Noticed how much junk seems to be filling the news lately? So have we. This blog is designed for those who find this frustrating. Here, you can discuss, (and maybe mock) the news that you think is worthy of discussing!
Last week, a toxicology report was released on Rudy Eugene, the man who chewed off a homeless man's face in Miami. The report concluded that there was no human flesh in his stomach. However, there were undigested pills (which have not yet been identified) and traces of marijuana in his system.
So, contrary to popular belief, bath salts did not cause this horrific attack. That being said, in the eloquent words of Youtuber Philip Defranco, "Bath salts are still the devil."
Recently the news seems to have been dominated by people losing their minds on drugs. There was the man in Miami who stripped naked and began to eat (yes, literally tear off, chew and swallow) a homeless man's face. Then, more recently, a man in New Jersey had a stand off with police during which he stabbed himself fifty times, ripped out his own intestines and threw them and his skin at police. It was at this shocking moment when the two officers quickly left and called for SWAT.
Both men are suspected to have been on some form of drugs like Bath Salts or heroin.
Yet despite the horrible things these men are doing to their bodies and other people with drugs, churches still choose to focus their hatred on homosexuals.
Last week, a North Carolina preacher said that all the "lesbians, queers and homosexual" should be locked up in electrified fences and left to die out because "they can't reproduce".
The video speaks for itself:
Virginia seems to have responded to this video by teaching a four year old boy to sing "Ain't no homo going to make it to heaven". As the boy sings this, the congregation goes wild with pride and triumph at their accomplishment.
Here at Kind of Newsworthy, we can only ask, of all the things to preach about, drug and alcohol abuse for example, why do these preachers insist on preaching hate and intolerance? Christianity is about loving and forgiving. There is nothing to forgive if someone is gay, so that means people should love them as they would any other person. That people can be so full of hate and prejudice is shocking.
Remember fifty years ago during the civil rights movement? Me neither, I'm not old enough for that. But the point is that people were preaching and screaming that blacks were going to burn in hell. Now, they all look stupid and racist. Imagine how these homophobes are going to look in twenty years...
Think you know whats going on in the world around you? Unless you listen to NPR or watch Comedy Central, you probably don't know as much as you could.
A recent survey found that people who watch major new corporations (CNN, HLN, FOX, MSNBC) know the least about current events in the world, with those watching FOX coming in dead last every single time. Surprisingly, people who listened to NPR knew the most.
Our personal favourite is the second place contender. It turns out that people who watch Jon Stewart's The Daily Show know the third most about international events than anyone else! So next time that you need an excuse to watch some comedy, you can tell yourself you're actually educating yourself.
In case you've been living under a rock or Kind of Newsworthy is your only source of news (sorry for the absence, we're back now), 17 year old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by George Zimmerman. Zimmerman claims he was acting in self defense, but pretty much the entire country is calling racism. (When Zimmerman called 911 to report a suspicious man [Travon] and the police told Zimmerman to stop chasing him, he asked aloud why these people always get away). Zimmerman was never arrested or charged because of Florida's Stand Your Ground Law, which permits the use of lethal force if one believes his or her life is in danger.
Eventually, the FBI became involved in the investigation of the killing. Recently, however, Zimmerman has disappeared. His lawyers say that they never actually met with him, they only knew where he was because he told them so.
To this development, we respectfully say, "No, really?" Quite honestly, what did you expect? The entire country is saying that Zimmerman is a racist and he should be arrested, charged and sent to jail for the rest of his life, and you expect him to sit quietly in his home peacefully disputing the accusations?
Nope.
Zimmerman did as anyone in that situation would have done and ran like the devil himself was in pursuit. While what Zimmerman did was terrible, racist and Mr. Zimmerman himself is most likely a terrible person, we can't help but feel like he just made idiots of the entire legal system. A known killer was allowed to wander free while people decided whether anything should be done about this guy?
It is terrible that an innocent boy had to die for this, but maybe this killing will point out some huge flaws in our legal system, and changes will be made that will prevent further killings like this.
UPDATE:
The day after this post was published, George Zimmerman turned himself in. He has been charged with second degree murder.
Rarely can a single video take the entire internet by storm with as much power as this video.
The video is from the organization Invisible Children. The group is dedicated to ending the campaign of terror lead by Joseph Kony in central Africa. For 26 years, Kony has abducted over 30,000 children from their homes and turned the boys into soldiers, and the girls into sex slaves. Often, Kony's men send the children back to their families to kill their parents. This ensures that the children have no where left to go except Kony's L.R.A.
Words, however, are incapable of expressing the horror of the Lord's Resistance Army's brutal slaughters We urge you to watch the entire video, it is, after all, only 30 minutes. We urge you to dedicate thirty short minutes to the plight of these innocent families. We assure you, you will want to change something.
Earlier this week, Sandra Fluke, a law student at Georgetown University, testified before Congress as to why she believes contraception should be covered by government health care. She cited the high cost, and the medical benefits for people like her friend who uses contraception to control an ovarian cyst.
Whether you agree with her arguments or not, she is not the main story here.
In response to this testimony, controversial radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh went on a tirade. He said that if taxes give "sluts" like these free contraception, we are paying them to have sex. What does this make Sandra Fluke? According to Limbaugh, this makes her a prostitute, and thus, we are her pimps.
In a dramatic conclusion after many minutes of ranting, he concluded that he would be OK with paying for Fluke's contraception if she and every other woman recorded their intimate experiences and posted the videos online for the public to watch..
Yes, somehow Rush Limbaugh took a respectable law student testifying before Congress, and turned her into a prostitute / pornstar.
Mr. Limbaugh later issued an apology, but it was soon discovered that many of his sponsors such as AOL were withdrawing their support from his show. Sandra Fluke dismissed his apology saying that he was just trying to keep his show from crashing and burning and sinking into the deep abyss where the few people who actually care about the show now will never be able to find it again. We might have paraphrased a little.
So in the end, Rush Limbaugh has proved once again that he is a terrible person. That is not a judgement or an opinion, that is just a fact. End of story.
This video is of an Iraq war veteran (and an anti-war activist) questioning John Bolton about the moral implications of the war. Mr. Bolton not only doges the question and doesn't answer, but he insults the veteran.
While Mr. Bolton is certainly allowed to his opinion and free speech, what Fox News did afterwards is inexcusable. At the actual event, Bolton was booed and received no applause. In order to make Mr. Bolton look a bit more well received, however, Fox switched the reaction from the actual clip to a reaction clip from the previous year, which showed Bolton being enthusiastically cheered..... and a different questioner!
Fox responded to the allegations saying that it was a simple mistake.
Fox... We all know this isn't a mistake. Not only are you a huge national news station and can't afford a mistake like that, but this mistake happens to only further your own agenda. No one is believing you.
To view the original true video (unedited), visit this link http://goo.gl/7T0Y2.
According to CNN, private Americans (people, not the country) borrowed over two trillion dollars in December. The anchor followed this news by implying that this was great news that the economy was on track to be the way it was before the recession.
To put it bluntly... This is NOT great news! Excessive borrowing is what brought the recession down on our heads in the first place. People took too many loans from banks that didn't check credit, and when the time to repay the banks came, people realized "Whoops.. I don't have any money to pay you back with." So the banks foreclosed on the borrowers, people lost their houses, cars, children and wives (ok, not those last two), and their jobs. Then the government stepped in with the stimulus, and now when things seem to be genuinely getting better, you tell us that people are racking up thousands of dollars in debt again? And you tell us that this is a good thing?
CNN, you aren't what you used to be, but this is just too far. Any economist could tell you that debt is not good. You do not need that 60" 3D Hi Def TV complete with Bose surround sound speakers. Not if buying it means going in to debt anyway.
You should only go into debt for important, huge purchases or investments like buying a house and going to university. Not even buying a car requires debt. (Instead of making payments to the dealer for five years, make payments to yourself for five years, so when you need a new car, you have the full amount of money ready and waiting for you).
Yes, debt is, as the anchor said, as American as apple pie. But since when does that mean it's right?
As the 2012 presidential election draws nearer and nearer, the Republican candidates (thanks in a large part to the media) have basically been narrowed down to Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. As these two duke it out at debates and primaries all over the country (as of writing, the next primary is in Florida), President Obama has yet to even start campaigning.
This may have a few effects. First; Americans practically forget that there is already a president and they think that their only choices for office are Romney and Gingrich (we're speaking of the not-so-nicely-educated Americans here..) Or, they may just toss so many insults at each other that by the time the real election rolls around, the general public has become so thoroughly disgusted with both of them that they decide to reelect President Obama.
Personally, I think something in the election system needs to change.
First of all, what is SOPA? SOPA is a bill that was recently introduced in the House of Representatives as the Stop Online Piracy Act. It's purpose is plainly stated; to stop online piracy. Because you're reading this on blog, we don't feel the need to define what online piracy is.
After filtering through paragraphs and paragraphs of bewildering attorney-speak, we've determined a few things. Obviously, the bill is designed to stop online piracy. This particular bill deals mostly with 'foreign infringing sites' that are being used in the United States.
Because U.S. courts do not have jurisdiction where any foreign site is located, the bill provides means to block the website. According to the bill, search engines must remove all links to the foreign site if told to do so by the government. All online advertising companies must remove their ads, and any funding from the foreign site. Any payment service (such as Paypal) must stop all transactions with the foreign site. The domain hosting service must block all American users from accessing the foreign infringing site. All of these must occur within five days of receiving a court order.
So while it does not seem that SOPA will be able to shut down foreign infringing sites, it forces us and companies to boycott them against their will.
A lot of rumors have spread about what sites this bill will target. Will Youtube be included? Will Facebook? Google +? Countless other massively used file sharing or social media sites? Right now, no one knows. All we can do is speculate, and decide whether or not we want to support this bill.
Do your research, learn what the bill says, and either back it or fight it. You make the choice.
