Sorry, but something is deeply wrong with this tragedy (Darn it, it was a dog!)

When I was a child, coming home after school, grandma told me my dog Terry was taken away by the dog pound employees. Upset doesn’t begin to describe what I felt. My best friend was taken away from me! Anyway, being raised somehow by The Littlest Hobo and Lassie on TV, there was little doubt in my mind that Terry would escape and come back to me.

I waited for Terry two years, and then I gave up hope.

Not so long ago I read in the newspaper that a young boy committed suicide because his beloved dog died. I remembered Terry, but I couldn’t understand the boy’s radical decision. Darn it, it was a dog! You can cry all that you want, most people would understand that!

But you don’t take your life because your dog died.

At the same time, another boy killed his dad… because his dad killed his dog. I could imagine the boy’s pain, but darn it, it was a dog, not a human life!

You don’t take a human life because of killing a dog.

I’m of course against animal cruelty. But bash me all the way if you want it, because for me the notion of considering animals as subjects of law with rights is an unspeakable affront to all the suffering humanity, that one that is starving to death in Africa and elsewhere, that one that is still being slaved for forced labor or sexual exploitation or that one that will be lapidated for “sinful” behavior.

In that perspective, animalism is an utter waste of time and resources, and a cowardly way to avoid an undoubtedly more difficult (and gruesome) fight for fellow humans. It’s easier and safer to stand up for bulls than for 2.000 extrajudicially executed human beings.

That said, I deeply regret soap opera actor Nick Santino’s decision to take his life with an overdose of pills after euthanizing his dog. But I can’t still understand or accept his suicide as a loving gesture. Darn it, it was a dog.

Santino, rest in peace, may God have mercy on your soul and hopefully there is a heaven for dogs, too.

But for me, we should try being more altruistic with our fellow humans first. It's the least that we can do. Then we can talk about animals.

Related articles

• Soap Star Nick Santino Commits Suicide after Euthanizing Dog (celebs.gather.com)
• Nick Santino Kills Dog then Himself (everyjoe.com)
• Struggling Soap Opera Actor Commits Suicide After Euthanizing Beloved Dog (tmz.com)
• Soap Opera Actor Nick Santino Commits Suicide After Euthanizing His Dog Friend (dlisted.com)
• Grief-stricken soap actor commits suicide (today.msnbc.msn.com)
• Sorry, but something is deeply wrong with this tragedy (Darn it, it was a dog!) (sipmac.blogspot.com)
• Nick Santino commits suicide after strict building management 'forced him to put down dog' (dailymail.co.uk)

GOP’s own EMP and the Eleventh Commandment

Every politician is an egotist (duh). Barack Obama is famous for taking himself in very high regard. But Newt Gingrich has raised the bar. Obama’s infatuation with himself is dwarfed by the way the architect of the 1994 Republican Revolution sees himself. Never timid with the use of grandiloquent statements (sample quote: “we helped defeat the Soviet empire”), Newt is the Republican answer to Obama’s “fundamental transformation of America.”

That said, Gingrich’s second surge in the Republican primaries has hit a very delicate nerve in some GOP sectors, enough to provoke an all-out attack against him in order to derail his presidential candidacy for good. The instrument for this assault is none other than the Gipper, Ronald Reagan, the most beloved Republican president of the 20th century. According to sources, in the 1980s, the candidate repeatedly insulted the Great Communicator, never afraid to predict that Reagan’s policies would fail. Even Viagra spokesperson Bob Dole decided to pile on Gingrich, hours before the 19th debate at the University of North Florida.

It is not risky to assert that Gingrich is driving his detractors insane; otherwise Ann Coulter, The National Review and a long list of pedigreed GOPers wouldn’t be so unambiguously breaking Reagan’s eleventh commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican. I don’t need to be a conservative or register myself as Republican to see where this absurd game is leading: the Republican nomination winner will emerge so weak and disminished after this slugfest that he won’t stand a chance against a full-of-internal-support Barack Obama. This in-house dispute (I refuse to call it civil war) is a Democrats’ dream come true. Like Christmas in January.

Gingrich’s many weaknesses are for all to see now, but absolutely nobody recognizes his true strength. Nobody’s praising his moon base plans, or his immigrant policy, but his followers sure dig the way he fights the biased media and his willingness to pin Obama for every wrongdoing of his tenure. Next to him, Romney is the android that SNL and countless others like to portray. Ron Paul’s foreign policy is way wackier than any Gingrich proposal could be (His EMP warning is not a delusional one, like it or not, it could really happen). Santorum is the only true social conservative of the bunch, and because of that, no matter how well he performs, he’s considered unelectable, because of his perceived “extremist views.”

But like Gingrich, he’s for big government and therefore more akin to the GOP elite, forever disconnected from the base, in fear of having to dismantle spendthrift federal agencies and stopping for once the derail-menacing gravy train of government runaway spending. So many sinecures and crony businesses opportunities lost forever…

The “United States of Greece” is derided as an exaggerated, silly boogeyman, but the spending party has to end. Europe keeps walking on the tight rope, and nobody wants to face the music in the first world.

In the meanwhile, the GOP detonates its own EMP device against itself and smiles pretending to know exactly what it is doing.

Related articles

• Matt Drudge Bombs Newt Gingrich - Many Worry About Former Speaker's Possible Nomination (dekerivers.wordpress.com)
• The Case For (and Against) Newt (nicedeb.wordpress.com)
• As he himself would say, "Bob Dole knows. Bob Dole remembers." (maureenholland.wordpress.com)
• Joe Scarborough: Newt Gingrich's History Of Attacking Ronald Reagan Shows He Is 'Ideologically Unmoored' (mediaite.com)
• Barbs fly as Republican race tightens (vancouversun.com)
• Newt In 1986: "President Reagan Is Failing" (alan.com)
• Gingrich Accused Of Violating 12th Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Speak Ill Of Reagan (jonathanturley.org)
• We Need More Debates - and Loud Ones (newser.com)
• GOP's own EMP and the Eleventh Commandment (paulmarsic.wordpress.com)

The Muppets: a “gas” except for the indoctrination parts

Innocent, wholesome entertainment sells. That’s what The Muppets are trying to tell us with their comeback movie. Great moral for the “gritty reboot” era, which is conveniently and mercilessly lampooned in a very clever and self – referential movie, that brilliantly manages to keep its fresh optimism and innocence.

The Muppets really can act. It’s not only their voices, but also their fabric-made faces transmit emotion better than a few contemporary actors can. And most of all, one cannot avoid feeling sorrow for Kermit’s sadness. Every member of the original cast makes a triumphant comeback and Walter with his tenderness and unique talent almost steals the show from the mighty Kermit.

People old enough can feel literally transported back to their childhood when the intro segment of the Muppets’ Show takes place. As a bonus, you can realize where the Simpsons’ concept of never-the-same-intro was stolen. You cannot see with tolerant eyes anymore how Groening and Co. lampoon the Muppets by working with Troy McClure after realizing that.

Jack Black’s “unwitting” contribution feels as natural as almost the whole rest of cameos. A self-deprecating Whoopi Goldberg looks great side to side with Selena Gomez and Neil Patrick Harris, which would have been perfectly cast for any major role in the movie, as he proved with The Smurfs.
Plot holes are easily and jokingly dismissed with the above mentioned cleverness the movie possesses. The music numbers are great and the only really unpleasant surprise is to find Sarah Silverman performing as Sarah Silverman, waitressing with her accustomed cynicism and wry demeanor (she might be just still bitter about Greg the Bunny getting axed after a paltry six episodes). What a great villain would have been, playing an updated version of the Wicked Witch of the West, but not, the writers played it safe demonizing oil and businessmen casting the villain as a tycoon that wants to destroy the Muppet Theatre to extract the oil, just like it’s done anywhere in the L.A. area. But never mind, the mood of the movie is very joyous and Tex Richman is an over-the-top caricature of a, say, a bloodthirsty George Soros, living only to make more money no matter the consequences.

Children indoctrination in movies is here to stay. Directors and writers aiming at children are not veiling the political message anymore. I’ve seen the horror of the coming “attractions” and I think I can barely stomach the way some Hollywood bigwigs attempt to manipulate its clientele, thinking for them and delivering what’s good for them. Buying the tie-in products is not enough anymore; the brats have to be taught how to vote, too.

It took two paragraphs, but believe me this political thing is a very small peccadillo in a great entertaining movie, with takes you with sensibility to a simpler era, without f-bombs and attitudes.


Whacka-whacka-whacka a comeback!

Related articles

• The Muppets: a "gas" except for the indoctrination parts (sipmac.blogspot.com)
• Ask Kermit the Frog a question on Twitter! (geeksyndicate.wordpress.com)
• The Muppets: One Word. Classic. (thebullmhs.com)
• FILM REVIEW: The Muppets (geeksyndicate.wordpress.com)
• The Muppets: 'You never call them puppets!' (guardian.co.uk)

World status update by country (taken from the Internet and modified)

I got this non-pc satire from the blog International Liberty. In these SOPA days sure I can feel nervous about knocking down an entire post, but it is awesome enough to deserve the reposting and even more worth of being added some new material.

===========================

The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent terrorist threats and have therefore raised their security level from “Miffed” to “Peeved.” Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to “Irritated” or even “A Bit Cross.” The English have not been “A Bit Cross” since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies nearly ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from “Tiresome” to “A Bloody Nuisance.” The last time the British issued a “Bloody Nuisance” warning level was in 1588, when threatened by the Spanish Armada.

The Scots have raised their threat level from “Pissed Off” to “Let’s get the Bastards.” They don’t have any other levels. This is the reason they have been used on the front line of the British army for the last 300 years.
The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from “Run” to “Hide.” The only two higher levels in France are “Collaborate” and “Surrender.” The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France’s white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country’s military capability.

Italy has increased the alert level from “Shout Loudly and Excitedly” to “Elaborate Military Posturing.” Two more levels remain: “Ineffective Combat Operations” and “Change Sides.”

The Germans have increased their alert state from “Disdainful Arrogance” to “Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs.” They also have two higher levels: “Invade a Neighbor” and “Lose.”

Colombia on the contrary, has lowered its alert level from “revolted, give’em hell” to “gullible, let’s hear them”, still away from the lowest level “naïve, let’s make a new constitution”.

Venezuela, maintains its only level since 1999 “paranoia, pretend those Yankees are after you to retain full power.”

North Korea is making its transition from “worker’s paradise” to “surreal” to “completely loony tunes”, which will be called later “normal”.

China is upgrading from “frenemy” to “only major player”, only if they can avoid the “implosion” status because of abusing the “everything’s fine” grade, without revealing its hidden housing bubble and railroad fiasco and infrastructure systems failures.

Argentina, after taking over the pensions system, upgraded from “perceived catastrophe” to “nothing to see here, pal”. The lowest level “real catastrophe, every man for himself” is somewhat consistent with its highest threat level “head in the sand.”

Russia has four levels: “I can get no respect”, “demand respect”, its current “extract respect” and “war”.


Alert level of this blog? Red, of course.

Related articles

• Terror Alert: Interview with a Canadian couple on Bangkok terror alert indicates mixed-readiness (thaiintelligentnews.wordpress.com)
• (MONITOR) International Terror Levels! (dreadnoughtuk.wordpress.com)
• Terror Alert: Israel says Terrorist Recruiting with Social Media & USA's Bangkok "Terror Alert" with Social Media (with UPI) (thaiintelligentnews.wordpress.com)
• Philippine Catholics defy terror alerts, march in streets (cbc.ca)
• Politically Incorrect Terrorism Humor from England (danieljmitchell.wordpress.com)
• World status update by country (taken from the internet and modified) (sipmac.blogspot.com)
  
• World status update by country (taken from the Internet and modified) (sipmac.blogspot.com)

Mid-January SOPA Meme-mania

January used to be a very dead month, news-wise, that is. But since the Mayans ran out of calendar space this year, it seems we will live twelve very intense months. The old curse said “hope you live in interesting times”, so that, thanks to SOPA and PIPA, we are experiencing a very interesting time in which we may see the end of the happy, jovial and free internet (or not). Memes took the side of the users and want to teach some manners. You be the judge.

Ask the Hollywood moguls: Stop squealing, you never lose money! What have you done lately for me?

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• Six Terrible Things That Are Sure To Happen If SOPA Passes (biobreak.wordpress.com)
• SOPA/PIPA Battle Rages: Tell Congress We Will Not Accept Censorship (mountainrepublic.net)
• Internet BLACKOUT over SOPA, PIPA (bokertov.typepad.com)
• Why Do You Need To Care About SOPA/PIPA and Internet Censorship? (johnbalaya.wordpress.com)
• PIPA and SOPA Bring Protest (techbookshelf.com)

Slogans, Mantras, Litanies, you name it

IRL people these days are incredibly intuitive at creating slogans; they can range from outrageous to decent and from tame to lame, but that don’t refrain them from trying. When yellow pages are on the wane, and TV ads are not watched anymore (I found myself not knowing when was the last time I saw an entire ad spot on open TV), a good slogan can be the way to get noticed. Behold Slogan Maker!

• It's not a secret when you have sipmacrants!
• It's not a trick, it's a sipmacrants!
• You need sipmacrants every day.
• Be young, have fun, taste sipmacrants!
• Things go better with el barranquillero promedio.
• Quick start, long life with el barranquillero promedio.
• With a name like el barranquillero promedio ,it has to be good.
• If Jesus was here, he would go for el barranquillero promedio.
• Life begins with tijera press.
• The Power of procer progresista.
• Prócer Progresista, it's for real.
• Start your day with Picornell.
• A piece of Picornell for everybody, everyday.
• Nothing is like Opinion Renegada.
• Opinion Renegada is your inspiration.
• Opinion Renegada is our middle name.

Slogan Maker, and leave the thinking to us!

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• What is your Personal Slogan? (bethefitmama.com)
• Letter: President Obama speaks in slogans (knoxnews.com)
• Tips & Advice For How To Create A Slogan For Your Brand That Will Attract Customers (profitworks.ca)
• "Big Sis" Is Monitoring Drudge, NYT, Facebook... Opinion Renegada? (paulmarsic.wordpress.com)
• Slogans, Mantras, Litanies, you name it (sipmac.blogspot.com)

European Union or: how I learned to stop worrying and love the pensions bomb

No way out...?

You hear that Mr. Anderson?... That is the sound of inevitability... It is the sound of your death...

Agent Smith, The Matrix

It seems some people loathe my pal Agent P because he doesn’t like public servants that well. And we both dislike how governments recklessly spend our tax money. The #OccupyWallStreet movement protests the obvious carelessness of the incredibly short-termed mind of the current business model, sheltered by government old chums (They just don’t see that way). People good, corporate greed bad, we know that song.

Ever thought of government greed? Or public “servants” greed? You think that does not exist? Lookit shorty here: this Friday the 13th of January, Standard & Poor's will cut the credit ratings of Italy, Spain and Portugal by two notches and downgrade France and Austria by one notch. Yes, just like the USA were downgraded last year.

But didn’t Merkozy grab the bull by the horns and drove into submission the unruly PIGS? Didn’t France and Germany send the right signals to the markets? Apparently not. There are a lot of people not buying the White Knight rescue fairytale. You see, there’s some information that’s not a secret at all, but European politicians prefer not to talk about, because of the election cycle, they are as short-term minded as those ugly Wall Street capitalists.

Because of that it is a downright horror story, not a fairy tale what the Europeans prefer not to face: the state-funded pension obligations in France and Germany are three times the GDP of those two countries. Together they total 13.9 trillion Euros, very nearly half of the pension bills of the 19 nation States studied in this 2009 report of the Research Center for Generational Contracts from the Freiburg University.

Expert used to call that mess “the retirement bomb.” Sooner or later the public will realize that the lavish public employee pensions and most of the rest of the perks of the welfare state are impossible to meet by taxpayers. It has nothing to do with wealth redistribution; the pension liabilities exceed three times the GDP of two of the most stable and wealthiest states of the European Union. In three decades, there will be no wealth to be redistributed. Same goes for the PIGS and everyone else in the Union. Same goes for Medicare and Social Security in the USA.

If that’s not greed, to mortgage several times the future of their countries to satisfy public employees demands, then the definition must be changed.

The future is already here. After all, Greece and several other countries already spend way more than they earn.

Most of us will worry when we hear the downgrade news. But when they find out the bigger picture, they will consider this nothing compared with what lies beneath the abyss of the welfare state.


Keynes said “In the long term we all be dead”, but if he were alive today he would say “Who, me?”

H/T The Slog

Related articles

• European Union or: how I learned to stop worrying and love the pensions bomb (sipmac.blogspot.com)
• Europe's pension bomb about to explode (business.financialpost.com)
• France to say 'au revoir' to perfect financial rating (rt.com)
• Eurozone crisis: signs of hope ... then credit agencies strike (guardian.co.uk)
• Eurozone slammed by downgrades, collapse of talks (bottomline.msnbc.msn.com)
• European Union grappling with crisis: US Academic (thehindu.com)

AMIS NIX TINTIN FLIX?

Americans went to watch “The Incredibles” and “Cars”, lured in by one sole word: Pixar. Those were brand new concepts, created out of nothing, huge gambles in the sequel-and-known-brand-only film era. And they got critical and popular acclaim, so the bets paid off.

The “Steven Spielberg Presents” tag is a proven audience magnet. Unbelievable as it is, Spielberg himself casted doubts in the success of his “Indiana Jones for kids” movie, “The Secret of the Unicorn”, featuring comic-book Belgian superstar Tintin. It doesn’t make any sense: why the fears about an US flop?

A hint of elitist anti-Americanism can be detected in those reservations. It presupposes that the American audiences will never cherish an European import. Following that flawed reasoning, the Beatles, the Stones, Sean Connery, Maserati, Volvo and a very long etcetera never stood a chance. Sorry for them.
This is the only stain in a very good movie, besides the poorly taken decision to release the movie in a tentpole saturated season. “The Adventures of Tintin” would have shone incredibly between September and November of last year. Returning to the elitist wiff, I can accept that Spielberg premiered the movie first in Europe out of pure respect (like the affectionate way Hergé appears in the first scene of the movie), but if he tried to “get word of mouth success” to attract the American public into the cinemas, it shows jaw-dropping inconsistence. If Americans would not buy the Tintin concept, why would they care about the movie’s European success?

Which leads to the real reason of the somewhat lackluster American box-office performance: in spite of the terrific job Mr. Spielberg did adapting the source material and the wonderful staging of the best animation I’ve seen so far, the accomplished director did not know how to market his own triumph. Disappointing, considering the director’s career. Kind of expected, if you think about the still recent “Crystal Skull” fiasco.

Looks like hanging out with the current version of George Lucas can damage your moviemaking skills.


That said, I hope Tintin makes it to the Oscars and can’t really wait for the two projected sequels.

Related articles

• Review: The Adventures of Tintin (eoghann.com)
• 10 great movies by Steven Spielberg (csmonitor.com)
• The Adventures of Tintin is pure FUN & awesomely Spielberg! (nediunedited.wordpress.com)
• AMIS NIX TINTIN FLIX? (sipmac.blogspot.com)
  
• 'Tintin' premiere gets hero's welcome in Brussels (sfgate.com)
• The Adventures of Tintin: movie review (VIDEO) (csmonitor.com)
• The Adventures of Tintin (moviesfilmsandflix.com)

Mocking Rick Santorum's pain for his dead baby is despicable. Rectify your evilness. NOW!

It is a rule for all the members of the sipmac team not to write or speak about their personal lives in any of our blogs. We’re bloggers, not divas. In the libertarian sense, we feel we don’t need no badge to be considered with the same rights as journalists, specially if we follow the same rules. Two hundred years ago, no journalist asked the state for permission to publish (their publications just got closed when they became uncomfortable enough).

But I digress. I will make an exception for the “personal live rule” today because I want to use this modest podium to energically protest the unspeakable way the mainstream press in the USA is cruelly mocking the way presidential hopeful Rick Santorum handled with her wife the death of their baby Gabriel a few years ago.

You may disagree with Santorum’s ideology, but this mockery is way beyond the line. It is pure depravity distilled. For people that claim to be sensitive, that take pride in their alleged empathy, it is truly their lowest point in their careers so far. It happened before with Trig, Sarah Palin’s son with Down syndrome, now it happens to a baby that was born alive but died after two hours.

As a father whose only son died two days after being born, words fail me to describe the disgust and the ire I feel reading and watching those considering themselves the voice of reason, more sophisticated than those clinging-to-their-guns-and-their-religion "troglodytes", but somehow petty and dishonest enough to score a paltry and shallow political victory by demeaning and defiling the pain a grieving father feels, just because he is a political adversary.

It is not a story about cultural divide. It is a story about how partisan journalists won’t stop at virtually nothing to advance their agendas and destroy their perceived enemies.

The end justifies the means. Is this your creed? Is this the way you want to get Obama reelected?

Shame on you!

Related articles

• Mocking Rick Santorum's pain for his dead baby is despicable. Rectify your evilness. NOW! (sipmac.blogspot.com)
• Rick Santorum vs. the Meat Grinder (crisismagazine.com)
• Fox News Commentator Criticizes Rick Santorum (huffingtonpost.com)
• JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Was Santorum 'Weird' For Bringing Home His Stillborn Baby? "There is much I don'... (pjmedia.com)
• Rick Santorum succeeds in minimizing Ron Paul (actualgrit.wordpress.com)
• Alan Colmes Mocks Rick Santorum's Dead Son, Then Apologizes for Tasteless Comments (ibtimes.com)
• Rick Santorum Baby Body Story Not Weird, Say Psychologists (abcnews.go.com)

Demotivational Posters for Early-January

Who said January was a slow month in news? There’s plenty to look at with our irregularly-appearing-but-almost-traditional Demotivational Posters. They almost write themselves!

Thanks to all those public figures that make my work a lot easier.

Related articles

• Demotivational Thursday: Basketball "Never Stops" Edition [22 POSTERS] (coedmagazine.com)
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• Demotivational Posters for Early-January (sipmac.blogspot.com)