Entries Tagged as 'Some people!'
This originally started as a Sideblog post, but I guess I have more to say about it than I had originally thought. When I had finished writing it, I realized it was entirely too long to stick over there.
I'm kind of disgusted that more of the Presidential Hopefuls didn't participate in
10 Questions. Any one of them could have completed it in under an hour on the back of their tour buses, but so many are 100% absent that it makes me think they don't believe in the spread and influence of "the Internets."
Even though I won't be voting for Huckabee, I'm impressed that he was the only GOP candidate to chime in. I certainly respect him for that. And what about candidates like Ron Paul who whine all day and all night about not being given the chance to participate in debates, but who is a total no-show here when the stage was his for the taking. Methinks he doth protest too much. (If he really had anything to say other than, "Let me debate!" he would have said it.) Hasn't Hillary prided herself on her outreach and honesty? (She does have to, after Bill's impeachment hearings…) Not a single response from her.
This is no piddly little website, either.
10 Questions is in cahoots with the NY Times, MSNBC, and a host of
other organizations spanning the entire political spectrum.
I commend Edwards, Gravel, and Kucinich (
… Who?) for at least sending in a response to every question. It could be argued that some of their responses skirt the question, but at least they responded. That's like getting some base points for spelling your name correctly on the SAT's.
What drives me insane about this is that the overwhelming reason that candidates ignore or dance around issues is so that nobody will know for sure where they stand on the issue. All so that they can remain in the gray area and maybe get a few votes that they wouldn't if they admitted they were pro-whale-hunting, or whatever.
I could just smack the whole lot of them.
As far as I am personally concerned: I don't care what your viewpoint is, I just want you to pick one side or the other, and believe in it. Show some courage. Take chances. (Grow a pair!)
I bet it would net you more votes than it cost you.
You may be asking yourself, if your self is part of my extended family, which we exchange ornaments instead of more expensive Christmas gifts, "Self: Why haven't I received a Christmas Card and Ornament from Adam and Megan?"
Well,
self erm, you. That, you can blame on the United States Postal Service.
You see, they were mailed. Well before Christmas. We painstakingly hand signed and addressed every card and envelope (I know… itty bitty pity party… but when you know how to use a Mail Merge, why wouldn't you? (Answer: Wife won't let you.)) and stuffed the applicable ornaments into the applicable envelopes and applied a bevy of 41-cent stamps: one for each envelope.
Then, instead of dropping them in a mailbox somewhere, Megan took them to the post office to ask a professional mail clerk (they go to school and get certified, right?) if any additional postage was necessary — which she was assured wasn't. They were mailed, and a couple of days later we received a bundle of them (though oddly, not all) in our mailbox wrapped neatly with a rubber band and each with an ugly sticker or hand-written note indicating that 17 cents additional postage was required presumably due to the extra quarter-inch of girth each held from being stuffed with an ornament.
Disgusted with the lies of the professional postal clerk, Megan took them back to the post office, explained the situation to another professional mail clerk, and affixed an additional 10-cent, 5-cent, and 2-cent stamp to each before having the clerk send them off to their destinations.
Again, days later, a couple of them came back because, presumably, the second professional mail clerk failed to clearly mark that the additional postage had indeed been paid, and (or possibly "or") someone saw the sticker/handwriting indicating that additional postage was needed but didn't check thoroughly enough for the "ok" written next to it, and decided that sending it back to us a second time would be cheaper than just sending it on its way.
(Note to self regarding scheme to destroy the US Postal Service by way of drained budget: Send lots of letters with insufficient postage over and over again without affixing additional postage until, inevitably, they can no longer afford to buy gas to bring the letters back to me.)
I knew we should have just
elf'd ourselves and called it a day. Next year you're all just getting e-cards.
As an upper-middle-class suburban white male, you might not expect that I would be discriminated against. Sadly, I am and it's become so commonplace that I'm generally not affected by it any more.
I am an Atheist.
That doesn't mean that I am a Satanist, Anarchist, Communist, or anything else. One does not beget the other. What it does mean is that I do not currently believe in God or a so called "higher power." I believe that everything that has ever or will ever happen has a strictly empirical scientific explanation; whether "we" — the collective knowledge of our species — understand it (yet) or not. But this isn't about my beliefs, it's how I'm being discriminated against.
On November 27th, our local paper published an article about a local Atheist Group, the Freethought Society, planning to erect a holiday display on municipal grounds next to the Menorah, Christmas Tree, and a Cr?che. The following Sunday, the paper ran a letter to the editor that they unfortunately haven't published on their website for me to link. And even more unfortunately, I think we've already recycled the paper and I won't be able to quote it directly for you.
In her letter, she says that we (Atheists) should, "keep our opinions to ourselves." Let's not overlook that letters to the editor appear in the OpEd section: Opinions and Editorials. That is the definition of hypocrisy. What gives her the right to voice her opinion and not the Atheists? Because it's her holiday, being a Christian? Were this a different rant, I might argue that point.
And as much as I'd like to explain to her that her letter is hateful, oppressive, intolerant, and hypocritical, I believe she has the right to have and voice her opinion. Part of me wants to sit smugly knowing that I'm not going to stoop to her level, but another part of me knows that the smugness is just another form of stooping.
The saddest part about the whole thing is that I didn't even flinch when Megan read the letter to me. Atheist hating has become the new popular intolerant thing to do, now that racism and gay bashing aren't acceptable public behavior. I only hope the next group to fall victim to the intolerant has the patience and tolerance to persevere.
Kill em with kindness, mom always said.
