It's Past Time

Everyone with functioning brain needs to contact their reps and senators and let them know we will not stand for the corruption of government by any religion.
And that is exactly what is happening right now. There probably some churches who are not trying to take your health care away, the catholic church is not one of them. Why is anyone listening to these old hypocritical assholes? About anything. But especially about things they know nothing about. Wait that's a pretty big collection of things. They are about living in the 5th century. I don't know about anyone else out there but my calender says quite a bit of time has passed since then.

Why are we allowing any church to tell us how to live, or more importantly how not to live?

Fun in the economy or what I'm doing with my life

I'm not getting depressed over our current congress critters, I'm getting angry. And what gets me real angry is that I know that nothing, and I mean nothing that we do will make any difference in the short or long term.
We have no money to buy these idiots assholes, no one liberal enough to run against all of them, and no hope that any of that will change.
I really feel like a chump because I joined the military with the belief that I might be helping my country. I served, got an honorable discharge and despite what JFK said, I want my country to serve me and all the rest of the people who live here. And this government is not doing that. Or even trying to fake it.
Who do I see about this?

— people are too worried about their own jobs to spend money on major purchases right now"

Own a small retail store in the sporting goods industry, and it's not just the major purchases that are not being made. Most people are cutting off all non-essential purchases. It's not getting better here in retail land and I don't expect it to for at least 6-12 months. I expect to loose my biz over this. Oh well could be worse, I could have a job with benefits and lose that, get unemployment and have that run out, then I'd really be screwed. Oh wait.....

I wrote this as a draft while back and now it has come true. My store is now closed. Maybe I'll get by, maybe not. Fuck conservatives.

Charities

Pink ribbons.

They are supposed to mean that you support or care about research concerning breast cancer. That sure sounds like a good thing. The half of the worlds population with breasts probably are very concerned, the other half should be. Breast cancer kills. Out of the seven women in my and my mothers immediate family 2 of them have died from breast cancer and another has survived 45 years after being diagnosed. That's almost 50% of them have had breast cancer and of those 2/3 have died from it.
So what does this have to do with anything?
The Susan G. Komen foundation has just withdrawn their rather large amount of support from Planned Parenthood, which was used for breast cancer screening. This is after all the people who have paid for products and events to support helping to fight and find a cure for this horrible disease. Are they being robbed? Or at least deceived? I think so. And the kicker is that this is because Planned Parenthood does exactly that, they help people (women more so than men) plan parenthood, which many religious groups don't want women to do. They want no planning when it comes to pregnancy.  These assholes wouldn't allow abortion when a woman's health is at stake or when she has been raped. They would rather she die or that her doctor would die than even a fetus that can not possibly live. This is one sick, fucked up point of view.

So I'm saying, don't support SGK. Boycott any pink ribbon products or events. Let the SGK foundation know what you think. As Tbogg writes you could make a direct donation and have a thank you card sent to the vp of SGK. Click on the link and get the details.

To summarize: Fuck these assholes.

Now That's Class Warfare

An oldie but goodie.

From Al Franken’s Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right:

Anytime a liberal points out that the wealthy are disproportionately benefiting from Bush’s tax policies, Republicans shout, “class warfare!”

In her book, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century, Barbara Tuchman writes about a peasant revolt in 1358 that began in the village of St. Leu and spread throughout the Oise Valley. At one estate, the serfs sacked the manor house, killed the knight, and roasted him on a spit in front of his wife and kids. Then, after ten or twelve peasants violated the lady, with his children watching, they forced her to eat the roasted flesh of her husband and then killed her.

That is class warfare.

 Arguing over the optimum marginal tax rate for the top one percent is not. 

 I like it. Life was probably pretty hard in 1358 for most people but when it got even harder, and just for the enjoyment of the wealthy, remedies could be found.

H/T to rirr at balloon-juice

Once More

David Atkins does a spectacular takedown of libertarianism and the idea, "It works, it just has never been done correctly".
As messy as humans and their societies are, there are certain ideals that just don't work. Pure communism, libertarianism, religions as governing bodies. None of these work as open societies because they are never inclusive of all the people that live in a geographic region,  nor do they work with  human nature, rather they try to stifle it.

Vote. Always Vote.

Charles P. Pierce

Remember that name. Read whatever he writes. Pay attention to what he writes.

His post today on voting and especially on voting rights. A thing of beauty.

The line.       

Sorry, Lyndon, we overcame. And then we didn't. Let you down, big guy. (Click to see the whole post.)

Bit by Bit or the Drones Don't Fly Themselves

The world is evolving, like it always does. Our constitution and bill of rights was pretty far ahead of the curve when written but it still had and still has holes. Part of that is the imperfection of the people writing it. Part is the fact that evolution is all around us. It is in biology, it is in technology, it is in the law.
We still have the 4th amendment as our basis for personal freedom. We have tried to give it away, see act, patriot, among other methods. It's still a pretty good law but it's interpretation maybe leaves something to be desired.
I once took an oath to uphold and defend the constitution and bill of rights. I placed myself under a different set of rules, stripping me of some of those rights to defend it because I felt it was important. My little part turned out to be not so big a deal and I have frequently wondered if it was worth it, but done is done. Protecting it is done bit by bit just as losing it's power is done bit by bit.

Is civilian surveillance  by police drone one of those bits we are giving up? I think it is real possible the answer is yes.

A Nice Overview

Commentator JD Rhoades had this to say over at Balloon-Juice

After Willie Horton ads, Swiftboating, GOP convention-goers waving purple band-aids to mock a veteran’s war wounds, birtherism, Ann Coulter saying the “only choice was whether to impeach or assassinate” President Clinton, Coulter claiming 9/11 widows were “enjoying their husband’s deaths,” Rush Limbaugh mocking Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s disease, ads falsely claiming Barack Obama favored “comprehensive sex education for Kindergartners,” Rand Paul supporters trying to stomp the head of a protester, ads claiming Kay Hagen was “godless,” Michelle Bachmann calling for an investigation of ‘un-American views” among the Congress, “If ballots don’t work, maybe bullets will,” “Obama hates white people,” ‘GET OFF MY PHONE YOU LITTLE PINHEAD!” “YOU LIE!”, wingnuts at FreeRepublic calling 11-year old Sasha Obama a “street whore” for wearing a peace sign on her t-shirt, outright lies about “death panels,” “Bury Obamacare with Kennedy,” cheering for executions, booing soldiers in war zones for being gay, comparing poor people to stray animals you shouldn’t feed, “’we’ve got one raghead in the White House, we don’t need a raghead in the governor’s mansion,” supposed “Christians” suggesting that people pray for the President using Psalm 109:8 (“May his days be few; may another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow”) as a text, Limbaugh calling the First Lady “uppity,” and on and on and on, all without a single peep from the Right…They can take their whiny-ass bullshit about liberal “rudeness” and peddle it somewhere else. We ain’t buyin’ it here.

I'm a lot less civil in my tone, his version fills in the reason why.