“Videri quam esse” (“To seem to be, rather than to be”)
I'm strange but i like to be a good strange, My name is Clarence, born in 1988, Pisces and I'm a student of Sociology and the child of the internet. I usually feel like my life has no meaning and i want to die but sometimes it seems like life is worth living for and i love everything in it. If it seems odd to read think what it might be like living it. I like reading philosophy, fiction and tech news.
This Blog is where i collect all the the weird and interesting links from around the net, its not meant to be that serious and just fun. If you stop by here you can enjoy comics, tech, current events, sociology, a little pornography (or erotica if you prefer to call it that) and more weird stuff. Please feel free to tell he what you like and dislike about the site and more of what you want to see.
Please feel free to talk to me by letter in my ask or by following me on other social networks but please just throw me a message WHO YOU ARE.
By the By it goes without saying you should make sure children don't read most of this.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
I’m not familiar, precisely, with exactly what I said, but I stand by what I said, whatever it was.
Republican presidential candidate MITT ROMNEY, when asked if he stood by comments he made on Sean Hannity’s radio show saying that President Obama wanted to make the U.S. a “less Christian nation.”
What a spineless, pimplesqueeze pusfuck this guy is.
(Source: thingsmittromneysays)
BREAKING: GOP filibuster kills student loan compromise.
The GOP refuses to raise taxes on millionaires to prevent student loan interest rates from doubling on July 1st and costing 7.4 million Americans an extra $1,000 annually.
That’s… just… they… ARRRRGGGGHHHHH. This November, PLEASE go vote and DESTROY THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.
these motherfuckers.
Breeeeath. Breeeeath….I need a drink.
and when you can’t pay it you’re the bad guy
The Hunger GOP.
We’ve been hearing a lot about the war on women, which is real enough. But there’s also a war on the young, which is just as real even if it’s better disguised. And it’s doing immense harm, not just to the young, but to the nation’s future.
Let’s start with some advice Mitt Romney gave to college students during an appearance last week. After denouncing President Obama’s “divisiveness,” the candidate told his audience, “Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business.”
The first thing you notice here is, of course, the Romney touch — the distinctive lack of empathy for those who weren’t born into affluent families, who can’t rely on the Bank of Mom and Dad to finance their ambitions. But the rest of the remark is just as bad in its own way.
I mean, “get the education”? And pay for it how? Tuition at public colleges and universities has soared, in part thanks to sharp reductions in state aid. Mr. Romney isn’t proposing anything that would fix that; he is, however, a strong supporter of the Ryan budget plan, which would drastically cut federal student aid, causing roughly a million students to lose their Pell grants.
So how, exactly, are young people from cash-strapped families supposed to “get the education”? Back in March Mr. Romney had the answer: Find the college “that has a little lower price where you can get a good education.” Good luck with that. But I guess it’s divisive to point out that Mr. Romney’s prescriptions are useless for Americans who weren’t born with his advantages.
… What should we do to help America’s young? Basically, the opposite of what Mr. Romney and his friends want. We should be expanding student aid, not slashing it. And we should reverse the de facto austerity policies that are holding back the U.S. economy — the unprecedented cutbacks at the state and local level, which have been hitting education especially hard.
Yes, such a policy reversal would cost money. But refusing to spend that money is foolish and shortsighted even in purely fiscal terms. Remember, the young aren’t just America’s future; they’re the future of the tax base, too.
A mind is a terrible thing to waste; wasting the minds of a whole generation is even more terrible. Let’s stop doing it.
Paul Krugman, The New York Times, “Wasting Our Minds.”
Go read the whole damned thing.
(via inothernews)
Proud of Georgetown for standing up to Paul Ryan
Dear Rep. Paul Ryan,
Welcome to Georgetown University. We appreciate your willingness to talk about how Catholic social teaching can help inform effective policy in dealing with the urgent challenges facing our country. As members of an academic community at a Catholic university, we see your visit on April 26 for the Whittington Lecture as an opportunity to discuss Catholic social teaching and its role in public policy.
However, we would be remiss in our duty to you and our students if we did not challenge your continuing misuse of Catholic teaching to defend a budget plan that decimates food programs for struggling families, radically weakens protections for the elderly and sick, and gives more tax breaks to the wealthiest few. As the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has wisely noted in several letters to Congress – “a just framework for future budgets cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor persons.” Catholic bishops recently wrote that “the House-passed budget resolution fails to meet these moral criteria.”
In short, your budget appears to reflect the values of your favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Her call to selfishness and her antagonism toward religion are antithetical to the Gospel values of compassion and love.
Cuts to anti-hunger programs have devastating consequences. Last year, one in six Americans lived below the official poverty level and over 46 million Americans – almost half of them children – used food stamps for basic nutrition. We also know how cuts in Pell Grants will make it difficult for low-income students to pursue their educations at colleges across the nation, including Georgetown. At a time when charities are strained to the breaking point and local governments have a hard time paying for essential services, the federal government must not walk away from the most vulnerable.
While you often appeal to Catholic teaching on “subsidiarity” as a rationale for gutting government programs, you are profoundly misreading Church teaching. Subsidiarity is not a free pass to dismantle government programs and abandon the poor to their own devices. This often misused Catholic principle cuts both ways. It calls for solutions to be enacted as close to the level of local communities as possible. But it also demands that higher levels of government provide help — “subsidium”— when communities and local governments face problems beyond their means to address such as economic crises, high unemployment, endemic poverty and hunger. According to Pope Benedict XVI: “Subsidiarity must remain closely linked to the principle of solidarity and vice versa.”
Along with this letter, we have included a copy of the Vatican’s Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, commissioned by John Paul II, to help deepen your understanding of Catholic social teaching.
Respectfully,
Georgetown U is officially my favorite group of professors on this planet at the moment
WSJ: Mitt Romney filed for an extension on his 2011 tax returns. Which he has every right to do -- just as he has the right to squirrel away many of his millions and millions of dollars away in offshore tax havens, like a good corporate-raiding, company-asset-splitting, multiple-home-owning One Percenter should.
He won’t apologize for being rich. He just doesn’t want you to know how rich.
The Law of the Gun in Florida - NYTimes.com
reagan-was-a-horrible-president:
Florida leads the pack in passing bills written by the gun lobby that block any sensible attempt to control the purchase and use of firearms. The dangerous folly of these laws was on display in the Trayvon Martin shooting, and will again be on display when Republicans gather for their presidential convention in Tampa this August. The City Council is sensibly preparing tight security precautions for the downtown area by temporarily banning clubs, hatchets, switchblades, pepper spray, slingshots, chains, shovels and all manner of guns that shoot water, paint or air. But not handguns that shoot actual bullets. In other words, someone outside the convention hall will be entitled to pack a handgun, but not a squirt gun.
More Republican “logic” on display.
(Source: tartantambourine)
reagan-was-a-horrible-president:
It’s only considered “class warfare” when we fight back.
(Source: progressivefriends)
Oh my fucking God.
It’s not a parody.
They really published this.
(via The Colbert Report)
Romney Won't Explain Cuts Until AFTER The Election
Mitt Romney tells the Weekly Standard that he’d eliminate some federal agencies if he’s elected president, but he won’t say which ones.
Said Romney: “One of the things I found in a short campaign against Ted Kennedy was that when I said, for instance, that I wanted toeliminate the Department of Education, that was used to suggest I don’t care about education. So I think it’s important for me to point out that I anticipate that there will be departments and agencies that will either be eliminated or combined with other agencies… but I’m not going to give you a list right now.”Jonathan Chait summarizes: “One of the things I have found in previous elections is that announcing my plans makes people want to vote against me!”
(Source: politicalwire.com)
Stop distorting my words! If I see it, it’s bullshit! I mean, c’mon, man!
Republican presidential candidate RICK SANTORUM, lashing out at New York Times reporter Jeff Zeleny, who had asked Santorum to clarify his statement saying Mitt Romney was “the worst Republican in the country to put up against Barack Obama” in the fall.
Republicans. So sensitive, oh my!
Also, when will they realize that the media are merely quoting their own words?
(Source: inothernews)
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush Endorsed Mitt Romney For President
“Now is the time for Republicans to unite behind Governor Romney and take our message of fiscal conservatism and job creation to all voters this fall,” Bush said in a statement.
Oh, please.
Let’s start with that lie about fiscal conservatism. That’s all it is…a lie. The facts show that Republicans are good at running up the debt….Borrow & spend and lower taxes on the wealthy is all they know. None of those things counts as fiscal conservatism.
And what about those jobs?
When given the chance to talk about the economy & jobs, the Republicans choose to talk about birth control, gay marriage, pornography, abortion, Iran, repealing health care reform…etc.
If they do happen to mention jobs, it will be to tell the lie that cutting taxes on the wealthy will create jobs. We know this is a lie, because George W. Bush cut taxes on the wealthy and caused the mess we are in now.
If you’re unemployed, here is what the Republican Party thinks of you:
“We need a candidate who’s going to be a fighter for freedom…. I don’t care what the unemployment rate’s going to be. Doesn’t matter to me. My campaign doesn’t hinge on unemployment rates and growth rates.”—
