muzings

I think I’m going to take this challenge on. I love to rant, and this provides a good way to rant consistently.

The topics are:

Day 1 - Love.
Day 2 - Confidence.
Day 3 - Racism.
Day 4 - Our generation.
Day 5 - Haters.
Day 6 - Followers.
Day 7 - Tumblr.
Day 8 - Best friends.
Day 9 - Wants and Needs.
Day 10 - Make up.
Day 11 - Global Warming.
Day 12 - Boys.
Day 13 - Girls.
Day 14 - Appearance.
Day 15 - Education.
Day 16 - Tumblr without photos.
Day 17 - Stereotypes.
Day 18 - Plastic Surgery.
Day 19 - Your future.
Day 20 - Jealousy.
Day 21 - Guilt.
Day 22 - Regrets.
Day 23 - The world.
Day 24 - Poverty.
Day 25 - The web.
Day 26 - Space.
Day 27 - Humans.
Day 28 - War.
Day 29 - Your hopes.
Day 30 - You.

(via justifiedinjustice)

This is not true for all Americans; I am generalizing, of course. But I am convinced that (the overwhelming majority of) Americans really are unable to process information presented to them from which they have to draw their own conclusions. They need CNN, Fox and NBC to spoon feed the news story to them so that they can understand it, know about it and decide which point of view they agree with.

Take for example two major revelation in the past two weeks: the Washington Post’s Top Secret America series which chronicles the exponential ballooning of America’s national security operations and costs and WikiLeaks’ Afghanitsan War Logs, which chronicle the Afghanistan war through first hand government reports from the field.

Now, for all intents and purposes, these are blockbuster reports which need to be looked at carefully and analyzed closely because both can provide insight that up till now has been the domain of intelligence analysts. The first was largely ignored by the media also, because god forbid someone actually looks at data and extrapolates their own opinions, despite the fact that the Washington Post released the information in a fantastic format. The second, the collection of 92,000 documents leaked by WikiLeaks, has been debated about but only as far as the question of its use, and the chances that the people who leaked it are going to be prosecuted– it hasn’t been an analysis so much, rather a sidestepping. Most importantly, now that these otherwise secret records are in the public domain, Americans are only focusing on what is being pointed out to them by the media rather than doing their own research. In fact, the overall reaction has been apathy, which is a bit disgusting because every other day, almost everyone has an opinion of security matters, the massive budgetary problems in America and on how the Afghanistan war is going.

Then again, I didn’t expect much more from a population in which 26% of people don’t know which country America declared independence from.

Keep pasting bumper stickers on to your cars folks, you’re doing a heck of a job.

How in the world does the US Department of Defense lose track of 8.7 billion US dollars? That is the amount that the DOD cannot account for in its calculations of money spent on Iraqi reconstruction- more specifically, its 95% of the total budget earmarked for the project, which came from the oil revenues of Iraq. 

Lax accounting pratices is not a good enough answer. You forget a thousand, sure. You lost a million, sure, I understand, your wife needed a diamond encrusted Rolls-Royce; fine, I get it. But you stole 8.7 billion dollars and you expect me to believe this poppycock bullshit that your accountant was not certified and hence made a few mistakes? Please.

With that kind of money, I’d admit I stole it, buy myself an army of lawyers and let them battle the case in court till I die; at which time, I’d give it all to my pet chihuahua just to be belligerent. Lax accounting standards, my diamond encrusted ass.