Sounds Like Oklahoma All Right

OK, listen up, Oklahoma. I'm sorry about your earthquake. I'm sure it was very surprising for all of you...Sooners? ( Yeah, OK. I still don't know what those are.) And look, the truth is that the rest of the country doesn't think about Oklahoma very often. So, really, if you're going to be in the news across the nation because of the 5.2 earthquake that you just had, you're going to want to at least try to make yourselves sound not like the stereotypes that most of the country envisions (on those rare occasions when they pause to consider Oklahoma as a whole). Therefore, take the statement below as an example of what not to do and carry on.

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Not A Lot Of Shakin' Goin' On

(Sorry for the lateness. I had a fourteen-year-old's birthday to orchestra and pull off flawlessly.) As we all know, the east coast was struck by a devastating earthquake that slightly rearranged patio furniture everywhere over there.

Now, to be fair, the west coast kind of gets the same way whenever it "snows", so I guess it all evens out.

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Help Out Japan

Hey. Japan is effed up right now. Fortunately, this time it wasn't caused by the US out of retaliation for an ill advised sneak attack at the beginning of a World War. But that's really not much of a consolation when your island country has been struck by an earthquake which has now been measured at a whopping 9.0 on the Richter Scale. And they're still being constantly bombarded with aftershocks that are between 5.0 and 7.0. Those are aftershocks. If an earthquake of that size hit anywhere in the US, it is all that would be talked about on the news. That is a HUGE quake. And the Japanese are experiencing multitudes of those huge quakes almost constantly right now. And as if the earthquake wasn't enough, there was a massive tsunami which only made things a bazillion times worse. I don't get that. It's like pouring salt in the wound. Is it necessary? I guess it is, but it's definitely rude on the part of Mother Nature or whoever is in charge of this sort of thing.

You know what I find interesting about this disaster in particular? The people of Japan have had their lives ruined in the blink of an eye. (Well, two blinks. The first blink was the earthquake and the second blink was the tsunami.) And you know what makes this disaster different from other ones that have happened in recent memory? There's no looting. There's no despicable behavior like that. I'm impressed. It's a sociological phenomenon that should be studied. No looting. Amazing. Way to go, Japan. And as you know, I'm not one for a lot of compassion. That's why, when these disasters strike, as soon as the looting begins, that's when my compassion goes away. If people have the energy to break the glass on store windows and haul out big screen TVs and 57 pairs of Nike shoes, I figure that they can use that energy to help themselves and that I really shouldn't interfere. Not to mention that I lose a lot of respect for anyone like that.

But not in this case. In this case, these people need help and they're deserving of it. (Please don't judge me based on that sentence. You know what I mean.) And it is rare that I ever advocate just giving away your money, but in this case, I'm going to suggest that if you can spare a few bucks, that you donate it to the American Red Cross so that they can get some help out to Japan. If you're not a fan of the American Red Cross (even though I cannot imagine why you wouldn't be), then donate some to an organization that you feel would be of assistance in helping out the people in Japan. Just do something if you can. You'd want someone to help you out, wouldn't you?

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What Caused The Earthquake?

This Haiti thing has been the breeding grounds for ridiculous comments. First we have big, fat Rush Limbaugh shooting off of his mouth and saying that the only thing that you're going to get by donating for Haiti is that you'll end up on the White House mailing list. (Would that be such a bad thing, really? Maybe they have coupons like Bed, Bath and Beyond!) Then we have the (probably) completely senile (perhaps because his brain has been riddled by syphilis) Pat Robertson saying that the earthquake struck Haiti because the Haitians had made some sort of a deal with the Devil in order to get the French and Napoleon III out of town. (I'm still not really all that clear on what the Haitians were supposed to do to uphold their end of the bargain with the Devil. And I'm also not clear on how it is that suddenly the Devil has the power over earthquakes. I thought we left Mother Nature in charge of that. Did the Haitians back out of some sort of a deal with her?) And now we have another fruit loop to add to that mix. And it comes in the unlikely form of a one Danny Glover.

I'm pretty sure that Danny Glover hasn't been thinking straight for a while now. I'm guessing it all began probably right around when he signed up for that The Shaggy Dog movie, but it could have been much earlier (when were the Saw movies?). Anyway, Danny Glover had called into some show that was on something called GRITtv. I didn't have any idea what the heck that was either, so I checked out their website and found that "GRITtv with Laura Flanders is a new, news discussion and take-action show,available in multiple formats, with interactivity, a real relationship with news makers across the world, and a positive take on what's possible in the 21st Century." Now you know as much as I do.

I have the clip below. Mr. Glover begins spouting right around the 1:00 mark. I knew he was going to be a little bit wacky when he started off with ""I believe that this is going to be a defining moment for this administration. What we (something) for...in a new relationship, in a partnership with Haiti." Umm, OK?

I'm not sure how sending aid to another country (one that we're friendly with and all) like we tend to do is going to be a defining moment for President Barry's administration. I'm just not seeing it. Frankly, I'd prefer that a defining moment for any American President's administration be one that is directly related to helping the people of the nation over which the administration sees, but that could be just me. I might be the only one who wants a President's defining moment to actually impact the country which elected him. Maybe. But maybe not.

I'm also not sure how this "partnership" with Haiti is possible. What exactly is it that Haiti is going to do for us? See, because when you "partner" up with someone, you're both helping each other. In this instance, from what I can tell, we're going to help Haiti and Haiti is going to let us help them. That's really not what I would call a "partnership". It's nice, but it's hardly "partnering".

Mr. Glover continued along lines of questionable thinking processes by saying: "That means that other countries in the region — Venezuela, Brazil, Cuba (which he pronounced COO-ba for some reason) and other countries have already accepted the point that this is a great moment for another type of internationalism, you know." Actually, I...I don't know. Do we know about these other countries alleged acceptance of said alternate internationalism? I wish he had some examples. Perhaps a chart. I love charts! But I digress. Onward...

"And I hope we seize this particular moment because the threat of what happens in Haiti is the threat that can happen anywhere in the Caribbean to these island nations, you know?" Um, yes? Yes, an earthquake can happen just about anywhere. The Caribbean. The not Caribbean. Earthquakes are real. Thank you for pointing that out to us, Danny Glover.

Oh, but before you give thanks and leave, please read on! See, I didn't realize that he was going to continue to explain WHY this earthquake happened and WHY this can happen anywhere. And I'm sure you're just dying to find out, right? Whatever. Keep reading.

"They're all in peril because of global warming; they're all in peril because of climate change. When we see what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens, you know what I'm saying? But we have to act now." Wait. What now?

What we did at the climate summit? We didn't do anything at the climate summit! Because we didn't do anything, Haiti had an earthquake? I...I don't think that's correct. I'm fairly certain that the climate summit had little or nothing to do with the natural disaster that occurred in Haiti. You know why I think that? Because it's TRUE!

Sad. Perhaps Danny Glover has the same alleged syphilis riddled brain problem that might have affected Mr. Robertson. That's unfortunate. I really liked Mr. Glover in Lethal Weapon. (And by the way...Danny? They're using the 'climate change' term these days. Saying 'global warming' is out because sometimes there's 'global colding' and so if they go with 'climate change', well, change is change! And that way they're never wrong. Now go find your slippers and stop calling TV stations.)

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Deals With the Devil

Today....Haiti!

First of all, there's nothing to mock about disaster. Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere and to put it bluntly, they're effed. If you feel the need to donate to help these folks out, I've placed a banner over there on the right hand side of this here blog. The banner was downloaded straight from the American Red Cross website, so you know that any donations will go to the place where they are intended to go. The last thing anyone needs is to be sending money that is intended to go towards aiding those people in Haiti and have it instead going into the pocket of some shady blogger or worse...a Tweeter. Please don't be giving away your hard earned money blindly and just sending it off with every official looking email that you receive (unless it's from President Barry, as he seems like a pretty good guy). Make sure you know where your donation is going.

Now that I'm done reprimanding you for money that you may or may not be giving, let's move on to some people who really need reprimanding in regard to this situation. First up...newsholes!

Shortly after this earthquake hit, I began hearing reports of the "estimated" numbers of potential casualties. (If you're new to the newshole business, "casualties" means "deaths".) At first, I was hearing "thousands". Then I began hearing "tens of thousands". When I first heard "hundreds of thousands", that's when I lost it.

Hundreds of thousands? Really? I don't think so. And I, apparently unlike the irresponsible newsholes who are reporting such garbage, do not get some sort of orgasmic thrill when I hear a ridiculously high number of casualties being bandied about. Do you people really want there to be that many casualties? I don't think that you do. But let's look at what we can probably expect here, since the newsholes are unwilling to do that for us.

Haiti is an island nation. That means you're going to have a hell of a lot of people all compacted into certain areas and you're not going to have anywhere else to go. Hence the term "island". But while it is an island, that doesn't mean that people can't be spread apart. People can be spread apart. And while Port au Prince is the capital and the most populous region of Haiti, it's not like there aren't other places on the island to live. But if you're a newshole, you'd report casualty figures as if Port au Prince was the ONLY place to live.

The population of Haiti is around 9 million. The population of Port au Prince is somewhere in the neighborhood of 704,776 if you're going to believe Wikipedia. And for some inexplicable reason, let's say that we do believe Wikipedia (please don't make a habit of it). And let's also say that we believe The Telegraph that went with the headline: "Haiti earthquake: hundreds of thousands feared dead". Plural? Really? Hundreds?

Let's do a conservative estimate of that wildly speculative and highly irresponsible headline. Let's go with the lowest of all the plurals, the number two. Let's say two hundred thousand perished. That's over a quarter of the population of the city. And while I understand how that could happen (there IS a reason for an international building code), what I'm saying is that it's unlikely that it DID happen. And just doing the simple, basic, speculative guesstimating math would have told the newsholes the same thing: that it's unlikely there are that many casualties. But yet they go ahead and report it anyway under the guise of saying things like "We've heard there could be up to or possibly more than one hundred thousand casualties." So, what if I just said that I think there are a million casualties? I've said it and you've heard it so now you can report it?! I don't think you can I know for certain that you shouldn't. (By the way, the Red Cross is estimating somewhere in the area of 45,000 -50,000 deaths "based on information from the Haitian Red Cross". What a novel idea! Asking the Haitian Red Cross what they think the numbers might be! Fascinating. Wait. Let me write that down so I can shoot off an email to those newsholes who are just pulling numbers out of their newsholes to report. Morons.

Speaking of morons, let's move on to Pat Robertson, shall we? It won't take long. Pat Robertson is the Grand Poobah of something called the 700 Club. I don't know what that is supposed to reference, but it certainly isn't his IQ. He's a religious guy with a TV show. Enough said? I thought so. Anyway, he summed up what has happened down there in Haiti. Rather, he has summed up why the earthquake happened. Did people need to be told why? Shifting of the tectonic plates and all? Release of built up energy? Don't we know that? What's that? Oh, it wasn't because of the tectonic plates? I see. It was because...of...the devil, of course. Wait. What?

Correct. This jackass Pat Robertson has said that the reason that there was an earthquake in Haiti is because "Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you'll get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it's a deal....ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other"

::: blink ::: ::: blink :::

What the what? I'm pretty sure that those folks that were over there in that earthquake did not make a pact with the devil. And even if they did, what kind of a pact would that be? You free us from that shrimpy little Napoleon dude and in exchange, we'll let you devastate our capital in 2010? What kind of a dumbass pact would that be (provided that you even believe in the whole "making deals with the devil" theory in the first place)?

Robertson goes on to explain why this is clearly the case by stating: "That island of Hispaniola is one island. It is cut down the middle; on the one side is Haiti on the other is the Dominican Republic. (He does have a firm grasp of the geography of the situation, I'll give him that.) Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, etc. Haiti is in desperate poverty. Same island." Um, might I make a comparison? The United States and Mexico. The United States is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts like Dollywood and Graceland, etc. Mexico is...well...Mexico is not. Same island. Er, continent. Same continent. (Sorry, Canada/America's Hat. I suppose I could have put you in the equation with you being on the US side of things, but if someone is going to be as simple minded as Mr. Robertson or to consider what Mr. Robertson had said, I felt it best to keep things as simple as I could. We still love ya, but I just couldn't fit you into my rebuke against pacts with the devil to explain Haitian earthquakes. Sorry.)

Did Mexico make a pact with the devil? See, I don't know much about this sort of thing, so as you can imagine, I have a myriad of questions. Where exactly does one go to find this devil character in order to make said pacts? Can you just come up with your own terms or are there pre-written pacts to choose from? Can anyone make a pact? Do you need good pact credit? Is there a three day window in case of buyers remorse if I decide to go with a pact? Can you only make one pact? How many people can be included in said pact? I could go on, but as you can see, I bring up some valid questions about how all of this works.

Fortunately, he did manage to include at the end of his idiotic explanation "But right now we are helping the suffering people and the suffering is unimaginable." (Please don't send that man any money. Ever.) I think the only thing that I find more reprehensible than his comments is the reaction of the person sitting next to him. Who is that nitwit? How on earth can you sit there and just nod your head and utter "Mmm-hmm" when he's spouting off something like that? How?! How can you just sit there and act as if those are words being spoken by a sane individual? You can't! Unless you're equally insane, which I'm going to have to assume that she is.

Speaking of equally insane, let me wrap this up with Rush Limbaugh. Rush is a doughhead at best. He has an act and he's good at what he does. And unfortunately, around 20 million people listen to this windbag regularly. This man makes a gazillion dollars a year. (For those of you unclear on the monetary denomination of a gazillion, it's right around $38 million a year for 8 years plus a $100 million signing bonus. Yep. That's a gazillion all right.) And because he's been so fortunate in his lifetime, he's going to be more sympathetic to the plight of others, especially in times of disaster, correct? Um, not...not so much.

Rush Limbaugh told a caller to his show "...that all helping out will do is get someone on Obama's campaign email list" according to Swamp Politics (they're a blog over at the Chicago Tribune). I highly doubt that's all a donation is going to do, but just in case people weren't swayed by that logic, Limbaugh went for the ol' one-two punch by adding "We've already donated to Haiti,. It's called the U.S. income tax." Oh, for God's sake. Shut up.

You know, the donations that are being asked for en masse are in amount of five bucks and ten bucks. The a-hole that is Rush Limbaugh makes $38 million a year in salary (and I'm sure that he endorses some piece of crap or sells gold bars or something in his spare time to earn more). The average annual income in Haiti is around $400. That's about $1.10 per day. And Limbaugh is trying to discourage people from helping out. Why couldn't he have made a pact with the devil?

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