Student Loan Relief

There’s a lot of talk about student loan relief. Democrats are heroes, pushing to help relieve the debt burden, while Republicans are evil, wanting students to die broke in the gutter. Okay, but it seems to me that student loan debt wouldn’t be nearly such a big deal if college tuition hadn’t gone up 300% in 20 years! Colleges and universities are mostly run by liberals, so how come they’re ripping off students like this? There’s no excuse for this ridiculous highway robbery, and this is what’s making student loans so ridiculously expensive and such a long-term debt burden. (Well, that and the awful job market for recent college graduates.)

So, if Democrats really care about student debt and accessibility of higher education, why aren’t they talking about capping tuition rates or at least looking into the reasons for its ridiculous increases over the past two decades? It seems to me that this might help a little bit more than some temporary student loan relief. (Well, that, or else maybe create a business-friendly environment so they can get jobs and pay off the student loans themselves.) But it’s just a suggestion.

All I know is, if this were any other industry raising prices this high for no reason, gouging young people into indentured servitude for years on end to pay them off, I’m pretty sure that the Democrats would be railing against it (and rightly so!). So I think while they’re at it fighting the debt stuff, it might be nice to solve the source of the problem first: sky-high tuition costs! (But I’m not opposed to debt relief. It’s just that it looks to me like that’s more taxpayer-funded government debt while we’re already dangerously in debt as a nation, when maybe the real guilty party is the ridiculously unfairly high tuition. I can’t think of any reason for tuitions to triple in twenty years, now: can you?)

Weather and the Political Party Conventions

I think we mostly all know by now that the Democratic National Convention has moved President Obama’s acceptance speech from the giant outdoor stadium back to the indoor auditorium. This is supposedly due to weather concerns, but a lot of people are making hay out of this, saying they couldn’t fill the stadium, etc. But whether it’s weather or something else, let’s also remember the Republican convention in Tampa, with the hurricane warning, etc. It seems to me that planning their conventions in Gulf Coast or Eastern Seaboard locales during hurricane season demonstrates a definite lack of good planning and decision-making abilities for both parties. And doesn’t that make both sides seem a bit incompetent? I mean, along with many of their policies and stuff.

Ventriloquists Subvert Brussels Offensive Language Ban

A new effort to curtail offensive language in Brussels has had an unexpected drawback, reportedly leaving it open to abuse from disgruntled ventriloquists. One such ventriloquist and self-described anarchist said:

“When they first announced it, I called the guy a jerk, a loser, an asshole, and a f*ckface, and I managed to get four different people thrown out and fined right there. I thought: ‘This is great!’ You see, most people don’t have any respect for ventriloquists like me, so this is the perfect opportunity to get revenge on everyone! Plus, I’m tired of the government trying to make people do whatever they want all the time. Well, after that, I figured I could get everyone busted and make the government seem like the enemy, and so I spend most of my time nowadays sitting at corner cafés, spitting out vile insults so it sounds like other people are saying them. I get dozens of people arrested and ticketed every day! It’s such a good scam, in fact, I’ve thought about asking the government if I could do it full time for them. After all, I’m making them tons of money this way; shouldn’t I get to wet my beak a little?”

Here’s the swearing story:

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/09/brussels-plans-to-fine-offensive-language/

The Gyp Liberty?

Yes, last night at the DNC*, Ted  Strickland, the former governor of Ohio, said someone’s job was saved by Barack Obama, so he could make the “Gyp Liberty” 60 hours a week. He did correct himself (to Jeep Liberty), but I wonder if this was a Freudian slip, because he really secretly thinks President Obama is plotting to gyp everyone out of their liberty. It said he was a Democrat, but maybe this guy’s a secret Republican? And maybe he just pretended to make the slip of the tongue to plant the seed of distrust and freedom-loss paranoia in everyone’s mind? (Also, if the guy in the story is working sixty hours a week, I’d say that sounds like he’s being gypped out of his liberty just a bit. I hope he’s not being held captive by those car-building robot thingies, so they can design a better Terminator.)

* Okay, actually it was last night on The Daily Show, and the speech was two nights ago. I’m sorry, I just don’t have the patience to listen to all the snow job speeches. But I was surprised to see that The Daily Show didn’t make a joke on that little slip of the tongue, seeing as how Republicans are always complaining about Democrats curtailing freedoms, etc., and generally complaining about one person specifically. (By the way, it’s President Barack Obama they’re usually accusing of such things, just in case you weren’t sure.)

Murderball

I was just watching the Paralympics on the NBC Sports Network, and it reminded me of some news report I has seen about Wheel Chair Rugby, also known as “Murderball”. Now, I’m no sports announcer or lawyer or anything, but it seems to me that if it’s called Murderball, it might make it seem intentionally violent, and that might hurt its appeal. So how about calling it “Manslaughterball” instead? That might at least make people think the violence is unintentional. Or maybe they could call it “Justifiable Homicide Ball”, and so when someone gets hurt, it will seem like they deserved it or something. Hey, it’s just an idea. After all, we don’t want everyone to think they’re just a bunch of murderers, now do we? (Actually, maybe it will be more popular if people think they are murderers, as serial killers are all the rage in America. So maybe they could each adopt some serial killer moniker, like the Marilyn Manson band members do. Sound like a good idea?)

Paralympics Coverage

I’ve never watched the Paralympics before today. It’s an easy thing to miss seeing, seeing as how nobody seems to want to show it. NBC, for all their über-liberal stances, doesn’t seem to want to put their money where their mouth is and show it on NBC. (They talk the talk, but they won’t walk the walk.) I heard they’re showing 5 hours of it on their sports channel: whoop-de-do! Well, at least I guess we should be glad they’re showing us any at all, huh?

So I made an effort to seek it out, and I finally found some by accident on NBC Sports Network (they haven’t advertised it at all from what I’ve seen), and I watched it. And I was just starting to really get into it, when it was over (!!). And then they showed some hour-long puff piece on some MLS player I’d never heard of (one hour: as long as the Paralympics piece they showed!). What the hell? I thought NBC wanted to help change people’s view of social issues. I guess not if they might not cash in, huh? Lame.

The fact is, apparently this is by far the best Paralympics ever. They have been selling out tickets for events all over the place, and there have been a bunch of amazing performances. I didn’t know what to expect, so I watched what little there was to see, because I’d never seen it before, and I found a completely different sort of thing than I was expecting. And way better and cooler than I could have imagined. (I think I figured it wouldn’t be that good because nobody ever seems to want to show it.) By the time it was over, I was literally yelling at the TV for cutting it off!

It was really great, and I think the very least NBC could do would be to devote their sports network to it while it’s going (you know: the whole time). People have to see it to see if they want to watch it, and if they can’t see it, they’ll never know. Well, I looked for it, and I got a taste, and I want to see more. And I’m very disappointed there isn’t more, at least not on NBC. (All I can think is that they had made so many people mad during the regular Olympics, they didn’t want to take a chance at alienating less people during the Paralympics. And if that was the issue, then mission accomplished! {And a good job, too!})

Now, I’m not just trying to jerk NBC’s chain. I’m just saying that I think people really may enjoy the Paralympics more than they might expect. But they might never know, if someone doesn’t take a chance and put it on prime time TV. See what I mean?

Newfound ‘Tatooine’ Alien Planet Bodes Well for E.T. Search

This is the headline for an article disseminated through multiple online media outlets today, but this whole thing is a complete waste of time. You see, they’ve made a simple mistake here, which is this: How can you expect to find a character from a Steven Spielberg movie in the Star Wars galaxy? That’s not even the right movie. It’s like looking for Wookies on Mongo, or Hawkmen on Naboo: they just ain’t there.

The funny thing is that George Lucas supposedly put the E.T. aliens in a cameo for one of his prequel trilogy (The Phantom Menace, apparently) as a return favor for Steven Spielberg putting a Yoda mask in E.T. The Extraterrestrial. But I think it’s clear now that Lucas did that in order to get real space science nerds looking in the wrong place for them, and apparently the ruse has worked, if this article’s headline is any indication.

But look, even if the E.T. aliens are from the Star Wars galaxy, how can scientists be sure to find one on Tatooine? That’s not even their home planet. Maybe one got left behind there too like E.T. got left here on Earth for a while, but that’s not really the right place to look. Plus, there are lots of other things going on there, and the Hut will probably capture and shake them down and stuff anyway if they try to go there, so they probably won’t even get to look around effectively. Plus, Tatooine is a desert planet, so looking there would be a miserable experience anyway. But if they insist upon going there, why not look for Luke Skywalker on Tatooine? He’s from there.

(BTW: This is based on the article’s headline, and not on the article itself.)

Here’s the planetary piece:

http://www.space.com/17416-tatooine-alien-planet-habitable-zone-life.html