♫ “ONCE UPON A TIME I DRAAAANK A LITTLE WINE. WAS AS HAPPY AS CAN BEEEEE. HAAAAAAPPY AS CAN BE!” ♫

“Aw fuck I know this one. Fuck! Damn! Piss! Shit! Hey old man, get out here!”

The “old man” comes out from the back. He’s 27. The clerk is just out of high school, and I’m 14. So yeah, old man. “Sing it again”

♫ “ONCE UPON A TIME I DRAAAANK A LITTLE WINE. WAS AS HAPPY AS CAN BEEEEE. HAAAAAAPPY AS CAN BE!” ♫

The old man is like “I know this, fuck! Fuck! Fuck!!!”. I leave them to ponder this song, stuck in their head, until they stop breathing and choke on their spit, i guess…

The mystery continues for 43 years… Until today when I searched for it.

SEE?

The post All The World’s Knowledge, and Guess What I Use Google For? appeared first on SoApBoX.

What used to be the premium site for fact-checking has become a tool for Partisan Politics

This kills me to write.

For 20+ years I was one of Snopes’ biggest defenders.
This website taught me how to read the news, urban legends, and rumors and think critically. Before Snopes, I truly believed kids died of pop rocks and soda; Elvis was a racist; Flipping on your high beams was a recipe for death from gang initiates. For the longest time, they seemed impartial and many on the Right-wing hated them because they were bitter that their BS was called out.

But now? I am beginning to believe they think life and politics hold only one perspective and anything else was “Fake News” and a possible Russian plot to make Trump GodEmperor4Lyfe. In fact, they have declared war on satire sites because they feel it’s important everyone embraces one ideology (or they think everyone is just *THAT* stupid).

So here are the following examples I have noticed where people posted a Snopes link in my Facebook comments to imply something I posted was “Fake News,” when, in fact, it wasn’t.

1) Were an American Couple Killed by Isis While Trying to ‘Prove Humans Are Kind’?

“There is no evidence Austin and Geoghegan were aware of any terrorist threat in Tajikistan, or that they travelled through that region particularly in order to vindicate their belief in human kindness.”

Now, this appears to be edited since the time someone posted this in my Facebook comments. It used to be marked “FALSE”, now Snopes is settling for splitting hairs over the true intention of the Millenial Cyclists, and calling it a “Mixture”. My intention of posting this was to make it clear to the many doe-eyed, idealistic morons on my friends’ list, is that the world is NOT a safe place. There are dangerous corners of the world, and not everything is like a festival in San Francisco. You venture to these places, and you don’t look like everyone else there… you will be a victim. Robbery, rape, murder, human sex trafficking, organ harvesting, kidnapping, you name it. In America, we take for granted how clean and safe our environment is. Many people think the rest of the world is that way.

Maybe you should ask a Jewish person how limited their world-traveling can be.

After someone posted this link to inform me that I was committing the grave sin of “Spreading Fake News,” I quickly went to the cyclist’s blog site where they stated the following:

” You watch the news and you read the papers and you’re led to believe that the world is a big, scary place. People, the narrative goes, are not to be trusted. People are bad. People are evil. People are axe [sic] murderers and monsters and worse.
I don’t buy it. Evil is a make-believe concept we’ve invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own—it’s easier to dismiss an opinion as abhorrent than strive to understand it. Badness exists, sure, but even that’s quite rare.”

If anything, this opened my eyes to a NEW kind of White Privilege. The one where you think every place is as nice as the gentrified neighborhood you just moved yourself and your gluten-free latte-maker into.

Seriously people… just be careful.
You have no idea how good we have it in America.
Solipsism kills.

2) Hitchhiker Killed by Muslims?

“While the Yes I’m Right story was based on a New York Times article published in April 2008, the web site made no attempt to inform its readers that the incident had taken place over eight years earlier and that they were republishing a years-old story with no clarification about when it occurred…

As the incident occurred eight years ago and Turkey is an officially secular country, it’s not clear how Yes I’m Right concluded (despite the statements from law enforcement and her own family) that Bacca had been killed over religion.”

Again, like the one above, they are splitting hairs over petty details like the date of the occurrence and the possible religious orientation of Pippa Bacca’s rapist(s)/murderer(s). They concede she was trying to promote peace. Given that Turkey’s flag has a crescent moon and star in it, I would say it is not exactly a “secular country,” Snopes. According to the Turkish government, 99.8% of the Turkish population is Muslim (although some sources give a slightly lower estimate of 96.4 percent). And while we don’t know who did it, it’s pretty reasonable to assume the culprit(s) were of the Muslim variety?

“We don’t know for sure” is not the same as “nope, this is false!”. You can draw a reasonable conclusion based on available facts and evidence.

The point is, some naive “flower-power” type thought the world was like the safe environment they have always lived around and had a rude awakening. Sure this could happen to anyone hitch-hiking, but aren’t we seeing a pattern with these peaceniks going to dangerous places to “prove us wrong”, only to have the exact opposite happen yet?

Look, I have met many Muslims in my life, and most have been warm and kind. (One even brought in an entire feast for our office to share to mark the end of Eid.). I know better to paint Islamic people with a broad brush like Right-wingers tend to do… but could it just be possible, that maybe, just maybe… many of these Muslim-majority countries aren’t safe for women to be traveling alone in, given their Bronze-age views towards women?

Also, I saw “Midnight Express”.
You couldn’t pay me to travel to Turkey without bodyguards.

3) Does This Photo Show a Toddler in a Cage Detained by ICE in 2018?

“However, as it turned out, the photograph was taken on 10 June 2018, but it did not show a child confined by immigration authorities to a cage. Rather, it was snapped during a protest staged in front of Dallas City Hall to call attention to the Trump administration’s practice of separating families and confining undocumented children.”

Now you know DARNED WELL this has made the rounds on social media and has been used consistently by the Left to support their “Children in Cages” narrative. (No, children aren’t in cages. What we see are misleading closeups of a “holding pen”). Had the Right-wing been this duplicitous, Snopes would have slapped them down with all their fury. As you read the article, clearly you see this crying child is actually part of a protest demonstration, and he is neither held by ICE or even in a cage against his will.

So it’s marked “False,” right?
(Even Politifact does)

NOPE! “Miscaptioned”.
Although clearly, there is ZERO truth to this picture, they want to soften the blow to any well-meaning people who are using this picture for their Liberal agendas.
“Oh hey, guys, I don’t want to upset your righteous anger, but it’s not as ‘TRUE’ as you would like it to be. Don’t be mad now.”

4) Is an ‘ Obama Don’t Separate Me From My Mommy ‘ Protest Sign Real?

“This is indeed a genuine photograph that was taken during the Obama era in 2014. However, there major differences between the immigration policy at the center of the pictured protest and the child detention centers that were at the center of public outrage in June 2018.

In a nutshell: Families were separated under President Barack Obama as the result of deportation of undocumented people from the United States. Families were separated under President Donald Trump as parents and children were put into different detention facilities after they crossed the border to ask for asylum in the United States.”

This one is the exact opposite of the one above. Yes, this sign is real. This was a real issue, not from being separated at the border, but from deportations.

However, it is also marked “MIXTURE” because of how it is used. And it really leads you to believe Snopes is running interference for the Democratic Party.
Kids are STILL being separated from their parents… instead of a holding pen a few hundred yards away, now it’s thousands of miles.

As sad as I find this separation of children and parents (and if you know my back history, you’d understand), the fact is, they are separating the children at the border for a reason. There is a rising surge of people kidnapping children to pose as families, in the hopes of getting through the border. And DNA testing of many of these suspected families is showing 1/3 of the children aren’t related.

So what do you find more reprehensible?
Children separated from “parents” until proven otherwise, or kidnapped children being used to sneak in by criminals and then heaven-knows-what happening to them afterward?

Also, most of the pictures of “kids in cages” that everyone is upset over are actually from 2014 (during the Obama administration), despite Snopes insisting Obama never separated families (which I can now no longer find on Snopes, but was used quite often in debates).

5) Did a Pennsylvania Daycare Receive a Racist Letter About a Black Employee?

“Multiple social media users shared images of a letter they say was anonymously sent to the facility.”

I saved the best for last, because this is the entry that opened my eyes to Snopes and how they play with words, and frame things to suit one particular side of the political aisle. A daycare center in Whitehall, PA gets a letter complaining about a Black employee, and the phrase “make your daycare great again,” made it seem pretty obvious this racist person was a Trump supporter. The “multiple social media users” were just the daycare owner’s son and daughter… (so it’s not a “wide group of random witnesses verifying this act,” like Snopes is leading you to believe. More on that later.).

Hmm. If only people knew someone who lived in the area of this daycare center to give you an idea of how this is a complete hoax…

OH WAIT! YOU DO!
ME!!! I LIVED IN WHITEHALL, PA!

For three years, this was the location of the “Casa de Brooksy” as I worked surveying land for an oil company. I can tell you with all honesty, this must be the most diverse area I have lived in all my life (and by “diverse,” I am using the word correctly) it was easily 40% White, 30% Black, 20% Syrian, and 10% Hispanic and others. My next-door neighbor knew Barack Obama as a teenager in Kenya, and during the 2012 election was screaming as if her own cousin was just re-elected as President.

It would be insane to conceive that someone would have a concern about a Black person in this area. In fact, the daycare owner, Dominique McKelley, even says she has several Black employees.

And believe me, this was definitely NOT a Trump-supporting area.

And, ironically, Snopes has the most-likely culprit featured right in their article.

The one who spread this all over the internet via Twitter.

The one discussed in the comments of the Morning Call article about the event.

THE DAYCARE OWNER’S DAUGHTER, LEXI MCKELLEY.

There was quite a long thread by author Thomas Wictor who reportedly exposed Lexi as a fraud, a webpage by another unraveling the mystery scooby doo-style.

Sadly all of this has been lost to the memory hole as Thomas Wictor’s entire social media presence has been wiped out of existence in one of big-tech’s purges of right-wingers.

And since Ms. McKelley has never been arrested or convicted of this alleged hate crime (and yes, I agree it’s a hate crime), I try to word this all very carefully.

But if you use Occam’s Razor, see who is closest to the dumpster fire, who was enjoying all the attention, and who benefits the most from it… it’s rather crystal clear.

But don’t hold your breath for Snopes to try and bring the truth.
They worded it as “Did this actually happen?”, so any attempts to call this a hoax is immediately shut down by the people who want to see racism everywhere.

I have tried to explain to people online how this was hard to believe, given the racial composition of the area. But I got the usual shouting down by SJW-types.

What do I know, I only lived in this area, right?

CONCLUSION

Now don’t get me wrong, I have met some really dim-witted Right Wingers that still believe bullshit like “they found WMDs in Iraq,” and “they are using aborted babies for parts“.
(Okay, stem cell research? maybe… but what use is a heart that is half the size of a lentil on the black market?), and other insane conspiracies… and Fox News has been known for over a decade to spew partisan-skewed stories that barely resembled the truth.

But they aren’t the only ones.

CNN and MSNBC seem to be on the same mission of spreading partisan-based propaganda, we now have an industry of “Outrage News” online, where clickbait, shares, and visits generate tons of revenue from people looking to soothe their confirmation bias.

• Where was Snopes when the kids from Covington HS were being crucified by the media, and Nathan Phillips gave his side of the story that was NOTHING like the events we all saw in the longer video?
• Or when a woman nearly lost her business and reputation when people on Facebook posted a misleading picture of her talking to a young man about immigration, and they made it look as though she was hatefully screaming at him? (The kid actually had to come forward and clear it up as people were doxxing her and threatening her and her business)
• How about when the Young Turks published a news piece about the Black church in Greenville, Mississippi burning down with “Vote Trump” written on the side and ridiculed any idea that it might not have been a Trump supporter or the hate crime it was made to look like?
• Or when Shaun King falsely accused someone on his Facebook page of being a white supremacist and murdering a young Black girl?
• Or hell, most of what Shaun King puts out to get the SJW crowd riled up that later turns out to be false? (and this guy is supposed to be a journalist?)
• Or any number of articles by THE RAW STORY* that is immediately called out by readers as having a misleading headline that says the exact opposite of the story?

*Oh wait. Arturo Garcia was a writer for THE RAW STORY and is now a fact-checker for Snopes. That explains a lot.

Point is, the falsehoods are coming from both sides, and even foreign powers are joining in. We need an impartial fact-checker now more than ever.

Unfortunately, Snopes seems obsessed with Satire and anything that might help Trump get re-elected. Lord help us!

Are there any news falsehoods you can think of that Snopes either missed or got wrong?

The post The 5 Times Snopes Played Fast And Loose With the Truth [#politics] appeared first on SoApBoX.

Everyone likes at least ONE of them

Let’s face it, people are either voting FOR Trump, or AGAINST Trump in November 2020.

With all of the choices in the 2020 Presidential Election, most of us have already made up our mind. However, while most people voting against Trump will accept whoever the DNC chooses for them (again) we all still have people we would prefer in the White House.
So I have compiled MY 2020 wishlist of who I would vote for:

1. Tulsi Gabbard
2. Donald Trump
3. Giant Meteor
4. The wino that tries to wash my windshield on my way to work (I think his name is Mark or Hector?)
5. Marianne Williamson’s Healing Crystals
6. Zombie Apocalypse
7. A Baltimore Rat
8. Bernie Sanders
9. Elizabeth Warren
10. Yang, Buttplug, Spartacus, and Beto (As one person, though. Sewn together like Frankenstein).
11. A series of Human Extinction events
12. Kamala Harris
13. Joe Biden

For the life of me, I can’t understand why a party that constantly villainizes white men and police officers would have two old white dudes and a cop/prosecutor as their front runners (or not offering anything to the Middle class, moderates, and independent voters you will need to win), but okay…

*shrugs* It’s your election to lose, Democrats.

Who are YOUR choices for President?

The post My #2020Election Wishlist appeared first on SoApBoX.

I have always said that “If anyone takes our guns away, it will be the Republicans”.

Obama had eight years to do it, and never did. Why?

Because you were expecting it.

Everyone was ready to raise hell at the first sign of it happening. But they know when a Republican does this (or Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants, or add more government agencies, etc), Republicans will just quietly whimper and accept it. Instead of getting mad as hell and threaten to not support those candidates next election.

“I am not happy that they took away bump stocks, but at least they didn’t touch silencers”

“I am not happy that they took away silencers, but at least they didn’t start endorsing Red Flag Laws“…

“I am not happy about Red Flag Laws , but AT LEAST THEY DIDN’T SHOVE THAT 14-INCH DONALD TRUMP-SHAPED DILDO COMPLETELY UP MY ASS AND, THANKFULLY, STOPPED JUST SHORT OF THE PART WITH THE SPIKES“…

Listen America, you need to start getting mad about your rights being slowly stripped away. While you were so busy worrying about Barack Obama announcing on TV that you had to “hand in all your guns… or else,” he was busy continuing the work of George W. Bush’s Government-expanding extravaganza by stripping even more of your Fourth Amendment rights, with even MORE spying, Civil Asset Forfeiture, detaining citizens indefinitely (NDAA), and drone-bombing the living shit out of innocent people in the middle east… all in the name of “Keeping America Safe”.

You had already signed off on this when Dubya was starting this breakdown on your privacy, because “MUH 9/11!” “MUH PATRIOTISM”.

You don’t seem to understand there is ONE government, with two parties that know how their supporters work.

Like a Snake Oil Company with two salesmen with two completely different sales pitches…
One of them will make the sale.
But the Company will keep on doing whatever it wants.

They know the Democrats take an 8-year nap when their guy is in the White House.
They know Republicans will NEVER vote for the other side…

… because Republicans believe Democrats will take their guns away, and make the government even bigger…?

Morons.

The post [#GunControl] The Gun-Grabbing, Government-Expanding Republican Blues appeared first on SoApBoX.

So I had a dream last night (I think it was a dream…).
I was visited by TULSI GABBARD

She flew in my window. She was glowing and had wings.
She was an angel.
A Tulsi Angel.

She hovered over me. Her lips pursed into a smile as she beckoned me closer with her finger.

As I sat up in my bed, we were nose to nose. I began to become lost in her big, beautiful, brown, angelic Samoan eyes… Then we closed our eyes as she drew closer, and my heart raced as I thought “THIS IS IT!”… I was trembling in anticipation!

And she whispered in my ear “I only like you as a friend”.
And she was gone.

*Big dreamy sigh*
Exactly the way I always thought it would be.

https://tulsi.to/MakeItHappen – Keep the momentum going! Help us reach 130,000 and qualify for the 3rd debates.

The post [#Tulsi2020] I Was Visited By Tulsi Gabbard in a Dream! appeared first on SoApBoX.

Washington (AP) – On Friday, House Democrats made a surprise vote. It was such a surprise, Republicans didn’t even know to show up.

The vote was a proposal by rising-star Alexandria Occasio-Cortez. Remove an hour from everyone’s lives to help offset the deficit. “You’ve heard the saying ‘Time is Money,’ right?,” Occasio-Cortez announced, “Well what if we cut one hour out and used that money to offset our staggering deficit? It would relieve some of the debt our constituents are burdened with. Plus, they’ll be sleeping, they’ll never miss it!”

As expected, the decision was unanimous without any Republicans present to “screw it all up, just because”.

An outraged President Trump tweeted that the Democrats have “gone too far,” and promised to restore that hour back to Americans in September, just before the next election.

When asked if there are any special movies this weekend AOC planned on seeing, the young congressperson responded: “The last movie I went to see was called ‘Closed For Rennovations’. It was very noisy and I couldn’t follow the plot with all these construction workers moving around and talking. It was stupid”.

The post Democrats Vote Unanimously to Remove One Hour From American Lives This Weekend appeared first on SoApBoX.

Aurora, Illinois (AP) – For International Women’s Day, and the Premiere of Marvel’s Captain Marvel, we sat down and spoke with an expert on both… A Men’s Rights Activist named Marty Cohen.

“It’s so frustrating,” Cohen confesses, “Us guys want to teach her a lesson about hating ‘White Dudes’… but what can we do? She got no ass, no tiddies, and she always looks bored. Like someone is reading her the ingredients of gluten-free cereal! I can’t fap to this!”

To my horror, he pulls up a picture of Ms. Larson on his laptop and proceeds to whip his ding ding out.

“Yeah come on, baby! Time for some White Dude dick! Who’s your da…. ARRRRGH! WTF! WHAT DID SHE WIN AN OSCAR FOR, PLAYING A BROOMSTICK IN A CORNER?”

Totally defeated from her lack of sex appeal, I left Marty Cohen to quietly sob, as he put a Hot Pocket in the microwave (with unwashed hands), and fired up his XBox to cheer himself up.

The post Neckbeards Complain They Can’t Angry-Fap to Brie Larson #InternationalWomensDay appeared first on SoApBoX.

We got cats, so no problem, right?
Well, no. Our cats are kind of assholes. They lounge around like they are in the First Class section of the Titanic, and us humans are their servants. To ask them to kill some vermin in exchange for a roof over their head seems to be beneath them.

So I got glue traps from Wal-Mart.

Not quite sure what I was thinking with that one. Perhaps I thought I could come home, find a dead rodent or two in the trap, then chuck it in the garbage and forget about it. (Like your mom did with that abortion in high school.).

What I didn’t expect was to come face to face with some poor living creature struggling in the glue. Something with intelligence, feels pain… and from the shrieking, feels fear, obviously.

So anyway…
I just got home and accidentally stepped on the one under my desk. As I am about to peel it off my sneaker…. I hear the desperate squeals of a terrified rodent under my foot.

FUCK! *STOMP*
      FUCK!*STOMP*
           FUCK!!!*STOMP*

Not only is Ben Jr. still squealing and I didn’t put him out of his misery, but the glue trap is EXTRA stuck to me now… with mouse guts too, probably..

So I use the other foot to peel it off (fuck that, I ain’t using my hands). And find there are TWO mice struggling to live. One about the length of my thumb. Tiny little thing.

I’m not a heartless prick and won’t let them live their final hours in terror.
I toss the glue trap, with Ben and Willard in it, into a plastic bag, take it outside and stomp the shit out of it, to put them out of their misery and leave the bloody bag in the trash can. And hopefully scraped all the sticky, gooey mouse guts off the bottom of my sneaker in the wet grass.

That was too much for me…
I went and picked up regular mousetraps to snap their necks from now on. I’m a jerk… but I am not a monster.

So far no new takers. I think my message of “DEATH AWAITS ALL WHO ENTER THIS ROOM” has come off loud and clear.

Anyone know how to get mouse innards glued to the bottom of a sneaker off? It’s still there. Yuck.

The post Of Mice and Whiny Men appeared first on SoApBoX.

When I was a teen, I was a volunteer at the Ridgewood-Bushwick Senior Center in Brooklyn. We helped the elderly with food deliveries, help shopping, clean, deliver things. Make their lives easier.

I was very disappointed in the lack of wisdom my elders had. You watch any TV show, and a wise old geezer appears and says the one magical thing to give our hero a second change to win. Real life? PHHHLLLPPPH! They were just basic meat and potatoes kinds of people. Their whole life was: Wake up, go to work, come home, have dinner, fall asleep watching Johnny Carson. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

No real gems to pass on to the next generation. Nothing to explain how life works, or the complexities of Human Nature, not even an explanation of why the drive-thru ATM buttons have braille on them.

One of them did advise me to “not get old”. Did I listen? NOOOOOoooooo….

Now I see people my age, middle aged, rapidly approaching seniors, and they are passing on tweets from some Millenial Tumblrina as if she has all the answers, but she’s just mad at her daddy, and the woman forwarding it with “So much this!” added is just a bitter spinster mad that her husband left her for a younger version of herself. She thinks because she is young, she has her fingers on the pulse on the future, as if we are entering a new Age of Enlightenment. It’s just a ridiculously over-sensitive time.

We are trying to appear “progressive” and “open-minded” about issues like 57 genders, paying a carbon tax when you ALREADY pay taxes to live in the an Industrialized Society, fighting for the rights of Transgenders to pee in the stall next someone’s young daughter, when none of them asked for this as far as I know of. In fact, none of the transgender people I know in real life ever seemed to have an issue with finding a public bathroom to use.

Meanwhile those guys, that sported mascara and fishnets on college campuses three years ago, are now clean-cut, married, expecting their first kid and saying “OMG, GUYS! It was college and I was going through a phase!”

Life’s lessons never seem to touch certain people.

All the world’s knowledge is just a few taps away on their smartphones, yet we still have people that think the world is flat, afraid to vaccinate their kids, and think Lizards have enslaved the Human Race.

So I’m thinking maybe stupid kids, turn into stupid adults, and then stupid old people?

Who’d have thought?

The post Sunday Musings: Stupid People appeared first on SoApBoX.

I’m not gay… but I can understand the importance of spending the rest of your life with the person you love, and have society recognize it.

I don’t have any tattoos or piercings… but I understand the need for people to express themselves.

I don’t own a gun… but I understand why some people want them to protect their family.

I don’t own a pitbull… but I can understand how people love them for their loyalty and sweetness, and how fears and exaggerations from the media can spin so much bullshit and unfair laws against them.

I don’t own a uterus… but I can understand why someone would not want to have a child at this current time, and would prefer to not bleed to death correcting that mistake.

I most likely don’t share the same beliefs in your God, nor do I dismiss the idea of a Higher Being and order in the universe. If it brings you comfort, and makes you a better person, then I respect you for it.

I am neither Conservative or Liberal… I make up my own mind and see one or the other makes a good point here and there.

It’s called compassion. The ability to see things from another person’s point of view, and realize not everything is about you.

We are all set on different paths, headed for the same destination. The difference is the stops we make on that road, and the lessons we need to learn along the way to become better people.

It’s all about Love and living without Fear.
Don’t be assholes, unless it’s absolutely funny.

The post The Centrist Creed appeared first on SoApBoX.