America and the Middle Class

On Saturday, I attended the inaugural caucus of the Clark County chapter of the Progressive Democrats of America.

For work purposes only, people, keep your shirts on. Gordon’s still as red-and-black as ever.

All in all it wasn’t terrible- I actually got an opportunity to talk to the keynote speaker, a local congressman, about the impending vote on military action against my adopted homeland of Syria (for the record, I said if we had money to bomb Syria, we have money to spend giving refugees the medicine, food, and housing they so desperately need).

But that’s not what I’m here to talk about.

I’m here to talk about what was said (over and over), before the congressman started taking questions from the crowd. Continue reading

DC Is Terrible, But They’re Not Homophobes

Look, let’s be clear, I’m not a fan of DC. To be a little more specific, I am not a fan of DC’s business practices and editorial decisions. All of that being said, yesterday the internet perpetuated one of my least favourite of its trends: snap judgement from journalists fishing for hits.

Late Wednesday night W. Haden Blackman and J.H. Williams III, the writer and artist of Batwoman, respectively, posted  a message on the former’s blog that they would be leaving the title. Here’s the section of that post that has received the most attention [emphasis added]:

Unfortunately, in recent months, DC has asked us to alter or completely discard many long-standing storylines in ways that we feel compromise the character and the series. We were told to ditch plans for Killer Croc’s origins; forced to drastically alter the original ending of our current arc, which would have defined Batwoman’s heroic future in bold new ways; and, most crushingly, prohibited from ever showing Kate and Maggie actually getting married. All of these editorial decisions came at the last minute, and always after a year or more of planning and plotting on our end.

From what I can tell, the news was first broken by The Outhouse, and was soon followed by all the other major comic book news outlets. ComicsAlliance and Newsarama both likewise delivered the news straight, but elsewhere this wasn’t the case. Continue reading

Fame Day: Cornel West

Where exactly do you start when talking about Cornel West?

I mean, the man’s a brilliant academic. Dr. West had an illustrious career at Princeton and has just recently begun teaching at Fuller Theological Seminary (when he’s not teaching at the university of Paris). On top of that, he’s written over 20 books (and by books I mean tomes measured in weight rather than pages), appeared on countless national news panels, and somehow still found time to have a bit part in a couple of The Matrix movies.

Or perhaps I could talk about the man’s political work. West has been one of the few figures to consistently call out the Obama administration on its hypocrisy and atrocities- exemplified best by his outrage on Obama being sworn in on MLK Jr.’s bible.

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Evan and Gordon Talk: The Confederate Flag

GORDON: Today, we’re going to be touching on a nerve that’s still pretty raw in the US, even after a century and a half.

Specifically, we’re going to be talking about the ol’ stars and bars- the flag of the former Confederate States of America.

EVAN: I’d like to remind everyone reading this that I am a Canadian. The most experience I have with the Confederate flag is in seeing it on the top of the General Lee from the remake of, and not the original, Dukes of Hazard.

That being said, Gordon directed me towards an article written not too long ago on BBC, and there is an incredible amount of divisiveness regarding it as a symbol. Continue reading

Shame Day: Cigarette Butts

I wrote about this a long time ago on a vastly inferior blog, and I’m going to state it again here in the first sentence of this post: I don’t want to see people throwing their cigarette butts on the ground.

Two weeks ago the image below popped up on imgur, and being pretty interested in where this conversation could go I clicked to see what the discussion was on reddit.

A good portion consisted of people agreeing that having cigarette butts all over the ground is unsightly, disgusting, and can have a toxic environmental impact. On the other side, however, were smokers complaining that things just aren’t that easy. Continue reading

Gordon Brown’s Labor Day Extravaganza

They say it’s better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission. I’m going to gamble on that and offer this, my Labor Day extravaganza of random leftist agitprop which I’m going to pretend is somehow connected to the blog’s purpose in that it shows you a bit of a subculture you’re probably not familiar with.

While I am fully prepared for Evan to chew me out, I am hopeful that you, the faithful readers, will soften his hard heart by reminding him of these two important facts:

Firstly, it’s Labor Day.

In this country, that doesn’t mean much more than a last chance to get some barbecuing in while the weather’s still pleasant. Considering how pitiful the labor movement has been in this nation, a bit of red flag waving and raised fists is far overdue.

Secondly, today is my birthday.

Continue reading