically a stranger to travel to Mexico. She should be found unfit to care for her child (who she obviously hasn't cared for anywhere other than this room in a church) and since HE is a citizen and SHE isn't - take Saul Arellano away and into a foster home with real parents who'll give him an actual childhood and won't make him go to Mexico to appeal to governments about immigration reform.

You call it "breaking up a family". I call it "justice".

Don't let her get to Washington, federal agents! The only reason I would accept for not arresting her outright here in Chicago and deporting her ass is that you want to do it in Washington because you have the home court advantage. It's a criminal walking straight to a police station and yelling "I'm a criminal but I shouldn't be arrested for it!" Take her down, in the middle of the lobby for immigration reform. Let the public know that we don't need immigration reform - we need to enforce our immigration laws.

Oh, and be sure to have lots of agents stationed outside the area, so that when they pop out to arrest and deport Arellano - there are people ready to catch all of the fleeing illegals who are frightened by the presence of ICE agents. I've always said that the best place to sweep for illegal immigrants is at an immigration reform conference or protest.

Seriously, feds! Just take a look online or at websites! Find out where and when these protests and lobbies are being held - and then show up to arrest and deport all of the illegals! It's time to enforce the laws and scare some of these MILLIONS of criminals back to their countries of origin because they'll know we're finally enforcing the laws!

Feds, we can't do this without you. Help us take down Elvira Arellano and make a statement.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IS ILLEGAL.





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Letter to RedEye: CTA Rate Hike

I got printed again in the RedEye! Here's the letter I sent them - the italics are the portion that they decided to print. Sad, really - they kept the part where I complain, but left out the part where I suggest how to make things better.

To RedEye:

Okay, so to make up for this lack of funding, they not only want to raise the fares based on which method you pay with but magically what time you're having to make your trip? Unfortunately, I don't GET to change my game plan. My game plan involves having to ride the CTA between 6:30am and 9:30am and then again between 4:00pm and 7:00pm.

It's called a JOB. I don't get to call in to work and say, "Sorry, boss, but to save money I'm going to have to come in at 10am because they charge extra on the CTA to get to work when I'm supposed to."

With that kind of flawed logic, they should get it over with and charge us double the fare - punishment for having a job and contributing to society, I'm sure.

How about if THEY step up and start FIXING things as a game plan?

If they're already threatening to cancel 40-something bus routes, why not be SMART about it? Why not just threaten to cut 50-something routes, but use the EXTRA buses and drivers from those extra cancelled routes and improve service on the EXISTING routes?

Put 3/4 of the workforce from the extra cut routes into extra buses and drivers so riders can USE the buses. That extra 1/4 of the workforce? Put that money towards hiring some HELP to figure out why buses keep bunching and how to eliminate the problem! I can think of SEVERAL research methods to figure it out - I'm sure they could come up with ONE and put that extra money towards implementing it and making our public transportation system at least tolerable.

Because tolerance is currently running thin. And we'd rather have our money working FOR us, rather than flushing it down a failing system like we currently are.

Aaron Samuels, 23
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It's a "Hate Crime" to Hate Crime??

I'm told that this all started back on July 5th. Or at least around then. A group of protesters from a group supporting a Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act went on a hunger strike to further press this issue of giving relief to illegal immigrant children for secondary eduaction and making college and military service another pathway of amnesty to making them legal citizens. Okay, so already we've got a rather dumb idea. But it all started to really hit the fan when Michael Savage had his say:

"I would say let them fast till they starve to death. ... Because then we won't have a problem about giving them green cards because they're illegal aliens."

And bleeding-heart liberal San Francisco went ablaze in fervor over the remarks. They went so far as to waste taxpayer money (because taxpayers are responsible for paying their representatives' salaries) by having Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval introduce a resolution Tuesday condemning the "defamatory language used by radio personality Michael Savage against immigrants." And soon, more will be wasted as the Supervisor plans to call a vote on the official condemnation.

I'm asking of you: Who did he defame, and how were they defamed?

The protesters on the hunger strike trying to get amnesty for illegal immigrants? How did he defame them? By disagreeing with their stance on an issue? By not taking their method of protest seriously? If not agreeing with a method of protest or the reason for the protest and verbalizing it is wrong, then all counterprotests would result in "condemnation" and "defamation" news, wouldn't it?

The illegal immigrants? The ones who want us to help pay for them to go to college and cheat their way into legal citizenship? How were they defamed? Michael Savage doesn't want them to get green cards. He called them exactly what they are - illegal aliens. That's not defamation at all. It's stating the obvious. They're not citizens, and they're here illegally. They are criminals. Okay, Michael Savage didn't say that, but I am. Does that mean I've defamed illegal immigrants by posting this?

Good. Defamation is a way of reducing the fame and popularity of someone. And the less famous and popular we make the criminals walking amongst us and the less public support they're receiving as a result - the better.

Now let's get to the idea that this is "hate speech" or a "hate crime":

As for hate speech, I think the only appropriate response is, "SO WHAT?" Speech can be hateful. As long as there are hateful emotions, there will be hateful words and hateful speech to express that hatred.

As for calling it a crime? No f-ing way. The man has done nothing criminal in the least. In fact, he's expressing hatred and outrage about CRIME being committed by ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS! How can it be a "hate crime" to hate a crime? The only criminals here are the illegal immigrants - especially those who want more support and help to continue their criminal lives here and seek amnesty for the crimes they've committed.

Here's the real problem. Government officials are going out of their way to officially condemn this radio show host for the comments that he made. But here's the thing: he was telling the government officials themselves to stay the course and NOT give in to some piddly little hunger strike. In his own words (which you wouldn't hear in the biased liberal media who's comparing him to Imus), "the logical conclusion of a hunger strike is starvation. That's their right."

Savage went on to explain that the hunger strikers are illegal aliens, "who stole free college educations and then had the audacity to demand citizenship because they were slippery enough to beat the system out of a college degree!" The strikers, he said "owe the U.S. taxpayer reimbursement for their college degrees, and any other public benefits they may have cadged over their years here illegally. Then they should be deported."

If it's condemnable to speak up and speak out against illegal immigrants robbing citizens of so many resources, demanding that we be reimbursed for what they've stolen, or calling for their deportation - then I'm willing to bet that some hippie in San Francisco is writing up a proposal to condemn me as well.

And I'd welcome it. After all, there's no such thing as bad publicity. And illegal immigration is ILLEGAL. Strange how not a single Latino-based or Civil-Liberty-based organization will accept that...

(A story about the Michael Savage condemnation)





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Rap Deathmatch!

This is what I like to see, and I think there should be more of it in the entertainment industry today. It's the career version of no-limit Texas Hold'Em and deciding to shout "All In!" Two men enter the marketplace. One man leaves. And the other man stays, to continue his career. This is what it's all about, and we need more celebrities doing it - putting their careers on the line, providing us with both the best of what they can offer (finally!) and the relief of having the loser gone from sight.

50 Cent: "If If Kanye West sells more records than 50 Cent on September 11, I'll no longer write music. I'll write music and work with my other artists, but I won't put out anymore solo albums."

50 Cent, welcome to the Entertainment Industry Thunderdome! Just for participating in this glorious arena, your "Platinum Balls" trophy is in the mail, provided that Kanye accepts your challenge. (The Thunderdome rules only apply if two men enter, you know?)

I'm literally praying that Kanye West agrees to this challenge. I'm rather sick and tired of Kanye West, and I believe that 50 Cent has the larger following and could pull off a victory. He's certainly the favorite in MY books. Not that I'm a bookie or anything. So no need to contact me to place your bets if this shindig actually takes place. Though I'm really hoping it does take place.

I'm not really much a fan of 50 Cent, either. In my mind, we're kind of dealing with a "lesser of two evils" scenario. But that's where the magic of the career pink slips comes in. The best thing about a fight to the career death with two artists who you don't really care for is that one of them is guaranteed to never bother you (as much) again! Sure, his rules stipulate that he can still write music and you could still wind up hearing him on a track by another artist - but his solo career is over! For good!

So let's come up with rules for spreading this to other industries...

Singers: No more solo albums, I like the thought of that. I'm okay with songwriting and performing with others, but you should not be vocally present on more than 50% of the songs on any album.
Actors: No more starring roles. You can be in the movie business, directing or producing or something, but only acting as a cameo role at best.
TV Actors: No more starring roles. Again, you can be in the business behind the scenes, but you must not appear on any opening credits as anything but "Guest Star".
Game Show Hosts: Same applies as the TV Actors. I just think Game Show Hosts deserves a category of its own.

So now the Thunderdomes are set up and ready for participants. Who would you like to see doing battle with their careers on the line? What pairing would be a fair fight, whether you don't care which jackass loses or your money is riding on your personal favorite? Here's a few of my ideas:

Chris Rock vs. Chris Tucker: Tucker's latest movie just came out. If Rock's next movie beats it at the box office, we'll have a winner.

Ted Danson vs. Kelsey Grammar: I think each of them have a new crappy show coming out this fall. Ratings winner takes all. One of them goes home, for good.

Those are my ideas - I WANT TO HEAR YOURS!

The article about the 50 Cent vs. Kanye West challenge

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Rallying Against Rap? Tough.

When I was growing up, there was a word repeated over and over from my parents. "Tough." Perhaps it was an abbreviated version on a phrase "Tough _____" and my parents were sparing me the obscenity or softening the blow. Which I guess would make it a contradictory statement. But anyway, when things weren't going right, when I wasn't happy with a situation, when I had a problem that I wasn't able to solve by myself:

"Tough."

It's a motto that, while it didn't seem to affect me physically, and although I'm still a bit of a non-confrontational person at heart, I still live by. Or at least try to spread to others. Whether it's about "toughening up" or "toughing it out" - society could learn a lot from that brand of parenting and that brand of giving into a situation and making yourself more tough by ACCEPTING it rather than by bitching about it with a stupid rally or protest.

Which is where this topic turns, towards the rallies being held across the nation, but especially here in Chicago. Rallies to debate the controversial lyrics in rap music. Some are here to piss and moan that rap music degrades women and glorifies violence and other naughty things that parents shouldn't want their children to grow up thinking, doing or being in general. Some are here to cry "censorship" for trying to remove words from a language, and more specifically from a music genre. Some are here just because some newly-famous jackass is here and they flock to stupid ideas and anyone spouting them because they have no minds of their own. To all these people, and any others coming to rally for one reason or another:

"Tough."

The system is damned fine the way it is, for the most part. Deal with it.

Rap is riddled with "bad words" and what many call "bad ideas" and "bad beliefs". So? Music has always contained questionable material, and it perseveres. Way back when, don't you think there was some argument going on about women being referred to as "hound dogs" and lying about being "high-class"? That's right, even the King was a bit "misogynistic" - if you want to fall for exaggerations. And what about the racist undertones of "Play that funky music, white boy"? Face it, it's always going to be there. That's the crazy thing about freedom of speech and freedom of thought - it literally takes all kinds.

So after we accept that music can always contain questionable material, it comes down to how it's handled, and by whom. If it's on the radio, it's handled by the FCC. As much as it shouldn't be, that's who it's currently handled by. For decent radio, like this XM satellite radio stuff, which I believe ISN'T under FCC rule - it's handled by the person listening to the radio. George Carlin said it best, "A radio has two knobs, you know. One to turn it off, and one to change the station!" If you don't like it, don't listen to it.

And if you're a parent, claiming you don't have the power to change the station when your child is listening to it without you - you still have the power to instill decency in your child no matter what the radio provides for them. If a song on the radio has more effect on your child's attitude towards women than YOU as a PARENT do - what does that say about your parenting skills? After all, that's what this boils down to. Parents at these rallies want everyone to parent their children EXCEPT THEMSELVES, so they can complain about how crappy their children are behaving and acting. Well guess what, parents?

"Tough."

YOU'VE got to be in charge of your kid, not some rapper. And don't even try to play the "but they look up to them" card - just because I looked up to Superman as a kid doesn't mean I jumped off of buildings trying to fly. My PARENTS sat me down and reminded me that while it all looks cool and Superman's a great guy - I have to obey the laws of gravity. And just because your kid looks up to someone who talks about "shooting bitches" - you have to remind them that they have to obey the laws of the city/state/federal government. Oh, and that they have to obey the laws of decency, too. YOU instill their values and their morals, so THEY can decide to follow it when confronted with rappers and how they treat their bitches.

The music industry does half the battle for you, parents. The radio stations have to censor the cussing themselves, or pick up Radio-Edit versions of the songs. Does that eliminate the potty-talk? Mostly. Does it alter the messages of demeaning women and glorifying violence? Nope. But again, that's where parenting comes in - before the police wind up coming in later on in life.

So where does all of this violence and women-bashing come from? Why is rap music being blamed for trends in society? Because these researchers (and especially pompous douchebags with holier-than-thou attitudes) still can't get it through their skulls that CORRELATION DOES NOT MEAN CAUSATION! Rap music is more offensive to people than ever. Society is more offensive to people than ever. Does that mean rap is to blame for society's ills? Couldn't it also mean that rap's ills are due to society? That since it's cooler and "in" to be shocking and promote violence and sex (sex sells, and it always will) - that's what leads music companies to hire/produce artists with songs portraying just that? I think that's the most likely story. The MARKET and the DOLLAR is what drives the trends, and vice-versa. Society wants more violent video games and is willing to pay - the market makes it happen. Kids would rather shell out money for Parental-Advisory-stickered CDs instead of cleaner rap music that the whole family can enjoy? Then that's what's going to get produced.

Don't get mad at the rappers, get mad at the recording studios willing to produce it to make a profit off your children's skewed value system (I mean AFTER getting mad at yourself for allowing your child to have a skewed value system and the cashflow to affect the marketplace accordingly).

Or as I once heard, "Don't hate the player, hate the game."

Or as my mom used to say:

"Tough."





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Dogfighting Bites

I'm not sure if I could ever be called an "animal lover". I mean, there have been animals in my life I've felt love for - but they're few and far-between. For the most part, I'm a man who believes that animals are made of meat and a pet is no substitute for a child. Non-human animals simply aren't human. And yes, I'm foolish enough to believe humans are better animals than non-humans.

So if all of that winds up putting a bias on my ideas about dogfighting in your minds, so be it. I have to be true to myself. If I weren't, I wouldn't be able to write these articles.

Dogfighting is cruelty. Even I'm sane enough to admit that. Pitting an animal against an animal for the sole purpose of profit and/or bragging rights, just because they don't know any better - that's cruelty.

That in mind, could you really expect better from our society? Wasn't it just a few thousand years ago that leaders of men were pitting humans against each other to the death? Wasn't it also just a few years ago that we brought it to the silver screen and the home television? And what about boxing, or the newer and more violent "ultimate fighting" competitions? Sure, that's done on a voluntary basis, and pretty much never to the death - but still evidence of human thirst for violence.

While dogfighting is illegal in all 50 states, it took until just a few months ago to get cockfighting banned in all 50 states. In fact, the last state's ban won't officially take place until 2008, I believe. Are we suggesting that the more "lovable" an animal is, the more offensive it is to pit them against each other in bloody battle? After all, a few of our first presidents were avid cockfighters. I mean they owned gamecocks and battled them, not that they actually fought against gamecocks or anything. That's just silly.

No, I'm not trying to defend dogfighting. Again, there's little way to see it as anything but cruelty. Of course, everything leading UP to the dogfighting, that might be a different story. After all, it's considered "damning evidence" just to be in possession of both a dog (whose breed is one commonly associated with dogfighting) and a piece of what is considered "dogfighting equipment". That's seriously all it takes to get a case going and a jury completely against you. THAT, I feel, is unfair. Dog owners have the right to train their pets to be as aggressive or passive as they choose. How they train them? That can border on cruelty, yes. Not feeding a dog just to make it hungrier and more aggressive is technically "neglect" - even though it's not being neglectful, it's just being cruel. As for things I've read about mixing dead bumblebees and gunpowder in the dog's food, to rile up the dog as stingers pierce their gums - that's cruelty AND stupidity.

Of course, I'm a man who'd love to lock people up for stupidity as much as cruelty.

Even so, I think the laws and penalties are fine where they are. If you're caught with supplying a dog for dogfighting, or being in charge of anything - that's up to three years in jail. Most of the training things, if you're caught, are rightly dished out as animal cruelty charges, most of which are one or three years. Attending a dogfight lands you up to a year in jail - this one I'm a bit against, mostly because police can never seem to actually track down a dogfight taking place, so why trump up the charges just for being there? As for bringing a child to a dogfight resulting in up to three years in jail, that one I'm more comfortable with. Of course, I'd see it more as "child endangerment", or just being plain stupid - which sadly isn't yet punishable with jail time in and of itself.

But that's fine as it is! We don't need "harsher penalties" all of a sudden. The punishments currently fit the crime, no matter how much you want a bad guy who hurts puppies to get locked up "forever and ever". But lately, there's a fad here in America where hot-button topics get overemphasized, overexaggerated, and overlegislated as a result. When that bridge recently collapsed, there was nothing but fearmongering, causing the closures of way too many bridges. We need to veer some of the news away from hot-button topics, so that the first time we pay attention to things isn't when IT becomes the new hot-button topic.

Dogfighting is cruel and illegal. It was cruel and illegal long before some NFL superstar wound up shedding twenty times the normal spotlight on the issue. It will continue to be cruel and illegal. That doesn't mean that just because it's the "in-thing" to be against dogfighting, that means that we need a hundred more harsher laws and punishments.

We just need to keep enforcing the laws we have, and if that's the best way to remind our law enforcement agents to shape up, so be it. I just want them to remember that there's a lot of human suffering out there and a lot more human victims every day than the counts of dogfighting victims being wallpapered over the newspapers.

I'm not saying they should ignore the poor victims of dogfighting rings. I'm saying they have to pay just as much attention to the violence befalling humans, too.

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PETA: Dogs WE Love Are BETTER!

That's right, you read the title correctly - PETA is at it again.

This time, they're doing something even more ridiculous than usual: they're attacking celebrities for buying instead of adopting. PETA has just decided that animals in shelters "deserve" owners more than animals available for purchase from a breeder or just a common pet shop. Protests were organized (of course) and as the protesters donned their Paris Hilton and Britney Spears masks, they waved their signs reading things like:

"Shelter Dogs Are Dying and I Don't Care"

Alright, let me get something straight right off the bat: these celebrities are being attacked because they purchased dogs rather than adopted from an animal shelter.

Really think about this for three seconds. There are two dogs. One is in a shelter, one is in a pet shop. Both are available to be taken home as somebody's pet. But because one was bred and has papers and you genetically know where it came from - that makes it worse to bring home and love? That's PETA's argument. That because you wanted a prettier pet that is the breed of dog you were looking for in the first place instead of one "slated to die" in an animal shelter - that makes you someone they can target in a protest.

Know the most hilarious part of this whole story??

PETA is protesting because these unadopted shelter dogs are going to be put down - but PETA is responsible for putting down so many shelter animals every year.

Their signs should really read: "Why did you buy that dog? Now we have to go kill one from a shelter!"

This whole thing is just insane. PETA, you idiots, the LAST thing you should be protesting is a person willing to take in a dog and care for it - especially those with enough wealth to care for it luxuriously. After all, you held your little protest right by your latest crazy billboard about "animal birth control".

That's right - PETA thinks that the best way to save animals from the shelters (where PETA will likely kill them) is simply to spay/neuter all of the dogs and cats in California.

WAIT WAIT WAIT - isn't PETA the insane group that wants us to leave animals alone completely, not to anything harmful to them ever (even things that aren't harmful but sometimes LOOK harmful or could be harmful if done in the completely wrong way) and to let them all roam free to do as they please? And yet they want it MANDATED to chop off the sex organs of every dog and cat in the state of California??

Well, PETA, two can play at your little CRAZY GAME!

Since PETA is so fond of taking situations animals find themselves in and then relating it to actual tragedies of human circumstances (remember the animal cages made to look like Holocaust concentration camps?) - here's one for you, Ingrid Newkirk!

Africa. Too many Africans. They're all dying of disease and starvation due to poverty. There's just too many of them to share the little resources they have. So instead of coming in and putting them out of their misery (why hasn't anyone thought of euthanasia in Africa?) - we're just going to cut off the testicles of every African man and remove the uterus from all African women. In time, the population will acheive balance once more and the few Africans left who avoided castration or migrated from another continent can live peacefully without dying of starvation and poverty from overpopulation!

Okay, so the plight in African countries is a lot more complex than simple overpopulation - but socioeconomic trends show that lower tiers of socioeconomic status have lots more children, so as to provide a bigger support structure over time. So there IS a lot of breeding going on, and one COULD theorize that sterilization could improve things. By killing off families by destroying their support structure and letting another family have a chance at their food and shelter...

No matter how you look at it, it's a grim picture. One grim enough to warrant a shock video sequence from the masters of terrorist propaganda: PETA itself.

Back to the matter at hand: PETA is usually up in arms about people owning animals in the first place, aren't they? When did "animal liberation" suddenly become "animals-other-than-pets liberation"? As soon as I'd heard about a protest regarding Paris and Britney purchasing dogs, I thought it was going to be in protest against animal ownership and "animals are not ours to own" bullshit. But I was wrong.

Because even PETA agrees that animals can be owned, and that it gives the owner the right to do whatever they choose to with that animal.

Don't believe me? I didn't think you would. That's why I've got a link to the PETA employee trial where the lawyer for PETA stated exactly that in his closing arguments: "It was PETA's property, and she had the absolute legal authority to put the dog down."

Still really pisses me off that those puppy-killers got away with it all.

And here's a little bit of extra thought, thanks to a provoked defense in a comment on LJ:

It doesn't matter either way. PETA wants all pets dead, matter-of-factly.

They don't want us breeding dogs and cats. Because breeding them means there's going to be more of them getting owned instead of adoptable pets from shelters. And the bred pets might wind up in the shelters anyway, given pet-owning trends.

They don't want animals breeding by themselves. Because if they "accidentally" breed, that's more "unwanted" pets being put in shelters and being "slated to die" - sometimes by PETA's own hands in a "rescue mission". That's why they're sponsoring billboards for a movement to spay/neuter all dogs and cats in California.

So if they can't breed themselves, and we can't breed them - that's the extinction of dogs and cats. At PETA's hands, all their arguments coming together. Hell, they kill over 90% of the ones they "rescue" anyway, right?

PETA would rather have them all dead. That's the logic I get from it.

But then again, you can't trust PETA with any form of logic...

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McDonald's and Rap Music

You know, even though I'm a huge fan of McDonald's and have been an addict for nigh on thirteen years or so, I will always admit that it's bad food. You know it, I know it - the whole world knows that McDonald's is and will always be synonymous with "bad for you". This doesn't mean it's the WORST for you, and it certainly doesn't mean its TASTE is bad (not in the least!) - it just means that it's not healthy and it shouldn't be.

Whole Foods is synonymous with "healthy" and/or "pretentious" (at least in my book) - you wouldn't trust them coming out with a "Supreme Meat Lover's Cheeseburger Pizza", would you? That's because they know what they are and they stick by it. And McDonald's, you're "fatty burgers and fries" to the extreme - don't ever lose that. But enough of my pleas to fast food chains to stay true to their titles and lay off the healthy food menu items - this is about Twista.

It's okay if you haven't heard of this whole mess - I hadn't either, until I picked up my RedEye this morning. So for those of you who get the news from sources like me and my RedEye regurgitations, here's the scoop:

McDonald's is hosting a concert series. One of the concerts is going to be in Chicago and McDonald's picked Twista, a Chicago-native rapper, to be in the concert. They promoted the concert using Twista as one of the performers. And suddenly, there was a wave of billboards being put up chastizing rappers for their derogatory language, naming Twista as one of the long list of perpetrators. According to the rapper, McDonald's had even told him they were behind him during this potty-mouth-lyrics situation.

And then all of a sudden, as Twista so eloquently describes it, "they just told us that they didn't want me performing no more."

This is where the hypocrisy comes in. McDonald's obviously knew that derogatory lyrics were used - not only from the public accusations on billboards, but the fact that, uh, TWISTA IS A RAPPER! We don't live in the 80s or even the 90s anymore. You won't hear "rapping" about happy things like "saying hello to the black, to the white, the red, and the brown, the purple and yellow" or even hilarious things like "cooking MCs like a pound of bacon". Rap has degraded into this amalgam of debauchery and violence, and we ACCEPT THAT. You either like rap or you don't. But don't say you like rap while trying to deny everything that rap now is.

Sure, I loved the Sugar Hill Gang. But then rap grew up and starting f*%^ing the police.

So here's what I'm saying to you, McDonald's: accept Twista and the fact that his lyrics are lewd because he is, indeed, a rapper. You and rap have so much in common, let's all face the facts...

- Most people either love it, or they hate it. There's a few fence-sitters, who likely haven't experienced much of it.

- Most people against it say, "It's bad for you and bad for society in general." Most people for it say, "Sure, but we like it anyway."

- If you hear about a person who likes it, you'll immediately jump to a negative stereotype of what that person looks like based solely on that fact and without even having seen them once.

- Both are having a huge impact on the newest generation of consumers, and a huge number of people are up in arms about it being a huge NEGATIVE impact.

- Both are always trying to claim to be "cleaning up their act"; we know it'll never really happen.

So c'mon, McDonald's - just say Twista can play in the concert again. He had such nice things lined up because it was such a big gig and in his hometown. He was going to get a children's choir to join him for a song, and he was going to donate the money raised by his performance to two of his favorite Chicago charities. Does that make up for "crude lyrics"? Beats me. But he's not the only one to come up with catchy chants that society wants to blame all its ills on, is he, McDonald's?

I'll leave you with a "rap" from my childhood, written by McDonald's itself:

"Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun!"

(Twista's RedEye blog telling the whole story from his perspective)

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Freedoms: Speech and Hatred

Face it, we're being enslaved. Slavery is not at all over - not by a longshot - because none of us are truly free. We cannot do the things we were guaranteed the right to do, challenged by oppressive overseers who try to put us back in our "place" every day.

And here in the city of Chicago, two of this era's greater-ranking oppressors are merging and will be sharing the city's overseeing. I'm speaking, of course, about Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Now I don't really have as much of a beef with Jackson; he stays out of the newspapers more often than not and is more of a behind-the-scenes kind of guy (as far as I can tell). Or it could just be that he's totally not behind-the-scenes; he's just severely overshadowed by the pompous windbag of oppression known as Al Sharpton.

Use the "n-word" in public (or loudly in the privacy of your own home) and the odds are good that it will travel like a twinge on a spider's web, alerting the beast that it's time to feed and suck the life out of another morsel. Say it on any broadcast waves, and the swarm is akin to a scene in Braveheart. Even now, I can picture Al Sharpton with the half-blue face, shouting:

"They can have cops shoot us! They can lynch us in the streets! They can portray us poorly in the media! But they can NEVER SAY THE N-WORD!!!"

Well guess what, Sharpton? Yes, we can! We have the right to use any word we want, at any time we want, in any place we want!

Oh, I think except for "fire" in a crowded auditorium. I think that's one's actually illegal, because it can get people killed in the ensuing trampling - though saying the WORD isn't illegal, just the result of it is illegal. Or something. It's a slippery slope...

Back to the point: Sharpton and Jackson are both proponents of the "death" of 'the n-word'. They even had a ceremony for its burial and everything. Which was then promptly defiled. It just goes to prove my point: You cannot kill words, and you cannot forbid them to be spoken. If you tried to ban/kill the word "green" - let's say you're against the unholy union of pureblood blues and yellows and you consider it an offense to the color wheel at large - wouldn't you also have to ban the word "verde" ("green" in Spanish)? What about "midori" (Japanese) or "vert" (French) or "зеленый цвет" (Russian)? No matter what words you take away, you can't change the fact that it IS a color and it's the IDEA of that color that creates the words, not the other way around. Removing the "n-word" isn't going to remove the hatred or feelings that lead people to USE that word; you've got the whole thing backwards! Even if you removed the right to say all known forms of the word "green" from every single language, people would have to find new ways to say it or express it. The color remains, and it wouldn't be long before "blellow" (blue-yellow) came into play. Kill it, and you'd get "yellue" (yellow-blue). Kill that, and people might start just calling it a word you couldn't get rid of...

Like "Kermit". Could you really kill off that word, just because it NOW represents some word or idea that you don't like? That's what we're faced with today.

Newer "n-words" are being formed thanks to the destruction and burial of the old one. Now, instead of the "true n-word", some people on the street have switched to "ninja". What are you going to do about that, oppressors Jackson and Sharpton? You can't kill a word that has thousands of years of history completely unrelated to the negative idea you're foolishly trying to hunt down and kill without bothering to try the root of the problem.

And the root of the problem is the hatred. Without the hatred, there'd be no reason to create or use "n-words" of any variety. Words are an expression of feelings and ideas - you can't just treat every instance of a word as just one emotion or feeling or idea being tied to it. One person from the Deep South might use the "n-word" as a way to express outright hatred and loathing for a race of people. One person of that race might use the "n-word" as a way to express a "brotherhood" or connection with other people of that race. Nobody should be allowed to mandate that one usage is associated with all utterances of that word, and no matter if you use it to express brotherhood, comedy, or even the factual (like reading a transcript) - the mandate says it's nothing but hatred and loathing.

That's a load of "BS-word".

No matter what the foolish reason for trying to cut the word down to size, you can't curb the ideas and emotions behind it. Nobody can tell you how to feel or how to think. You have the right to enjoy something or dislike something. That's right, you have the liberty of hatred. You can hold a grudge, form an enemy, even pray for genocide. You can have any idea you choose to be nestled in your head - and even the right to say them out loud and express them. Following through with them, however, is another case entirely. You have the freedom to wish for genocide; you don't have the freedom to put it into action. But that's a rant for another day.

I think I've spoken my peace. Which I am fully entitled to do. I have the freedom of speech. And I have the freedom of hatred towards those who do not respect the freedoms of speech and hatred.

So Mr. Jackson and Mr. Sharpton - keep your wits about you, because I won't be stifled by your oppressive beliefs that words can be "bad". Words are always good, because it's always better to use them than to resort to violence instead. Any good mother can tell you that. The ideas are what you're supposed to be against, not the words expressing them. And unfortunately for you, the ideas in someone else's head are not yours to govern. The best you can hope for is you speak your mind, just as you should let others speak theirs, and hope that in time, your words can sway their minds away from the hatred and loathing that lead them to use their words in ways you don't like.

Until then, we'll just have to agree to disagree - and speak our minds as such.

Which we both have the freedom to do. Read more!

Smoking Ban vs Gay Marriage

Before I even get off into my usual slur of bad analogies, half-baked jokes and other things that prevent me from forming a coherent verbal (but not written) sentence before 8am - I have no idea what I'm talking about. You hear that? My opinions on these subjects really don't matter because neither of them really affect me directly. Just like men and abortion rights, we can have an opinion, but we'll be seen as wrong just for having one since it's not our issue and it apparently never will be. Now that this is out of the way, I'll say my peace.

Hopefully at least SOME of you read my last piece, about the new Illinois smoking ban that still allows people to smoke, just nowhere where they'd LIKE to smoke. Like in places where there's shelter from the environment other than their own home. What was GOING to follow was a piece about the new cigarette taxes coming into legislation.

I can't begin to think of a better analog for "adding insult to injury."

Instead, certain reader responses in the RedEye this morning just got me BACK onto this original rant, and I felt I had to add more on because people STILL just don't get it: there should NOT be laws being created to ostracize people just based on the theory that secondhand smoke is really that dangerous. Again, I haven't seen any scientific proof. And even if there were test subjects in controlled environments who got cancer from extreme doses of secondhand smoke, I highly doubt that those experiments would reflect the REAL world, where secondhand smoke isn't that concentrated (even indoors) and the hundreds or thousands of other factors that determine when a person gets which cancer.

But no! The liberals (who, might I remind you, are taking away liberties rather than protecting them) are trying to argue that they can tell you where you can't smoke because they're afraid of dying from secondhand smoke. Fine. If you want to make the argument that a hypothetical scary result that hasn't been factually proven yet can be stopped by one of the things that might trigger it in limited circumstances (a long way of saying "you MIGHT get cancer from POSSIBLY secondhand smoke IF this all happened INDOORS and you ignore everyone OUTDOORS")...

...then I say that you have to also agree with the arguments to ban gay marriage.

That's right, I went there. I went there, took some photos, bought a T-shirt, came back, and showed you boring slideshows of it all. Smoking ban? Gay marriage ban. But why, Aaron? Why would you equate something as silly as not being able to smoke indoors with the lifelong struggle of the gay community to commit to each other for life in a federally-recognized ceremony?

Because it's the same argument being made against gay marriage that was made against smoking indoors: something that could potentially harm in a non-proven way if conditions were met. I'm taking about the "gay marriage destroys families" argument here.

I'm arguing that there's an equal percentage of people trying to prove that this seemingly-unlikely event is what triggered their horrible problem. Trying to pin secondhand smoke as the culprit for lung cancer in non-smokers is just as improbable as pinning gay marriage as the culprit for the lack of value of the sacrament of marriage itself.

After all, while being gay is NOT a choice that can be turned on or off, deciding to couple and deciding to want to get married is TOTALLY a choice. You can be gay and do whatever you want to other gay people for as long as you'd like - but when you make the choice to invade the institution of marriage, that apparently affects OTHER people in the bond of marriage and some see it as possibly destructive.

Likewise, while nicotine addiction is not as much of a choice (at serious levels of addiction), it is TOTALLY a choice to start smoking. And you can smoke whatever kinds of cigars and cigarettes you want for as long as you'd like - but when you make the choice to invade the air space of other people indoors, that apparently affects OTHER people in the room and some see it as possibly destructive to their health.

Can you agree on the similarities in the arguments?? One is just as ridiculous as the other! And yet the insane one about SMOKING is easily thrown together as actual legislation by the liberals, while the insane one about GAY MARRIAGE is a rallying point liberals AGAINST the same argument!

Sorry, liberals, but you can't have it both ways. One fauly argument becoming law should equate to more laws backed by the same argument - whether it's something you believe in or not. Smokers believe they have the right to smoke. You argue it threatens the health of others and besides, "smoking is bad for you anyway so maybe this'll help people to quit." Gays believe they have the right to get married. Others argue it threatens the sanctity of marriage and besides, "being gay is morally wrong anyway so maybe this'll help people to get right with God."

Are you starting to see how absurd it all is?

You don't have the right to quash someone's liberties because you're afraid people could get hurt and die. If that were the case all around for everything, people shouldn't be allowed to play sports because there's a high risk of steroid use, and people shouldn't be allowed to drive cars because they can't be trusted to not crash and kill people, and farmers shouldn't be allowed to grow peanuts anymore because so many people are allergic to them and they kill so many people.

You have the right to defend yourself from imminent danger.

You don't have the right to legislate a ban on anything that could potentially be dangerous.

Because people have the right to do dangerous things - to themselves especially, and potentially to others. You can drink alcohol. You can own a gun. You can drive a car. You can bungee jump and parasail and skydive. You can also smoke a cigarette.

And if people are going to take away that liberty for such a stupid reason, I'm just saying that the things THEY believe they have the liberty to do should be taken away just as easily.

And please don't try to turn this into me being a homophobe or against gay marriage. I have several gay friends and I'm not against gay marriage. If you read this piece properly, you'd see that I'm trying to NOT ban gay marriage by trying to get this smoking ban lifted due to the ridiculous reasoning that brought it into existance. It just usually gets a hot-button topic to get people to actually notice the NOT-hot-button topics.

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Liberals Taking Away More Liberties!

You know, I always thought that the word "liberal" was supposed to be about liberty - about making sure we citizens had the liberties and rights to live our lives as we saw fit without having the government come in and trample those rights.

Turns out I was wrong. Because everyone else seems to be wrong. These people we call "Liberals" - the Democrats who blue up the blue states with their anti-Republican stances - aren't the ones who are protecting our liberties. They're the ones taking them away. And Gov. Blagojevich just pulled down his pants and made a bowel movement all over another liberty on Monday.

The liberty to smoke.

Thanks to the new law signed by the governor, on Jan 1st, 2008, smoking will be restricted to private homes and outside (more than 15 feet from a public building entrance). No more smoking in taverns or restaurants with bar areas. Can't smoke in a dormitory, either. Can't smoke in a PRIVATE home if there's a business open to the public operating out of the same space.

Face it - your liberties have just been written off.

You know what? I'm not even a smoker. I loathe the smell of cigarette smoke, it doesn't take much for me to start coughing, and I'm sure several branches of my family tree have been affected by smokers and the cancers they PROBABLY got from all of their smoking. (Yea, that's right - I'm still not totally convinced. I mean I'm convinced that smoking can cause cancer - but at the rate of other things scientists keep coming up with that ALSO cause cancer, I'm not as sure you can pin any of it directly on the smoking itself.) Even so, I am fully aware that they have every right to smoke and do whatever they want to themselves for themselves. You know what I have the right to do?

Go stand somewhere else.

Which is why I can understand why some places SHOULD be non-smoking, or rather that they should have designated non-smoking areas and designated smoking areas. Workplaces, because there you don't have the right to go somewhere else. Eateries, so you can have the CHOICE to be in one or the other section. Gas stations, so you don't make things explode.

Other than that (and probably some other places, but I'm not here to make a list of hypothetical exceptions to my own rule), smoke wherever and whenever! And if I've got a problem with that, I can stand somewhere else! This goes right along with the idiots who don't realize the have the option to change the channel or station when something they don't like is on the TV or radio. Stop taking away our freedom of speech and expression and go practice your freedom of choice and choose something else! These are our liberties, people! Stop letting those false advocates of liberty take them away!

The article I'm reading has a quote from a 70-year-old named Wally who says, "It's the General Assembly being our new nanny. After this they'll ban foods that are too fatty. You'll have to ask the state what you can eat and drink - they'll start regulating hamburgers." Oh, Wally... I guess you don't know/remember that they've already started with the trans fats... Your burgers ARE being regulated, Wally.

For those of you who want to argue "secondhand smoke", I'm going to refer you back to "go somewhere else" and leave it at that. These people are the ones arguing that since it affects them and endangers their health that they should be able to make it illegal. So here's one (or two) of my famously-crazy analogies:

I'm standing on the street with one leg placed out at an angle. I'm not trying to trip anyone at all - I'm just placing my leg out because I feel like it and I have every right to stand how I choose to. It's not MY fault if you don't have the wherewithall to, um, LOOK AROUND and notice it and trip over my leg that's been in the same position for the past three minutes. Lots of people didn't trip, because they walked somewhere else and paid attention and were vigilant about where their feet were walking. Just because you got hurt somehow doesn't mean what I did was illegal. I didn't do in in a malicious manner and I wasn't attacking someone. You just tripped. I am not at fault.

Let's try something even closer. I'm standing on the street with my dog, on a leash. Everything's legal with that. Dog's not even pooping on the sidewalk. And then you come along, with your horrible allergy to dogs, and maybe you didn't notice the dog or you didn't think you'd wind up that close to the dog, but you breathe in some dog hair from my dog and start having an allergic reaction. You're going to potentially die, even though the risk is low because it was just errant dog hair or something and worst case scenario we call 9-1-1 and they pump you full of epinephrine or something. Even so, I didn't do anything wrong - YOU did by not paying attention to your OWN problems. I'm allowed to have a dog and follow the laws. You shouldn't be allowed to blame me for your allergic reaction. See a dog - get the hell away from it.

You don't get to declare it illegal to have a dog out in public because people on the street might have an allergic reaction.

I don't have any advice as to how to fix this. My initial thought was a call to every smoker to follow every disgusted-look-giving non-smoker they encounter, blowing as much smoke at them as possible. Maybe if you could smoke inside, you wouldn't be out here, blowing smoke at people. Of course, that gives them argument to be extreme jackasses and try to ban smoking entirely.

My second thought was a smoking protest - lining up about fifty smokers in a ring 15 feet away from the entrance to an important building (like the Sears Tower where I work) and just smoking. As everyone outside tries to get in, say you can't move, because you can't get within 15 feet of the door. At first I threw out this idea because preventing entrance to a public building is probably an arrestable offense, but then I remembered - the place has two entrances! (Three, if you count the Skydeck, where the tourists are supposed to go to get up to the top but always wander into the office entrances instead.)

I just don't know what else to offer other than my condolences. I mean, I'm not a smoker, so this really doesn't affect me much more than my smoking friends getting a little grumpier over having nowhere nice to smoke. Let's face it, in the summer and the winter, the extreme temperatures are NOT helpful to smokers. This law is even LESS helpful.

And don't even get me started on "but maybe this will encourage them to quit." That's not for the government to decide. That's not for you to decide with a vote, either. That's for them and ONLY them to decide. They have that liberty to choose what to start and when to quit.

At least they used to. Until the "liberals" decided otherwise.

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Rats: A New Delicacy?

Gotta hand it to the Chinese. They're really taking advantage of the saying about every cloud having a silver lining. I'm sure we can all recall the famous line from the Simpsons (because that's more likely than knowing the fact without The Simpsons as guidance) that "the Chinese use the same word for 'crisis' as they do for 'opportunity'." All that aside, it really boils down to another age-old adage:

When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.

Well, the lemons being handed to the Chinese all started when a Hunan lake flooded, possibly as a result of the Three Gorges Dam project. This flooding displaced the home of a few billion rats, who are now plaguing areas in central China. And staying as true as possible to that adage, they're making lemonade - by selling the rats as a delicacy to Guangdong restaurants in the southern part of the country.

"Recently there have been a lot of rats ... Guangzhou people are rich and like to eat exotic things, so business is very good," the China News Service quoted a vendor as saying, referring to the capital of Guangdong province.

Some vendors had asked people from a village in Hunan province, near Dongting Lake, to sell them live rats, the Beijing News said today.

"The buyers offered 6 yuan for a kilo, but as to where they will sell the rats, they would not say," the newspaper quoted a local resident as saying, adding that villagers had to catch the rats live.

Yes, I suppose that's the REAL catch of it all - the rats they're catching have to be caught alive. No, not for some purpose of cooking them while they're still alive, but I guess it's more along the lines of "the fresher the better" - akin to giant lobster tanks in fancy restaurants so the customer knows his dinner delight wasn't made from frozen meat or something like that.

Maybe they've got nice big cages writhing with rats in these Guangzhou restaurants?

As for the 6 yuan for a kilogram of rats (about $0.79 in USD), the villagers have no problem with that price, since they claim it's easy to catch up to 150 kilos of rats in a night. There's just that many of them, destroying 1.6 million hectares of crops and possibly spreading disease. And the consumer end of the deal? The restaurants have been advertising "rat banquets" and charging the inflated price of 136 yuan per kilogram of tasty rat meat (almost $18) to the people of Guangdong.

And for those who can't get to a restaurant to enjoy this delicacy? Oh, the Chinese media has reported that citizens have posted several recipes for rat on the internet.

I hope a rat version of "lemonade" is one of those recipes...

The delicious original article Read more!

Waukegan - You Are Not Dead To Me!

Rejoice!

The aldermen of Waukegan may keep their jobs in my eyes, for they held true to their words and did not back down from the swarm of protesters who used everything from prayer vigils to corporate boycotts to coerce the city councilmen away from their initial 7-2 ruling in favor of applying for the federal program which will train some police officers and give them the power to set the deportation process in motion. Even though the hall only had enough seats for 200 people, of course the city had to sell 400 tickets to the meeting. This led to over 100 people having to stand in the room and hallways, hoping for a seat to open up. This is in addition to the hundreds outside, still protesting for and against the measure.

The new count? 8-2 in favor of applying for the federal program!

The extra vote came from the Mayor, also in favor of applying for the program. While I have not yet confirmed this, I suspect that the two "nay"s were the same as the first vote, those two aldermen who claimed it would lead to racial profiling or that it would frighten even the legal immigrants and they wouldn't be able to trust the police.

While it IS true that the ability to deport extends not just to illegal immigrants, but also to legal immigrants - that only applies to those who are arrested for heinous crimes like murder, rape and some drug-related felonies.

So hey, legal immigrants - don't murder or rape or smuggle cocaine! Got it??

That's all it takes! Don't commit these crimes! I'm more than willing to admit that harsher laws don't really have that desired effect to deter criminals from committing those crimes - but you have to admit that once deportation is on the line for immigrants (both legal and illegal), they're hopefully going to think twice before KILLING SOMEONE. I mean "think thrice", because if you're going to kill someone without a second thought, you don't deserve deportation - you deserve the death penalty.

Maybe now that we've shown that SOME City Councils out there have the balls to follow through with their decision to apply for this great federal program that cuts down on the red tape and paperwork, we can get some other cities with high illegal immigration populations to apply for it as well.

This is a trend that needs some momentum, and we need to keep it going bigger and stronger. Maybe someday major cities like Chicago will be able to participate and we can finally start ENFORCING the laws that ALREADY EXIST!

Write your City Council! Tell them to apply for 287(g) and get your local law enforcement this training program!

An article ringing in the good news! Read more!

Back to Waukegan - Voting AGAIN?

This is just ridiculous. I thought I could be proud of Waukegan, a city so close to the metropolis of Chicago where I live, for voting 7-2 a while back to approve the application process for federal training for their law enforcement to gain the ability to deport illegal immigrants. And it turns out that they caved in to the protesters and nay-sayers and "scared Latino community" and there's actually going to be a re-vote.

If Waukegan's City Councilmen wind up changing their vote as a result of protests and claims of "racial profiling" - they no longer deserve to be aldermen.

Here's the deal, people. This vote doesn't mean that all of the police get to go around and bust into your house and demand to see a green card or they're kicking your ass out to Honduras or Mexico or wherever you're from. This vote doesn't even mean that the local law enforcement officers are going to be trained at all! This vote is about filling out a freakin' application!

Guess what? The federal government could say "no" to them!

Furthermore, if the application goes through, it's not even like every cop is going to have this power and they're all gonna be on the lookout for anyone darker than Screech from Saved by the Bell so they can harass and deport on sight. The application is to get federal training in deportation for TWO OFFICERS. Which means that there wouldn't be a lynch mob roaming the streets looking for anyone speaking Spanish. It means that when a criminal gets arrested for a serious crime and turns out to be an illegal immigrant, instead of having to send notification to the I.C.E. in Washington D.C. and having to wait for paperwork to get filed, which is often too late - now they can start that paperwork at the source, in the local police agency.

It's to get rid of criminals who are AGAIN breaking the law - first by entering our country illegally, and then by committing another heinous crime against our citizens and getting caught for it.

But the Latino community is still in an uproar. "They're going to racially profile us," I can hear them whine.

Hey! If you're here legally - and you're not breaking the law by committing violent crimes - you've got NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT! The fact that thousands of Latinos are signing these petitions and complaining means their either they're too dumb to realize that if they don't break the law, they're not going to be arrested and deported - or they're mostly comprised of criminals because they're here illegally and they don't want anyone to catch them and deport them for it!

Every time there's a possibility for a law to catch a new group of criminals, look at those who are against it. There's a good chance those people are against it because they're going to be found guilty of it - which means they have the most to lose.

That's not racially profiling. That's LOGIC.

The Waukegan City Hall only has enough seating for a few hundred people. Over a thousand are expected to show up in protest. Only those people with tickets are going to be allowed in.

I say - they should have to have a ticket and a GREEN CARD or other proof of citizenship.

Only the legal citizens of a city should be allowed to help decide how their city is governed and ruled and protected. You can't let the criminals make the laws; there wouldn't be any.

I support 287(g) and call upon the City Council of Waukegan to make the right decision.

The one they already made.

A few articles about the vote tonight:
This article
And this article
Okay, one more article

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Chicago Cabbies Suck Out Loud - And It Costs Them!

It's only July, but cab drivers here in Chicago have already amassed 2,600 citations for the year - bringing in a total of $280,246 in fines as revenue for the city. These citations and fines come from a variety of reasons, such as unclean/damaged vehicles, reckless driving, abusive behavior and my personal pet peeve, talking on cell phones. That's right, cab drivers in Chicago are NOT allowed to use cell phones while driving, even if they use a hands-free device to do so. It's against the law, and if a call is made to complain about a driver talking on a cell phone, that's a $200 citation and a 5-day license suspension for the first offense. A second offense results in a $750 fine and 29 days of suspension.

If you think I'm here to complain about the "harsh penalties" and rally in favor of cabbies - you're dead wrong.

I'm calling the citizens of Chicago to unite and TAKE ACTION and get more of these citations going!

These are the strings that came attached to a cab rate hike that was given to the cabbies in 2005. City Hall allowed for what amounts to an 11.7% rate increase based on things like the base fare, additional passengers and the general per-mile rate. In return, drivers got a few added sanctions to make sure that the rate increase was worth it to the customers. They can be cited and fined for everything from a bad attitude to an untidy cab to letting a non-cabbie drive the cab. And, of course, talking on a cell phone. Here's a rundown of the citation count, revenue generated and average cost per citation as of June:

Discourtesy - 1,197 citations - $83,030 in fines (Average: $69 each)
Reckless Driving - 1,086 citations - $39,696 in fines (Average: $37 each)
Operating Unclean/Damaged Vehicles - 227 citations - $19,015 in fines (Average: $84 each)
Cell Phone Use - 150 citations - $13,790 in fines (Average: $92 each)
Abusive Behavior - 139 citations - $12,779 in fines (Average: $92 each)
Overcharging Customers - 39 citations - $2,580 in fines (Average: 66 each)
Allowing a Non-Licensed Public Chauffeur to Operate the Cab - 49 citations - $8,325 in fines (Average: $170 each)

Only 150 citations for cell phone usage?? I had never known that you could simply call 311 with the cab number to file a complaint about cab drivers using their cell-phones, even if they're hands-free, to get one of these citations issued (and get them suspended for 5 days). If I had called in every cabbie this year alone that I watched talking on a cell phone - just the ones I've been IN this year - that number could probably have already hit 200.

That's why I'm encouraging ANYONE in Chicago who uses a taxi to be vigilant and start calling these in. I'd held off because while I knew it was wrong for a driver to use a cell phone while driving, I had no idea that the hands-free was also illegal when it comes to cabbies, and the punishment that gets doled out as a result of a complaint. Now that I know this is a Chicago fact, as well as HOW to report these cabbies (best done through 311 and not the taxi's service number printed in the taxi) - I'm going to start.

We need a change. Cabbies are already reportedly on the march about raising the fare by another 10% due to "rising gas prices" - foolishly not realizing that higher gas prices means people are more likely to take a cab rather than drive, which gives them more business and more opportunities to make money. Let's try and get them to adhere to the sanctions they agreed to back in 2005 for the LAST rate hike before we even consider for one nanosecond the idea of raising their rates.

After all, what's the point of raising the rates to use a taxi if they're just going to keep giving more and more of it back to the government to pay for all of their citations for breaking their sanctions?

The original article with the numbers Read more!

Wal-Mart and Life Insurance

Karen Armatrout died in 1997. She was an employee of Wal-Mart at the time. Earlier, and without Karen's knowledge, Wal-Mart took out a life insurance policy on her. When she died in 1997, Wal-Mart collected on the insurance money. As it turns out, Wal-Mart has placed life insurance policies on about 350,000 of their employees. Michael Myers (no relation to the horror-movie character or Canadian actor), an attorney in Texas, estimates that Wal-Mart collected on the life insurance of 75 to 100 policies taken out on Florida employees. He's trying to turn Armatrout's case into a class-action lawsuit.

Wal-Mart filed for these life insurance policies back in 1993, for all of their full-time employees between the ages of 18 and 70 who were taking part in the medical benefits program. They were supposedly given notification and the opportunity to opt out. They stopped taking out the policies in 1995, and due to the fact that they were losing money with this program, canceled the policies in 2000.

So here's where judge and jury will step into it - was there wrongdoing? Who's to blame if there was?

I say Wal-Mart is not at all at fault here. I'm not even seeing fault in the first place, except possibly with the insurance companies selling the life insurance policies. The whole problem people seem to be finding with Wal-Mart in this case is I guess either that the employees didn't know about the policies, or that they think Wal-Mart is trying to "profit off the deaths of others" or something.

First off, they obviously didn't profit from this venture, which is why they canceled all of their outstanding policies in 2000. I can completely understand where Wal-Mart is coming from with having them in the first place. I started working for this company about a year ago. When they hired me, on my first day we went into the conference room (there was another guy hired at the same time) and the boss pretty much went over the company policies with us. One thing he mentioned is that the company is going to do everything they can to make sure we stay in these jobs. It's not a matter of "one complaint and you're out" or threatening firings if numbers start slipping. He made us aware of how much money is spent on advertising for the open positions, the time spent by employees to interview when they could be doing other profitable things, and the time spent training someone new - not to mention the profit lost in these positions which were empty between the last person leaving and one of us filling that spot.

Employees are expensive to obtain, train, and even more expensive then lost. I've clawed my way up in this business, though more laterally than vertically. I'm by no means a supervisor or manager, but I now have knowledge of many things in the company, and have a lot of people reliant on my work and the information I know and the files I keep. I finally feel that I have job security because firing me would be losing so much information, having to start over on huge deals and projects, and training a full replacement would either take several months or several new hires.

That in mind, if I were to die - the company would still be out lots of money. Why wouldn't they consider a life insurance policy on me? Or rather - the idea of one. I'm not sure if my value to the company is really worth a life insurance package, but in a larger scale, I can totally see it happening. Large companies take policies out on VPs and other executives. Does it really matter if the employee knows? Not really. The company wouldn't want to let them know how much or how little they're worth, and not everyone would respond calmly to finding out their dead body is now worth money.

Which brings us to the policy-sellers. I don't know much about life insurance policies or that entire industry at all. I don't know how legal it is to have a policy on someone without their signature. I would think that a policy on my head would be something I would have to sign off on. My realist logic, though, says that is probably not the case. I don't have to know who's profiting from my death - it's their insurance, anyway. If I were a director of a movie, I could see myself maybe taking out a policy on an actor or something. If I stand to lose money based on someone dying - I don't care if you personally know them or not, you'd want that investment to be safe. Life insurance doesn't sound like a bad idea.

Do I really see a lawsuit here? No.

I just see an overreacting and emotional loved one who's lashing out at someone who seems better off in some way as a result of that person dying. And if they want it as a class-action lawsuit, it's just a larger number of emotional people.

The company didn't profit. It just helped cushion the blow of the financial burden of rehiring and money lost as a result of that employee's death. Families take out policies on loved ones to help pay for the financial burden of funeral costs. A decrease in sales and interviewing schedules and training programs are the funeral costs to a company - they should have the right to take out policies to help with their burdens as well.

Of course, I could be wrong. I don't know the whole legal aspect of it all. I'm just a person making logical assumptions and what my brain thinks is right and wrong. Let me know if you think otherwise or have more information on the legality of it all.

The original article Read more!

Meat-Eaters Deserve the Tax Breaks!

Everybody poops.

It's such a well-known fact, they actually made a book with that title. Well, the creation of the book is more for toilet-training purposes, but the fact remains. A corollary to that fact would have to be the statement that "everybody farts" as well. Which is where our story really focuses. It's a fact that you do have to keep in mind - not that everybody poops, mind you, but that everybody farts. The follow-up fact to that is that while everybody does indeed fart, NOT everybody's farts contain methane gas. You have to keep that fact in mind as well, because there's a big to-do about methane gas in the world today. It's apparently one of those huge factors in greenhouse effects and global warming - those things that everyone seems to be taking very seriously.

So seriously, in fact, that they got TAXES involved in it. And nothing could be more serious than taxes. So even though we're talking about farts, let's try to keep our serious faces on. I know mine is certainly on, because I am taking on my old nemesis, PETA, with these facts that I actually did research and had to use mathematics!

This whole ordeal started about a month ago, when I read a letter from Ingrid Newkirk addressed to Washington D.C. politicos saying that just as hybrid car-buyers are getting a tax break, vegetarians deserve a tax break as well.

That's how it all started. PETA's president decided to compare the ecological benefits of purchasing a hybrid car (as opposed to a "gas-guzzler") to the supposed ecological benefits of eating vegetables (or rather "not eating meat" - since I know vegetarians don't actually have to eat vegetables, they just don't eat meat). Newkirk got this particular bee in her bonnet after the U.N. released a study saying that the cattle industry (or rather the collective of "large ruminants", which are animals with four stomachs) is the biggest producer of methane gas in the United States.

That's what the study said. I'm not going to refute their research or their study. Not at all. The first stomach of four in ruminants is where a lot of methane gets created, and cows are known for releasing methane gas. Just keep in mind that everybody farts, and human farts can contain methane as well. Trust me, it'll come back up later, I promise. I believe the study said that the American cattle industry produces 5.5 million metric tons of methane gas. Okay, that's our number one producer of methane, we admit it. So where does Newkirk take this fact?

She says that because vegetarians DON'T eat meat, they're NOT contributing to this "number one problem" and therefore deserve a tax break. Never mind the fact that it would be impossible to prove for a fact that one is a vegetarian (she suggests sales receipts that show no meat, which could easily be the one shopping trip you take that DIDN'T involve beef galore) - that's the entire basis behind her "vegetarians deserve a tax break" argument.

Now it's time to prove how backwards her logic really is.

Okay, so all of these cows produce a lot of methane. According to PETA, they'd love to see all of these animals roam free, rather than be cooped up, bred, and then slaughtered for their delicious tasty meat (or their lovely skin, or precious tallow, or everything else you can do with a dead cow - and that's a lot, just ask a Native American, since I'm told they were able to find a use for every single part of what they killed). So thanks to PETA, now only are we not EATING the cows, but they're free to roam, have sex, and have baby cows, and thus we still have a helluva lot of cows, farting and producing their deadly methane.

Smooth move, Ingrid. You've killed us all. I'm pretty sure that "killing us all" was never tax-deductible.

Do you know what omnivores like myself and the rest of the meat-eating population do? We eat cows. Which means we make cows dead. Do you know what dead cows don't do? They don't fart or produce methane gas. They just provide us with tasty eats. You know what foods humans eat does NOT produce methane? Meats. In fact, the more meat you eat, the less methane you produce, and the less chance you have of producing methane at all whilst farting. Which everyone does. (Glad you remembered!)

Seems to ME that the one who's doing the most to bring down the level of cow-produced methane gas would be the people killing cows and eating them. That's US, the meat-eating omnivores. Not YOU, the vegetarians. Seems like WE're the ones who deserve the tax break, which we could easily prove with sales receipts because they'd SHOW we eat meat and are killing all those pesky methane-producing cows!

I eat cows - to save the planet. (I should really make a T-shirt that says that. Or maybe "EAT A STEAK - SAVE THE WORLD" or something.)

Now that I've thoroughly put down Ingrid Newkirk's plan to get PETA members tax breaks and stolen those ill-gotten tax breaks for the meat-eating crowd like myself, it's time we kept pressing forward. PETA thinks they're the only ones who can find research, twist it completely, and prove a horrible point for their cause. Well, Newkirk - TWO can play at that game! It took me a while, but I finally got a lot of questions answered about human flatulence and what levels of methane WE produce as non-ruminant mammals. It's true - we don't produce NEARLY the levels of methane as our four-stomached dinners, but I stumbled across some information that was VERY interesting.

Remember how I told you that while everybody farts, not everyone produces methane gas?

Good. Here's where the fun begins. It turns out that while fats and proteins produce very little gas and little chance of methane - the highest producers of gas are things like vegetables, fruits, beans, whole wheat, bran and diet foods that contain sorbitol. Things that vegetarians like to eat! There was a study I found that was about testing the isotopes of methane to see if human-produced methane had a "fingerprint" to discern it from environmental methane. The real interesting part of the experiment was the unintended result that the colonic methane gas of omnivores was on average 4,000 times less than the colonic methane gas of vegetarians.

Let me repeat: the average methane production in an omnivore was 15 parts-per-million, and in a vegetarian it was 60,000 parts-per-million.

Not only was the methane concentration higher, but a vegetarian diet, as I just mentioned, contains many more gas-producing foods. The average human produces between 0.5 and 1.5 liters of colonic gas every day, and farts between 10 and 20 times a day. Let's say that the average human with the average diet produces the average amount of gas each day, so about 1 liter. The average vegetarian produces gas on the higher end of the spectrum, so let's guess 1.5 liters per day.

Here's where the math comes in. I'll make it quick for you.

One liter of gas weighs about 1.3 grams, or 0.0013 grams.
One one-millionth of that (parts-per-million) is 0.0000000013 kilograms.

We factor in the 1 liter for an omnivore, 1.5 liters for a vegetarian, and the respective methane gas parts-per-million, and we get:

Daily methane for an omnivore: 0.0000000195 kg
Daily methane for vegetarians: 0.000117 kg

Annual methane for an omnivore: 0.0000071175 kg
Annual methane for vegetarians: 0.042705 kg

Now then, we've got about 6.6 billion people living on the Earth nowadays (give or take a few million). Let's assume that a worst-case scenario is that PETA wins and everyone in the world is now a vegetarian. (That's right, Newkirk, that's the WORST-case scenario!) Or the best-case scenario is that everyone who reads this article winds up either convincing every vegetarian on the planet to eat meat (or just kills them). Either way, best-case scenario is 0% vegetarian, worst-case is 100% vegetarian. Let's see what happens to the precious planet now!

Annual methane production worldwide if all were omnivorous: 46,976 kg
Annual methane production worldwide if all were vegetarian: 281,853,000 kg

(This "metric ton" that the U.N. report uses is 1,000 kilograms, so:)

Annual methane production worldwide if all were omnivorous: 47 metric tons
Annual methane production worldwide if all were vegetarian: 281,853 metric tons

Smooth move, Ingrid. You've once again killed us all.

Okay, in reality even 281,853 metric tons can't compare to the 5.5 million metric tons produced by the cattle industry. That's why I made the previous point about how we omnivores are working to kill and eat those global-warming bovines. PETA would rather let them all roam free and never pay for their environment-destroying flatulence. I don't believe in "ruminant amnesty" programs. I say they all get rounded up and deported - to my stomach.

But doesn't that math prove the point that vegetarians are through and through more a danger on the methane scale? They produce more in parts-per-million, eat more foods that produce that deadlier colonic gas, and are doing everything to STOP killing the main cause of the United States's methane problem! I say it's meat-eaters who deserve the tax breaks! PETA and Newkirk can go suck a fart-inducing carrot!

EAT A STEAK - SAVE THE WORLD!

(Yea, THAT'S the T-shirt I need! Too bad it's hard to print all of the rest of this math on the shirt that proves the point. Oh well, at least you read it and if you buy the shirt, you could at least inform all those who question the logic.)

Here are some of my resources:
PETA's backwards-logic letter asking for vegetarian tax breaks
Vegetarian diets produce more gas
Vegetarians produce more methane
That lousy study attacking the cattle industry

Check back, because I may have a link to buy a T-shirt very soon!

In fact, Check out my store! I'll add more later, after some polling!

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