Voter Intimidation

Romney tells employers how to threaten employees with lay-offs if Obama wins.

Anyone else see a proposal that employers be entitled to vote on behalf of their employees in the not-to-distant future? "...but the workers don't understand what's best for them."

Media Bias

I won't bullshit here - media bias is a real thing. And not just in Fox News. It'd be impossible to enforce a rule that the media must report without bias. The media can happily have whatever bias they please. They can do this overtly, or covertly through more subtle means, such as choosing what to report on, or choices of words used when reporting. However, they generally are not allowed to outright lie, else they do risk legal consequences - libel and the like.

The more often complained about bias is that of the "liberal media." I have seen some things to support such a claim, although it's often debatable as to whether it's actual bias, or simply trolling for ratings. Or sometimes, such perceived bias is actually a sense of common decency. People who think of war as a feel-good family show aren't going to want to see pictures of the actual carnage and destruction, along with the very human faces of those suffering the most from it. Therefore, news stories such as that might be painted as having a liberal bias, as many of today's conservatives choose to see the "enemies" as less than human.

Nonetheless, the media bias in this election cycle, as well as the accusations of such, have been amusing to say the least. Quoting Romney is now "liberal bias" coming from the media. One wouldn't expect that from a supposedly conservative candidate, but hey - I'm just a know-nothing know-it-all hack with a blog. What do I know?

On the other hand, we have everyone's favorite, Fox News! They're fair and balanced. It says so right in their logo, so it has to be true. I was watching them scramble on their website to fact check and somehow discredit Obama. I also heard that Fox News is blaming Romney's loss of the debate on the audience. Aren't they the ones the debate is supposed to be about? I haven't found mention of this on the Fox News website, though.

One thing that just rubs me wrong, though. Romney's opportunism as far as the Libya thing. First of all, it's never right to use a tragedy for political gain. This is why I was pissed off at Bush well before the 2004 election came. Anyway, the complaint didn't even have real substance to it - there was so much made of whether or not Obama labeled it as a terror attack fast enough. First of all, yes, he did do so in that speech in the rose garden, although Fox News says that's debatable.

Next, though... what the fuck does it matter? Seriously. People were killed. Does calling it a terrorist attack make them any less dead? It seems like Romney's camp is doing its best to harp on about gestures. Personally, I like my leaders to be more concerned with action rather than getting in a pissing contest over who feels more tragic anguish over such a thing.

But, maybe it's the best the Romney camp has to offer. "Gee, I won't get anything done, but I'll sure do my best to convince you that I cry myself to sleep over it!"

How disappointing...

Chick-fil-A still using bible to justify hate, your money to fund it.

Guess my money's going elsewhere.

Breast Cancer Awareness

I have to wonder... what's the point of an awareness campaign if you post a bunch of vague, nonsensical stuff on Facebook in the intention of being secretive, and perhaps excluding a whole gender? To me, that seems counter-productive and even childish. It does little or nothing to raise awareness and has more the feel of junior high school girls making up secrets just to annoy the guys.

For those wondering, if you're seeing strange Facebook statuses, usually with numbers, it's probably part of the awareness thing. For instance, a recent one is "x inches :-(". The x is to be replaced by the person's shoe size. In the name of breast cancer awareness. I could see how a bra size might be relevant, but...?

Anyway, I do fully support breast cancer awareness, along with awareness of any cancer. And while I do think that breast cancer perhaps gets a disproportionate amount of attention, I'm not going to make this a battle of the sexes thing. By all means, save the boobies!

With all the attention, it becomes increasingly easy to contribute. If you like yogurt (yes, I'm manly enough to admit I love the stuff, at least in some flavors), Yoplait is running their Save Lids to Save Lives campaign. Real simple - just buy yogurt, eat it, then go to the website, enter your e-mail address, zip code, and the code on the underside of the lids. For each code submitted, they contribute ten cents to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Not my favorite foundation after they've chosen to end their partnership with Planned Parenthood... I'm aware of the politics, but it was mutually beneficial. Planned Parenthood provides a lot of women's health services. But anyway, it's not going to hurt. You aren't contributing to the Westboro Baptist Church or the Romney Campaign or anything like that. If you're aware of other good breast cancer groups, by all means, name them in the comments.

And women, get screened. After all...