The Electronic Dark Ages

On my way out this morning I'm listening to the radio talk show and they're talking about Facebook and MySpace and how potential employers go straight to these social networking sites and check your profile for pictures that might incriminate you someway. One the hosts was talking about how she was invited to a human resources and that was the topic: teaching employers how to use things like Facebook to weed out potential candidates for the job.

So who are the weeding out? People holding up bongs and embarrassing pictures of you with your tongue down somebody's throat at a party you went to when you were 19.

All innocent fun, really. Those of us who aren't the Wall Street loser types did sh*t like this and maybe even some stuff we ain't all that proud of. Then you're 35 and chilling with your family when one of your old friends posts a picture of the old you doing a keg stand. Everyone has a good laugh, but be careful for the almighty boss is watching.

I swear to God. Maybe this is part of America's problem. Stuck in the f**kin middle ages where some religious kook's fanaticism is the social norm and you are an outcast if you dare push the envelope or once had some sort of youth.

What's worse is that everybody did these things including the new peeping voyeurs that some people call employers. The difference is some people own up to them while others pretend they were born with a receding hairline, reading glasses with pens in their shirt pocket. Who do you trust?

When I was young, I smoked pot, snorted coke, drank my last can of beer well after the sun came up and had sex with women who never planned on marrying me. There. I don't do drugs now. I drink (mostly) in moderation and I do not cheat on my wife. There's the truth. So I suppose I don't the job or get to run for the U.S. Senate because you can probably find out all this sh*t about me with a quick google search and I really don't give a f**k because I never want to work for assholes who pretend they are made of solid gold and never lived a day in their lives- and that includes the American people if the description so warrants.

If I were an employer, I'd be weeding out the people who would only dare show the shiny and happy pictures of good clean fun because those are the types you see on Forensic Files when they uncover the truth about a serial killer. The people who aren't ashamed to admit they crashed next to the toilet bowl on Saturday nights in college are probably harmless.

But no! Hire the most dishonest people you can find because that's really what capitalism is all about. Screw people as hard as you can and then act like you're doing them all a favor. You don't want someone with a human heart foreclosing on some family's home. It's the free market, Christian way.

And when these scheming liars you weed out for their fakey wholesomeness turn on you or drive your company into the ground, just go crying to the government for some bailout money because our government is filled with plenty of those types of people too.

Blaming the Victim Isn't Just for Violent Criminals Anymore, It Works for Corporate America Too

In scrolling through Youtube videos supporting and opposing the Employee Free Choice Act, I find this piece of bullshit that is the dumbest thing I've heard since someone tried convincing me that Bush and Cheney were responsible for 9-11.



Now wait just a goddamn minute. "Union bosses" didn't sign free trade agreements that allowed our manufacturing base to fly off into countries where grade school age kids are allowed to work 12 hour days for 15 cents an hour. "Union bosses" don't vote every year to give China "Most Favored Nation" trade status so that they can dump steel into our country forcing American steel companies to shut down because they can't compete with a totalitarian communist nation that makes regular practice of treating their workers and their people like total shit. President Ronald Reagan, no friend to labor, broke the airline unions back in the 1980's so how the hell can anyone blame the "Union Bosses" for jobs lost in that market?

But there is some truth to these type of ads if you read between the lines. What big business in this country really wants is a return to the 1800's when kids could be forced to work in our factories and wages were low enough to rival places like Indonesia and Guatemala. We can just all live in cardboard boxes and huddle around trashcan fires for heat while the bosses are free to make even more money sitting around on their lazy asses collecting government handouts, eating donuts and drinking coffee.

That, in a nutshell, is really what they mean when they talk about "being more competitive with the rest of the world". I don't know about you, but I think I'll pass.

Support the Employee Free Choice Act

Because everyone deserves the opportunity to join a labor union if they so choose. Joining a union isn't just in your best interest, it's the American thing to do.

Who Wants a Don Blankenship Victory?

Tensions run high in West Virginia and all of central Appalachia when you talk about coal, jobs, and the environment. Read this article from the Charleston Gazette and you get the idea.

But let's talk about one of the major players spearheading this new rally coal industry's goal of destroying every mountaintop in our fair region of the country: Don Blankenship.

People, let's get one thing straight. Don Blankenship stands for one thing: lining his own goddamn pockets. Don Blankenship is not pro-West Virginia. Don Blankenship is not pro-Appalachia. And Don Blankenship sure the hell is not pro-coal miner. Just check out this article from the Examiner.com on how Massey Coal locked out 85 union miners when it bought up a coal company after it went belly up. How did Blankenship and all his newfangled supporters think these folks were planning to feed their families?

Don Blankenship is pro-Don Blankenship and that's pretty much all there is to it. I mean he can talk all he wants about his poor Appalachian upbringing and all one needs to do is check out a picture of Blankenship tanning his union busting ass over on the French Riviera while was he was working to buy out yet another one of West Virginia's state judges and then the real story emerges.

The debate over Mountaintop Removal needs to shift it's focus and recognize that MTR exists for one reason: to break the back of the UMWA and coal miners who fought hard throughout the years to earn a decent wage. Dynamite and Walker machinery can't sign union cards. Yet Blankenship and his cohorts have managed to turn this whole debate into Jobs vs. The Environment.

But I guess to be fair, Don Blankenship isn't the first egomaniac from the Appalachian Region to brainwash normal people and convince them to rally around his flag and do things for him that make very little sense at all.

Halloween

Best horror movie ever!

2012 Couldn't Come Soon Enough

This might surprise some people, but I was secretly rooting for Hillary Clinton during the Democratic Primaries. It's not because I thought she would have made a better president than Barrack Obama. It's because I heard a rumor that she might have had plan to tap West Virginia's governor, Joe Manchin, as her running mate. And no issue could be dearer to my heart than getting this damn bozo straight the f**k out of Charleston.

And if you really want to know what I think...... well, here's an example from the Charleston Gazette of why I think this clown is just a terrible governor:

"Gov. Joe Manchin on Tuesday continued his criticism of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, calling its decision to more closely review mining permits in four states 'cruel and inhumane."

"Last month, the EPA referred 79 pending mining permits, including 23 in West Virginia, to its water quality experts and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for more scrutiny.

"Speaking to reporters after an unrelated state Culture Center news conference Tuesday, the governor called the federal agency's move unfair and wrong."

Speaking to F**ked Up World readers from an unrelated blog, Wade D. Drasch calls on Governor Manchin to recognize the fact that he has no business telling the federal EPA how to do their jobs. Just because he's a piss poor leader who has his departments underfunded and understaffed to the point of total incompetency doesn't mean the rest of the country should follow suit.

Is There Life In Outer Space?

Well, probably. But why the hell would a race intelligent enough to invent space vessels visit this planet unless they were planning a cro-magnon type study on a race with minds that can reason but still blame natural disasters on angry supernatural beings.

When I was young and going to church camp we were taught that there are no aliens. Why? Because they aren't mentioned in the Holy Bible. Dinosaurs aren't either, but fossils are just things that were placed in the ground by Satan to test our faith in Jesus.

Ironically, the creationist theories tend to support the idea of intelligent life as we know it than evolutionary theories do. I watched a show a few years back on the subject of aliens on planets and one scientist brought up a good point. He said that in order for lifeforms to exist the way we exist- walking up right with two arms and two legs and blabbering through the mouth- the evolutionary conditions would have to be exactly as they were when single celled organisms formed multi-celled organisms and the crawled on up out of the ocean. The chances of those identical conditions existing on any other planet are great to say the least. So these scientists did advance the idea that they were almost certain that there is intelligent life out there, but it would more than likely be something we would barely recognize because of the stark differences.

Now, the creationist theory makes this easier. God created Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden then went over to Alpha Centari and created Zwark and Zfeve.

Since I can't imagine a universe without Hawkgirl, Chewbacca, and General Martok, maybe I ought to start hitting the ol' Bible and going back to church. Then again, left-wing ideolouges were never welcome there to start with so I probably wouldn't be allowed to come back even if I wanted to. Ain't like Jesus was about acceptance, peace, and love or anything.