Constantly Amazed, Yet Never Surprised

While I'm getting a real post together...

2010-01-18T20:12:00.001-08:00

I'm not crazy, and neither am I

2010-01-03T20:44:00.000-08:00

Okay, where was I?

Oh, yeah.

See, I have been sort of out of commission for a bit. I took some time off because I needed to see someone about anxiety and depression that was getting a little out of hand. So, that's how I spent my holidays, more or less. I'm doing better now, but... well, we'll get more in depth as I begin blogging again.

In the meantime, here is some video footage taken of me describing my problems to my therapist:

As you can see, I am not quite fixed yet...

This is EXACTLY What Happened to Me

2009-10-22T20:07:00.000-07:00

On the Pendulum Swinging

2009-09-03T22:42:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I have been gone again. This time I won't make excuses, although I must say that I finally succombed to depression... for a while. I dunno. Depression has a way of sapping one's energies, don't you think?

Ah, well. It can't go on forever, can it?

Sniffing the Glue that Holds the Republican Party Together

2009-07-04T19:45:00.000-07:00

An interesting tidbit appeared in an article about Sarah Palin's resignation recently:Only a few years ago, the [republican] party was considered a model of lockstep discipline with around-the-clock message control and seamless coordination of policy and politics. But from all appearances, it has entered a period of inner confusion, verging on the dysfunctional... How did so organized a party come apart so swiftly? One explanation is that it hasn’t been swift at all. The Republicans have been in decline for some time — and in recent years, even in disarray... Dating back to 1992, Republicans have won a plurality in only one presidential election — and that lone victory, in 2004, was not nearly the triumph it appeared to be at the time. Its architect, Karl Rove, spoke of establishing a “permanent majority” for the Republicans, but in reality Mr. Bush won by less than 3 percentage points — one of the narrowest re-elections in presidential history. And although he claimed a mandate, his two big second-term initiatives — privatizing Social Security and immigration reform — were easily thwarted. Some of the strongest opposition came from within Mr. Bush’s own party — further evidence that the Republicans were even then losing their cohesiveness.
The rise of Repubican power, and their abuse of it as they became drunk with it and sought to crush opposition without considering the lives of Americans whom they also crushed along with their political targets, followed by their fall from grace, fascinates me.

I have always tried to accept change readily, and yet I am, as this blog's title says, amazed at some of the changes I have seen in various areas of my life. I thought the repukes would always be on top because they are the power elite, or at least they are the tools of ht epower elite. Now, if the Dems are on top... what does that say about the power elite, who are always in control of everything? Nothing happens unless they allow it to happen, right..? So, maybe the Dems are the new tools of the power elite?

I don't know. Whenever I make real observations about the real world, it sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory. I wonder why that is?

Blog reflections again

2009-06-19T22:44:00.000-07:00

My blog looks a little dated with all the old anti-bush stuff on there... I need to clean house. Maybe put those in the "don't let this happen again" section :). Gotta stay up-to-date, even as I become old and musty myself...

Life.

2009-06-14T10:18:00.000-07:00

Okay, sometimes life gets in the way of blgging. I'm going into a busy period that will probably cause some more of my frequent lapses in blog posting... I'll try to keep up when I can. Blog on!

If conservatives weren't hypocrites, we couldn't recognize 'em

2009-06-07T13:43:00.000-07:00

The same-sex marriage debate rages on in my corner of California. It's a very right-wing community, so letters to the local newspaper generate a lot of responses from the "regulars" - locals who comment frequently on most articles & letters to the editor.

I always take the position that supports marriage equality, so I always end up being a defender of gay marriage, a hot topic here on the left coast. What I try to communicate to the other commenters, though, is that my defense of "gay marriage" has nothing to do with homo- or heterosexuality. It has everything to do with civil rights.

See, I have always been very much a live-and-let-live kind of guy. I have tried to live by the credo that people can do whatever they want, as long as they don't hurt someone else or infringe upon others' rights. This has led to conflicts in my life, as few people understood my belief that people should be allowed to do things that many feel they shouldn't, like commit suicide, etc. Where marriage is concerned, I believe consenting adults have the right to marry, period. That includes consentual plural marriage, same-sex marriage, even (gasp) between relatatives if they are adults when they enter into it and don't intend to reproduce (I draw the line at deliberate risk-taking with birth defects). I think it's nobody else's business, regardless of their individual moral values.

Also, as my wife will attest, before I was married I explained my resistance to legally-sanctioned marriage: I am firmly opposed to the idea that one of the most intimate parts of my life has to be licensed by the government, as if they own the rights to me like a slave. How can the government license who I fall in love with, the level of committment we have with each other, etc? Of course, I still married, but I did it for us, not to meet some government mandate. And with regards to California, where opponents to same-sex marriage frequently justify their position by procalaiming "The people have spoken!" (because they voted to ban it), I am also opposed to the idea that my marriage is subject to approval by popular vote.

Of course, local opponents to marriage equality also justify their position by ranting against homosexuality, citing "natural law" or what "nature intended", or that marriage is basically about reproduction, or that marriage needs to be protected and defended, or that it is the fundamental cornerstone institution of all human society and should be not defined as anything but a union betweem a man and a woman, and most often claiming that gays in civil unions in California already have all the same rights as straight married couples. I keep pointing out the obvious: They don't have the right to get married. If they did, we wouldn't be having this discussion over and over again.

So here I am, a heterosexual married man who shows up in the local newspaper forum to advocate for "gay marriage". Or as I think of it, advocating for civil rights while the "small-government" conservatives argue in favor of government micro-managememt of the intimate aspects of peoples' personal lives. They can shove their @#$% tea bags, as far as I am concerned.

Torture and Rape Rooms: America's way of saying "Howdy!"

2009-05-30T12:44:00.000-07:00

Remember when former unelected president, sneering condescending liar, and incoherent half-wit corporate stooge George W Bush was giving speeches trying to sell his war-for-oil to the public by howling about Saddam Hussein's "torture and rape rooms"?

"Iraq is free of rape rooms and torture chambers."-- Oct. 8, 2003

"We acted, and there are no longer mass graves and torture rooms and rape rooms in Iraq."-- Apr. 23, 2004

"Saddam Hussein now sits in a prison cell, and Iraqi men and women are no longer carried to torture chambers and rape rooms ..."-- Feb. 4, 2004

"Because we acted, torture rooms are closed, rape rooms no longer exist, mass graves are no longer a possibility in Iraq."--May 3, 2004

Well, no one in their right mind believed him, but that doesn't matter because the war was bought and paid for by corporate backers anyway. Nevertheless, his ~~promises~~ lies have come home to roost:

Abu Ghraib abuse photos 'show rape'

"At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Maj Gen Taguba’s internal inquiry into the abuse at Abu Ghraib, included sworn statements by 13 detainees, which, he said in the report, he found “credible based on the clarity of their statements and supporting evidence provided by other witnesses.”

Among the graphic statements, which were later released under US freedom of information laws, is that of Kasim Mehaddi Hilas in which he says: “I saw [name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid’s ***…. and the female soldier was taking pictures.”

The translator was an American Egyptian who is now the subject of a civil court case in the US.

Three detainees, including the alleged victim, refer to the use of a phosphorescent tube in the sexual abuse and another to the use of wire, while the victim also refers to part of a policeman’s “stick” all of which were apparently photographed."

So, that's how supporters of the war in Iraq "spread democracy." That's the "freedom" we heard so much about. Freedom for full-blown depravity done in your name and mine, that is.

When I refer to the Bush administration in blog- or newspaper-forum comments to account for these things, rightwingers always try to dismiss them by saying I am dwelling on the past, "blaming Bush"; that I should "just get over it". They insist the fault lies with either Clinton or Obama.

Well, the raped and tortured don't "get over it", and neither will I. It was just lies. It was treason.

Bonus rant:
When are we going to be held to account for irradiating the Iraqis with depleted uranium?
(pictures of some of the freedom we have spread)

The Constantly Amazing solution to partisan conflict

2009-05-29T21:19:00.000-07:00

A wise blogger once wrote that we should not whine about society's problems without offering a solution. Personally, I think that's too heavy a burden. But it is nice to offer at least a suggestion sometimes, right?

Well, here at Constantly Amazed, we go that extra step and just solve the world's problems anyway.

Recently, I described how to solve California's budget problems. Not to rest on my laurels, I will now offer another Constantly Amazing solution: How to end partisan sniping in American politics.

Now, the Democrats will have to take the first step on this one, but here it goes: All they have to do is, en masse, switch their party affiliation from democrat to republican... and voila! No more partisan bickering possible.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying the former dems should discard their values. I'm saying they should take their progressive selves, values and all, and simply become... the NEW republican party! They could go on doing what they did before, just under a new name. Not only would there be no more bickering between parties possible... but as a the majority, the former dems would actually redefine the republican party from the ground up. The old republican politicians, what's left of them, would be reduced to their role of the party's howling little mob of extremists, and eventually voted out as troublemakers. Most Republican voters would be fine with it since they would still have their familiar product-label recognition. The few who objected could splinter off and form their own little ineffectual extremist parties where they could no longer do any harm. They could deify their rightwing media heroes, hold conventions, have tea parties, and put up candidates like, yes, Palin-Bachman and "Joe the Plumber".

So there we have it. In my Constantly Amazing wisdom (don't worry, I'm as humble as ever), I have solved the California economic crisis and brought an end to partisan gridlock. As soon as I get loaded up with caffeine tomorrow morning, I'll see what other crises I can solve.

Giant blob found deep beneath Nevada

2009-05-26T19:53:00.000-07:00

Giant blob found deep beneath Nevada. You don't suppose it's him, do you?

Who Would've Thought?

2009-05-24T23:22:00.000-07:00

Not too long ago, I wrote that if I read or hear of one more person claiming that liberals hate Rush Limbaugh because he's right, my head would explode. Little did I realize that there is such as thing as this. Maybe I should choose my words of exasperation more carefully next time..!

Gabby Rocks

2009-05-23T15:55:00.000-07:00

Gabby is home and doing great. He has to take some antibiotics for a little while, but he seems to be back to his old self and is very happy to be home.

Thanks very very much to everyone for sending the positive vibes. We, and Gabby appreciate it :)

He's probably going to be a spoiled kitty for a while, but he also seems to really appreciate his home environment now that he has had another taste of the outside world. He agrees with me that it's better back at the castle.

By the way, click the image for a surprise from Gabby :)

Ciao! Meow! - Gabby

Get Well, Little Gabby...

2009-05-21T20:42:00.000-07:00

My kitty cat is sick. Throwing up. Lethargic. Not eating or drinking. Hardly even sleeping! He's been to the vet, and we're hopeful. We cannot bear the thought of life without little Gabby the cat. That's a worst-case scenario. We are hoping he'll bounce back.

I am sad.

Update: My wife posted about Gabby on her art blog here.

Hurry and get well, little Gabby.

Oh, man...

2009-05-18T20:39:00.000-07:00

Seriously, how many of you wish you could jump on an opportunity like this? The top of the heap. Damn.

"I'm better than Sheanc because I blog for Think Progress"

BUY ME THIS

2009-05-15T22:27:00.001-07:00

Click Pic for More

Please, buy me this bass. You know you want to. You have to. You must. There is nothing in the universe more important right at this moment than the simple, inescapable truth that I should have this bass. You know it, and I know it.

It's $10,400.00, and worth every penny.

It's the only thing in life that will really make you happy, and it will certainly make me happy. Forget about all those other things that cloud your judgment with false hopes and fleeting moments of pleasure. Imaging the joy you'll feel knowing that you made me so happy by buying me this bass.

Please. Buy me this bass.

Let's get real: we all know there are questions, eternal questions, unanswered questions, about life, about existence, about the role we play in the grand and glorious panorama that is life itself. Well, here is the answer, truthseekers:

Buy me this bass.

This message brought to you by the Buy SheaNC This Bass or He May Never Be Truly Happy Ever Again, Probably, Foundation, LLC.

The Thing That Just Won't Die.

2009-05-12T21:04:00.000-07:00

Dick Cheney seems to be everywhere lately. I hate that. The former Vice President, to whom I will always refer as "The Snarling Hunchback" because 1) he maintains a visage with all the charm of an ill-tempered dog; and 2) whenever I see him on television he seems unable to lift his head... he simply lets it hang forward and addresses people by turning it sideways and glaring at them like Bela Lugosi's Igor from Son of Frankenstein, and snarling his answers out of the side of his mouth. But all that is neither here nor there. The point is, we can't seem to get rid of him. He is all over the media. They love to combine the hideous and the spectacular, and in him they have a tabloid monster ready-made. It serves their purpose well, and his also.

Sad to say, I blame the Democrats for Cheney's newfound public persona. In 2006 they were elected to end the war and impeach Bush and Cheney. Period. Everything else came second. They had the chance to impeach and they should have done it. It was absolutely the right thing to do... and they blew it. They decided that all the evil that had gone before would go unchecked and unpunished. It didn't matter. Lying. Conspiracy. Mass Murder. Treason. No matter, it's all okay; can't be bothered. Might affect someone's career, you know.

It's like Stockholm Syndrome. Or Battered-Wife Syndrome. The Repukes have been the battering spouse, and the Dems have been their apologetic enablers.

Whatever. We've all studied a little history, haven't we? We didn't expect the world to suddenly become fair just because a bunch of us want it to be that way, did we? I guess not.

...and Dick puts the "mean" in meanwhile...

This Just In: Big Bald Rat Exits Sinking Ship

2009-05-07T21:48:00.000-07:00

Hoky Smokes, Bullwinkle, get a load of this:

Samuel Wurzelbacher, better known as Joe the Plumber, tells TIME he's so outraged by GOP overspending, he's quitting the party

Is there no end to the evidence that we live in a universe where the only thing you can count on is that it will continue to be consistently bizarre no matter how hard you try to find logic in it?

Mr. Wurzlebacher went on to proclaim that

...he wouldn't support any cuts in defense, Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid — which, along with debt payments, would put more than two-thirds of the budget off limits.

So there we have it: "Joe the Plumber" is leaving the Republican party and becoming a socialist. Hey, if Sarah Palin can be a socialist, then so can "Joe", right? Of course, that means those of us on the left might be stuck with the weird "exaggerator" Samuel Wurzelbacher aka "Joe the Plumber", who was not a plumber, not named Joe, and whose sociopolitical wisdom could fill a thimble with room left over to hide a family of subversive crickets and the printing press they use to produce their pro-cricket 'zine.

Here's my prediction: Mr. Wurzelbacher will latch onto one ot the more, shall we say, "out there" political groups and try to pull a Jesse Ventura and get elected Governor as an independent. Any bets on which one of these parties he might find attractive?

What war?

2009-05-03T17:28:00.000-07:00

The last I heard, we are still fighting at least two wars. But, you know what? To watch/read/listen to the mainstream media, you wouldn't think so.

We are still blowing the hell out of the cradle of civilization, still killing people, still sending kids and adults to be used as corporate cannon fodder and convincing them that they are somehow defending our country by doing so. But I don't think I've heard anything about the wars in so long I can't remember when the last time was.

Sure, it's covered by the alternative lefty media that I frequent, but only us diehards read that stuff - Alternet and Buzzflash and stuff like that. Nothing from local, state, or national news that was notable enough to notice.

On a related note, I recently read a quote from boxing great Muhammed Ali. A recent quote for a magazine article, he said that one thing he does not understand is war.

That is a very interesting statement coming from him, I think, because I'll bet he actually understands war better than most people do. See, you can kind of think of boxers as analogous to different countries. Ali, as a "country", fought for two different reasons. First he fought to get something. Once he had it, he fought to keep it. He didn't just fight because he enjoyed it. He fought because he was trying to acquire something or to defend it - the same reasons we fight wars (I'm leaving out the third reason - to destroy something - for now). Ali knows all about war, including how to win one, but perhaps he is unwilling to accept that the brutal, ugly aspects of boxing can be applied to entire populations. I guess it is hard to understand why entire countries can be made to behave like two pugs slugging it out to win a gaudy belt or some money.

GOP Reaches Out [with a withered rotting claw that grasps a jagged poison encrusted dagger that would stab at the soul of humanity]

2009-05-02T23:03:00.001-07:00

This is fascinating to me. Republicans are scrambling to redefine themselves in the wake of their defeat in 2006 and again in 2008. According to this article,

“…a group of Republicans are trying to re-frame and re-focus the party.”

Because, as the article explains,

"According to a recent ABC poll, only 21 percent of Americans self-identify as Republicans. That's the lowest number since 1983. And only 39 percent of Republicans themselves [that's 39% of that 21%] say they have faith in congressional Republicans to 'make the right decisions for the country's future.'"

No shit, Sherlock.

It fascinates me because the Republicans still call themselves "conservative" with a straight face, and insist that's what they are. Okay, for the moment we will give them that: Because, if they really want to "re-frame and re-focus" the party, they must do one of two things:

They must either return to real conservatism, which they abandoned in favor of neocon adventurism and corporate plutocracy, or
They must stop giving disengenuous lip service to conservatism altogether, and admit that the Republican party wants to redefine its political ideology as "whatever it takes to return to power."

The article implies these Republicans want to attract moderates and independents to the party, after they recently left it in droves. But how can they do this without acknowledging that they need to abandon the policies that drove people away, and adopt new ones to entice them to return? And, how can they adopt new policies and still call themselves conservative? Unless, that is, they plan to abandon neoconservatism return to real conservatism, including fiscal restraint and sharply limited involvement in foreign wars. They must also resist new ideas, change, and forward-thinking; and those are some of the things that their lost membership felt was lacking in the first place.

It's okay if they want to re-frame or re-focus the Republican party; heaven knows it could use it. Frankly, I think most Americans could live with a government that included a balanced mix of fiscal conservatives and social liberals (I think that's how most Americans define themselves anyway). But this road show looks to me like a deperate attempt to entice swing voters with disengenuous pandering that belies their intention to continue in the same vein they have for years; the party of corporate powermongers and international strategy game players to whom we are simply pawns. Whoever buy the crap they're selling is getting played.

A Grain of Salt

2009-04-28T13:13:00.000-07:00

My blog friend Nunya over at politckybitch raises some interesting questions about current events regarding swine flu in her post entitled "Color me cynical on the whole swine flu thing". Would maintream media employ sensationalism to distract from other issues, like the torture memos? Hmm...

Time on Wheels

2009-04-28T11:15:00.000-07:00

Not too long ago, GM decided to stop production of the Oldsmobile line. Now, they are discontinuing Pontiac as well. This is sad to me. Classic Americana fading into history like an old photograph. I never thought I'd live so long.

It's not like I was unaware of such things. When I was most into cars, during my teens (16yo in 1976), I knew about brands that were real high flyers at one time that no longer existed, like DeSoto, Studebaker, Packard, and Willys, to name a few. But in those days, American autmomakers appeared strong, if knocked for loop by the energy crisis of the time. But the writing was on the wall. Anyone who is about my age would probably agree that new cars in the 70's were cheap, ugly crap. That's why we car buffs looked to the past for quality. It's probably also the first step in the sharp decline of the American market. Small efficient foreign cars took over, and American manufacturers struggled to produce poor imitations of those. Later, during the mass-consumption-consumerist-culture-me-me-me-gimme-gimme-gimme-more-more-more culture ushered in by Reagan & the Yuppies, big American junk became popular again, and the US automakers returned to producing the wrong product for the wrong reasons. In the meantime, I became a VW enthusiast in the mid- to late-eighties.

Now they pay the piper in so many ways. Oldsmobile and Pontiac, producers of such memorable machines as the Olds Rocket 88 & 442, and the historic Pontiac GTO, have gone to join the Studebaker Hawk and its brethren in automotive Valhalla. In the wake of peak oil, we look to hybrids and alternative fueled vehicles to carry us into the future. I just wish I wasn't so damn sentimental.

Update: I should add this: I had a great aunt who died in 1998 or so. As far as I know, she never lost her mental faculties. She was born around 1900 and was a nurse during WWI. Imagine witnessing almost the entire 20th century pass, and being aware the whole time! Incidentally - she chain smoked right up to the end. Go figure. Also: I inherited her favorite rocking chair, which she inherited from her father.

Tales from the Opinion Page Battleground

2009-04-26T01:00:00.000-07:00

Recently, I donned my armor and engaged in battle on my local paper's opinion-page comment forum. The letter-to-the-editor in question was asserting that America was "founded on Christian principles". No, I am not broadcasting through time from the 13th century. Where I live there are people who think that way.

So anyway, as I researched my comments in order to rhetorically eviscerate my opponents, I found some rather funny rules that we are to follow if we are indeed a Christian nation. So, I thought I would pass these along to you, my loyal readers (and the occasional lost soul who accidentally googled wildly and ended up here - HaHaHaHaHa!)

Don't let cattle graze with other kinds of cattle.
Don't have a variety of crops on the same field.
Don't wear clothes made of more than one fabric.
Don't cut your hair nor shave.
Any person who curseth his mother or father, must be killed.
If a man cheats on his wife, or vise versa, both the man and the woman must die.
If a man sleeps with his father's wife... both him and his father's wife is to be put to death.
If a man sleeps with his wife and her mother they are all to be burnt to death.
If a man or woman has sex with an animal, both human and animal must be killed.
If a man has sex with a woman on her period, they are both to be "cut off from their people" .
Psychics, wizards, and so on are to be stoned to death.
If a priest's daughter is a whore, she is to be burnt at the stake.
People who have flat noses, or is blind or lame, cannot go to an altar of God.
Anyone who dreams or prophesizes anything that is against God, or anyone who tries to turn you from God, is to be put to death.
If anyone, even your own family suggests worshipping another God, kill them.
If you find out a city worships a different god, destroy the city and kill all of it's inhabitants... even the animals.
Kill anyone with a different religion.

That last one explains a lot, doesn't it? The next time some rightie-tightie says we're living in a Christian nation... remind them that they'd better toe the line. I mean, that one about unfaithful husbands and wives being put to death would spell certain doom for the republican party!

Interesting stuff from the Interwebs

2009-04-25T00:00:00.000-07:00

The following was a comment to an article on MSN: "...studies show 1/3 of death row is innocent, 90 percent of criminal cases are plea bargained and 96 percent of police officers admit to perjury. They actually have a name for it TESTILIE..."

96 percent of police officers admit to perjury!? Yikes! I haven't researched that claim, but if it's true, that's a pretty sad statement about the "first responder" heroes everyone praised in 2001. If it is true, I think the producers of Law and Order should take note!

How Easy Is It To Go Vegan?

2009-04-18T23:35:00.000-07:00

Happy Cows Come From California, a current advertising slogan says. If you really want to make a cow happy, tell it "Moo moo moo moo", which roughly translates into "I have decided not to kill you, Ms. Cow."

I don't mind telling you, I am less and less inclined to eat meat. I know humans are omnivorous and nature is full of carnivores, but the longer I live the more disgusted I am at the thought of eating it. But I love cheese and other dairy products, even knowing that "Most cow's milk has measurable quantities of herbicides, pesticides, dioxins (up to 200 times the safe levels), up to 52 powerful antibiotics (perhaps 53, with LS-50), blood, pus, feces, bacteria and viruses" Oh, yum.

I kind of prefer leather shoes over man-made products, too, but I still hate the thought of eating animals.

It's hard to give up killing to make our lives a little better. Still, what are we giving up besides meat (and mad cow disease) when we spare our bovine friends from the slaughterhouse? Dig this staggering list of products made from cattle:

antibodies (immunoglobins)
beef insulin
bovine collagen - used as injections to fill in scars
bovine fibrinolysin (brand name- Elase) ointment for necrotic tissue
bovine super oxide - dismutase cream (Orgotein) - cosmetic skin cream to prevent tissue aging.
bovine thrombin (brand name- Thrombinar) clotting agent for blood culture medium - diagnosis
fetal bovine serum - tissue cultures
Hyaluronidase - efficient drug use
PTH - control tetany
pegademase - bovine derivative (brand name- Adagen) - for patients who are immune-compromised...helps prevent white blood cells from breaking down.
pill capsules - GELATIN
whole serum - vaccine manufacturing

estrogen
progesterone - a reproductive hormone

PRODUCT FROM STOMACHS
pepsin - aid in protein digestion
rennet - aid in milk digestion

bovine thyroid (Thyrar) a thyroid replacement
TSH - thyroid diagnosis
thyroid extract - hypothrodism
thyroid hormones
myxedema
cretinism

cortisone - for arthritis, skin allergies, anti-inflammatory medicine
epinephrine - aid in raising blood pressure, heart disorders, and allergies

heparin - anti-coagulant, prevents gangrene
liver extract - treatment of anemia
intrinsic factor - pernicious anemia
Vitamin B12 - prevention of B-complex deficiencies

heparin - anti-coagulant, prevents gangrene

plasma protein
blood albumin - RH factor typing
Fraction I - hemophilia
Fraction V - kills viruses
iron for anemia
thrombin - blood coagulant
protein extracts
diagnostic microbiology

heart valves for human transplant

medical sutures - surgery

bone marrow - blood disorders
bone meal - calcium and phosphorous source
mineral source in supplements
collagen and bone for plastic surgery
soft cartilage - plastic surgery
xiphisternal cartilage (breastbone) plastic surgery

chymotrypsin - contact surgery
diastase - aid in starch digestion
glucagon - treat hypoglycemia
insulin - diabetes mellitus
pancreatin - aid digestion
trypsin - for burns, wounds, and infection - promotes healing - aid in protein
digestion and in cleaning wounds

ACTH - arthritis, allergies, rheumatic fever, skin and eye inflammations
pressor hormone - regulates blood pressure
prolactin - promotes lactation
vasopressin - controls intestinal and renal functions

cholesterol - hormone products

nitroglycerine
antibodies (immunoglobins)
beef insulin
bovine collagen - used as injections to fill in scars
bovine fibrinolysin (Elase - brand name) ointment for use on necrotic tissue
bovine super oxide - dismutase cream (Orgotein) - cosmetic skin cream to prevent tissue aging
bovine thrombin (Thrombinar - brand name) clotting agent for blood
culture medium - diagnosis
fetal bovine serum - tissue cultures
Hyaluronidase - efficient drug use
PTH - control tetany
pegademase - bovine derivative (Adagen - brand name) -- for patients who are immuno-compromised - helps prevent white blood cells from breaking down.
pill capsules - GELATIN
whole serum - vaccine manufacturing

a huge variety of fresh, frozen, and pre-cooked meats
and prepared and processed meat products

butter
casein (proteins)
cheese and cheese products
cream
food ethanol
ice cream and ice cream mixes
lactose (carbohydrates)
milk powder
sherbet
whey (proteins)
fats (lipids)
yogurt

chewing gum
lard
oleo margarine
oleo shortening
oleostearin
pharmaceuticals
rennet for cheese (sheep)
rennet for cheese (sheep)
shortening

blood sausage
bone meal
cake mixes
deep-fry batters
egg substitute
gravy mixes
imitation seafood
pasta
whipped toppings and coffee whiteners

whitener in refined sugar

gelatin capsules
gelatin deserts
ice cream, malts and shakes
marshmallow
potted meats

sausage casings

sausage casings
gelatin
candies and confectionery
flavorings
foods
gelatin desserts
ice cream
marshmallows
mayonnaise
yogurt

adhesives
animal feed
buttons
carriers for human medicine
cosmetics
glue
pharmaceuticals
sizing
specialty plastics
veterinary medicines

adhesives
bone marrow
bone meal
fabric printing and dyeing
leather-treating agents
livestock feed
minerals
plaster retardant
plywood adhesive
diagnostic microbiology
from colloidal proteins - glue for automobile bodies
protein source in feeds
sticking agent
textile sizing

bone charcoal
pencils
high grade steel
bone handles
bone jewelry
mineral source in feed
fertilizer
dried bones
buttons
bone china
glass
porcelain enamel
water filters
whitener in refined sugar

adhesives
bandage strips
collagen cold cream
cellophane wrap and tape
crochet needles
dice
dog biscuits
emery boards and cloth
fertilizer
glycerine
laminated wood products
neatsfoot oil
photographic film
plywood and paneling
shampoo and conditioner
wallpaper and wallpaper paste
syringes

anti-aging cream
cholesterol

animal foods
biodegradable detergents
biodiesel
cellophane
cement
ceramics
chalk
chemicals
cosmetics
crayons
creams and lotions (sheep)
deodorants
detergents
explosives
fertilizer
fiber softeners
floor wax
glycerin
glycerol
antifreeze
herbicides
horse and livestock feeds
industrial oils and lubricants
insecticides
insulation
linoleum
livestock feed
lubricants
makeup
matches
medicines
mink oil
nitroglycerine
oil polishes
ointment bases
oleostearin
paints
paraffin
perfumes
pet foods
pharmaceuticals
plasticizers
plastics
printing rollers
protein hair conditioner
protein hair shampoo
putty
rubber products
shaving cream
shoe cream
soaps
solvents
stearic acid (sheep)
tallow for tanning
textiles
tires
water proofing agents
weed killers

ornaments

air filters
artist's paint brush
felt and rug padding
insulation material
non-wovens
plastering material
textiles
upholstering material

belts
collagen-based adhesives (from trimmings)
bandages
emery boards
glues -for papermaking, bookbinding, cabinetmaking
sheetrock
wallpaper
drum head (sheep)
pharmaceuticals
photographic materials
leather sporting goods
leather wearing apparel
luggage
pigskin garments, gloves, and shoes
porcine burn dressings for burn victims
shoes and boots
upholstery
wallets

chessmen
combs
buttons
fertilizer
horn handles
imitation ivory
inedible bone meal
livestock feeds
ornaments
piano keys
plant food

instrument strings
sausage casings
tennis racquet strings

fertilizer - used in gardens, lawns and farm cropland
nitrogen
potash
phosphorus
minor minerals

airplane lubricants and runway foam
car polishes and waxes
hydraulic brake fluid
Stearic acid - helps rubber in tires hold shape under steady surface
friction
steel ball bearings containing bone charcoal
textiles for car upholstery
various machine oils and viscous fluids

asphalt binder
carpet
clothing
cosmetics
fabrics
felt
insulation
lanolin
medical ointments
paint and plaster binder
pelt products
rouge base
rug pads
upholstery
woolen goods
worsted fabric
yarns

If you made it this far, it's a good time to point out that there are some mighty good uses for soy and hemp.

Idea #1 on How to Fix California's Economy

2009-04-18T00:36:00.000-07:00

Okay, in the spirit of Constantly Amazingness, I have figured out a way to fix California's shattered economy. You're chuckling already? Well, this could be the one that wins the biscuit. All it requires is some of the same civic-minded progressive volunteerism that "Hollywood Liberals" are known for.

Here's the deal, truthseekers:

Of the things for which California is reknowned, at the top of the list, thereabouts, is: The Film Industry. And if there's one thing the Studios know how to do, it's make money. I mean, it's an American stereotype, isn't it? Rich producers, directors, actors & actresses, and all manner of industry insiders. Even talentless human mannequins who chatter with celebs of all levels make more in 5 minutes than I'll probably earn over my entire lifetime.

So, with that in mind, here's my idea: California already has all the infrastructure in place, as well as most of the industry talent, so: I think that the state should go into the movie business.

Now, just for clarification, I am not talking about tourism documentaries here. I am talking about full-blown world-class movie making, with all the production value of a seasonal blockbuster. Picture this: Directors, performers, etc., volunteer their time to contribute to the production of a film that is designed to generate profit. Again, I am talking real-deal cinematography here. Imagine some of the greats who are financially able to contribute and would be happy to do it: civic-minded directors like Rob Reiner come to mind, or Ron Howard, (Scorcese would do it... for NY), and countless others from, as I said, all areas of the entertainment industry. Tim Robbins & Susan Sarandon. Barbara Streisand. Janene Garofolo!

Eventually, after a hit or two, volunteerism would not be necessary, as the state-run studio would be self-sustaining and profit-generating. It could establish its own competitive television network, with all profits going into state coffers.

The scenario I imagine is a serious enterprise, not a publicity stunt. What kind of money are we talking about? Well, here are a few profitable movies and their numbers:

Titanic $717,700,000.00
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King $470,513,663.00
Jurassic Park $397,050,000.00
Shrek 2 $388,060,852.00
Star Wars $387,950,000.00
ET: The Extra-Terrestrial $385,955,277.00
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest $382,185,666.00
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers $369,142,189.00
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone $362,278,946.00
Star Wars: Phantom Menace $347,144,149.00
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets $339,493,940.00
Finding Nemo $339,457,489.00
Independence Day $333,484,628.00
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring $324,841,547.00
Lost World: Jurassic Park $318,343,340.00
Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith $309,235,289.00
Lion King, The $304,777,781.00
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire $296,106,518.00
Sixth Sense, The $291,250,838.00
Forrest Gump $284,700,000.00

And that's just a few movies. If I am not mistaken, there is even bigger money in television and DVD releases.

California's budget deficit is something like $40 billion. It has all the tools at hand to start is own entertainment empire; one that would reap profits at hundreds of millions of dollars a pop. That's one way to make a dent in a deficit.

Darwin would have been so proud

2009-04-15T22:09:00.000-07:00

Connections?

Thousands of dolphins block Somali pirates
Thousands of dolphins blocked the suspected Somali pirate ships when they were trying to attack Chinese merchant ships passing the Gulf of Aden, the China Radio International reported on Monday.

Dolphins Evolve Opposable Thumbs
"I believe I speak for the entire human race when I say, 'Holy fuck,'" said Oceanographic Institute director Dr. James Aoki, noting that the dolphin has a cranial capacity 40 percent greater than that of humans. "That's it for us monkeys."

Hmmm... :)

Tip o' the hat to Nancy

10 Repubican Lies for Tax Day

2009-04-15T21:40:00.000-07:00

10 Repubican Lies for Tax Day

1. President Obama will raise taxes on small businesses.
2. The estate tax devastates small businesses and family farms.
3. 40% of Americans pay no taxes.
4. Tax cuts always increase revenue.
5. The GOP is the party of fiscal discipline.
6. Ronald Reagan was the greatest tax cutter of all time.
7. FDR caused the Great Depression, or at least made it worse.
8. Obama's cap-and-trade plan will cost each American family $3,100 a year.
9. Obama's tax proposals will undermine charitable giving.
10. The rich pay too much in taxes already.

All lies. Click on the link for more about each one.

Shock: What if there was more to the story than the mainstream media spoon-feeds us?

2009-04-14T21:47:00.000-07:00

My old friend Mike of the North offers food for that in this entry at his blog Screams from the Wilderness. He reminds us that there is always more to the story.

Of course, we don't condone bloodthirsty violence. But desperate times drive people to desperate measures, and quite frankly, Somalia has seen deperate times so long that Hell probably appears as a distant cloud on the horizon.

Sam Kinison once joked that starving people in Ethiopia should GO WHERE THE FOOD IS!! (his screaming, not mine). Evidently it's not so easy. Some try to make a go of it and bloom where they're planted. I don't condone violence, and the story's resolution certainly is an example of "live by the sword, die by the sword." But is is also important to remember that evil is not always done for it's own sake; there is usually a complex dynamic of different influences at work; social, economic, environmantal; that result in the news of the day.

It's ironic. When you see a picture of a starving, impoverished Somalian, you might think that, among other things, they have to live a simple life. But the harder things get, the more it seems that life is not so simple after all.

Happy Oestre, part II

2009-04-12T13:13:00.000-07:00

No one will ever believe me, but I swear this is true:

When I was about 14 or 15 years old, I had a summer job at a lumber yard/feed store in Arizona. One of the areas where I stacked lumber bordered forest (eastern/central AZ ponderosa pine forest, like this:

One day, while stacking lumber, I saw, through the brush, a jacktabbit as big as a full-grown german shepard.

No one believed me then, and no one believes me now. But I grew up in that area, and I was used to judging size according to the surrounding visual references, to I don't think I was mistaken. I saw a jackrabbit the size of a large dog. I'm not sayin' it was the Easter Bunny, but it was what we called, at that time, one fuckin' huge-ass jackrabbit!

Happy Oestre, Pagans!

2009-04-10T22:01:00.000-07:00

Well, it's time once again for my fifth annual Oestre post, pagans! Let's run naked through the forest and dance around oak trees like our druidic forebears!

Weird Easter traditions from around the world

Surely the strangest Easter custom takes places in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia, where there is a tradition of spanking or whipping women on Easter Monday. Males throw water at females and spank them with handmade whips made of willow and decorated with ribbons at the end. The spanking is supposed to be symbolic and according to legend, females should be spanked in order to keep their health and beauty during the next year.

In Finland, children dress up and go begging in the streets with sooty faces, carrying broomsticks.

In Spain, a traditional “death dance” is performed which involves a parade down the streets of the medieval town. Everyone involved is dressed in costumes and the procession ends with frightening skeletons carrying boxes of ashes.

In Germany the tradition is to create an Easter fire out of used Christmas trees from the winter. The fire is seen as a symbol of the victory for the beautiful and sunny spring over the cold days of winter.

And now, on to my traditional reprints of oestre posts from years past :) That's what tradition is all about, right?

Easter's Pagan Origins

Many, perhaps most, Pagan religions in the Mediterranean area had a major seasonal day of religious celebration at or following the Spring Equinox. Cybele, the Phrygian fertility goddess, had a fictional consort who was believed to have been born via a virgin birth. He was Attis, who was believed to have died and been resurrected each year during the period March 22 to 25. "About 200 B.C. mystery cults began to appear in Rome just as they had earlier in Greece. Most notable was the Cybele cult centered on Vatican hill...Associated with the Cybele cult was that of her lover, Attis (the older Tammuz, Osiris, Dionysus, or Orpheus under a new name). He was a god of ever-reviving vegetation. Born of a virgin, he died and was reborn annually. The festival began as a day of blood on Black Friday and culminated after three days in a day of rejoicing over the resurrection."

Wherever Christian worship of Jesus and Pagan worship of Attis were active in the same geographical area in ancient times, Christians "used to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus on the same date; and pagans and Christians used to quarrel bitterly about which of their gods was the true prototype and which the imitation."

Many religious historians believe that the death and resurrection legends were first associated with Attis, many centuries before the birth of Jesus. They were simply grafted onto stories of Jesus' life in order to make Christian theology more acceptable to Pagans. Others suggest that many of the events in Jesus' life that were recorded in the gospels were lifted from the life of Krishna, the second person of the Hindu Trinity. Ancient Christians had an alternative explanation; they claimed that Satan had created counterfeit deities in advance of the coming of Christ in order to confuse humanity. Modern-day Christians generally regard the Attis legend as being a Pagan myth of little value. They regard Jesus' death and resurrection account as being true, and unrelated to the earlier tradition.

Wiccans and other modern-day Neopagans continue to celebrate the Spring Equinox as one of their 8 yearly Sabbats (holy days of celebration). Near the Mediterranean, this is a time of sprouting of the summer's crop; farther north, it is the time for seeding. Their rituals at the Spring Equinox are related primarily to the fertility of the crops and to the balance of the day and night times. Where Wiccans can safely celebrate the Sabbat out of doors without threat of religious persecution, they often incorporate a bonfire into their rituals, jumping over the dying embers is believed to assure fertility of people and crops.

More about Easter

In Norway, in addition to skiing in the mountains and painting eggs for decorating, it is tradition to solve murders at Easter. All the major television channels show crime and detective stories (such as Poirot), magazines print stories where the readers can try to figure out who did it, and many new books are published. Even the milk cartons change to have murder stories on their sides. Another tradition is Yahtzee games.

In the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia, a tradition of whipping is carried out on Easter Monday. In the morning, males whip females with a special handmade whip... [consisting] of eight, twelve or even twenty-four withies (willow rods) and is usually from half a meter to two meters long and decorated with coloured ribbons at the end. It must be mentioned that while whipping can be painful, the purpose is not to cause suffering. Rather, the purpose is for males to exhibit their attraction to females; unvisited females can even feel offended. The whipped female gives a coloured egg to the male as a sign of her thanks and forgiveness. A legend says that females should be whipped in order to keep their health and fertility during whole next year. In some regions the females can get revenge in the afternoon when they can pour a bucket of cold water on any male.

Call it Easter, Spring Solstice, Fertility, Jesus, Rabbits, or whatever... even the celebration of the marketing of hideous crap.

Finally, a constantly amazing blog post is nothing without my obligatory political section [link]

George Washington:
"The United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian doctrine."

Adolph Hitler:
"The national government... will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality.”

So, happy easter, everyone... another ancient pagan ritual celebrating the natural order of things. Seasons change. New life appears, and old things pass away. Constantly Amazing, isn't it?

Rambling Thoughts…

2009-04-07T10:00:00.000-07:00

Here's one that you don't hear everyday: I don't think we should have states. I think we should just be one big country. I mean, we live under three governments already: local, county, and federal. Why not just live under one government instead? PS: I already know why it was set up that way, I'm just sayin' it was not the best choice.

I think health care and education should be freely available to everybody. What is the point of humans forming societies, anyway? It's because a group of people can each contribute to the group in different ways that benefit the group as a whole. And certain things are fundamental to the survival and progress of the group. These are the very basic necessities of life: Shelter, clean water, basic nutrition, basic healthcare, and yes, education. I think a society that provides these basic necessities to its members eliminates a lot of problems before they start.

Now, I already know the conservative response: "There's no such thing as free healthcare or education, someone has to pay for it." Really? When we dial 911, does the operater ask us for a credit card number? When you need a cop or a fireman, do they require you to show them your protection plan ID card? No, that sounds absurd. Instead, we take it for granted that we will share the cost of such services and all benefit from them. Wouldn't our society be great if we could count on getting treated for pneumonia as surely as we can count on the other "free" services we all enjoy in the industrialized world?

I don't support giving billions or trillions of $ to crooked brokers/bank owners/etc. I was a Kucinich supporter, and he said that the bailout(s), the first of which came in Fall 2008, was obscene. At a gut level, I agree. I am no economist, but if those bailed-out businesses didn't get that money, and went bankrupt, what would happen? How bad could it be? Maybe some of them should have just gone under. In a free market economy, that's what would happen, anyway. Bonus Rant: Any wingnuts who claim the bailout has anything to do with liberalism has forgotten that the bankers, wall street brokers, CEOs, etc., are hardcore rightwing conservative Republicans all; still surviving off the corporate welfare blessings of their St. Ronnie.

Speaking of saints, what the hell is it with the wingnuts' insistence on referring to Obama as the Messiah? Liberals never say it. I think they say it to enrage the religious right, to give them the impression Obama supporters are worshipping false idols. The religious right have always been the Repukes' patsies, anyway.

I have heard a lot of rightwing talking heads use the words "socialist" and "socialism" lately. Personally, I doubt if most of them know what socialism even is. Or liberalism, or even conservatism, for that matter.

If I read one more time that "Liberals hate Rush because he is right", my head will explode. I want to reply: "Is that why you hate Jon Stewart? Because he is right?" (forgive me for comparing the two).

There is Always Hope...

2009-03-28T23:00:00.000-07:00

This article is striking because it is written by a former Republican power player who recently left that party in disgust. The whole article should be read, but I just posted part of it here. This guy was one as tight with the Republican party as anyone, and even worked to get McCain elected. He has since rejected the dark side and has come into the light. Here's an excerpt:

Open Letter to the Republican Traitors (From a Former Republican)

"You Republicans are the arsonists who burned down our national home. You combined the failed ideologies of the Religious Right, so-called free market deregulation and the Neoconservative love of war to light a fire that has consumed America. Now you have the nerve to criticize the "architect" America just hired -- President Obama -- to rebuild from the ashes. You do nothing constructive, just try to hinder the one person willing and able to fix the mess you created...

How can anyone who loves our country support the Republicans now? Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan defined the modern conservatism that used to be what the Republican Party I belonged to was about. Today no actual conservative can be a Republican. Reagan would despise today's wholly negative Republican Party...

Republicans are today's fifth column sabotaging American renewal. President Obama has been in office barely 45 days and the Republican Party has the nerve to blame him for the economic and military cataclysm he inherited. I say economic and military cataclysm because without the needless war in Iraq that you all backed we would not be in the economic mess we're in today. If that money had been spent here at home on renovating our infrastructure, taking us toward a green economy, putting our health-care system in order we'd be a very different situation.

For the party that created our crises of misbegotten war, mismanaged economy, the lack of regulation of our banking industry, handing our country to rich crooks... to obstruct the one person who is trying to repair the damage is obscene.

After Obama was elected, you Republican leaders had a unique last chance to send a patriotic message of unity to the world -- and to all Americans. You could have backed our president's economic recovery plan. Since we all know that half of our problem is one of lost confidence and perception, nothing would have done more to calm the markets and project resolve and confidence than if you had been big enough to take Obama's offered hand and had work with him -- even if you disagreed ideologically. You had the chance to put our country first. You utterly failed to rise to the occasion.

The worsening economic situation is your fault and your fault alone. The Republicans created this mess through 8 years of backing the worst president in our history and now, because you put partisan ideology ahead of the good of our country, you have blown your last chance to redeem yourselves. You deserve the banishment to the political wilderness that awaits all traitors." Frank Schaeffer is the author of CRAZY FOR GOD-How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back Now.

One of the reasons I am posting this is that we are beginning to hear a lot of rightie-tighties saying that "the economy was just fine before the Democrats took over" (a local blog friend will recognize that one), and basically blaming the left and Democrats for all of America's current problems.

Now, there aren't many people left who have read my blog for the 5 years or so that it has been going, but one of my earliest and truest things obsrvations has been the inevitable pattern where Republicans massively screw things up, and the rest of us have to clean up the mess. I say "the rest of us" because there are more than just Democrats who have to work to repair the damage left by the Repukes.

Anyway, I just wanted to share with the world: If one of them can see the light, there is hope.

An Economy Thing from Dec 2008: Thom Hartmann, "This is an Absolute Consequence of Reaganomics"

2009-03-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

I meant to post this a while back, but better late than never, I suppose. I just like the way Thom Hartmann explains it:

David what he needs to do immediately is read Alexander Hamilton's 1791 report to Congress on manufactures. Hamilton laid out this six step plan to build an industrial economy in the United States and we followed it. We, Congress actually put into place in 1792 and it stood until Ronald Reagan came along and started deconstructing this, followed by George Herbert Walker Bush, Bill Clinton and George Bush now and the legislatures, mostly pushed by the Republicans taking this thing apart. You could argue some of this started with Taft-Hartley. But basically the founders laid this thing out. They had it figured out and it worked. We built the biggest industrial infrastructure and industrial economy in the world.

We have gone, when Reagan came into office we were the largest exporter of manufactured goods and the largest importer of raw materials on the planet. And the largest creditor. More people owed us money than anybody else in the world. Now just twenty eight years later we're the largest importer of finished goods, manufactured goods, exporter of raw materials which is kind of the definition of a third world nation and we're the most in debt of any country in the world. This is the absolute consequence of Reaganomics.

Fast-forward the video to 4:13:

It's Turn Up Your Speakers Time!!

2009-03-08T21:23:00.000-07:00

With Rush Limbaugh in the news again, and again, and again, I think it is my duty to re-post this presentation which defines his character in succinct yet wholly accurate terms. In fact, it is probably way too complimentary!

As my bloggin' friend Grandpa Eddie quoted in this post about Limbaugh: "Limbaugh's the "role model" for the party of family values? A thrice-divorced, drug-abusing, Parkinson's-mocking, cigar-sucking egomaniac, a poster boy for meanness, overindulgence and excess? So for now the future of the party is an admitted Oxycontin addict who plea-bargained his way out of a drug conviction, who mocks children and Parkinson's sufferers, who exhibits strange sexual fears about our first black president (why is he worried about "grabbing his ankles?"), who was famously detained on a Dominican Republic vacation for carrying Viagra without a prescription?"

It was only a matter of months ago that Limbaugh declared that if John McCain became the Republican nominee for president it would signal the death of the Republican party. He also said that he was tired of "carrying the water" for the Repukes by defending Bush, etc. He tried to subvert the American electoral process by encouraging Repukes to deliberately foul up the Democratic National Convention. He has all but admitted that his ilk cannot win a fair election and must cheat in order to remain viable.

I have heard him off and on for over 20 years, and he has lied his ass off the whole time.

If Rush Limbaugh is the symbol of the Republican party, we have either nothing, or everything, to worry about.

Reading the paper

2009-02-22T00:02:00.000-08:00

When I read the paper, I usually make a beeline for the letters to the editor. Among the constant onslaught of anti-Progressive, right-wing garbage that usually infests the place, I like to find the gems like this:

...Remember when the Bush administration sent $12 billion in cash to Baghdad on huge wooden pallets? Three-quarters of the cash was never accounted for. Remember when Halliburton was given no-bid contracts and ended up billing the U.S. government $5.5 billion for work that should have cost $685,000? Remember how Wall Street bankers raked in billions of federal bailout money with no strings attached? ...President Barack Obama wants to spend money on schools, roads and bridges, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and help disabled veterans, the elderly and the unemployed. And he wants to post all the expenditures on a government Web site. Unscrupulous private contractors and war profiteers had eight years to loot the U.S. Treasury. Now it's time for Congress to begin repairing the damage with the economic stimulus package. For those members of Congress who voted "no," they should feel the full consequences of their actions. Just strip their districts of any federal stimulus funds that will come their way.

Oh, if justice was that easy. Unfortunately, good people suffer when their bad elected officials are punished. We seem to get hit no matter what.

What kind of liberal are you?

2009-02-18T21:54:00.000-08:00

I snatched this from over at Politicky Bitch:

My Liberal Identity:

You are a Reality-Based Intellectualist, also known as the liberal elite. You are a proud member of what’s known as the reality-based community, where science, reason, and non-Jesus-based thought reign supreme.

Take the quiz at www.FightConservatives.com

Take the quiz to find out what kind of liberal you are (or would like to be, with a sly wink towards the conservatives...)

President's Day, the Retro Way!

2009-02-15T23:24:00.000-08:00

I am reprinting these links from my 2007 president's day post, because, damn it, they are interesting :)

Here's how those dead presidents died,

and,

here are their final words.

Hooray! (updated)

2009-02-13T15:00:00.001-08:00

Here's great news for anyone who has lived in or near Maricopa County, Arizona: Finally! House Judiciary Committee calls for investigation into Sheriff Joe By the way, I'm expecting a scream from the wilderness on this one :).

Here's more about the thouroughly corrupt "Sheriff Joe" at Overthrow Arpaio

And at this story from Alternet

Celebrate!

2009-02-08T22:16:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted in a long time 'cause I wanted to leave everyone lots of time to read my looooooooooooooooooong final Bush-years post. Now, I have to hurry up and post because the holidays are coming. What holidays, you ask? Why, February 12th, of course...it's DARWIN DAY!

As noted in last year's Darwin Day post, I live with a polydactyl cat (artist's rendering at right - not actual cat). This qualifies me, I think, as one who has done his part to encourage the progressive evolution of cats in general to the six-toed ideal. I mean, my cat can't actually reproduce (please don't ask him, he's sensitive about it). But the cat and I both encourage other cats to maintain an open mind about such things. And that's pretty good, if you ask me (you can also ask the cat, and he will offer an opinion).

By the way, here are my Darwin Day posts from 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008.

Rock on, all you non-believers! Crack open some wine (Blue Nun might be appropriate) and evolve! Because when all is said and done, we're right, even if we have to wait until after we're dead to prove it :)

Finally (updated with more links)

2009-01-19T00:14:00.000-08:00

As I write this, there is one day left of the Bush regime's official control over our government. It is the end of an era. The end of a political nightmare the likes of which I hope we never have to live through again (I am not so naive as to think we won't).

I have put a lot of thought into what I would write as my final Bush-related blog post. Actually, I have been thinking about it ever since I began the blog, in September 2004. Many of my posts were written with some thought devoted to the end of the story. Now that time has come, and I feel as though I have lived through a period that is so philosophically shattering that I am left shell-shocked.

Please, put the tea kettle on and find a comfy spot. This may be a long one.

As some of you know, I started blogging in Sept 2004. Like many others, I began as a means of finding a voice to address the urgency of the 2004 presidential election. I'll bet blogging increased a thousandfold in 2004. Here is one of my first blog posts, which describes my feelings at the time:

The initial reason I decided to enter the blogosphere is that our current political environment has inspired me to express myself... Not that I don't have other things to talk about. But the past four years have restored a political conciousness in me that had grown almost dormant in the 1990’s. With too much faith in Americans’ ability to discern between truth and lies, between the good of the country (and indeed the whole planet) and the undisguised avarice of a handful of over-privileged corporate royalty, I have watched our political climate transform into a storm of divisiveness by a self-proclaimed "uniter." The most important election of my lifetime has arrived.

I naively assumed that those right-wing extremist hate-mongers, the neocons, could not possibly come to absolute power. I watched as neocon leaders duped their followers into surrendering themselves, using the same tried-and-true formulae as so many who had come before… nazi-like propaganda designed to inflame the base passions of Jerry Springer Show-wannabe’s who can’t be bothered to imagine life outside the warm incubator of the spoon-fed neocon vision of “Us vs. Them” (“them” being anyone who does not contribute to the neocons’ money and/or power).

Even under the Reagan administration, the neocons seemed like they were still a fringe group. Not anymore. Power has been seized by those who seek only to feed their own greedy self-interest, the rest of humanity be damned. Calling themselves “conservative” in order to capture the demographics of the 1980’s Republican constituency, they have revealed themselves to be no such thing. Conservatism used to mean fiscal restraint and moral temperance. The modern leadership of the Republican party seems to believe “conservative” means spending money you don’t have (and lots of it), giving special favors to rich Republican plutocrats while snatching food, money and civil rights from lower-income people, and insulting the world by telling them that their opinions, rights, and very lives don’t matter to Americans. They damage they have done is horrific. If I had voted for any of them, I would be ashamed. I am embarrassed to be represented by them.

As you can see, that was an understatement as to the horrors that would follow. As I wrote in years to follow, everytime I thought they had done as much as could be done, they would come up with something unexpected. Remember when the Bush regime decided to take away workers' right to overtime pay? Or when they decided to "support the troops" by slashing veterans' benefits? Or when they planted fake journalists in news organizations so they could spread their propaganda? Or when they planted a gay male prostitute in the White House press corps and pretended he was a credentialed journalist? Cheney telling a senator to "go fuck himself" while on the floor of the Senate? Cheney's secret energy task force that met to plan their conquest of the middle east (here and here)? How Cheney about choosing himself to be vice president, and then lining his pockets off of the war. Cheney's company even continued to do business with Iran when it was against the law. Or all the sex scandals (Mark Foley, Ted Haggard, the Interior Dept Sex-and-Drugs-for-political-favors-scandal...)? Or how about the fact that the Bushes gave financial support to the Nazis? Or that Bush took more vacations than any previous president,yet still managed to spend more money and create more debt than all others combined? Or how they used fear to manipulate the nation into surrendering their civil rights? How about Bush cracking jokes about the way he lied to justify his invasion of Iraq? Or saying he doesn't even care about catching Osama Bin Laden? Or saying he doesn't even think we can win the "war on terror"? That's because he never considered it a war on terror - it was a war for oil, and he always knew that; the terror thing was marketing for dupes. How about being abducted and thrown into a foreign prison without knowledge of why, of who is responsible, of when you might be released, or if you might be released... and then tortured!?. How about the fact that we have done that to children who have now grown up in our torture-prison system? Will they come out of that experience thanking America for liberating them from Saddam Hussein ("let freedom reign")?

And don't think we'll avoid burning in Hell for showering Iraq wih radioactive material. If you can stomach them, here are pictures (scroll down) of how we have "liberated" Iraq with depleted uranium. We did this.

You never hear anyone mention these things anymore, do you? Not now, with two wars that have raged longer than WWII and an economy a gnat's piss away from repeating the Great Depression. And don't get me started on Karl Rove or Tom Delay or Abramoff or extraordinary rendition or... Augh! There are so many bad things to list that the Bush administration has done, that there isn't time to concentrate on any but the most currently pressing issues. Maybe that was something they counted on. You are willing to forget that someone held down your foot and smashed your toe to pulp with a 3lb sledge hammer, if they later decide to hack off your foot with a dull saw.

Those things I listed above are just a handful off the top of my head; the actual list of Bush administration transgressions is miles long, far too long produce a comprehensive list here. Not that I didn't want to... I started out wanting to do that as my final Bush post, but the further you go back, the further you peel back the layers of corruption, depravity, criminality, treason... it just become too overwhelming. Here are a few:

Bush Scandals List
Bush Lies, Etc
List of Bush Scandals
So Long Worst President Ever; 10 Reasons History Will Hang You
The 43 Who Helped Make Bush The Worst Ever
42 Reasons We Won’t Miss President George W Bush
Bush Lies
Do You Know?
ABC'of W
Know Your BFEE
Right-wing Claims vs Fact
Bush Family Values (a favorite!)
Rightwing Chickenhawks
The Comprehensive List of 110+ Palin Problems (not Bush but still important)
Republican Offenders
Republican Sex Offenders
More Republican Sex Offenders
Republican Sex Scandals going all the way back to 1925.

And let's not forget that Bush was not elected president in 2000 - the election was stolen from the voters by a corrupt Supreme Court (one, two, three, four). That's the same court that conservatives criticize now as "acivist." And, he fucked with our votes again in 2004 (here), and in 2006 (here)!

Furthermore, I don't care how crazy some people think it sounds, the Bush regime's complicity in the 9/11 incident is too far beyond coincidental.

When I first started blogging, I told myself it would take a long time to repair the damage inflicted by the Bush presidency. As their actions developed, I told myself I probably wouldn't see the damage repaired in my lifetime. Now, I believe the damage is irreparable.

I grew up wanted so much more from the 21st century. When I was a child, it was predicted that we would be living on the Moon and exploring Mars by now. Instead, almost a decade into the 21st century, we live in a world where religious fanatics want to drag us back to the middle ages, and socioeconomic "conservatives" want to return to a world of Dickensian sweatshops where the middle classes no longer exist, replaced by a master/servant serfdom. All in the name of "freedom", says George Bush.

The following article eloquently describes how it has been a disastrous eight years under Bush. I want to reprint the article in its entirety, so I will close, for now, with it. But I want give my most heartfelt thanks to all those who have been with me on this right through political hell. I'm not giving up, but I am so looking forward to being done with George Bush, who should have been impeached long ago. I hope criminal charges are brought against him and his cronies, and they are tried for crimes against humanity in a world court.

Sorry about the tone, but I can no longer summon much humor where the Bush years are concerned. In so many ways, they ruined our country, and I will forever be pissed off about it. Anyway, please enjoy this great article:

It is hard to imagine that one U.S. presidency could leave more wreckage than George W. Bush's did during his eight years in the White House.

By his own yardsticks, his administration was an abject failure. He was a divider, not a uniter. He was "the decider" who led the country into a war of choice on what proved to be false pretenses. His administration was neither compassionate nor conservative. It ran up record deficits while giving tax breaks to the wealthy and creating a culture of government neglect that left some Americans trapped in a netherworld of neglect after Hurricane Katrina, and continues to keep all of us gripped by the angst of an economic system that remains on the brink of collapse.

This was a president whose election was assured only after the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, settled the more than monthlong dispute over the Florida outcome. He immediately began to govern as if he had a ringing mandate.

The defining event of the Bush presidency came on Sept. 11, 2001, when al Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners and turned them into missiles against the icons of U.S. financial and military might. More than 3,000 died that day, and the world was transformed. For a fleeting moment, the American people - and global sentiment - rallied around Bush. But that opportunity would soon be squandered.

For the neocon factions within the Bush administration, the 9/11 attacks opened the opportunity for two goals it brought into office: To force a regime change in Iraq, and to expand the power of the executive branch. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney went on the stump in 2002 to sell the notion that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and had a connection to al Qaeda. Neither proved to be true. Still, America went to war, and American troops remain in battle to this day, many billions of dollars and more than 4,000 U.S. lives later.

The threat of terrorism became the rationale for other Bush administration assaults on American values. The Bush White House pushed the limits of the law to establish warrantless wiretapping, military tribunals, indefinite detentions of suspected "enemy combatants," torture techniques on detainees and a legal no-man's land at Guantanamo Bay. Bush expanded and redefined the use of "signing statements" to effectively declare that he - as president - can pick and choose which laws he will enforce or ignore.

Just don't call Bush a conservative. The last Clinton administration budget had a surplus of more than $100 billion; the fiscal 2009 deficit could approach $700 billion.

Bush was a disaster on the environment in many ways, but in none more critical than in his belated acknowledgment that climate change was real and was a serious threat to the planet. This nation essentially lost eight years in addressing the most profound issue of our time. In the final weeks of his presidency, Bush moved to undermine the Endangered Species Act. The Bush administration also let politics trump science in other ways, such as its resistance to stem cell research and myriad family-planning programs.

Politics also pervaded this administration's oversight of the Department of Justice. Its attempt to fire nine U.S. attorneys appeared targeted at those who were not regarded as conservative enough.

When strong hurricanes struck the Gulf Coast in 2005, what seemed to be a slow and disorganized response reflected badly on the Bush White House. The public relations damage was compounded when Bush toured Louisiana right after Katrina and commended Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown for a "heckuva job." The awful hurricane aftermath, in which we saw hungry and frantic Americans scrambling through the chaos, became an indictment on the competence of the Bush administration.

"He kept us safe" is the mantra of the Bush loyalists. Indeed, terrorists did not strike again after 9/11. But the Bush policies did, leading us into war, depriving our liberties, exploiting our natural resources and allowing the construction of financial houses of cards - while seizing new executive powers at every turn. This nation is deeper in debt, gloomier in outlook and weaker in global stature than when George W. Bush took office.

This has been a disastrous eight years.

It certainly has.

ps - I think I'll dedicate this one to the late Molly Ivins, who would be very happy that this time has finally come.

Year In Review, Part Two

2009-01-09T12:20:00.000-08:00

click to enlarge

Year in Review, Part One

2008-12-30T21:00:00.000-08:00

click to enlarge

Me and Christmas

2008-12-24T23:44:00.000-08:00

Okay, I said a while back I would do a post about me and Christmas. I usually write about more satirical or political things at Christmas time (remember the one about Christians' believing that Santa Claus is actually Satan?).

I love Christmas; I always have. The holiday festivities, the decorations, the "meaning of Christmas" (as taught to me by the old Christmastime TV specials of my childhood), the general wonderfulness of it all. The thing that throws some people off, though, is the fact that I am not a Christian.

I don't have a religion. I do have a set of beliefs, but that's another post in itself. My point here is to describe my relationshp with and enthusiasm about a holiday that has become associated with Christianity. I have blogged a lot about the Pagan origins of Christmas traditions, and how it is originally a Pagan holiday that was hijacked by Christians. But that's mostly for fun and partly to enlighten any poor souls who might happen by and don't already know what we know.

Christmas appeals to more in me than what Christians claim. I enjoy sociology, history, observation of culture, of human nature, of humanity in its various expressions. The Christmas I have known since my earliest memory was a cultural holiday; one where people tried to express all those good things we're all familiar with, all embellished with the colorful trappings of holiday festival. My generation grew up on Rankin-Bass animated Christmas specials, and the magic contained therein. I even appreciate the things that Christianity has brought to the table (so to speak), although I see them as expressions of cultural and historical significance, the human glue that binds societies together. As a non-Christian, and a nonreligious person in general, I recognize that religion is still a part of me as long as I am a part of society - it is a part of my culture, even if I don't share those beliefs.

So, what I love about Christmas is the cultural things; the festival, the history, the holiday, the lights, colors, art, music, sights, sounds, aromas, and yes, even traditions. There's a lot to be said for appreciating the holidays on a lot of different levels; it makes for a rich experience indeed.

Well, it's far into Christmas Eve, so I'll leave on that note. A heartfelt Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night :)

More Christmas Cool Stuff: It's a Blunderful Life

2008-12-19T06:44:00.000-08:00

This is great: It's a Blunderful Life. Apparently there are lot's of "Wonderful Life" parodies with GWBush. Remember: "Everytime a bell rings, Rove becomes someone's bitch in prison."

Christmas Blogging Begins. Wassail!

2008-12-11T00:17:00.000-08:00

Okay, anyone who has had the dubious fortune of reading my blog during past Decembers knows that I love to blog about the pagan origins of Christmas. I also enjoy poking fun at the rightwing defenders against the "war on christmas".

So, I am starting off this year's Christmas blogging with this 3-part documentary that I found in the interwebs. These have a lot of really cool info (get a load of Ruprecht in pt 2 - who knew that Santa Claus was based less on St. Nicholas than on the devil that St. Nick captured and enslaved?)

I'll be blogging more about Christmas this year, as I have some thoughts to share about my complicated relationship with the holiday - but until then, please enjoy this three-part documentary about the origins of Christmas.

Thanksgiving update: I'll take a left wing, please.

2008-11-29T17:48:00.000-08:00

Okay, spent Thanksgiving with brother-in-law's family and some of their friends. Brother-in-law ("B" for short) votes republican. So does his wife ("S" for short). They are classic "vote-against-their-own-interests" republicans. Right-wing right down the line, yet he works for the City where he receives great benefits which he has used extensively, and will continue to do so for the rest of his life. She works for a hospital and is active in her union, shockingly enough, considering how she is unswervingly right-wing. They live in a home that they bought through HUD. The list goes on and on, but suffice it to say that they are classic in the mold of A Day in the Life of Joe Middle-Class Republican. They are opposed to liberalism yet their lives have been so improved thanks to liberal-democrat policies that they would be shocked if they only realized. They don't - they think they did it all themselves and deserve every benefit they receive (not realizing they're exploiting the fruits of socialism).

Their friends, although I admit up-front that it is not my place to judge, are country Nascar Walmartian types who seem like they stepped right out of King of the Hill.

B & S have three daughters. The older one (23yrs) shares our basic liberal ideology (thank goodness), while the two younger ones (21yrs) don't seem to be too concerned about such things.

There was very little political discussion, but here's a sample of what little there was:

B, to my wife ("T"): "So, who did you vote for?"

T: "Who do you think? Obama."

B: (emphatically) "I'm sorry."

(Older neice's boyfriend: "The Messiah himself!")

T: "I think he has some good ideas."

B: "Well, if you believe what it says in the good book-"

S: "No political talk at dinner, remember!?"

End of conversation. I knew where he was going with it: he was going to say that the Bible says Obama is the Antichrist. Happy Thanksgiving.

And by the way: what is this obsession the right has had throughout the campaign about Obama being "the messiah"? They're the only ones who ever bring it up. I know it is all a part of their contention that he is the antichrist and all that but it still floors me that the rank-and-file repukes buy it. Real ones, too, right in plain sight! Hoky smokes, Bullwinkle.

I spent the day feeling disassociated from the group, as usual. I'm used to it. It's usually really depressing, but this time I was encouraged by the crushing loss they received on election day. Chuckle (and sigh of relief).

I like my brother-in-law, and I don't condemn him for being ignorant about politics, any more than he condemns me for not knowing how to pour a concrete foundation. He's a good person who is easily influenced by friends and associates who get their worldview from FOX news and talk radio. At least he expresses an active interest, which I suppose is better than being apathetic. Maybe. Maybe not.

I'm just glad more voters decided it was better to vote for the antichrist than for four more years of truly diabolical policies.

Worried About Thanksgiving Fights with Right-Wing Family Members?

2008-11-26T12:13:00.000-08:00

Reprinted from Alternet:

Worried About Thanksgiving Fights with Right-Wing Family Members? By Sara Robinson

Oh, Lordy. It is that time again. Thursday is Thanksgiving -- the official kickoff event of the 2008 holiday season. For a lot of progressives, these festivities also mean that we're about to spend more quality time with our conservative relatives over the next six weeks than is strictly good for our blood pressure, stress levels, or continued sanity.

Personally, I'm not a wholehearted fan of turkey -- probably because the mere smell of it instantly slams me back into memories of several decades of Thanksgiving dinner arguments with conservative kin that took a turn for the ugly. We all know we're supposed to stick to "safe" topics like the kids, college football, and the weather; and avoid controversial issues like religion, politics and whether oysters belong in a proper bird stuffing. But the afternoon is long, and after the approved topics have been exhausted and that third bottle of Cabernet vanishes and the tryptophan torpor hits, decorum and discipline are at high risk of going all to hell. After that, things can and do get contentious, usually in ways that make everyone wish we could all just go back to fighting over oysters in the stuffing.

These family gatherings were hard enough to stomach through the appalling years of the Bush Adoration -- but this year, it's likely to be even worse. Our beloved family wingnuts were insufferable, in a grotesque Mayberry-on-acid surreal kind of way, while crowing into their succotash about the manly Godliness (or was it Godly manliness?) of Our Divinely Ordained Commander-in-Chief. But this year's different. This year, they're on the way out of power -- and they're scared witless about it. Which means big steaming heapin' helpings of liberal-bashing are likely to be featured prominently on the menu next to the mashed potatoes, as they put fresh vigor into every paranoid anti-liberal fantasy ever spouted by Rush, Reverend Pat, or their new darling, Sarah Palin.

The black guy won. Armageddon -- or, at the very least, socialism, atheism, gun control, and a national epidemic of erectile dysfunction -- must certainly be at hand.

As you prepare to head once again into the family fray, it might be useful to note that most of the right wing's favorite anti-liberal slanders are rooted in some deeply-held -- and deeply wrong -- assumptions about who liberals are, and what we believe. If your relatives, God bless 'em all, insist on going down that road, your best defense this year might be to listen closely for these underlying myths and fables at work -- and be prepared to challenge them head-on when they surface in the discussion.

Here's a basic set to get you started. Tuck it away in your bag with your Xanax and Maalox, and apply (liberally, of course) as needed.

1. Liberals hate America.

For the record: Liberals love America. In fact, what makes us liberals is that we actually read and believed all those pretty words in the Declaration of Independence about "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and in the Bill of Rights about freedom of speech, religion, assembly, privacy, and all the rest of it.

We're idealists that way. We want to live in the country the Founders described. We believe that the nation's founding documents expressed a uniquely powerful moral contract between the people and their government, and an audaciously positive vision of people's ability and competence to shape their own future. When we get annoying and whiny, it's usually because we believe so much in America's astonishing promise -- and our own responsibility for realizing it -- that we're sorely disappointed when the country falls short of that standard. We really want to believe we can do better.

Conservatism, by contrast, tends to take a dim view of human nature, prefers hierarchy to liberty, and isn't completely convinced people can or should be trying to contravene the will of God or their betters by trying to arrange their own futures. This tends to lead to a selective reading of the Constitution (as well as the Bible), and -- as we've seen in the Bush years -- a far more flexible attitude toward its interpretation.

The proof, however, is in the history -- and it's pretty irrefutable. America's greatest moments of progress, generosity, and moral strength occurred when the country stuck most closely to its progressive ideals. We loved America so much that we freed the slaves, passed child labor laws, built schools and colleges, gave the vote to women, enacted civil rights laws, rebuilt Europe after a war we helped win, and put a man on the moon. All of these were progressive projects -- and all were fought tooth and nail by conservatives in their time, simply because they feared change and saw power as a zero-sum game. Yeah, we sometimes overshoot and miss -- but you can't argue with the daring scope of our dreams.

Conversely, most of our worst moments -- the Native American genocide, the continued justification of slavery and Jim Crow, the Japanese internment, Abu Ghraib -- were conservative projects that were driven by narrow-minded xenophobia and short-term greed, and are regretted by everyone (including most conservatives) when we look back now.

Rick Perlstein has called this out as a predictable pattern: conservatives will loudly obstruct social progress for decades before finally accepting it -- and then, they'll insist they were 100 percent for it all along.

Love us or hate us; but we're every bit as American as our conservative friends and relatives, and have been since the day the Declaration was written (by a liberal, in fact).

2. Liberals want to leave us defenseless in the face of evildoers around the world.

The big disconnect on security issues begins with the fact that we have a far more expansive definition of "security" than conservatives do. And, perhaps, a broader sense of what the actual threats are, and what can be done about them.

When conservatives discuss "security," they're usually thinking in terms of solving all our problems by sending in more guys and gals with guns. The flip side of this that they tend not to give much credence to real threats that can't be fixed by guys and gals with guns.

But as progressives, we know that the country's financial crisis is a security issue. And in a world of superbugs and epidemics, universal health care is a security issue. And global warming is, plain as day, a looming security issue (and the Pentagon agrees). We also know that sending in the Marines, hiring more cops, and taking off our shoes at the airport won't begin to address some of our most terrifying problems. Real-world security is far more complex, and requires a much wider range of solutions, than most conservatives are willing to consider.

3. Liberals hate the free market.

If that's so, why does everyone down at the Apple Store know my name?

The operative word here is "free." Liberals believe wholeheartedly in the amazing power of markets to deliver all kinds of important goods. But we've also noticed that some of the deepest human goods of all -- a strong family, a caring community, a healthy environment, safe food, clean water and air, and time to enjoy them all -- are assigned no economic value at all in unfettered markets. If we want to protect the value of things that money can't buy (and even conservatives will usually agree that such common goods exist, and deserve to be protected), then we need to put some restrictions on markets so they can't encroach into those areas.

Besides, any 10-year-old who's played Monopoly (or any adult who's been within reach of a TV or newspaper in the past two months) can tell you how free markets invariably end up. One person ends up owning the whole game board, and everybody else ends up broke. Game over. That's not an accident; it's just how capitalist systems work. Good regulation can go a long way toward preventing that, too.

It can also be argued that conservatives don't really believe in free markets, either. Truly free markets can only work if there's also a free market in labor -- which means open borders (it's fun to drop this suggestion with a broad wink on border-fence grognards) and unfettered collective bargaining -- neither of which are exactly pet conservative causes.

Because free-market theory also asserts that markets only work right when people can make rational, fully-informed choices, they break down if there's not a parallel free market in information, too. If conservatives really believed in free markets, they'd support efforts to preserve and maintain that market. Keeping good information flowing means putting tight regulations on media consolidation, and firm limits around how far advertising and PR firms can go to stretch the truth or bury negative information. It also means abolishing laws that deprive consumers of important purchasing information, like food-libel laws and federal bans on rGHB labeling. It's a rare conservative who's willing to go that far to protect the sanctity of the free market.

4. Liberals hate our troops.

We love our troops. We love them so much that we want them brought home safe and sound to their families, as soon as possible.

This one's almost depressingly easy. Who blocked the new GI Bill because it might encourage troops not to re-up? Who refused to increase VA funding? Who oversaw last year's debacle at Walter Reed? Who is making soldiers buy their own body armor?

News flash: it ain't the libruls. Putting a yellow ribbon decal on your car is not enough. Making sure our troops have everything they need to do their jobs -- and keeping our promises to them when they get home -- is putting our money where our mouth is. Liberals have been there doing the heavy lifting from the start, while the conservatives in government have been nowhere on the scene unless there was a photo op involved.

5. Liberals are a bunch of elitists who hate decent working- and middle-class Americans.

…as opposed to those sainted corporate men-of-the-people who fly around in private jets and pull down eight-figure salaries while closing plants and cutting 10,000 jobs at a time. That's what real populism looks like, you betcha.

Liberals are funny people. We think that sending well-paid American jobs overseas is a bad idea. We think the minimum wage should be big enough to cover life's necessities, with some left over. We think it's insane that over half the bankruptcies in the country are due to lack of adequate medical insurance. We think everybody who has the grades should have a shot at college. And we believe that middle-class prosperity is absolutely essential for maintaining a healthy democracy -- because history (via Kevin Phillips) has taught us that no democracy that's tolerated our current levels inequality has ever survived for long.

You'd be surprised (or maybe not) at how many conservatives making this accusation have never stopped and taken stock of the role government has played in making their own middle-class life possible. Their dad or granddad got through college on the GI Bill. They financed their own education with Pell Grants and federally-guaranteed loans. They grew up in FHA or VA-funded houses, and collected fat mortgage interest deductions -- which, right there, ensured their family's place in the middle class. They went to decent public schools -- and, perhaps, state universities. They're several thousand dollars richer every month because they're off the hook for Grandma's living expenses, thanks to Social Security and Medicare. They or their parents may have started businesses with help from the Small Business Administration, or relied on government advice and subsidies to keep the farm going. They work for businesses that depend on government contracts.

And then they'll sit there over the second helping of candied yams and loudly insist that they made everything they had, all by themselves, with no help from anybody and especially not from the government.

All you can do is laugh. And then, because they're family, go back to 1945 and start re-telling the family story -- this time with Uncle Sam's forgotten role in the drama front and center.

6. Liberals are against "family values."

This is one of the biggest disconnects between us. As George Lakoff has pointed out, conservatives and liberals have very different ideas about what families look like, how they function, and what rules they should run under. The problem is that liberals are quite willing to recognize the conservative model as a legitimate and valid way to do family, even if we don't always agree with it. But when conservatives look at liberal families and their patchwork of made-up arrangements, they see a chaotic free-for-all that doesn't follow any of their strictly mandated rules of family organization -- and thus doesn't qualify in their minds as any kind of "family" at all. We think it's creative and flexible. They think it's unstable and scary.

So it comes as a considerable shock to conservatives when you point out that progressive areas of the country have significantly stronger families, by almost any metric you can imagine. They have lower rates of divorce, teen pregnancy, infidelity, drug abuse, domestic violence, and juvenile delinquency than the more conservative areas do. Massachusetts -- the first state to offer gay marriage -- also has the lowest divorce rate in the country. They like marriage so much there they think everybody should have a shot at it.

Looking at the statistics, it's possible to conclude that the conservative obsession with "family values" may reflect the fact that families in Red America really are beset by devastating problems that aren't nearly as common in Blue America. Rather than admit that maybe we know something about creating healthy families that they don't, they'll usually try to fix the blame for their family chaos on us and our crazy anything-goes family arrangements. (If there are Bible readers at your table, you might suggest they re-read Luke 6:42 before holding forth.)

Liberals believe in family. We take our marriage vows just as seriously as conservatives do. We love our children just as much. Our families are at least as successful and happy as theirs. This shouldn't be a matter of debate; but it will continue to be one as long they refuse to believe that our families are just as healthy, valid, and sacred to us as theirs are to them.

7. Liberals want to raise our taxes.

It all depends on who is the "our" in this scenario.

If your dinner companions are well-off enough to be bringing in over $250K a year, there's no point in finessing this. Their taxes probably are going up. The only comeback is that between Clinton-era tax cuts, the housing bubble, and the hot stock market of the past 15 years, they've probably made so much money that it's time to start giving some back to the nation that made their boon possible. (Refer back to #5: they almost certainly didn't make that pile without at least some government help.)

If 's nobody at the table fits that happy description, then according to Obama's plan, they're going to get a tax cut. Sure, they're not going to believe it until they see it (and, quite possibly, not even then); but it's not an argument they even want to have until after an Obama tax plan is passed and the actual results are in.

Remind them also that there's just no way to pay for a $600 billion war and a $700 billion bailout (and that's just the current cost on both fronts -- they're likely to soar in the future) without somebody somewhere paying some more taxes. The bill for the war alone currently stands $5,000 per American household; the bailout may cost that much again, depending on how much of the money the government can recoup. The GOP went shopping on our credit card -- and now it's time to pay our share of the bill.

8. Liberals are Godless -- and therefore, amoral.

This often sounds odd coming from people who raised you, who generally like you, and who usually think you're a fairly sound citizen…well, apart from that weird liberal thing. One good comeback is to personalize that accusation: Do you really think I'm less moral than you are? Seriously? In what way? Hmm. (It's good if you can resist the temptation to say: Gee, it must have been the way I was raised.)

Another twist on this: I'm liberal because you made me that way. You dragged me to church, where they taught me to love my neighbor and care for the poor and sick -- and I became a progressive because I took the things you taught me to heart.

If personalizing the argument won't work with your crowd, go general. A lot of progressives are deeply religious -- and our politics are guided by our religious faith. Evangelical churches are getting involved with environmentalism, poverty, and human trafficking -- all issues where liberals have been active for decades. It's good to have the extra hands on board.

It's also true that a lot of progressives aren't religious. Unfortunately, many conservatives equate "secular" with "having no moral code whatsoever," since they honestly believe that nobody can possibly behave themselves unless there's some outside authority keeping a hairy eyeball on them. (It's tempting to speculate about what people who believe this might try to get away with when they think nobody's watching; personally, I think it's an incriminating admission that they can't be trusted behind closed doors.) Rejecting God means you refuse to follow His rules -- which, according to their logic, can only mean that you hold nothing sacred and don't recognize any rules at all.

Call this out for the wrongness that it is. All non-religious progressives have things they hold deeply sacred: family commitments, community obligations, professional responsibilities, the Constitution, social and economic justice, the earth and its systems, the idea of democracy, the dream of a peaceful future. Those things form the basis of a demanding internally-driven moral code; and it's not uncommon to find secular progressives who live more uncompromisingly moral lives than many overtly religious people.

9. Liberals don't believe in personal responsibility.

Again, there's a definitional disconnect at work here. Conservatives tend to use the rule of law to enforce traditional morality and social hierarchies, which usually means light treatment for those at the top, and harsh penalties for those at the bottom. Liberals tend to use the rule of law to maintain some semblance of fairness and equality, which means that those who have more should be given sentences proportional to their greater wealth and power; and those with less should be given a more gentle hand. Naturally, each side finds the other side's reasoning and criteria appalling.

But there is common ground. The bare fact -- which everybody at the table may agree on -- is that in present-day America, nobody is happy with the way justice is being doled out, and people all over are getting away with things no civilized nation should allow to slide by. Absurd leniency abounds on both sides. You can either argue over whose side is getting the worst of it; or you can simply agree that the system is broken all over, and move on to the pumpkin pie.

10. Liberals are wimps.

Conservatives like to caricaturize liberals as being soft in all the places our society values toughness. Our refusal to adhere to any dogma must mean that we're soft in our convictions. Our reflexive open-mindedness is often derided as evidence that we're soft in the head. Our persistent and gentle insistence on humane government is evidence of hearts too soft to set hard boundaries or do what must be done. And all of this together makes it easy for them to portray us as a mushy bunch of feckless, effeminate intellectuals lacking in cohesion, backbone, focus, or purpose.

But you can only believe this if you don't know anything about the history or reality of American liberalism. The Constitution is, itself, a liberal document -- the ultimate expression of Enlightenment principles. In every decade since the republic was founded, progressives have stepped up and put themselves on the line to further the purposes of government laid out in the Preamble. We're heirs to the people who fought and died to free slaves, organize unions, give the vote to women, end child labor, protect family farms, enact civil rights laws, and preserve our environment. Some of the boldest, bravest Americans in history -- Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, Teddy Roosevelt, Cesar Chavez, and of course Dr. King -- have proudly called themselves "liberal" or "progressive."

Progressivism couldn't have survived and thrived if we were half as weak and indecisive as conservatives like to think we are. Our progressive forebears were not fearful people. Nor did any of them seem to be bedeviled by a lack of conviction. "Mushy" or "feckless" are about the last words I'd use to describe any of them. ("Stupid" isn't anywhere on the list, either.) When you sign up to become a progressive, this is the legacy you take on, and from then on attempt to live up to. It's not God's job to make the world a better place. It's yours. This has never been work for the faint of heart, mind, or spirit -- and in this era of conservatism gone rotten, it still isn't.

It's going to be a stranger season than most, in no small part because the changing political winds are going to put some fresh twists and turns into the same old holiday discussions. But holiday arguments over religion and politics are a tradition that's as old as the republic. For most of us, wouldn't be an American family holiday without a little hot conversation served up over a freshly roasted bird.

Sara Robinson is a twenty-year veteran of Silicon Valley, and is launching a second career as a strategic foresight analyst. When she's not studying change theories and reactionary movements, you can find her singing the alto part over at Orcinus. She lives in Vancouver, BC with her husband and two teenagers.

© 2008 Blog for Our Future All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/108638/

You want to know something that really freaks me out?

2008-11-25T12:39:00.000-08:00

Here's something that really has me messed up. I don't want to say that I am worried, exactly, but I am curious and concerned. You see, for many months now, I have not been able to find any of these for sale, anywhere:

You may think, "Big deal. Stuff like that comes and goes; maybe they were out of 'em or something."

No, this is bigger than a simple inventory lapse. Hostess Blakcberry Fruit Pies have not been available in any grocery or convenience store where I have shopped for a long, long time. I mean a really long, long, looooong time.

It's not just that I like them. They have been available for as long as I can remember. Stores often stocked a few more of them because they were a little more popular than the others. But now, it's a barren wasteland where once the mighty berry fruit pie reigned supreme.

The call goes out to all my blog buddies. Have any of you seen a Hostess Blakcberry Fruit Pie for sale? Anyone? Anywhere? Please let me know if you have, so that this great pie shall not perish from the face of the earth.It is a mystery which must be solved.

Thanks ahead of time for your help.

Funny headline of the day:

2008-11-24T06:34:00.000-08:00

Seen on MSN: "Teen Survives Cougar Attack."

Well, I thought it was, anyway.

Hi$tory

2008-11-23T12:00:00.000-08:00

Bush (yes, he is still the president) had an economic plan. His Arabian counterpart Osama Bin Laden did, too. The two were remarkably similar. Actually, they had basically the same goal with different motives.

From 2003:
Bush's Plan

The plan is very simple, but not obvious on first blush. Make sure that all the money is gone from the U.S. treasury, make sure the deficits are so great that all social and educational programs are cut, increase the military and security budgets to "protect our nation" with all these monies going to corporations and security firms who are extra-national (not tied to any country, but actually more than multi-national in that they are outside the purview of any nation at any single moment) and stave in the social security fund by allowing it to go to private corporations for "investment"-and you have the perfect scenario for saying, "only the private sector can save us-we're broke and they have the money to run every program, fund every program, but of course, at huge costs and profits for the private corporations." Our only resource will be the corporate lenders, especially the large extra-national corporations who will have loyalty to no one except their corporate coffers and large share owners throughout the world.

This plan is so obvious at this point that it is hard to believe because it is happening so fast and the Democrats and even conservative non- neo-con Republicans don't realize what Bush and his neo-con buddies are up to.

Of course, this is easier to accomplish with all of our attention being focused on 9/11 matters, Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, the WMDs, threats to our nation, threats to our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (where we lose troops everyday to Iraqis and Afghans fighting against our occupation), but we keep sending in more troops to basically protect Bechtel and Halliburton. Soon, we'll also hire private contractor troops, some from other countries and others from selected American security firms. All the time we are occupied with this, just as Orwell predicted in his novel, 1984, the Bush team will be destroying our civil liberties and taking away our social and educational programs in order to fund "security measures" and will keep blinking yellow, orange, and red codes at us.

From 2004:
Bin Laden's Plan

"We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah," bin Laden said in the transcript. He said the mujahedeen fighters did the same thing to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, "using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers... We, alongside the mujahedeen, bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat," bin Laden said.

So, both planned to drive ths US into bankruptcy to achieve their goals. I hope the American citizens who voted to support that are pleased with themselves.

"Joe the Plumber" is a @$$%...and I'm glad.

2008-11-20T12:19:00.000-08:00

Samuel Wurzelbacher, aka "Joe the Plumber" (if that's not a name that sounds like a 1940's petty crook, or the codename for a wiretapping expert, I don't know what does) is trying to further exploit his exploits as rightwing media darling by "writing" (and I use the term loosely) a book. That's right. "Joe the Plumber" is writing a book. This, of course, follows the news of his boot-scootin' into a country music deal. Yee Haw!

Well, I for one am totally in favor of Mr. Wurzel - I mean, "Joe" *wink wink* being the symbol of Republican party from now on. Who needs that tired old drug-addled gasbag Rush Limbaugh or pompadored doofus Sean Hannity or even child-porn producing hypocrite Bill O'Reilly (aka Bill-O the Clown), when they can have a real-life down-home blue-collar man of the people like "Joe"? A tax-evading, professional-license-avoiding, alias-identifying, truth-stretching, wanna-be hillbilly is so right for the "right" that it's hard to believe he isn't entirely created in a lab beneath the Skull-N-Bones clubhouse.

Republicans' voting public in the blue collar community won't identify with the real Republican base: corporate fat-cats, old-money aristocrats, and wild-eyed fascists anxious to take over the world. They should be happy to be forced to bail out billionaires while enoying the fruits of the Bush/Cheney administration's free-market paradise (you know, the one where "the free market will regulate itself").

Joe's book will, no doubt, be a bestseller. I know if I was in charge of buying material for a political science course, I'd order a bunch of them, to serve as an example of what can happen when you elect neocons into leadership for 8 years (turning America into a giant exclusive gated community surrounded by trailer parks).

Okay, I'll do a Post about Marriage Equality.

2008-11-15T16:33:00.000-08:00

Apparently, there have been world-wide protests in support of gay marriage rights, inspired by California's unfortunate passing of the proposition 8 ban on gay marriage.

Strangely, this subject is also hugely important to... homophobic religious heterosexuals. In the words of Craig Furguson: I know! Ordinarily, I would expect "gay marriage" to be a "So what? Live and let live" thing, right? Wrong. Here in California, where the months leading up to the Nov. 8th elections produced more letters-to-the-editor of the local newspaper about gay marriage than just about anything else. I would have expected more letters about things like the war(s), or the economy, but nooo. Gay marriage was the big deal of the day with local voters.

Particularly annoying was how those who wanted to ban gay marriage said that gays were forcing their lifestyle on them. Of course, when rebutted with a request to cite an example, they didn't (or couldn't). Their meaning was obvious: simply knowing that homosexuals exist was how it was being forced on them.

I usually added comments to those letters, especially to the smug religious zealots/closet theocrats who are a real pet peeve of mine. They probably thought I was the local gay advocate or something. The truth is, I am the local advocate of keeping government the hell out of my personal life.

It's weird: most people whose opinion I have heard are not opposed to gays having the same marriage rights as anyone else. Yet, the vote results say otherwise. There is a lot of speculation about why that is, but none of it matters to me. I haven't given my opinion on it much, but here it is (itemized for clarity):

It is a civil rights issue. So-called conservatives are now on record as saying they want the government to dictate whom they may marry. That is a dangerous position to take, I think. See, I believe that consenting adults who are legally able to enter into other civil contracts are legally entitled to enter into a marriage contract. By the way, this is why conservatives' ridiculous claim that marriage equality would lead to legalized beastiality, pedophelia, etc., is wrong: We're talking about a legal issue between consenting adults. They are citizens and (usually) taxpayers. Many are even veterans (take that, righty-tighties!). No animal or has the right to vote; nor are they mentally competant to enter into a contract. Human adults, unless found mentally incompetant to understand the meaning of the action, can do so. Incidentally, I couldn't care less about plural marriage. If three or more consenting adults want to form a committed lifelong relationship; an extended family wherein they all benefit, that's fine with me. It's not a choice I would make, but it's not my place to prevent their making that choice, either. Again, I am not talking about something like fundamentalist Mormon arranged plural marriages to child brides. They're a bunch of sick bastards. Consenting Adults, that's the key phrase here.

It is a great vehicle to demonstrate conservative hypocrisy. They claim that one of their most cherished values is freedom from government intervention in their lives. Yet, they always insist that government's role is to dictate the behavior of peoples' most intimate relationships, like marriage. The truth is, conservatives do want government intervention in peoples' lives. They just don't want to pay taxes, obey labor laws or environmental regulations, etc. They claim to be God's chosen, but the god they worship is the almighty dollar.

Last, here is the main distinction between me and the ban-gay-marriage crowd: I draw a distinct difference between religious marriage and legal marriage. I beleive they are two completely separate things. Churches can impose whatever rules upon their members they want, but those rules are only valid for those church members. Legal marriage, on the other hand, is for all citizens, whatever their religion or lack thereof; it is required to accomodate everyone to whom all other laws apply.

For a group of religious zealots to deny civil rights to other citizens, based on religious values, is completely anti-American and just plain wrong.

Maybe someday those who would deny others' civil rights will find themselves on the other side of an issue of equal importance to them, where they are denied their civil rights because they don't conform to the majority mold. Maybe then they'll understand what Thomas Jefferson meant when he wrote:

"All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression."

He also is attributed with this one:

"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."

In other words, Majority rule does not give the majority the right to oppress the minority. So, the protesters are correct in fighting for their civil rights. Hopefully, for all our sakes, equal rights will prevail.

To the Anonymous Commenter:

2008-11-13T21:16:00.000-08:00

Domain Name: bushlawgroup.com
IP Address: 65.218.135.# (AIMCO)
ISP: Verizon Business
State: South Carolina
City: Greenville

Enjoy your anonymity.

Veterans Day

2008-11-11T01:18:00.000-08:00

VAIW: Veterans Against the Iraq War
IVAW: Irag Veterans Against the War
VVAW: Vietnam Veterans Against the War
Who Served (A Chickenhawk Database)

War Is A Racket

How do you like the new header?

2008-11-09T00:07:00.001-08:00

Groovy, ay?

I am going to...

2008-11-05T23:48:00.001-08:00

...start dressing up the blog's visuals soon, since we are finally entering he 21st century. I thought we'd never get here! Anyway, suggestions are welcome!

Finally!

2008-11-04T22:19:00.000-08:00

"A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt. ...We must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost." - Thomas Jefferson

More blogging, of course, to follow. Thrilled is an understatement. I hope to touch base with the blogger buddies I've met over the last four years of political blogging. We made it!

Constantly Amazing Random Eavesdropping Today

2008-11-03T19:11:00.000-08:00

So it went like this:

My wife and I were having lunch at a restaurant this afternoon. It's a place with a New Orlean's theme, more pricey than our usual choices, but we felt like indulging ourselves. Seated nearby were two "elderly" ladies - not that elderly, but one in maybe her 60's and the other one older.

We heard them talking about the election and immediately turned our ears their way.

They started out sounding like a pair of rightwing conservatives, or at least rightwing voters. One of them talked about getting her news from FOX and O'Reilly. Stuff like that. But, as we listened, they began to discuss Obama... and they both began to explain why they were choosing to reject their party to vote for Obama. They both said they voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004. And, they both said they thought the country has been "getting worse and worse" for the past several years. They even discussed their belief in anti-Obama propaganda, such as Obama "not saluting the flag because he refuses to stand for America," and similar Fox "news". But in spite of all the garbage they had consumed via rightwing news outlets, they still said it was better to give an unknown, potentially dangerous upstart a chance than to continue down the disastrous path of the republicans.

We were thrilled and surprised. A pair of longtime republican voters, overheard through a totally random coindidence, explaining over lunch why they were rejecting the repukes and their doomed policies, changing from republican voters to democratic ones. That's change I can believe in.

Hoping that my vote matters this time

2008-11-02T21:24:00.000-08:00

Like many of you, I voted early (I dropped my ballot off five days early). However, as many of you are aware, the Republican party is engaged in several insideous schemes to destroy our votes, like voter caging, vote flipping, disenrollment, long lines at polling places, even telling college students they can't vote because they no longer live at home, and telling people whose homes were forclosed that they can't vote because their address has changed. Republican operatives even tried telling democrats they should vote on the wrong day. And of course there's the Bush administration's typically backwards-named-to-conceal-it's-true-purpose "Help America Vote Act" which rules that your vital info has to match a notoriously flawed national database. No match means no vote for you.

Republicans have admitted that the fewer voters there are, the more successful the republican candidates are. With that as their strategic foundation, they have proceeded to turn the last two presidential elections into circuses of election fraud. And, as you've heard me say before, the biggest thing that stands between progressives and success is republican election- and voter-fraud.

I just hope it works the way it is supposed to this time. There is a difference: there is media attention focused on the activity, whereas before we were ridiculed as tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorists. But we're talking about thousands and thousands of voters whose eligibility has been challenged. Hopefully the ones that do get counted will accurately reflect the real vote. If it doesn't, again, then there will be hell to pay.

Re-Posted From 2006: For Halloween-Eve...

2008-10-30T00:00:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite, most favorite, most favoritest-favorite artists in the whole world is the wonderful Edward Gorey. He was not only an illustrator, but a prolific author as well. So, for Halloween Eve, please enjoy one of my favorite Edward Gorey stories:

30 Minutes of Hope

2008-10-29T22:54:00.000-07:00

I watched it. Did you watch it? I liked it. Did you like it?

It's amazing, the difference between a thoughtful, intelligent, articulate scholar & statesman like Obama, versus the inarticulate, dishonest, halfwitted dullard George W Bush.

Hope appears on the horizon.

By the way, here is a nostalgic Constantly Amazed History Moment: From 2004, one of my very first blog posts ever. Back before "change" became a political motto, I wrote "It's Never Too Late To Speak for Change," a post that sort of explains why I have been doing this for four years. I am saddened to say that it still rings true after all this time. Let's hope it's different this time around.

More About Socialism: It's the American Way

2008-10-28T23:32:00.001-07:00

Tip 'o the hat to Windspike

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA...

2008-10-27T12:16:00.000-07:00

I LOVE IT! Sarah Palin is a Socialist!!! And, she said so herself!!! Here is what Sarah Palin said:

And Alaska—we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs. … It’s to maximize benefits for Alaskans, not an individual company, not some multinational somewhere, but for Alaskans.

Now, here is the definition of Socialism:

A theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA *COUGH* HA HA HA HA A-HA A-HA *SPUTTER* *COUGH* HA HA HA *WHEEZE* HA HA A-HA A-HA HA HA...

IMPORTANT!

2008-10-22T22:38:00.000-07:00

IMPORTANT!

The repukes have already enacted laws to steal your vote! I am not just spouting off here. I am serious. Electronic voting machines are already demonstrating malfunctions that are switching democrat votes to republican. The "Help America Vote Act" (so named in the opposite-speak parlance of the right wing) has and is purging millions of qualified voters from the rolls, voters who are most likely to vote democratic. And do you think your safe with a mail-in vote? Think again! Unless you are very, very careful, your vote will be stolen from you. Don't let it happen! Please click on the link above for more. I'll try to add updates.

I have said it a hundred times before: The republicans are planning to steal the election through vote tampering. AGAIN. Please don't let them succeed!

The Emperor's New Clothes

2008-10-20T21:59:00.000-07:00

I find it amusing (or weird) that the mainstream media either hasn't noticed, or is ignoring the fact, that the republican nominee for president is running on a platform that is 180 degrees opposite of conservative. Weirder still, republicans (they used to call themselves conservative) don't seem to care, and democrats aren't taking the opportunity to point it out, either.

The definition of conservatism is to conserve the status quo. To maintain what is established and resist change. To employ tried-and-true methods and embrace traditional values. To surround ones self with the familiar. To stay the course. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. If it is broke, fix it but for god’s sake don’t include any design improvements. If it stays fixed, don’t fix it. If it breaks again, fix it but for god’s sake don’t include any design improvements. If it…” you get the picture. Often, it involves a desire to return to an idealized version of the past.

Now, let’s look at the Republican party catchphrases for this election (in other words, their sales pitch):

"Change."
"Reform."
"Standing up against their own party."

Huh?! None of that has anything to do with conservatism. Not one bit. Yet those are the pillars of their campaign.

Change. They had to jump on this one after Obama used it and everyone liked it, a lot. Now the republican candidate says they’re the real party of change, the kind "you can believe in." The only change they're good for is changing their message to steal another candidate's thunder. Any way you slice it, "change" and "conservative" are incompatible. Together, they're an oxymoron. On the republican ticket, they say, "desperate enough to acknowledge the failure of conservative values and their rejection by most people."

Reform: Reform is the exact opposite of what conservatism is all about. Honestly – is there one member of the red team that has ever spent a moment in a political science class? Or did they learn all they needed to know about politics, and society from talk radio? It's so laughably ironic that the party that once elevated their pronoun-challenged mantra “stay the course” to the level of Gregorian chant now pins its hopes on candidates who sing the praises of “reform”. And the fact that McCain's first defense of Palin's credentials is always her supposed record as a "reformer" is so funny in it's idological perversity that it must have real conservatives sobbing with laughter. Or just sobbing.

“Standing up against your own party.” OMG! Can you believe that nonconformism is now a preferred value of the establishment party!? The republican party!? The ones who spent the dawn of the 21st century striving to create a permanent republican majority, the ones who threatened to punish anyone who dared deal with a democrat, the ones who made it clear in no uncertain terms that party loyalty was more important than human life; you were with ‘em or against ‘em, and if you were against the republicans you were against god and country. Now the republicans' candidate for president is boasts about how he "stood up against his own party." He also chastises Obama for not "stand up" against the democratic party (as if that even matters: maybe, during his time in congress, Obama didn't need to oppose his party. Ever think of that, John McStupid?).

Anyway, is this the most backward logic or what: the republican party wants you to think that they are running the candidate who opposed the party who is running the candidate. In the words of Mickey Goldmill, "Shrewd."

Have you ever seen the movie Little Nicky? Remember Jon Lovitz’ character, who would do something evil, then be punished while screaming, “I deserve this! I deserve this!” There’s the new republican party mascot.

At least they're consistent

2008-10-19T12:45:00.000-07:00

For quite a while, my blog posts, when I do produce one, are usually negative. That’s because I am one of those people who is more inspired to blog about the injustices of the world than about the niceties. My passions for social and political commentary are driven by my fury at those terrible things, those wrongs that must be righted before I can ever find peace.

When I described being overwhelmed in my last post, I neglected to describe one of the symptoms, which has a direct effect on blogging. That is, I find it difficult to focus and concentrate on a topic when my head is filled with the cacophony of badness that we are left with at the last days of the Bush administration. So as I return to blogging proper, I want to start throwing out random topics and try to weed the mental garden so that I may ultimately try to shine a positive light in here sometimes.

There are two things that are biggies with me, as far as blogging goes, and they are both interconnected as current reports come to light. They are:

1. Hypocrisy, my biggest pet peeve, which is something I truly believe is the glue that holds the republican party together. I can’t think of a single issue about which republicans and so-called “conservatives” are not hypocrites. I am open to being proven wrong about that, but so far it hasn’t happened.

2. Election fraud / voter fraud. I am passionate about this subject. It is the thing that really drove me to really get into political blogging. I maintain (as you probably know) that the republican party cannot win a fair election, and they are well aware of that. So, they must engage in completely unethical practices involving voter suppression, election fraud, and all manner of un-American acts which are such an insult to democracy and to our Constitution, that they are easily defined as treason.

Where does this leave us today? Well, there is a mountain of evidence of election and voter fraud that has been and is being perpetrated by the Republican party. They realized many years ago that they can't win if people vote, because more people vote for democrats.

Paul Weyrich — a principal architect of today's Republican Party — scolded evangelicals who believed in democracy. "They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote... As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down." thanks nunya for that link

Voters say they were duped into registering as Republicans

Study Finds States Purging Millions of Voters in Secret

And check out Nunya's posts here and here.

At the same time, the repukes try to draw attention away from their insidious activities by pointing the finger of blame where no blame exists:

Despite the screaming wall-to-wall coverage of "Democratic voter fraud in 11 swing states" as seen on Fox News and even the once-respectable CNN, none of it's true. None of it.

And of course, there is my old post that is still important:

Restored: 20 Amazing Facts about Voting in the USA.

Again, the Republicans know full well that they cannot win an election unless they cheat. Oh, and did I forget to mention that Joe the plumber is a fake?!.

Here is what I believe, and I challenge anyone to prove me wrong: WHATEVER A REPUBLICAN SAYS IS THE OPPOSITE OF THE TRUTH.

UPDATE:
Other important resources concerning republican election tampering are here, and here.

Also, see the video below.

Now, I'd like to close with something a little more upbeat, thanks to a link via betmo:

No More Apologies

2008-10-14T13:14:00.000-07:00

I have been so bad about posting in my blog that, quite frankly, my apologies are beginning to annoy even me. My few remaining loyal readers and blog buddies deserve better.

Do any of you remember when I was at my blogging peak (i.e., the good old days)? I used to get comments like, “Man, where do you find those amazing links?”, and, “Right on, well said!”, and, “You’re pathetic, you liberal socialist un-American unpatriotic unreligious worm… you’ll become one of us someday, you’ll see!”

Yeah, there was a time when I would stay up all night composing eloquent and complex rebuttals to right-wing bloggers and their insipid, asinine commentary. And man, there were some fire-on-the-fingertips moments, believe me.

I began this blog in September 2004, hoping to add my voice to the many who knew how bad the BushCheney regime was, long before it became hip to be aware of it. It was a real uphill battle back then, remember? We were regarded as the fringe. Weirdos, hollering out in the green park of conservative consumerist complacency. The curtains were drawn in the McMansions where the worshippers at the alter of St. Ronnie could practice chants to “support the troops” and protect against the war on Christmas.

Still, we were riding high, us “Bush-haters” (that term was once used to dismiss us as shallow and reactionary; now it is simply a description of about 90% of the world’s population). Even in the face of adversity, we were the elite practitioners of reason in a sea of madness. I, for one, am extremely proud to say that I opposed the war against Iraq from day one, and said so at the time, before I ever even started blogging.

Like many, I was posting every day. I felt driven to do so, first to proclaim the importance of voting out Bush in 2004; then in response to the stolen election and the Kerry betrayal (concede my ass, Mr. Skull-N-Bones). At my peak I was contributing to three different blogs, one of which is based in France and is still successful, while the other fell apart after I left due to a troll (remind me to tell you that story).

But something happened… not just to me, but other blog-buddies of mine. Posts became less frequent, and some blogs folded up altogether (others continue with a vengeance and to them I offer my heartfelt thanks and compliments to their strength and perseverance). I think what happened is this: we expected the badness of the BushCheney administration to plateau and maintain at some point, at which time, it stands to reason, they would either have to be brought to justice, or at least be made to not commit any further treasonous and vile acts against this country or the rest of the world. But instead, it just got worse, and worse, and worse, and worse, and worse, and worse, and worse, and worse, and worse, and worse, and worse, and worse, and worse, and worse, and worse, and worse, and worse, and worse, until it seemingly could not get any worse at all. Then, just to make matters, well, worse… it did.

So here we are. And here I am: burned out somewhat and simply exhausted by the sheer enormity, the vastness, of the evil of the “right” and the harm the Bush administration has inflicted on our world. Every day I collect links to items about what they have done, and it is too much. I don’t mean that as a catchphrase, either. I mean there is so much horribleness to what they do, constantly and relentlessly, that it is too much to catalog and consume.

So, I guess I just need to simplify, rather than try to keep up with everything, and post more simply and more positively (WWTDLD*?) Early in the life of this blog, I promised I would carry it through at least until GWBush is removed from office. I can surely do that, and I hope to keep going and add my other artistic interests to the blog (I have said that before, but I always get overwhelmed by political issues and blog about those instead).

Please don’t sign me off just yet, blog buddies! (I wanted to say "my friends" but thanks to John McCain, I can never utter that phrase in good conscience again). I may be slow, but like Charley Brown’s Christmas tree, I have sincerity. Keep checking back!

*What Would the Dalai Lama Do?

Where Have I Been?

2008-08-09T13:49:00.000-07:00

Where have I been? I haven't been blogging, that's obvious.

I don't know why I have gone for blogging breaks; I've written about it in the past as a way to make myself stop taking them, but I still do it. I'm back now, though, for a long time, I hope.

I started blogging in Oct 2004 and decided I wouldn't stop at least until the Bush regime was removed from power. It appears that day is on the horizon, but I am greatly disillusioned with the entire process. The democratic party has let us down so many times that I am back to considering them the lesser of two evils. What hopes I had following the 2006 congressional elections was dashed as the "democratic" congress refused to impeach the bush administration, approved mountains of money to continue their conquest of the middle east, and generally seemed to become the repukes' willing henchmen.

Who is worse: Dracula or Renfield? Dracula, obviously. Does that mean we admire Renfield so much that we want him to make all the rules and represent our interests in the world? Not for me, it doesn't. But our Dem leadership thinks we're satisfied with Renfield at the helm of the ship of state.

And you know what? They're right about that - most people seem to be satisfied with the lesser of two evils. Many are even more satisfied with the with the greater of two evils. Still more don't care much either way: a poll was taken decades ago that shows most Americans at the time actually opposed our own constitution, and I wouldn't be surprised if the situation has only gotten worse. If nothing else, we are most certainly all more controlled by corporate media than ever before.

So I become disillusioned and discouraged as things get worse and worse. This latest news about John Edwards, whom I previously endorsed as a good candidate (Kucinich will always be my #1 pick), is a deeply disappointing example. I thought he was worthy of my vote, and now I find out he's a philanderer and a liar. It's just another brick in the wall. And it's been like that for a while now.

So I become disillusioned and discouraged and remain so. Hopeful? Sure, there's always hope. The democrats, who in spite of being the sniveling lapdogs of the vile repukes, are still at least 1,000% less corrupt than the repukes are, could win. IF the repukes don't steal the election for a THIRD @#$%^ TIME.* Which they probably will. And if they don't, it won't matter much anyway; partly because the of damage they've done which won't be repaired in my lifetime, and partly because I predict they will wait until after the election, then go to war against Iran before January 2009, and leave the whole economic-political mess for the Democrats to repair/live with/be blamed for. And the Dems deserve it, because they didn't impeach the bastards and end the war in 2006 like we elected them to do.

* (Don't worry... this hasn't happened. Yet.)

Yay! A Site Appears on the 'Net Like Cool Water in the Desert: Republican Offenders

2008-04-27T00:12:00.000-07:00

This is absolutely great! As some of you know, I have tied to compile links to sites and reports listing the many, many scandals of the republican right. Most of you are already aware of our old favorite, Armchairsubversive, which one of the most important sites on the 'net. But lately I have discovered a new site devoted to keeping track of all the rightwing depravity, hypocrisy, contempt for society, and sneering disregard for the rule of law that we have come to expect from the GOP (Grotesque Old Perverts).

The site is called (drumroll & fanfare, please) REPUBLICAN OFFENDERS, and it is absoluetly brilliant. It achieves the work that I have been lazily doing (okay, I've only been saving a folder of links), but on a grand and glorious scale that fits the importance of subject matter.

And why, some ask, do I consider this to be so important? Let's address that first. Many are convinced that all politicians are corrupt, and that the big two parties are equally guilty of transgression. Fair enough; I used to hold the same opinion. But since I began blogging in Oct 2004, my opinion has changed. I have done enough research online to be convinced (and I mean convinced, not swayed by passion or duped by unbalanced data) that the Republican party is far, far more corrupt than the Democratic party. When it comes down to the lesser of two evils, as it inevitably does for me every election, the Democrats win hands down.

This is largely due to the Republicans' constantly proclaiming themselves to be morally superior to all others (especially democrats). They insist that they are God's chosen political party and that they do no wrong, they are the source and protectors of "family vaues" and all things good and righteous, they are the only practitioners of sexual morality and socioeconomic fairness, and want nothing more than to spread freedom and democracy and to all, with the added bonus of leading all to heaven as they are the only ones who know where it is and how to get there.

HYPOCRITES! LIARS!

The reason Republicans are about 10,000 times worse than Democrats on the corruption scale is their hypocrisy. They lie cheat and steal without remorse, they commit the most disgusting acts of depravity, but worst of all, they do all that while piously proclaiming their moral & spiritual superiority. If they would just own up to their actions; if just one Republican pedophile or whoremonger or whatever would admit (especially after being proven guilty) what they did and accept responsibility like an adult and apologize for their actions, then I could accept them as, like I said, responsible adults who erred and are willing to accept the consequences of their actions.

Instead, the scenario is usually more like this: A rightwng Republican (male in this case) spends his entire career condemning homsexuality as an unpardonable sin, and telling his voters to support him because he'll protect them from the Democrats' "gay agenda". Soon we discover that same rightwing Republican has been enthusiastically taking it up the poop chute from his harem of young gay male prostitutes for years. He'll sob and beg forgiveness and his followers forgive him, because their God embraces concealed repressed sexual deviance and hey, a little distraction helps conceal the action going on in their own pews, ya know?

If the guy had been a true liberal, he could have accepted his sexual preference and formed a healthy relationship with a consenting adult and perhaps even participated in legislation to allow them to form a legal monogomous union. Instead, he chooses the conservative approach: repress his sexuality out of guilt, shame, and fear for his reputation among his equally hypocritical but judgemental peers, until that repression expresses itself through twisted perversion and drug-addled back-alley boner buffing as often as he can for as long as he can get away with it.

The massive hypocrisy of the political "right" is what makes their corruption far worse than anything the left is guilty of. As long as they maintain their "holier than thou" platform, we will be there to point out how very wrong they are.

Please, please visit the following links of you haven't already:

Armchairsubversive

Republican Offenders (possibly my new favorite site...)

Republican Sex Scandals Dwarf Those of Democrats

In the interest of balance, here are rightwingers' lists of Democrat scandals. I leave it to you to decide which carries more weight in light of Republicans' claim of moral superiority versus progressive liberals' more realistic claim that we are all human and must take responsibility for our actions.

Democrat Scandals

Sex Scandal Lineup (mixed left & right)

Top 10 Democrat Sex Scandals

Rightwing Regret

2008-04-20T18:23:00.000-07:00

Okay, so this weekend we had a little get-together with inlaws... specifically my wife's sister, brother, and his wife. I like 'em all and we all get along fine... and they're all republicans, of two different types.

My brother-in-law and his wife are the sort of suburban vote-against-their-own-interest republicans - the kind who condemn liberalism while spending their lives cashing in on liberal democrat policies. I mean, he works for the City, great salary and tons of benefits at taxpayer expense (and has used them a lot to the extent that they have saved his life and those of his children), bought his home through HUD, pro-union, etc., yet voted for Bush/Cheney right down the line. Whatever - like I said, I like them, and ignorance is a forgivable sin.

But my sister-in-law is more of a social conservative. Fundamentalist Christian, "pro-life" (I call it pro-birth), and pro-Bush. She believes what she's told by the right, and is so averse to conflict that, driven to practice avoidance as a coping mechanism, she would not be able to face the truth about the horrors that have been been committed in her name by the Bush/Cheney regime. I like her, too.

But here is the interesting part: at the end of the day, after the others had gone home and the sister-in-law lingered, the conversation got around to current quality of life. The price of groceries, etc. And my sister-in-law expressed great concern about how bad things are... "Why?" she would ask, "why are these food prices so high? What's going on!?" And so on, about gas prices, healthcare, etc. She's a nurse, by the way, and says the hospital she works for is losing money, etc. (and you know how much they charge).

It was really sad. I should have felt vindicated; that here was a "loyal Bushie" who is now reaping the bitter harvest of her support for the republican administration and it's eight years of insane and destructive policies, which have affected many different aspects of her life. I tried to explain to her that the food is expensive because the fuel used to produce it and transport it is so expensive, among other things. I tried to explain that a single payer healthcare system would be an improvement over the profit-first exploitation-medicince practiced in this country. I tried to explain that the "happiness level" in countries where people pay taxes to receive basic needs in return, such as healthcare and education, is higher than it is in America, where the corporate plutocracy is striving to revert to a Dickensian industrial age where the "middle class" no longer exists.

I explained my philosophy that the whole purpose of forming societies is so that the group can contribute to the common good; so that basic needs can be met by all. These include clean water, healthcare, and education. Those three things should be available, for free, to all, paid for by fair taxation.

To my surprise, she enthusiastically agreed. This Bush supporting, war supporting, anti-choice, fundamentalist, agreed with a philosophy of full-blown progressive liberalism. Of course, she didn't realize that's what she was agreeing to - if she did, it would be too much of a shock for her (and I mean that literally, not just as a figure of speech).

I imagine the conversation we had has been going on all over the country. Bush/Cheney supporters are suddenly confronted with the fruits of their actions. Whether they were innocent victims, "values voters" who were duped by the rhetoric, or foxophiles who knew what they were doing, some of them may now be realizing that their actions just may have been the cause of immense difficulty for millions of people all over the world (not to mention the agonizing death and maiming of so many others).

I know one, at least, who is shocked by the price-per-pound of bananas... one who may realize, too little too late, that she helped set the price herself.

Wow... constantly amazed, again.

2008-04-10T21:19:00.000-07:00

Yes, amazingly, Randi Rhodes is outta there at Air America radio. And good for her, I say. The state of progressive radio in this country is pretty anemic, and in the Sacramento CA area, the capitol city of the so-called leftest state in the west, it is absolutely non-existant. Really - anyone who can find a lefty radio station around there, please let me know. And Air America, once the great hope of progressive radio, has done more harm than good to our cause.

Not too long ago, they booted one of my heroes, Mike Malloy. Why? Who knows. Maybe they have a death wish, or maybe they are rightwing wolves in sheeps clothing. Either way, the decision sucked. They were on thin ice, damnit.

Then, recently, they suspended Randi Rhodes for calling Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro "fucking whores" at a live gig that, as far as I know, was not an Air America event. Air America suspended her - so much for free fucking speech. It's okay for Dick Cheney to tell a senator to "go fuck himself" on the floor of the senate, but it's not okay for Randi Rhodes to swear at a live gig. Ooo, swearing... how fucking sinful. What would Air America do if a stand up comic like Lenny Bruce or George Carlin was guesting on one of their shows? Censor them?

Well, she definitely has the last laugh now! She landed at the same radio home that landed Mike Malloy! Woo Hoo! She's now at Nova M radio, who run KPHX 1480 in Phoenix, of all places. I say that because as some know, I am from AZ and lived in Phoenix, including the early/mid 80's when talk radio as we know it was in its infancy and growing into the monster it would soon become. Talk radio in Phoenix started out with a healthy mix of right & left opinion, enthusiastic but not as hateful as it is now. Soon, however, Phoenix followed the national trend and became overwhelmed by rightwing radio. But now... Wow!

You could have knocked me over with a feather when I realized that Phoenix has become home to some badass progressive talk radio, far more than Sacramento has to offer. Is that sad or what!? Geez! And as icing on the cake, they also have Stephanie Miller and Rachel Maddow, more of my favorites... I swear, I am not a paid endorser. But this is a dream team for me.

Anyway, I am hoping Randi and Mike Malloy and all are met with huge sucess in the southwest. Rock on, truthseekers.

Shopping Day, Part 2

2008-04-07T23:02:00.000-07:00

Okay, so after we're done grocery shopping, coming out of the store, there's a guy with a little table there with stacks of forms in clipboards.

"Sign a petition?" he asks.

"What is it for?" we reply.

He had several petitions for people to sign, and briefly explained each one. They were related to various local issues - redistricting, methamphetamine-related crime, etc. But one of them was to enact a law to define marriage as being only between a man and a woman. Yawn. We said what Amy Winehouse said when they tried to make her go to rehab.

Now, as progressive bloggers, we see this tired old chestnut dredged up over and over again. And each time, I ask myself, what are conservatives afraid of? And they are afraid. I mean, whenever they address the subject of 'gay marriage' they always use the language of fear: the "Defense of Marriage Act," and so on, always constructing their rhetoric and catchphrases in the language of defense in the face of imminent danger. They don't just proclaim a preference for heterosexual marriage, they proclaim it is under attack and threatened with extinction.

My suspicion is that they are not afraid, but they are aware that fear is the best tool to motivate the public, and so they use it to achieve their ends. But as for the people who are so concerned about gay marriage that they are willing to go to great expense to try to eradicate it, are more likely to be motivated by a reaction to their own repressed sexual identity issues. So, these reactionaries feel that if gay marriage gains acceptance, they will not be able to resist the feelings they labor so hard to suppress. It's their own marriages they're worried about, not ours.

Ironically, one of the reasons they cite as justification for their cause is their belief that the "homosexual lifestyle" involves a lot of promiscuity. Their solution to that is to enact legislation designed to prevent gays from forming monogomous relationships. So, they promote monogamy by denying people the right to be monogomous. Brilliant.

I think that any mentally competant adult who is legally able to enter into a contract agreement has the same right to enter into a civil marriage contract. If they want to hold different values for religious marriage, that's fine. If their church won't recognize their marriage, that's a separate matter from the legal contract that is civil marriage, which is the right of every consenting adult couple, despite the righty-tighties' rhetorical fear-mongering.

Still, as I have in past posts and other blogs' comment sections, I ask the same longstanding question and challenge any right-winger to answer: What are they afraid of? Why do they feel threatened? From what does heterosexual marriage need to be "defended"?

Shopping Day, Part 1

2008-04-06T14:45:00.001-07:00

Well, Sunday was grocery shopping day for my wife and I, so why not share the mundanities of that activity in what was once a highly-charged political blog? After all, politics seems to have "trickled down" to the grocery store lately, for many of us. So, to begin, here is a nice little shopping list from an article at Organic Consumers dot org:

QUICK FACTS OF THE WEEK: A NATION BUILT ON UNSUSTAINABILITY - FUEL, FOOD, AND DEBT

With trucking diesel fuel prices now over $4 per gallon in many locations, food prices are reaching an all time high, since the average grocery store item has traveled 1500-3500 miles.

Over the past year, alone, consumers have been forced to pay significantly more for staples like eggs (25 percent), milk (17 percent), cheese (15 percent), bread (12 percent), and rice (13 percent). This is partially due to increased costs of transportation and partially due to massive amounts of cropland being converted to biofuel production. As a result, consumers are paying more for their food and paying $15 billion in increased taxes per year for biofuel subsidies.

Fuel prices have nearly doubled the expenses of commuters over the last year. Recent polls show a strong majority of U.S. citizens are in favor of allocating a larger portion of the federal budget for mass transportation.

In contrast, the amount of federal money earmarked for mass transit projects (example: rail and bus) has been reduced by nearly 70% since the Bush Administration took over in 2001.

A record number of consumers are using credit cards to pay for increased fuel costs. Although the recession has negatively impacted employment, the New York Times reports one of the few booming occupations in the current job market is as a Debt Collector.

Since 2001, the top five oil companies have increased their annual profits by an average of 500%.

Thank goodness I have a liberal supply of stored fat to get me through the lean times. Between that and not being able to afford gas, I'll soon be a lean, mean, coupon-clipping machine.

Codependent Quoterama

2008-03-29T18:15:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month on my easter post I noted the following quotes:

George Washington:
"The United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian doctrine."

Adolph Hitler:
"The national government... will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality.”

Well, I found a couple of others that are as heartwarming:

George W. Bush:
"I believe that God wants me to be president."

Adolph Hitler (again):
"I would like to thank Providence and the Almighty for choosing me of all people to be allowed to wage this battle for Germany."

Maybe we can find some codependent quotes for Cheney/Stalin!

Finally, my 2 cents on the Obama church thing.

2008-03-23T19:40:00.000-07:00

I'm late jumping on this bandwagon, but since it is still simmering, I just thought I would comment on this story-that-should-be-a-non-story about Obama and his church minister's provocative remarks.

First, an anology. I have a longtime friend who is also a blogger, and often reads this blog (howdy, dude!). He and I have known each other for many years. And, in that time, we have had many spirited debates about all kinds of subjects including politics, society, and culture. Each of us has made statements that the other disagreed with wholeheartedly. Sometimes those discussions were pretty dynamic. But in the end, we each were able to recognize that specific opinions are only fragments of the whole psychology, and our appreciation of the whole person superceded any problems we had with one opinion. And that, I think, would be the situation between Obama and this minister. Association does not mean absolute adherence to identical opinions. It just means you have a friend and you don't have to agree with every single word they utter.

Besides, there's really one hell of a double standard in the media attention here. For example, as described in this article:

Rudy Giuliani's priest has been accused in grand jury proceedings of molesting several children and covering up the molestation of others. Giuliani would not disavow him on the campaign trail and still works with him.

Mitt Romney was part of a church that did not view black Americans as equals and actively discriminated against them. He stayed with that church all the way into his early thirties, until they were finally forced to change their policies to come into compliance with civil rights legislation. Romney never disavowed his church back then or now. He said he was proud of the faith of his fathers.

Jerry Falwell said America had 9/11 coming because we tolerated gays, feminists and liberals. It was our fault. Our chickens had come home to roost, if you will. John McCain proudly received his support and even spoke at his university's commencement.

Reverend John Hagee has called the Catholic Church the "Great Whore." He has said that the Anti-Christ will rise out of the European Union (of course, the Anti-Christ will also be Jewish). He has said all Muslims are trained to kill and will be part of the devil's army when Armageddon comes (which he hopes is soon). John McCain continues to say he is proud of Reverend Hagee's endorsement.

Reverend Rod Parsley believes America was founded to destroy Islam. Since this is such an outlandish claim, I have to add for the record, that he is not kidding. Reverend Parsley says Islam is an "anti-Christ religion" brought down from a "demon spirit." Of course, we are in a war against all Muslims, including presumably Muslim-Americans. Buts since Parsley believes this is a Christian nation and that it should be run as a theocracy, he is not very concerned what Muslim-Americans think. John McCain says Reverend Rod Parsley is his "spiritual guide."

If a candidate's support of, or from, volatile religious leaders with big mouths and small brains is a reason to condemn, then let's be fair, shall we?

Better yet, just get religion the hell out of government.

I think religion sucks, and I approved this message.

Happy Oestre, Or, My Employer Wants Me To Be Wiccan!?

2008-03-20T22:46:00.000-07:00

Here is my fourth annual reprint of tidbits from my original constantly amazing easter post. This one goes out in honor of my place of employment, who, in an apparent attempt to be inclusive and politically correct, sent out a flyer to inform us of a celebration of the "spring equanox [sic]". More on the irony of that below. For now: Happy Oestre, Pagans!

Easter's Pagan Origins

Many, perhaps most, Pagan religions in the Mediterranean area had a major seasonal day of religious celebration at or following the Spring Equinox. Cybele, the Phrygian fertility goddess, had a fictional consort who was believed to have been born via a virgin birth. He was Attis, who was believed to have died and been resurrected each year during the period March 22 to 25. "About 200 B.C. mystery cults began to appear in Rome just as they had earlier in Greece. Most notable was the Cybele cult centered on Vatican hill...Associated with the Cybele cult was that of her lover, Attis (the older Tammuz, Osiris, Dionysus, or Orpheus under a new name). He was a god of ever-reviving vegetation. Born of a virgin, he died and was reborn annually. The festival began as a day of blood on Black Friday and culminated after three days in a day of rejoicing over the resurrection."

Wherever Christian worship of Jesus and Pagan worship of Attis were active in the same geographical area in ancient times, Christians "used to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus on the same date; and pagans and Christians used to quarrel bitterly about which of their gods was the true prototype and which the imitation."

Many religious historians believe that the death and resurrection legends were first associated with Attis, many centuries before the birth of Jesus. They were simply grafted onto stories of Jesus' life in order to make Christian theology more acceptable to Pagans. Others suggest that many of the events in Jesus' life that were recorded in the gospels were lifted from the life of Krishna, the second person of the Hindu Trinity. Ancient Christians had an alternative explanation; they claimed that Satan had created counterfeit deities in advance of the coming of Christ in order to confuse humanity. Modern-day Christians generally regard the Attis legend as being a Pagan myth of little value. They regard Jesus' death and resurrection account as being true, and unrelated to the earlier tradition.

Wiccans and other modern-day Neopagans continue to celebrate the Spring Equinox as one of their 8 yearly Sabbats (holy days of celebration). Near the Mediterranean, this is a time of sprouting of the summer's crop; farther north, it is the time for seeding. Their rituals at the Spring Equinox are related primarily to the fertility of the crops and to the balance of the day and night times. Where Wiccans can safely celebrate the Sabbat out of doors without threat of religious persecution, they often incorporate a bonfire into their rituals, jumping over the dying embers is believed to assure fertility of people and crops.

Oh, cool! This means that my employer is encouraging us to celebrate one of the 8 Wiccan Sabbats! Ha ha ha!

More about Easter

In Norway, in addition to skiing in the mountains and painting eggs for decorating, it is tradition to solve murders at Easter. All the major television channels show crime and detective stories (such as Poirot), magazines print stories where the readers can try to figure out who did it, and many new books are published. Even the milk cartons change to have murder stories on their sides. Another tradition is Yahtzee games.

In the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia, a tradition of whipping is carried out on Easter Monday. In the morning, males whip females with a special handmade whip... [consisting] of eight, twelve or even twenty-four withies (willow rods) and is usually from half a meter to two meters long and decorated with coloured ribbons at the end. It must be mentioned that while whipping can be painful, the purpose is not to cause suffering. Rather, the purpose is for males to exhibit their attraction to females; unvisited females can even feel offended. The whipped female gives a coloured egg to the male as a sign of her thanks and forgiveness. A legend says that females should be whipped in order to keep their health and fertility during whole next year. In some regions the females can get revenge in the afternoon when they can pour a bucket of cold water on any male.

George Washington:
"The United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian doctrine."

Adolph Hitler:
"The national government... will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality.”

So, happy easter, everyone... another ancient pagan ritual celebrating the natural order of things. Seasons change. New life appears, and old things pass away. Constantly Amazing, isn't it?

Remember When I Used to Blog about News Stuff?

2008-03-16T23:01:00.001-07:00

Plan To Spray Toxic Biological Chemicals Over San Francisco Announced

"the US Government is planning to poison more than two million people in California"

And people call me a pessimist. Sure, the glass is half-full... of poison!

A Scandal... Maybe.

2008-03-15T00:23:00.000-07:00

Okay, truthseekers, I am hoping this one is not true. Truth be told, it is based on hearsay. I don't want to slander anyone, but if the accusations are true, then a worldwide charity organization may be guilty of extortion and fraud. If it turns out that I am wrong, and this story is untrue, then I will gladly retract this.

The basic gist of it is, I've heard that the local Salvation Army homeless shelter is requiring homeless people who want to stay there to apply for food stamps, whereupon they must surrender 80% of those food stamps to the Salvation Army! And, they're also directing those homeless persons to apply for a small amount of cash assistance that is available to them for personal needs, so they can also hand over 30% of that assistance to the Salvation Army!

If this is true, it is infuriating. Besides the fact that the Salvation Army is a religious organization and is tax-exempt, and probably receives considerable tax breaks, federal grants, and other such perks thanks to the Bush/Cheney "faith based" free-for-all, how dare they exploit homeless people by using them as a tool by which they can suck money from taxpayers and funnel it into their proselytizing coffers under false pretenses. Besides, public assistance benefits are required to be used in specific ways. They are most definitely not intended to be bartered as rent, or worse yet, extorted by some christian authority figures who strong-arm the vulnerable homeless and shake them down for their public assistance like some schoolyard punk bullying a smaller and weaker kid out of their lunch money. It is also worth mentioning that I live in a small, economically disadvantged community where homeless peoples' options for finding shelter are limited.

I intend to follow-up on this until I know what is really going on. If the Salvation Army is doing this, it cannot be allowed to continue. It's unethical, and most likely illegal.

Again, I am operating on verbal hearsay, and my information has not yet been confirmed. Anyone reading this, who is of a mind to get in on the ground floor of a scandal that has not yet appeared in the media, might want to check out their local Salvation Army homeless shelter and see if this may be happening in their community.

Blog on, truthseekers, and power to the people.

There's Always Room for Another Conspiracy Theory

2008-03-04T22:24:00.000-08:00

Okay, who has been reading my blog long enough to remember be saying (a lot) that Hillary is the repuke's fave pick as candidate for president '08? Anyone? (crickets chirping in background, but thanks to those five of you who do remember).

First of all, we have Rush Limbaugh imploring his listeners to cross over and vote for Hillary Clinton in the Texas Democratic Primary. Next, we have news reports that republicans are, in fact, doing just that: hordes of GOP dittohead zombies are voting in the democratic primary, which is open to anyone. And do you think they are simply disaffected conservatives who want "change"? Puh-leeze. They are the same repuke bastards who have turned their party into a cesspool of corruption, perversion, hypocrisy, and treason, and they are scared shitless that they might further lose their grip on power.

They know they can't beat Obama, and they shudder at the thought that regardless of whatever policies he decides to implement, his election symbolically represents wholesale rejection of fascist neocon republican values.

Republicans also know that they can never win an honest election - they had to cheat in order to "win" in 2000 and 2004. So, true to form, they once again must resort to dishonest trickery to secure the office of president. This is only a gnat's piss away from the type of criminal activity that Watergate was all about, by the way. Now, that's what I call true conservatism: bringing back the crime-culture that defined their party, and associated it forever with corruption (there's a reason why every political scandal has the "-gate" suffix).

If the repukes succeed in mucking up the election by deliberately sabotaging the electoral process (which has been their tactic for at least the last two presidential elections), there should be hell to pay. Seriously. Even though the press and the public will lie probably down and take it... how long must we tolerate this behavior?

Link Project (Phase One) complete, or, More About Me!

2008-02-25T23:37:00.000-08:00

Okay, I have finally (after !@#$ months) sorted through my list of links. That's been on my to-do list for a long time, and yes, I evidentally like lists. But if you think that's the end of it, think again: I have a bunch of saved links to add now, not to mention all the great ones I find at other blogs like politickybitch or Azgoddess's "now for something completely different" links. Damn, this blogging stuff is a lot of work!

Okay, so...

2008-02-17T02:03:00.000-08:00

...I've finshed some of the updates on the blog. I still have to revise my whole blog roll, because some of them are probably dead links by now, and I've also spotted a few embarrassing typos. I've been adding them since November 2004. It seems like an eternity sometimes... I began all this as a reaction to the awful Bush presidency, and now that presidency is winding to a close, and it feels as if we have been through political hell. Or, a hell of a political ride, at least.

I was a contributor to three different blogs at one point. One is defunct, one carries on, and mine sometimes feels, well... I mean, look at some of those links. 9/11 stuff, Bush stuff. Less and less relevant as time goes by, which is sad to say, because the events of the Bush administration represent some of the most significant crimes against this country, and the world, and they are fast slipping from public memory. Treason in the face of apathy and acceptance equals success for the plutocratic bastards of the neocon Bush/Cheney regime.

But I digress. As I think about blogging; the act of blogging, that is, one thing really stands out to me. That is the impact it has had on the establishment and the way some politicians have demonstrated such a fear of bloggers. Right-wingers in particular (well, it's true) tend to condemn bloggers with such enthusiasm that it is almost funny to watch, if it weren't so sad (how many times have I had to type that phrase over the last four years?). It's so painfully obvious how afraid the rightwing is of "common people" having such a powerful voice in current affairs. Even though they gain power by pandering to the masses, they never reliquish their power to those masses - they use them and toss them aside, and maintain their deathgrip on all of us who exist only to be used by them in their ongoing quest for more money and power.

But when blogging came along - Bam! All of a sudden, the rest of us had a voice that the establishment had not yet learned how to supress. And they still haven't, although they are learning, and they ultimately will shut us up one way or another. Until that time, we will have made a hell of a mark. Like the underground countercultures that have come before, and changed the world, bloggers have dealt a blow to the powermongers that was really felt. Ha. I'm glad. For a while, at least, we can say we had a positive effect on the world.

Because we can't win, you know? We can't. Progressive movements change the direction of society for a few miles on the highway of history, but ultimately the powerbroker class wins and crushes us until the next uprising. America itself is a good example. It began as a progressive revolutionary rebellion against the established ruling class, but soon corruption reared its ugly head and became an intrinsic part of American government, and once again the same old rich and powerful ruling class were in control. See, progressives are usually content to fix a hole in a boat, relax and sail on in the knowledge that the problem was a one-off and all is well from here on out. Optimism. The power-elite estabishment, on the other hand, conservatives will keep punching holes in that boat until they sink it, no matter how many holes the progessives fix, the conservatives will not rest until the boat has sunk. As they boasted in 2004, they are "resolute." We won't have to worry about what to do with our newly-won democracy and benevolent leadership anytime soon, I'll bet.

This is a rambling and depressing post, isn't it? At least there is a light at the end of the tunnel. There is minor regime change coming along, so that's something. I'm looking forward to seeng who corporate America selects to "lead" the country. In the meantime, I'll dream of a planet where domocratic leaders are elected through direct elections by a popular vote with verifyable results and runoff elections to ensure majority rule. In other words, more crazy rambling.

It's Darwin Day!

2008-02-12T06:43:00.000-08:00

February 12 is Darwin Day!

Woo hoo! Rock on, those of you who eschew the literal interpretation of Genesis! Rock on, all you organisms in the ecosystem! Let's all hope we can evolve a little further this year. I've done my part, by providing a home for a six-toed cat. Surely, he represents the future.

Elect-ile Dysfunction

2008-02-03T01:00:00.000-08:00

All my voting life, I have been very dissatisfied with the American process presidential elections. The electoral college is not only obsolete and ineffective, but the electors are not required to vote according to the will of the people, and occasionally they don't. The electoral college has it's defenders (or apologists), but the bottom line is that it was designed to oppose democratic elections and replace the results with election by a select elite. I don't know them and I don't trust them.

It is common knowledge that Gore won the popular vote in 2000 by approximately half a million votes. As far as democracy is concerned, he was elected president in 2000. In my opinion, that means Bush was not elected president, and if he wasn't president in 2000, he could not be "re-elected" in 2004, so he has been a phony pretender to the office for his entire administration. Imagine how much better off the world would be if the voter's actual votes had been respected, and the president had been elected by the citizens.

All this defines me as a tin-foil-hat-wearing-far-left-radical-conspiracy-theorist-blah-blah-etc in the eyes of the right, and even in the eyes of the mainstream, most of whom do not seem to give a monkey's buttcheek whether their most valuable right as citizens is just a cheap facade. They are so placated by the propaganda that is foisted upon them from cradle to grave, so that most of what they think they know is actually lies, that they just don't care. In our consumerist/celebrityist culture, they are more concerned with having stuff and being entertained that by the things that really matter (yes, I am inclined to be done with relative values: I say there are things that matter more than bigscreen TVs and SUVs and Britney Spears).

In 2004, I thought that the horror of the 2000 election fiasco would shock voters to demand changes to the electoral process: Direct elections with verifiable results. Is that so much to ask from the nation that defines itself as the world leader in democracy and technology? But, no change happened, and I am beginning to believe won't anytime soon. Those of us who question the status quo are laughed at and derided.

Meanwhile, in the primaries, by the time they come to my state (CA), half the choices have decided to quit and deprive us of the choice to vote for them. So a handful of states (swayed by corporate-controlled media selectivity) who are lucky enough to have earlier primaries get to choose who the rest of us are offered to vote for in the primaries... we don't even get to vote for our choice among the declared candidates! That is taken away from us even at this early stage! Do you want to vote for Edwards, or Kucinich? Tough luck, California, South Carolina or the pop media or whoever makes the call says that we are not allowed to have the same choices they had.

Some democracy. It's totally unfair and rigged from day one. I am completey disillusioned (again). My vote means nothing, and never has. And don't get me started about electronic election fraud and the inevitable republican victory it portends (unless the republicans are following their pattern of ruining the country and then leaving office for a term or two so a democrat can repair the damage and take the blame, thus paving the way for the next eight year plutocratic orgy).

I am back to where I was before 2004: part of a radical minority who will never be represented in American government; who must select candidates and positions based on other people's values; who is completly aware that he has no representation and no voice that matters; who's smartest option seems to be to simply try to make a life in a nation built of lies and deceit and treachery; where sharing democracy with the world means bringing death from the skies and the stormtrooopers who facilitate that carnage are regarded as heroes even by those who claim to oppose the never-ending war and invasion and occupation to lay seige to other countries' resources; where all power is transfered to the Halliban plutocracy and the christian-fundamentalist theocracy; where waging war for oil is more important that education and healthcare and the president is applauded for saying so.

Yeah, I'll vote. I'll participate in this broken corrupt system to save myself from having to listen to others tell me that if I don't vote, I have no right to complain. That's the rub that Americans always present us dissenters with, isn't it? Either vote for something against which you are morally and philisohically opposed, or else your fundamental right to freedom of speech doesn't exist. I'm not allowed to express my opinion unless I march in lockstep with the machinery of the corporate machine that is America.

Yeah, I'll vote. May the best tool win.

bonus vid :)

The best best best election coverage site I know of.

2008-01-30T21:28:00.000-08:00

www.electoral-vote.com is a plain-looking, but totally great, site devoted to tracking election results. I first discovered it when I started blogging before the 2004 election. It was the only source that seemed to accurately show what was really going on, and explained things pretty well also. Now, as I am not the most worldly source of info in the blogosphere, I can't guarantee that there isn't something better around the corner. But I recommended watching www.electoral-vote.com to keep track of the unfathomable chaos that serves as our electoral process.

Same Old More of the Same

2008-01-29T20:47:00.000-08:00

Here's a quick thought...

2008-01-28T19:42:00.000-08:00

Here's a quick thought that I heard on my morning drive time radio (Stephanie Miller show): "Attorney General John Edwards."

Not bad, eh? Strange, after those words were uttered, the sun came out and the rain stopped and the birds began hopping around...

I like to see him start prosecuting you-know-who, you know?

Hoo.

Corporate Media Fascism Rules the Day

2008-01-15T22:03:00.000-08:00

So dig it, truthseekers:

MSNBC prepares to broadcast a "debate" (they're not debates in the true sense of the word, just public appearances). They decide, of course, to exclude Dennis Kucinich (the candidate who best represents progrssive values and enjoys huge popular support, therefore scaring the shit out of America's powermongers). Exclude him! I mean, they actually changed the rules so he could be disinvited. Lovely.

So, insted of a democracy where we get to choose between candidates who are running for office, we get whatever triangulating centrist corporate shill the news media decide to whore out for mass consumption.

And we all know that most people in this country don't have the brains to think past American Idol and will happily vote for whoever is most successfully marketed to them. No matter how much they complain, they (we) will receive more of the same, wrapped in a new package.

It's all just sales schtick. The new brainwashing catchphrase on all sides is "change", repeated enough to make people think that's what is being offered, when the truth is they are receiving the very same plutocratic corporatist gruel they are given every election. The only change they offer is the fact that the next president is much more likely to be able to actually speak english in a coherent fashion like a sober adult, instead the absurd, unintelligible gibberish we have been subject to for the last eight years. Yes, Bush has lowered our expectations to the point where we will accept a villian just as rotten as him, if only they can present themselves as if they are at a job interview instead of an audition as a babbling, snickering hillbilly lunatic in a Tarantino film. But I digress.

The subject at had is the slow painful death of American democracy. If I counted the times I have read and/or heard progressives state who they would like to elect for president, I would swear that 90% of them have said they liek Kucinich best. But the corporate media (bizarrely characterized by the "right" as the "liberal media") would have you think that Kucinch does not even exist.

We are truly fucked, truthseekers, when our so-called "democracy" is just another poorly produced "reality" show where the candidates we have to choose between for President of the United States are chosen for us by the corporate media, who not only choose who we should choose, but more importantly, decide who we are not allowed to choose.

Even progressives have been saying for months that the best candidates, their favorite candidates, who they believe would best lead the country, have no chance of winning. No chance of even being considered. Everyone resigns themselves to the lesser of evils.

And that's not even factoring in the electronic vote manipulation the right will employ to steal votes, or the dirty tricks they'll employ right before the election (like suddenly declaring victory and bringing the troops home or whatever).

Yes, we are screwed, and I feel like the election is already over and the same old power elite has won again as they always do and they always will. We are truly on our own, those of us who want anything more than plutocratic/theocratic/fascist corporatocracy.

PS: Remember what Eisenhower said:

2008-01-05T00:00:00.000-08:00

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

Dwight Eisenhower, November 8, 1954

I talk about the candidates and choose the ones I loves and hates

2008-01-04T20:54:00.000-08:00

Okay, now that I am blogging again, I am way overdue to offer my sage wisdom regarding the presidential race of 2008. How can I best describe the excitement of the 2008 American presidential election?

Pitiful comes to mind. Pathetic. Appalling. Disappointing, disheartening, discouraging. I’m sure there are more adjectives than we have room for here.

The Big Two parties continue to fail us.

The republican party presents us with liars, hypocrites, “flip-floppers”, religious fundamentalist zealots… at least they’re consistent with previous offerings.

The democratic party has offered us enablers, appeasers, facilitators, rhetorical hypocrites, and more of the same, except for Dennis Kucinich, who is a shining beacon of hope and is, therefore, regarded as unelectable. Integrity is poison to American government.

Here are my thoughts about the candidates (most of them, not all of them), starting with the democrats, for whom I will be forced to vote because we are stuck with the @#$%^&* two-party system again when I would far rather vote for the Green Party.

Besides which, the cadidates we have to choose are selected by the media before we ever get near them. There is no good reason why the media darlings should get virtually all the press attention, while the best candidates, in my opinion, are ignored by the media as if diseased, until they are finally driven from the race. More on that later.

First, the Democrats.

Hillary Clinton:

She was the front runner for a long time (and may be again) because the republicans who control everything (that is, society's corporate puppetmasters) want her to be. I say again, and insist this is true: Hillary is the republican’s chosen candidate. She has been crafted and nurtured by the right into their desired adversary over the last decade, and she represents a total win-win situation for the republicans: If she wins, they get a president who has been a loyal adherent to Bush policy, and yet will manage to improve America’s reputation abroad by virtue of her connection to her well-regarded husband. If she loses, which they expect her to do anyway, they get their own body in there. Either way, a vote for Hillary is a vote for the republican party.

Barrack Obama:

Says he would have voted against war in Iraq, which we can never really know because he wasn’t there. And he’s a little too hawkish about Iran for my taste. I like Michael Moore’s description:

“Barack Obama is a good and inspiring man... But who is he... other than a guy who gives a great speech? How much do any of us really know about him? I know he was against the war. How do I know that? He gave a speech before the war started. But since he joined the Senate, he has voted for the funds for the war, while at the same time saying we should get out. He says he's for the little guy, but then he votes for a corporate-backed bill to make it harder for the little guy to file a class action suit when his kid swallows lead paint from a Chinese-made toy. In fact, Obama doesn't think Wall Street is a bad place. He wants the insurance companies to help us develop a new health care plan -- the same companies who have created the mess in the first place. He's such a feel-good kinda guy, I get the sense that, if elected, the Republicans will eat him for breakfast. He won't even have time to make a good speech about it.”

Don't get me wrong, I like Obama. I worry that he might be swallowed up by the corruption of the vocation, but I would take the risk and vote for him if he was the democratic candidate for president.

John Edwards:

Of the three front runners, he’s the one I like best. Moore writes about him, too:

“…you find a man who is out to take on the wealthy and powerful who have made life so miserable for so many. A candidate who says things like this: "I absolutely believe to my soul that this corporate greed and corporate power has an ironclad hold on our democracy." Whoa. We haven't heard anyone talk like that in a while, at least not anyone who is near the top of the polls… he has nowhere near the stash of cash the other two have. He won't take the big checks from the corporate PACs, and he is alone among the top three candidates in agreeing to limit his spending and be publicly funded. He has said, point-blank, that he's going after the drug companies and the oil companies and anyone else who is messing with the American worker. The media clearly find him to be a threat, probably because he will go after their monopolistic power, too. This is Roosevelt/Truman kind of talk. That's why it's resonating with people in Iowa, even though he doesn't get the attention Obama and Hillary get.

And he voted for the war. But unlike Senator Clinton, he has stated quite forcefully that he was wrong. And he has remorse…He went further than Clinton and Obama and said he'd have all the troops home in less than a year.

Edwards is the only one of the three front-runners who has a universal health care plan that will lead to the single-payer kind all other civilized countries have… he is the only one who has correctly pointed out that the health insurance companies are the enemy and should not have a seat at the table.

Then, as the theme from Gilligan's Island puts it, are "all the rest" (I'm only touching on a few of them):

Richardson: Excellent resume, made lots of sense, has good experience in foreign policy, I liked him a lot, but then he made a stupid statement about homosexuality in a debate and it was downhill from there. That, combined with the lack of media attention, seemed to remove him from the race.

Biden: Also made a lot more sense in debates than, say, Hillary Clinton, but was also ignored. He was possibly the best qualified candidate the democrats had to offer. Because of that, he was given the silent treatment, too.

Kucinich: Now, then. I want to state loud and clear that Dennis Kucinich is my top pick of all the candidates of any party (or independent). He represents the values of progressives right down the line. On every issue: war, health care, environment, economy, etcetera, Dennis Kucinich is absolutely the ultimate top-flight a-number-one best-choice candidate. And if that's not enough, dig this: He is consistently chosen in polls by many other progressives as their favorite, too. I am truly shocked by how often I read other progressive writers' opinions that they, too, like Kucinich best. Nationwide polls choose Kucinich as the number-one favorite. In fact, I read more often that he is the chosen favorite candidate by progressives than any other, and I mean any other, including the media front-runners. Nevertheless, Kucinich is thoroghly ignored by the media, effectively turning him into a non-entity and strangling his campaign. Why? Because he is exactly what we want, that's why, and the corporate pigs who contral everything, left and right, are terrified of us having so much power as to elect a president who represents the majority of progressives. They're afraid of him, they're afraid of us, and I am sick of trying to take that as a compliment. Besides, they are stealing another election by selecting candidates that they want us to choose, instead of us choosing who we want. How long must we be subject to this?

Now, the Republicans. Short work, this. I mean, in general, it is still true that the republican party is the party of hypocrites, liars, perverts, and the only thing you can count on with any of them is that whatever they tell you, you can be sure the opposite is true.

Huckabee: Fundamentalist crackpot, bible-literalist, wants to convert the whole country to his religion, pitifully uninformed, is a great schmoozer but so is every asshole salesman I've ever known. Make that bible salesman in his case.

Romney: Let me just say this up front so I can be accused of predjudice: I have been intimately involved with the Morman church in my lifetime. Specifically, I was "converted" when I was 10 by a stepfather into it and was thus involved until I was in my late teens. I hated it, but these are not just sour grapes. See, I believe that in order to support a particular religion, one must accept that religion's dogma - all of it, including the metaphysical parts like creation, life after death, the definition of "God" and other important members of the pantheon, etc. If you don't accept those things, then you don't believe in the most important aspects of that religion and are thus a disbeliever, affiliated in name only. Fast forward to Mitt Romney. I happen to know some things about mormonism that make me despise it as the insidious cult that it is, founded by a liar and con man. I won't go into them here (no room, no time), but I say for the record that anyone who is involved in mormonism is either ignorant of these things or agrees with them. I don't want someone who is that ignorant in charge of the country. And I certainly don't want anyone who actually believes in the bullshit that is mormonism to be in charge of anything connected with my life. No apologies. Mormonism is not a religion that deserves tolerant respect, it is a con that hurts people and would be prosecuted as a crime if it didn't cloak itself in a facade of false "Christianty" so that society is afraid to touch it. Mitt Romney is part of all that.

Giuliani: At the republican national convention of the 2004 election, he said that his first thought when he saw the towers fall was, "Thank God George Bush is president." That statement alone, whether true or not, is enough to disqualify him as a candidate by virtue of his thorough disconnection with popular opinion. Added to that is the fact that he is sleazy (moved his mistress into the governor's mansion while he was still married), corrupt (Bernie Kerrick?), and cannot be trusted. He was a joke up until 9/11, at which time he exploited tragedy for personal gain (Bushism in a nutshell). He would sell us all out to achieve his personal glory.

McCain: I am from McCain's state, Arizona. I have followed his career since he came on the scene in the 80's. His only qualification at that time was that he was a prisoner of war. Everyone who voted for him then, who effectively began his political career, stated up front that they voted for him because he was a POW. No regard whatsoever for his policy positions, whatever they were. Since then, he has proven himself to be a political whore who will flip-flop his ass off and sell his soul to toe the party line. He was also in the pocket of savings-and-loan-scandal figure Charles Keating. He's likeable but he is bad news.

Fred Thompson: A lobbyist/lawyer!? How wonderfully republican. How perfect, if he hadn't turned out to be the scary uncle candidate.

The rest of the republicans: if they've held office during the last eight years, they are guilty of being part of the legion of vial bastards who believe America should become the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany all rolled up in one. To hell with them all.

So there we are. What is the result of my analysis? It is this:

1. Believe in the priciples of Dennis Kucinich,

2. If we are forced to choose between Clinton, Obama, and Edwards, choose Edwards,

3. Expect the republican corporate fascist plutocrats to steal the 2008 election using the same methods that worked for them in 2000 & 2004.

I'm Back!

2007-12-24T11:54:00.000-08:00

I’m back! Yeah, I know, I have been gone before, but … wow. It seems like I’ve been gone for months. And apparently, I have.

It’s been a really busy summer-fall-winter. First of all, my wife and I bought our first house, which was a long process that kind of took up a lot of my time and energy. Between that and the move and work and whatever, my mental processes were sapped, and my body is not designed for too many more moves.

Besides that, I have been so overwhelmed by the sheer volume of horrible current events that I have a hard time digesting it all, let alone write commentary. I am not talking about simple bad news, where one can shake one’s head and say, “Oh, those darn politicians, they’re such scoundrels, with their earmarks and their good old boy networks and their selling out government to the highest campaign contributor.” We’re used to that old stuff, it’s been going on forever; it’s old hat. I’m talking about how America has become everything that I was taught, growing up, was wrong: We invade and occupy other countries that pose no threat, in order to seize their resources. We kidnap people, hide them away in secret and torture them. We torture people! Or we send them to another country and have them tortured for us! and our leaders are arguing over whether or nor that is okay!? Domestically, civil rights have been demolished. Worker’s rights have been demolished. All power has been returned to the richest of the rich, and taken away from the people whose fathers and mothers fought so hard to win it during the last century. Corporate power rules over all and masses of the faithful are duped by corporate/political con men that wear masks of piety and spew hatred in God’s name. Fascism, plutocracy, theocracy, all combined into the new American Way. Our leaders have learned their lessons at the knee of their masters; the Nazis, the Soviets, and if you dare criticize or dissent, you are branded an enemy of the state by the brainwashed masses whose ideas are formed for them by corporate shills through the right-wing media.

I remember when one of the first actions by the Bush administration, before the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, was to petition the world court and demand that America cannot be held responsible for war crimes. Again I point out, that was at the beginning, before the wars. How could anyone ignore such an action? How could people simply shrug that off and assume the Bush people had the best of intentions by demanding they be immune from prosecution for war crimes!?

I remember not long after that when they worked to eliminate workers’ right to overtime pay. What I do not recall was very much media attention paid to it and even less of a response from the workers themselves. And then there was all the lowering of restrictions on dumping poison into the air and water. The list goes on and on.

And it hasn’t stopped. It’s gotten worse and worse and worse. And the most mortifying reminder of it is the fact that the Democratic party screwed us all over by duping us into electing them to enact change and instead becoming the rubber-stamping enablers of the Republican fascists. I’ve said this in this blog many times before: who is worse, Hitler, or those who did his bidding? I am often inclined to choose the latter.

Depressing? Yes. So much so that I have a hard time maintaining a (generally) political blog. But, I promised myself at the beginning that I would keep forging ahead until this administration is out of office. I am aware that they may declare a national emergency and refuse to leave, but I intend to honor my vow and keep trying to make sense of it all.

So, I offer my happy-holiday wishes to all. I wish the best of luck to us all, as we ride out the eighth year of the most diabolically evil presidential administration in our nation’s history. Good luck.

This Freaks Me Out! [Pictures Newly Uploaded - Hope It Works This Time!]

2007-08-17T16:31:00.001-07:00

For years I have noticed that members of the Bush administration are prone to flashing this particular hand sign when giving speeches or public statements. Now, I am no babe-in-the-woods, and I have been a keen observer of human behavior all my life. I never saw this gesture used so often by a specific group of people until I began noticing its frequent use by the Bush cabal.

It's not a new or complicated hand sign. It is a simple hand gesture, often used to indicate measurement, as in, "I need six #10 bolts about this long," or something like that (I know all the implied penis-size jokes are there too, so we don't have to bore each other with those). I have a theory, though. It will sound like typical "conspiracy theory" stuff, but here it is.

I think the gesture is a hand-sign/secret code used by the neocon "Bushies" to indicate something to specific listeners when they are speaking in a public forum. I believe that when they are speaking, they are not addressing the general public or an interviewer, they are secretly speaking to a target-audience of socioeconomic & political elite, their "base" as Bush called them. The hand-sign is flashed to indicate to those listeners who are "in the know" that the phrase connected with the sign is to be interpreted a particular way, rather than literally. It might mean to use a predetermined code, or to simply use the opposite meaning, or whatever; I do not know the code. But I suspect it exists and that is what they are doing.

Remember, these are a bunch of secret-society frat-boy types, Skull-and-Bones members, etc. They are long accustomed to communicating through elitist signals; it only makes sense that they would employ that tried-and-true method throughout their lives' endeavors. And remember what I said about the gesture being used ordinarily to indicate measurement? At the risk of ridicule, I offer the notion that the use of such a gesture as a secret message could have masonic roots.

In any event, here are a few examples:

I am dead serious. Can anyone tell me what is really going on with this?

A Good Little "Why They Hate Us" Video

2007-08-16T22:45:00.000-07:00

I used to have a link to a site that had a totally great little article called "Why They Hate Us," describing why so many people from other countries (say, Iran or Iraq) hate us (hint: they don't "hate us for our freedom").

Alas, that link is no more. I miss it so, but luckily other similar sites exist to fill the void. Here is one such link:

Infuriating and enlightening at the same time. Consider, for example, the part about 32 seconds into the piece, where it says that since 1991 were had been bombing Iraq on a weekly basis. The Bush administration has such a low opinion of you and me that they think we'll believe their lie that the Iraqis "hate is for our freedom," not for conducting bomb runs against them every week for years.

Whoever believes the right-wing position on world affairs is either an ignorant dupe or an evil bastard.

Probably More Likely to be My Last Rove Post

2007-08-15T21:58:00.001-07:00

One more thing, damnit: I am sick to death of hearing about what a brilliant strategist and a genius Karl Rove was. Can someone please, please, tell me something he did to warrant such a description?

Frequently mentioned is his success in getting George W Bush into political office (I won't say "elected" because that's not how it went down). What is the brilliant strategy in lying and cheating and stealing? Maybe the result is the proof: One might have to be brilliant to get an asshole like Bush into office.

I am anxiously awaiting proof that the morally bankrupt failure Karl Rove is as smart as they all say he is. Personally, I think they are simply repeating that lie because they were ordered to... probably by him.

Maybe My Last Rove Post

2007-08-13T18:38:00.000-07:00

Of course I can’t let the resignation of Carl Rove go by without comment. I have referred to him a lot since I began blogging. So, rather than re-hash old material, I’ll just hit a few highlights.

1. Rove is not the genius he is credited to be. His ideas and methods were not new or innovative. His tools (secrecy, lies, cheating) are as old as the hills. He is simply a cunning backroom schemer whose plans were/are so unethical that they caught his opponents by surprise (that in itself is surprising given the nature of American politics). Even his big claim to fame – perverting the American system of electing our political leaders into a sleazy façade of pandering, corruption, election-rigging and vote-theft – has been done before, by both parties, more often than most of us would care to know. Of course, Rove had the audacity to take it to treasonous levels without remorse, but the important thing here is that his vaunted “genius” did not win the day. Not forever, anyway. Bottom line: not a genius, just so rotten that his peers thought only a genius could get away with that.

2. Rove’s grand vision of a permanent Republican majority fell down around him like a house on fire. I suppose he thought he could fool the public, for whom he and the Bush administration have demonstrated the utmost contempt throughout their reign, into thinking Republicans were morally above reproach, fiscally prudent, adherents of traditional Christian values and proponents of smaller, less intrusive government (I’ll continue as soon as you stop laughing). Now, certainly he (as a “genius”) must have been fully aware that Republicans were the exact opposite of all those things, morally, ethically, economically, & politically. So he must have thought he could build that permanent Republican majority either in spite of, or, even worse, because of, the despicable nature of Republican politicians. The “in spite of” option = stupidity, the “because of” option = evil. And that is the consistent hallmark of Republican politicians: you get to choose between stupid or evil (with the Texacutioner we got both). Either way, the “genius” failed miserably, for himself, his party, and his dark neocon masters.

3. Maybe being known as the “brain” of a “shit-for-brains” president is not such a good thing after all.

Selling Us Up the River, or, How Long Has it Been Since I Wrote a Post Where I Had to Include the Word "AAAAUUUUGGGGHHHH!"

2007-08-12T23:02:00.000-07:00

Okay, I don’t know why I never thought of this before, but:

Recently I received a call from a telemarketer who I believe was calling from outside the US, possibly India. Now, usually when this happens, I don’t give it much thought. We all know outsourced phone bank workers have become a normal part of the global economy. Customer service calls of all kinds are routed overseas to workers who earn a small fraction of what similar workers in America would earn.

But this time, it occurred to me that an international call from a telemarketer to my residence is now considered justification for me to be investigated by homeland security domestic surveillance operatives. After all, we now live in a country that believes any call in or out of the country is suspicious.

This whole situation pisses me off in all kinds of ways (surprise).

Besides the fact that domestic spying is an insult to our constitutional rights, and besides the fact that telemarketing is an insidious annoyance despised by all but it’s purveyors, and besides the fact that outsourcing cheats the working men and women of this country out of needed jobs, I am pissed off because corporations (who really run this country anyway) can not only take away your customer service or marketing job and then call you every evening to rub your nose in it, they can now turn you into a criminal just for having a working telephone in your home. They can turn you into a criminal and they can make money off it in the process!

Talk about another sick example of twisted repuke perversion of justice! I don't want to receive unsolicited calls from overseas, but I can't prevent it, and it is being fueled by the corporations who contribute to the politicians who insist that those calls make me criminally suspect, and yet they receive their campaign contributions and lobbyist money from the revenue based on those very calls!

AAAAAAUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHH!

Declaring War Against Ourselves?

2007-07-28T22:49:00.000-07:00

Odds n’ Ends in the War on Terror

If the United States attacks Iran preemptively... the signatories of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty [NPT] do have certain obligations... basically Russia and China, as well as France and the United Kingdom, will "provide immediate assistance" to Iran if it "is a victim of an act, or an object of a threat of, aggression in which nuclear weapons are used." Interesting, eh? So if Bush-Cheney bomb Iran, the other NPT members are required under international law TO DEFEND IRAN.

So, if we attack Iran, out allies are obligated to defend Iran against us. Bush-Cheney could end up forcing the rest of the world to declare war against us.

Now, that's what I call a legacy.

Saturday is Music Appreciation Day at Constantly Amazed!

2007-07-21T20:51:00.001-07:00

And I hope you'll enjoy a little Django Reinhardt. Trivia: His left hand (the one on the frets) was severely injured and he only had use of two fingers.

They say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to...

2007-07-17T22:01:00.000-07:00

In all the frequent mentioning in the media of oil issues (use, overuse, peak oil, war for oil, price of gas, OPEC, what have you), they are inevitably focused on automobile usage. It's always driving, driving, driving, and the price of gasoline. That's it. As if the whole petroleum industry starts and stops there. Okay, so maybe 1% of media mention heating oil. But the other 99% is all about gasoline.

As you might have already suspected, I think a little differently.

See, when they talk about fuel, I don't think about Joe Mullett's jacked up F250 or the asinine SUV Mr. & Mrs. Suburbia use to drive back and forth from their McMansion to the local warehouse store (driving with a starbuck's froofroo cafe caramel mocha latte half caff whatever in one hand and text messaging on their cell phone in the other). No way, Jose.

I think of all the other stuff. For example, cars a probably a drop in the bucket compared to the bazillions (I don't know exactly how many) of jet airplanes that fly back and forth across the country and across the world, and how much jet fuel goes into those things and gets burned up by the, what, hundreds or thousands of gallons a minute? Does anyone know?

Even more importantly, what about all the stuff that is made from petroleum that we use and toss away every single day? Plastic is a petroleum product, and everything is made from plastic (you may think this is old news, but 70% of Americans don't know plastic is made from oil)! There are even petroleum products in your food. I think more people should be reminded more often that the oil interests who want to control the resources of the middle east are not just interested in fuel and lubricants. If they control petroleum, they control just about every product produced on the planet.

A partial list of products made from petroleum: a partial list of products made from Petroleum (144 of 6000 items):

Ammonia, Anesthetics, Antifreeze, Antihistamines, Antiseptics, Artificial limbs, Artificial Turf, Aspirin, Awnings, Balloons, Ballpoint Pens, Bandages, Basketballs, Bearing Grease, Bicycle Tires, Boats, Cameras, Candles, Car Battery Cases, Car Enamel, Cassettes, Caulking, CD Player, CD's, Clothes, Clothesline, Cold cream, Combs, Cortisone, Crayons, Curtains, Dashboards, Denture Adhesive, Dentures, Deodorant, Detergents, Dice, Diesel, Dishes, Dishwasher, Dresses, Drinking Cups, Dyes, DVD's, Electric Blankets, Electrician's Tape, Enamel, Epoxy, Eyeglasses, Fan Belts, Faucet Washers, Fertilizers, Fishing Rods & gear, Floor Wax, Folding Doors, Food Preservatives, Football Cleats, Football Helmets, Footballs, Footballs, Gasoline, Glycerin, Golf Bags, Golf Balls, Guitar Strings, Hair Coloring, Hair Curlers, Handguns, Hand Lotion, Heart Valves, House Paint, Ice Chests, Ice Cube Trays, Ink, Insect Repellent, Insecticides, Life Jackets, Linings, Linoleum, Lipstick, Luggage, Model Cars, Mops, Motor Oil, Motorcycle Helmet, Movie film, Nail Polish, Nylon Rope, Oil Filters, Paint, Paint Brushes, Paint Rollers, Panty Hose, Parachutes, Percolators, Perfumes, Petroleum Jelly, Pillows, Plastic Wood, Purses, Putty, Refrigerant, Refrigerators, Roller Skates, Roofing, Rubber Cement, Rubbing Alcohol, Safety Glasses, Shag Rugs, Shampoo, Shaving Cream, Shoe Polish, Shoes, Shower Curtains, Skis, Slacks, Soap, Soft Contact lenses, Solvents, Speakers, Sports Car Bodies, Sun Glasses, Surf Boards, Sweaters, Synthetic Rubber, Telephones, Tennis Rackets, Tents, Tires, Toilet Seats, Tool Boxes, Tool Racks, Toothbrushes, Toothpaste, Transparent Tape, Trash Bags, TV Cabinets, Umbrellas, Upholstery, Vaporizers, Vitamin Capsules, Water Pipes, Wheels, Yarn...

Even $@#^& candy wrappers are made from plastic! Along with just about every piece of product packaging filling the aisles of your local Hell Mart.

And to top it off, you have things like this happening: Boeing Unveils Blockbuster Plane:

"What makes the 787 revolutionary is that it is the first airplane built mostly not of metal, but rather mostly of high tech composite material, a type of reinforced plastic."

Do you see what I mean? They don't just want to control the gas you put in your car. If they control oil, they control everything!

So now you know why, every time I hear someone from either side of the argument proposing to save the day by encouraging the use of biofuels, I feel a little cheated. Honestly, we need to address the big picture here. The fuel thing important, but we really need to address the fact that practically everything else is made from oil, too. And the neocons want to own every drop of it!

P.S. Someone once said that I shouldn't address problems like this without also providing a solution. So... how's this: Henry Ford built an automobile out of soy and hemp!

Mission Accomplished

2007-07-14T21:08:00.000-07:00

Iraq PM: Country can manage without U.S.:

"BAGHDAD - Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki shrugged off U.S. doubts of his government's military and political progress on Saturday, saying Iraqi forces are capable and American troops can leave 'any time they want.' "

Whew! Glad that's over!