Tuesday, April 27, 2010

First Response back from AZ based company

I've been writing to the list of companies  based in Arizona asking them about their stand on the adoption of racist Apartheid laws and including the following:

Ethically, I can't continue to support a company based in Arizona unless they publicly speak out against this horrible new law. Will you do this or does your company approve of the new law?

 

I received the first response back from GoDaddy.com. If you will notice it DOES NOT say anything against the law other than we didn't do it and I'm guessing the comment about free speech reveals more about their approval of the law than against it. So feel free to draw your own conclusions from the letter. I'm moving the last of the domains I have with them and will quit recommending them to customers.

Letter from GoDaddy:

Our Office of the President has responded to your request, details of which are described below:

Discussion Notes
Office of the President Response
Dear Ms.xxxxx,

Thank you for contacting GoDaddy.com. Your correspondence has been directed to the Office of the President.

We appreciate you taking the time to contact our office to share your opinion about the recent State of Arizona legislature. Although we wish your opinion in this matter did not affect your relationship with Go Daddy, please know your feedback is highly valued. At GoDaddy.com, we strongly believe that the freedom to express one's opinions is one of the defining factors that makes the United States a great nation.

Please also know that Go Daddy has multiple locations in several states and countries abroad. Furthermore, understand that Go Daddy did not create nor influence the state legislature in question. As such, we hope you will re-evaluate your final determination about your relationship with GoDaddy.com.

Should there be any other matters requiring the attention of our office, please do not hesitate to bring them to our attention.

Kindest Regards,

The Office of the President




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Friday, April 23, 2010

What is a Fundamentalist?

Exactly what do these whacked out fundamentalist christian crazies believe? This is a very nice little video that breaks it down quite simply, so nice and simple that even the Christian Taliban won't need Teabonics to understand it.




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Boycott Arizona

Governor Jan Brewer, poster child for everything that's wrong with the Republican Party and their Teahadist minions, signed one of the most bigoted pieces of legislation into law today since blacks were ordered to drink from different water fountains. read more

In doing so she guaranteed that anyone who isn't a white, christian Republican in Arizona will be pulled over to produce their papers to whatever passes for authority that day, whether it is legal law enforcement or some whacked out racist Teabagger who's convinced his white power militia membership gives him the right to terrorize anyone with a different color of skin.

If you think this is an unlikely scenario then you haven't been paying attention to the bigoted violence and hatred that is the root of the militia/teahadist/white power/neo nazi groups in America. They don't need facts. They don't need equal rights guaranteed by the Constitution they are so fond of parading around. They don't need anything but a law like this and hate radio/Fox News's Talking Morons to move them toward what they really want to do: create a country where only white assholes like them have the right to live.

Think I'm wrong? Here's video proof of what manipulated hatred does:



On days like this I sometimes think I should just crawl into bed and stay there until the stupid hatred goes away and human beings return to the planet. Just yesterday I had the unreal experience of trying to explain to someone that being nice to bigots and racists doesn't teach them love and tolerance; it makes them think being bigots and racists is okay.

I ended up nearly screaming at this person that I would continue to challenge, humiliate and shame bigots and racists every time they opened their mouths in my presence. I would continue to call someone a racist who generalized and tried to box one race of people into some stereotyped category, no matter how good a person they were/are in every other aspect of their lives.

That one bigoted statement is enough to tarnish their humanity and I really do consider it my job to let them know that's how it sounds and why. I also expect everyone else who cares about humanity to have the same job because that is how hatred is wiped away, by stopping it in its infancy when it's still a harmless joke, a mild stereotype, a seed of bigotry waiting for a weak moment to grow and become something far far worse that leads to laws like the one passed today.

And if you think Arizona made a bad decision today to embrace hatred, racism and bigotry, just be thankful America didn't make that same decision when its Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) was running for President. We'd all be having to show our papers to the militia thugs running the country if he had won.

Boycott Arizona shirt
Boycott Arizona by orsobear
Shop the t-shirts section of Zazzle


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Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Crazy Whackjobs in the Senate

Democrats expose the absurdity of Goposaur obstructionism. Read more



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Friday, April 16, 2010

Yo! Moran! Back away from the Karaoke machine and no one gets hurt!

One of these days the Tealiban will have someone very patient and well-versed in Teabonics (Yo! Moran! USAUSAUSA), explain to them how Teabaggers were used by Corporate puppetmasters to help them loot the country. You see, that's how they will finally understand it, by being told it was all about money. Especially since they won't have any as it will all be in the hands of the obscenely wealthy.

But even some of the smarter ones who can count without their fingers and toes, will never understand they were manipulated because their hatred, their racism, their moronic love of slogans, was a big old long leash hooked around their necks just waiting for some huge self-interest group to drag it wherever they wanted it.

These neck leashes allowed the wealthy and powerful insurance industry to drag teabaggers around to protest everything except the continued overpriced, punitive, and ineffective health insurance most of them didn't even have.

I am convinced this was the test for what is to come. They took some really stupid people who were "educated" with highly censored and biased Texas schoolbooks that left out all that annoying thinking for yourself stuff, and instead presented conformity and fear as the lifeblood of America, and saw how much they could use them for their own purposes.

It must have been quite a celebration the day the Insurance company execs looked out their windows and saw their first teabagger protest. Look! they must have shouted with glee, they're demanding we continue our horrible and expensive policies and deny them any chance of surviving an extended illness without losing everything.

And the backslapping and the laughter must have been something else when they realized many of them didn't even have insurance...or holding their sides with hilarious laughter...they realized a whole bunch of them were getting either VA or Medicare benefits AND protesting against government handouts.

Corporate America realized on that day they had a whole contingent of ready fools at their disposal. Now they're cranking them up for the fight against financial reform because every good American Patriot will gladly suffer through sky-high credit card rates, junk overpriced mortgages someone's betting will make them lose their homes, pay day loans with usury rates instead of low interest rich people loans, and cars that automatically turn themselves off if they're ten minutes late with the payment.

All they have to do is convince them anything that benefits ordinary people is Socialism/Communism/BatManism. The Teahadists' masters know most of them haven't a clue those are all radically different things. Those Texas schoolbooks again...

But let's not forget or be distracted by where the sheep are led and instead let's take a look at the sheep. It's really about the bigotry, the outright hatred of Obama because he's black. Read some of their signs, listen to what they say: THEY HATE HIM FOR BEING BLACK, and that's how the wealthy, corporate sleazebags can lead them around and make them do and say whatever they want them to do. They appeal to that hatred, that racism, that bigotry, and like the dumb jackasses they are who believe such crap, they follow their wealthy masters wherever they are led.

But like racists everywhere, they do and say things to try and convince others they are not really racist because it's not the 50's where people kind of chuckled and looked away. There are actually some people (gasp!) who will give you grief for being a piece of shit bigot.

They will go to extreme lengths to explain they aren't racist; they just don't like how all of "them" are on welfare, or how all of "them" are in gangs, or how all of "them" are on drugs. And when the light is shined on their racism, they do stupid shit to prove they're not racist--like make a really bad rap video.

Untitled from elizabeth glover on Vimeo.



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Sunday, April 11, 2010

Religion, the oppressive master.

One of the mistakes people make about me is believing because I'm an Atheist, then I must live in some kind of empty, immoral and inconsequential world. They believe this because religion has created a wall between them and the world beyond things. Unlike those who live behind this wall, I have no problem seeing myself as part of the greater whole that is nature, that is earth and sky, that is me in everything and everything in me.

The believers try and claim this sense of wholeness by calling it "the world god created." To me this is putting oneself in the position of renter on the planet instead of an inseparable part of it. No god created me or any such nonsense. I AM just as a tree is, just as a mountain is.

The advantage to this is huge because it means I can't be disconnected from myself by something as shallow as religion. I can't be led around by prejudices about the world to the point where scientific evidence is dismissed to pacify superstitious nonsense. I can't be swayed by material rewards or pacified by the promise of a life beyond the reality of the present.

That makes me dangerous because if I can't be bought then I am neither for nor against. If I can't give up my ferocious hunger for peace and justice for the lie that my perfect world exists somewhere I have to die to see it, then I become even more dangerous because I am never satisfied with platitudes. I want actions. I want tolerance. I want equality.

Most of the people in this country right now have been fed so much divisive crap they can't even consider anything but their place in the herd. Everything outside it is a threat, complete with color coded fear levels. Everyone who isn't them, who doesn't go to their church, who doesn't believe exactly as they believe, is somehow defective, wrong, or gasp! a socialist leftist terrorist who aspires to nothing more than sitting on a death panel that will get to off grandma.

I don't know if we can ever come together again as a country, as a people, as a nation. Maybe America is still too young. Maybe this country is like a belligerent teenager who has to say no to everything to establish its independence, no matter how much he or she needs what they are rejecting.

We've created these caricatures of human beings in people like Sarah Palin and her Paliban followers. We've scraped the bottom of the human barrel and out came the Becks, the Limbaughs, the Teahadists and their hateful rhetoric fed to them as talking points with no substance to distract them from what their masters want them to believe.

Maybe America is the stupidly materialistic hell where all the dumb people who valued things over anything else, ended up to wallow forever in their misguided ignorance. Maybe we're all dead and this is how it ends, buried in a landfill with all the insignificant crap we were convinced meant true happiness. Maybe hell is that house we over-bought to impress who the hell knows. Maybe hell is everything in that house, in its closets, in its garages that were supposed to buy happiness but failed miserably. Maybe hell is the pile of discarded relationships that lost out to the things mattered more than love. Maybe there really isn't much hope for us as a species. Maybe we're a worthless pile of failed ideology that someday will be studied and used as an example of how not to live a life.

Or maybe we will wake up and realize how badly we've all been manipulated, how efficiently we were taught to hate with no facts to back up the reasons for our hatred. Maybe we'll realize that we allowed ourselves to be led and herded into like-minded groups so we would never become dangerous, never explore outside our comfort zone, never accept anyone different than ourselves, never demand that our leaders lead instead of herd. Maybe one day we will turn off the TV, throw out the hate radio, use the propaganda that passes as newspapers to start a great big bonfire we can dance naked around together and start over as a species.

And maybe, just maybe we'll come to the realization that religion was and always will be the problem. Not god, not spirituality, not dancing naked in the forest, but religion--that evil, dogmatic chain so many willingly strap around themselves. On that day, a whole lot of people will finally understand that the best way to make someone your obedient puppet is to lead them around by their hate, and that religion is what mainlines the hatred directly into the human being. And hopefully the desire to escape, to finally live free and by their own terms, will allow them to throw off the shackles of religion forever and grow that perfect world without having to die first to see it.





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Sunday, April 04, 2010

What to do about the Pope and his crimes.

As an Atheist I believe our actions have consequences and no god/religion/easter bunny will remove the stain of those actions if they are wrong and immoral. In nature, the relationship between different parts of it affect the whole and create the future.

In a spiritual sense this can be referred to as Karma, but when you take the mysticism from the idea, then what you have left is the purity of action reacting to something done to it. For example, a drought will kill the vegetation and wildlife, and a flood will do the same. A volcano will erupt and destroy all life within the path of its destruction, but over time the ground will absorb the volcanic debris and create rich, fertile soil. It is a delicate and timeless dance throughout time of balancing the actions with the reactions.

For me, life, as in nature is all about seeking and maintaining that balance, so when asked recently what I, as an Atheist, would do about someone like the Pope, I first measured the enormity of the crimes committed over time by the organization he heads.

This is no different than examining the history of a company like Exxon spilling oil and fouling nature before determining what the punishment would be if they repeated that action. Or a petty criminal whose crimes add up to lifetime criminal status before he or she is locked away for society's protection.

Included in the punishment of both these examples is the concept of retribution such as a fine that might go to the victims, or a requirement that certain amounts of money go to clean up the damage done by neglect fed by long-standing corporate philosophy. The same criteria should apply to the Pope when you consider the crimes committed by the corporation he heads.


Most of us are familiar with the
The Crusades
. They are often cited as the dark side of Christianity.

But that was a minor mass murder committed in the name of religion. The crimes go far deeper and cover more people. For example, religion also killed Pagans, those considered Heretics, Atheists, Witches, Jews, and others that don't get nearly the same press, such as many of the 20th Century crimes committed against humanity in the name of religion. Many native people were slaughtered in the name of god. During the second world war, death camps were also run by Catholics. Christianity had its foul little hands in mass murders in both Vietnam and Rwanda. Read more on this.

In light of this criminal history, what should be the punishment for the current CEO of the Catholic Church who looked away, denied, and covered up the abuse of children by his Priests? How about something that restores balance to the planet by taking into account the concept of Karma, the act of natural cleansing, and consequences for committed actions? Here is my proposition:

Find one of those dungeons/catacombs where witches, pagans, heretics and others were tortured and left to die? Strip the Pope naked and let him hang by chains on one of the dank walls like those who were treated this way by his church. Once a day throw some slop at him so he will continue to live. Hose him down and let him drink his own urine to survive. Isolate him so he can't infect others anymore. And pray he lives a long life so the Karmic debt his corporation inflicted on humanity evens out and restores balance to our planet.



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Saturday, April 03, 2010

Teahadist Oath

I, ________________________, do solemnly swear to uphold the principles of a socialism-free society and heretofore pledge my word that I shall strictly adhere to the following:

I will complain about the destruction of 1st Amendment Rights in this country, while I am duly being allowed to exercise my 1st Amendment Rights.

I will complain about the destruction of my 2nd Amendment Rights in this country, while I am duly being allowed to exercise my 2nd Amendment rights by legally but brazenly brandishing unconcealed firearms in public.

I will foreswear the time-honored principles of fairness, decency, and respect by screaming unintelligible platitudes regarding tyranny, Nazi-ism, and socialism at public town halls. Also.
I pledge to eliminate all government intervention in my life. I will abstain from the use of and participation in any socialist goods and services including but not limited to the following:

· Social Security
· Medicare/Medicaid
· State Children’s Health Insurance Programs (SCHIP)
· Police, Fire, and Emergency Services
· US Postal Service
· Roads and Highways
· Air Travel (regulated by the socialist FAA)
· The US Railway System
· Public Subways and Metro Systems
· Public Bus and Lightrail Systems
· Rest Areas on Highways
· Sidewalks
· All Government-Funded Local/State Projects (e.g., see Iowa 2009 federal senate appropriations)
· Public Water and Sewer Services (goodbye socialist toilet, shower, dishwasher, kitchen sink, outdoor hose!)
· Public and State Universities and Colleges
· Public Primary and Secondary Schools
· Sesame Street
· Publicly Funded Anti-Drug Use Education for Children
· Public Museums
· Libraries
· Public Parks and Beaches
· State and National Parks
· Public Zoos
· Unemployment Insurance
· Municipal Garbage and Recycling Services
· Treatment at Any Hospital or Clinic That Ever Received Funding From Local, State or Federal Government (pretty much all of them)
· Medical Services and Medications That Were Created or Derived From Any Government Grant or Research Funding (again, pretty much all of them)
· Socialist Byproducts of Government Investment Such as Duct Tape and Velcro (Nazi-NASA Inventions)
· Use of the Internets, email, and networked computers, as the DoD's ARPANET was the basis for subsequent computer networking
· Foodstuffs, Meats, Produce and Crops That Were Grown With, Fed With, Raised With or That Contain Inputs From Crops Grown With Government Subsidies
· Clothing Made from Crops (e.g. cotton) That Were Grown With or That Contain Inputs From Government Subsidies
If a veteran of the government-run socialist US military, I will forego my VA benefits and insist on paying for my own medical care
I will not tour socialist government buildings like the Capitol in Washington, D.C.
I pledge to never take myself, my family, or my children on a tour of the following types of socialist locations, including but not limited to:
· Smithsonian Museums such as the Air and Space Museum or Museum of American History
· The socialist Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson Monuments
· The government-operated Statue of Liberty
· The Grand Canyon
· The socialist World War II and Vietnam Veterans Memorials
· The government-run socialist-propaganda location known as Arlington National Cemetery
· All other public-funded socialist sites, whether it be in my state or in Washington, DC
I will urge my Member of Congress and Senators to forego their government salary and government-provided healthcare.
I will oppose and condemn the government-funded and therefore socialist military of the United States of America.
I will boycott the products of socialist defense contractors such as GE, Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Humana, FedEx, General Motors, Honeywell, and hundreds of others that are paid by our socialist government to produce goods for our socialist army.
I will protest socialist security departments such as the Pentagon, FBI, CIA, Department of Homeland Security, TSA, Department of Justice and their socialist employees.
Upon reaching eligible retirement age, I will tear up my socialist Social Security checks.
Upon reaching age 65, I will forego Medicare and pay for my own private health insurance until I die.
SWORN ON A BIBLE AND SIGNED THIS DAY OF __________ IN THE YEAR ___.
_____________
Signed
_________________________
Printed Name/Town and State



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