I'm responding to another long email at one of the blogs I now follow called getadamnjobyouhippie.org. I'll leave the original in it's font and my interspersed replies will be in
bold. I'm going to temper this as politely as possible - you're a young girl, so I won't use the same vitirol I use on adults who ought to know better.
Oh good. For a minute there I thought you were going to show a complete lack of class.
A quick glance at your site shows others have already addressed the points I'd like to make - namely that you attack people with a very broad brush. For example, I support the 99%, and I'm a Neuroscience/Neuropsychology major, hardly the "Women's study" major you would claim I have. Even if I chose to change to that, it's really wrong of you to paint all Women's Studies majors as some type of ground-trooper for SCUM or something. Highly inaccurate.
Why? it's a liberal ARTS degree is it not? Therefore..unless you're including the womens study as an entertaining elective to a main degree[such as your Neuroscience] then it's basically useless in the job world.
Second - this is the internet - did you not learn anything from watching Rebecca Black? All she did was make a shitty music video, and she got villified for it. Whether she deserved it or not is beyond the point - that's what happened. You got involved in a devisive issue, WAY more nasty than making a bad music video. Furthermore, you got involved by calling your opposition "Damn Hippies" and basically claiming intellectual superiority over them at age 13. Not... exactly an intelligent move on the internet where Anonymous can track down your address and have you run out of town (and if you've read, they've done so to others for far less). I guess what I'm saying is.. you aren't allowed to be above criticsm. If you want to get out there in the debates, like an adult, then understand that as hard as you can hit, your opponents can hit back as well. As they say - you have a right to your own opinion, not your own facts. You also have a right to speak, and we have a right to speak back. Just because you say something, doesn't exempt you from having to own up to it - that's part of what growing up and becoming an adult means: taking responsibility and owning up for the things you say and the things you do.
No..Rebecca didn't necessarily deserve all the hate she got...but that WAS an annoying as hell..and absolutely brainless song. I give Rebecca credit for trying though. Now...yes learning to accept responsibility for your own decisions Is part of growing up. No I don't have to agree with everything you say and you're free to say it. However..I can still call you a FOOL for saying it.
You're a "smart" 13 year old, okay, good for you. Have a cookie. But you can't hit your opponent with something, then cover your face and scream how you're only 13 when they come back, sometimes with nasty remarks. Let me ask you something, McDonalds, assuming they're hiring, pays about $6.50 an hour aye? So, even working 40 hours a week, the maximum usually allowable by any company, before taxes, that's about $260/wk. That's assuming they even let you work 40 hours, as most McDonalds aren't going to want to pay even that much. So you're looking at maybe 20 hours a week if you're lucky, $130, before taxes. That's about $520 a month. What place do you know of where rent, PLUS food, PLUS living expenses PLUS utilities, comes to under $520 per month?
Condescend much? So much for showing class. Most places that hire nowadays hire at above minimum wage. Hell I can find a job for $9 minimum and that's for grunt/customer service/cashier retail setting. The minimum I've seen low wages going for in my neck of the woods is $8. Know what? for $8 an hour..I bought my own stuff, TV, cable, cellphone and saved up for a down payment on a truck in...7months give or take. If I'd been smarter and waited a few more months to make a bigger down payment I wouldn't have lost the damn thing to the repo man. But that's my own damn fault. Again..it's ALL on me. I don't blame anyone else for my own stupidity and expect a hand out for nothing from "the rich" Hell up in N. Dakota where the Bakken Oil field is there is upwards of 16,000 jobs going wanting. Granted the cost of living up there is much higher but so is the minimum wage their willing to pay. $15 for flipping burgers at a fast food joint. So please..float that pile of shit by someone else.
Think about that, for just a moment. Considering rent in northern California for a hovel is about $1800/month. Over 3 times your monthly wage at McDonalds, for rent, no food, no living expenses, nothing else. Those people are the ones who are protesting.
That's why smart people get a roommate. Who doesn't mind sleeping on the couch or futon. Ooops another argument from you that doesn't hold water.
You like to talk about the people who have iPads, and iPods, and -gasp- headphones too. -My Droid was a gift from my father because my old pay-as-you-go cell phone was 5 years old and had already required me to go out of my way to buy a new battery for it.
-My iPod Video is almost 5 years old too, the LCD in the screen is fading out and needs to be replaced.
-My headphones are 2 years old, I'm just now finally replacing them using money I got from taking student notes at my University for 15 hours a week. They're cheap Phillips brand, you can find them at Target.
Yep being a responsible adult is a stone bitch sometimes ain't it? Yet here you are whining.
I won't really address your "spent 13 (13 what?) chasing blah blah blah" because frankly, it looked like an attempt to be sarcastic that fell flat. You need to spell AND grammar check your work before posting it - that's part of the reason we laugh at the Tea Party - they can't spell to save their lives.
Ahhh ANOTHER grammar Nazi. Jesus Jumping H! don't you people have anything better to do? Never mind forget I asked that.
Question though, you're going to "take our country back" - to what? FROM what? You've probably heard your parents bandying about wanting to take the country back. But do you what they're trying to take it back from?
From the people trying to turn it into another Russia clone...like Europe has become in a lot of ways.
Do you want to roll back the rights the LGBT community has made in the last few years? Reinstate DADT, DOMA? Sodomy Laws? How is that in any way American? Being LGBT myself, I could quote dozens of sources, including both APAs that support the notion that marriage equality is a good thing, being gay isn't a choice, etc. You say you're a smart girl, I trust you will be on the right side of that issue. Otherwise, please let me know and i'll be more than happy to releive you of your professed ignorance.
Rights? Give me a break. The only ones I see constantly whining about LGBT rights tend to be 'liberal'. The rest of the people I know of who are LGBT..by and large just get on with their lives. DADT...probably wasn't a good idea from one point of few..but the military is not a 'social experiment petri dish'. It's a machine made of men and metal whose sole purpose is to kill people and break shit. That ours does humanitarian aid rescue missions is simply an outflow of the fact that we as a people tend to be VERY giving. Look at every major natural disaster in the world. We're generally the first ones in with the most money and supplies BY FAR. But I'll forgive you you're ignorance because I'm feeling magnanimous. Don't know why. Oh by the way grammar/spelling nazi? You misspelled RELIEVE. Just thought I'd return the favor.
Do you want to take back the white house and congress for the Republicans? Have you seen what kind of mess the economy is in? Have you seen the surplus Clinton left us in 2000 when Bush took office? Did you see what he did to it? Can you correlate that to the mess we're in now? Wait, right, Bush did nothing to cause it, am I right? Starting 2 wars, almost starting a 3rd, and cutting taxes back completely on the rich had 0% to do with why we sank into a recession. Deregulating businesses had nothing to do with massive outsourcing, worker layoffs and giving the banks more freedom which led to the housing bubble.
*snicker* Damn why does everyone talk about how great Bubba was? Do you know WHY he didn't spend us into the hole we're currently in or get what was then called 'Hillary Care' passed? Because the American people saw what was coming. Didn't like it and gave the republicans complete control of BOTH houses to keep a leash on that idiot and his wife's bad ideas and spending. Oooops did we forget that little fact? So sorry. 2 wars? Nope. Learn warfare idiot. It wasn't 2 wars. It was 1 war on 3 fronts, which strategically and logistically speaking is fucking insane but that's a bitch for another day and one me and others have talked about incessantly.
What about the tea party almost sending this country and the entire world into a massive depression because they couldn't pass a new debt ceiling? They were willing to let America, and the WORLD fall into chaos, just to make Obama look bad. Is that a good thing? Atlas Shrugged was fiction, not fact, and John Galt killed millions at the end - Rand doesn't really like to dwell on that, or doesn't care to. You KILL people when you try to "destroy the country and remake it" - that's NOT American. That's not even moral on a human level. - But you say you're a smart girl, I trust you don't mean that. If you do, say so and again, I'll be more than happy to relieve you of your ignorance.
You really don't want to go here. If it's the Tea Party's fault, then how is it, that Obama and the democrats..with control of the White House and both houses of congress FAILED TO PASS A BUDGET FOR 2 YEARS!
Could it possibly be because they were too busy pissing money down a rathole in [over $4trillion in 3yrs] giving money to their pet projects, union buddies and..oh yeah..passing a health care bill that in actuality...no body but the "we want something for nothing and want other people to pay the freight' bunch wanted? Good grief..and you have the nerve to call this child ignorant? She may or may not be ignorant of some subjects but that's probably because she hasn't gotten that far in her educational and personal studies yet. In your case it's willful and blinding arrogance.
*snicker* "you KILL people when you 'try to destroy the country and remake it."? No shit sherlock..anyone whose studied ANY history at all could have told you that. Lets see..who are some of the worst offenders in all of history. Hitler[an estimated 17 million all told], Pol Pot[between1.75 and 2.5million, Stalin[14million to the gulags. the estimate of dead is more], Mao[between 40-70million dead], the list goes on. Leaving Stalin out of it..just between Hitler, Pol Pot and Mao..they killed..just shy of 132MILLION people on the low end. Now... Did Americans kill people to remake the country? Why yes..we did because we were tired of being dictated to by a tyrant and his lackeys more than 7000miles away. Did we kill anywhere NEAR that many people to do it? Uhmmm..nope. Lets see the grand total of the total numbers of dead that I can on all sides is...184,000..known deaths. While no one is sure of the total number of deaths, lets say we multiply that by a factor of 5[just to be completely ridiculous, that's still only about 900,000. while it's still an atrocious number for the time.... That's a FAR cry of the 132 million killed by just 3 of the worst communist assbags in history. Ooops that's a part of history you'd like to conveniently bury isn't it? My bad.
Do you want to take the country back to a time when women like yourself couldn't hold public office? Or vote? What about minorities? Do they deserve rights? Or should we roll back all the way to slavery? You're a smart girl, I doubt this is what you meant. But if it is, I can relieve you of that ignorance.
Again with the ignorance? Geez..you sound like a broken record. Of course women deserve rights you gasbag. They got the rights guaranteed them in constitution by fighting for it. They always had them they just didn't act on them. 250 YEARS later it's a bit of a different story.
You talk about Unions, but you see... here's where it really sounds like Mom and Dad wrote this for you - and if you took a simple US History or APUSH class in high school (when you GET to high school) you'd see why it's B.S. - the unions were there to protect workers from corrupt oligarchies who had no problem working people 60 hour work weeks for pennies with no health insurance, no benefits, no vacation, no time off, no lunches, no breaks, and no hope. And if they got injured even a little bit, well they were just fired. Read up a little on our history circa 1900-1930. That should give you an idea of why there are unions. Yes, reading about US Steel and Andrew Carnegie - I didn't like it either, it was January and cold out and I'd much rather have been in bed sleeping. -- Then I learned to love history. They did this to kids too. Ever hear in the 1800s about those cute little newsboys? You realize they worked attrocious hours for horrible pay right? Or the chimney sweeps who got black lung? Or the factory workers from Sinclair's The Jungle? But no, we need more deregulation.
Yeah yeah..unions did all that...no one DENIES they did right in the past. Now? They are just as bloated and useless as the government is now. Why because they became corrupted over time. Now the unions are in it for one thing..more money they haven't earned. Look at what Auto workers make an hour? How much of that goes to pay dues, for those at the top of the union food chain? About half I should think. It's one of the reasons when my father was young that he moved to Texas...NO UNIONS. See in New York state he was forced to be a member of one to work in his chosen field..Plumbing. Who are the democrats biggest backers? I mean aside from some of the big banks. Unions. Big shock.
On the topic of high school, what about college? What do you want to major in? Will it be impacted? Is it something like Engineering? I see that you study 13 hours a day, but guess what? That's not enough. Come high school - you get to take 12-13 AP classes, get 5s on ALL your AP tests, maintain a 4.6 GPA BECAUSE of those AP classes, take at least 1-2 maybe 3 sports, volunteer for about 300 hours a year, and you had better be in student government and a few other ECs. Otherwise? You aren't going to one of the top schools, and DEFINITELY aren't getting into the major you wanted.
Sigh,,I've said this before but it bears repeating..you don't HAVE to go to one of the top colleges. Just a decent one. Somehow I don't think grades are gonna be a problem for this child. So again from you with the condescension? *yawn*
Does your family make enough to put you through? Or are you going to be relying on scholrships and grants? The Pell Grant, the thing that keeps some of us going to college because our families weren't lucky enough to be born into money and have to work 40 hours a week just to make rent? Yeah, the people you want to "take the country back" for, want the Pell Grant to disappear. That means people like me, who work hard, who still get good grades, who struggle with a difficult life at home and at school, should just drop out of college, give up, and crawl in a hole and die somewhere because we aren't rich enough, and those banks, that 1% you support, aren't always keen on helping us.
Sigh..pay attention pinhead..did she NOT already explain to you that her family didn't come from money? that they lived beneath their means, in other words they were extremely frugal with their money, took care of themselves and worked their asses off and made smart decisions about how and where that money got spent? What you didn't know that? big shock..didn't bother to read the beginning posts to this did you? nah..didn't think so.
I'm going to graduate, btw, with about $200,000 in student debt. I'll be spending the next 20 years of my life paying it off, assuming I can find a hospital or research team willing to hire me at market value for my Ph.D/Psy.D in Neuroscience.
But I can always live in a cardboard box on the street while working at McDonalds for $130 a week, right?
$200,000? Jesus christ! You could have chosen to take off a semester here and there to work a job or jobs to make money to help pay your bills and start paying down your debts while earning your degree. I know several people who did that. I know lawyers and actual doctors whose student loans weren't and aren't but HALF that much. I know well paid engineers who also didn't come from money worked their asses off and whose student loans weren't but about an eighth of that...or had no student loans at all to pay off. I know so many people who joined the military so they could use the GI bill to help pay for school who have multiple PH.D's in multiple subjects..including subjects like quantam physics etc..they literally ARE rocket scientists, research scientists etc. People who because of the GI bill had loans that were almost non existent. BTW before you say anything..why the hell should I object to THAT. They are out there fighting and dying to keep me and you safe...so why the fuck should I care? They USED what they learned to get very good paying jobs in various and sundry fields that continue to allow them to contribute to their fellow man AND their country. So no..I don't and never will object. I KNOW several transgenders..got at least one in the family. One of them is going to school for engineering WHILE working on an actual working farm all day. His loan? IIRC he doesn't have one. Or it's so low compared to your own that it's non existent So who's the idiot? Look in the mirror.
Are we done now? ayup..damn that was one long winded nimrod. Ain't I a nice guy? No? So sorry you feel that way. have a nice day.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled inanity and insanity.
