I Hear Stupid People

I'm beginning to believe the human species is too stupid to survive. Every day we are hearing the same old crap we heard about Iraq, and every day more and more people put their brains on hold and think well yeah, this crazy guy in Iran hates us and so we need to take him out. Hey guys, everyone hates us these days.

If that was a reason for war, then we'd be taking out Greece who just let Condoleeza Clueless know they weren't going to die in Iran for her. Or any other countries who think that Bush is a madman who responds only to the voices in his head. Read some of the crap he's been saying about those voices in something other than the state-run media.

It doesn't even have to be extremist to get a clear picture of what's going on. Here's some sites I read with my morning coffee: Huffington Post , Antiwar.com , Daily Kos , Raw Story .

These sites have a mix of writers who cover all sides with reasonable arguments, instead of the simpering White House Whores over at Faux News morons who wouldn't know a real news story if it snuck up behind them and yelled "Fascist!" to get their blood warm enough to reach their hearts.

And if you never read anything but crazy madwomen's blogs, at least stand up for peace. Let your voice be heard. Teach people that peace is strength, that peace is power, that peace is all that will save our stupid, warmongering asses of a species before it's too late.

Peace

and you can buy the rose peace design at my store on t-shirts and other stuff: Ursine Logic

I Hear Stupid People

The Lies of State

Back in the days when oppressive regimes were the enemy instead of our own government, every bad country had its own propaganda minister. He was eviscerated by American media and those who were our friends, back in the days when America had friends, as a symbol of oppression, as a tool of the political machine, a useful idiot whose only purpose was to spread and disseminate the lies of state. In other words, they did the job that Scott Mclellan did for Bushco.

Underlying the hypocrisy and gallows humor surrounding America having become everything it once opposed, is the pathetic fact that lying has become an American value. We no longer expect honesty from anyone. We expect people to lie, to manipulate us, to cheat us, to do us wrong in the name of politics, religion, making the sale, and love.

This is what the culture of lying that surrounds and permeates the current administration like the smell of rot and decay lingers long after the offending source of the stench has been removed, does for our country. It makes lying normal. It makes personal attacks on people and their loved ones normal. It makes going to war for oil and unresolved daddy issues normal. It makes being mean and cruel and arrogant and selfish normal.

If there is one legacy other than all the unnecessary, awful deaths caused by Bushco's greed, it will be the culture of lying. They will go down in history as the most dishonest, the most manipulative, the most cruel and selfish administration ever.

In light of that sad truth, the new Propaganda Minister for the White House should be our old friend Baghdad Bob. He, above everyone else, exemplifies what Bushco really is all about.

And this design, like many others on this blog, are available at my store: Ursine Logic

The Lies of State

My Kitty

I decided to go ahead and expose some of my stranger art to the world at My store And because I love my cat, I think she looks beautiful in whatever I dress her. :-)

I'm also working on more Green Bears as people seem to like them a lot.

My Kitty

Green Bears

I've been collecting bear-related stuff for Ursine Logic pages for awhile now, so it wasn't a problem of enough material, but rather one of choosing the best material for what I wanted to say and do. So today I finally settled on the green bears. They are where I've been putting my political stuff.

The reason I chose these guys is because I wanted to establish myself firmly in my political identity of Compassionate Liberal. I wanted a way to comment on politics and politicians that wasn't mean-spirited. I wanted humor, caring, and an honest sense of bewilderment that people are not as smart as the average bear when it comes to making up their own minds.

This was never made clearer to me than on Easter. I saw little kids running and crawling around in the wet and muddy grass after the rains of the day before. They were all decked out in miniature wedding finery--with ears and without, and they were engaging in some ancient fertility ritual of stuffing eggs into baskets as they hopped all over the damn place. And all this while their parents proudly filmed the whole thing.

It's a weird sort of kiddie porn when you look at it from one angle, the same angle that looks at religion and sees it for what it truly is--the biggest bucket of damn excuses for human behavior that was ever created. If someone commits a socially acceptable act, then god made them do it, the angel's hands (or wings, as it were) guided them, they were blessed by saints of all shapes, sizes, and stages of demented philosophizing. On the other hand, if the act was socially unacceptable, such as spending the afternoon seducing the neighbor's wife, or taking an ax to that annoying guy who insists on exposing himself every day...well, of course, that was the devil's fault wasn't it?

So the green bears will be discussing stuff like this in more depth over the coming weeks. Do check back often and see what they have to say.

Green Bears

Wild Creatures

I am a solitary creature who enjoys my own company. I'm not anti-social or overly weird or too scary. I do have friends, great friends, loving and loyal friends. But after a long time being together, we are like old married people who desperately need a break from each other.

And there are also times when I love my friends, but as people...well they let me down every once in a while. They reveal themselves to be mere mortals. They commit the worst sin imaginable...they reveal themselves to be ordinary! Just like everyone else on the planet...demented, weird, wanting, longing, and so damn needy I often feel bled dry by them at different times.

Because they've been my friends for a long time I am willing to step back, give us all some room, and then hope everyone shape shifts back to the charming, intelligent, witty, tolerant and accepting creatures they are normally.

But on some issues the cracks are exposed and I'm not sure they can ever be patched back together again so that no one notices too much. One of those issues is immigration. There doesn't seem to be a neutral ground in this argument. It's yet one more polarizing issue brought to us by politicians so infected by greed that anything human gets by them completely.

In a perfect world, one I dream about, one I hope to see in my lifetime, there are no borders. But the world is not perfect and the reality is that if this country shuts out immigrants we will not be any safer, any more secure, any more prosperous. The looting of our treasury and resources to fund a madman's war, has created a whole new class of poor and desperate people.

I live in a neighborhood where people's jobs are car prowling, identity theft, drugs, and stealing anything to survive to the next meal or next fix or next month's rent. How do you build a fence against that when all the money to do so has been stolen by our criminal government? How do you protect yourself against the next generation, the one that is fed Ritalin as if it were candy or are so tranquilized because overworked teachers can't cope with them if they aren't perfect little kids? Do you have perpetual wars and just kill them off as they get old enough to do serious damage at home to us?

I also feel that if someone wants to come here so badly they are willing to work crap jobs for less money than anyone legal would get for the same job, they deserve a chance to stay. They've demonstrated the kind of work ethic that built this country. They are willing to do the hardest, crappiest work and even die in our perpetual wars as green card soldiers. Isn't that the kind of resolve that made this country something special in the eyes of the rest of the world?

Sadly, I think immigrants are the new distraction for the failed Republican policies. As long as quack radio and whacko white people news actors keeps hammering home the idea that these people are the problem, no one will look at the real problem of those greedy, selfish, fanatical, lying, thieving, cheating, murdering war and hate mongers who have created conditions in this country that makes us all illegal aliens. They care about us about as much as they care about something on the bottom of their shoes. That is the real threat, not a bunch of Mexicans who work their ass off for shit wages.

Wild Creatures

Compassionate Liberalism

One of the sad mysteries that I'm trying to understand is what happened to make people so mean? Everywhere I look there is someone making life miserable for someone else for no good reason that I can see. Sure, life is hard for a lot of people. Just being alive is a challenge sometimes. But why has the mean quotient risen so sharply in the last few years?

Of course I can point to some obvious things such as "talk radio" that should more aptly be called "yell radio," or the equivalent on TV where highly paid morons insult each other with the most ridiculous of empty arguments on a daily basis. Or that this horrible war without reason creates an underlying sense of anger in people that drip drip drips from them on the roads where they scream and flip each other off, in the stores where they bump into each other's shopping carts with guttural grunts of indignation, and in relationships where love is slowly eroded by disillusionment, boredom, and outright hatred.

But what I suspect is the true reason is a mass feeling of outrage over being used, abused and manipulated by sleazy lawyers who stepped on and backstabbed so many people they finally made it to the halls of power in congress and the white house. Every day they prove that ethics and the legal profession are never uttered in the same breath. Every day they decide issues on what is legally permissible instead of what is morally and ethically right. All that hairsplitting and their consciences, the little they had to begin with, were lost in the trash heap of legally right but morally wrong manipulations.

When lawyers became so great in number that everywhere you looked one was running something or other, it became a matter of a very short time before our leaders would stop being drawn from the public servants who wanted to do good, and were instead drawn from the scheming hordes of absurdly wealthy and powerfully connected lawyers who sleazed their way to the top of the shit pile.

Think about it...all our vital decisions such as war and peace, death and dying, birth and life has been placed in the hands of those who know only how to lie, cheat and steal their way to a win in the courtroom. We only have to look at the decisions being made to know these people don't care about us, or about the planet, or about each other. They care only about winning, about accumulating the most gains, the most prizes, the most rewards.

And if you think this is bad, the group coming up behind them who are just as large in number and just as greedy? Real Estate agents. Whatever ethics and consciences were left will soon be up for auction.

Therefore, the only sane way out of this mess is to fight back with weapons completely unfamiliar to either groups: compassion, love, peace, caring about people instead of their incomes or places of residence or the labels on their clothes or the size of the cars they drive. That is why I created the design for Compassionate Liberal. It is one I plan on wearing myself quite often and giving as gifts to my friends and family who understand what it means.

If we are too nice to yell and be mean, at least we can still make ourselves read if not heard. And it is like people say...the dog you have to worry about is not the one who barks, but the one who sneaks up silently behind you.

Compassionate Liberalism

The Meaning of Friendship

Some days I end up feeling as if I'm a strange kind of alien creature that holds values far above what people can realistically attain. I tell myself that I am some kind of freak because I believe that friendship is such a valued and cherished part of me that I can't compromise on what I believe. I tell myself that I hold back until I am sure because I know once I give it, it is for life. I tell myself that friendship means acceptance and tolerance and unconditional love. Anything else, and it is NOT friendship. I tell myself this is the natural order of things and anything that falls outside those lines is a poor and unsatisfying imitation of the real thing.

This is why, when someone does something that tells me not only do they believe differently than I do, but something about my beliefs makes them want to cut me down, much as those who walk through a forest think only of which trees are the best to slam into with a chainsaw, I end up locking myself in my bear den in stunned horror.

I know there is evil in the world. I know there are bad people. I know there are sociopaths who can lie as easily as they speak the truth. I know there are people who live to take vengeance on others for reasons known only to them. I know such people exist. I just don't expect to find them among people who profess undying love and friendship for me. I tend to believe them when they say such things.

I also tend to believe that once you give your heart to someone, once you say the words I love you, then you can never hurt that person, no matter how the relationship ended. To do so would make a mockery of love. It would cheapen it. It would make it seem something weak and easily wiped away as if it were some meaningless speck of dirt.

I also believe that when people split up, neither has the right to put an extra burden on their mutual friends by demanding they choose sides. I have spent my life trying to be fair in such situations. I can always see both sides of the issues in every relationship. I can empathise, sympathize, listen attentively and respectfully...and still not take a side, no matter who I believe is at fault. This is what it means to be a friend. This is what it means to have friendship, once given, be non-negotiable.

That is why I am always so stunned, so deeply wounded when anyone goes against this, or worse, when they use it against me to get back at someone else. People know how I feel, and yet that doesn't stop them from demanding I choose sides. It doesn't stop them from taking sides in my own relationship paths. It doesn't stop them from going against everything they once said in such sincerity that I feel a fool for believing it now.

And yet, believe it I must. If I allow myself to take sides, if I allow myself to fall apart because I learn friends I cherished walked out of my life because an ex partner made it a condition of continued friendship, then I fall to the lowest level of the basest act.

That is the split in the human condition, the two sides of ourselves we are always trying to reconcile with being alive. No matter what we believe, there will always be someone who will try and take it from us. Strength is therefore defined as not letting them do it, no matter what evil and disgusting methods they use to do so.

The Doggess of Unconditional Love is another one of my designs from my store. My Store

I also started a blog over at myspace that is going to focus on things like the politics of peace and respect. I only have a couple entries in it so far and some of my more political art. I'd be honored to have people visit there as well.

My home at myspace.com

The Meaning of Friendship

This Immigrant Thing

I started a new store today to add my political and semi-political and on the edge of acceptable stuff.

Immigrant's Landing

Mostly I wanted to express my feeling that this whole immigration argument is an extension of the divide and conquer argument that seems to be the Republican's entire party platform. If they can't win you over with ideas, then the next best thing they figure is to divide people against each other, feed each group a measured amount of bullshit until they barf it back at each other and call it democracy.

And while everyone is at each other's throats, then they sneak around behind our backs like the mean little cowards they are and start another war.

Isn't it clear enough that unless we all get along with each other and learn to treat each other with respect, then we will continue to be ants in their demented antfarm?

If you hate, if you preach intolerance, if you practice vengeance, if you are just a plain old mean person, then you play right into their hands. You help them cover the planet with a blanket of greed, and hate, and perpetual wars. Is this what you want? Aren't you better than that?

As far as the immigrant issue, if you aren't a Native American, then you are an immigrant. All we are really arguing about is the timing of our arrivals.

Peace.

This Immigrant Thing