Two things I did to help bring Republicans back to reality
I have to admit, it is kindof fun watching the idiot republicans pull themselves away from reality and try and dig into this birther thing. It’s almost as disgusting as watching Representative Virginia Foxx lie on the floor of the House. But I had to do something. I mean these people are so divorced from reality that it’s disgusting.
Then I heard the President use the L word. Lie. And you know what? That started me off.
First, I put together a letter to Representative Foxx and faxxed it to her office. It basically said, “Dear Representative Foxx, You lied. You know you lied. I expect you to do a retraction.” And then I went and Googled an image of Obama’s birth certificate (which you can find here) and faxed it to Representative Gohmert. No letterhead, no coversheet. Just a copy of the birth certificate so he can see it.
I encourage you to do the same. Call these people out! When they lie, tell them that they lie, and that you expect a retraction. And when they go off about Obama’s birth certificate, fax them a copy. Maybe they’ll get the hint.
My thoughts on health care
Had a discussion with a friend on Facebook on healthcare. They were not sure about it, and wanted to know the reasons FOR and why would someone NOT want healthcare. I put together the following, and thought I should share here as well:
The only things I’ve heard are: A) namecalling (SOCIALISM!) B) we’re rushing things and C) it costs too much. One at a time:
A) Namecalling is CHILDISH. Have a cogent argument and stop the namecalling. We already have THREE forms of “socialist” healthcare in the United States and those would be 1) Medicare for the elderly 2) Medicaid for the infirm/disabled 3) the Veterans Administration for our soldiers. Have an elected official try and take away Medicare, Medicaid or the VA and see how fast they are run out of office.
B) President Truman called for national health insurance in 1948, and Democrats have been trying to get it passed ever since. 61 years is NOT rushing things.
C) The Bush tax cuts for the wealthy cost the US $1.3Trillion in funding. The war in Iraq has cost at least $1Trillion and estimates are that it would be $3Trillion by the time all is said and done. Healthcare for all would cost $1Trillion over ten years. Tax cuts for the wealthy but no healthcare?!?!?
And then furthered the conversation, when asked “can you explain to me like I am a five year old”, with:
Okay – problems with Medicare. First off, Bush “stole” surplus from the Medicare funds to use in the general budget. That should be illegal, but it’s not. It put Medicare in a bind. If we used a similar system of funding healthcare for all, we would need to make sure that could not be done.
Currently Medicare taxes come out of your check, but the withdrawals stop at about $102,000. So a person making $30,000/year always pays into Medicare but a person making $500,000/year only pays into Medicare for the first $102,000 they make. Removing that ceiling will save Medicare. And making sure the same ceiling doesn’t exist for healthcare for all will do it.
Healthcare for all would be a boon to the health insurance industry UNLESS there was a public option. Medicare, Medicaid, VA have about a 3% overhead whereas private insurance has 20% to 25% overhead. So, if you own stock in Aetna, Blue Cross, etc, it would truly suck because they would be forced to bring in costs and lower profits.
That’s it. Arguments for healthcare, combating the arguments of those against it, and revealing the true motives of those against it. Questions?
Why people think Democrats are wimps
Yeah, that’s a pretty infuriating headline, but I have a point. Come with me on this.
In the late 1980s/early 1990s, it came out that the Reagan/Bush White House was involved in the Iran-Contra affair, to the highest levels. When Bill Clinton took the White House in 1992, what was the decision on Iran-Contra? Clinton said we were to look ahead instead of looking back. In other words, the former Presidents probably did something wrong, but let’s focus on going forward and forget about it.
Cut to 2009. After eight years of Bush/Cheney, and the lies and laws that they broke, a fresh face comes to Washington. People have been infuriated for years at the laws broken. People tortured and held without charge. Americans had their phone, email, instant messaging, and web browsing spied on illegally. All of this crap. And what does Obama do? Declares that we need to look forward and forget about it. Sure, Holder has started making sounds about investigating, but without a unified message from the White House, will it ever happen?
That’s why people think Democrats are wimps. You can look forward, but you HAVE to examine the past. Why? Because if you don’t learn from the past, you are doomed to repeat it. Bush/Cheney repeated the crimes of Reagan/Bush. And Obama/Biden are repeating the “we see nothing!” ignorance of Clinton/Gore.
Democrats, GROW A SPINE!
You know the Nazis burned books, too
This is not only disgusting, but VILE. A small town in Wisconsin has started campaigning against their public library because they carried books that held a positive view for GLBT youth. That just wouldn’t do. They demanded books of hate be carried as well. You know, books that denounce and deride people. When that didn’t happen, they got some library board members removed, and suggested that they start burning the pro-gay books.
Propaganda and hate, anyone?
Nazi book burning
First they came for the gays…
This weekend, as I was working in my yard and came upon an idea. And low and behold, it came into being. What was it?
You see, I was thinking that those that support the civil rights of GLBT Americans need to get those haters that fight against gay marriage to come out against marriages performed by the Justice of the Peace, or by City Hall. Yes, the “civil” part of “civil marriage”. Pretty damn good idea, if I say so myself.
Well cut to tonight, as I’m about to do some blogging on the subject, when I come across this great link on AmericaBlog’s new gay blog. Seems that indeed, there is a group of men that truly believe IF a man and a woman go to City Hall and get married, they are basically doing nothing more than “shacking up”, and their marriage is not a true one. While the man in the video says that’s not what the issue is he and his organization (which is male only, because they don’t bring the women along since the language used by people might be “dirty”) were dealing with right then, it IS an issue that they support.
So there, mister and misses heterosexual married couple that got married in front of a Justice of the Peace or by a clerk at City Hall. YOUR marriage is not good enough. And when this group continues to help ban gay marriage, they’ll come after yours!
Judge rights a wrong, gets demoted
How’s THAT for activist judges?
Remember a while back when Florida passed a bill that prevented gays and lesbians from adopting children? Pure hate, no? Children need families, even if those families are headed by two men or two women. But that wasn’t good enough for the bigots in Florida, so they passed a law saying that GLBT people could not adopt. Let’s see… Discrimination, anyone?
Well Miami-Dade County Circuit Court Judge Cindy Lederman certainly though it was discriminatory, and found it unconstitutional. So what does she get in return for this decision, after 15 years on the bench? She gets demoted. Yes, the new Chief Justice that is over Lederman’s court decided they “wanted to go another direction” and got rid of her. Nice, eh?
Stupid f’ing bigots!
Declare YOUR independence
You know what? I’m sick. I’m sick to death of corporatism. Everywhere you look is either a “made in China” sticker, or some corporation that has no ties to your local community wants you to come spend your money at their establishment – so they can suck that money out of your community and send it to their corporate headquarters, be it across the country or around the world. Spend your $8 for a quickie meal at McDonalds and have the money sucked out of your local economy and sent to Illinois, though at least it’s still in the US. Go to Wal-Mart or Target to get stuff for your Independence Day get together? Those companies actually suck tax dollars out of your local community because local jurisdictions lure them in by cutting them tax deals (which makes YOUR taxes go up). Then Wal-Mart skims off their bit and sends it to their Alabama headquarters while Target skims off their bit and sends it off to their Minneapolis headquarters. But the VAST majority of your money gets funneled off and sent to CHINA. Or The Phillipines. Or Taiwan. Wherever they can pay people ten cents per hour in crappy conditions to make that doodad gadget that you just couldn’t live without. Maybe you’re paying your bills, and as you write your check to ADT for your security system, you don’t know that it is a corporation that is actually owned by a company called Tyco that is headquartered offshore in Bermuda. Yeah, they don’t have to pay their US taxes like you and I do.
It goes on and on. But why? Why is it that companies like Wal-Mart or Tyco get so big, and suck the money out of our local cities, only to send it overseas? We Americans are responsible for somewhere between 50% and 67% of the economy of the United States; do we want our money going to huge, multinational conglomerates that don’t care about your local economy, the local workers, or anything beyond their corporate tax havens overseas? And why is it that the United States Government gives contracts to the likes of Accenture millions of our tax dollars, if they are not headquartered here? In the period between October 1st, 2001 and September 30th, 2002, The United States paid $662,000,000 to Accenture for accounting purposes. Why? Yes, they’re a big company. But they are headquartered in Bermuda. Check out their company info, including the address of their post office box in Bermuda, and then check out the map. Wow, how many hundreds of miles offshore is that?
Yeah, well I’m fed up. I have had it. It makes me sick to see people lined up waiting to get into corporate chains like Outback or Chevys or Hardees or The Cheesecake Factory. You know why? Because there is absolutely nothing that is distinctive about that restaurant. You can eat a meal in California at PF Changs, then go halfway across the country and eat the same meal and SURPRISE! It tastes EXACTLY the same! So what did you get? You get corporate food that was designed in a lab in New Jersey (read Fast Food Nation if you don’t believe me) and then designed to be cookie cutter. No surprises, no differences, no distinction. Why the hell would you want to do that? Are people that much of a pushover that they prefer corporate food to a local chef at a mom-n-pop place down the street? You’d be surprised…
Think the food in your local grocery store is safe? Think again. Pick up a frozen breakfast or lunch entree and look at the ingredients. Those aren’t even the HALF of it! There’s one entry called “Spices”; did you know there can be dozens of ingredients all lumped into that one little word? A report on NPR from last year said that dozens of spices come from hundreds of suppliers all over the world, so even if you think you’re buying some food that should be safe because it’s “made in America”, it includes spices that come from halfway around the world. And we all know how safe foodstuffs and goods coming from China are. How many pets were killed because of tainted Chinese pet food? How many babies got sick, and how many died from tainted Chinese milk? Who thought it was okay to use lead based paint, and paint that had the compound that was the equivalent of a date-rape drug IN CHILDREN’S TOYS? Oh yeah, that would be China again. And you know what’s even fucking scarier? That the United States Consumer Protection Agency doesn’t even have the staff to test even 1% of the food, drugs, toys, and consumer goods that are shipped in from overseas.
Feeling scared yet? How about pissed off? Hells yeah, I’m angry! But as I’ve heard from people before, “But I’m just one person. What I do can’t affect the rest of the world”. My response? BULLSHIT!
Instead of going to Target or Wal-Mart, how about finding a local chain that provides goods and services that are comperable? Here in the Pacific Northwest, we are blessed with our own little employee owned box store chain called BiMart. They have everything that we would get at a Wal-Mart, Target, or Walgreens. But you know what? The money stays right here in the Pacific Northwest. In California, instead of going to Home Depot or Lowes, how about the California household building supply company OSH (Orchard Supply)? A lot of the same stuff as Home Depot and Lowes, but again, the money goes into the local community. Hell, in many a town around this great nation, at least where Wal-Mart has not killed competition, there are still mom-n-pop general stores that you can go to. Sure, maybe you’ll pay fifty cents more for a screwdriver, or a dollar more for a hammer. But you’re keeping not only local people employed, but a local business’ doors open, and the money stays in your community.
Here in the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area, we had a great local group of restaurants called Stanfords. They had good meals, good drinks, and everyone was happy. They did so well that some corporate group from out of state came in and bought them out. That was good, until the changes started coming. See, Stanfords used to take their food seriously. Their chefs perfected a veggie burger that was made on site, in the kitchen. They had fresh produce that they did a multitude of ways. And they had a wide-range of other dinners that were simply delicious. Then, the corporatist beancounters came along and said, “Well now; if we standardize, we can squeeze a few more pennies out of every dollar for profit!”. Gone went the house-made veggie burger. They did away with spinach cooked 4 different ways and standardized on one. Away went the multitude of cuts of steak and they went down to two. Why? Not because of customer demand, but because the beancounters wanted to squeeze out more profit. One night at Stanfords, when I received a veggie burger, I challenged the waitstaff, saying they changed the recipe or something. They flatly denied and went and got me the corporate recipe – which called for 1 Morningstar Farms Garden Veggie Pattie. Gee, that’s not brown rice, black beans, cheese, and spices mixed together by hand and cooked delicately, is it? Hell no it’s not. But that’s corporate food for you. A steak at Outback Steakhouse is going to be the same whether you buy it in Tigard, Oregon or Orlando Florida. How about you find a local independent steak house to try instead? Know why you can never get your home made french fries to taste like McDonalds? Because the essence of the fry was developed in a lab in New Jersey and is standardized. Are you standardized? Hell no. You’re an individual. And as an individual, you deserve REAL food, not corporate food!
Concerned about your food, and all the preservatives and additives that come from around the world, only to end up in your digestive system? Become a locavore. Your local non-corporate restaurants already do – you should, too. There are butcher shops that still exist outside of the local megamart grocery stores. Gee, you aren’t going to be able to get White Out and Juicy Fruit Gum when you buy your hamburger, but you’re going to have DAMN good hamburger, that’s a hell of a lot fresher, if not healthier than your local megamart grocery store. And hell, as I write this, it’s the middle of Summer. Know what is in season near you? You should. And how can you? Find out at LocalHarvest. They tell you what’s in season, and where your local farmer’s markets are. Sure, there are going to be people peddling crap that they get drop-shipped from China, like socks and stuff. But there are going to be other people there from local farms that have the most delicious produce, the freshest herbs, the best cheese, and the best treats. And quel surprise, it’ll be just about the same price – or cheaper – than what you pay for at the megamart!
You know what I want to get this country for its 233rd birthday? I want to see the drive through at Burger King to be empty, and the local burger joint to be packed. I want Texas Roadhouse and Outback Steakhouse to be closed due to lack of customers that night and the local steak, chicken and bar joint to have a line out the door. I want Kohls and Sears and Wal-Mart to have an empty parking lot, and for people to get their crafts from local stores and vendors, or from ordering their goods from companies that STILL manufacture things here in the United States.
We can be our own best friends, or our own enemies. You make the choice every day when you purchase goods and services. Will you choose to help your fellow American? Or will you toss our future away by sending our money, and our jobs, overseas?
When headlines LIE
Oh man… You have to give it to Don Wildmon and the AFA. They can lie with the best of them (which, oddly enough, God said you shouldn’t do – but they don’t care. I get an email newsletter from the AFA that declares “Teacher fired for conservative website”. Being someone who is TOTALLY for free speech (including the speech of republicans, the KKK, Aryan Nation, etc – just because you don’t like what they’re saying doesn’t mean they don’t have the right to say it), I read the article. Seems a teacher in the Lawrence, KS school district had a conservative website that he paid for himself and expressed himself on – and that’s why they’re saying he got fired.
What a load of crap.
What they aluded to in the article, but did not explain out totally was the fact that this teacher REQUIRED his students and their parents to log on and use the website for school information. Yes, he was basically forcing his views to be spread by making it the way students and teachers could get information about their school work. Their school work.
So hell yes. He could have set up a totally separate website to handle homework and grading information for students and their parents. But he didn’t. He refused to couple his political beliefs website with a website that students were REQUIRED to use if they wanted information. And for this, he SHOULD be fired. And good riddance!
Just shows, once again, that the AFA lies. And if you have to lie to make your point, you had no point in the first place — and the people that swallow the lie are just as guilty. Ignorance, for them, *is* bliss.
FOX News counts on you having a 12 second memory. Do you?
This is just so blatantly awful that it is not even funny anymore. FOX News is whining because ABC News will have an exclusive with the President. So what do they do? They go off about “This has never happened before” and “We haven’t seen this type of access to a President in decades.” Decades? Try MONTHS. FOX News had it’s collective head up the Bush Administration’s ass for so long, that I’m surprised George W. Bush doesn’t have the imprint of Hannity’s helmet-hair on his colon wall!
But you know what? It actually IS starting to stick. I have overheard people actually talking about this, parroting FOX! Those people are just mindless automatons though, I swear.
Want proof? The good people at DailyKos have the video proof. Click here to watch.
Harassment by any other name…
Wow… On the West Coast, there really are a few cities that you look towards for GLBT leadership. Those cities are San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Portland (probably in that order – at least in my mind). We have leadership in those cities that not only welcome the GLBT community, but help fight the ignorance and hate from those on the right. But what’s going on in Seattle right now is scary as hell.
The City of Seattle has various groups that employees of the city can join. One of those groups is the GLBTQF (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered, Questioning, and Friends) Club. The city gives each of the groups $1,000 per year and allows employees to work on behalf of their group for two hours per month. That’s all fine and dandy. And then along comes Seattle City employee Philip Irvin. He wanted to join the GLBTQF Club, but he was not allowed. Why? Because Philip is a fundamentalist who does not think that gays should be allowed to exist, much less have a club. Obviously the GLBTQF Club is within their rights to refuse him entry. After all – would you want to bring someone into your home that’s just going to yell at you endlessly? No – that’s why we all moved out of our families homes!
Well Philip would not let it sit. To “get even” with the group, he is suing the city and is asking to force the names of everyone in the GLBTQF Club to be named publicly. He wants the names of ALL GLBTQ Seattle employees to be published so that everyone knows who they are and the City of Seattle almost went along with it, until a temporary injunction could be put into place. If the names are released what are you going to do, Mr. Irvin? Will these employees end up like Dr. George Tiller? Haunted constantly, and then some whackjob goes and tries to assassinate them, too?
Think I’m a little out there? Think again. The rate of hate crimes – specifically murder – against GLBTQ folks is rising at an alarming rate. Yeah. This is 2009, and people are still being racist, homophobic, murdering bastards. So excuse me for NOT wanting to give out the names of the GLBTQF Club employees!
