Really looking forward to learning which toxic subculture the Magneto(?) mask with a flag signifies.
Where do you see the dream catcher? Are you talking about the sticker in the lower left corner? Because that’s a USA-spartan helmet.
Pretty sure it’s a spartan helmet. So 300-style hypermasculinity.
A group of my law school buddies and I were talking about creating a series of stickers to the effect of “I support the Jew coup.” And “Soros is my homeboy.” To troll nazis
The problem is, we laugh at them but they shoot at us.
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The spartan/300 stuff is usually just a militant pro-2nd amendment sentiment:
Molon labe, meaning “come and take [them]”, is a classical expression of defiance. According to Plutarch,[1] Xerxes I—king of the Achaemenid Empire—demanded that the Spartans surrender their weapons and King Leonidas I responded with this phrase.
In the United States, the original Greek phrase and its English translation are often heard as a defense of the right to keep and bear arms. It began to appear on websites in the late 1990s and early 2000s.[8] In the Second Amendment or firearms freedom context, the phrase expresses the notion the person uttering the phrase is a strong believer in these ideals and will not surrender their firearms to anyone, especially to governmental authority.[9]
My brain has broken.
READ, WEEP, PRINT AND KEEP!
This should be on the front page of every newspaper.
Charley Reese’s Final column!
A very interesting column. COMPLETELY NEUTRAL.
Be sure to Read the Poem at the end…Charley Reese’s final column for the Orlando Sentinel… He has been a journalist for 49 years. He is retiring and this is HIS LAST COLUMN.
Be sure to read the Tax List at the end.
This is about as clear and easy to understand as it can be. The article below is completely neutral, neither anti-republican or democrat. Charlie Reese, a retired reporter for the Orlando Sentinel, has hit the nail directly on the head, defining clearly who it is that in the final analysis must assume responsibility for the judgments made that impact each one of us every day. It’s a short but good read. Worth the time. Worth remembering!
545 vs. 300,000,000 People
-By Charlie ReesePoliticians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don’t propose a federal budget. The President does.
You and I don’t have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.
You and I don’t write the tax code, Congress does.
You and I don’t set fiscal policy, Congress does.
You and I don’t control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one President, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a President to do one cotton-picking thing. I don’t care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator’s responsibility to determine how he votes.
Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits… ( The President can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.)
The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House?( John Boehner. He is the leader of the majority party. He and fellow House members, not the President, can approve any budget they want. ) If the President vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to. [The House has passed a budget but the Senate has not approved a budget in over three years. The President’s proposed budgets have gotten almost unanimous rejections in the Senate in that time. ]
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted – by present facts – of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can’t think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it’s because they want it unfair.
If the budget is in the red, it’s because they want it in the red.
If the Army & Marines are in Iraq and Afghanistan it’s because they want them in Iraq and Afghanistan …
If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it’s because they want it that way.
There are no insoluble government problems.
Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power.
Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like “the economy,” “inflation,” or “politics” that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible. They, and they alone, have the power.
They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses. Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees… We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!
Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.
What you do with this article now that you have read it… is up to you.
This might be funny if it weren’t so true.
Be sure to read all the way to the end:Tax his land,
Tax his bed,
Tax the table,
At which he’s fed.Tax his tractor,
Tax his mule,
Teach him taxes
Are the rule.Tax his work,
Tax his pay,
He works for
peanuts anyway!Tax his cow,
Tax his goat,
Tax his pants,
Tax his coat.Tax his ties,
Tax his shirt,
Tax his work,
Tax his dirt.Tax his tobacco,
Tax his drink,
Tax him if he
Tries to think.Tax his cigars,
Tax his beers,
If he cries
Tax his tears.Tax his car,
Tax his gas,
Find other ways
To tax his ass.Tax all he has
Then let him know
That you won’t be done
Till he has no dough.When he screams and hollers;
Then tax him some more,
Tax him till
He’s good and sore.Then tax his coffin,
Tax his grave,
Tax the sod in
Which he’s laid…Put these words
Upon his tomb,
‘Taxes drove me
to my doom…’When he’s gone,
Do not relax,
Its time to apply
The inheritance tax.
Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL license Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Excise Taxes
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax (currently 44.75 cents per gallon)
Gross Receipts Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Taxes
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Personal Property Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service Charge Tax
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax
Recreational Vehicle Tax
Sales Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Nonrecurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Taxes
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation TaxSTILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY?
Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, & our nation was the most prosperous in the world. We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.What in the heck happened? Can you spell ‘politicians?’
I hope this goes around THE USA at least 545 times!!! YOU can help it get there!!!GO AHEAD. . . BE AN AMERICAN!!!
SEND THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW
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Speaking of 2A, SCOTUS is getting ready to laugh in our faces and somehow expand gun rights even further with a case challenging a NYC law THAT HAS ALREADY BEEN REPEALED. This is what doing nothing while Mitch steals our government looks like.
OK Boomer
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That’s like Dickens collecting all of his old chapters and then rebinding and selling them back to the people who traded them in.
There’s some truth to it. Very few of those taxes are levied on anything that would have any major impact on the very wealthy… and when you really get down to it a simply hilarious % of the money that gets raised ends up in their pockets.
It’s like they control the country or something. I think we could eliminate 2/3 of those taxes and just tax inheritances over 1M at 85% and be much better off.
I particularly enjoyed the idea that the US was an economic utopia with a thriving middle class 100 years ago.
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These are good edits. The intro sentence is a big missed opportunity too. Who cares about the dimensions of Baja? And if they’re important, why aren’t you giving the reader something interesting to grab on to?
The Baja California Peninsula (Baja for short) is a sparsely populated finger of mountainous desert and scrubland tenuously connected to the western edge of Mexico proper. Baja sweeps 800 miles southeast from the mainland, carving out the slender Sea of Cortex from the broader Pacific Ocean. The size and shape of Baja mirror its cross-Pacific cousin Kamchatka (familiar to a certain generation for its key strategic position in the board game Risk), which hangs off of the eastern edge of the Russian mainland and manages to be even more desolate and forbidding than Baja.
A lot of this is a bit cliched, but if you put some good writing into it, it should be more engaging. One exercise to is to look at the verbs and verb-derivatives in your original piece:
Baja California, as it is commonly known, is 800 miles long - varying from 74 to 144 miles wide, with some 2000+ miles of craggy coastline - bordered by the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Sea of Cortez to the east. As far as long, skinny, isolated peninsulas – Baja’s only rival is the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia (also an important feature in the game of Risk). It takes 3 days to drive from the US border to Los Cabos at the southern tip - assuming one follows the standard overlander rule of never driving at night - which in Baja is extremely advisable due to the chassis-destroying potholes. Before the trans-peninsular highway was completed in 1974 - driving Baja on anything faster than a donkey was basically an expedition.
Except for chassis-destroying (which is twisted into a way to describe a pothole rather than a direct reference to a chassis being destroyed), none of these are interesting at all. To be clear, it is also not good writing to run a dry list of facts through a thesaurus and come up with a bunch of synonyms for is. What’s happening is that you have a list of boring facts, and you describe them in the natural way, which is boring. You can’t just describe boring facts in an artificial way, you need to find some interesting ones to keep the reader engaged with important boring facts (unimportant boring facts get cut).
Yeah what you describe is exactly the problem I was having. It takes a certain amount of creativity to break out of that rut and find a new POV/angle and it just wasn’t coming. Also what was coming out was awkward (and still is but I’m slowly winnowing that down).
I’ve been playing a lot of live poker lately which doesn’t seem to get the creative juices going. But I’d been stuck on it so long I decided to just slog though, write it crappy, then start trying to fix it. The only thing going for me when I get in this mode is at least I know I’m writing crap and don’t delude myself.
I’ve read all the stuff here and been tweaking it for a while. Here’s the first part now (still a lot of work to go):
I’ve been fascinated with the Baja Peninsula since the first time I saw it on a map. Yet despite over 20 years of exploring and photographing the US West as a hobby, to my great shame I’d never made it further south than Ensenada, less than 50 miles from the US border. Finally, it was time to take my copy of the excellent Baja Adventure Book off the shelf from which it had silently mocked me for 17 years.
Baja California, as it’s commonly known, is an 800-mile long skinny finger - varying from 70 miles wide at the narrowest, to 144 miles wide at its bony knuckle. It takes 3 days to drive from the US border to Los Cabos at the southern tip, assuming one follows the standard overlander rule of never driving at night, which in Baja is highly advisable due to giant tortoise-sized chassis-destroying potholes. Before the trans-peninsular highway was completed in 1974, to drive the length Baja on anything faster than a donkey required a mechanic and an entire second vehicle worth of spare parts.
I like the jokes here ok but the writing still doesn’t flow very well. I’ll keep refining.
Also yes these facts are boring (I know what you mean), but I need to assume my reader starts from knowing literally nothing about Baja. So I want to at least try to paint some mental image in their mind. I’m trying to establish a couple of themes that will come up in more detail in the Baja section - 1) Baja is forbidding and repels civilization (for the Spanish, but also going back to a people who created some of the most prolific cave painting sites in the world, then vanished) and 2) precisely because of its forbidding yet stunningly beautifully terrain - Baja has inspired artists, writers and adventurers - from the cave painters up to today.
So there are a lot of things I want to touch on, but in the most succinct and still entertaining way. It’s a tough needle to thread. Also this is the first section of the first actual travel chapter (start of the meat of the book). So it needs to grab the reader.
I might do that thing where I jump ahead to the adventure climax of the book in Nicaragua then do the “[record scratch]… you’re wondering how I got here, well…” thing. But I dunno, that always feels a little cheesy to me. But if it’s needed to grab people. I do preview the crazy Nicaragua adventure a little in a front matter section.
I don’t think anything in Baja is that crazy worth jumping ahead to - it’s more of a slow build to some personal revelations - and getting over my initial trepidations about the whole trip. If I just start chronologically it’s having a beer with gramps in Tijuana - which has some interesting stuff but I feel like establishing the themes first and laying some background on Baja made more sense.
This exercise has given me a ton more appreciation for authors like Bill Bryson who manage to make the “boring” stuff entertaining. That takes legit writing talent, which I know I don’t have. My hope is just to not write so bad that it gets in the way of my ideas - which I think are my strength. I feel like if anything is going to differentiate this book and make it popular, it will be tapping into my all-over-the-map nonstop internal monologue.
FWIW, here’s the first piece of “front matter”, which still needs work but I generally feel a lot better about. You can probably tell I’m a lot more comfortable writing from the first person. I don’t know if the final book will actually have memes but I figured we can throw them in for now (my ex hated the “buzzfeed crap” which is all the more reason to leave it in, and possibly write her into the book a little as well). About the Title (850) - Google Docs
If you’ve seen the movie The Punisher it’s from that and then adapted by these wannabe vigilante types.
Wait is it Punisher or Spartan? Or are Spartan and Punisher the same?
Because Punisher is a known racist meme right?