Just Get Rid of Capital Punishment...

Last Monday I had the great "pleasure" of watching Fox News' live coverage of the execution of Stan Tookie Williams, alleged Crips cofounder and convicted for quadruple homicide. The coverage was wrong and sickening on so many levels it was almost unfathomable.

They had reporters in front of the prison, in the crowd of protesters, and other guys who were in the witness room, which of course, barred cameras from entry, probably in an effort to maintain some self-righteous sense of civility (see, we're not televising it, so it's not cruel). At first, the anchor guy just sat around talking to the female reporter in front of the prison. This was pretty annoying to watch, because anchor-douche was busy force-feeding the woman questions like, "Is it correct that this man murdered a bunch of people in cold blood, but a bunch of people don't believe it or actively choose to look the other way??" The anchor then proceeded to do his best to belittle the reforms that Mr. Williams had made in his life, claiming that it was either a facade, or a bunch of crap that never actually happened, but he couldn't make up his mind as to which, because he had no evidence of either. He then went on to claim that it is a joke to receive a Nobel Peace Prize nomination, and that any idiot could get one, himself included.

After this, since they felt that they had adequately proven that Mr. Williams was Hitler re-incarnate, they went to the protesters, some of which were supporters of Mr. Williams and others were just death penalty protesters. They then ran through some of the same demonifying tactics a few more times, since the majority of their audience has the attention spans of fruit flies, and then proceeded to do their best to make everyone look idiotic, as well as ask the stupid reporter in the crowd moronic questions such as repeating the question, "Has the crowd gotten violent yet?" Because when a crowd is predominantly composed of African Americans, it must get violent eventually, right Fox News propagandists? When the camera man shoved some woman out of the way, she whacked him with her sign, and they were like, "Oh my God, the crowd has started to get violent; it's amazing how a few bad people can ruin the whole thing!" Morons. They went on to talk about how a bunch of Christian people for the death penalty had left awhile ago, probably because it was past their bedtimes.

Right away, anyone should be able to see the inherent stupidity in that particular demographic's position. Christianity is supposedly the pro-life, pro-forgiveness, "turn the other cheek", "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" etc. etc. religion. Knowing nothing else and keeping this in mind, it would seem obvious that, in order to adhere to their faith, they would have to oppose capital punishment. But, no. If you ever watched the news, you would have been treated to some amusing images of Christians holding up crosses and screaming for a man to be put to death. Sounds strangely resemblant of the way Jesus was killed...

Eh, I started writing this a week ago, and intended to add some more to it, but never really got around to it or had the time. I just wanted to point out that killing this guy was insanely stupid, since in jail, he was helping to sway young kids from joining violent gangs, but his execution pretty much ended whatever good could have come from this tragic situation, and if anything, just produced more gang members and more anger. I forget what I wanted to say, so I'm just going to publish it as is. I'd just really like to see this country (America, for the uninitiated) get rid of this punishment. It's cruel, it's barbaric, and it's often used on innocent people tried with circumstantial evidence. DNA tests frequently prove the innocence of people on death row. When you think about it, statistically a lot of people are murdered by the US government on a regular basis based on a lot of the findings from various studies. Furthermore, it's been statistically demonstrated that the death penalty does nothing to deter crimes; if anything, it actually makes people more violent, as states with the death penalty show much higher violent crime rates than those states without the death penalty. The US is also the only first world country to still have the death penalty. We get to join the ranks with Syria, North Korea, Iran, and other countries which are clearly bastions of human rights and preservers of essential human dignities and justice. *cough* *cough*

Oh yeah, I added a few pics of the guillotine (link goes to a movie of an actual execution in 1939), something that we should bring back just for the sheer hell of it, and hopefully liberally use it on right-wing Christians who advocate the death penalty and wars for the sake of killing the "heathens". And just as a random fact for the day, ironically enough, the creator of the guillotine, Dr. Joseph Ignace Guillotin, was very much against capital punishment, but created it with the intention that at least it would make capital punishment more humane, since it was clear that the death penalty wasn't going to go away since there was a Revolution occurring in France at the time (and there were a lot of bastards that just needed to die). Amusing, isn't it, that a guy who hated the death penalty will be forever remembered as the guy who created what is arguably the most infamous symbol of the death penalty. Especially since he wanted the machine to be called the louisette, but everyone else started calling it the Guillotine.

End of Semester

The end of the stupid semester is almost finally here. I managed to work myself somewhat sick by doing a monstrous final lab report (31 pages) at the last minute. I had to skip dinner and stay up all night to finish it and turn it in on time yesterday, but I did it. Some of my friends were freaking out about the whole thing, and one of them got physically ill and threw up. Of course, this same individual wants to become a doctor, so I hope that he gets his shit together before he heads off to med-school, because if turning in a final report freaks you out, then holding someone's life in your hands should really freak you out. He's a good guy though, but way too uptight about everything, as most of these freaks known as pre-meds are.

Of course, everyone always says that since I'm always so calm no matter what is going on I'd make a good surgeon (maybe even a good general? HA!). I'd probably be infinitely better if I actually... did things ahead of time? I have issues with studying and doing projects in my free time; I'd much rather wait until the absolute last point wherein I must do the work. For example, my honors biochem class, I didn't bother studying for the final exam (not really a "final" per sey, just the second midterm exam), I just looked over some of my old work the second day before the test. The night before the test I studied from 10-3AM, and even then, I'd say about half of that time was me talking with my friend that I was studying with. I end up getting a low A on this exam, even though all my classmates are honors students that were constantly studying for it. One girl got a 100% on it, which really raises questions in my eyes, because she's sort of a moron, and all of her past work sucked. She also got a 105% on the lab midterm. How does this happen? I dunno, but morons don't usually get 100+% on exams unless something's up. Especially since, on her homeworks, she got D's.

Anyway, I'm sick of talking about school since it's been all I've been able to do for like the past month. I'll update this thing with an angry rant tommorrow; I'll probably just watch some Fox News for inspiration.