1.
This honestly sounds like the Labays are being cheap and need the money. Why not just restore the house and move someone in, I'm sure if it was in good condition they could sell it for a good deal more, besides, If you have a house on west 11th, you're probably entitles dickish white people anyway, so I could care less. The compromise sounds fine, but If I wanted that house I would want a yard, and I wouldn't want some new modern looking building right next door to my 19th century house.
2.
If universities want anything to do with nuclear weapons testing, I guess to possibly make them cheaper or safer to produce then I see no potential drawback. If there is anything that could be done to further research on anything that could lead to nuclear energy breakthroughs I am all for it. It is an incredibly safe form of energy until something goes horribly wrong and is at least an alternative to fossil fuels. If Boeing wants to help university researchers develop better nuclear instruments then I say go for it.
3.
I will admit that the trivia surrounding Bill Cosby's sexual assault court battle does not particularly affect me, but I guess when you were once such a prominent figure in American pop culture you don't just see your way through court without a front-page article. This guy is clearly guilty, and any efforts from his legal team to admonish him of said guilt will most likely fall flat, and this being a criminal case now makes things a tad bit more serious if Cosby is convicted.
4.
Well it's still Lee, which means it may as well still be Robert E. Lee. I don't feel that by leaving the name half unchanged there has been much of a difference to the way things were. In this sense I completely agree with Paul Saldaña in that there are so many more fitting names for the school than some cop-out photographer who happened to live in the neighborhood.
5.
Waco is a shithole and so is Baylor. It should come as no surprise to anyone that a football program cum faux academic institution would value the careers of its athletes over the livelihood of its students. If the president wants to be the fall man, so be it. I doubt much will change the culture of the school or the way things are done there for a while. I don't think that there is much that the university could do other than properly address the sexual assault allegations rather than sweeping them under the rug.
Jack's Journalism Blog
Wednesday, May 25, 2016
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
Trump Story: Take Deux
Over the past year, the candidacy of the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party, Donald Trump, has created a lot of controversy over many statements he has made as well as for other decisions made and actions taken since last June. Many of his campaign events and rallies have been catalysts for anti-Trump protests and are frequently the places where much of the political strife this country is undergoing come to the forefront. Here in Austin, and especially here at McCallum, the political views of the majority of the student body are to the left of center, it may be difficult for some of us to comprehend the meteoric rise of someone whom it would be easy to dismiss as a race-baiting populist or as a nativist anti-intellectual. To try and further understand the point of view of people who support the Donald, I sought out a few of McCallum students who were Trump supporters to ask them a few questions.
If any of you have read the article that was published in a pervious issue of The Shield, Putting a little swing in your state, you may have noted that Trump supporters accounted for just 3 of 195 seniors planning on voting in the 2016 election. That was back in December, and while that number may have changed, it was very difficult to tell. For all of the hours I spent trying to find these Trump supporters, I was only able to find one person who was willing to be interviewed for this article. They declined to be named out of concern that their car might be keyed or that someone having read the paper might decide to do something silly or make a point about it.
This person, who I will refer to as Ron first became interested in Donald Trump because of "the situation in Europe with all the migrants". Perhaps fearing that something similar might befall our great nation, Ron became interested in protecting our own borders, and "his policies reflect…you know, the whole wall thing." Ron is assuming already that he and I have the same views about the real-life implications of current events and their consequences, something which he will repeat throughout the interview process.
The most major issue to Ron was immigration, something that according to Trump "nobody was talking about until I brought it up". Ron's belief that our current immigration system "clearly isn't working" and that "everyone's seen the reports" as well as "videos of people walking across the border...sometimes carrying weapons" and noting that "there is no response". Ron believes that "if we put up an impassable wall, we will largely stop land immigration". Ron is quite clear about the cause for his concern, saying that this "largely has to do with the security of our nation", and is not a racially motivated grievance. "Having a large amount of illegals come in, commit crimes - not all of them" causes people to be "afraid of their own safety."
By this point, Ron's presuppositions that we've all seen the reports or the videos of people walking across the border with guns that he was quick to mention may have confused many readers. I was for the entirety of the interview holding my tongue, mostly out of a desire to not have this not turn into a line-by-line debunk of the Trump platform, any number of which I'm sure you can find in the media somewhere. That being said, many of the things that Ron likes to assume we all know about or that some of us choose to willfully ignore are exaggerations of the truth or utter falsehoods.
"As we've seen, there are those that come in, commit crimes" Ron again mentions, which while true is a not entirely fair to illegal immigrants, who commit fewer crimes per capita than the population at large. Ron pivots to an appeal to an economic appeal, saying that "it's costing the US large amounts of money to enforce it's current policy" and that because "we can't collect taxes on them" and "they're here making money", essentially saying that immigrants do not pay taxes. I decided to attempt to explain the many ways in which immigrants do pay state income taxes and sales taxes, all of which, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy amounts to about $11.84 Billion per annum, an effective tax rate of 8%.
Ron is't completely supportive of the entire immigration plan, and believes that deporting the 11 million illegal immigrants here is " not really something that you can do". Ron believes that there should be some sort of system in place instead where "non-violent immigrants should be able to become second class citizens". What Ron supposes the status of non-violent immigrants are in today's society is unclear.
I wanted to ask a couple of questions about Donald Trump's tax policy, mostly because I thought that if I could get Ron to think long and hard about fiscal responsibility he might have second
thoughts about his support for the man, and I could avoid yelling about how Trump was an adulterer or a schmooze or a bad businessman. At any rate, my question was as follows: Trump's tax plan would create a deficit of about $1 trillion a year, what government programs would we have to cut in order to account for this massive loss in revenue? Ron was not interested in this potential possibility, and touted the Trump campaign line that most of this was focused on our corporate tax, saying that "we have the highest tax rate for corporations in the industrialized world" which although way may have the largest top marginal tax rate is effectively untrue. Large companies like General Electric have for years payed nothing in taxes, and many industries are large recipients of government subsidies, all of this aside, setting the corporation tax too far below someone's marginal tax bracket would most likely lead to self incorporation, a process in which individuals become companies in order to avoid paying higher taxes. When I asked what Ron thought government's role is, he just said that "government is too large it needs to be less" and that we should cut "most regulatory agencies, the military, and social programs". This is a very common opinion of many conservatives, that the size of government should be cut, in Ron's opinion, "the role of government is to keep our borders secure and to say out of people's personal lives as much as possible".
If any of you have read the article that was published in a pervious issue of The Shield, Putting a little swing in your state, you may have noted that Trump supporters accounted for just 3 of 195 seniors planning on voting in the 2016 election. That was back in December, and while that number may have changed, it was very difficult to tell. For all of the hours I spent trying to find these Trump supporters, I was only able to find one person who was willing to be interviewed for this article. They declined to be named out of concern that their car might be keyed or that someone having read the paper might decide to do something silly or make a point about it.
This person, who I will refer to as Ron first became interested in Donald Trump because of "the situation in Europe with all the migrants". Perhaps fearing that something similar might befall our great nation, Ron became interested in protecting our own borders, and "his policies reflect…you know, the whole wall thing." Ron is assuming already that he and I have the same views about the real-life implications of current events and their consequences, something which he will repeat throughout the interview process.
The most major issue to Ron was immigration, something that according to Trump "nobody was talking about until I brought it up". Ron's belief that our current immigration system "clearly isn't working" and that "everyone's seen the reports" as well as "videos of people walking across the border...sometimes carrying weapons" and noting that "there is no response". Ron believes that "if we put up an impassable wall, we will largely stop land immigration". Ron is quite clear about the cause for his concern, saying that this "largely has to do with the security of our nation", and is not a racially motivated grievance. "Having a large amount of illegals come in, commit crimes - not all of them" causes people to be "afraid of their own safety."
By this point, Ron's presuppositions that we've all seen the reports or the videos of people walking across the border with guns that he was quick to mention may have confused many readers. I was for the entirety of the interview holding my tongue, mostly out of a desire to not have this not turn into a line-by-line debunk of the Trump platform, any number of which I'm sure you can find in the media somewhere. That being said, many of the things that Ron likes to assume we all know about or that some of us choose to willfully ignore are exaggerations of the truth or utter falsehoods.
"As we've seen, there are those that come in, commit crimes" Ron again mentions, which while true is a not entirely fair to illegal immigrants, who commit fewer crimes per capita than the population at large. Ron pivots to an appeal to an economic appeal, saying that "it's costing the US large amounts of money to enforce it's current policy" and that because "we can't collect taxes on them" and "they're here making money", essentially saying that immigrants do not pay taxes. I decided to attempt to explain the many ways in which immigrants do pay state income taxes and sales taxes, all of which, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy amounts to about $11.84 Billion per annum, an effective tax rate of 8%.
Ron is't completely supportive of the entire immigration plan, and believes that deporting the 11 million illegal immigrants here is " not really something that you can do". Ron believes that there should be some sort of system in place instead where "non-violent immigrants should be able to become second class citizens". What Ron supposes the status of non-violent immigrants are in today's society is unclear.
I wanted to ask a couple of questions about Donald Trump's tax policy, mostly because I thought that if I could get Ron to think long and hard about fiscal responsibility he might have second
thoughts about his support for the man, and I could avoid yelling about how Trump was an adulterer or a schmooze or a bad businessman. At any rate, my question was as follows: Trump's tax plan would create a deficit of about $1 trillion a year, what government programs would we have to cut in order to account for this massive loss in revenue? Ron was not interested in this potential possibility, and touted the Trump campaign line that most of this was focused on our corporate tax, saying that "we have the highest tax rate for corporations in the industrialized world" which although way may have the largest top marginal tax rate is effectively untrue. Large companies like General Electric have for years payed nothing in taxes, and many industries are large recipients of government subsidies, all of this aside, setting the corporation tax too far below someone's marginal tax bracket would most likely lead to self incorporation, a process in which individuals become companies in order to avoid paying higher taxes. When I asked what Ron thought government's role is, he just said that "government is too large it needs to be less" and that we should cut "most regulatory agencies, the military, and social programs". This is a very common opinion of many conservatives, that the size of government should be cut, in Ron's opinion, "the role of government is to keep our borders secure and to say out of people's personal lives as much as possible".
My final question for Ron had to do with the likely Democratic challenger, Hillary Clinton ."First off she's a liar, second she should be in prison for getting four Americans killed by leaking data through her emails" Ron wasted no time in bringing up the two most prominent talking points about Hillary Clinton, only he had seemingly combined in his head the attacks on the Amerixan Embassy in Benghazi and the private e-mail server debacle. I decided to ask why he thought leaking those emails got those four Americans killed. Ron says it was because "it compromised their identity",
however the embassy was attacked not because it was low profile, but because it represented a very high-profile US presence in the country, and at least one of the four Americans killed was an important diplomatic figure, Ambassador Stevens. Ron says he "can't say if the attacks wouldn't have happened if Clinton was not Secretary of State" and that he had in the years since 2012"kinda forgot" what actually happened at Benghazi. At any rate, Ron believes that Clinton "should be held to a higher standard". What higher standard someone who might be one of the most scrutinized former government officials in the country could be held to I will leave to interpretation.
however the embassy was attacked not because it was low profile, but because it represented a very high-profile US presence in the country, and at least one of the four Americans killed was an important diplomatic figure, Ambassador Stevens. Ron says he "can't say if the attacks wouldn't have happened if Clinton was not Secretary of State" and that he had in the years since 2012"kinda forgot" what actually happened at Benghazi. At any rate, Ron believes that Clinton "should be held to a higher standard". What higher standard someone who might be one of the most scrutinized former government officials in the country could be held to I will leave to interpretation.
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Other High School Newspapers
1.
The cover of a newspaper called the mustang has no text, only an image of a squid. I like the simplicity of it and would probably read the content inside of it. I think that they could do with putting some text of some sort or a title of the volume somewhere in there but the avant garde approach
2.
The West High School in Davenport, IA has a very strange article on sexual assault as well as a profile of a crying girl on the front page. It popped right out at me because of the way that they had blurred her face was strange and also the text was really big and bold so I had to investigate.
3.
So this headline is from a different paper but there is this article in Viking Saga called "The Typical Teenager" and you've probably heard me gut laughing at the whole shebang. I want to read every word.
4.
There are no stories on the front page of my favorite one.
5.
Honestly most feature the name of the paper, date and edition number at the top, with some sort of banner or big blowup image front and center with the date and maybe a few columns on the side. Many have small columns on the side. There aren't that many serif fonts left and much to my chagrin
6.
Some of the newspapers are trying a new approach. Quite a few of these publications just have a cover page and then the actual bile starts inside, while some of them just go right for the news with those typical daily newspaper-type front pages.
7.
Honestly other than the significant lack of quality in any of the publications I saw, there appeared to be many similarities in format, placement, and style of presentation.
The cover of a newspaper called the mustang has no text, only an image of a squid. I like the simplicity of it and would probably read the content inside of it. I think that they could do with putting some text of some sort or a title of the volume somewhere in there but the avant garde approach
2.
The West High School in Davenport, IA has a very strange article on sexual assault as well as a profile of a crying girl on the front page. It popped right out at me because of the way that they had blurred her face was strange and also the text was really big and bold so I had to investigate.
3.
So this headline is from a different paper but there is this article in Viking Saga called "The Typical Teenager" and you've probably heard me gut laughing at the whole shebang. I want to read every word.
4.
There are no stories on the front page of my favorite one.
5.
Honestly most feature the name of the paper, date and edition number at the top, with some sort of banner or big blowup image front and center with the date and maybe a few columns on the side. Many have small columns on the side. There aren't that many serif fonts left and much to my chagrin
6.
Some of the newspapers are trying a new approach. Quite a few of these publications just have a cover page and then the actual bile starts inside, while some of them just go right for the news with those typical daily newspaper-type front pages.
7.
Honestly other than the significant lack of quality in any of the publications I saw, there appeared to be many similarities in format, placement, and style of presentation.
Wednesday, April 13, 2016
Current Event Experience 5.2 -
1.
I want to say that this is a novelty story, but honestly a murder on campus story is I would think just a little bit too cliche to get that classification. Anyways, Haruka Weiser was strangled to death and here I am writing about it like a callous ass just trying to provide some details about story writing and get this over with. What I can say is that Criner - the suspect - appears to have pulled some sort of "shiny rigid object", which I assume is a knife because what the hell else could that be describing and also he had a bag with him that he didn't at an earlier point after he emerged from where police think the crime took place. None of the sources were named because it's an ongoing case and you can't because reasons name your sources.
2.
So this website named Hired.com did some research that shows that because of something called the "expectation gap" and also something else called "sexism" it is harder for women to get good money in their tech jobs about 69% of the time. Honestly I didn't really thin that these companies were completely clean cut in the first place but this doesn't seem like something that could be rectified easily unless, you know, you make everyone suddenly not sexist with voodoo magic but whatever now that we know, we know.
3.
So North Carolina, a state known for boring college basketball and disputes over mustard apparently hates the transgender people and they signed in a law hat said you had to use the restroom on your birth certificate which is just super impractical and also a waste of everyone's time and also really like what do they think is going to happen in the restroom there haven't exactly been any reported incidents of sexual assault by trans people and so like the shitstorm ensued and a bunch a people and companies are backing away from doing business in the state which is honestly their prerogative and thank god I guess.
4.
I want to say that this is a novelty story, but honestly a murder on campus story is I would think just a little bit too cliche to get that classification. Anyways, Haruka Weiser was strangled to death and here I am writing about it like a callous ass just trying to provide some details about story writing and get this over with. What I can say is that Criner - the suspect - appears to have pulled some sort of "shiny rigid object", which I assume is a knife because what the hell else could that be describing and also he had a bag with him that he didn't at an earlier point after he emerged from where police think the crime took place. None of the sources were named because it's an ongoing case and you can't because reasons name your sources.
2.
So this website named Hired.com did some research that shows that because of something called the "expectation gap" and also something else called "sexism" it is harder for women to get good money in their tech jobs about 69% of the time. Honestly I didn't really thin that these companies were completely clean cut in the first place but this doesn't seem like something that could be rectified easily unless, you know, you make everyone suddenly not sexist with voodoo magic but whatever now that we know, we know.
3.
So North Carolina, a state known for boring college basketball and disputes over mustard apparently hates the transgender people and they signed in a law hat said you had to use the restroom on your birth certificate which is just super impractical and also a waste of everyone's time and also really like what do they think is going to happen in the restroom there haven't exactly been any reported incidents of sexual assault by trans people and so like the shitstorm ensued and a bunch a people and companies are backing away from doing business in the state which is honestly their prerogative and thank god I guess.
4.
Friday, March 4, 2016
There is nothing funny about gang rape.
This is really painful for me. Even now I have a horrible bitter taste in my mouth and a real glut in the creative writing cycle has occurred. The article was very good, it was something that needed to be written and I am horrified at almost every instance and circumstance reported, none more so than the University's deliberate intent to divert victims of rape and sexual assault away from filing reports or with following through on their allegations. This is disgusting. I am disgusted. There is no denying that the story has gone above and beyond in it's respect for the victims and protecting the anonymity of sources and keeping it's integrity in tact. This is truly awful material, but it was a great piece of journalism.
Friday, February 19, 2016
Brian Gumbel. Olympic sized cartoon character.
I recently read Rick Reilly's piece from the late '80s about Brian Gumbel and how he was a terrible person to his mother and what was left of his family and had been ever since his dear father had departed this earth and how he had a hardon for golf and Shwarzenegger movies and how he was such a tryhard he didn't get along with virtually anyone. I doubt that Reilly goes in to too much detail about Gumbel as a lonely sod but I do think that there is at least some evidence of portraying him as an archetype. The story is probably presented fairly, and I do not believe it describes anything about Gumbel that is too sensitive and does not withhold very much. To portray someone in a possibly negative light the fair move. The essential purpose of the story seems to be to convey the life story of Bryant Gumbel and it that it succeeds. It is honest, straightforward, human, and I doubt that many people were swayed in their liking of the morning anchor by The Mourning Anchor, but I do at least think that it is a thought out, comprehensive, and all-inclusive look in to his life.
Do I think it is a great piece of journalism?
Fat chance.
Bjerke
Mr. Bjerke is a pretty cool teacher. Pretty sure most people know him. In addition to being a kind of folksy and gregarious digital media teacher, he also runs many of the clubs for people at the school who may not have up until very recently been included in the societal norm. I asked him about all of the things that he does to help out with students in the LGBT community as well as people who do not self identify with the gender binary. When I asked him he replied very humbly about the whole ordeal, saying that "all I do for them is try to create a safe space." He told me the story about how on one occasion when a student had called someone else a faggot that he had responded in a way so as to discourage further use of the pejorative and posted about it on Facebook. Many of Bjerke's former students chimed in to say that when they were there that was their safe space. One of the clubs that Bjerke hosts, Spectrum, was set up for LGBT students and their straight friends to try and resolve some of the issues that they have and potential slights they may have suffered while on campus or in their day as a consequence of the stigma placed on people who do not identify as straight. The club includes straight people as well as everyone else, which Bjerke believes is the way it should be. "It's a spectrum, so you can call yourself whatever you want to be, but it's completely irrelevant, and in the future it will be. Once everybody in the school knows four or five trans kids, they're going to change the way they view them." Bjerke believes that the environment now is much better than it was than it was when he was growing up. "I didn't even know what [being LGBT] was. In a small town, the only exposure I ever had to gay people was the pride parades, and I always saw them and the way they were and I thought that that wasn't who I was. My freshmen year of college I was a raging homophobe. I said horrible things about people, and then *BAM* I realized I was those people." You can join spectrum by going to Mr. Bjerke's room (153) on Wednesdays during lunch.
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
Current Events Activity 4.1 - Texas Tea
1.
Glenn Hager is the Texas that comptroller and a man trying to keep the Texas Democrats from making a fuss about the price of oil. Royce West, a state Democratic representative, asked him a prodding question about the price of oil, which has plummeted down to around $30 a barrel. State government is vile. The Democrats are a bunch of whiners who haven't been in charge since they were the party of white people and the Republicans have free reign to do whatever the hell they want with impunity. Hager pointed out that the Texas oil industry isn't some miracle economic weathervane and that the state had actually gained 179,000 jobs in the last 12 months. The state may have lost some money from severance taxes on oil and natural gas, but that doesn't mean that Texas is going to fall off the deep end and into a recession.
2.
"Trump says he won't take party in Thursday's GOP debate" Well shucks, he was the only reason anybody was going to watch the show, but now there is faux outrage and a controversy and Fox News issued a statement and who knows what the Donald will do next. So here's what I imagine, the seven other candidates get on stage and Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace or whoever are there at the moderator's desk and the crowd is sort of tense and then Jeb! Bush tries to make a joke about Donald Trump and then a voice calls out "NOT SO FAST!" and then a cloud of smoke fils the backstage and heavy metal music starts playing and the curtains part like the red sea, a spotlight shines down to illuminate HE, the greatest presidential candidate of all time, the ten billion dollar man, the miracle from manhattan, Donald Trump, in full WWE attire, with a huge f-off belt and flowing locks of combover hair. From below the stage, a new podium rises, embellished in gold and diamonds, and on the front, in big bold letters, TRUMP. All kidding aside (again), it doesn't matter if Trump makes it to the debate or not, he's like 20 points ahead of all of his competition, and wether he is selected for the candidacy or not, he has made this probably one of the coolest got damn election cycles to watch probably ever or at least post-Lincoln. The Democrats, meanwhile, have buckled down for a serious competition between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, between the old line centrist democrats and the new left-wing idealists, a true challenge to the party's established doctrine of incrementalism and pragmatic third way solutions with new radical ideas creating some sort of socialist(?) utopia like Denmark of Ikea or the other one. There may or may not be a debate on Feb. 4, and that really isn't the big issue, what is interesting is who is going to win in Iowa, Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton. Whoever emerges victorious from that competition will likely have a much better chance at attaining the nomination, especially in Bernie's case. A loss for him on monday means that New Hampshire may be one of his only pickups in the primary race.
3.
Brazil is trying to eradicate a mosquito which carries the Zika virus, a disease which the WHO now believes is linked to microcephaly, a condition where babies have small heads and developmental problems because of the aforementioned head size. Brazil has deployed the troops literally to go door-to-door to give pregnant women mosquito repellent, which is a great plan. Imagine if we did stuff like that in the United States. Instead we just occasionally mail people cheese. The WHO doesn't like that the Brazilian health minister said that they were losing the war with the mosquitos, and they may have a point. Nobody is going to want to go to Carnaval or to the silly olympics if mosquitos are gonna give their babies tiny heads.
4.
So you can now have a gun concealed on a university campus, and Steven Weinberg, a nobel laureate is going to ban them in his classroom, perhaps. The Chancellor at UT, Bill McRaven said that the university would be complying with the law. The preparations for the guns in the classroom bill had started when the bill passed on August 1 and starting January 1 the law has been made effective.
5.
Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General and all-round shitty guy does not like Muslim or Arabs, really he's not a fan of people who aren't white. He knows many of his constituents share in his nativist, racist, islamophobic sentiments and so he continues to blow the stupid dog whistle in hopes that, what? Obama is just going to turn around and say, the Pigheaded racist bigot is right! We shouldn't allow refugees in this country. That would be the day. Paxton tried to tell a judge to stop resettlement plans, and the judge said that Paxton's reasoning was speculative hearsay, which is a really polite way to say it was bullshit.
6.
Texas Women's Basketball is close to winning 1,000 games! Wowee! The team is 18-1, and ranked sixth or second depending on who you ask and they would be first if it weren't for all of the turnovers. Texas just needs to hold on to the ball or play more passive or something I don't know but what I do know is they are gonna beat the shot out of Kansas and win their 1,000th game! Go Lady Longhorns! Is that possible though, it's like being a lady bull, wouldn't you just be a longhorn cow, or do both male and female longhorns have horns? I don't know.
7.
Abe Vigoda, of Godfather fame, died at 94. I preferred the New York Times lede, mostly because I felt like the information was more readily available and it felt like it had more consistently stuck to the orthodoxy of obit writing. I honestly don't really care all that much for the obituaries, it would be a much better tribute to just watch the godfather and appreciate the man for who he was and what he did than to read a silly article that entails it, but those are just my two cents.
Glenn Hager is the Texas that comptroller and a man trying to keep the Texas Democrats from making a fuss about the price of oil. Royce West, a state Democratic representative, asked him a prodding question about the price of oil, which has plummeted down to around $30 a barrel. State government is vile. The Democrats are a bunch of whiners who haven't been in charge since they were the party of white people and the Republicans have free reign to do whatever the hell they want with impunity. Hager pointed out that the Texas oil industry isn't some miracle economic weathervane and that the state had actually gained 179,000 jobs in the last 12 months. The state may have lost some money from severance taxes on oil and natural gas, but that doesn't mean that Texas is going to fall off the deep end and into a recession.
2.
"Trump says he won't take party in Thursday's GOP debate" Well shucks, he was the only reason anybody was going to watch the show, but now there is faux outrage and a controversy and Fox News issued a statement and who knows what the Donald will do next. So here's what I imagine, the seven other candidates get on stage and Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace or whoever are there at the moderator's desk and the crowd is sort of tense and then Jeb! Bush tries to make a joke about Donald Trump and then a voice calls out "NOT SO FAST!" and then a cloud of smoke fils the backstage and heavy metal music starts playing and the curtains part like the red sea, a spotlight shines down to illuminate HE, the greatest presidential candidate of all time, the ten billion dollar man, the miracle from manhattan, Donald Trump, in full WWE attire, with a huge f-off belt and flowing locks of combover hair. From below the stage, a new podium rises, embellished in gold and diamonds, and on the front, in big bold letters, TRUMP. All kidding aside (again), it doesn't matter if Trump makes it to the debate or not, he's like 20 points ahead of all of his competition, and wether he is selected for the candidacy or not, he has made this probably one of the coolest got damn election cycles to watch probably ever or at least post-Lincoln. The Democrats, meanwhile, have buckled down for a serious competition between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, between the old line centrist democrats and the new left-wing idealists, a true challenge to the party's established doctrine of incrementalism and pragmatic third way solutions with new radical ideas creating some sort of socialist(?) utopia like Denmark of Ikea or the other one. There may or may not be a debate on Feb. 4, and that really isn't the big issue, what is interesting is who is going to win in Iowa, Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton. Whoever emerges victorious from that competition will likely have a much better chance at attaining the nomination, especially in Bernie's case. A loss for him on monday means that New Hampshire may be one of his only pickups in the primary race.
3.
Brazil is trying to eradicate a mosquito which carries the Zika virus, a disease which the WHO now believes is linked to microcephaly, a condition where babies have small heads and developmental problems because of the aforementioned head size. Brazil has deployed the troops literally to go door-to-door to give pregnant women mosquito repellent, which is a great plan. Imagine if we did stuff like that in the United States. Instead we just occasionally mail people cheese. The WHO doesn't like that the Brazilian health minister said that they were losing the war with the mosquitos, and they may have a point. Nobody is going to want to go to Carnaval or to the silly olympics if mosquitos are gonna give their babies tiny heads.
4.
So you can now have a gun concealed on a university campus, and Steven Weinberg, a nobel laureate is going to ban them in his classroom, perhaps. The Chancellor at UT, Bill McRaven said that the university would be complying with the law. The preparations for the guns in the classroom bill had started when the bill passed on August 1 and starting January 1 the law has been made effective.
5.
Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General and all-round shitty guy does not like Muslim or Arabs, really he's not a fan of people who aren't white. He knows many of his constituents share in his nativist, racist, islamophobic sentiments and so he continues to blow the stupid dog whistle in hopes that, what? Obama is just going to turn around and say, the Pigheaded racist bigot is right! We shouldn't allow refugees in this country. That would be the day. Paxton tried to tell a judge to stop resettlement plans, and the judge said that Paxton's reasoning was speculative hearsay, which is a really polite way to say it was bullshit.
6.
Texas Women's Basketball is close to winning 1,000 games! Wowee! The team is 18-1, and ranked sixth or second depending on who you ask and they would be first if it weren't for all of the turnovers. Texas just needs to hold on to the ball or play more passive or something I don't know but what I do know is they are gonna beat the shot out of Kansas and win their 1,000th game! Go Lady Longhorns! Is that possible though, it's like being a lady bull, wouldn't you just be a longhorn cow, or do both male and female longhorns have horns? I don't know.
7.
Abe Vigoda, of Godfather fame, died at 94. I preferred the New York Times lede, mostly because I felt like the information was more readily available and it felt like it had more consistently stuck to the orthodoxy of obit writing. I honestly don't really care all that much for the obituaries, it would be a much better tribute to just watch the godfather and appreciate the man for who he was and what he did than to read a silly article that entails it, but those are just my two cents.
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
2015: Voyage to Nostalgiastan
First we gotta talk about all the sick pics taken in 2015. Look at these beauts.
Pic #3
Photocreds: Goran Tomasevic - Reuters
This is a picture of a protester to President of Burundi and all-round mean guy Pierre Nkurunziza. To hide his identity, he has covered his face in grass. I kind of admire the bravery and the symbolism, which, as we all know, is symbolic. He just feels very intense and impassioned about his cause.
Pic #2
Photocreds: Dogan News
This dead baby, Aylan Kurdi, got a bunch of people to care about something they previously did not care about: human beings. People tend to not pay attention to stories about thousands of people suffering somehow somewhere else in the world, but people do love themselves some dead baby.
Pic #1
Photocreds: Fabrice Coffrini - AFP/Getty Images
Sepp Blatter, a man who has never done any soccering in his life, was previously the president of FIFA, the people who do something involving Soccer and a great amount of fraud. As it turns out, the only reason someone decided to hold the most prestigious international sports competition in Qatar, a country famous for it's sand and imported slave labor, was because the people of Qatar were willing to throw in a little bit of a whole lot of money. Anyways as usual America found out and saved the day and the silly Swiss man was showered in cash and now the rest of the world has to stop calling it football.
Ok now that we are through with those pics time to answer some questions.
Q: What was the best song of 2015?
A: I Don't Know
I have no idea what the best song from 2015 was. For me, 2015 was a good year in music but not like to great and I wasn't too hyped about the new Kendrick Lamar album or the Weeknd's incessant pandering to pop culture or Drake's two not real albums but Rihanna did make BBHMM which was pretty rad but I can't decide so I'm leaving the box blank.
Q: What was the best movie of 2015?
A: The Martian
The Martian is a movie about a science fiction book (lame) with Matt Damon (Matt Damon) and I didn't think it would be good but I saw the trailers and I was like how can he grow a potato in space if there is no sound in space? I watched it and as it turns out it was a perfect 5/7 movie.
Q: What was the best news story of 2015?
A: Same Sex Marriage is Legal
There were a bunch of news stories this year about mass shootings or terrorist attacks or disasters both natural and manmade, however most of these stories generally have a lot more news clout than the less fantastical and sensational good news stories of 2015. It's true, people bought a lot of papers on September 12, 2001 just to keep as memorabilia, and people have a tendency to gravitate towards stories that anger or scare them despite the fact that it may be in their best interests to avoid them. So, having stood on my soapbox, the best and most monumental news story this year was probably the announcement of the legalization of gay marriage.
Q: Who was the most important person of 2015?
A: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
Talk about coming out of nowhere, the leader of ISIS really made a power grab and just took over areas of Syria and Iraq late in 2013. ISIS aren't particularly good at anything, and almost nobody likes them, which is kind of cool and edgy in a sense. ISIS has successfully created a time warp to the seventh century and they beat North Korea on the list of most realistic hell on earth, and that is probably more important that a transsexual racist or some other celeb.
Q: What was the most important sports/entertainment story of 2015?
A: FIFA is crazy.
So the ridiculous thing about this story is that everybody has known for a long, long time now that there is a strange spoils system that allows certain members of the International Federation of Association Football (IFAF) ((FIFA)) (((It's called soccer))) ((((IFAS)))) to logroll some of the most watched and followed sporting events in the world, for instance for some reason everybody thought it would be a good idea to hold the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, a country with no stadiums in the middle of the desert in the summer, not that the choices of Russia or South Africa or Brazil were all that informed either, but I digress. As of previously there was no proof of all of this, but this summer in Switzerland, the FBI decided America was going to save the day once again by laying the law down on Sepp Blatter (real name) and his cronies. Some weird legal stuff is going on right now and the legal delineations of soccer are almost as boring as the sport so it's sort of a bore to follow but the moral of the story is America #1 the game is called Soccer only real men play Football.
HOW WAS MY VACATION?
You mean me?
Well, for starters the most memorable thing that happened to me was for Christmas I got a pony it is named Toby and he likes me but not my sister Carrie Anne who Toby occasionally kicks in the face because she is a girl. Toby eats carrots and is six hands tall and likes apples too. Sometimes Toby is sad and mama says it's because he has no pony friends to play with but it's okay because we are all family now.
My 2016 resolution has already been broken I said I would try and brush my teeth every single day of the year but I want gingivitis so people will think I had a rough childhood and how can I do both?
I am looking forward to the election in 2016 except not really because I like Obama and besides if he is gone who am I supposed to blame when there is no prize at the bottom of my cracker jacks? Hillary Clinton?
Pic #3
Photocreds: Goran Tomasevic - Reuters
This is a picture of a protester to President of Burundi and all-round mean guy Pierre Nkurunziza. To hide his identity, he has covered his face in grass. I kind of admire the bravery and the symbolism, which, as we all know, is symbolic. He just feels very intense and impassioned about his cause.
Pic #2
Photocreds: Dogan News
This dead baby, Aylan Kurdi, got a bunch of people to care about something they previously did not care about: human beings. People tend to not pay attention to stories about thousands of people suffering somehow somewhere else in the world, but people do love themselves some dead baby.
Pic #1
Photocreds: Fabrice Coffrini - AFP/Getty Images
Sepp Blatter, a man who has never done any soccering in his life, was previously the president of FIFA, the people who do something involving Soccer and a great amount of fraud. As it turns out, the only reason someone decided to hold the most prestigious international sports competition in Qatar, a country famous for it's sand and imported slave labor, was because the people of Qatar were willing to throw in a little bit of a whole lot of money. Anyways as usual America found out and saved the day and the silly Swiss man was showered in cash and now the rest of the world has to stop calling it football.
Ok now that we are through with those pics time to answer some questions.
Q: What was the best song of 2015?
A: I Don't Know
I have no idea what the best song from 2015 was. For me, 2015 was a good year in music but not like to great and I wasn't too hyped about the new Kendrick Lamar album or the Weeknd's incessant pandering to pop culture or Drake's two not real albums but Rihanna did make BBHMM which was pretty rad but I can't decide so I'm leaving the box blank.
Q: What was the best movie of 2015?
A: The Martian
The Martian is a movie about a science fiction book (lame) with Matt Damon (Matt Damon) and I didn't think it would be good but I saw the trailers and I was like how can he grow a potato in space if there is no sound in space? I watched it and as it turns out it was a perfect 5/7 movie.
Q: What was the best news story of 2015?
A: Same Sex Marriage is Legal
There were a bunch of news stories this year about mass shootings or terrorist attacks or disasters both natural and manmade, however most of these stories generally have a lot more news clout than the less fantastical and sensational good news stories of 2015. It's true, people bought a lot of papers on September 12, 2001 just to keep as memorabilia, and people have a tendency to gravitate towards stories that anger or scare them despite the fact that it may be in their best interests to avoid them. So, having stood on my soapbox, the best and most monumental news story this year was probably the announcement of the legalization of gay marriage.
Q: Who was the most important person of 2015?
A: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
Talk about coming out of nowhere, the leader of ISIS really made a power grab and just took over areas of Syria and Iraq late in 2013. ISIS aren't particularly good at anything, and almost nobody likes them, which is kind of cool and edgy in a sense. ISIS has successfully created a time warp to the seventh century and they beat North Korea on the list of most realistic hell on earth, and that is probably more important that a transsexual racist or some other celeb.
Q: What was the most important sports/entertainment story of 2015?
A: FIFA is crazy.
Do I know this is the same picture twice? Yes.
HOW WAS MY VACATION?
You mean me?
Well, for starters the most memorable thing that happened to me was for Christmas I got a pony it is named Toby and he likes me but not my sister Carrie Anne who Toby occasionally kicks in the face because she is a girl. Toby eats carrots and is six hands tall and likes apples too. Sometimes Toby is sad and mama says it's because he has no pony friends to play with but it's okay because we are all family now.
My 2016 resolution has already been broken I said I would try and brush my teeth every single day of the year but I want gingivitis so people will think I had a rough childhood and how can I do both?
I am looking forward to the election in 2016 except not really because I like Obama and besides if he is gone who am I supposed to blame when there is no prize at the bottom of my cracker jacks? Hillary Clinton?
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