Half a Million Secessionists Impotently Petition White House

By Will Conley

As of Tuesday night, Nov. 13, 2012, more than 500,000 Americans have signed online petitions at the WhiteHouse.gov petition portal, requesting permission from President Obama to let their states consider seceding from the Union — including a few hundred from my home state of Minnesota.

Click to magnify.

That the number of signatures on the Minnesota petition at the time of this writing is commensurate with a concurrent petition to let a university have their Injun mascot back is illustrative of the fact that the secessionists' bark is louder than their bite. Also, that apparently only racists ever petition the White House. (Not true. Joke.) (Wait, Will, how can a bite be loud? Well I suppose if it's a really gnashing, cartoony-sounding bite...)

The maps below — which I created merely to shock and frighten you — show how the United States would be carved up if the election-losing crybab- er, secessionist movement ever managed to drag their states into a civil war. The first map represents the state of the petition situation as of Monday night. The second reflects the massive surge in popularity just 24 hours later.

Click to magnify.

Click to magnify.

But don't polish your muskets just yet. The secessionist movement is little more than a temper tantrum thrown by a small minority of the roughly 314 million people whom the U.S. Census Bureau deems Americans. A few points to remember:

► The petitions do not reflect the will of the state governments in which the petitioners reside. Governor Perry of Texas, for example, expressly does not support the Texas secessionist movement, even though in the past he has hinted at his sympathy with the movement in an effort to garner more votes.

► Anyone can start a petition. You only need one person to start a petition and thus "represent" a state.

► If a petition receives 25,000 signatures, all that means is the president is legally obligated to respond in words to the petition.

► Most of the petitions are copycats of one another and do not reflect separate spontaneous movements to secede. That means most of the secession rhetoric is bandwagoneering, and most of the petitioners couldn't have spelled the words in the petitions independently let alone comprehend the full meaning of those words.

► It's a safe bet that there's at least one These-Colors-Do-Run quitter in each state, so I guesstimate all 50 states and the District of Columbia will have petitions by the weekend. That means that if a secession movement could even remotely succeed (it can't, not in this police state), then the whole country would have to secede from itself. It would be like a kid threatening his brother to take the ball and go home — while the two were still standing in their own back yard.

Conclusion: It's very, very safe to point and laugh at these clueless wannab- er, brave revolutionaries. Your comments, whether sane or idiotic, are welcome.

Sources:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petitions
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57548572/states-petition-to-secede-from-union/
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/nov/12/petitions-to-secede-are-filed-for-23-states-since-/
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/secession-petitions-gain-steam-article-1.1201439
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/13/petition-to-secede-states_n_2120410.html
http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html

Maps created with the assistance of:

Defocus Blog: http://www.defocus.net/visitedstates/generate.html

-----
All post content on Man of Many Words is created by Will Conley. Please feel free to share this post or any of my other posts with the whole world. Just make sure they know where it came from.

Back in the 1960s, school yearbook editors could read your thoughts.

For more Famous Fake Quotes, please visit and like Famous Fake Quotes on Facebook, and please share it with your friends! "Sharing is caring." - Adolf Hitler

Russian President Vladimir Putin Weighs In on North Carolina

For more Famous Fake Quotes, please visit and like Famous Fake Quotes on Facebook, and please share it with your friends! "Sharing is caring." - Adolf Hitler

What God REALLY thinks of the gay marriage ban.

For more Famous Fake Quotes, please visit and like Famous Fake Quotes on Facebook!

In which I review a book that correctly claims America is a religion, but is also pure trash.

Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion by David Gelernter
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This book speaks the truth about the fact that America should be thought of as a religion first and foremost. The problem with the book is that it is written from the perspective of a devout neoconservative Americanist who feels at liberty to browbeat the reader into worshiping as he does. I couldn't finish this book, because despite the author's obvious intelligence, it was full of willfully ignorant calls to blind faith. In short, the author is correct in his basic assumptions, but he is a typical piece-of-shit death worshiper.

My response to the writing prompt "Write an alternate ending to a movie."

JFK (graffiti)

For any movie, instead of rolling the credits at the end, roll the Zapruder Film. With no explanation.

A Global Anatomy of Power in the 21st Century

A brief sketch of a hypothetical non-fiction magnum opus: a book about how power works in the 21st century.

Global Power

A survey of the different types of power bases, and how they interact. Governments, extra-governmental corporations, profit-motivated groups, ideologically motivated groups, and unconscious psychosocial movements. Because power does not always rest in human hands, natural phenomena would have to be treated as power bases as well; they would be integrated into the theoretical interactions of human power bases.

National Power

A survey of many countries and a more focused analysis of how power works on the national level. Inclusion of a charting system developed to measure the distribution of power in each country; such a chart would place national, regional, local, private, and hidden power in relation to one another by contact points and weight.

Regional and Local Power

Further magnifications.

Clubs, Families, and Individuals

How power works in small groups, and how individuals change this.

True Power vs. Power in Name Only

A definition of actual power bases. For example, if two countries are better understood as one in terms of power, I would explain why. If one country can actually be broken into multiple true countries, either geographically or psychographically, I would address this as well.

Patriotism

A survey of common and interesting types of patriotism, and an assessment of the influence of patriotism in each geographical region.

Culture

A discussion on how different cultures allow power to distribute itself and to what degree it exercises itself. I would trace the cultural customs and values back as far as relevance allows, in search of an explanation for why power becomes what it becomes.

Gangs, Cartels, Shadow Governments

A survey and portrait of how semi-hidden power bases influence world affairs and the lives of everyday people, as well as their real power relative to official power.

Political Systems

A discussion of various political systems (democracy, communism, monarchy, etc.) and why they don't matter very much.

Language and Art

A discussion of how language and art affect power.

Technology

A discussion of how technology changes the nature of power.

Conclusion: How To Change Power

How to change, redistribute, reduce, or eradicate power. A discussion on fleeting change vs. real change. The key message here will be that real change takes many generations, and that even the most spectacular of world events do not actually change things as much as people think they do. Change must be initiated at the cultural level.

A few thoughts on menstruation, boys behaving badly, ritual, and the Gulf oil spill.

You're weak, ladies and gentleman. Weak, whiny, woman-girls and man-boys. And it's because we as a culture have no meaningful rituals to separate childhood from adulthood. If we had stronger, more jarring initiation rites to mark the time between childhood and adulthood, we would all be less pathetic and whiny and heartless as adults.

And if we replaced our self-indulgence with a healthy fear of Mother Earth, the Gulf might not be your "oops" garbage dump.

The world needs to wake and make a big deal of a girl's first menstruation. Her body is becoming a vessel capable of sustaining the species, and we should use it as a time to help the girl become aware that she must eventually let go of the trappings of childhood and accept her place in the world as a mature and responsible and strong human being.

We have turned menstruation into an object of shame and embarrassment. At best, it's aslightly droll and unfortunate event. We talk in code about it and try not to be conscious of it. Silly excuses and lies are made up about why a girl or woman is absent from school or work.

The Aboriginal Australians have rites in which a woman's first menstruation is marked by sitting in a tent for days and days, forcing the girl to come to grips with the fact that she must now let go of childhood and all the weak, needy things associated with it. If she fails to grow the up, the Aborigines can't use her and she gets kicked out of the tribe. In the unforgiving landscape of Australia, ostricization means death. She who fails to mature mentally is a danger to the survival of the community.

Same goes for the men. We need to wake up and make a big deal of a boy who starts to misbehave as a teenager, and throw him head-first into what it means to be a man. We need a point at which a man learns that this rock is a real bitch to live on and he had better grow a pair now.

Men don't have a natural division point between childhood and adulthood as a female does, so ancient cultures have made up rituals to make it obvious that the boy has to grow the hell up or the tribe will die.

The Aborigines have an elaborate, terrifying ritual to snap boys into behaving well. When a boy starts acting all tough and egotistical as testosterone is wont to make a male do, the grown men dress up like spirits, come in making a commotion, "kidnap" the boy from the mother (who plays along), circumcise him, subincise him (splitting), and thus induct him into the mens club. They scare the living fuck out of him in one painful fell swoop and make it abundantly clear that he is no longer a momma's boy, that the tribe depends on him, and he had better shape the fuck up or he's a dead man.

Sure, we have weak certain initiation rites in some cultures. Jewish kids have bah mitzvahs and bar mitzvahs. Catholic children get a smile and a slap on the cheek from the nice priest. Latinas have quinceañeras on their 15th birthday to help them act more like spoiled princesses. Men have rites involving self-indulgence – such as going to the nudie bar for the first time, smoking his first cigarette, drinking his “first” beer, and other “special” “firsts”.

In schools and frats we have ridiculous "initiations" administered by our equally immature peers. Some might say the grade school system itself – and college – are good common ways in our culture to mark the occasions of growing up, but those people are wrong. Like a frog in a pot of lukewarm water heated up slowly, such a gradual, plodding process makes no impact. The person never leaves the comfortable confines of childhood. He never feels a change. And we all eventually boil.

Well isn't all that special. None of our common rituals jar us awake. They are all "just something we go through", and don't really make a lasting change on most humans.

This post was inspired by The Power of Myth, an edited transcript of the Joseph Campbell/Bill Moyers interviews, but it is also inspired by other anthropological literature I've read. I've got a little bit of knowledge, and I'm feeling dangerous, so there you have it. My opinion about why we are all so weak and pathetic and whiny. I am sick and tired of hearing about "emotional safety", and I grow weary of us who lack the fortitude to maintain composure no matter what the circumstances.

This is a tough world to live in, and if you think it's supposed to be easy, then I rest my case: We need ritual. We need myth. To teach us what it means to grow up.

In writing this, I have left myself open to ridicule, corrections, accusations, and other concerns ranging from the legitimate and the banal. So go ahead. Give me your best shot. But before you do, think about what I have said here. Try to make sense of it. Give the information/opinion/perspective a chance. And dream with me of a better future.

Now available for download: "The Search for Meaning at the Brink of the Unknown" Ep. 2 with @MichaelOwenHill

The next installment in my radio series that asks the question, "What the hell is going on?" With honored guest Michael Owen Hill of St. Paul, Minnesota. I enjoyed our freewheeling conversation.

The thing I like the most about doing this series is establishing multiple beginnings. As the subject matter tends to dart from topic to topic, the podcast is intended to give a glimpse, a menu, a selection of things about the guest.

We aim to expand our mind. Enjoy the podcast and share it freely. Subscribe to this blog to make sure you don't miss any episodes of The Search for Meaning at the Brink of the unknown.

 
Download now or listen on posterous

Searching_for_Meaning_at_the_Brink_of_the_Unknown_-_Episode_2_-_2010-05-15_-_Will_Conley_with_Michael_Owen_Hill.mp3 (11732 KB)

Posted via web from Will Conley's Random Things

Rizzn's Personal Blog: Barack Obama and His Blackberry [Legal Loopholes]

This might be my first re-blog ever. I promise not to make a habit of it. I just happen to dig what rizzn is saying here:

rizzn's personal blog: Barack Obama and his Blackberry [Legal Loopholes]

Posted using ShareThis

For My Connecticut Readers

By way of email from my friend Sarah:

I learned today that voting "NO" on Number 1 (against the Constitutional Convention) is crucial for Labor in CT. If the Convention passes, it will be possible for CT to repeal its Davis-Bacon law, which calls for prevailing wage on Government-funded construction jobs. Without prevailing wage, all tradesmen and tradeswomen in CT will suffer.

The more information we have, the better we lead our government.

Thanks again,

Sarah

I can attest from experience that non-prevailing wage constructions jobs, at least in the private sector, are just rotten. Back in New Mexico I worked for a private contractor who paid me $7 an hour. I'm not ashamed to admit it. However, I am ashamed for my former employer. If he can't pay his workers a living wage, he has no business in business.

Sure, I took the job, so you could say it's my free will, but perhaps you don't understand that I'm not complaining. I was inexperienced and wanted to learn about construction. The problem is, my veteran co-workers didn't make much more than me. One guy had been roofing for 20 years. His wage? $10 an hour.

On top of that, we were treated more like liabilities than the invaluable asset we were. Getting any respect from our boss was out of the question. He wasn't a bad man; his method is par for the course. We're talking about a systemic trend that rewards less sweat with more money, and more sweat with a smack in the face.

No wonder people are lazy. No wonder the economy is "in trouble". Those at the root of society--the ones who grow your food and build your shelters--are among the lower castes. Yet without them, we would all be without our most basic human needs.

Thank a broke homeless person today for keeping your ass alive. It's okay, you can feel a little guilty.

This is how they will steal it.

"Voter fraud". That phrase is how politicians steal elections. While the Democrats try to get more people to vote, the Republicans want less. This is because new voters are statistically more likely to vote Democrat. I don't even vote (sue me), and I won't pick a side (call me a fence sitter), so I can assure you I am unbiased.

My point: Voting is a hollow gesture. Electioneering wins every time.

McCain Calls for Voter Fraud Inquiry

In 1986 U.S. Tax Payers Bailed Out the Savings and Loan Industry to the Tune of $160 billion over Ten Years

By today's inflated standards that's about $300 billion, or about a third of the total amount of the bailout (sweeteners added) passed last night by the U.S. House of Representatives.

It's a good day to stay rich.

The 1986 bailout was a notable chunk of change. The world did not end. It won't end this time, either. Chicken Little, you may take a nap.

But Robin Hood, where art thou? The savings and loan "crisis" of the 1980s has another thing in common with today's version: it was all about usury, or improper lending.

Read the Wikipedia article here.

Jesus Defiled

Someone defiled this statue of Jesus in a cemetery here in Roswell.

Gangs in the Military

From The Magazine : Radar Online Annotated

Lax enlistment standards have inadvertently allowed known members of the Crips, Bloods, Latin Kings, and various white supremacist groups to join the military.

M'aidez.

Hey, it's May Day. So gather 'round the phallus and weave the ribbons 'round it. I'm talking about the May Pole. They had one on the town green today in the midst of the May Day festivities. All the little kids and some women each grabbed the end of a ribbon and took directions from the guy wearing a crown of forsythia in his hair. I love forsythia. It's the first bright thing I saw this spring. A whole bush full of those little yellow flowers. This guy, the one wearing the halo of forsythia, smelled like pot. I liked him.

"Everybody grab a ribbon! Okay, now pair up. You, you. You, you. Okay, if you're facing this way," he announced, pointing, "you are Sun. If you're facing the other way, you are Moon."

Things didn't go exactly to spec, because of all the little kids, but by everybody weaving in and out, "saying hello to the Maypole", and walking in circles, the phallus got wrapped up. I interpreted the ribbons to be the enveloping force that is female.

Ten feet away, a couple hundred people were forming a gigantic peace sign. A plane overhead was circling, taking pictures of the peace sign. Whoever was organizing the sign was shouting, "Everybody look to the sky!" There was something protruding from the bottom of the plane. I almost choked up as a morbid image came into my mind. What if a bomb dropped out of that plane? The protruding shape was obviously a camera or something.

Through all this, a musician was singing "Freedom!" onstage.

I picked up a dozen different flyers and pamphlets, including:

"Protest Bush, U.S. Out of Iraq Now! Wednesday May 23rd, 9 am, Williams Street and Mohegan Avenue, New London"

A flyer promoting a $45 dinner featuring Anthony Arnove, author of Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal

"The Economics of Capital Punishment" by the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty

A 19-page story called Ending a War: Inventing a Movement: May Day 1971 by L.A. Kauffman

"Building a Mass Movement to Confront the Climate Crisis, Thursday May 10th, 7:30 pm, Marcus White Living Room, Central Connecticut State University, 1615 Stanley Street, New Britain

"A Friendly Note from Your Muslim Neighbor..."

"Where Your Income Tax Money Really Goes", an extensively notated tract with a pie chart showing that 51% of the U.S. Federal Budget 2008 Fiscal Year is spent on current and past military bills, released by the War Resistors League

A flyer promoting a talk by Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times Correspondent Chris Hedges, who wrote a book called American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.

A booklet featuring all of the participating organizations and individuals for the 2007 New Haven International Workers' Day events

Howard Zinn, the noted historian and icon of the political Left, spoke on the Green as well. I showed up just as he was ending his speech with something about a vision of "freedom and respect for all people, everywhere." I'm just reporting the facts here, people.

I spoke to someone who evangelized at me about voting. It was more accusatory and oratorical than any Jehovah's Witness I've ever met. I smiled and told her that voting is a form of prayer, that America is a religion, and that I'm an atheist in that respect. She lectured some more. I said nice to meet you and smiled. She smiled, we shook hands, I left. Phew!

Zinn spoke again at 6:30 pm at Center Church, at the same time as the International Workers' Day parade was touring through the streets, chanting in Spanish, "The people! United! Will never be defeated!"

Have a good month. Come back tomorrow.

My Other One Political Opinion

I will let you guess as to whom the following refers:

He’s not so much a conservative as he is just a one-man circus in which the lion cage is open, the man got shot while still in the cannon, the clowns are all created by Stephen King, the trapeze artists are splattered all among the audience, and Lucy the dancing bear is actually just a retarded kid in a suit.

My One Political Opinion

I wrote this somewhere else first:

It’s a fundamental concept in Greek mythology: cut one of the heads off the infinitely-headed Lernaean Hydra, another head takes its place. Same goes for geopolitics. The question of whether Saddam Hussein was a threat is completely irrelevant. If you want to change the world for the better, then assassinating or executing or otherwise doing away with a “bad guy” is not only pointless, but dangerous, as doing so will only anger the beast. (The beast, in this case, is death and destruction and pain and misery on a mass scale for men and women and children.) So you can pretty much stop arguing over whether there is any connection between Sadaam Hussein and Osama bin Laden or Adolf Hitler or Donald Rumsfeld or or or or or. Here’s your answer: yes, they’re all connected, and they all either love each other or hate each other. If they love each other, they cooperate to kill and maim and otherwise inflict chaos and dread in the populi of all countries; if they hate each other, they compete for the right to be the foremost head on the Hydra of madness and blood and death and death and death. Whaddya gonna do. How do your solve it. Here’s an ice cream cone. Smile. Drop off a care package for your new neighbor. Stop beating your wife and kids, when in Rome don’t spit on the locals, sit up straight, and start acting like a decent human being. Or, just keep feeling like you’re “helping” by cheering the death of another human being. Whatever blows your skirt up, baby.

Dreams of the East

The following is an art review I wrote for Art New England. The show I reviewed was called Dreams of the East. The artist's name is David Shapiro (view his website here), who operates out of Brooklyn, New York City. The New Haven, CT venue in which the show appeared is an upscale backyard garage operation called Grand Projects (view their website here).

*****
Dreams of the East is a unique eight-painting installation incorporating Orientalist themes culled from the contemporary mass media. The images were rendered in fluorescent paint on canvas, and brought to life under black light. (To this reviewer’s knowledge, the technique has never been used.) The black light is flipped on and off at five-minute intervals, illustrating how the West selectively tunes in and tunes out the Pantheons of fame and the Underworlds of otherness.

When the black lights are off, the paintings are dull red or violet silhouettes. When the black light flips on, the paintings take on an eerie glow similar to television screens. They are freeze frames of famous white women in Arab harems; masked revolutionaries running towards the screen; celebrities like Whitney Houston, Angelina Jolie, and Brad Pitt visiting downtrodden peoples; and early Danish Internet pornography. Some of the images were faked on many levels, such as Anna Kournikova: Hot! Fake! Pic!, which is a photo of the tennis star’s face superimposed on the body of an anonymous porn star posing in a harem. Therefore, the image is triply or even quaternarily removed from reality.

The contemporary images in Dreams were culled from the Internet and television, yet the subjects recapitulate the works of such masters as Duccio, Gros, and Delacroix. Nobody Leading the People, for example, is a twist on Delecroix’s Liberty Leading the People. While Liberty depicts a violent revolutionary charge led by an ideal manifested as a common woman, Nobody depicts Haitian rebels charging towards the camera, storming the viewer.

Dreams of the East is a veritable catacombs of ideas, themes, subtexts, tropes, and theories. There are multitudes of access points into the catacombs, and every turn yields another series of choices. The intensity and thoroughness of both technique and concept make this installation a true original.