The price of hate

The Republican party has blood on its hands because it funded and supported the kind of hatemongering and stereotypical branding of human beings for their own political agenda. No one who listened to it, watched it, repeated it, spread it around like obedient little fascist monkeys can escape blame either, because without them there would be no audience, no advertisers, no reason to pollute the airways and minds with such evil crap. How many lives must be lost to senseless and stupid hate before people wake up and understand we are not born hating, that it is something we are taught and choose to keep believing.


First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.


Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.


Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.


Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

John Lennon's "Imagine" (2010 - Remaster)

The price of hate

On the death of my mother.

Today I found out that my mother died the way she lived--alone, among strangers in a place she was in the process of going to or from. We just don't know the answers right now, only that she died on February 10th in Placerville, California, a place we'd never lived. No one knew she had children and other family members to notify. We don't even know where she ended up, if she was buried, cremated, or what caused her death.  

We found out  by accident. My sister had taken on the chore of trying to keep track of her, trying to follow a woman from destination to destination that not even she knew she was heading for. She just ran, from one bus to another, from one hospital, nursing home, public housing to another. She would stay long enough for her social security check to be deposited and then she would talk whatever caretaker she perceived as the most malleable into letting her have "her" money, even though my sister told them never to give her money, that she would take it and disappear, run from some past that was always tapping her on the shoulder forcing her to run from whatever demons haunted her.

Always it was the same story. She refused to believe the doctors who told her she was too ill to live the way she was living. She began to accuse my sister of stealing from her, of total strangers stealing her clothes, her money, her belongings. Yes, she belonged locked up, but she was a woman who always knew the limits of her rights. She knew that no matter how ill she was, how crazy she was, if she didn't want to be locked up there wasn't a damn thing anyone could do about it. So she lived without an address and went from cold climates in winter coats to the desert and then to cold climates wearing only summer clothes. My sister would get phone calls from hotels she'd checked herself into and told the desk my sister would pay. She would get calls from hospitals where she'd been taken after falling and hurting herself. She would get calls from nursing homes saying she had once again escaped.

My sister last heard from her at the beginning of February. She had once again taken off and was on her way to some place in California. And then all communication ended. She had disappeared and no one knew where she was. My sister suspected she had died just as my sister feared she would die, alone in some strange place among strangers. But no matter where we searched, nothing came up. You can't find someone who doesn't want to be found.

Unless they die and then their lives are reduced to a simple one line public record. Today my brother typed her social security number in the death index and there she was and none of us knew how. She died eight days before her 87th birthday.

It all sounds so clean written down in black and white on the computer screen. There's nothing there about the damage war did to her, the many times she almost died, the hunger she suffered. There was nothing there about having her appendix taken out during the war with nothing to blunt the pain except a bottle of whiskey. There was barely any food, no medicine, and people were dying all around her at the hands of the Nazis, the Fascists, every single occupying army that came through town.

There was nothing there about her first love and how she went home and told her mom she had fallen in love and finally there was something to look forward to. Until my grandmother dashed that dream and told her that she couldn't marry a local boy, that she had to find an American and get the family out of the living hell their lives had become. She was ordered to give up love and find a ticket to America and she did. Or I should say we did because I was born there in the aftermath of war, in the broken dreams and bodies of the worst evil humanity can imagine. I almost died the first three weeks because five years of near starvation made her breast milk poisonous to me. And there was very little to give me to eat in its place. Six months after my birth I weighed just a few pounds more than my birth weight. But I survived just as she survived and all the awesomely strong women in my family survived.

But it came with a heavy cost. In the lines on the screen, there was nothing about the woman who alienated her children to the point where we literally ran from her and never went back. I spent most of my life afraid of her, afraid of her demons that filled the room. She drank heavily the first few years we came to America. My earliest memories of her were the smell of vodka mixed with mouth wash. I know she quit drinking a few years later, but the meanness that replaced the alcohol made me long for the sweet scent of listerine scented vodka. My brother and sister were born after she tried to leave her past behind and make a life for us in America.

But it was a difficult life. The man she married was an abusive gambler who beat her and then left us with nothing as he gambled away the rare paychecks he managed to earn. She worked several jobs to support us and it was never enough. He always came back and beat the money she earned out of her until she gave it to him and we went back to living on whatever we could scrounge. We lived in cars, in cheap hotel rooms, or on a bus going from one town to another. There wasn't any welfare or food stamps. You begged, borrowed, stole or you died. Life had become what she thought she had left behind.

I last saw her in 1979. It had been about three years since the last time and it ended badly with the police coming to help me get away. I never went back. Periodically she would find out where I was and send me letters telling me she drank when I was two years old because I was a really bad kid and drove her to it, or that her husband never hit her, that he never hit me, that I imagined it all, that it was all in my head, that the scars on my body were from my clumsiness, my lack of grace, my inability to walk without falling down and having some expensive accident like a broken arm or leg. Or I would get letters saying he beat me because I was bad and it was my fault, that if I had been a nicer kid he would not have ever hit me, that he would have stayed home with us and life would have been grand and wonderful. I stopped reading the letters after a while as they became as painful as the beatings.

My brother stopped seeing her when she told him he imagined all the beatings from his father, that he was a good man who would never abuse his children. It was too much for him just as it was too much for me. But our sister was stronger. She was the only one who one day decided she'd had enough of being beat and delivered a powerful kick to him that assured he would never lay another hand on her again. I'd always admired my sister for that moment. She was about 11 years old and gained my lifelong respect that day.

And because my brother and I were too wounded emotionally to deal with her, my sister took on the task of keeping track of our mother. It became a part of her life, the good daughter who took care of her mother. But even she didn't have skin thick enough to deal with the hatred and mean-spirited crap she received in thanks. She bought her a phone, replenished the card every month so she could call anytime, and for the last year only talked to her on the phone,mostly because the only time she could see her was if she was in a hospital for a few days. That's where my cousin found her and managed to get her to talk into a recorder and share some of the least horrifying memories of the war years. An after a couple hours of taping, she was once again gone, denying she was sick, denying she was old, and off to who the hell knew where.

We laughed about it but seriously, it had little humor to it when you think about it.  I've always known I could never survive what she and those of her generation survived at the hands of the madmen, the cruel beasts that passed for humanity for most of her early life. It is one thing to outlive everyone you know from old age, and quite another to outlive them because they weren't strong enough to escape from the Nazis and Fascists. In spite of our rough childhoods, the poverty, the pain, none of us kids ever had to watch those we loved die at the hands of monsters. In our hearts we know we were good kids because those of us who had parents who suffered through that knew intuitively that we could never be bad kids, we could never add to their suffering. We were children of survivors and we never forgot it.

But it turned us into pacifists. It made us adamantly anti-war. It made us hate authority and totalitarianism with a passion that consumed our lives. I often wonder what my mother would have been like without war and the glimpses I get of laughter, of softness, of brief glimpses when she allowed herself to forget always made me long for it to be true, for her to turn into a mother who didn't hate, who didn't condemn, who didn't see the world as a hateful and ugly place waiting to kill the spirit of anyone weak enough to resist it.

The hardest decision I made in my life was to stay away from her. It felt unnatural at the time and in moments of despair I sometimes wonder if I could have helped her become more human. But then I come to my senses and realize that for some people the damage is just too deep and when they go down, they take you with them. I wanted to live and getting away from her was the only way I knew to do it. I don't regret the choice I made. I grew into a better, stronger person because of it. But I also know there's damaged parts of me that won't heal. I know that my brother is a damaged soul as I am a damaged soul. I know my sister has her deep wounds. But what we share is that spirit of survival. Just as war couldn't kill her, she couldn't kill us even though she tried. Maybe she reallly did believe if she killed us we would no longer suffer.She didn't drown us in the bathtub, but it was close enough and I have to take a deep breath sometimes and take in the love that surrounds me in order to remind myself I made the right decision.

I think we all feel that way about her. I no longer live in fear of her finding me, of hurting me, of trying to destroy my life. I can live openly now knowing she won't show up on my doorstep with some crazed idea of people out to get us or attack those I love simply because love in her damaged soul, was a weakness that would one day kill me. I think what we want now is closure and we can't have that until we find out how she died, how it ended, where she was, what her final moments were. I suspect a stroke that left her unable to speak and have someone call my sister. Or maybe she just died knowing that she finally succeeded in escaping for the last time. I wouldn't be surprised if her last words were simply "fuck all of you."

 As I told a good friend this evening, grief is a strange thing. You don't mourn for what you lost but for what you never had. I think that describes me perfectly tonight as I write this. As I dug out this photograph I see a woman I never knew. Yet, she gave birth to me. She is in me. And maybe the real reason I'm still alive is because she was strong enough to give up love so I could survive. I want to believe that and maybe one day I will. I know the saying she is now at peace is so trite, but it's true. For a woman like her who went through what she went through, only death can bring peace. I am grateful she found it at last.

On the death of my mother.

Why I'm A Political Beast

Someone asked me the other day why I let myself get so wrapped up in politics. It's one of those questions that's nearly impossible to answer because it falls in the category of  if you don't live it as I do, then I can't explain it so you will understand. Because I care about the person who asked, I'll try and explain my passion for this mean and nasty piece of life.

I wasn't always political. What people often misinterpreted as politics was an inner sense of fairness that could never be denied. To me it is not and will never be a complete world until it is a just world. And I really believe we can't have a just world as long as there is war. We can't have a just world as long as people aren't equal. We can't have a just world as long as there are victims. We can't have a just world as long as there is greed, selfishness, intolerance, racism, bigotry and hatred.

It's as simple as that on the surface.  In my life I've learned there are certain things that  need to take place before the world becomes a just place, and they won't happen by themselves. It's too big a job. So I use my talents as a writer, as an artist, as a passionate person who cares about this planet to educate others into what needs to be done.

First and most importantly, we need an end to war. There can be no justice without peace as a foundation for a better world to grow its roots. People tell me it's an impossible dream, that we humans are a warlike species that will never know peace.

I disagree completely. I believe we all begin as peaceful creatures but life twists us around, wounds us, teaches us the wrong things, and we grow up believing we are a warlike species that will never know peace.

We need to walk back from this untruth and it requires the most difficult of all things to even get a grip on the path toward peace. It requires first and above all that we take a good look at ourselves, that we learn who we are, what shaped us, what created us, what gave form to the essence of opinions, dreams and desires we are as human beings.

But to do that we have to set aside a lot of crap. One of the biggest pieces of crap is religion. I don't care what people believe individually. I even think spirituality is good for people, that it gives them a focus, a center from which to evolve. But religion is a different thing all together. It is a business, a giant system of brainwashing large groups of people to believe just one point of view and nothing else.

This is not spirituality. This is mind control for the purpose of using human beings for things they were never intended to be used for. Religion fills the heart with hate instead of love. It creates an us and them world where there is only you and those who believe as you do against the enemy, the outsiders who are bad where you are good.

Without religion, people would question the need to go to war. They would question the need to believe in only one ideology. They would go outside their own safe little reality and explore, examine, and come to understand there are many truths.

But that makes humans dangerous to those who need war, because you see, war is a need. It is what makes people obscenely wealthy inventing and selling machines meant for only one thing: killing people. And that's where politics enters the picture. No arms merchant can sell his death tools by standing on a street corner with a cart and a cardboard sign. Arms merchants need politicians to convince the people of the need for war. And their reward is wealth and power and prestige. For a politician, this is what it means to be a human being.

And that's why I spend so much of my life educating myself and others about politics. I want people to see how they are manipulated, how they are used, how they are controlled  by those whose only desire is to make themselves richer. It's all about money and that is the disgusting simple truth of it all.

I can't fight the powerful with money because I don't have any. But I have a strong sense of who I am from decades of taking a stand for things that affect me but are not me. It is how we grow. We MUST step outside ourselves and look at what's out there from a different perspective. This is my fight, this understanding that what we are and what we believe was fed to us by those who don't really give a damn about us as living beings. We're tools to them and I am offended and disgusted by this.

And since I've never been one to sit around, I let people know about the corruption in politics, the bad people, the hypocrites, the racists, the bigots, the mean-spirited and greedy. I treat them like the cockroaches they are and shine a light on them because as they scatter and run for the darkness where they can destroy the world for their own personal gain, they know that I'm out there, that there are others like me out there, and that we care enough about the earth and those who share it with us to never let them operate freely without fear of being caught. We're waiting to catch them and they know it.

It won't stop them completely but it will slow them down. And since I believe in evolution, I have faith that even the worst in our species will change over time if they have something to change towards that is vital and alive and precious instead of evil, greedy, and dead.

 I am a patient person as is anyone who has ever planted seeds in a garden and waited for them to grow. I know I won't see world peace in my life time, but I learned long ago to content myself with seedlings knowing I  had a hand in their growth. And those seedlings are why I stay aware of politics and politicians, why I'll never shut up, why I'll never stop doing my part to make a better world. Multiply me by several hundred thousand over a period of time and you have the world I know is possible.

Corporate Planet by orsobear
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Why I'm A Political Beast

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

Love More Hate Less by orsobear
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First Response back from AZ based company

Useful Idiots

There are stupid people in the world, uneducated brainwashed morons who wouldn't know an original thought if it slapped them upside their mentally challenged heads. And then there are the other kind--the useful idiots. These are the tools of powerful people with an agenda that revolves around the only thing they care about--money.

These tools are the ones who are the first step up when a nation calls on them to be eavesdroppers and spy on their neighbors, or turn them in for imagined crimes simply because they belong to the wrong ethnic group. They are the camp guards in death camps, the thugs who guard the despot's gates from the citizen rabble. They are the ones who are the first to dig into their dead companions and start eating before the flesh is even cold because their own survival matters more than ethics or honor or compassion.

In High School they were the nasty little weenies who went crying to the teachers, to the Principal, to anyone who would reward them for being mean little tattletales. They did this not out of any sense of honor or justice but usually as payback for everyone accurately seeing them for the jerks they were. And for a meager little reward, a lollipop for their whoring betrayal of everyone they came into contact with, was payment enough for them.

These awful little cretins grew up to be the Rush Limbaugh's and Pat Robertson's of the world, mean and hateful excuses for human beings. Every time they open their mouths and spew their hateful agendas, they reveal the pathetic creatures they truly are. I mean, come on, how many drugs does someone like Limbaugh have to take before he quits gagging at the sight of his own face in the mirror, and how much of the Bible does Pat Robertson have to shit on before he runs out of justifications for his bigotry?

What neither of these hatemongering cretins understand is they are useful idiots whose strings are being pulled by those with an agenda that cares nothing about them or what they believe. They have one purpose and that is to gather all the rabble in one place so they can more effectively be used to further someone elses agenda. For this they need the useful idiots to act as their shepherds, their brainwashers, their propaganda ministers.

The Fundamentalist Wingnuts and the Teabaggers did not grow out of a grassroot snake pit but instead were created, funded, and directed by Corporations who are terrified the American people will wake up and realize how badly they're being screwed. The useful idiots like Limbaugh and Robertson feed them the poison that's provided by their masters in order to keep the rabble ready for whatever they are slated to be used for, sort of an army of moron robots who will follow each other off a cliff if it means they get to hate gays and black people on the way down.

But there's a risk in how far they can go before ordinary people start realizing that nausea they feel is their conscience recoiling against the hatred spewing from their radios and from their pulpits. Each time someone like Limbaugh capitalizes on human tragedy in order to keep his masters from cutting off his drug supply, or someone like Robertson trashes the Bible by turning it into the book of hate, more and more people start to see them as the pathetic and hateful trolls they truly are.

Their sick comments about Haiti which I refuse to link to or give them any more access to people with, crossed the line for a lot of people today who ordinarily would just dismiss them as the sick fucks they are. Today they projected themselves into the future in a lot of people's minds a few short years from now when they are old, ostracized and trying to defend their hate-filled lives. Hopefully they won't use that worn out excuse that they were only following orders and instead take responsibility for the hurt and harm they did to America in the eyes of the world.

But I somehow doubt it. I think they will die lonely and defeated old haters whose graves have to be hidden from the public so people won't make pilgrimages to use them as personal toilets. They will be used as examples of what happens when really bad and greedy people find a way to get others to do their dirty work for them. Children will grow up vowing to never be them, to live a life that is the opposite of everything they stood for in their short and insignificant times.

Judging from the ferocity and stupidity of the shit spewing from their mouths, I am certain I will be alive to see that day as hate has a way of consuming the hater from within. It's a cancer and it's feeding on both of them with an unrelenting hunger. They are eating themselves from within.

Useful Idiots

Godless Damned Degenerate for Peace

I'm the first to admit that my inner beast is a stubborn one. It grabs hold of something and doesn't let go until there's some kind of ending, some resolution that doesn't stink of enforced compromise, or that hasn't been steeped until tasteless through the filter of consensus.

Yeah, that's me. But I'm also someone who doesn't waste my time with lost causes. I have no use for people who have given up on themselves, who have turned their brains and hearts over to some master pulling strings they don't even know they have.

It's why religion annoys me. There's nothing democratic about religion. There's some power-hungry asshat behind a pulpit preaching his biases to a crowd of people who are so afraid of their inner selves, they turn themselves over body and brain.

I hate unfair fights and there's nothing more unfair than a power whore abusing those weaker and more desperate than him or herself. The average preacher claims to be a servant or emissary of god, often using the same language as other historical mass indoctrinators of human consciousness  used those words to raise armies in the service of their own special friends.

My main objection to religions is that every one of them has its blood all over wars using some mythical deity as an excuse for the pillaging and slaughter.  One of the many reasons I don't believe in god is that if one existed then he/she/it would have smacked the holy shit out of these morons starting wars and killing people using him/her/it as an excuse. And if I am wrong, then what kind of human being would I  be if I allowed myself to get sucked into these mass murder cults that demand blood and hate as some sort of twisted homage? I couldn't live with myself if I gave up my humanity that easily and for so little. What kind of evil monster would demand such horrid obedience from me that I would literally turn over all that is loving and kind about myself to him/her/it so they could kill and destroy even more?

But every day I see people who do this, people who are so insecure, so afraid of the perceived demons inside themselves that they march sheeplike to the cadence of their masters. This is what war truly is, the strong manipulating the weak and frightened so the powerful may grow richer and more powerful. The only god they're fighting for is money and power. And they use religion to keep people from noticing their hands picking the pockets of the people as they make others die for their own personal enrichment.

This has always been the story of war. It has nothing to do with honor, with glory, with democracy or saving souls. It has everything to do with powermongers who sell weapons to everyone, no matter what their politics or religion. It has everything to do with politicians who are so willing to use the lives of others to score points in some demented game of human chess, they don't even consider the casualities worthy of being referred to as human beings. It has everything to do with land grabs, with historical grievances, with family feuds among the rich and powerful. And religion is the noose they drape around the neck of the sheep so they will die willingly and ask no questions.

But it all doesn't happen so easily. To convince the sheep to enter the slaughterhouse, they use their evil minions, the purveyors of hate and propaganda. They use the lowest of the common denominators to instill hatred and rage because that way they can control the masses. Those who love are beyond the control of evil masters, but those who hate already have one hand on the leash and are ready to hand the other end of it to the first hater who stirs up the venom in their hearts.

As human beings who have the responsibility of passing on a whole and healthy planet to the next generation, we have to understand that love is the only thing that will save us and preserve something worth passing on. Love is the only way we can move forward in a time where hate is a prison waiting to enslave us all. We need to speak up. We need to make some noise. We need to understand if we don't use our own power to create a peaceful world, then it will be taken from us and turned into a weapon of hate that will be used against us. We need to reject hate. We need to reject the cultish behavior that leads to mental imprisonment. We need to stand up and very clearly state: there's a better way of going through life and we are that way.

Ursine Logic's Peace Store 

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Godless Damned Degenerate for Peace

On this moronic topic of hate

So Cafepress decided to take down the assassination gear after all. I suppose I should be happy they came to their senses but instead I'm left with this gnawing suspicion that they crunched numbers, talked to lawyers, measured the cost of indignation, were appalled (and not totally understanding) why they were singled out for shame on TV and Zazzle was not, and then went with the bottom line that favored them, which is the way they make all their decisions. It would fit their "profile" as they've refined it over the last year. It would solidify their standing as just another corporate crap shop that cares only about money. Yeah, thanks guys, but you already revealed who you are and doing the decent thing came too late. As they used to tell us slutty girls who actually enjoyed sex as much as the boys back then, you can't get your reputation back.

I really wish that they and others would have immediately recognized it as the hate-fueled crap it was and taken it down immediately, or at least been the leader and kept it down once they made the decision like Zazzle did. But that would imply a decency and intelligence they, and a lot of people do not possess. There's times when we seem to have become a nation of poorly educated morons goosestepping to either the almighty dollar or some barely disguised hate group.

I don't know at what point a human being can say I've had enough of this crap and I'm going to start fighting back, but that pretty much sums up where I'm at right now. I've always tried to have a live and let live approach to life. But damn it, when crazyass hating jerks who use the Bible or whatever book they choose to wave in my face to justify hate, then I'm done letting live.

I'm not a violent person and I will never, unlike these hate groups, advocate violence, but I do have ways to make my voice heard. I use my art, my words, my helping others to fight back. Those are more effective and lasting ways to effect change. If you kill someone or piss them off then you haven't really done something that will create positive change. All you've done is create more enemies, more hate, more victims.

Yesterday two of those pure little Mormon converters made the mistake of knocking on my door. All I could see were representatives of a church who used money and power to deny citizens of another state the right to marry. I still remember when African-Americans were not allowed to hold positions of power in that church. And now I see that same bigotry directed toward gays and lesbians. How dare they come to my door and push that crap on me? How would they like it if I went to their doors and lectured them on Atheism?

I sent them on their way without too much verbal damage because it's not their fault they're ignorant of what their church really is, but with enough warning that coming back would not be a pleasant experience for them. It did leave me feeling as if religion is its own worst enemy,  that politicized churches have created more Atheists than believers in the last few years.

Maybe there's a downward spiral they've sucked themselves into that has to happen, and right now the pool is just starting to whirl. Maybe some day history will look back on this time the same way they looked back on the fall of the Roman Empire, the end of Hitler, the disgrace of Nazism and Facism, the cruelty of tyrannical dictators.They will be able to point to certain people who were the propagandists who stirred up the ignorant with hatred and created enemies/scapegoats for these uneducated and mostly stupid rabble to rail against. There is no easier person to control than one who hates. They are truly the tool of any master who feeds them hateful crap.

This may seem like the most idealist nonsense you've ever read but I really do believe love and tolerance can defeat all that. As I said, you can control a hater with no problem, but a person who loves is fairly hard to turn into a missile of evil. Love is a power that only works for good and immediately recognizes when not good is threatening them.

I'm not talking about the kind of love that happens in relationships. That's a whole different kind of love, a sort of willful blindness that only hurts those who choose badly. I'm talking about the kind of love that most religions conveniently forgot were the basis of those precious books they're so fond of waving around. Maybe if people were required to actually read their bibles, their religous books, and not go on just the word of some unholy intermediary with an agenda to push, we might create that better world that religion promises so deceptively to its followers.

But in the meantime, it's up to us as individuals, as artists, as human beings to take over the message of hate and replace it with love. It's up to us to take the negative crap and replace it with positive goals. It's up to us to stand up to the haters, to call them on their hate and make as much noise over love as they do over hate. It's up to us to realize we do have the power to fight back against mean, against cruel, against hateful, against bigoted and intolerant.

We all have the means inside our hearts and it's time to start digging or the haters will win.

Hate is an STD by orsobear
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Peace Love Tolerance by orsobear
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On this moronic topic of hate

Murdering for Jesus

I'm descended from a long line of survivors, people who lived through horrors most of the people I call my friends can't even imagine. In too many of them the scars never healed properly. They lost something vital to life, some integral part of self that left them incomplete human beings. The other ones, the ones who did manage to put the pieces of themselves back together again came out stronger and more alive than when they went in. It almost made up for the ones that came out severely damaged for life. Almost.

I've spent a lifetime dwelling on this as I lived with the war wounded who couldn't deal with the pain so they passed it on and raised children with anger, with bitterness, and sometimes an outright hatred of human beings. Considering what some of them went through, I can't judge them for this. In fact, because of it I became a person who is reluctant to judge, who tries to understand the depth of wounds, the reasons for the missing pieces of humanity. I've always wanted to make up for what they didn't get a chance to experience: tolerance, acceptance, equality. I felt it was my obligation, the reason I was born. I was one of the balancing stones of the next generation. I never questioned this role. I just knew it as mine.

And yes, I've spent a lifetime balancing out the selfishness around me by being unselfish, especially when it was difficult. It's so much easier to want than to not want. We have to train ourselves to not want, to let someone else have, to stay out of the way of someone else's happiness needs. I'm kind to people others are cruel to because I know how it feels to have others be cruel to me based on things that exist only in their own fears. I've always figured people's lives were their own to live and as long as you didn't hurt the other animals, no one had a right to tell you how to live. And hurting someone was not an excuse and killing was always wrong, no matter who did it.

I learned these valuable lessons from some of the most fucked up people on the planet. But the strange thing is,  because of what was done to them they developed a sort of reverence for tolerance, a kind of wistful optimisim. It was their version of religion and they worshipped daily on their dreams of a world that wouldn't do to their children what was done to them. 

An important lesson I learned was that  in spite of the horrors they went through, in spite of the mean cruel side of humanity they had to endure, not one of them killed another human being over some mythical god. In fact, if war taught them anything, it was that religion was the biggest obstacle to peace and harmony in the world.

That doesn't mean everyone in my family were pacifists who embraced all humanity as their brothers and sisters. Hate is an evil disease and it gets passed on to the nicest people and turns them into not so nice people. Often I would look at some members of my family and wonder what they would have been like without war, what would they have been like without having to survive hate and others trying to kill them just because they believed differently or didn't believe at all. And I often wondered what they did believe because for the most part, they kept these things to themselves as they had learned it was not something safe to talk about openly. Power was too unpredictable and it had a way of turning on you when you least expected it to.

There's a lot of Atheists in my family, especially the ones who almost died from someone else's religious hatred, and especially their children, of which I am one. No god would stand by and let what happen to them happen so I never believed in one. Believers like to say there are no Atheists in foxholes and to them I say it takes war to make people stop believing. It takes hunger, and fear, and the loss of most everyone you know and love to convince you god is a figment of a special privileged class who have never had their beliefs tested by too much reality. It takes reading history and paying close attention to how the unholy churches and their evil minions killed millions over many generations simply because they believed differently. It takes seeing the pattern of hate emerge over and over again to finally understand it is not some god who is preaching hatred from the pulpit, from the radio, from the television screen. It is not god, but it is some mean fucked up excuse for a human being who is spreading that hatred.

And yesterday, that hatred caused the death of a doctor, a man who had dedicated his life to helping other human beings, a man who was gunned down in church, of all places, in the house of the god these hatemongering fanatics believe is so loving and kind and honorable.

I understand who these people are. I grew up with some of them. They are people who are lacking in basic human compassion, who believe their hell on earth is punishment for being human. They are pitiful and weak excuses for human beings. They are easily led, easily controlled  by those who have ungodly agendas. They hang on every word the hatemongers spew as if it were the word of their own god. They don't see themselves as the manipulated fools they are, the tools they are to further an invisible agenda by those far more rich and powerful than they will ever be. They listen and hear them say go and kill for me, go take out this symbol so we can exploit it for political gain. Their puppetmasters don't care about the families, the loved ones, the communities that suffer. It's all about politics and getting someone to murder to further an agenda.

This is who killed this doctor and the other ones. This is who blows up buildings and clinics. This is who kills indiscriminately in war and turf battles. This is who kills over an imaginary god only they can see and yet want to inflict on everyone else. This is who the real terrorists are and it's way past time we started paying attention to what they are doing, what they are trying to destroy. It's time to make them accountable for their actions. Put them on trial for the accessories to murder they are, for the treasonous bastards they are, for the hatemongering bigotrys they perpetuate in the name of a political agenda designed to enrich and empower them further.

It is time to put the blame where it truly belongs, on those that led yet another  poor stupid manipulated idiot to kill--the O'Reilly's, the Limbaughs, the Gingriches of the world. It is their agenda that drove this man to kill another human being. Not god, not the easter bunny, not the tooth fairy, but soul-less, empty hearted men who care nothing about humanity and want only to enrich themselves further, steal even more money and power, spread even more hatred and intolerance bnecause in the end they know the one truth they can't hide from: as human beings they are complete and utter failures and history and the generations within their own families will forever remember them for this failure. They will serve as cautionary lessons to wiser and more educated generations to come, just our generation learned from the horrors of our parent's generation that some people are just plain evil.

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Murdering for Jesus

That Prop 8 vote...

I don't understand most hate. I'm just not the kind of person who wastes what I feel on such a non-productive emotion. I'm always slightly embarrassed for the person who goes off on some tirade that turns them red and livid and bordering on the edge of stroking out from it all. It seems so futile, so low on the list of ways to accomplish something or change an event or manifest what it is that eludes you so completely you must hate all those who keep it from you, justified or not.

I admit to a feeling of bewilderment, of not understanding what it is that people who object to same-sex marriage are objecting to. It seems simple to me. Two people discover they love each other and want to have a party where everyone comes and joins in the celebration of their love. It happens every day all over the world. Why does their being gay make a difference?

And yes, I've heard all the religion arguments and it's probably because of such self-serving interpretation of words written many years after the fact by those with their own agendas to push, that I am an Atheist. Religion has always fed on hate to perpetuate itself, especially in times when it felt threatened. And the last eight years of religious manipulation for political gain has probably created more Atheists than believers so the beast is threatened. And it strikes back to perpetuate itself.

But this time it has stepped on its own tail. Not only has the validity of the initiative process been validated, but so has the legality of voting in a specific agenda based on the small-minded and cruel beliefs of religious cults. This has opened a very wide door that will be shoved open with great force, exploited and trashed for points and counterpoints, and will eventually force a definition of who gets to decide how someone else lives--and why they should have that right over someone other group or individual.

Therefore to help speed up that process so we don't have to endure anymore religious crap wrapped around bundles of bigotry and hate and obscenely paraded as the word of god, I propose the following initiatives for the people of California to consider gathering signatures for and getting on the ballot and then turning out in huge numbers to vote for them:

1.  Make all marriages performed in churches illegal. If churches can decide which civil marriages are valid or invalid, then the people should have the same right to decide if church weddings are legal or illegal.

2.  Make divorce illegal. Force those who bleat about the sanctity of marriage to stay married to each other. No escape. For eternity. That means you, Mel Gibson and Newt and Rudy all the other hypocrites. No new bimbos. Marriage is, after all, sacred and we say so, therefore you must obey whether you agree or not. You must now go back to your original wives...forever. And ladies, you have to take them back because chances are you don't differ that much from them politically so you deserve them.

3. Any church that preaches politics, hatred, and intolerance immediately loses its tax-exempt status and must register as a PAC.

4. Before anyone can get married, a percentage of people based on the number that voted in the last election, get to vote on whether they can get married or not.

5. Make it mandatory that anyone who brings up the Bible as an excuse to justify their bigotry has to sit down and actually read it for themselves, every damn word, every damn page. No unholy intermediaries putting their political spin and manipulation on it.  And if they can't read? Well, then they'll just have to put off using the Bible as an excuse until they learn how.

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That Prop 8 vote...

President Obama's Speech

After eight year's of cringing every time the poster child for faith-based education--as in throw the little bastard to the hyenas and see what comes out the other end--blathered his idiocy,  President Obama's press conference was an awesome reminder that things are different these days. Listening to him fend off the purveyors of dying dinosaur talking points disguised as journalism was a delight I've never really witnessed with such a personal interest. It was like watching the smart sheriff ride into town and start kicking stupid people's ass.

He took the "are you still beating your dog" type questions and turned them into quick lessons dumbed down so anyone who cared to listen would understand, all the while twisting the knife of his intellect into the spineless backs of his obstructionist colleagues. He did this with the stimulus package where he carefully explained what it would do and not do, and then he mocked those who complained that it was a spending bill when the very word "stimulus" meant spend.

He did this with careful explanations of how there was a difference between earmarks and funding for essential programs, at the same time as he portrayed the obstructionists as failing to understand how building roads and green buildings was putting people to work--an idea so simple and clear only an ideological moron could fail to grasp it.

He did this with everything, with every question. He answered them honestly. He poked at himself for not playing the game of Washington ego well enough when dealing with petulant Republican demands. He showed how the process of being President works as if he were a reality show we were tuned in to watch.

And he made it real by describing the moment he realized he was President when he had to sign a family death notification for a war casualty, and how each signature was a reminder of his responsibilities, the consquences of decisions he made and will make.

It was an awesome look at a man speaking to us as human beings, as equal citizens, as co-owners of an amazing country in need of a lot of work and TLC. Listening to our President made me feel that maybe we can fix things, maybe things will get better, maybe things aren't so totally and completely bad after all. Maybe we really are one people, one vision, one dream, one truth, one heart. Maybe we can finally make the world we've always wanted in our hearts.

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President Obama's press conference, stimulus package, economy, obstructionists

President Obama's Speech

Short term memory and a hungry world

I have a hard time around holidays. Most of my memories of holidays as a kid were not fun things and are best forgotten. I've learned to create my own celebrations around things that matter to me, things that touch more of me than family/community obligations that give nothing back. So every year I do something with the limited resources I have. This year I have hardly any money left over for anything. I've always lived on the edge but this time I'm hanging on with my fingernails.

But the important thing is that I'm hanging on and I have that damn optimist gene that keeps me looking at life as a series of small steps forward. I've always figured that if I wasn't flat out cold on my back, then I was moving forward. That's always been good enough for me.

So this year instead of shirts, I gave buttons and magnets as donations for my favorite fundraising auctions. Last year was dog and cat shelters. This year it's Darfur. I donated some magnets for a fundraiser to some friends in California. They held a dance and auctioned off the magnets and then wrote a nice check for the group they support. It's a great way to give a little and have it turn into a lot. Here's the magnet I made for them:

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Short term memory and a hungry world

Overturn Proposition 8

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Let me put this in terms that just about any moron can understand: proposition 8 was not about gay marriage; it was about voting to take away one group's civil rights. It wasn't even about marriage. All legal marriages are civil marriages. If you get married in a church without that official STATE license you have to fill out, sign, pay your fee and send back to the STATE, then you are not legally married.

Proposition 8 was a church-funded assault on the civil liberties of one select group of citizens and their right to engage in a civil ceremony. It was bigotry and hatred on a scale that brings shame on these churches for even invoking the name of Jesus.

Where in those damn holy books does it say one group of human beings should be denied a civil ceremony because of someone else's religious beliefs? And why are churches who politicize the pulpit allowed to keep their tax-exempt status? When they take funds from their donors/congregations for influence peddling and election tampering then they are officially PAC's and need to register as such. And they need to pay taxes on the money they raised for political actions because it sure as hell isn't going to help the poor and hungry.

And let me put this another way that just about any moron can understand. My grandmother's sister was a Lesbian. She was born in the late 1800's and lived with her partner in Italy for their entire adult lives. They were two women who shared a home for decades. And not even their own families knew they were a couple, knew they were part of an enduring life-long relationship they had to live in secret.

And when my grandmother's sister died the secret some had suspected was revealed in the lone photograph of her lover, the woman she shared her entire life with. We don't know her name. We don't know how and when she died. We don't know if at that time and place, close friends were allowed to be with each other when the other died. We don't know if it was as it is in so many hospitals here that only one's "legal" family can be with the dying patient, no matter how many years they shared, how much they loved one another, how lonely they must die without the presence of the other.

How can a church justify this kind of sorrow, this kind of heartache and loneliness? How can its congregation think such pain, such despair is approved by their precious Jesus? Will someone please explain to me how hate came to mean love and how tolerance came to mean interfering in someone else's right to the same rights as every one else? And if you can, then maybe I will understand why so many thought it was acceptable to hurt so many in the name of their god. If they think that's okay, then maybe they need a new god.

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Overturn Proposition 8

Lynch mobs for McCain-Palin

John McCain is no man of honor and he sullies all who served honorably with what he's become recently.

"The Secret Service is following up on media reports today that someone in the crowd at a McCain/Palin event suggested killing Barack Obama, according to Secret Service spokesman Malcolm Wiley. The shout of "kill him" followed a Sarah Palin rant on Obama's relationship with radical Chicagoan Bill Ayers." read more

This is what McCain now considers honor. This is what his running mate considers honor. This is what they work to inspire in their followers--death threats for his opponent, racism to a news reporter, false accusations of terrorism. John McCain has revealed what kind of hateful and dangerous President he would make.

Of course, what do you expect from a man who helped sell arms to Iran and associated with known terrorist, John Singlaub? read more Surely, not honor.

What do you expect from a man who was involved in the last financial meltdown caused by greed and deregulation? read more Surely, not honor.

And as far as Sarah Palin, when you advocate the violent overthrow of the American government:

"Isn't it funny that Sarah Palin would totally distort the Times story and tell lies about Obama "palling around with terrorists," when, in fact, it is her husband who was actually the member of a secessionist group whose founder hated America and got killed and chopped up and
buried in a tarp after a plastic-explosives deal went bad? Isn't it funny that Sarah Palin is calling Obama out when in fact it is HER OWN HUSBAND WHO PALS AROUND WITH TERRORISTS!? ISN'T THAT JUST SO FUNNY?!?!" read more


THAT is treason and she and her terrorist pals should be arrested immediately.

But more than anything what this latest slime from the McCain camp reveals is a pathetic desperation. They have nothing to offer the American people except fear, hatred, lies, slime---all tactics they learned from associating so closely with their best buds, the Bush administration. Nothing says Bush clone like the campaign McCain is running, no matter how much he tries to deny it. The only honor and dignity in this campaign belongs to Obama and the American people know it.

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Lynch mobs for McCain-Palin

Dividing The Sheep

I realized the other day, after yet another heated virtual discussion broke out on among list members, that every single mailing list I'm on has degenerated at some point into name calling, insults, and hurt feelings. No one can talk anymore. No one can have a discussion without it deteriorating into a flame war shouting match. There's no more middle ground, no more giving way to the possibility that the other person's candidate, religion, political party, choice of relationships, place of employment might be equal or gasp! even better than one's own. We've become a nation of petulant children who must have our way or else.

It's easy to lose hope that we'll ever get along again, but I'm an optimist. It's what's kept me alive and kicking in situations that would have destroyed or even killed others. I always believe in people far more than they deserve to be believed in at times. I have to, because to believe that people really are as awful in real life as they are on mailing lists and discussion forums is to give up on the world. I'm not ready to do that yet, if ever. I'll probably go to my death still believing that we can be better than we are.

But there's some things we need to do in order to reclaim the title of human being. Here's a partial list. Feel free to add to it in the comments section as I consider this a world community project where those of us who really do want a better world are prepared to lead the way toward it.

1. Stop listening to those who insist on creating a divided world. What right do they have to create wedges between human beings, and why are you giving them the power to do so?

2. Stop perceiving human beings as being superior and inferior to each other. If you hate, if you're a bigot and harbor prejudices, then you are a tool waiting to be used. Look at History and see how people's hatreds were manipulated by those with evil intentions, by those with an insatiable hunger for power and greed. It's way too easy to stir up a crowd of people if their noses are already pointed in the direction someone wants them to go. Be aware of those who preach hate. Ask yourself what they have to gain if they succeed in making you hate along with them.

3. Make compassion the core of your being. It's a lot easier said than done because in order to know compassion, you have to receive it. So make  a point of giving it away because it is the only way to create a more compassionate world. There's nothing that can be pointed at and said this is it and this is not it. Compassion is one of those misty things that can only be felt, and if you've never felt it then it's impossible to understand.

4. Step outside your own needs and desires and pay attention to what others need and desire. Once you step outside your tiny little world, then life becomes larger, the world becomes larger. And yet it becomes interwoven once we realize we all have the same basic needs and desires. If we create a world with these as our foundation, then no one need suffer from lack of them.

5. Accept that there is only one way to create a world filled with healthy people, prosperity, knowledge, creativity, and scientific marvels and that is to do away with war. It is the single act that has prevented human beings from evolving to their full potential. We must embrace Peace with the same fervor, the same enthusiasm, the same desire as we do war, or we will never become complete human beings.

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Dividing The Sheep

Me, Politics, and the Hope Ghost

In 1968 I was seventeen years old in Las Vegas. My best friend, my strange and romantic and poetic buddy who didn't have a mean gene in his entire body, died in Vietnam. As a quiet and horribly shy kid whose family spoke with funny accents, he was my only friend those first few years in the desert. His family was neither Mormon nor Catholic. That made him an outcast just like me in a community that demanded you be one or the other for acceptance. Or you could be rich. Money erased all social taboos, but we were both from dirt poor families.

We ate our sack lunches together every day on the far corner of the playground, away from everyone else. We couldn't afford school lunches and often we could only afford one lunch between us. We shared the meager contents of our bags with each other. We bonded over stale bread and supper leftovers. Without him, without his acceptance, I don't know if I would have survived those early years. He gave me life and war took him from me.

It devastated me even though I was a child of war. I knew that's what war did. It took away those you loved. I was raised by people who survived horrors most Americans will never be able to wrap their minds around. No matter how whole their bodies were, their minds, their ability to feel, their ability to love, their ability to live a normal life was taken from them by war.

But before he died, we shared politics and peace. We and a small handful of social misfits like ourselves, formed a club in school that worked for civil rights, for equality, for world peace. The other students saw us as odd and quirky and mostly avoided us.

And then the unthinkable happened. Dr. King was assassinated. In the midst of our grief a small change started to occur. During the assembly where the entire school came together to mourn, students who previously avoided us now welcomed us and started to come to our meetings. Something woke in them. Something became important that had previously lain dormant inside them.

In May of 1968 we signed up to work on Robert Kennedy's campaign. We watched him that June evening with the pride, the hope, the power of our dream starting to take shape. And then as quickly as the moment came, it went with his assassination.

Life became this awful series of shocks to our hearts and spirits. It didn't seem that things could possibly get worst, but they did. Almost a week later David was drafted, and by September he was dead.

I was young and I was angry. That is why I didn't just bury myself away and run away from the wounds of the past few months. I was raised by survivors and I wasn't going to let war defeat me either.

I don't remember how I went to my first anti-war demonstration. I suspect it had to do with David because part of that first day was camping out with a group of students on the steps of the federal building in Las Vegas. We read the names of those killed in Vietnam up to that point. It was already a long list and it took us all night to read the names with people coming up and offering to read for a while. I remember a nun came and they still dressed in black robes. She read for half hour and then left without saying anything to anyone. About 3 am, a police car pulled up and we thought we were going to be arrested, but instead he got out of his car and offered to read a few names. He had lost his son in Vietnam six months before. It was that kind of night.

It was also the kind of night when cab drivers spit at us, when people with engraged, red faces and bulging veins screamed insults at us, called us Communists, traitors, appeasers. I found my voice that night when I learned I had to read loud enough to be heard over the insults.

Those years shaped and defined me as a pacifist. I have spent my entire life since then writing about peace, making art about peace, being part of organizations and groups that worked for peace and the victims of war. In all those years I never lost hope, never gave up my dream that one day the world would know peace and reject war.

But the last eight years knocked something down in me. I fought but it was from despair instead of hope. I often felt as if an overwhelming evil had taken over America and was spreading outward. I began to understand how tyranny grew, how it fed on the dispirited souls of people too beaten down to object anymore. I understood how the Nazis happened, how the Fascists happened, how petty dictators hung on to their ill-gotten dictatorships.

That dull sense of merely existing instead of fighting back is finally starting to melt. No matter what people think of Obama, the important thing to understand is that he is a symbol of a change that is already taking place. We created him, our mass consciousness, our despair, our frustration with a world growing more cruel and more mean and more intolerant, created him from our own dreams. He is us and so is Hillary and so is Biden and so is everyone who was in that stadium tonight and who watched on television screens all around the world.

I don't know what will come of it all but I do know that for the first time in eight years that feeling of oppression is starting to lift. And because of my experience with war, with death, with survival, I know that's all it takes sometime, for someone to lift the edge of the fog and show us the way forward. Tonight I finally see the glint of daylight on the horizon and like millions of people around the world, I am daring once again to dream of a better world.



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Me, Politics, and the Hope Ghost

Del Martin

For those of you who somehow missed hearing or reading about Del Martin, here's a synopsis of her remarkable life.

"Del Martin, a lesbian rights pioneer who took part in one of California's first same-sex weddings, died today in San Francisco after a long period of declining health. She was 87." read more

This amazing woman and her partner Phyllis had a very large impact on my life. It started with my grandmother's sister who was a Lesbian in Italy. She was born somewhere before the turn of the century in Yugoslavia. I can't imagine how difficult it was to have anything like a normal life in that part of the world at that time. And yet she did, and lived with her partner until death parted them. I know that my grandmother didn't really know until she was at least in her 70's and 80's and even then it was something impossible for her to wrap her brain around. It was easier for my mother to understand and accept. Recently, one of my cousins is trying to track down the her partner's family because through our grandmothers, we are connected and that needs to be acknowledged, their love and commitment for each other needs to be acknowledged.

It was for my grandmother and also one of my cousins that I am grateful for Del Martin's responsibility for getting the American Psychiatric Association to stop classifying homosexuality as a mental illness.

I also owe her for being one of the fortunate few who broke the chain of domestic violence in our relationships. My mother was often severely beaten and abused. Del Martin's work to publicize domestic violence opened the door to women like me being able to walk away from a relationship that had the potential for violence. Through her I knew I deserved better than the hell my mother endured. And through her courage in speaking out to all women in similar situation I was able to break that chain.

As one of the many people who attended far too many memorial services in the 80's for friends who died of AIDS, I saw my share of life partners denied those precious final moments at the bedside of those they loved before they passed away. Del Martin's work to change this horrible tragedy allowed life partners to share in all aspects of their loved one's lives and deaths. It allowed them to marry in California and the day it became legal to do so, she and Phyllis married as did many of my friends who live in the Bay area.

So thank you Del Martin from this straight woman who owes you so much. You will be sorely missed, but what you leave behind will continue to heal and inspire people for generations to come.Technorati Tags: Del Martin, Gay Marriage, Lesbian, Domestic Violence, Equality

Del Martin

Getting Used For Your Love

We've been hearing a lot about Hillary's Pumas lately and will hear even more because they are an easy target to exploit as are most people who are inflexibly attached to anything. As someone who originally supported Hillary and was driven away by the nasty politics she engaged in, it wasn't that big a step to go from one Democrat to another. I know what's at stake here and I'll vote for any Democrat to rid the country of the parasitical Republicans who care only about lining their own pockets at the expense of people like me and you.

But I do know two women who are so inflexible over Hillary not getting the nomination that they will put the future of their daughters in the hands of those who will take away their right to choose, who will almost guarantee they'll be sent to fight in some war for the next line of Cheneys, and who will let lobbyists and arms merchants dictate foreign policy. This is just plain selfish.

But setting that aside because after all, these are only two women and I believe, because they are intelligent women, they won't allow themselves to remain trapped in an abusive relationship. They'll probably end up voting Libertarian once common sense kicks in and they realize their emotions are being played by the McCrazies, or they will suck it up and vote for the perpetual candidate of the disaffected, Ralph Nader. That's their right and I honor it.

Having said that, I am one of those people who remembers what I read a few months ago about some of those primary votes for Hillary. Here's a typical article on the "phenomenon" read more. I remember how hatemongers like Rush Limbaugh encouraged his listeners to go vote for Hillary, not because he had any love or respect for her or them, but because the Republicans wanted to manipulate the primaries and get rid of what they considered a serious contender: Barack Obama.

And the Republicans are so desperate right now that they will grab hold of anything to exploit. Of course with their compliant whores in the media, they will exploit exploit exploit the passion these voters feel and turn it into slime like they do everything they touch. Those two women I mentioned will be magnified into a huge division within the Democratic party. They will be featured over and over again as something to fear, to use, to manipulate, to convince voters that the Democrats are fractured and can't agree on anything. They will do things like pile a bunch of closet Republicans (that GOP sure does love closets, don't they) into a hummer and claim they are Pumas. Check out this and tell me that any decent Hillary supporter would show up in something as blatantly symbolic of Republican excess than the hummer. It's a sad, pathetic attempt to manipulate a handful of Hillary supporters and it comes off as sad, pathetic and desperate: read more

While I would have loved a woman President, I'll settle for Obama because I truly do feel he represents me and my interests. Unlike the GOP meme that gets passed around to discredit him, he does stand for much of what I believe in. I went and read his website early on in the debate instead of listening to the bought and paid for media try and convince me he stood for nothing. Shame on those who didn't and still ask in that quasi-rhetorical meme zombie tone of voice: but what DOES he mean by change? Go read for yourself and quit letting the state run media tell you what to think and believe. Then you'll understand why more than anything America needs not just someone promising change but someone who is a symbol of that change. After eight years of Bush and his idiocy, I want someone who can talk to the entire world and not just a bunch of mindless GOP cheerleaders. That to me is a real leader.




Click on image to visit my political shop for progressive voters.Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, Pumas, Hillary Clinton, Election 2008, Democratic convention, mainstream media, anti-Republican

Getting Used For Your Love

Protecting us from the white lunatics within our borders

So it starts. Home-grown terrorists climb out of their shit pile of hatred with plans to assassinate Obama. Here's a link to one of the stories read more.

Maybe Homeland Security, with the help of their ignoble asshat co-conspirators--hate radio and propaganda TV, should start going after loony white guys instead of focusing so much attention away from them by making us scared shitless of Arabs, Mexicans, Blacks, Muslims...anyone who isn't a white Christian lunatic. Last I recall McVeigh, the creepfest who blew up the Federal Building, was a crazy white guy.

Really, it's time to focus more on what's already within our borders--white Christian lunatics who are easily manipulated by the likes of Faux news and Rush "let's stir up some drug-induced hate monkey" Limbaugh into committing the kind of crimes they claim only those with brown skin commit. Those guys are the real threat from within, not some poor Mexicans trying to feed their families, or some Muslims who came to America for a better life and ran into the most intolerant fucks this side of Saudi Arabia.

Better yet, maybe the so-called mainstream media should focus less on car chases, celebutards, missing spouses, runaway children and actually report the news so America will quit holding the title as the dumbest, most poorly educated idiots on the planet.

Here's an idea for news that won't leave anyone with more than a third grade education gasping in astonishment of the collective ignorance that passes for "information" these days:

1. Darfur
2. World Hunger
3. Global Warming
4. Government policy shaped by Arms Merchants
5. Greedy fucks who don't care about people but who are playing some perverse game of who can accumulate the most money in a lifetime. (cough cough Cheney cough cough)

The list is endless and nowhere near the top are there any blond bimbos, sex lives of the white and boring, rehab tales of the rich and famous, and television "personalities" who can't even read the script tossed in front of their blank stares without gagging on their own irrelevance.

But I won't hold my breath that anything will change anytime soon. Hate is big business in America. It's the fuel that drives our politics, defines our consciousness, and makes us no better than schoolyard bullies with a vocabulary no bigger than fuck you well fuck you too you fucking fuck. And for that we need a media filled with cocaine blonds and insipid necktied young Fascists making us all very afraid and suspicious of each other so the bastards in charge can rob us blind. Nice legacy to leave the grandchildren, eh?

Protecting us from the white lunatics within our borders

Jesus Hates You

Hate always confuses me, especially the kind of hate that doesn't have any personal experience to back it up but instead relies on someone whose business is hate mongering disguised as religion. I really sincerely doubt that cretin, Fred Phelps, has ever come close enough to a gay person to even recognize him or her as a human being, just as I doubt he ever learned to read well enough to understand the message of Jesus which I'm told is all about love. I've yet to see it in action, but I'm told it's about love.

And don't get me wrong here. I'd really really, double and triple really like to see this so-called Love Jesus do a smack down of these morons that spread hate, fear and intolerance in his name. I'd even make a sincere effort to believe he was more than an ancient version of the tooth fairy if only he'd come and make haters like Phelps walk around with a sign around his neck saying "Jesus is making me wear this because I'm an evil asshole who twisted his message of love around to suit my own financial gain." I'd like to see Jesus make people like Phelps get a real job and quit profiting from the ignorance of people like himself who live in fear of anything called education or truth.

Most of all I'd like to get religion out of people's private bedrooms. There's lots of free porn on the 'net if you can't afford to buy it, but quit getting off on making it your business what other people do in the privacy of their bedrooms. Once upon a time it was considered rude, insensitive and just plain twisted to obsess on the private sex lives of others. Now it's a national pastime whipped into a religious fervor by churches who obviously skipped over that inconvenient Jesus equals Love and Tolerance part of the Bible.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the fight to allow same-sex marriages. And nowhere is the violation of church and state prohibitions more evident than in this area of people's personal lives. To those who think they should have a say in who should marry, I'd like to remind them it is not Jesus or the church of their choice who legally marries them. It's that piece of paper you sign and turn in with your fees. And guess what, most don't accept checks, so you'd better pay up in cash before you start getting the party started.

Jesus has nothing to do with that. It's not his hand at the city's window going that'll be cash only please. It's all state business and therefore should be free of religious and personal biases. You think I'm wrong? Try getting legally married with just a church service. You'd be living in sin and popping out bastards faster than you can holler Hallelujah I'm an ignorant asshat if you tried to do that.

But that's all paperwork and legal details, something the religious haters prefer to ignore if it doesn't suit them. They would much rather make up crap and throw around ridiculous terms such as "gay agenda" and "special rights." It's easier than reading the law or actually meeting and talking to a gay human being.

So, let's talk about those special rights, shall we? First of all, marriage as we know it is a relatively modern institution, especially LEGAL marriage, the one requiring a license. Few people know that license was devised to prohibit interracial marriage. Here's an excellent article that discusses it in great detail. This is a direct quote from that article "...miscegenation laws were in effect for nearly three centuries, from 1664 until 1967, when the U.S. Supreme Court finally declared them unconstitutional in the Loving decision."

I personally find it very interesting and sad that the same language used by those opposed to gay marriage is almost the same argument down to the hate-filled accusations used by those who didn't want human beings of different races and cultures to legally marry. When it comes down to it, hate is hate, intolerance is intolerance, and ignorance is ignorance, no matter what kind of Jesus love you sprinkle on it.

Marriage, when you remove the religion and politics from it is about love and that's all it ever should be about. If you love each other then you have the right to get married the same as everyone else, no matter if you're blue, green, gay or Fred Phelps. The rest is just plain damned ignorance and hatred that Jesus, if you believe in him, is going to make your ass pay for one of these days. You can deny it all you want, but one day you're going to have to justify your hatred and it ain't going to be pretty to watch you lose the meanest argument in the entire universe.

Having said all that, I'd like to offer my sincere congratulations to my dear friends Andrew and Jason who are getting legally married next month. They asked me to make them some t-shirts and gifts for their wedding rehearsal, dinners, and honored attendants. It's the most fun I've had in a long time designing stuff because it all came from my heart. If you're interested in seeing it and buying some of the for your own wedding and for gifts for the brides and grooms and their honorable helpers, here's the url to my designs in My Holiday Shop.

Jesus Hates You