President Obama Birth Certificate

I just wanted to post this image.  For far too long we have had to listen to a bunch of fucking morons tell us that Barack HUSSEIN Obama is not like us, what with his dark looking skin, and 'socialist ideals' and 'Marxist tendencies' etc.

These cretins, collectively known as 'birthers,' who make up a disturbingly high percentage of Republicans these days, would do or say anything to remind us that a non-white American was now in charge.  "TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK" right?

So how about all you birthers, grow a big pair of balls, and admit that the reason you don't like the President is because he isn't white.  You surely have enough of an education to see that his ideals are pretty much center right, hardly extreme liberal that you like to pretend.  You surely see that he isn't really a Muslim right?  So why not just pull out that Confederate flag, slap a South Will Rise Again bumper sticker on your truck, and call him the 'N word' just like you always wanted to?  Stop hiding your racism behind the lie that you 'are not sure' he is 'really American.'  Own your racism and bigotry, just like the sheet wearing KKK used to do.

The proof is now here for all to see.  Barack Obama is as American as apple pie.  Born in the US of A.  So how about we move on from this nonsense and talk about how we can fix the mess that W created for us?

Sony PlayStation Network Hacked

Sony have recently had some egg on their face with the 'illegal network intrusion' that has left over 70 million PlayStation users without a network for several days now.

But annoying as it is not to be able to enjoy Call of Duty or Netflix, while their network is down, I was especially angry today to read the latest press release from Sony about the problem.  It was a little while before they even admitted that a hacker had been to blame for the outage.  Today though, they went a step further and almost a week after the outage began they mentioned that it is possible that personal data from users may have been compromised, including, name, address, email address, credit card numbers, birth dates, and basically anything we've shared with Sony in recent times.  Awesome.

The blog post suggested that the 70 million users be 'vigilant' and check their credit reports for identity theft or phishing scams.  Are they fucking kidding?

I used to like Sony a lot, but first they allowed their network to be compromised by a bunch of morons running patches that allow all manner of cheating in major popular games like Modern Warfare 2, ruining the whole game for several weeks.  Then they patched that and somehow let a hacker wander in, steal all their confidential customer data, and fuck their network on the way out.  Their system is so badly designed that I can't even watch Netflix on the PS3 any more because for some crazy reason I can't just stream like I would if I were watching it on my laptop.  It has to use the PSN, which is still offline.

I guess I am ultimately just disappointed that this is yet another failing in a long line of security breaches Sony have allowed, and this time it even involves my personal data that I entrusted to Sony.  I expect more than just a lame apology and a warning to be vigilant with my personal information.

UPDATE: Sony just issued another statement 'clarifying' that they didn't realize that personal data had been stolen until some computer forensic experts they hired figured it out.  Therefore, they did not sit on this knowledge for an unreasonable amount of time according to them.  Just thought I'd mention that.

Donald Trump

"I want to be a billionaire, so freaking bad."  The lines of a catchy, albeit annoying, Travie McCoy song.  And on the surface it does seem like it would be fun.  But increasingly we are seeing rich celebrity types drunk on their own egos getting completely out of control, and it makes you wonder if there is truth in the saying that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

When a rich and powerful person surrounds themselves with yes men and sycophants, does the line between reality and fiction begin to blur?

Take Donald Trump.  Once upon a time he was just another rich asshole, making deals, worshiping at the alter of money, which I'm sure he had gold plated.  But back in 2004, Trump decided to be on the telly and The Apprentice was born.  When interest in the show wained it was replaced with Celebrity Apprentice, where celebrities from the B thru D list show up and try and raise tax write offs, er I mean charitable donations, for their favorite charity.

To Mr. Trump's credit, he realized that when you are on TV with a reality show, it's a bit like having a 45 minute commercial every week that makes a lot of money for just being on TV, and then a ton of additional money later on in product placement deals and self promotion.

Fast forward to 2011 and it certainly seems as if all that money, power, and celebrity has perhaps taken his ego into the stratosphere.  So much so that in the past few weeks Donald Trump has made it increasingly obvious he would consider running for President of the United States.

Oddly though he didn't choose to do this by stating his case, showing his business and financial credentials, instead he did it by acting like the belligerent and obnoxious drunk you see in a bar late at night looking for a fight.  Trump began by coming out as a 'birther.'  This is the new term for what used to be called a 'racist.'  Now racist people simply attack Obama for not being 'like us' and murmur about 'taking our country back.'  These same people, love to make wild baseless claims about the birth place of our first non-white President.  To me it all seems like code to replace the N word.

Under normal circumstances I would have hoped that intelligence would have prevailed, and people would have dismissed the man as a rich and eccentric lunatic who loves the sound of his own voice.  But shockingly all this ranting about Obama's birth certificate in little sound bites on the news and on talk shows, didn't get Trump laughed off the stage, it actually ignited the Republican base, and in just a few weeks, he went from nowhere to the number one choice of polled Republican voters for their favorite presidential candidate in 2012.

I'm not sure if this speaks to the stupidity of Republicans, the weak field of candidates they have to choose from, the underlying racism within the Republican party, or all of the above.

Donald Trump has continued to run his mouth unchecked in the media almost every day now, with the class and sophistication of one of his gold phallic monstrosities he erects around the world.  Having just attacked Jerry Seinfeld in the media, he more recently moved on to Robert Di Nero spitting venom after Di Nero dissed him in an interview for his recent boorish behavior.

At this rate Trump is on course to put out a rap record by the end of the year in which he claims that he does in fact have the most bitches and hoes, and the longest penis, and is going to shoot anyone that dissed him recently.

Frankly, I'm sick of it.  What this country needs is some TLC to nurse it back to health after Bush raped it and left it for dead in the gutter.  The Bush legacy will take years to recover from, and the last thing we need is some retarded bimbo from Alaska telling us who the 'real' Americans are or the blow hard egomaniac telling us all how easy our problems are to fix if you are brilliant at everything, like he is.

I guess I may as well get used to it, because election season is nearly upon us, and it won't be long before the attack ads begin all over again.  The bright side for me though is that if Palin, Trump and that Mormon cult member are all the Republicans have to offer, Obama should be a lock for another four years.

Online Poker War

While politicians bicker about budgetary problems, policy, and economic philosophy, the Department of Justice and the FBI have concentrated their efforts and our tax dollars on an issue that is clearly top of the priority list of most Americans; the scourge of online poker.

Right now, across this free country, millions of Americans are choosing to play poker online.  And the government has decided, having learned nothing from Prohibition, that we should be spending millions of our tax dollars attacking a business that is enjoyed freely throughout the free world.

While many Americans worry that big corporations are not paying tax, that they don't have a job, that their health care benefits are becoming more expensive and covering less, the government is apparently worrying that some Americans are choosing to play poker on the Internet.  Never mind that poker is a true all-American game, with a rich history in this country, never mind freedom, capitalism, or common sense.

So in a move so disgusting it can only have been pulled from the George W. Bush Douchebook, the DoJ and FBI recently seized the domain names of several leading online poker sites, forcing them to block United States customers from their sites.

It is truly mind blowing that with all the issues we face in this country right now, such a concerted effort should be put into this.  Especially given the obvious reality that it is not supported by the majority of Americans.

We live in a country where gambling is a way of life for the vast majority of states.  Whether it be horse race betting, the lottery, bingo halls, slots, casinos, card rooms, or dog tracks.  Gambling exists legally in one or several forms, in just about every state.  In fact some of the largest casinos and gambling competitions are here in the US.  And Americans benefit tremendously from this reality.  Gambling has brought enormous income that has helped keep taxes lower, and fund programs that benefit our communities.

So why is the government attacking legitimate businesses around the world, that attract law abiding American citizens?  Why is it that I can go and spend $100,000 on scratch off tickets this week, but not bet $1 on a hand of online poker?  How come I can go to a fucking gas station three hours from my home and put my entire pay check into a slot machine without breaking the law, but I cannot bet 1c on the small blind of a game of online poker?

It's time we had a 'grown up conversation' about this.  America has clearly decided that gambling is okay.  Only a handful of states outlaw every form of gambling.  So on that basis why is the Federal government spending money that could be given to teachers or firemen, to try and create some kind of hypocritical prohibition on gambling, that violates trade agreements America has made around the world, makes no sense whatsoever, and clearly doesn't jive with America's public opinion?

It's time to end this insanity once and for all?  Allow online poker (which by the way isn't even gambling compared to the lottery or other legal gaming), regulate it and tax it.  Tap into the billions of dollars Americans want to play with, and take a little slice for the Government.

We've been hearing that America is broke for most of 2011.  So let's look to issues such as online gambling, and online poker, as potential revenue sources.  Because if it's a choice between legalizing online poker, or laying off 10,000 teachers, it is as they say, a no brainer.

Facebook Status Bullshit

When I was growing up, spam came in the mail, it was called a chain letter.  You'd get a letter telling you to send five copies of the letter to people you know, and you should send money to a random person and get good luck, along with threats of bad luck if you 'broke' the chain.

Today the equivalent is the Facebook status bullshit.  Usually it begins talking about some terrible disease like cancer, or perhaps something patriotic about the troops.  It ends with something along the lines of 97% of people will not put this in their status, because they are evil soulless bastards who are better off dead.  Or something like that.

One that has recently been doing the rounds is this one:

When I was a kid I didn't have a XBox, Wii, cell phone or computer. I had a pushbike and a curfew, a.k.a. the street lights. I lived outside, not inside. If I didn't eat what my mom made, I didn't eat. I didn't dare tell my parents no nor talk back. Life wasn't hard, it was Life. And I survived! Repost if you drank water out of a hose and hand sanitizer didn't exist, but u COULD get your mouth washed out with soap! 

Now the first time I saw it, it was posted by someone over the age of 45, which makes sense a little bit if you want to look at the past through rose tinted glasses.  But recently I saw it posted by someone in their 20s, and thought what the fuck?

I have always thought it was a huge mistake to overly romanticize the past.  My own mother does this a lot, and talks of her idyllic childhood with so little crime.  Of course she is rather ignoring the reality that millions of the men likely to commit violent crime had just been brutally slaughtered in the world's most horrific and bloody world war!

My problem with this status update is with almost every line of this stupid post, so I'll break it down for you:

"When I was a kid I didn't have a XBox, Wii, cell phone or computer."

 - Awesome, and when your grandparents were kids, they didn't have anti-biotics, and kids died needlessly from illnesses we can cure these days.  Now sure, they still die needlessly, but that's because our country likes to withhold medicine from the poor kids, so the rich people can get richer.

But hey, if you think it was better before technology, log off Facebook, turn off your fucking computer, and stop using technology to whine about technology like it's a bad thing.

"I had a pushbike and a curfew, a.k.a. the street lights."

-  I'm pretty sure that bicycles are still available in this modern era.  We have streetlights too.

"I lived outside, not inside."

-  That's because there was nothing to do in the house because you lived in a backwards era.

"If I didn't eat what my mom made, I didn't eat.  I didn't dare tell my parents no nor talk back."

-  So your parents made you live in fear, and starved you if they fed you food you didn't like.  Awesome.

"Life wasn't hard, it was Life. And I survived!"

- If life wasn't hard, why talk about 'surviving' it?  I never say, I survived watching TV last night.  You only use that word if the experience was hard, so that statement is contradictory and stupid.

"Repost if you drank water out of a hose and hand sanitizer didn't exist,"

- Ah yes, the good old days, when bacteria didn't exist.

"...but u COULD get your mouth washed out with soap!"

- I'm guessing you could also get your ass beat for improper grammar and writing 'u' instead of 'you.'  I mean seriously don't be telling me about the good old days while using modern 'txt' abbreviations!  That's just fucktarded.  As is the notion that good parenting involves forcing a child to ingest soap.

Sorry, but the fact is, whoever wrote this tiresome chain letter is an idiot.  There was no perfect time, no golden era, it's just the simple reality that for the most part, people look back with fondness as their childhood.  But let us never forget that this is just a personal perspective.  Life wasn't magical in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, or any other time.  So let's not try and pretend that when we grew up life was any more special than when kids today grow up.