Quick Rants!

Married With Children turns 30 this year.  The show was always a magnet for controversy and even now 30 years later that remains the case.  Recently Katey Sagal was quoted as saying the show was sexist. No way, not Married With Children, not Al Bundy, he was a always a class act.  

Yeah, MWC was tactless and devoid of class. Al was pond scum and honestly so was Peg.  They were supposed to be. The show was never meant to taken seriously. It was supposed to show the worst possible husband/father, wife/mother and children that you could ever encounter.  The Bundy's were supposed to be the worst and most dysfunction family in America. If you actually felt this show was a social commentary on how things should be in America that is on you for being a dumbass.  Married with Children was supposed to show a life so terrible that no matter what was going on in your own you could say at least I am not a Bundy. 

A Sunday night flight filled to capacity. A flight crew that has to be in Louisville Monday morning to avoid grounding a flight. A doctor who had patients to see Monday morning. Put these three things together and a human tragedy occurred.  David Dao just wanted to get home. Fate dealt him a disaster and he was bumped from his return flight. Rather than get up and get off the plane he refused and was brutally and horrifically forcibly ejected from a United flight. The backlash against United has been widespread, but United is not the only party in the wrong here. The Chicago Aviation Police are the ones who assaulted an old man and Dao himself chose to disobey a lawful, if unpopular and terrible, decision by United and orders issued by the Chicago Aviation Policy. Episode 26 deals with this event and attempts to show why everyone involved is wrong and all parties could have handled the situation much better. 

PizzaGate is the insane conspiracy that Hillary Clinton or her campaign were running horrific operation out of a local Pizza and Ping Pong restaurant. Alex Jones has issued an extremely rare retraction for his role in spreading this nonsense, although he tries to claim he was not a primary driver of this story.  Maybe no story currently exhibits the danger of the fake news more than PizzaGate. Something that existed only in the deranged mind of a crazy alt right adherent has become a national story that resulted in a 28 year old man marching into Comet Ping Pong with an assault rifle to free the imaginary enslaved children. 

So Penn State has not learned to just shut up and continue to apologize each time Sandusky crimes are brought up. Sometimes you just have to accept that your university chose an evil and immoral path and that nothing will redeem if for that choice. Not Albert Lord though. Trustee Lord is running out of sympathy for the victims. He also feels that the University and trustees such as himself are forced to accept the politically correct view point. 

Lord's comments and views are exactly why the Penn State football program should have been eliminated in 2012.  There are still people there who feel that real tragedy here is that the school's reputation was damaged and Sandusky was the only one who did wrong. 

Seriously, stop doing this. This is why we get broken, incomplete half-assed efforts from game producers.  We can't guarantee our money to the game makers fast enough, even if they have a track record of mailing in the development of games and trying to fix all the issues with post release patches. We also pay for season passes before knowing what the season pass will get us and we wonder why the DLC is garbage and the game is always messed up on day 1. It is simple, stop buying the game before it is released and video game makers will have to release a game that is day 1 ready in the box. 

Sit back and enjoy episode 23 and don't forget to contact us know to pre-order your Raving Lunatic Media Mystery Box***, I don't know what will be in it but if you send me money today in a few months we will mail you a box.  Great idea right?

***Offer for a Raving Lunatic Media Mystery Box is not valid or real, do not send money, you will not receive a box***

Stop telling people your cat or dog is your child.  It is not today, tomorrow or ever a child and all you are doing is making yourself look pathetic while insulting your friends and their children.  Pets are wonderful. Animals should be loved and treated humanely. The relationship between owner and pet is special and meaningful. It however, is still, not a Fu$%ing child so stop calling it one. 

Figured maybe it was time for a non-political rant again, so here you are. 

Wikileaks has essentially informed the entire world not only the CIA is spying on everything, through almost every device imaginable, but exactly how they are doing it; and no one seems to care. This rant deals with two questions: Should we care and are wikileaks, and any US citizens who leaked the data, anti secrecy warriors or traitors? 

This are not straight forward or simple questions. Certainly in some cases Wikileaks does function as an anti-secrecy warrior and provides needed information.  In this case however, Wikileaks has made the world less safe.  Is it scary the CIA has this ability? Certainly.  Is there a potential for misuse? Absolutely.  However the CIA, in order to do its job, needs to have the ability to function the way the vault 7 leak indicates they can. The vault 7 leak gave valuable information anyone looking to avoid CIA surveillance, and that just made the whole world a less safe place. 

So its been a week, and 45 has produced zero evidence to support his claim that former President Obama had his wires tapped. Does this now qualify as "fake news"? I think it does. I think it's pretty amazing that the man leading the fake news crusade against the main stream media is himself as guilty or more guilty of spreading fake news than the so called "enemy of the American people".  This rant address 45, his tendency to state as facts things that exist only in his own mind and how this reeks dangerously of McCarthyism. So yep, after one rant slamming the left, I am back to my favorite topic, 45. Enjoy. 

After heavily bashing the conservative right wing recently I felt it was time to start evening things out and criticize the left. This rant deals with leftist thought policing. The progressive left in this country has a disturbing habit of attempting so silence and destroy anyone who does not agree with them. In a country that champions free speech it should be obvious why we should not be attempting to take away that right from an ideological enemy, however the dangers seem lost on the left. 

Free speech is essential to a democracy. Unfortunately that means that agents of hate and ignorant fools are allowed to pontificate and influence the masses. That is the cost of living in a democracy.  

***Production note - this rant was a production experiment using a new microphone and a new recording software. There are couple short areas of bad distortion I am less than pleased about, but I am already four days late getting this one out so, bear with me, the next one should sound amazing and I will make podcasting great again!***

Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, used Historically Black Colleges and Universities to sell her failing idea that school choice is the way to solve the public school problems in America. Ms. DeVos is a champion of school vouchers, which allow parents to send their kids to private schools, problem is recent studies have shown actually fair worse than public schools for children transferred into them. 

Aside form the fact that the nations head educator is championing a failing idea, and has no experience as an educator on any level, her statement indicating historically black colleges and universities offered choice to African American students is absurd and demonstrates a critical misunderstanding of America pre 1960 and the social journey the country has been on since 1861. HBCU's were not a choice, they were basically the only option. So unless the choice was college vs no college, this statement is just critically flawed. 

This episode discusses the education system in America, why voucher systems don't work, and why they are not the answer to fixing the system.