Corporations Are People Too

Corporations Are People Too

Hey, did you hear? Corporations are people -



Ha! The crowd laughs at him. Man, that's sweet. I'd also laugh at Mitt Romney as well.

But you hear that shit? Corporations... Human beings, my friend. That shit is just crazy. Obama would never consider humans equal to corporations. So hey, both Mitt Romney and Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack H. Obama believe the thing Mitt Romney said in the video. But only Romney was stupid enough to say it out loud and so openly.

Did you know that in the late 19th century corporations got more benefit from the changes in legal definitions of person hood than freed slaves did? Fucking America. I just need to learn how to turn myself into a corporation. Maybe if I'm bitten by a corporation on a full moon, maybe then I will turn into one.

This may sound like a joke but I'm guessing that the government of the united states of America will probably recognize a marriage between a man and a corporation before one between man and man. But hey, who agrees with him on this issue?



Welp, I guess I could have guessed that one.

KEYES: Governor, are corporations people?

PALIN: The people pay the taxes. It’s not an entity — the corporation itself — that pays the taxes. It’s the people who pay the taxes. So Mitt Romney was right.

But hey, why should that stop you from voting for Romney. I mean, he's a friend of the animals, right?

The incident: dog excrement found on the roof and windows of the Romney station wagon. How it got there: Romney strapped a dog carrier — with the family dog Seamus, an Irish Setter, in it — to the roof of the family station wagon for a twelve hour drive from Boston to Ontario, which the family apparently completed, despite Seamus's rather visceral protest.

O_o

It all becomes clear now. Mitt is the driver and we're the terrified, compulsively shitting and pissing Irish setter strapped unthinkingly to the roof of this car we call America. But hey, it's at least nice that someone takes responsibility for their actions in the political setting..

Tea Party Rep: Bank Should Have Known I Wouldn't Be Able To Repay $2.2 Million Loan
Jillian Rayfield | August 11, 2011, 10:01AM

Tea Party aligned Georgia Rep. Tom Graves ®, who castigates Washington for fiscal irresponsibility, reached an out of court settlement Wednesday after he was sued for defaulting on a $2.2 million loan -- which his attorney argued is the bank's fault for lending him the money in the first place.

Ha! Fuck this stupid country. It deserves all the bad shit that will ever happen to it.

Well That Was Awkward

Well That Was Awkward

Here are some of those awkward moments of the week. Let's start with President Obama. President Obama warmly embraced Mr. Boehner and then took the podium and said:

“Speaker Boehner and Senator McConnell, thank you for your commitment to act in our nation’s highest interests. Let me say publicly what I committed to you privately: I have asked Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson to revive their deficit commission and to use their recommendations for how to cut spending and raise revenues as the starting point for our negotiations. But it will now be called ‘The National Commission for American Renewal.’ Because in addition to the original Bowles-Simpson members, it will include Senator McConnell, Speaker Boehner, Senator Reid and Congresswoman Pelosi, and its goal will indeed be a comprehensive plan for American renewal. Everything will be on the table — spending cuts, tax reform and increases, a framework for restructuring the debts of Americans whose homes are under water and the investments we need to renew the primary sources of our strength — infrastructure, education and scientific research. Each component will be integrated and timed to minimize pain and maximize job creation — and the entire package will be presented to Congress for an up-or-down vote. I am confident that real tax and entitlement reform will unleash billions of dollars in investments.

“But the most important thing that will be on the table will not just be a plan to make our country solvent. It will be a plan to make America great and guarantee that another generation will enjoy the American dream. Any fair-minded person who looks at all the stimulus investments I’ve made in education, clean energy, research and infrastructure can see that this has been my goal from the start. But I know those investments can’t be sustained without a new long-term budget deal. And I, too, have a confession: I’ve done a poor job integrating my nation-building ideas, including health care, into a single vision so people understood where I was going. I also let tactical political considerations — like abandoning the Bowles-Simpson commission — intervene, so Americans lost sight of my priorities. That will not happen again. No one loves this country more than I and my Democratic colleagues. While we will bring our traditional concerns for social justice and equality to these negotiations, we will not quit until a Grand Bargain to ensure American greatness is enacted into law.”

And then we move on to the whole finical sector. A couple of days ago there was this strange situation were Bank of America had issues in all of California. They couldn't give out any money. Seems odd that the ATM's weren't working or anything, but sure enough people were reporting that in..



Hmmm, Odd that it happened around the time of when BoA's stocks were taking a free fall in the market. Makes you wonder. But apparently the story behind BoA not having the cash you need? I got you covered.

A Bank of America mainframe computer malfunctioned, leaving an unspecified number of customers in the Los Angeles area temporarily unable to access account information online, by telephone, via ATM or at branches.

Bank of America spokeswoman Tara Burke said no personal financial information was compromised and the bank is fixing the problem. Online banking was restored shortly before noon Thursday, Burke said.

"There was no compromise to account security. This was not a hacking issue and we expect this to be resolved shortly. Customers still can get funds at a teller or ATM," Burke said.

Burke did not say what caused the computer to crash or why some accounts were affected while others weren’t. She said only customers "in and around Los Angeles" were affected.

In an email to The Times, one concerned Bank of America customer said: “Today, my online account says that 2 of my savings & checking accounts do not exist. Also, their phone line tells me that I don’t exist. The wait for a B of A phone representative is over 30 minutes.”

I'm more inclined to believe that they are out of money. Watch next the FDIC crashes.. So there you have it, some awkward moments of the week.

A Food Network Challenge - Stop Being Racist

A Food Network Challenge - Stop Being Racist

Oh man, that's a loaded word, isn't it? The R word. Yeah, you don't go yelling fire in a crowded theater and you probably shouldn't go calling people racist. Well, not unless they somehow are. And it seems that Food Network likes to stick its minorities in their place.

I came to this realization while watching Chopped. It pissed me off when they said something about meals not having continuity with every meal. As if a chef can plan ahead on what their continuity and theme of the meal will be when you throw random shit in the basket before the start of the show. You really can't tell someone to have "continuity" when their ingredients are a secret until 30 seconds before they start cooking. It's just not possible.

Then I started waiting for that one contestant to make a French-toast Napoleon with layers of mascarpone or ricotta ice cream. Because really, that would truly be the dessert to end all Chopped deserts.

The only problem there is that they would be declared the loser for not "Staying true to their roots/cooking with their soul" or "not within the continuity of the meal" bullshit.

But it was that one aspect that really pissed me off. The whole notion of "staying true to your roots" thing that always gets me if the judges bring it up. It's just furthering the notion that Asian people better make Chinese food and Hispanic people better make Mexican food. Because I noticed that on Next Food Network Star, the Hispanic woman said she didn't want to be pegged as the Mexican chef, so she cooked French food. The judges panned her and told her she wasn't staying true to her roots, so now all she cooks is all Mexican food influenced by her Mexican mother and Mexican grandmother and telling "relatable stories" of how she's first generation American in her Mexican family.

I really wish someone would call the judges out on their blatant racism instead of just pandering to them. It's disturbing to see how they get away with regularly telling chefs "you can only cook food from your race, no mixing!" in their competitions. It's also disturbing how many of the chefs seem to believe they should only cook within their own culture.

Just look at Aaron Sanchez, who lost the first Next Iron Chef because of this. That time around they seemed to actually be thinking it would be a good idea for an Iron Chef to use as many styles as possible. In the second round they told him they really liked his food but he was being really "one note with Mexican dishes". Then they cut to him talking to the cameras being amazingly offended that they would dare ask him to cook a different style of food. He still managed to basically place third.

But yeah, this whole notion of sticking to your ethnic roots is so much bullshit. Or didn't you know that staying true to his Irish roots was how Bobby Flay became so popular? I would love to read his biography if it includes a section on how growing up in his Irish grandmother's kitchen, roasting poblanos on the grill, so she could use them in traditional Irish barbecue made him the Iron Chef he is today.

But you know that if anyone on Next Food Network Star tried to call him on that shit that there's no way they wouldn't be crucified at the Alter of Flay for such tongue. I guess it just goes to show you that white people can cook whatever they want whenever they want. It's only the ethnics that should stay in their place.

What next, are they going to make the Cajun chef get water from a different faucet? I would suggest that people should complain about this, but if anything, Food Network would assume that it means that ratings are increasing. That's what they did with NFNS. There was a drama queen in the running who's sole purpose in being on the show was to start shit up.

She basically manufactured drama for no other reason than she could. Those crazy amounts of ratings offsets any negative reaction from the small number of people writing in to complain about such blatant racism. After all, the food network is all about drama. That's why it's called the food network.

Or maybe they put the ethnics into a pigeon hole because they don't want to turn off the viewers who would otherwise be confused on the matter. Because, why is that there Mexican girl cooking Foy-grass and not tacos and burritos?

Don't believe me in all this? Here you go, here's the video:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/248406/fo...cook#s-p2-so-i0

Challenge: "Wow us with a sophisticated breakfast." She makes crepes.
Cooking French food: 11:03-11:18
Showing her food: 18:00-18:42

Now, Mexican.
Second challenge: 27:55-31:17
(even the amazing Alton Brown has her be less "Mexican")

So yeah, perhaps Food Network should be less racist. Hell, at this point I'll settle with just less reality show like. Get back to what worked... COOKING! What ever happened to television station that was all about cooking things.

The Reality of War - An Unpopular Opinion Piece

The Reality of War - An Unpopular Opinion Piece

The one thing that really bugs me about this "war on terror", among many other things, is that we seem to not want to see how sausage is made. Americans seem to have the 'Fuck Yeah!' moments of blowing up shit but they don't want to open there eyes to the reality of war.

This topic was brought up when it was reported that Osama Bin Laden was killed. The notion that we got to see Saddam, this terrorist that we created, get hung for his crimes against humanity and what not. So it was a bit strange that we didn't get to see any proof of death for Osama. Again, the reality of war, or how sausage was made was being covered as to not offend our sensitive eyes.



But really, this all goes well beyond the releasing of the Osama pictures or anything like that. I think we're well past all that anyway. It's just plainly obvious that we don't really care about the war and will gladly throw money towards it as long as it "protects our freedoms" never really seeing what we are doing to the country and its people because we have become so desensitize to the reality of war.

This leads me to believe that we probably should release more footage of the dead. For a long time now we wouldn't even show the hundreds and hundreds of returning caskets from Iraq because that wasn't what people in America wanted to see from our news media. We blind ourselves to what the cost of giving others freedom truly is.



Maybe we're just too afraid to see the ugly truth of what our actions are doing to other lands? I really don't know. Oddly enough it's only when our own men and women die out there in some sort of big story that we see that in fact, wars are bloody and people can and will be hurt in them.

Take for example last Saturday when we got the realities of war and the death count displayed across the evening news....

31 U.S. troops killed in Afghan crash

KABUL, Afghanistan—A helicopter crash in Afghanistan’s eastern Wardak province ended in the death of 31 U.S. special operation troops and seven Afghan soldiers, the country’s president said Saturday. It was the highest number of American casualties recorded in a single incident in the decade-long war.

A senior administration official said the NATO helicopter apparently was shot down. The Taliban claimed to have brought the helicopter down with a rocket attack, but they have been known to make exaggerated claims in the past.

NATO confirmed the overnight crash and said there “was enemy activity in the area.” But it said it was still investigating the cause. The alliance was conducting a recovery operation at the site, it said, without releasing details or a casualty figure.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in a statement that NATO had attacked a house in Sayd Abad where insurgents were gathering Friday night, killing eight fighters. The Taliban then downed the helicopter, he said.

....

Meanwhile, NATO troops attacked a house and inadvertently killed eight members of a family, including women and children, in the southern Helmand province, an Afghan government official said Saturday.

NATO has come under harsh criticism in the past for accidentally killing civilians during operations against suspected insurgents. However, civilian death tallies by the United Nations show the insurgency is responsible for most war casualties involving noncombatants.

The deaths bring to 334 the number of coalition troops killed this year in Afghanistan, and 11 this month.

this isn't an amputee falling out of a roller coaster it's occupying soldiers being killed while on duty so i think we're allowed to feel good about it. Seeing as these dudes committed murder and kidnapping on a weekly basis sort of makes me feel pretty much numb to the fact that they died horribly.

I know it sounds wrong, but I was really hoping that they got shot down on the way to the raid instead of on the way back from it. Let's just take a moment to focus on all the lives saved in this "crash". Oh, what's that? Everyone on board died? Exactly.

These aren't people who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They're occupying soldiers being killed while on duty. If the articles about this were more accurate maybe people would think differently about this. Then again, the title "Death Squad shot down" would preclude the use of a byline and really wouldn't sell a hit ABC television series.

You also shouldn't feel too bad for them for the sole reason that they died doing what they loved - Raining death and fire all over the Afghan countryside.

Soon after the "crash" it came out that the majority of those killed in the helicopter "crash" in Afghanistan were Navy SEALs. Apparently 20 of the people killed in this "crash" were from the team of proud heroes that were sent to shoot an unarmed highly opinionated 60 year old CIA operative/civil engineer in the face earlier this year.

Wait a minute.. let that sink in. The Taliban killed the guys that killed Bin Laden. So now the people who supposedly found and killed Bin Laden, of which no evidence has been released and the body is now in the bottom of the ocean being eaten by fish have themselves been mysteriously killed.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Or maybe this is just Osama's revenge from beyond the grave.

We're all clear on the fact that this is the plot of every spy thriller ever, right? Like now the US can literally go on TV and say "we speak without fear of contradiction: we killed Bin Laden, everyone who might know otherwise is dead, and we totally killed the guys who killed them too. Then all you do after that is write your names properly in the history book and jump right into the land of Disney movies about Team 6.

The only thing you need to be aware of is to keep the conspiracy theory going, the team that took out these Taliban fighters needs to die under mysterious circumstances. Preferably a series of car crashes over the next year or two. Maybe if we're lucky it just turns into a massive cover up operation where the whole US Army ends up dying in "accidents" to cover up from the "accidents" they caused to kill the previous group.

Oh yeah, in case you forgot, the director of the Hurt Locker is supposed to be making a Seal Team 6 movie. Not to mention that we're also going to get a video game based on them. So perhaps a "Get shot down by a random fucking rocket" is a level in the official licensed army propaganda...er, I mean Video Game.

And wasn't ABC/Disney/Buena Vista shooting to make a television series based on the Seals team? Welp, I guess we all know how season 1 ends now.

Before you get all judgmental on me for not being all gung-ho about this elite SEALS special forces, may I remind you that this special operations troops are responsible for the ultra deadly "night raids" that basically murder people in their homes:

Matthew Hoh, formerly the senior U.S. foreign service officer in Zabul province before his 2009 resignation, was familiar with the target list for SOF kill or capture raids. He told IPS the list included Afghans holding every kind of non-combat function in the Taliban network, including propagandists and workers who make Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs).
......
Night raids generally kill Taliban personnel in their own homes, and thus outside the context of a military operation.

If the same humanitarian law criterion used in counting victims of Taliban assassinations were applied to the alleged Taliban targeted in SOF night raids, the victims of killings during those raids would have to be considered civilian casualties.
........
The continued refusal of ISAF, under the command of Gen. David Petraeus, to release that information suggests that it would reveal a very high proportion of the several thousand Afghans killed last year as "Taliban" were simply civilian supporters or victims of misidentification or a malicious intelligence tip.
........
But from May through July 2010, according to ISAF figures, SOF units launched 3,000 night raids – a 50-fold increase over the rate of only a year earlier – in which they reported killing nearly 1,100 Taliban "leaders" and "rank and file".

I mean, maybe I sound like a dick asking the obvious question that should be on everyone's mind, but I figure I'll bring up for discussion how the number of Troops killed in this one attack is likely more than the number of Al-Qaeda in the entirety of Afghanistan.

Though that's even if you think that Al Qaeda actually exist in any form other than in the fevered imaginations of infantile right-wing fanatics. Just look at the end of the AJE article on this if you really think these brave men and women were just protecting America's interest:

"Elsewhere, in the Nad Ali district in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province, up to eight civilians were killed in a NATO airstrike on Friday", governor Shadi Khan said.

"A group of Taliban attacked a foot patrol of NATO forces," Khan said.

"Subsequently, an air strike targeted the house of an imam of a mosque in the area. As a result the imam, his wife and six of their children were killed.""

And according to AJE, the rocket was fired after a night raid just as the helicopter was taking off. That means that 30 Americans got killed by some dude probably hiding behind a shed and shooting an RPG from 30 feet away.

You just know that this means that those "surgical strikes" are going to mean "Obliterate entire mountainsides" instead of just going into individual villages.

It is interesting how awkwardly they're forcing it in that these are just "crashes", if you haven't noticed how I have written that in this piece. Really odd how these crashes just happen to occur after they get shot up by the resistance fighters. Rather than having to admit that American aircraft are "shot down"

Even today Obama's still calling this a "crash". Why yes, I'm sure that rocket had nothing to do with it. Though, there is a real good chance it just fell straight the fuck out of the sky because they do that a whole lot when you think about the history of choppers in combat. Or maybe getting shot didn't make the helicopter crash. It just triggered the excited delirium which caused the helicopter to "crash".

At least there's some good to come out of all these reports. I do mean Good in a sort of ironic way. You really have to love all the comments about this incident. It's really the one pure example of the Internet saying the darnedest things.

Just wrote this to my congressman. Does this make me crazy?

Congressman:

I know you are going to think I’ve read too many conspiracy novels and may never again pay serious attention to anything I write to you about but regarding the deaths of SEAL team 6 members in Afghanistan, I want to know if you are going to be demanding investigations and hearings into the State Department, DOJ, Obama himself, the DOD and the CIA about this.

Why?

Because the Taliban are not smart enough to do this sort of stuff on their own. To say they were “lucky” would also be a stretch.

The only way this could have happened is if they were given the intelligence from someone about the movement of the team.

Sincerely,

Dearest douche, your letter is going straight into the trash. Sincerely, reality.

I can’t help but think this was targetting, and I’m tring to think back didn’t that ignorant bozo biden let out it was seal team 6 that got bin laden? I remembr gates and panenetta were furious over Biden’s assinne mouth balbbrering on about this.

Why yes, we all leaked out the info that our troops were going to be in Afghanistan. You know, because we haven't pulled them out yet. I doubt it's some master plan and just another case of the death count in a war we shouldn't be in racking up the numbers.

I just do not understand why so many extremely valuable, highly trained SEALS (and others) would be allowed on the same helicopter, given the obvious risk should it be shot down. This is a tragic loss.

Why yes, we clearly aren't spending enough on personal death taxis in the sky. Let's make sure that every soldier has his own ride to the midnight "fuck with the locals" party and their own chopper out of there. It's not like they make much noise. In fact, it could be like that scene in Apocalypse Now.



Then there's this gem:

Maybe it wasn’t the ISI…

Team O didn’t want any books coming out on the bin Laden raid…

and dead men tell no tales…

I'm still laughing at the comments on various Free Republic sites, and the Freepers have all been saying the same narrative here. That they've bought into their racist propaganda so much that they can't believe these backwards ragheads actually shot down a helicopter on their own.

I mean, it's not like these guys don't have ample enough reason to just start shooting random helicopters, do they?

Then again, don't worry guys, cause we'll get them damn towel heads. Them pesky sand nigga's can't run away from the swift hand of justice for too long, unless your name is Osama, in which case it'll be a good ten years before they catch them... oh wait. I guess the the narrative just got better:

"ladies and gentlemen....we got him!!"

US: Strike kills militants who downed US chopper
Reuters

WASHINGTON — An air strike by NATO-led forces in Afghanistan killed Taliban fighters, including a local leader, who were responsible for a weekend helicopter crash that killed 38 troops, the worst single incident in 10 years of war.

"The strike killed Taliban leader Mullah Mohibullah and the insurgent who fired the shot associated with the Aug. 6 downing of the CH-47 helicopter, which resulted in the deaths of 38 Afghan and coalition service members," the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said in a statement.

The statement did not say explicitly that the Taliban fighters had shot the helicopter down, although it was the clearest indication yet that was the likely cause.

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan also announced the same news.

"We dealt with them in a kinetic strike," General John Allen, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, told reporters at the Pentagon.

Why yes, "We're absolutely sure to within a 50% certainty that we got the camel jockey that actually fired the shot". Hmmmmm, so they killed the unnamed unknown guy who shot down the chopper? Man, the Obama admin and its spin doctors are starting to get as patently ridiculously as the Bush admin in terms of not even able to tell good lies anymore.

I'm really surprised that there isn't a little throwaway line right at the end about how 12 children and a house full of puppies also died as collateral damage in the strike. You know, like how it has been showing up in just about every other news piece about our tragedy mounted above and beyond any sort of death of an innocent.

But hey, at least now they're associating the rocket with "the crash".. or are they? The Taliban fighters may not have shot down the helicopter, however, the Taliban fighters who shot down the helicopter were killed, hence, the Taliban fighters shot down the helicopter.

I can picture them now just cursing about the fact that in order to say we killed these people we have to bestow on them on the title of people, it's hard being a soldier you know, we can never have our cake and eat it too. Dehumanize these people too far and it devalues the kills. Fuck! Now I have PTSD from all this head spinning.

Social Media In The Arab Springs

Social Media In The Arab Springs

You constantly hear people who use social media proclaim that it's so revolutionary and thanking it for the rise of the poor downtrodden class in oppressed countries to rise agains their oppressors.

You really couldn't stop hearing this sort of shit when Egypt was getting that sort of freedom injected from the uprising. How twitter and facebook played a major part of it. I mean, why hey, let's look at a place where they're using social media... a place called Bahrain. Look at what Facebook has done for the democracy there:

CLICK ON ME AS THE VIDEO IS A TIMED SEGMENT

Yeah, that is something else, isn't it. I implore you to watch the whole thing. It's 54 minutes, but it'll be a very educational hour of your time



You can basically call this the Facebook Counter revolution. You should watch it till at least the title gets explained. That in itself is a real kick in the pants.

I still remember that really dumb NPR story on how America wasn't doing enough to stop the Iranian-backed hordes trying to take control of Bahrain and how they forgot their true allies, Saudi Arabia.

I kind of have to admit that Al Jazeera is really awful now. Ever since the Libyan war, they've gotten real bad real fast. I guess it has to do with Qatari interests aligning with western neo-liberal interest and massively grown western audiences following Egypt essentially had them shift narrative to appeal to the brand new Time Warner Cable offered channel.

So it really is a case that their interest don't always perfectly match that of the west, which makes them some where valuable, but in the end they are working for the same team. To be fair, every piece of information you receive from a source other than direct observation just work for team capital anyway.

I guess the key here is to use various outlets to balance each other out. Russia today is practically run by the Kremlin and has a consistently pro-Putin and anti-NATO outlook. However, this allows it to offer some good insights that the BBC and Al Jazeera would never give.

So while it has gone down hill a great deal, Al Jazeera can still be decent. You just have to know what the filter out.

DC - 52... Fuck That Shit

DC - 52... Fuck That Shit

We're almost in the half way point from Comic con and when the new DC 52 comes to be in September, it's time to check out a few of the stuff that has happened from Comic Con till now.

First let's start with comic con. Here's the 52 new comics panel

Some tidbits from it were:
-Demon Knight will feature Vandal Savage, and Cornell wants it to be like Game of Thrones and Dragon Age
-Stormwatch will be 9 members strong
-Stormwatch will fight the moon
-in addition to Action Comics, Justice League will also be set about 5 years before the present, while GL is the present
-no plans for Wally West
-not starting with an origin story for Wonder Woman
-Thunder Agents will be back in November (still written by Nick Spencer)

Of all that, I still find it the most troubling that Barbara Gordon is Batgirl again. Mainly because of the logic behind it. If it really is a case of Barbara being the most recognizable Batgirl and that's why she gets to be Batgirl again, then what's the deal with Wally West? He has got to be the most recognizable Flash for most fans, specifically those fans who watched Justice League cartoons. But here they're saying that he's out of the picture?

And I guess I can sort of understand Batgirl because from a purely visual basis, Batgirl has striking characteristics in the red hair that her successors who now never happened lacked. Where as the only difference between Barry and Wally was the way the belt sort of pointed down to his crotch. They really might as well have been the same guy based on their costume alone.



But a lot of that visual impact is a result of residual nostalgia creating a vicious cycle. One version of the character gets a lot of play on merchandise and TV shows and cartoons, so a generation grows up with nostalgia for that version, which leads them to want to use that when they get the reins - which influences another generation. As a result, any new incarnations have almost no chance of gaining any traction.

It was a joke earlier, much like the "Drawing the line at $2.99", but DC really can't claim "These ain't your daddy's comics!" because in every sense they really are.

Wally West has been the only Flash in almost all non-comics media. Smallville, JLU, even the animated movies, it's always been Wally. If the concern is about alienating new comic readers, wouldn't it make more sense to use the character who they're more likely to have had exposure to?

By this logic Dick Grayson should be Robin again. And seeing how Batman's been around at most a little over five or six years in modern DCnU, that's even more logical unless he's cranking them out like some sort of degree mill college. But sure enough, Dan Didio said it himself.

"I think we could do that with all the characters" He ended the conversation by saying "I think we'll be sticking with Barry for awhile."

Oh goody, the Flash that no one is asking for gets to stay! I'm pretty sure that if you got rid of Barry Allen tomorrow, not a single person person would be clamoring for the comeback. So when they say that there's no plans for Wally it's them really saying that there's people out there who have tons of pitches lined up to use him, but they aren't having it cause they want their Pre-Crisis Barry Allen back.



This is just part of why it's pretty clear that DC is out of touch with their fans and the attempts to make things "their way" just come across as forcing people to accept it by half-assed reboots that no one was asking for but are being justified as bringing new readers on-board.

What really confuses me is that Johns wrote a really good Flash run with Wally surpassing Barry and building up what was basically a Flash Corps and now he can't be bothered to give a fuck about Wally. He's giving Wally the finger and saying that Barry's the only Flash worth writing even if it's a bland as hell character.

And that's not even the biggest issues that I have with the reboot. For example, I'm excited to read Morrison's run of Superman. At least I can pretend it's an alternate universe version of superman. But when you compare the two Superman books, it does sound like Morrison and Perez will be writing completely different characters. It just makes you wonder how long Morrison's run is expected to last because that's about all the time I can give to the man of steel.

Then you get to Firestorm. Hee, I got a mouthful from Ethan the last time I talked badly about the potential of his book and his really radical beliefs. But I still don't have a fucking clue as to why you would remove one of Firestorm's biggest defining and most interesting gimmicks in favor of two identically-named superheroes. How does that make things more accessible and any less confusing?

Then they released the variant cover for Justice League #1 with art by David Finch....



My god, that's got to be one of the ugliest covers possible. Not to mention that Cyborg is missing. Way to promote your super hero team by leaving out the minority character. Then you have Wonder Woman going back to shorts again. And if you notice in the pictures higher above, then you'll see that they modified the original cover to also be pantless as well.

Before anyone claims that she's not wearing pants because this Justice League arc is set five years in the past, I'm pretty sure that pants existed five years ago. Maybe five years ago Cyborg was also not injured yet so thus you wont see him?

Maybe they should just come out and say that all the people complaining at the conventions last year won and that the pants were just a bad idea after all. And what is with the silver metal on Wonder Woman? It attracts your attention but doesn't look good at all on her upper cleavage.

Which I guess leads to another thing. Wonder Woman looks way too much like a stripper or a dominatrix than she ever did in the old DCU. Wasn't part of this whole reboot to make sure that women were less objectified? Because if that's the case, I really have to ask what is up with Voodoo?



I mean, if you're going to reboot a female character and try to make her one of your viewpoint characters, keeping her as a stripper is probably something you may want to change about the character. Especially when the preview pages are like the above.

It's bad enough that comic nerds are generally stereotyped as being sex deprived nerds. But let's not act as if sex workers are ever portrayed in a positive light when it comes to comics. Why did DC need to highlight this as the thing to focus on when reintroducing the character? Perhaps their preview pages could have shown off an action scene or something else about Voodoo other than a scene that was filled with nothing but male gaze?

It's really dumb to talk about how you're adding diversity to your universe and then have one of the only non-spinoff female super heroines with their own book introduced to the modern public with a page like this.



Those Voodoo pages seriously look like they're out of a coloring book...

A really weird coloring book that I wouldn't show my mother when I'm finished coloring it in.

But really, the fact is that DC is trying very hard to push themselves as diverse and less pandering entirely to a male audience. Pushing it as a "sexy" series, in their own words, about a female bisexual stripper with cheesecake art is probably the sort of thing they should be avoiding, especially as their only book with a non-white female lead.

DC should honestly try to avoid even the impression of coming across as the creepy dudes you don't want to see in a comic shop in that sectioned off adult book area. They shouldn't be pushing Catwoman as a "dirty dirty book" or having their initial impression of Voodoo be cheesecake stripper or joking about retractable pants. That just makes them look exactly like the image they're trying to shed.

Taking money from perverts and selling a book with a little gratuitous T&A is a huge issue with comics these days. "Hey guys, why don't we turn Mr. Terrfic into a big-lipped, dumb caricature and have him just sit around eating watermelon while all the white superheroes save the day, it's okay, though, think of all the money DC will make off all those idiot racists!"

If they're rewriting the whole universe, they should take this chance to do it right.. either that or they should just have more strippers. Circuses are pretty much a thing of the past and don't relate with the modern reader, perhaps Dick Greyson would be the first on the list to be turned into a stripper. Newspapers are also a bit of an artifact these days, Clark Kent should also be written as a stripper with a blog.

Let's be honest, that's the way we're going to get and hold new readers.

Panic In The Streets of London

Panic In The Streets of London

If you're not up on current events, the current situation in London can be summed up in this song:



No wait. That's not really an accurate song to start this story off. Not at all. It seems that we're well past that part in all of this of just having simple panic in the streets. Now it's full on Anarchy...



That's really the only way to describe what has been happening for three nights. Utter chaos and destruction of private property by looters and rioters (though they aren't calling them that). So really, if there was ever a time that there was Anarchy in the U.K, it has to be now.

Rioting is currently spreading all over Liverpool's grove street, Bristol and Manchester are also getting hit hard. For for those of you unfamiliar with the lay out wondering how close is all this crazy rioting in proximity to where the rich people are, the answer is nowhere. Though I think I heard one report about it reaching Notting Hill. Which I'm sure you recall from that sill Hugh Grant film.

Hayes in West London reported that lots of sirens in the area and an unmanned police station in Birmingham was set on fire. If you want to see how real this shit is getting, just check out this video:


Those cheeky bastards 'boot to giv'em a jolly good wankerin' oi guynah! If you're wondering what that noise is at the end, it's one of those crowd dispersing noise machines that torture everyone in it's way.

To put it into perspective, 225 people have been arrested and 36 charged so far after three full nights of rioting, arson and looting. Hell, during the student protest in March, 201 people were arrested, 149 charged, 138 of them the UK uncut protesters scooped up in Fortnum and Mason.

It goes to show you that the Coppers are just a bunch of cowards and liars who cannot handle people who refuse to play by their rules. So I really do wonder if Cameron is just going to call in the army on all this.



Though honestly, when a fire reaches that huge in size, I just start worrying about innocent bystanders. Another thing, I discovered today that insurance companies typically deny all claims caused by riots. Though I guess if I thought about it, it really isn't surprising. If revolution was covered by insurance, then companies would hire Maoist guerillas to destroy subsidiaries in areas where cost of labor was too high.

So I guess the question you're wondering now is how this whole thing started. Apparently the police killed a guy in what was initially reported as an "exchange of fire" - Strangely enough, the one bullet allegedly fired by the victim ended up lodged in a police radio. The IPCC (Independent Police Complaints Commission) ignored the family and so they and others marched to Tottenham police station hoping to get some answers from a senior police officer. Though no one wanted to talk to them.

Later on it kicked the fuck off and a good dozen police mobbed a 16 year old woman and beat the shit out of her. At which point a bunch of stuff got set on fire, including two police cars and a bus.



It eventually turns out that the bullet lodged in the police radio is probably a police issued bullet, and the gun found on the scene of the shooting was stuffed into a sock, bringing into question the whole idea of an "exchange of fire". Then there has been another few nights of rioting, this time all across London.

Other factors come into play. The British Poll tax was apparently different from the one they used to use. And it looks like it was just a flat fee per person across the country designed to just fuck the poor generally. Not actually a tax on voting designed to fuck blacks specifically. It's also what eventually led to Thatcher's downfall after she continued to back it in the face of a 95% opposition. Either way, that shit was just another log that caused this fire to grow even bigger.



Though many locals dismissed the socio-economic explanations for the riots saying things like this:

"We are going to get people blaming the economy and what happened last week but that's not the real reason this happened," said Brixton resident Marilyn Moseley, 49. "It's just an excuse for the young ones to come and rob shops."

But even if it's a silly excuse to blow shit up, it does make you think. Even the British still riot when the police murder someone. There really is no hope for America. I mean, I wish people rioted every time a police officer shot someone here unjustifiably. The only problem is that these guys are failing to follow the rules that most rioters seem to forget - DON'T TRASH YOUR COMMUNITIES! Trash there communities. How hard is it to remember that?

Also, I have to say fuck twitter and everything about it. I've never actually really paid much attention to it before and seldom ever look at it, but it looks like it's full of dumb people with bad opinions.



Why yes, pray for Londoners to give Bobby a right bollocking, Mate! I don't know who started the #prayforlondon hash tag, but it's good to know that we didn't completely forget about that Japanese Earthquake a couple months back. Just look at stupid ass tweets like the following:

Then you have morons who seem to make their money on the backs of enticing riots and civil unrest to happen for nothing more than bodies hitting the floor and whatever other stupid songs they now place on KROQ.



And then.. there's something worse. Something like this I didn't think I'd get emotional over this, but now I'm sobbing. The place where DH2 premiered is now burned to the ground. #PrayForLondon

THE HORROR! Though when I was watching Al Jazeera last night they did say something that shocked me greatly. The woman on there was literally arguing that the fires have a silver lining because they could then build nice shiny new apartments and cafes for the upcoming Olympics. Why yes, creative destruction. I take it you folks took your cue from Wall Street.



I guess it's simple to say that Al Jazeera really went down hill over the past year. I guess the turning point was the Arab Spring and the huge number of new viewers they must have got from it.

All that is left is to wonder what the odds of reprisals against minorities will be. Let me help you take a guess - the vast majority of them.