You're Still Wrong.. Mykel's Feb 2020 Blog I DON'T GET IT (Pt. 3)

You're Still Wrong.. Mykel's Feb 2020 Blog I DON'T GET IT (Pt. 3)

NOTE: This is my third WEEKLY blog. I’ve heard from several readers that “it’s too long.” Maybe they’re right. I know the feeling of reading on a screen. An old friend from the band The Apostles sent me a 65 page book he wrote. It’s a great read, but I can only manage 10 pages at a time on the computer. Something about the media shortens attention or concentration. For me, this is a test. Please let me know what you think. So far, these segments seem too short. Next month: BI-WEEKLY! 

YOU’RE STILL WRONG
Mykel’s Post MRR

Feb 2020

Part Three

of

I Don’t Get It

The focus of this column is feedback from others... explaining how they think on topics I don't understand. Last week I asked for an explanation of how omnivores can excuse the horrors of factory farming, yet condemn less-horrible cock-fighting and bull-fighting. This week I ask about...)

GAY MARRIAGE: I’ve long been an opponent of gay marriage... and straight marriage… at least as government recognized institutions. Again, if you want to see my reasons, just go back and read everything I’ve ever written before.

BUT, I can understand the thinking of those who want to be allowed to partake of the benefits of marriage: Half-price healthcare, automatic hospital visitation rights. the ability to transfer funds without being taxed, the right to social security benefits someone else paid for… and this from Consumer Reports: If there's a large discrepancy between the bride and groom's incomes, the lower-earning spouse might serve as a tax shelter for the higher earner.

I get it. You want those perks offered only to married people. That is… to those who follow a government sanctioned religious rite. I don’t like it. I don’t support it. I think it’s unfair, but I understand it.

What I don’t get is those who claim to want gay marriage on the basis of equal rights! It’s as clear as the blood on the sheets that married and unmaried people do NOT have equal rights. Marriage itself is inequality. The “right” to get married is the “right” to give up your freedom and participate in a fundamentally unequal institution. This has nothing to do with equality. The “right” to marry becomes a duty to marry, with insurance companies demanding marriage before they’ll insure “a partner.” TWO becomes the official number... required before you can avoid estate taxes or gain the right to someone else’s social security when they kick the bucket.

It’s as if, in the 1800s, gay people demanded the right to own slaves… in the name of equality. Slavery, like marriage is an institution of inequality. Allowing more slave owners (or marriages) does not change that inequality. So please… explain to me how gay marriage makes people equal. 

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at god@mykelboard.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available. Subscribe to the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com]

→ A touch of integrity dept: US Attorney General William Barr asked facebook to build a “back door” into its encryption of Messenger and WhatsApp messages and calls. Why? For SECURITY, of course, so criminals can’t send messages without the cops reading them. (Of course, in pre-internet letter-writing times, the cops did open a few letters… but not in anywhere neat the number they do or want to do now).

"The 'backdoor' access you are demanding for law enforcement would be a gift to criminals, hackers, and repressive regimes," WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger executives wrote. I’m still not a fan of facebook (though I use it too much), but you gotta give punk points where they’re due.

LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

I read that the search engines like lots of links... and it's also nice to support my friends --and enemies-- in their blogs. So facebook me or email me if you have a blog, webpage or something else to connect to. I add you. You add me.

Here's a start:

David Goldberg's Busy Microbes Blog

And another Goldberg: goldberg.wordpress.com

Poetry and humor fans will like Justin Martin in The Latency

And my friend Mike R has a nice site with recipe hits from the past! (He cooked for me once... great stuff.) Check out Yesterday's Recipes.

And here's one by a member of ANTI-SEEN... a tour diary of sorts.

Andy Shelton has an interesting blog here.

Savage Hippie is a guy who has been YouTubing for a long time. Our opinions largely overlap... but he complains that I'm a Communist. I'm not! I'm a communist.

Chris Stecher publishes a zine called PRECIS. You can see the back issue links there... and he promises a new issue soon.

If there’s no link here (I can’t find it temporarily), then Google… er… Duckduckgo him for information.

And my long-term pal Sid Yiddish contributes with his Mishegas Master Blog.

Then there’s the link for people who hate links. Real live XEROS, a zine in a world of e-zines and virtual ideas. Check out ASYMMETRICAL ANTI-MEDIA “The Review Zine with Lunatic Fringe Tendencies.” What’s the URL? Hah! You need to put a crisp (or wrinkled) dollar bill in an envelope and MAIL IT (With a stamp. Get it?) to: Jason Rodgers, PO Box 10894, Albany NY 12201 And you should.

Let me know if you have a blog… or a PRINT zine and want to be added to the list. You show me yours… you’ve already seen mine. god@mykelboard.com

Eureka? You're Boring! (Column Meant for Street Carnage)

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

MRR Column 363 (Never published, never submitted)

[Note: Though, this column was written before I was fired, it was never submitted to MRR.]

You're Wrong

An Irregular Column

by Mykel Board

We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks. --Woodrow Wilson

Work. Study. Get ahead. Kill. --1960's anti-war chant

Panic. The Smithsonian Magazine talks about a report that the US is only in the middle of world-countries in math and science-- especially women. The U.S. Department of Education starts a campaign to encourage more female participation in those areas. They make t-shirts: SCIENCE-- IT'S A GIRL THING. The campaign fails miserably.

Meanwhile, students find themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt-- student loans that will never be paid off. Why? So they can go to college and earn a degree to get “a good job” so they can earn enough money to pay off their student loans. Most will not.

The Economist reports: The cost of university per student has risen by almost five times the rate of inflation since 1983, making it less affordable and increasing the amount of debt a student must take on. Between 2001 and 2010 the cost of a university education soared from 23% of median annual earnings to 38%; in consequence, debt per student has doubled in the past 15 years. Two-thirds of graduates now take out loans. Those who earned bachelor’s degrees in 2011, graduated with an average of $26,000 in debt, according to the Project on Student Debt, a non-profit group.

At those prices, who can afford to waste money studying USELESS subjects like art or language? No math unless it's accounting. No science unless it teaches you how to fiddle chemicals into something some drug company can patent for big bucks. Anything else is useless. It won't get you a job.

What is USELESS anyway?

In 2013, useless is not putting money in someone else's pocket. Useless is not consuming. Art is useless unless you sell it. Music is useless unless you create PRODUCT. Music is even tangential to music. Ask any band on tour... the big money-maker is the t-shirts. Nobody buys records. Nobody buys music.

Liberals push for university for all, so even the poor will have a chance to be educated... and get good jobs... and contribute to society (aka General Motors, Walmart, Citibank, Million Dollar Real Estate).

Conservatives want students to pay their own way. Borrow from the bank. Enrich Citibank, before they can even start working for them. Standing on your own two feet, they call it.

FLASHBACK: It's 1988, September. Classes are just starting. It's my first day of Gilyak. In the world, there are about 500 speakers of that language. I'm gonna learn it. This isn't a speaking class, though. It's a grammar class. We learn about the structure of Gilyak, how the grammar relates to the phonemes. Like in Mongolian and Finnish, they have vowel harmony. But unlike those two, the harmony isn't in the front or backitude of the vowels. It's in the height of the tongue position. We're lucky enough to have the world's leading expert on Gilyak teaching the course.

BANG! The HAND OF THE PRESENT reaches back in time. Slaps me on the back of the head.

“Yo Mykel,” says the VOICE OF THE PRESENT, “what the fuck are you gonna do with Gilyak?”

“Yo PRESENT,” I say, “why do I have to DO anything? Why can't I just learn something interesting? Just LIKE learning it... even if I forget it next year. Why can't I enjoy finding out stuff for itself? Learning is fun.”

“Because,” says the VOICE OF THE PRESENT, “you have to live in society. You're going to college for a purpose. You've got a life ahead of you... you're less than a third of the way through. How will this contribute to your future? How will Gilyak make you a better member of society? Get a job? Be productive? What GOOD is it? You'd better plan for your future rather than waste your time with fuckin' Gilyak.”

FLASH TO NOW: It's my niece's college graduation. She's got a B.A.... in marketing. She aced the class How to Do Business on the Golf Course. I shit you not.

I've taken the train to Delaware to attend graduation ceremonies. I stay at a Holiday Inn, right near the university.

I have a few minutes to explore town before pre-graduation dinner.

I make sure I have the stupid little keycard, close the door and head down the hall toward the elevator. I'm in room 44-- easy to remember: Reggie Jackson's number. The door to room 42 is not quite shut. As I pass it, I stop and listen. The sound of panting comes from inside. I nudge the door open with my foot, trying to be as quiet as possible.

Yep, there on the bed, an attractive young man rests a computer on his naked stomach. He's reaching behind the machine to stroke his short but alluring stubbiness. I watch quietly as my own short but alluring stubbiness hardens.

As in every piece of imperfect timing, at this point, the door squeaks.

“What the fuck?” he says, quickly putting himself together.

I recognize the VOICE. It's the VOICE OF THE PRESENT.

“Hey,” I tell him, “I know you.”

“What the fuck?” he repeats.

“You were jerking off,” I tell him. “Just lying in bed jerking off.”

“So?” he asks. “Like you don't jerk off?”

“But what's the purpose?” I ask him. “How will this contribute to your future life? How will this make you a better member of society? Get a job? Be productive? What GOOD is jerking off?”

Get it?

Universities used to be places of learning. You'd study things that were absolutely useless... in the job sense. You'd learn art, philosophy, interpreting Egyptian Hieroglyphics. At Columbia College, I took a course in the History of Violence and Pornography. (I aced that one.) Universities were places of agitation, socialization, give and take, pranks, and inter-racial drug-taking.

Now, most classes are given through the internet. Jerking off at home, rather than having REAL SEX. But jerking off with a purpose: to earn a degree, get ahead in life, get a job, contribute to society. AHHHRGH!

If you want to learn math because numbers are the most fascinating artificial construct. Fine! It's not much different from learning Gilyak. If you want to learn math because AT&T needs number crunchers or because the US Army needs to better direct its killer drones.. not fine.

If you study to get a “good job,” you are wasting your time. Not only your time now, but your future time. And you'll spend the rest of you life trying to convince yourself that owning THINGS... having an SUV or an Internet TV with 453 food channels... is a valid substitute for actually living.

What is it with HAVING A JOB? Why do we care what you can DO with that? How long before universities stop all of the Gilyak classes and instead offer Creative Accounting for Hiding Business Profit 101.

Okay. In today's American society, you NEED a job. You also need to regularly take a shit. But do you really have to go to college for either? And should your life be a vague goal of a “good job” (oxymoronic?) Or should you be LIVING NOW, enjoying knowledge for itself... feeling the bliss of each fart as it escapes into the atmosphere.

Yeah, you work because you have to. But that is neither a goal nor the a reason to study.

Besides, is ANY job better than the real freedom of NOT WORKING?

Instead of men asking for the right to stay home and take care of the kids... or just shop. Women demand EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK. Huh? How bout the right NOT TO WORK. What kind of life is it when all your time is work? For what?

In the old days, women stayed home, did some shopping, cooking, cared for the kids when they weren't in school, watched TV, read books, took day classes. They lead real lives while their stupid husbands crowded into stupid cars or commuter trains to earn a sliver of the money they were making for someone else.

Now women want EQUALITY IN THE WORKFORCE. Why? Equality to what?

How 'bout forcing the idiots who WANT to spend their lives EARNING MONEY... those who live for greed... for riches... to pay for the rest of us?

Instead of creating a society where MORE women are entering the workforce... where MORE women are in executive positions... using their math or science to make money, why not create one where MORE men (and women) LEAVE the workforce... hang out at home... have a personal relationship with their kids? NO BREAD-WINNERS, because the bread shouldn't have to be won. It should be there for the eating.

In Scandinavia, where people are happiest with their lives, it's easy to get welfare. The rich pay up to 90% income taxes and they still live well. In America, life is hell, the rich are the devil, and you get no more protest than people demanding to burn equally. What is it?

The right to work? What about the right to learn? The right to adventure? The right to jerk off at your leisure? In China, people jump out of windows from the strain of building iPhones so you can instantly notify your friends of a cute-boy spotting. Is that your RIGHT? Is it right?

Is it worth giving your life to some corporate monster with MAYBE two days a week where you're not a slave-- to report a CUTE BOY? I don't think so.

We're asking the wrong questions. It's analagous to gay marriage.

In that case, instead of asking “Why do people have to get married at all?” or “Why does the government intrude in the marriage business?” or “Why does marriage give rights that singledom doesn't give?” Homos ask, “Why can't GAYS get married too?” AHHHRGH!

People should ask: “Since most work is dangerous, environmentally destructive, soul-destroying, useless, why do people have to WORK at all?” or “If women traditionally stay home, prepare and LIVE life, why can't men do the same?” Instead, they ask, “Why can't women earn the same money as men for the same work?” AHHHRGH!

Instead of asking, “Is Gilyak an Indo-European language, or is it related to Mongolian... or maybe an isolate, like Basque?”

People ask “Hey, I got this new nose-hair counting app on my cellphone. You want a link to it?”

Add your own AHHHRGH! here.

ENDNOTES: [You can subscribe by email (god@mykelboard.com) or view the blog (mykelsblog.blogspot.com/) for live links and a chance to post comments on the column. Your zines, Cds/records, and... er... private videos... can and should be sent to me at: Mykel Board, POB 137, Prince Street Station, New York NY 10012]

-->Christians, ya gotta love 'em Dept: After the Connecticut school shootings. The Reverend Rob Morris, was reprimanded by the head of his church. Why? He attended a multi-religious memorial service with other preachers and rabbis. The head of the church said Morris shouldn't have attended. Why? By attending, he gave "the false impression that our differences with respect to who God is, who Jesus is, how he deals with us and how we get to heaven, really don't matter in the end."

Morris apologized.

-->The military, you gotta love it Dept: The Yale Herald reports than an associate professor of psychology applied for a federal grant to bring US Special Forces to campus. The professor wanted to teach them "interrogation techniques." He planned on having them practice on "someone they can't necessarily identify with." Who would he use to teach the techniques on?

"We could use New Haven immigrants from Colombia, Ecuador, Morocco and Nepal," suggested the professor. After student/alumni protests, the grant proposal was withdrawn.

And further on the education front:

-->Understanding is one thing we will not tolerate dept: From AMNewYork: an unidentified 10th-grade teacher at Albany High School assigned her students a "persuasive writing" exercise.

She told them to pretend their teacher was a Nazi.

The Albany schools superintendent later met with Jewish leaders and apologized saying "that's not the assignment that any school district is going to tolerate."

The teacher is facing disciplinary action that could include termination.

-->The Kids are All Right dept: The Progressive Magazine reports that the Atwood-Hammon Little League in Illinois is raffling off an AR-15 assault rifle as a fund raiser.

Little League commissioner Steve McClain says, "People from the media keep asking the same question: 'Is this tasteless?' I don't think so. It's all about the kids."

On the MRR front: the editors and their co-conspirators have tried a new trick: Blaming the Victim. It's ironic, because it's a pet shibboleth of feminists that MEN are guilty of this tactic.

“I'm sorry, officer, but I couldn't help myself. She was dressed so... so... slutty. I couldn't keep my hands to myself.”

So, here's the same tactic from the MRR powers. This is from an email to me:

First, you obviously have read not only Mariam's column, but Lydia's column as well, from the previous issue. Both have indicated how incredibly obnoxious and obstreperous you have been throughout this entire process. Lydia in particular has likened your attitude to hari-kiri, a kind of suicidal behavior. I noted the same thing in my own column, when I said you were behaving like "suicide by coordinator" and that your intent was to purposefully get yourself canned.

As usual, I urge you to express your opinion to me at my email address above and to MRR at mrr@maximumrocknroll.com.

MRR column for 355 (The Column In Between)

This is the column in between the two that the editors refused to print. I guess there's nothing controversial in this one. Uh oh!

You're Wrong

An Irregular Column

by Mykel Board

Column for MRR 355 (Love and Marriage go together like..., or Mykel sees history abused)

“How can an American woman go out with a Japanese man? They never say “I love you” or buy flowers or things like that.” --A Japanese woman showing surprise at my white female friend moving to Japan to live with a Japanese guy

“Love and marriage, love and marriage, go together like a horse and carriage.” -- Sammy Cahn lyrics; Frank Sinatra record 1955

Yes! It's so rare to find a girl who'll do your balls. One like her... right now... sucking first one, then the other, between her lipsticked lips.

I sit over her, my feet on either side of her head. My throbbing five inches alert.. at attention... as she runs her tongue over my hairitude.

Releasing my twin robins eggs, she moves her tongue through the taint, to the sensitive brown hole. Pick... pick... poke!!

Yowsah! Not only does this girl do tea-baggin... she's a rimmer too! I'm in love!

“Marry me!” I shout. “Quick marry me, before I come!”

Fortunately she can't answer. Her tongue is busy on other matters.

Part One: I've squirted screed against marriage ever since I first took chisel to rock to write for MRR. It didn't help. More and more screamed out for “the right” to marriage. Even homos got in the act.

These days, if I get an invitation to a wedding, I no longer fork over the tens of dollars necessary to buy some exotic gift... like a veg-o-matic. For what? A temporary team, that'll break up in 2 years? I don't think so. Sorry, from me, you'll get a five pack of beer-savers resealable bottlecaps. That's it.

But... what if the problem isn't marriage at all? What if it's the Shakespearean... the John Donne... the Harlequin Romance. What if it's the WAY we get married, rather than marriage itself.

Type feminist and arranged-marriage into the BING® search box that Microsoft® forced on you. You'll get 2,760,000 results. Most will be like: Arranged marriages: a subversion of feminism.

The idea that someone's parents... or a professional matchmaker should choose a mate is repugnant to Personal Freedom^®. To me, that's like saying the idea of someone else choosing your slave master is repugnant to personal freedom. We should be free to chose our own slave masters, right? I vote for ending slavery... but that's another story.

Even if you think there's something wonderful about marriage. That a family is the best way to raise some stinking brat who'll end up hating you anyway. Even if you believe all that, look at the numbers!

If marriage success is determined by the length of the marriage, marriage-for-love loses. The US, land where love rules, is first in divorce. (Or second to Sweden, depending on whose statistics you use.) The most stable marriages are in India, country of arranged marriages.

It's logical. People fall out of love. Their partners change. What they used to like about each other, they begin to hate. Or something's empty. Marriage-- or even dropping puppies-- isn't like they imagined. After the rim job, there's still someone else's dirty underwear on the floor... and that dingleberry on your tongue. People fall out of love. They don't fall out of an arrangement made by their parents.

Part Two: One of the few other columnists that I actually read criticizes me as being a Free Speech Absolutist^®. Like the muckrakers of old, it's an epithet I wear proudly. Let's check out the alternative view. I'll call it, No-free-speech-to-those-who-would-deny-it-to-others®.

The Scene: The big square in front of City Hall in Republicanville, Kansas. A rally... at least 50 people from Nazis for Romney. The speaker, a short man with deepset eyes and Frida Kahlo eyebrows stands at a makeshift podium. He addresses the crowd with a little click of the heels.

“My fellow white Americans...” he starts.

There's a commotion... some shouting... a scream. Some people charge into the crowd from the back... fists flailing... there's a chain...ski masks... black leather jackets. They push through the crowd to the small podium.

One of the attackers, a tall guy with catcher's mitt sized hands, grabs the little speaker by the upper arm. He spins the man. BLAM, a fist to the little guy's jaw. He's down.

The big guy shouts into the microphone. “NO FREE SPEECH TO THOSE WHO WOULD DENY IT TO OTHERS!”

The cops come... there's a melee... blah blah blah. You got it.

Then the papers. More publicity for Nazis for Romney... more sympathy than they would've gotten if nobody cared. But there's a deeper issue-- a moral issue.

If I say “No Free Speech to those who would deny it to others,” that means I want to deny free speech to some people. According to my own logic, since I want to deny free speech to others, my own free speech should be denied.

See where that goes? It's like the Hatfields and McCoys. EVERYBODY is denying free speech to someone, and then-- because of that denying-- is in turn denied by others. Only the strong can say anything.

Bad/stupid/wrong speech is best countered by good/smart/right speech, not by censorship. Not by government censorship. Not by The People's® censorship.

Part three:

MAP (Mothers Against Penises) marches down Market Street in San Francisco. The women, mostly walking advertisements for Sensa, hold aloft cardboard signs showing pictures of deformed babies. One is missing its arms... just stubs at the shoulder. Another shows an almost normal baby except that in the middle of its head is one enormous eye. The babies look dead, though the enormous eye is open. Under the various pictures is the logo: IF IT WEREN'T FOR PENISES, THESE BABIES WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN BORN TO SUFFER.

Strange? Maybe, but their logic is based on fact. For these babies to have been born, a penis was involved. Even if the mother was artificially inseminated, you need a penis to milk the semen from in the first place. Eliminate penises, and you eliminate birth defects. It's logic. It's science. It's easy, right?

Add history to logic and science and you get the atheist/materialist trinity that radical and feminist intellectuals have been praying to ever since Karl Marx gave Catherine MacKinnon her first rimjob.

I'm reading this book called Lies My Teacher Told Me. It's an alternative® to modern textbooks. The author complains that those gloss over the evils of American history. They don't mention that Thomas Jefferson had slaves... or that the British did not civilize a barren land but destroyed an already present civilization... or that people spoke Spanish in America much before they spoke English.

I've never read On the Use and Abuse of History for Life but, from the title, Nietzsche got it half right.

History itself is abuse. When books use it to gloss over the “bad parts” of American history, it's abuse. When books, like Lies My Teacher Told Me, use it to prove a point, it's abuse.

That book, for example, in an attempt to make it seem like the Civil War was fought about slavery, picks a quote from the South Carolina constitution. If it were honest, there'd be a pro-slavery quote from the Articles of Confederation. There isn't. The only mention of slaves in that document is the 3/5 voting rule... same as in the U.S. Constitution. Not much of a reason for war.

The reality? A bunch of reasons... a complex web... with the rich and corporate as the spiders.

To some, history is a series of big moves made by great men. It is presidents, generals, people whose achievements Changed the Course of History.® That too is wrong.

If I get a particularly good blowjob... one that includes my balls... that changes the course of history. My history, at least. EVERYTHING changes the course of history.

Maybe, history is a series of misdeeds and revenge, then revenge for the revenge, then revenge for the revenge for the revenge. Each time a different side wins, the winners rewrite the history, making themselves the good guys. I donno.

We can look at the past and see things from other vantage points. History is an interesting task, and it may be able to shed some light on the present. But it doesn't teach us what to do in the present. Neither does logic or science.

With free speech, the answer is not to ban it, but to provide a better alternative. With history, the answer is not to provide alternative history, but to let it go.

Penises make birth defects is logical, scientific and historical. It is also wrong.

What we need instead are absolutes... like free speech. We need some basic principles we can judge are right. Then we work from those principles. I propose the following as starters:

1. People have the right to say whatever the fuck they want, though THE PLACE and VOLUME they say it (like during the scary part of a horror movie) can be slightly regulated. Any regulation must apply equally to everyone. Content of the speech cannot be a criterion.
2. People do NOT have a right to riches, or money. It's the duty of the government to insure everyone has a basic level of existence: food, housing, clothes, healthcare. The government can and should do this by taking from the wealthy and giving to the poor.
3. Other countries have other systems of government. Ours should not interfere in other systems except to allow open and unlimited entrance to people who want to leave those other systems.
4. Consenting people have a right to do anything among themselves, as long as it doesn't physically hurt anyone outside their group.

Other suggestions are welcome. I'm sure they'll come.

ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or blog viewers (mykelsblog.blogspot.com/) will get live links and a chance to post comments on the column. Your zines, Cds/records, and... er... private videos... can and should be sent to me at: Mykel Board, POB 137, Prince Street Station, New York NY 10012]

-->Sure corporate taxes are too high dept: The International Paper Company gave their CEO, John Faraci, a 75 percent pay hike in 2010. His new pay? $12.3 million. The company paid in taxes? Er... they got a $249 million refund. Good work John, you earned your pay.

-->T-shirts are speech too dept: The Lincoln Journal Star reports that officials at a Willie Nelson concert at the Nebraska State Fair told a woman she couldn't wear her Marijuana-leaf t-shirt. Why? It had a pot leaf on it.

The fair director said "this is a family event and we don't permit the promotion of illegal activity." Of course Willie Nelson himself is vocally pro-legalization of the herb.

-->Representative John Fleming, Republican of Louisiana, attacked Obama's proposal to tax the wealthy. His business took in $6.3 million last year, but he said "my profits are a fraction of that."

"By the time I feed my family, I have maybe $400,000 left over." Don't you feel sorry for him? By the way, the median US household income is just under $50,000.

-->It should be obvious department: The National Coalition Against Censorship reports that the TEXAS REPUBLICAN PARTY's new platform opposes teaching "critical thinking skills." Why?

"They have the purpose of challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority."

Of course, they're right. Critical thinking DOES challenge fixed beliefs, but I think there's another reason.

Texas Republicans are afraid that if people thought critically, they'd never vote Republican (except for the 1%®)^.

-->Merry Xmas Nessie! dept: A religious school in Louisiana uses a textbook asserting that THE LOCH NESS MONSTER is a relative of a dinosaur... and that proves dinosaurs are alive and evolution is wrong. That school will get state funding under a new voucher plan in Lousiana. The plan will also give money to schools that teach that "apartheid preserved cultures" and “the Ku Klus Klan was an agent of reform.”

-->Police Dept. of the Year dept: The Palm Beach Post reports that a Florida cop honored in 2010 as OFFICER OF THE YEAR, was busted for selling meth for the last two years.

I say, meth, huh? No wonder he was OFFICER OF THE YEAR... a real go-getter, I bet.

-->Is that a pistol in your pocket or are you shortsless dept: WTSP.com reports that Polk County FL Sheriff Grady Judd said the county was ending their Free Underwear for Men in Jail® program. Says Judd, “If inmates want to wear underwear in jail, they can buy it, just like had-working Polk County citizens do.”

I guess he means the citizens OUT of jail, earning enough money to buy underwear. Otherwise, it's like asking a slave to pay for his own housing and food. Oh wait... that's capitalism, isn't it?

-->Remember him? Dept: According to a report by the Center for Immigration Studies, 80% of the new jobs in Texas while Rick Perry's was governor went to newly arrived immigrants. Half of those were in the country illegally. The employment rate for native-born Texans actually declined during Perry's regime.

-->Take that Bribe, please dept: There is an international organization that creates a "Corruption Perception Index."

It is a view on how "clean" different governments seem in countries around the world. Cleanest is New Zealand. At the bottom of the list, ranking # 182 is Somalia.

The U.S? Number 24. And I think the only reason America scored THAT high, was that someone paid off the survey takers.

-->Thanks dept: I want to thank the Rev Norb for the inspiration to strategically use those little Registered circled R's(®) to make several points. If those R's don't appear in this column, blame the typesetter for interfering with my free speech.

 

--Mykel Board's barely functioning homepage is www.mykelboard.com, you can also find him wasting way too much time on facebook.