Thomas Calandra -writer

I sure can't wait until the Super bowl!!!

So I can see all those who feverishly lock on to any cause to exclaim that we all should know better on how to address sexism in society, how we should be more concerned of the sexual assault epidemic on college campuses, how domestic violence is deplorable, how we should fight r**e culture (then white knight these issues as if they were the ones directly assaulted) go and cheer on football players who are the perpetrators of domestic violence against women, sexual assault, and battery, thus helping these players with financial support, in order to afford legal representation to avoid conviction on these crimes at a lower rate than an average citizen; or if convicted, enable them to avoid going to jail. I seriously can't wait.

I can't wait for all those who insist on promulgating gender equality and urge against homophobia, to share memes that certain team's fans are gay, q***r or womanly, and synonymously less, simply because they don't like the team.

I can't wait for those who support political reform to tax the rich, and want to drain the 1%, to give a pass to those football players who make $10 to $40 million a year. Eat the rich, unless he is the same type of confused, scared, naked primate as us all wearing a certain colored jersey from a certain patch of geography, who throws a certain type of object to a certain set of arbitrary rules.
I
Can't
Wait.

"Football Season is Over. No more fun. No more games. Act your old age. This wont hurt." - Hunter S Thompson

This just might be the best argument on how compulsory public education has failed miserably.

He's not wrong.

"Maybe the factoid is true. Maybe Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet have more wealth than all of the infants, children, students, handicapped, prisoners, and postgrads combined. But you don’t need a PhD to figure out that’s not useful knowledge. Even if the factoid is true, it's deceitful. Whoever created it was obviously trying to manipulate people. And we uncovered this deception with nothing but some simple knowledge of the US population."

The Irrelevance of That “3 Billionaires Have More Wealth Than Half of America” Factoid | Daniel C. Jensen Major financial news outlets like Institutional Investor and Fox Business quoted it. But they shouldn’t have. If you know a couple of basic facts about the United States population, you know it's not worth quoting. It might be a fact, but it's so meaningless that it’s actually deceitful.

"A better option still would be go to vegan for two-thirds of meals, while still occasionally indulging in animal products. Doing so would cut food-related greenhouse-gas emissions by nearly 60%. Absolute veganism, unsurprisingly, is the most environmentally friendly. Die-hard leaf-eaters can claim to have knocked off 85% off their carbon footprint."

How much would giving up meat help the environment? Going vegan for two-thirds of meals could cut food-related carbon emissions by 60%

Yang went full Beto

Andrew Yang Proposes Making Social Media Algorithms Subject to Federal Approval Entrepreneur Andrew Yang has run a tech-centered campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, positioning his Universal Basic Income proposal as

"It's World Diabetes Day, which means it's a good day to explore why insulin is so expensive."

A Government Guide to Keeping Insulin Unaffordable | Laura Williams Through a nebulous network of bully tactics and insider dealings, government agencies and corporate campaign donors conspire to deny patients the benefits of market competition. 

How School Districts Put Politics Before Children | Matthew Bankert Many people wary of government power rightly criticize public schools for being more indoctrination than education. When the institution is fully dependent on the state for support, why would any ideas be put forth that could put their lifeblood in jeopardy?

In one of my favorite movies, “Big Fish,” there is scene right after the main character Edward Bloom won the charms of a girl named Sandra (who would soon to be his wife) where he receives a telegram. Edward looks disappointed as he reads what’s on the paper, to which the voiceover narration then says, “While my heart belonged to Sandra, the rest of my body belonged to the U.S. Government.” Of course, what Edward means by this statement is that he has been drafted, and must go fight in, at the time, The Korean War. For World War II, The Korean War and Vietnam, there were many men who volunteered to go and fight in these conflicts. However, there were a lot of men who didn’t, but where forced to, effectively because, as Edward says; their bodies were property of the state.

The last man was drafted in December of 1972 and after that the military became an all-volunteer based armed force. What this means when it comes to Veteran’s day for veterans of the first gulf war, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and the later Iraq war, is a little bit of a change in meaning. Today, these veterans are soldiers that are guaranteed to be there by their own volition. No one held a gun to their head. No one forced them to fight by threat of fine or imprisonment. They did it and joined completely on their own accord, and this has to be acknowledged in order to really appreciate Veteran’s day today as opposed to Veteran’s day in 1954, when it was renamed from Armistice day, founded following the culmination of World War 1 in 1918. This doesn’t mean that the value of one that enlisted is greater than the one who was drafted; it just means that despite there still being monsters out there to fight, despite that there are still encroachments on the lovers of life by those who are the lovers of death, we as a country now find in unconscionable to treat its sons and daughters as expendable cannon fodder. Yet these men and women still serve. They still volunteer. They still fight. They still find reasons to fight. In many cases, for things worth preserving, and in many other cases today, for things worth elucidating. The non-college educated man or woman veteran who stood there and guarded Iraqi and Afghanistan people in voting lines against lunatic bomb laden followers in the cults of death, will do more for promulgating liberty, freedom, democracy and self-government than anything I will do, speak, or write in my entire lifetime.

And that is why Veteran’s day has changed. It isn’t about “doing your part” and “serving” your country as if it was a job that you had to do, or paying membership fees to a club that you don’t have a choice in being in. It is about having the liberty to say no, but declining in doing so, because having that choice in not only fighting, but in other matters pertaining to your existence, is in itself, a concept, quality and idea worth fighting for. So please give a special thank you to the Veterans of an all-volunteer armed force in helping preserve the continuation of our all-volunteer lives.

"As it turned out, the socialist economies — designed to deliver an easier life to consumers and workers — were really vehicles of impoverishment, not to mention environmental degradation."

The Berlin Wall Reminds Us of What Happens After We "Smash Capitalism" | Ryan McMaken This week marks the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The place without the lights is also the place with the concentration camps and mass graves.