Pop Culture Profusion

Omg this
is so interesting! Excited for more!

This is so interesting! Excited for the next batch!

Sweeet this is so cool! Cant wait for next
ones!

So, Congress actually might pass a debt ceiling deal today, and no one in congress is happy about it! Kinda like when a game of kickball ends in a tie right before the recess bell rings. Almost $1 Trillion in cuts will be implemented in the next ten years and the debt ceiling will be raised by $900 Billion.

Guess what else? Congress announced the creation of SUPER CONGRESS!

A fellowship committee of Twelve congressmen, evenly divided by the two major parties and two chambers, given the task of deciding how to cut another $1.5 Trillion in spending.

“But wait! That’s not fair!” you say, “what about the green party, libertarian party, labor party and the rest of America’s vast spectrum of beliefs?” Well, they won’t be counted.

Oh and by the way, this is all cuts and no tax-hikes for the rich. Great work, Dems! Those Bush Tax Cuts are going to be effective into 2013 (assuming the country is still standing by then).

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Good news, however, comes from the Executive Branch today. It looks like Planned Parenthood’s petition to eliminate co-pays on birth control worked! The Obama administration ordered insurance companies to provide birth control as preventative care for women, without co-pays.

I am so glad this happened. It’ll really help a lot of people out and I was telling everyone I could grab to sign the petition, so of course, I think I deserve most of the credit for this.

* * *

Finally, this has nothing to do with politics, but supposedly Amy Winehouse was in the process of adopting a girl from St. Lucia before she died. I just found this a bit baffling, I mean, girl couldn’t even take care of herself.

Just a word of advice, make sure you have your own life under control before you devote your life to providing for another.

Hi. I’m Malcolm. I’m 22 years old. I’m a native Angeleno. I sing in a band. I play video games. I’m addicted to the internet. I work full time as a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood. I’m a couple classes away from finishing a degree in Cinema.

And I’m a little bit afraid.

Reading the short summary of my current life, it seems like I have it pretty well. I’m one of the decreasing amount of people with a job, I have access to modern technology, and I’m one of the fortunate few who attended college.

However, it’s July 31, 2011. The United States Congress has about 48 hours to raise the debt ceiling and from the looks of things, there is no solution in sight. At least not a nice one.

My band has a show today. I’m the singer and my voice is gone. If I lived in Europe, I would’ve seen the doctor a few days ago, got some medicine and had this taken care of. Unfortunately, I don’t have the right “privilege” of free health care, so I’m trying to take care of this the old fashioned way (salt water gargle, matzo ball soup, popsicles, and maybe a shot of Tabasco sauce). My show starts in five hours. We’ll see how it goes.

Living in a country whose government is run by hungry campaign-winning monsters instead of people who care about their fellow citizens is tough. I don’t know how a president can do anything anymore when the minute he steps into office, he needs to devote focus to winning a reelection in four years. Same goes for all those Senators and House Reps.

There are simple things we could do: Move tax rates back to pre-Bush era (We didn’t mind paying them when Clinton was around), generate revenue through the legalization of Gay Marriage and Marijuana, end the war on drugs, release the almost the 50% of imprisoned people incarcerated for non-violent, non-sexual crimes…

But these are too rational and simple to get a response from irrational and complicated politicians. Instead what we have is an onslaught of extremism geared towards shocking the majority of people to whatever side is the most mind-boggling.

Here’s a couple examples of things that infuriate me:

In Georgia, Rep. Bobby Franklin proposed a bill to criminalize miscarriages. The simple fact that “criminal” and “miscarriage” are used in the same sentence might be confusing for a lot of readers (I know it was for me when I first heard it), so let me explain. This bill proposes that, if a woman has a miscarriage, they will be put under a criminal investigation. If it is determined that the miscarriage was deliberate, they will be charged with a felony and face a maximum sentence of LIFE IN PRISON OR DEATH. How the deliberate part is to be determined is, as of yet, unknown. Georgia isn’t the only state, either. Rennie Gibbs, a 15 year old in Mississippi, is being charged with this very crime right now.

By the way, Rep. Franklin is the same guy who wanted rape victims to instead be called “accusers”. Real ladies man.

Then we have people like Michelle Bachmann running for president. I’ll put aside the comments about the puritanical bat-shit insanity of this woman or the fact that her husband is most definitely an in-the-closet homosexual. However, I do need to mention the most “wtf” moment I had when learning about her. Michelle Bachmann and her husband, Marcus, own a Christian Counseling practice called Bachmann and Associates. This practice is somehow deemed a clinic. This is one of those “the power of God will smite the Gay right out of you” places. Their clinic received over a quarter of a million dollars from government funding between 1995-2008. Meanwhile, Bachmann is one of the many right-wing extremists who would love if Title X (The government’s Family Planning program) was eliminated, effectively cutting off funding to clinics that provide contraceptives and sexual education all across the country.

Now let’s put these little bits of information into the bigger puzzle. We potentially have criminalized miscarriages along with limited-to-no access to contraceptives, sex ed and abortions. We have a continuing war on drugs. We also have 25% of the world’s prison population while only representing 5% of the world’s total population. The ingredients of a prison-state are right before our eyes and our representatives are choosing to eliminate services instead of giving us choice.

This is why I’m a little afraid.

By the way, you can look up all the facts I just posted with some quick Google searches. I’m not going to post a bibliography because I’m not a journalist (yet). I’m a concerned citizen of the United States of America. I hope by reading this, you’re a little concerned as well. Let’s try to do something about it.