The Rocky Mountain Collegian

April 10th, 2007

Happy Nuke Day!

That’s right guys; the Iranians are on their way to having a National Nuclear Day with today (April 9) being the one-year anniversary since the first successful enrichment of uranium in Iran. Claims are swirling that Iran is only a year away from developing its first nuke.

How did the U.N. respond? I believe Team America can suit the response (altered a bit, forgive me):

Mahmoud: Security Council, Security Council, Security Council. We’ve been through this a dozen times. I’m not building any nuclear weapons, OK U.N. Security Council?
UN: Then stop building nuclear reactors so we can ease the U.N.’s collective mind.
Mahmoud: U.N., you’re breaking my burka here.
UN: I’m sorry, but we must be firm with you. Please stop building nuclear reactors, or else.
[Long pause]
Mahmoud: Or else what?
UN: Or else we will be very, very angry with you. And we will write you a letter telling you how angry we are.

The U.N. just continued to say “no, no, no” and “please stop” to Iran. Actually, that’s a little too mean on the U.N. In reality they’re putting sanctions on Iran:

“Sanctions have been limited to a freeze of assets of some Iranian companies linked to nuclear and missile programs and a call for nations to ban travel by 15 Iranian security and government officials.”

…

One whole year and the best the U.N. has come up with is to tell Iran to stop with nuclear proliferation? Great job, guys. Keep up the good work! Let me know how the Oil for Food program is going while you’re at it. Oops, I shouldn’t have said that.

Here are a couple of actual quotes that make the pansy-assed sound like they have balls and are ready to rumble with anti-Semitic Iran (actual rumbling not guaranteed):

• - “The international community stands together in ensuring that Iran does not develop the means to acquire nuclear weapons.” - The British Foreign Office
• - That Iran will “engage in dialogue. … It is very important for any member country to fully comply with the Security Council resolution.” - U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
• - That Iran is “definitively going in the wrong direction.” - German Foreign Ministry
• - “Iran continues to defy the international community and further isolate itself by expanding its nuclear program, rather than suspending uranium enrichment.” - Gordon Johndroe of the National Security Council

The U.N. has taken a stand too: “The U.N. Security Council has set a deadline of late May for Iran to halt the program, warning it will gradually ratchet up the punishment.”

Allow me to summarize what the UN has said:

“Peter Gibbons, you’ve led a trite and meaningless life. And you’re a very bad person.” Office Space quotes work for everything! I bet Uncle Mahmoud is quaking in his boots as we speak. He just might cave and apologize from our bully attitudes!

These sanctions that we’re talking about, like the freeze of assets of SOME Iranian companies that have ties to the nuclear program, and the request for nations to ban travel of 15 Iranian officials, have to be the biggest hype of nothing I’ve ever read about. The only way these kinds of sanctions would bring a nation to its knees would be to impose them on a country that has economic problems a million times worse than North Korea’s.

Iran is defying the U.N. (which is easy to do, look at the Oil for Food program), illegally capturing and abusing British sailors, and denying the Holocaust ever occurred. And what is the world doing in response?

“You’re a very bad person.”

Posted in Editable Constitution | 5 Comments »

April 4th, 2007

A little more GW news

Well folks, apparently my CO2 emission blog was being perused by some of the biggest news media outlets in the land! In fact, our favorite magazine “TIME” has just come out with a new issue. What was the main focus? Well, have a look for yourself:

See that? Fifty-one things you can do to make a difference. I do believe my own article had about… 10 things I was doing to make a difference. Go on look below and see!

Unfortunately, TIME forgot to read my disclaimer, that my article was made in jest, or my other little warning that “I will punish whoever is responsible in ways that cannot be imagined, even by Saddam Hussein!” Maybe they just read the headline of my blog and filled in the blanks, like they always do. Who knows.

Here is the 51 step guide.

Here’s the very first step out of the 51 listed as to how Americans (not the Chinese, the ones who should feel the most guilty, and pollute more than the United States does) can combat man-made global warming:

1. Turn food into fuel. “Ethanol is the alternative fuel that could finally wean the U.S. from its expensive oil habit and in turn prevent the millions of tons of carbon emissions that go with it.”

Well, this sounds like a miracle fuel, doesn’t it? Use fuels that are coming from the earth like corn husks for your own renewable energy (I wonder where petroleum comes from…). But I already see three problems with this.

May I refer you to this link for my counter argument.

First, in comparison tests of tailpipe emissions of automobiles that were filled up with either 10 percent ethanol blended fuel or regular unleaded, there was no evidence that the bio-fuel was winning out. While carbon monoxide was slightly reduced, there was also a slight increase in hydrocarbons from the bio-fuel filled vehicles in certain conditions. So what’s the point of using bio-fuels when it doesn’t make any difference whether you use regular gas or bio-gas?

Second, that one swipe at our current fuel consumption that TIME made in that quote — “wean the U.S. from its expensive oil habit” — really bugs me. The U.S. would have cheaper gas if we were allowed to drill in our own country. Some popular sites are ANWR and Utah.

I’m still completely baffled as to why we can’t drill in ANWR anyway. The size of the refinery is so miniscule (given, the pipeline will not be, but no pipelines are) compared to the size of ANWR, or Alaska itself! Not to mention that current pipelines in the Yukon are NOT hurting caribou numbers. Rather, with the pipeline there, caribou numbers have increased. Wow, imagine that!

We can also drill in Utah for the trillion barrel reserve that’s down there, but we can’t for the exact same argument: “Think of the caribou!”

Also, have you taken a look at how much your loving state taxes you per gallon of gas? Forty-five cents a gallon.

That’s one way of curbing our terrorist oil consumption. Next comes curbing our socialist Hugo Chavez oil. People, please don’t get gas from Citgo, I beg you!

Also, high gas prices seem like a pretty clear response that we aren’t in Iraq for oil.

Third, where are these corn bio-fuel resources coming from? Nebraska, Kansas, Rhode Island? Negative. They’re legally immigrating from Mexico. The Mexicans are running out of corn tortillas, because we’re using their corn tortillas to drive our (plural) Prius (Priuses, Prii, Priaes?)! Talk about being greedy.

So, we’re doing all this work, causing this many problems on ourselves simply to slightly reduce our carbon MONoxide output? I’ll pass on that and go fill up at Gallagher’s (cheapest gas, don’t-cha know?).

After reading the next couple of steps that TIME offered, I just stopped reading. It’s way too complicated (I only gave you the very first guideline offered by TIME, you guys). Stick to my guidelines, folks, and you’ll save America from total secular Apocalypse. It’s way easier than building your own “green house” or making only right turns in your car ever again. To conclude, I’ll leave you with a happy picture of polar bears.

What Global Warming enthusiasts want you to believe is that these were massive glaciers at the time the polar bears got on them, and global warming is so terrible that the glaciers melted to those snowballs you see now. And now the poor tykes are stranded! That sounds almost possible, if the temperature increase was about 50 degrees instead of the suspected two.

But as for you people at TIME, while I will not punish you in a way worse than Saddam-esque, I will demand an apology. I wrote my guidelines two weeks before you did.

Posted in Editable Constitution | 18169 Comments »

April 3rd, 2007

Vandalism on Campus: 35 percent art, 101 percent retarded

I, for one, am fed up with the vandalism that is happening on campus. This is just a mockery of CSU’s beautiful campus. Be it kicking in my dorm room wall at two in the morning for a pathetic April Fool’s prank, smashing windows with baseball bats, or seeing graffiti/political action slogans spray painted on campus, it’s vandalism, pure and simple. Don’t forget, you vandals: vandalism a crime.

How hard is the university working to remove or prevent vandalism in the public areas of campus? From what I can see, spray painted slogans are still in the same place, three years later, in high traffic areas. Forget going green, go clean! That’s actually the ASCSU candidate I’d vote for, along with whoever would try their hardest to get Fum back at Hughes (can I get an Amen!?). Forget about tax-free textbooks and Ag-Day.

If writing an investigative piece on unlocked buildings on campus gets the university to lock their doors, then I believe that a piece on vandalism could have the same effect. It couldn’t hurt.

Vandals are pathetic.

Posted in Editable Constitution | 2 Comments »

March 27th, 2007

You there! Yes, you! Shut up.

So the 2006 elections ended almost 5 months ago, and I’m sure everyone wasn’t satisfied with the turnout of the elections. The Democrats got their governor Bill Ritter in along with control of the Congress (the Senate, while technically a Democrat majority now, has had some difficulties staying that way, what with Tim Johnson’s hemorrhage and Lieberman considering a party switch), whereas the Republicans got Musgrave reelected and Amendment 43 passed.

Alright, the results are in, and since Al Gore is out of the election picture, there wasn’t a recount to be had that really mattered. That’s fine and dandy. But remember what had to be done to get all these votes to turn out: Political attack ads.

“Rick O’Donnel is another vote for George Bush’s agenda,” “Angie Paccione never paid off her student loans,” “don’t vote for Wrong-Way Ritter or Both-Ways Bob,” “My arms are tired after explaining Referendum I!”

It grew to be ever so tiresome to listen to the same mindless drivel everyday while trying to watch your favorite episode of Scrubs. Not to mention that all the ads were probably done by the same emo propaganda creator with an eyepatch that only reads headlines of news stories.

So just for the fun of it, let’s make our own political attack ad. Here’s what we need:

• Creepy minimalist music, along with horror movie sound effects.
• Some random fact(s) about the person/event/action that gives it a negative image (usually found on the first page of hits when you search for “X is the devil” on Google)
• Advertise who paid for the ad
• Have some f-ed up intro line that leads to your “negative image random fact(s)”
• Have a deep voiced man read the script.

Ready? Go!

 *cue the intro music to the movie Halloween*

- As read by James Earl Jones:

     “What would you do for a Klondike bar? Hopefully nothing. Because people who eat Klondike bars are fat, are members of the KKK, and also kick puppies. Just a few reasons to not support this capitalist corporate hog. This message has been brought to you by The American Communist Party.”

Hot damn, guys, I think I have a new line of work made for me! That was hella easy!

But moving on. We’ve had these elections, and if you haven’t read a paper, been online checking Facebook, or haven’t had any outside contact with anyone over past five months, there’s already talk and polling about who will be the next president of the United States.

Newsflash, morons: It’s 2007. We have nine months left to go in a year where we don’t even get to vote a new president in (unless you’re one of those wacky moveon.org characters that has the “Pelosi ‘07” bumper stickers). In 2007 we’ll probably get to be bombarded by tax issue attack ads instead, what fun! After this year’s over, we will then have ELEVEN months until judgment day for voting on the next president.

Take a chill pill, you guys. The voters are still going to be here 10 months from now. Actually, this early candidacy is a turn off to me, making me not only loathe and despise you even more, but also not want to vote for you anyway. That actually doesn’t apply to Hillary, I’ve loathed and despised her way before she ever became a senator, so her “chat” ads are just icing to my “Hate Hillary” cake.

Let me put this in layman’s terms: It’s too early to be talking about the next president right now. Way too early. While I wasn’t a big politico back in 2004 or 2000, I am pretty positive that the decision-making for presidential candidates wasn’t until much closer to the election than it is right now.

Are people really that eager to get the current president out of office? The economy is on the way up, the war is looking better by the day, and there hasn’t been a terrorist attack on American soil for over 5 years, and we want to end all this awesome fun by deciding the next person in line already? Bush’s poll numbers are in the 40s (given, they’re the low 40s…), and people want to oust him like he was some kind of corrupt evil 9/11 mastermind warmonger oil-baron (I kid you not, people actually think this about him); even though plenty of people say he’s retarded as well, which doesn’t sound like it fits perfectly into the corrupt evil 9/11 mastermind warmonger oil-baron labeling, if you ask me. You can’t be both retarded and a mastermind in my book (zing!).

Truman had worse poll numbers, but I can’t imagine these hideous names being placed on him and the early decision-making of candidates in the 50s. Then again, the people of the ’50s had morals and respect, but we have the media to thank for that!

Instead, we get declarations of candidacy by Barack Hussein Obama, Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, and Mitt Romney (and probably Ralph Nader, he’s the only one that ever runs on the Green Party ticket every presidential election it seems) by the start of this year. “When you go to the polls in 20 months, vote for me!” I’ll write that down…

Attack ads are already in full swing. Hillary drew first blood with her “let’s have a chat” ads (Hillary, why do you look like a man? Let’s chat about that).

Barack Hussein Obama began his attacks when one of his supporters put out a “Hillary 1984” attack ad on YouTube. It’ll only be a matter of time until McCain comes out with a “I’m going to torture my Republican opponents in a way that’s legal to use on political opponents, but illegal to use on terrorists” type of attack ad. Hillary’s done something kinda like that already with her “I’m going to deck my opponent’s” statement.

Is it so hard to ask our politicians to just shut up for 6 months so that we Americans can get on with our lives: attending baseball games, going on road trips, reading a book (Playboy doesn’t count), playing Halo 2, slashing tires. You know, the usual American stuff. Give us a break from all your “Vote for me in two years” speeches.

Besides, I want Lance Armstrong to run. He’ll beat the French for good this time!

So to all you presidential hopefuls and the parroting media: Shut up, my favorite episode of Scrubs is on.

Posted in Editable Constitution | 2 Comments »

March 21st, 2007

Things you can do to reduce CO2!

(NOTE: Please realize, readers, that this article is entirely a joke, and not be taken seriously (like man-made global warming).

—

Well, I’ve been trying to avoid this for some time now, but the mainstream media and Al Gore want me to bow to their religion of man-made global warming. I have been approached as to how I, your beautiful blogger, can help stop the secular Apocalypse from coming to fruition.

You see, according to Al Gore and the man-made global warming enthusiasts like Larry and Laurie David, CO2 is a big, if not the only factor that contributes to global warming. If we as individuals can reduce our CO2 emissions, we can help prevent man-made global warming. Sounds like a sweet deal, huh?

Worry not, my lovelies, for I have taken action. Presented here is a list to how I am combating this nuisance of man-made global warming. Please take note though, this list is entirely my own. If I encounter my exact words, or even 25 percent of them somewhere on a Wikipedia entry, far, far away, in some intellectual professor’s book, or possibly even just put on a message board in the entrails of “The Internets,” I will punish whoever is responsible in ways that cannot be imagined, even by Saddam Hussein!

So let’s get this checklist as to how I am combating global warming ready:

- Reduce carbon dioxide output:

Well, let’s see. To reduce CO2 emissions, I am currently working on quite a few projects:

1. I don’t talk a lot. See, talking releases CO2, which is apparently harmful to our precious ozone layer and our polar bears on melting icebergs (even though the plants need it to photosynthesize). So I have gone back to my caveman roots, and when among my friends (girls included), I do mostly hand gestures to show my emotions, feelings, and desires. When it becomes absolutely necessary, I will grunt (you know, like *UNGGGGHHHH* with lots of feeling).
2. I don’t sing in the shower. While very tempting, and after having many singing lessons (if you count Music Theory class as a singing lesson), I find it better to just not sing at all in the shower, for the good of my sleeping roommates, my own eardrums, and the cat 3 miles down the road. I know, folks, it is oh so tantalizing to sing “I am man, hear me roar” from the Burger King Manthem, but I have to resist, because I have a planet to save! I talk to myself instead, it wastes less CO2, and cuts down on noise pollution (which leads to audio warming)…
3. I use AIM. AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger, any IM service: I use it and abuse it. Not only does this give me an excuse to use words like “lol,” “rofl,” and “n00b,” it cuts my CO2 emission through communication to 0 percent!

- Stop wasting resources:

1. I don’t wash my clothes… for a long time. Is this the seventh time this shirt has been worn to an ultimate Frisbee workout/gathering? It’ll work as an undershirt to a fancy restaurant! Not only does this cut down on water usage (after all, we just might run out of the stuff real soon!), but it also cuts down on my Tide usage (chemicals are icky).
2. I don’t waste paper. In fact, I don’t use paper at all. Those twenty page papers due three days ago? They’re sitting in immaculate condition in my printer tray, ink-free. This is also why I went with blogging: it’s like writing in the editorials, but without killing trees to print the newspaper.
3. I don’t kill the plants, the things that need all of our wretched CO2 to live. I go for the tasty barbecue ribs, the occasional bratwurst, and the fashionable T-bone steak instead. Salads are for people that want to hurt our environment, the insensitive fools!
4. I don’t recycle! All my Coke cans, newspapers, and glass bottles all get thrown into one bag with all the rest of my garbage. See, this answers two problems! I use less plastic for garbage bags if I only use one, and it reduces the amount of trips I have to make to my dumpster, thus cutting down on my CO2 output whilst breathing.

- Drive an eco-friendly car:

1. I drive a Focus (insert Ford Focus jokes here). Actually, that’s a joke in itself: mine is in the shop. No functioning car, no CO2 expelled into the air!
2. I don’t drive the Stretch Ford Excursion you see driving down Laurel. Imagine the gas mileage on that thing! But also imagine the bowling lane you could add to it, and you can see why people want to ride that thing, let alone drive it. While I won’t drive it due to the eco-guilt I’d put on myself, I’d pay for a ride on that massive car, however. For one thing, how many times are you going to ride in a Stretch Ford Excursion? Second, I’d be carpooling, which is great, one car for many people!
3. I don’t drive a Prius! It’s hard to believe, but making a Prius does more harm than good to the environment. The special nickel battery for our eco-enemy Prius begins its journey in Sudbury, Ontario (home of the infamous Superstack) where it is smelted. It then goes 10,000 miles on a container ship (roundtrip let’s hope). It then is sent to a nickel refinery in South Wales. Then it goes to China where it is turned into nickel foam. Eventually it ends up in Japan where it is finally made into the battery that makes a Prius what it is: a Prius (besides the ugly design and cramped seating).

Imagine the fuel and energy it took just to get that nickel from Canada to Japan! 10,000 miles, that’s quite a journey, not to mention the inhospitable landscape smelting this nickel created. So inhospitable in fact, that NASA is driving moon buggies on this terrain as it is the closest terrain on earth that represents the lunar landscape! I’m not making this stuff up. It takes more pollution to make a Prius than a Hummer, way more. Is it just me, or is the H2 suddenly looking better by the second?

So there you have it, comrades. I have gone into excruciating detail as to what I am doing every day to combat this menace called man-made global warming. Feel free to follow in my footsteps to reduce your carbon footprint, unlike Al Gore, who’s flying around in “big old jet airliners” (Steve Miller Band kudos) to tell us that CO2 emissions are evil.

Small side note: The Oscars going green is totally bogus. If they really want to cut down on their CO2 emissions and go green, they’ll ban all acceptance speeches. They should also do away with making Oscar awards at all. Heck, just put the whole ceremony online, it’s a helluva lot greener than what they had in mind.

So the next time some Greenpeace activists ask what you’re doing to combat man-made global warming, you’ll have ammo to respond with (assuming you don’t have a gun to begin the conversation with, silly!), and not end up being talked into buying carbon credits/offsets.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a green life to live. If you want to talk about natural global warming though (you know, the one where it isn’t our fault, is out of our control to stop, and has scientific proof to back it up), I’m all ears.

Posted in Editable Constitution | 1 Comment »

March 6th, 2007

She said (he said, too)

Ah yes, it has now become infamous. Conservatives make a misstep in a speech, and they get hounded beyond all belief. Thanks to the Mainstream Media, it’s been mentioned consistently these past few days.

Yes folks, Ann Coulter called Democrat Senator and presidential hopeful John Edwards the F-word at last weekend’s CPAC Convention while telling a joke. Not the F-bomb, the F-word. If you’re still completely clueless, it’s a term that has been associated with the gay community, and is a variant on the British slang term for cigarette (“fag”). I would tell you the word, but seeing as how I work for a politically correct media source, and being the kind person I am, I’m going to let you figure it out by yourself.

A quick recap on some bigger news sources that have covered the Ann Coulter debacle:

-Reuters
-Dallas Morning News
-CNN
-Houston chronicle blog
-The New York Times

Of course the Democrats have to jump into action and denounce Ann Coulter for what she said. Howard Dean put it so eloquently:

- “There is no place in political discourse for this kind of hate-filled and bigoted comments. While Democrats and Republicans may disagree on the issues, we should all be able to agree that this kind of vile rhetoric is out of bounds. The American people want a serious, thoughtful debate of the issues. Republicans — including the Republican presidential candidates who shared the podium with Ann Coulter today — should denounce her hateful remarks.”

Clever usage of words there, Mr. Dean. I especially like it when you used the term “hate-filled.” Such is the case with another person in the media over the weekend:

Bill Maher, host of the HBO program “Real Time,” was disappointed that the attempted assassination of Dick Cheney last weekend failed. That’s right, he was implying regret that the assassination attempt on the Vice President of the United States of America failed. How is this not hate speech?

Needless to say, Maher’s comments received practically no media attention. How much attention did he receive?

-Newsmax
-Newsbusters

Please note, neither of the two above sources is considered mainstream press. Yeah, that doesn’t smell like bias…

But wait, this isn’t the only slip of the tongue by Mr. Maher (you know, fool me once… fool me twice…). Maher has also said:

-That America is a “pitiful, helpless giant… because it’s a stupid country filled with stupid people.”  -That George Bush “is a Gilligan who cannot find his ass with two hands.”
-He even called the heads of the RNC “gay.”

The list goes on.

So, Ann Coulter makes an ad homonym attack, and the Left cries outrage. Bill Maher wishes someone was killed, and uses a slightly less offensive term for a homosexual, and he gets hardly any mention at all. Which is worse, really: Name calling or wishing for someone’s death? Borrowing a bit from DNC head Howard Dean, I believe Democrats should denounce his hateful remarks!

So we’re supposed to take offense when a conservative pundit makes a lowbrow attack on a presidential candidate, but when liberals call Bush “Hitler,” wish that assassination attempts on Cheney succeeded, and write movies on how Bush should be assassinated (Last year’s movie “Assassination of a President”), there is no condemnation.

Oh right, and don’t forget throwing Oreos at Michael Steele and having Democrat Sen. Byrd say the n-word on television. Little condemnation. It’s clear-cut hypocrisy. Tell me you don’t see it now.

Heck, I’ll be nice. When I get an apology for these Democrat faux pas, I will apologize for Ann Coulter’s remark. Until then, stop calling the kettle black.

Actually, this gives me a good quote to conclude with. What’s that you said, Mr. Dean?

“There is no place in political discourse for this kind of hate-filled and bigoted comments.”

Sorry Bill, even Howard Dean got it right this time for once.

Posted in Editable Constitution | 10 Comments »

March 5th, 2007

Expectations

Alright, so it has been 2 whole weeks since my blog got started. One newspaper article and a paycheck later, I’ve decided that I’ll let you faithful readers in on what I hope to achieve through this article.

As the title says, this is going to be a blog about politics. So naturally, expect politics.

Now comes the fun part:

This is going to be one of the very few editorials/blogs that will be conservative. I joined the Collegian bloggers because I was fed up with all the liberal opinions that were being put into the paper: Mash articles about Paccione, desperate cries for abandoning the war on terror, and pleas for civil rights lovefests when it came to the Patriot Act, smoking bans, and Referendum I.

I am an unashamed conservative. Background info for me includes being a member of this great University’s College Republicans for 3 years. If you bother to facebook me (add me as a friend while you’re at it!), no doubt you’ll see that my pride in being conservative has no limits. I rarely break ranks with how the great conservative minds think (See Limbaugh, Rush and Hannity, Sean). So don’t worry, I’ll be the small beacon of truth for all you silenced and/or depressed conservative folk out there. Be not afraid.

So, let the labeling begin. I’ve included what I consider my stances more important stances, as well as their liberal translations in parentheses:

• Pro-war (War monger)
• Pro-life (Anti-women’s choice)
• Anti-raising the minimum wage (Make more people homeless)
• Anti-gay marriage (Homophobic)
• Christian Catholic (Misogynist, Nazi-pope lover)
• Pro-national security (anti-civil rights)
• Pro-guns (Guns DO kill people)
• Anti-illegal immigration (Xenophobic)
• Pro-capitalism (Plutocrat)
• Anti-taxes (Confederate)
• Anti-welfare (Pro-debtors prisons)
• Anti-Terrorism (Hypocrite, Bush is a terrorist, lol!)
• Anti-Politically Correct (You’re mentally challenged)
• Global Warming skeptic (Anti-Polar Bears)

and so on.

Before you begin reading, might I remind you, you DO NOT have to read this blog. If you’re conservative-ophobic, or suffer from BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome), you might be better off reading the printed opinion section, the good old standby for left-leaning college student feelings and emotions.

So fear not, right-wingers, hope has arrived. You can catch me regularly in the online blogs section, and hopefully every Thursday in the actual newspaper! Naturally, I’ll have to be writing better than my fellow blogging colleagues, who picked way cooler topics than silly old politics, to get to my goal of being printed in the newspaper. God bless the First Amendment!

Posted in Editable Constitution | 2 Comments »

February 27th, 2007

Political Correctness: Expanding wordiness, one word at a time

“That’s offensive,” “that’s discriminatory,” “that’s not polite!” These are some of the common phrases I hear every now and again from my colleagues on campus. What are they talking about, you ask? Is it about pictures of aborted fetuses standing 50 feet high on the plaza? Is it the outrage being shouted at about affirmative action? Or is it about the gangstas, playas, and homies who say hello to each other by grabbing their crotch and/or flipping the bird to one another? Nope, these phrases are the common arguments I hear about why someone should be politically correct.

Let’s go through a quick list of “possibly offensive” words and their politically correct counterparts:

• -Retarded – mentally challenged
• -Black – African American
• -Gay – Homosexual
• -Straight – Heterosexual
• -Boyfriend/Girlfriend – Partner
• -Indian – First Nations (kudos to my mom for bringing that one to my attention)

The list just goes on. From the looks of it, it actually seems pretty simple to make something politically correct: Take a word that couldn’t possibly be offensive, unless you tried really hard to find a way to make it offensive (by looking at it from some perverted angle), and give it a new name, often in the format of 2 words.

Actually, come to think about it, this could be pretty fun. Let’s see if we can make some words PC, shall we?

Rams – Upon first glance, one would think that we’re simply referring to these graceful mammals that happen to be our mascot. But if we take it to an extreme trying to find a way to make the word “Rams” offensive, we can get these reasons:

• Rams are offensive to Buffaloes, especially after a couple drubbings in sports this season
• Rams can have a certain sexual connotation to it
• Rams can be offensive to environmentalists, due to its implication of heavy-duty pickup trucks

See? Too easy. I guess we can’t start calling our mascot the Rams anymore, we should start calling them the “woolly-horned ungulates” or “Buffalo superiors.” Actually, “horned” can be an offensive word too, but I digress…

Let’s try another one!

Vegan – Someone who will ingest nothing that comes from animals, be it eggs, cheese, or rump roast, either by choice or medical reasons (however, animal feces and decaying animal corpses found in the soil that grows these miracle plants are perfectly fine).

• Vegans are offensive to the carnivore in all of us, as we thrash mercilessly into a pound of finely prepared T-bone steak
• Vegans are offensive to the plants themselves, as they eat proportionally more plants than non- vegans do.

So then, how can “vegan” morph into a politically correct counterpart? “Carnivore challenged” seems pretty good.

One more. Let’s do colors!

Purple – The color of royal togas back in the good ol’ days of Vomitoria (not Vomitoriums) and backstabbing (literally) sandal-wearing people called “Brutus.” Purple is also a secondary color (that’s my kindergarten knowledge put to work, finally…)

• Purple is offensive to yellow, the only primary color that had no mention or say in purple’s creation.
• Purple is offensive to people that are colorblind and cannot see red and/or blue.

Purple, my friend, to be politically correct and not spread hate speech to your colored friends, as you’re all equals, I hereby call you “yellow challenged.” If you prefer, there is also “bi colored inclined to the red and blue degree.”

You see, it’s worthless. You take a perfectly fine, short word that can only seem offensive if you try REALLY hard, and make it even longer and incoherent.

Not to mention this problem:

Using political correctness, how would you label this person?

I’m assuming that most of you said this man was African-American. In actuality, this man is actor Rudolph Walker (check him out as Constable Gladstone in The Thin Blue Line, he’s awesome). By saying that he was African American (instead of, say, black) you would be implying that:

1. He’s African – actually, he’s from Trinidad
2. He’s American – actually, he’s British

Oops!

What this all boils down to, is society’s fear of offending a particular person or group.

A few examples of this “don’t offend people” mindset:

-Removing a dancing Illini act, as a white person paying homage to the great Illini tribe is offensive. All the while, Bobby Bowden is coaching the Seminoles of Florida State, whose fans have the Tomahawk chop. And those Super Bowl Colts, they reside in the one and only INDIANapolis, INDIANa.

-Banning negative chants at PSD football games, something CSU students are proud of, even though the faculty isn’t (remember Fum’s Song!). This actually makes me question whether a “suck less” chant is considered negative or not.

-Removing Pepe le Peu and Speedy Gonzalez from the Looney Tunes, as they misrepresent French and Mexican people. But exploding TNT in your hands, as it will simply scorch your face and tear your clothes a bit is totally accurate!

What’s this I hear about Freedom of Speech? It is being censored through political correctness. Using words that aren’t hateful (again, unless you try really hard to make it seem hateful) are now being censored. But dropping the f-bomb is perfectly fine (you shouldn’t say the f-bomb because it isn’t PC, you should say “passionate consummation”). It’s also perfectly fine to call the president a retard, but to call an actual retarded person “retarded,” you’ve unleashed PC Hell (Hell: Christian underworld for souls, to be politically correct; also known as Satan’s domain and H-E-double hockey sticks), not to mention your own hypocrisy in using the term “retarded.”

There is a silver lining to being politically correct, however: You know those three-page papers that you have to write for your Media in Society class? Thanks to political correctness, those scary three or four letter words suddenly become two ten-letter words, and if you’re a fan of word count, those 1,000-word minimum papers are all the more easier! And they say padding a paper isn’t art…

Gag me with a spoon. Grow up and take it like a man (or a woman, hear her roar). There are more important issues that need to be addressed than how to label someone. You can quote me on this when I say that political correctness is mentally challenged.

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February 23rd, 2007

Incinerated Space Garbage: A Landfill’s Dream

Ah yes, we’ve all had dreams of being the president. Just the thought of being the leader of the single greatest country in the world, having half the country adore you and the other half loathe you, flying on Air Force One while drinking presidential martinis, it just makes you giddy, doesn’t it? So begins my hypothetical dream world of where I would be president.

There would be one issue that would define my presidency. It wouldn’t be fighting a war over in Russia, Europe, Venezuela, China, or Iran, nor would it be arguing that a social issue, like allowing marriage between aborted fetuses and gay people as long as both parties are happy, is unconstitutional. Not even wild impeachment proceedings would define my presidency, where I would be called up on unsubstantiated charges of hacking against other players on CounterStrike.

The one issue that would define my presidency, ladies and non-ladies, would be an issue that most everyone seems to be very mum about: garbage control.

Landfills are getting ever bigger, and we’re looking for new and interesting places to stash our trash. Incineration, while a tempting quick-fix that could bring a ray of hope to cold hoboes, will only cause uproar among aging liberal hippies, who would prefer we live with our waste instead of part ways with it (see Van der Syn, Sim).

There is also the “sweep it under the rug” idea. This can also be known as apathy, “turning the blind eye syndrome,” or “Bill Clinton when facing terrorism-esque” — just forget about it, it isn’t a problem, don’t change what’s happening. Let the landfills get bigger, and when one of them fills up, make a new one. Apathy, you see, is for lazy bum college dropouts who don’t pay their part of the rent and would prefer to spend their time playing World of Warcraft instead (before you draw any conclusions: CounterStrike is a full contact sport), not elected officials, and especially not the president.          

Nay, I have a much better idea. You see that bright object in the daylight sky, the one that turns blue and destroys your retinas if you stare at it long enough? That, my friends, is called the sun. Thanks to progress made during the ’60s and ’70s in the areas of space travel, we can launch men into space, or at least fake it really well in a studio.

My idea? Build a massive rocket, capable of storing an entire landfill easily, build it out of cheap materials (possibly even garbage?), give it enough rocket fuel to exit Earth’s orbit, aim it at that burning ball of gas, “fire ze missiles,” and watch it get burned up by our happy little friend Mr. Sun. Rinse and repeat until satisfied.

If I get calls about incinerated space garbage causing global warming, I’ll have to hold my head and sigh at the oversensitivity of these people. “Incinerated space garbage kills polar bears!” No it doesn’t, now go fill up your landfill’s rocket.

Think about it. Not only could it revamp the space program, but we could catch up in the “garbage space race” to those pesky aliens who have been doing this exact same thing since before cavemen were beating cavewomen over the head with their caveclubs! I mean, what’s the sun going to do? It’s already getting bigger without our help, and given the size difference between the sun and a rocket full of garbage, I doubt it would mind.

That would be my legacy, folks and folkettes. I like to see it as a continuation of the space program, like what Reagan did with “Star Wars,” only it will be met with more massive approval by the entire country than the Gipper’s (environmentalists don’t count). Actually, come to think of it, this gives me a killer idea of how to win our country’s next great war: garbage bombs.

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February 20th, 2007

Media Bias: All in the name of the 1st Amendment?

There is a monster among us. It sucks you in with its appealing topics, and then when you aren’t even paying attention, it indoctrinates your mind with its agenda. It is the mainstream media, and it is the power tool of the Democrat Party.

MSNBC has them with Chris Matthews, who can’t go through a phone call without dropping an f-bomb about President Bush and calls Rudy Giuliani a fascist, and Keith Olbermann, who claims that there are 174 “bad conservatives” and only 23 “bad liberals” on his “Countdown.” ABC has Diane Sawyer, who interviews President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmahdinejad and claims he’s a good guy who’s just mistaken. The New York Times has its Maureen Dowds, and then hides behind the first amendment after it sabotages the United States‘ fight against terrorism.

And then there are the stories that the mainstream media misreports: Pure pessimism and debate over the war, where actual progress has been overlooked, or at best, reaches the scrolling bottom line. They’re always letting you know how many troops died in the war today, so they can depress you into thinking this particular war is different, because in this particular war, people die.

There’s also global warming, where the media praises Al Gore for being a daring and courageous leader in convincing the country and the world of the danger of global warming with his movie “An Inconvenient Truth.” But the skeptics, with facts on their sides, are shunned from the media and get little mention, get told that they should be stripped of their meteorologist credentials, or as Ellen Goodman so eloquently put it, “global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers”.

And when Barack Obama announced his candidacy for president, the media was practically throwing a party every single day, it seemed, with their nonstop praise of this young senator from Illinois. Chris Matthews went so far as to say that Obama’s candidacy “is one great day in American history” . But when Mitt Romney declared that he would be running for president, MSNBC’s Chip Reid simply called him “far right,” whereas Senator Obama, who is vehemently anti-war, was simply called a centrist who could unite the country. When Barack Obama announced his candidacy for presidency, he received over nine minutes worth of coverage during CBS’ “Saturday Early Show,” to Mitt Romney’s 10 seconds of coverage the day of his candidacy during “Early Show.”

Now what political party do you know of that seems to express these same opinions: praise for Democrats, frequent name calling and negativity when it comes to Republicans, extreme anti-war stances that can be seen as treason, hatred of the everything Bush, and touting man-made global warming as the single biggest problem America faces today? Coincidence? No sir.

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