Fun Facts About The Founding Fathers

Fun Facts About The Founding Fathers

Don't lie, by this time on this Thursday you're just limping to the barn at work. Waiting for when the clock runs up so you can get the party started by calling in sick tomorrow and enjoying a three day 4th of July weekend. What better way to kill the time than to lay some facts on you about our founding fathers you may not know.

These fun facts can impress your friends as you get drunk at this weekend's BBQ or while you're in the hospital waiting room on Sunday night waiting to see if they can put your nephew's hand back together. So take some notes - But since I'm over estimating our public schools, let's just lay one thing out there.

The term 'Found Father' conventionally refers to the signers of the declaration of independence or to high-profile patriots during the revolution. Hillbillies a century down the road, as influential as they may have been in modifying how the extant state operated, are not founding fathers.

George Washington's teeth were made of expensive African ivory, not wood. Wooden teeth? Get the fuck out of here. That would be very uncomfortable. What can I say, the man liked expensive things.

Though he was a notorious haggler who hated to pay full price. So you'd probably see him right at home in Glendale. He only went to war with England because the king wouldn't break treaties with the Indians and give him fuckloads of land in the Ohio river valley.

Washington probably died from all the bloodletting he went through in what would now be considered alternative medicine. His actual illness probably wasn't the thing that did him in.



Ben Franklin was a fat atheist (yet you religious freaks still love him) who had the gout and loved hookers. Hookers were probably Ben Franklin's favorite thing in the world. He also wanted the flag to be that "Don't tread on me" snake thing you see at tea parties and wanted the national bird to be a turkey.

When Ben Franklin got old, he was assigned a personal assistant to follow him everywhere to keep him from just going on about banging hookers and dirty government deals because he was one of those "I don't give a fuck anymore" type of old guys.

Thomas Jefferson was a drunkard and a hypocrite who managed to somehow run a slave plantation into the ground. He pretty much invented contemporary racism single handed. But he loved fucking black chicks. Must have been trying to keep all that fat asses to himself. He thought that sending all the children of slaves to die in the Caribbean was a good plan, but it was too expensive for him to actually carry out.



On that note, almost all of the founding father's thought slavery was the natural order of things. To the founding fathers wage labor was seen as dehumanizing and "white slavery" and they imagined most Americans would always be farmers or merchants controlling their own meagre means of production.

It's also comical with regards to health care. Seeing as even though doctors existed back then, chances are that if you got sick you died no matter how fucking rich you were. John Adams and the 5th congress still saw fit to levy a Mandatory Tax on ship owners to fund the marine hospitals

For you gun nuts out there thumping your second amendment - The founding fathers didn't give a fuck about personal gun rights and wanted a militia instead of a standing army because they hated standing armies. Well, let me correct that. Jefferson hated standing armies. Hamilton, Washington, and Adams loved war and believed it was a primary route to glory and achievement. Especially Hamilton. Madison and Monroe were more pragmatists about it, largely because they held power as the war of 1812 approached.

And since I need a page break, here's some stupid rap



Let me get back on Jefferson a little more. He was a bit of a complicated guy, but in essence he was

1. Anti-slavery, but skeptical about race relations
2) Anti-capitalist, and deeply worried about the effect of large scale industry and finance on political and social relations.
3) Radically pro-rights, for everything from expression to religion, in a way other founders sans Paine could not match.
4) Pro-revolutionary -- he believed the revolution had not gone far enough in some ways, that monolithic powers should not be built on a democratic foundation, etc.

Thomas Paine was socialist as fuck. Tea baggers would call Obama a conservative god compared to Paine, if they actually did any sort of research. His mentality was "Fuck welfare, EVERYONE gets money when you turn 21 no matter what. "

The famous "Tree of liberty" quote that Teabaggers have claimed so rightfully theirs was actually written to conservatives in America and French exiles about the importance of the French revolution.



Alexander Hamilton sucked at dueling.

Patrick Henry kept his wife chained up in the basement and was a strong advocate of Fourth wave feminism. His wife had post-partem depression and she was never in a straight jacket. Though, to be fair, while she lived in the basement she had a HUGE fireplace, servants and all the comforts she could ever want. Not to mention a pretty nice view of the garden.

Lincoln did mor to shape the current state of the nation than any of the old white guys in Philadelphia... Just sayin'.

Zachary Taylor is a president you may not know about. He's the 12th president and he should be known for one thing. He is literally the best president for one reason. He died from eating too much on the 4th of July and shitting himself to death.

Need A Gun? I Know A Guy, Who knows A Guy...

Need A Gun? I Know A Guy, Who knows A Guy...

Nah, I'm just messing with you. I don't know anyone who can get you a gun. You're on your own. But I can give you a hint.. If you want to get something to shoot at things (read: people) then you're going to have to go to the number one seller of weapons 'o' mass pew-pewing: America.

U.S. Increases Its Share of Worldwide Arms Market
By THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON — Despite a recession that knocked down global arms sales last year, the United States expanded its role as the world’s leading weapons supplier, increasing its share to more than two-thirds of all foreign armaments deals, according to a new Congressional study.

The United States signed weapons agreements valued at $37.8 billion in 2008, or 68.4 percent of all business in the global arms bazaar, up significantly from American sales of $25.4 billion the year before.

Italy was a distant second, with $3.7 billion in worldwide weapons sales in 2008, while Russia was third with $3.5 billion in arms sales last year — down considerably from the $10.8 billion in weapons deals signed by Moscow in 2007.

The growth in weapons sales by the United States last year was particularly noticeable against worldwide trends. The value of global arms sales in 2008 was $55.2 billion, a drop of 7.6 percent from 2007 and the lowest total for international weapons agreements since 2005.
...
The top buyers in the developing world in 2008 were the United Arab Emirates, which signed $9.7 billion in arms deals; Saudi Arabia, which signed $8.7 billion in weapons agreements; and Morocco, with $5.4 billion in arms purchases.

The study uses figures in 2008 dollars, with amounts for previous years adjusted for inflation to give a constant financial measurement.

You hear that? We're number one! Hell fucking yeah.. Hooo-raaah! If you're going to do something, you may as well do it right. How could anyone think this is a good thing? Well, clearly you don't own some lockheed stock. If you did, you'd be dancing in the streets, just like those countries do, shooting their AK's (which more than likely were bought through us).



It does bring up a good question. What's the list of countries who spent a few million on weapons. Someone has to be buying them to make us such a power seller. We can't be selling them to ourselves, now can we? There's also a bit of irony to watching our troops get blown away by our own weapons. If we all had guns, war would never happen, right?

I also wonder if this is all mainly guns/explosives and not a bunch of expensive computer systems, sensors and support packages. You know, all those heavy equipment that tell the guided missiles were to go. Because then we're just padding the numbers. If when we invade the countries we sell the weapons to, isn't it basically the same thing as an older brother saying "Quit hitting yourself! Quit hitting yourself!" while he pummels the shit out of his smaller brother?



I'm a bit surprised that Italy is #2. What do they make besides decent small arms anyway? Spaghetti, Sports cars maybe. But who the hell is buying these small arms like Benelli and Beretta? Pea shooters compared to what we have on the sales floor. Boo-yah! How are you going to kill the mass amount of people with those silly little guns? Come on, Italy, step it up some if you want to be a true death dealer like the good 'ol U.S. of A!

But to be fair, I'm not sure how much death dealing America is really doing compared to the other guys. Yes, we're selling a lot of weapons to our frienemies so they could kill our enemies, but the measure of death we're propagating can't be measured by the dollar figure and it doesn't give full perspective to quantity of weapons and their use. I would venture to guess that the $5 million Bulgaria-Congo arms transfer of the world probably wind up killing more people than the $350 million US-UAE transfer.



Look at it this way, more people have been killed with $120 rifles than $100,000 missiles because most violence in the world consists of poor people killing other poor people and the means to inflict suffering are very very cheap. It may not be very accurate, but you shoot enough bullets through an AK and you're bound to hit someone. Sadly that someone is usually the innocent.

Most of these sales may be for big ticket items. It's countries going to Washington going on spending spree buying shit they could not possibly need to meet nonexistent or at best trumped up threats from Iran. Yes, my tiny desert Emirate needs 300 modern main battle tanks.. It's like going to Best Buy and buy a high end gaming computer to do your taxes.

If there's one thing that is clear from all this and that we need to take to heart, it's that we clearly need to spend more on defense. Look at how many guns and weapons we sell to other countries. We have to stay ahead of them or the terrorist win.. I mean, literally, they win with our toys!

Getting Burned

Getting Burned

You may not be familiar with Jeffery Donovan. I mean, he is a cable network original star. But you may have seen him in The Changeling with Angelina Jolie where he played a corrupt early 1920's L.A. Police officer. But on USA's Burn Notice, Jefferey Donovan is a burned spy working in Miami and moving his way up in trying to figure out how to get back into the business as well as solving small time cases/problems for the locals.

Well, it looks like Jefferey was burned once more. This time Jeffery Donovan was burned while driving drunk

The star of that show "Burn Notice" may have been a little too lit up when he got behind the wheel last weekend -- dude was arrested for allegedly driving under the influence in Miami Beach.

TMZ has learned Jeffrey Donovan was arrested on suspicion of DUI last Sunday, July 12th. The 41-year-old posed for a cop cam and was released several hours later.

So far, no comment from Donovan's reps.

Which makes me feel a little better knowing that I wasn't the only one who had legal troubles over the last week and a half. I mean, I worked with this man for a very small amount of time during season 1. He's actually a really good guy in person. Very approachable and chill to hang with. Rather funny that his last twitter update was On Friday via Twitter, Jefferey said this:

All fans: BURN NOTICE reclaimed #1 show lastnight on Cable!!!! Thank you for all your support. I promise to reward you. :-)

Well, I suppose he had to get really tanked in order to get the celebration going. The one thing that it doesn't say on the report is if Sam or Fi busted him out of jail. I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt and think that he was simply trying to infiltrate the drunk tank as believable as possible.



I do have to laugh a little. My time working on the show had a lot of mocking jokes that there was going to be a lot of voice overs. So people would just talk in third person when setting up the sets in the voice over that Michael Westen does. I can picture what he would say in the situation talking to the officer.

"When trying to pass a field sobriety test, all you do is what the officer says and hope that you can avoid any mistakes."

Then I get pulled down to the reality that he was really slurring his words and all he had to say was this lovely replay:

"When Donovan finally stopped, he didn't serve himself well when he said, "Sorry, I didn't see the red light or your stopped car.""

I suppose the worse part i that his future scenes of him drinking next season might be cut down or cut out depending on if the judge slaps him hard and his publicist decides to do the whole "sobriety redeemer" angle. I mean, at the very least, this isn't Lost. He would have been shit canned and really burned off the show.