Cafepress Approves Assassination Gear

For those of you who have been following the not so thinly veiled threat from Religious Reichists to hide behind the bible while advocating Obama's assassination, please be informed that Cafepress has reversed its decision to not carry these products. Today they informed the writer of this diary on the Daily Kos that they will continue to carry merchandise advocating the assassination of President Obama.

There is only one sane response to their putting short term profits over long term decency and that is to quit supporting them. Do not buy their products. Many of us who have sold our designs through them have moved most of our businesses to their competitors such as Zazzle, Printfection, Skreened and many others due to the shabby way they treat their designers. These are not nice people and this latest move proves it. And it shows a profound ignorance and lack of caring that there are options out there for people who shop from ethical merchants. If you happen upon their site and see a design you like, be aware it will most likely be available at one of the three links listed above as many of us have moved our designs there. You have a choice these days on where to spend your money for the same products.

Many people have contacted the FBI, Secret Service, and the ISP's hosting the assassination sites. Others have contacted companies who have shops on Cafepress and asked them to reconsider offering their merchandise for sale there when there are more ethical options. And others have vowed to boycott Cafepress and anyone who does business with them.

However you choose to respond to this atrocity is up to you, but keep in mind a very simple truth: if throughout history people had the courage to speak up and say this is wrong and we won't support it, how many bad things would have not happened that did? Advocating the assassination of a President is not acceptable, no matter how much money can be made from it. In the end, it will cost them more than they gained and that will be the fair response.

Be The Change Flame by Crazy Old Lady Of  Peace

Cafepress Approves Assassination Gear

Anita Hill for Supreme Court Justice

We rarely get the opportunity to right a wrong in this life, but when one falls into your lap then it's time to consider it seriously. And for those of us who lived through the public humiliation forced upon Anita Hill for daring to speak up when she was subjected to sexual harassment by Clarence Thomas, justice is long past due. She has the qualifications. She will make a damn fine Justice. And it will make Clarence Thomas' head explode. I consider all those excellent reasons to nominate Anita Hill for the Supreme Court Justice position being vacated by Justice Souter. Now THAT'S what I consider moving forward.

Shirt and other items at Zazzle with this design available at Crazy Old Lady Of Peace store



Click here to purchase this dog shirt or the design on other Cafepress items.

Anita Hill, Supreme Court, Justice Souter retires, Anita Hill for Supreme Court Justice, Obama, Cafepress, Zazzle

Anita Hill for Supreme Court Justice

The Company We Keep

I've always believed that we are known by how we treat others on our way through the maze of life. There's nothing more revealing of character defects than how those above the crowd treat those below them in status, wealth, power, and dignity. It's why we elected a President who represented the paradigm shift many of us already felt and wanted to make the norm instead of a quaint idea embraced by an idealistic few.

We knew that treating others with dignity and respect were the keys to creating a better, kinder and more gentle world. We knew that a planet that was lacking in humanity would soon cease to hold anything resembling the enlightened and wise human being. It would deteriorate into an us vs. them, me first, take it all before someone else does jungle of savage and cruel excuses for human beings.

I've tried most of my life to only be around those who are kind, who care about others more than they care about themselves, who are supportive of endeavors without being enablers of bad habits and ideas, who say good things about those who are not in their presence rather than spread mean and self-serving untruths.

I haven't always been successful as I'm one of those people who prefer to believe the best of someone before I accept the worse. And of course, love is the great blindspot that filters all truths, as is the need for survival, the ache for friendship that won't betray you, and the idea that won't turn out to be something other than it claimed to be.

But I'm a fast learner and definitely can say that no one has ever fooled me twice. And along with that learning came the shaping that made me who I am today--someone who will not compromise on her ethics and expects others to live the same way.

For several years I've had many Cafepress shops. I was okay with some of their merchandise as I didn't believe college students who were looking for a beer drinking party shirt cared much if some poor Guatemalan villager made 10 cents for the shirt they just paid 30 dollars for. It didn't seem important that a shirt be 100 percent organic and sweatshop free if it was just going to be used as a limited message against a political candidate I detested. It seemed fitting in a way to use it for that purpose. I always figured people voted with their wallets anyway so if the origin and distribution of the merchandise was offensive to them, they'd simply walk away and buy it elsewhere.

But when I opened a shop that reflected the passion I felt over our need to save the environment, to fight against the corporate takeover of our limited and precious resources, and to promote a healthy lifestyle through the choice of organic food, vegetarianism and other issues that affected me directly, then it began to matter.

I justified my shop at Cafepress even though I was not completely happy with their reluctance to come right out and say these products are not made by people we exploited for a large profit margin in a third world country. I felt they allowed individual artists the opportunity to promote their message in a supportive and like environment. The people who are and were shopkeepers at Cafepress were individual small business owners, the kind of people I support in my everyday life when I choose where to spend my money. I don't shop at Wal-mart, don't eat at McDonalds, and I buy my lattes from my neighbor who is feeding her family with the profits from her personally owned stand instead of Starbucks.

That has all changed. Cafepress is no longer the small shopkeeper many of us prefer to support. Their front page now sports Coca-Cola designs and other corporate contracts. The small shopkeeper is being squeezed out and replaced with those who will work for far less and stay within the corporate lines. Artists are no longer allowed to set the price for their personally created works. Cafepress will do it for them and will also only pay the individual artist 10 percent and no more. This means that the average artist will make about a dollar on every shirt they sell and pennies on buttons and stickers. And worst of all, that doesn't mean lower prices for the consumer. It means that Cafepress is giving themselves the profit we once made.

Of course, this is all within their right to do so. It is their marketplace, their business, and their problem. But for me and other shoppers who take into consideration where the merchandise comes from, how the employees are treated, and how exploitive and corporate-owned the business is, shopping there is no longer an option. In my mind they are no different now than Wal-Mart or their new BFF, Coca-Cola.

Therefore, I and many others are moving many of our designs away from them. And in the way life has of making lemonade, I found the perfect venue for my Environment designs. Skreened.com represents everything I believe a company can represent and still make money. Take a look at their statement of purpose:

Here's what excites me about offering these products through Skreened:

"Everything SKREENED offers is made in the United States byAmerican Apparel.

Since we take a strong stance against any kind of exploitive labor practices, we have chosen to print on American Apparel. Their employees are paid fair wages and have an excellent work environment.

After it's all said and done, wouldn't you rather pay just a little bit more for the peace-of-mind that comes with knowing that no one was exploited to put a cheap shirt on your back? read more

I am looking forward to helping them grow their business with my many designs devoted to saving the earth and each other. I encourage you to shop there and support them because we all need to put our money where our personal beliefs and ethics are or why have them? Here are a couple offerings to get you started, and note that you can take the design that is on this product and put it on one of their other offerings if you wish. You can also add your own text to it. Have fun folks. I am.

This shirt is available at Ursine Logic's Environment Store.

This shirt is available at Ursine Logic's Environment Store.

Later I'll tell you what I really enjoy and appreciate about Zazzle. They are embracing Cafepress shopkeepers with open arms, lots of support, and a cool range of products. They're a great place for those special gifts.

Cafepress, Skreened, Organic, American Apparel, Sweatshop Free, Environment, anti-corporation

The Company We Keep

Cafepress Further Screws Hands That Feed It

I had a conversation with a fellow Cafepress shopkeeper back in November. It got a bit heated. It was just after I returned from the Seattle Meet 'N Greet and found an email from her asking me how it went, and did I get to see how wonderful and loving and nice everyone was and what a happy family we all were now that I went.

Let me preface my response by saying I grew up in the era of psychobabble. I endured those horrible bonding sessions that HR weenies in corporate officedom inflict on the rabble and I learned all the right buzz words to fling back, much as monkeys fling shit at those standing outside their cages to indicate the insulting indignity of being reduced to a mere exhibit in someone's demented play.

I dated enough losers to know that when someone wants a meaningless fuck that will only benefit them, they will swear undying love and respect and always always always claim they need you so much.

I've been around enough politicians and preachers to know that when someone is talking about doing me good, then I'd better keep my hands firmly wrapped around my wallet.

I've heard enough it's for my own good stories to stuff a million Christmas turkeys and still have enough left over to donate to multiple political campaigns and gardens in need of some deep fertilizing.

So it's perfectly understandable to me, at least, that my response to my fellow shopkeeper was to say that no, for me it was still business and I was not dumb enough to think these people were my friends or had my best interests at heart. They were just nice young folks, the same kind of nice young folks that gorged themselves on venture capital in the 90's and got high on their own arrogance...just before their companies crashed and burned and took all the true believers with them.

After meeting them in person I was even more convinced that it was time to diversify, that keeping all my design eggs in the Cafepress basket was not a good thing. My fellow shopkeeper got all pouty and said that I was too jaded to see the good in them and that they weren't like Corporate Pigs who abused everyone who worked for them and didn't care about them as people. In her words: "They're not Wal-Mart. They care about us because without us they'd be nothing."

I called Bullshit loudly and very clearly as her evangelizing came on the heels of being told we would no longer get a bonus for sales originating from the marketplace. The excuse for this was they needed the money for advertising and we'd all make so much more as result. Yeah, right. Only the dumbest true believers failed to see that they were setting themselves up as our direct competition as their budget was a lot heftier than the average shopkeeper.

I tried to tell her this but she just didn't get it. I gave up then and when I next heard from her it was when she wrote me to complain over the election portal Cafepress had set up with a very nice Obama shirt. It was priced below the base price we had to pay so we couldn't compete with our own designs. I immediately transferred many of my better selling Obama designs to Zazzle and had a great election season there and a pitiful one at Cafepress. This was more than the writing on the wall. It was the path to the future and it was littered with Cafepress shopkeeper bodies.

My fellow shopkeeper didn't join me at Zazzle until St. Patrick's Day when they did the same thing with the featured shirt that was priced below the base price so we couldn't compete. Same with Earth Day. And I'm sure it will be the same with every niche they think might do well.

When her sales at Cafepress tanked so badly that she couldn't even pay her rent for March, she apologized for all the names she called me in November. And today when Cafepress announced that any designs they sold for us in the marketplace would only get a 10 percent commission starting in June, neither of us were surprised nor left wondering what the hell we were going to do and how were going to survive. Her store at Zazzle caught on nicely as she has a lovely and unique niche that will do well there. Considering she made almost 50 grand at Cafepress last year and this year will be closing all but one of her stores at Cafepress, I'd say that was in the top ten of stupid moves on Cafepress's part to lose her. I made half that, but supplemented it nicely with the eggs in my other baskets. So between the two of us they just threw close to 80 thousand dollars away. Idiots.

But once again, I have to say that those who believe Cafepress, Zazzle, Printfection or any other business cares about them other than as a means to increase their bottom line, needs to get into another line of work. We are content providers, nothing more and I predict all the designs at Cafepress, if it's still here in a year, will be cheap knock-off's from China, and a few corporate shops like Snoopy and others that probably have permanent lip marks on their high earning behinds.

Cafepress has been acting like a company that's either on the verge of bankruptcy, going public, or more likely, selling itself to some place that will outsource everything and fixate totally on the bottom line. It will become the Wal-Mart of the POD world. Considering how they've trashed the shopkeepers who contributed to their success, it would be a fitting end.

The people who started the company obviously quit caring a long time ago when they got their money and it became a job rather than fun. That's when Cafepress started its downward slide to corporate sleazebagness and that's where it will remain. Zazzle to me right now is the company that will nip their ass into total and complete mediocrity because for now they are hip, cool, and more than ready to welcome with open arms those who are wiping the shit off themselves and looking for somewhere else to sell their designs. I also like Printfection. They do nice work and I manage to sell an occasional shirt there without trying very hard. I'll probabably put more of the energy I once put into Cafepress there and see how it goes.

The thing is, what Cafepress seems to be unable to comprehend is that those of us who design for PODs, we "POD People" as many of us call ourselves, we do mostly know each other. We talk. We share industry gossip. We go here. We go there. But in the end, we are business people and we go where the income is, where we can make money. We usually go together, in a herd, and we bring our marketing skills, our nice google and other search links with us.  We blog about each others designs. We promote the hell out of wherever we're working at the time. Love has nothing to do with it. It's business and nothing else. Anyone who thinks differently is going to get their heart broken and their bills left unpaid.

So those of you who are mourning over being fucked by the players at Cafepress, there's some nice honeys waiting for you at other places and they'd love to help make you feel better and get over those nasty abusers who really don't and will never appreciate who you are and what you do for them.

cafepress, print on demand, pod, zazzle, printfection, cafepress, commission change, shopkeeper, pod people, ursinelogic

Cafepress Further Screws Hands That Feed It

Nature, Atheism, and Me

Here's an excerpt from an email I received from a woman named Amy today:

..."I'm curious how you reconcile your unbelief in God with your spiritual connection with nature."


Dear Amy:

Basically, it's quite simple. I believe the greatest harm we can do is to objectify someone or something. This strips the life from it, the individuation from it, the very spirit that makes it so powerful and unique. This is what religion and belief in God does to people and nature. It takes a living organism like a tree and defines it as a thing separate from us, as an object created by an invisible force outside of ourselves. That makes it easier to cut down because it becomes "lumber" rather than  "part of ourselves," just as it becomes easier to perpetuate hatred and harm on human beings we perceive as being "not us."

Our official enemies never look, talk or act like us. They can't because then it would be harder to make enemies of our fellow human beings. And they always have different religious beliefs because that's a handy way to create the "us" and "them" so even the most uneducated, ignorant moron can understand these ain't godly folks and so we can abuse, torture and kill them in our God's name with no repercussions.

We do this on all levels of existence: my wife, my husband, my dog, my cat, my house. We do not see this as placing limits on what those living organisms can be, but merely as assigning personal ownership or belongingness to them. By objectifying someone or something, we make a place for them and keep them there.

I see such behavior as a destructive force. I see it as stunting the growth of things we perceive as existing outside ourselves. I see deifying a person or thing as the first step towards destroying it.

There is a big difference between saying "my spouse" and saying "part of me."  It is the same with trees in the forest. If I see them as something God made, then they cease to exist as living, breathing organisms that are an integral part of the whole. But if I see them as part of me, then they are me as my arm is me and as my heart is me.

We both still exist in the same moment in time, but our existence is not separate nor created by an external force.  If a tree in the forest is equal to my arm, then it requires thought, awareness, and an ability to understand my actions have consequences before I go blithely removing either a tree or my arm.

There are those who will and have argued with me that God made both the trees and me, without thinking for a moment that we might have vastly different opinions on how me and tree came to be. This is the blindness of religion. It operates by reducing things down to small pieces that can then be controlled, manipulated, and defined to suit personal biases and bigotry. That I might believe differently is automatically perceived as wrong and needing to be changed. That is ego gone wild and is never a good thing.

Our planet is being destroyed by this kind of limited eo thinking. By assigning God credit for the oceans, then we give them an artificial vastness that allows our corporate garbage creators to pollute and destroy them because, well, they are just so vast and can't possibly have a limit if God created them. We apply this same wrong thinking to the air, the soil, and every single resource on the earth.

But if we don't believe God created the oceans or the trees or the air, and instead believe they grew out of a natural scientific process that unlike religion, retains the same truth generation after generation, then they become a finite body of water, a forest that will not renew itself for decades beyond our lives, and air that will choke instead of giving us life, if we do not protect them and start treating them as an integral part of ourselves.

We must step outside the artificial excuse of God-created and realize that our planet must be protected by us, by real human beings who have the power to do or not do this,  or these essential resources will no longer be a source of life, nourishment, and spiritual replenishment.

That is why the increase in destruction of our natural resources has risen equally with the rise of claiming that God made everything and everyone believes in God. I'm willing to bet the corporate thugs that donated to the Republican party pushed religion as a political platform to help them take what they wanted without oversight.

Throughout time criminals and the most corrupt of politicians have used God as a partner in their crimes.  I suspect many of the most ardent of God-pushers don't believe half the crap they shovel towards the masses because if they did, then surely they wouldn't destroy the planet with God watching their every move.

So yes, I can reconcile my Atheism with the spiritual sense of self and belongingness I feel when I'm out in Nature because I never separated myself from the natural world with something as artificial as religion. I accept personal responsbility for anything I do to Nature. I do not blame an outside force like God for a tree I cut down, a stream I damn, or a species I wipe out because I like how it tastes on my dinner plate. I am as it is and we all are. Once we as human beings understand that, then maybe we can stop killing each other and live in harmony for a change. After all, when is the last time you heard about a tree taking out another tree because of their religious differences? It takes human beings to come up with something so ridiculous and disconnected from each other.

Tired of that silly Jesus fish? Are you a freethinker too smart to believe dinosaurs were on the ark? Amuse yourself and other with two dinosaurs munching down on ribs of Jesus fish over a campfire. Magnet may be purchased at The Godless Heathen, a shop for Atheists, Freethinkers, Agnostics, and Unbelievers.

Atheism, Atheist, Environment, Global Warming, Climate Change, Natural Resources, Nature

Nature, Atheism, and Me

An Open Letter To President Obama

Dear Mr. President:

I followed the story of your grandmother with heartfelt interest because mine was also a huge influence on me. She was the one constant in a dysfunctional family with a father who was absent most of the time and a mother who worked all of the time. As the oldest child it often fell to me to take care of my younger brother and sister and the household too, especially since my grandmother was already a senior citizen when she came to live with us.

My grandmother immigrated to America a couple years after we did. It took that long to save the money to sponsor her, and during that time she struggled to survive until we could send for her. As I was growing up, she was my support, my encouragement, my source of hope. And she had endless stories of what it was like to live through two world wars, how she managed to stay on the safe side of political struggles that redefined the boundaries of her home every few years, and all the ways she escaped the horrors of the Nazis and the Fascists.

But there was one story I did not learn until after her death, and it was about one of her sisters who remained behind. In retrospect, she probably suspected her sister was a Lesbian, but in the period of time that extended from the turn of the century through the 1960's, it was not a topic one discussed lightly in any of her homes: the former Yugoslavia, Italy, or the United States. But it is a story that haunts me because it is one that is far too common even today.

My grandmother's sister lived with her partner for most of her adult life. I can only imagine what it was like to live openly with her "roommate" all those years. I'm sure they had friends. I'm sure her partner had family. But we never knew any of them. We never knew if she was safe, if she was fed, if she was afraid. She disappeared into a world where secrets are kept for life. She disappeared into a world where it was impossible to immigrate as her sister had done, as just about everyone who was related to her had done. She was left alone with only the woman she loved, a woman we could never bring here because she was not related to us by blood. In the eyes of the law, she was not family, no matter how many years she lived with my grandmother's sister as her life partner. The law would let us bring her but not the woman she loved. The law would make her abandon her partner. She chose the path of her heart and stayed behind.

I think of what my life could have been like with more than one granny, more than one adult who could nurture me, who could help me grow, or who could just help me in the many small ways that left me exhausted when I should have been playing with all the other kids. And I think of how lonely my grandmother's sister was when her partner died, how alone she must have felt. I can't even think of this without breaking into tears. I can't even begin to comprehend the unfairness of it in any way that would sense.

Mr. President, I tell you this story because this story is still being played out all over the world. I have American friends who are gay, who fell in love with citizens of other countries. In so many cases these other countries have afforded them citizenship rights and recognized the legality of their marriages. I have friends who have lived in other countries with their partners for many years and now they want to come home to the America that has new promise, new hope because of your Presidency.

But in order to do so they still have to make the choice my grandmother's sister had to make. I want to believe we are a better people than that time. I want to believe that we no longer split up families, people who love each other because of bad laws. But all the evidence says we still do and will continue to do so.

That's why I'm asking for your help in passing the UNITING AMERICAN FAMILIES ACT. It's time to bring home your citizens who want to help make America realize it's true potential as a beacon of hope and promise to the rest of the world. They want to be part of what we're creating together. But please, Mr. President, don't make them choose between love of country and love of their partners. Please help pass this vital piece of legislation for all Americans, no matter what their sexual orientation.

A bouquet of roses in red, yellow, green, lavender, pink, red,
black and brown requests "Equal rights for everyone." A better world is
built by equal citizens. Click on magnet to purchase on visit my Zazzle store for more selections here

Familiar recycle symbol in purple, green and blue says "Peace, Love,
Equality" in different colors. Support equal rights for all people or
the better world we want to build will stay just a dream. Click on sweatshirt to purchase or visit my Cafepress store for more selections here

Uniting American Families Act, UAFA, immigration rights, same-sex couples, gay, lesbian, gay rights, cafepress, zazzle, open letter to Obama

An Open Letter To President Obama

Dubya, The Loser and His Legacy

I tried to watch Bush's speech tonight because it was the last one and there's so much pent up anger, despair and disgust at what he's inflicted on America and the world that I thought it might feel like a celebration to see the beginning of his end.

I lasted only as long as the moment he began the obligatory pandering to 9/11, neglecting to mention his administration ignored all warnings that it was about to happen.

-----"Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Attorney General John
Ashcroft received the same CIA briefing about an imminent al-Qaida
strike on an American target that was given to the White House two
months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks." read more------

I couldn't watch any more because he's a sick piece of crap who doesn't think he did anything wrong...ever. He's the kind of rationalizer who always finds someone else to blame, who always has an excuse, who always has a scapegoat waiting in the wings to take responsibility for his actions.

He's just another stupid, spoiled and pampered rich fuck who serves as a living example why an inheritance tax might be a good thing. If daddy and his corrupt cabal didn't steal the election for him, Dubya's life would probably have been a series of drunken driving arrests, cover-ups of times neighborhood pets were found tortured to death, and a series of insane moments where he would shoot at innocent people from inside his pickup truck while screaming that he was the Decider.

Instead, the bought and paid for Supreme Court stole the election for him, an act that history will condemn them for in perpetuity. As a result, he drunkenly drove the country into a financial ditch, wiped his ass with the Constitution, made torture synonymous with his legacy, and created concentration camps for people who were mostly guilty of being Arab. Those who were actually guilty of something can never be tried for their crimes because the laws he didn't manage to defile with his signing statements and politicized (in)Justice Department, will never allow their extracted confessions to be considered evidence.

In the last few days he's given more speeches than he's given in the last year. It's all about the legacy for him now and he's delusional enough to think it won't be the most horrendous shadow that will follow him to the grave. I have a few suggested legacy "designs" for him and his adminstration that he can't blame on anyone but himself.

Click on images to purchase or visit Ursine Logic for these designs on t-shirts and memento items.

anti-bush, Bush farewell speech, torture, domestic wiretapping, corporate bailouts

Dubya, The Loser and His Legacy

Child-Free By Choice: What It Means To Me

I'm often asked about my reasons for remaining child-free. If I set aside the personal issues, what's left are the common experiences that defined my choice and continues to define it. First and foremost, it's about overpopulation for me. Here's a few places that do a good job of explaining exactly what the term means and some examples of how it contributes to the damage done to our planet.


What is Overpopulation?

"Overpopulation is not a function of the size or density of the
population only. Overpopulation is determined using the ratio of
population to available sustainable resources. If a given environment
has a population of ten, but there is food or drinking water enough for
only nine, then in a closed system where no trade is possible, that
environment is overpopulated; if the population is 100 individuals but
there is enough food, shelter, and water for 200 for the indefinite
future, then it is not." read more


From Why Population Matters October 20, 2008

"The population of the US is projected to reach 300 million by October -
a population growth rate comparable to that of China. Because of
immigration, the number of people in the US could reach 400 million by
2050. About 76 million people are being added annually. This year's
world grain harvest will fall short of consumption by 61 million tons.
That's the sixth time in the past seven years that production has
failed to satisfy demand. The world carry-over stocks of grain will
fall to 57 days of consumption by the end of this year, the shortest
buffer since a 56-day-low in 1956 doubled grain prices. Despite
continued growth in world food output, the developing world had 815
million hungry people in 2002, 9 million less than in 1990." read more

My other concern is the overall health of the planet. Humans are a greedy species and everywhere we go we destroy something, use up something, or wipe out the population of something. With an Obama administration we will see a reversal of some of the most extreme of the Bushies thieve and destroy mentality, but we need to look deeper and prevent problems from developing into future disasters. Here's an excellent series of articles on what exactly it means to destroy a natural resource.

"Human activity on Earth has always altered the land. When populations
were small enough, and productive and accessible land was abundant,
people could abandon land that had been damaged by overuse and move on.
While some countries still have excess land available, if population
growth continues at the expected rate, virtually all arable (fit for
cultivation) land will be in use.
" read more

Then there's the issue of war. It's usually about land grabs, resource looting, and profiteering off human suffering. But it's also the greatest manipulator of human spirit there is. Those who want war will play on patriotism, fear, and differences to fill their uniforms. But a prosperous society where most are fed and clothed don't pay as much attention to the propaganda as those who are hovering around the poverty line. The military seeks out these desperate people and promises them housing, medical care, benefits ranging from home ownership to job training, and a steady paycheck to lure them into war. In a society where there are enough resources to go around, peace takes on greater importance than war. Overpopulation almost guarantees a ready supply of cannon fodder.

"In 2003 the Pentagon spent almost $4 billion targeting high-achieving low income youth with commercials, video games, personal visits, enlistment bonuses, and slick brochures." read more

I came of age during the Vietnam War. I lost those I loved, those I went to high school with, those in my immediate and extended family to that war. I swore I would never give the government a child of my own for them to kill in their evil wars. I've kept my promise to myself.

Finally there's the issue of a rising religious extremism that has as little respect for individual beliefs as the Taliban have for those who believe differently than they do. This loudly obnoxious Christian Reich Wing wants to ban birth control along with abortion.

"Supporters have pressured insurance companies to refuse coverage of
contraception, lobbied for "conscience clause" laws to protect
pharmacists from having to dispense birth control, and are redefining
the very meaning of pregnancy to classify certain contraceptive methods
as abortion. In increasing numbers, women and men opposed to
contraception are marshaling health facts and figures to bolster their
convictions that sex for anything but procreation is morally wrong and
potentially deadly." read more

As a child-free by choice woman I believe it's way past time for those of us opposed to these absurd policies speak out and let the world know these loonies do not speak for us. Here's a couple designs I made that gets the message across that I'm not buying their crap and if they try to mess with my rights, they're going to get a real battle in return.

The Condom Cross

Fight back against the religious reich's war on reproductive freedom
with this unique design of two condoms in the shape of a cross. Tell
them birth control is YOUR religion. You can buy it on everything from sweatshirts to buttons here

Or you can buy this one that I turned into a statement on birth control and religion:

Looking for an in-your-face response to those who want to ban birth
control for their personal religious reasons? Cross made of condoms and
"Church of the Holy Birth Control." Buy it here on many different items including t-shirts and other apparel.

overpopulation, birth control, child-free by choice, vasectomy, tubal, condom, reproductive freedom, reproductive choice, pro-abortion

Child-Free By Choice: What It Means To Me

War Profiteers Vs. Corporate Thieves

One of the most common fears spread around the "internets" is the desire of certain wingnuts for a third world war. One of the primary spreaders is the poster child for fried brain syndrome, Newt Gingrich, who really wants to believe we are already there so we can start nuking Arabs for fun and profit. "Newt's thinking is that five years of false promises, failures, ineptitudes, errors and omissions, is hard to swallow as a mere War on Terror, but that as World War III it would all be just dandy." read more

Of course, the possibility exists that rather than promoting war from the recesses of his demented and rapidly rotting brain cells as some ideological hallucination, he is actually a member of the future feeding frenzy party lined up at the trough and stands to profit from any and all wars. In this, he would be in some familiar company, starting with Bush's grandpa whose thievery and greed inspired Dubya the Dumber to follow in his blood-stained footsteps:


"George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany." read more

Making money from death is not limited to just the horse thieves in the Bush crime family:

"The three major arms manufacturers in the world – the U.S., Russia and France – provide almost 80 per cent of the sales for armaments. By itself, the U.S. sold over half of all weapons in the world marketplace: 18.6 billion dollars. Its sales increased 30 per cent between 1999 and 2000.

Among the principal clients for the armaments furnished by the great powers are the monarchies of the Middle East, like Jordan and Saudi Arabia. While continuing to improve their up-to-date airforces, they
also purchase armored cars to keep internal order. The United Arab Emirates expense for arms in 2000 was 8.4 billion dollars. Other clients for weapons are the African dictatorships like Algeria, which spent 580 million dollars, Angola, (253 million dollars), and the Democratic Republic of Congo, which spent 108 million dollars. All three countries have been ravaged by terrible civil wars which have oppressed and massacred their populations for years. Nothing stops the arms industry – merchants of death – from going after profit." read more

The greed of these war criminals/profiteers is almost endless, but it is matched by their most passionate and vindictive enemy--the corporate whores who already have dibs on any profits  made on the backs of American workers. They've spent a lot of time and money making sure their profits aren't messed with by ideologues like Newt or their other worst enemy--labor unions and workers who struggle to make a decent wage.

"Just after the end of World War II, when the Jeep first became a civilian vehicle, 35 percent of workers belonged to labor unions. That’s significant because union members earn 30 percent higher wages
than non-union workers and are 59 percent more likely to have health insurance. Those better wages and benefits helped create the great middle class in America. Workers earned enough money to buy
refrigerators and homes and cars and, later, college educations for their children. The money they earned and spent churned through the economy and kept it humming." read more

But that wasn't enough profit for the corporate pigs. They realized there was money to be made by keeping wages low and forcing Americans into the endless cycle of debt they needed just to stay alive. After all, a refrigerator can be paid off and then you have to find someone else to sell another refrigerator to. A credit card can return interest investment forever. A refrigerator bought on credit will continue to add money to corporate coffers year after year, even after the refrigerator itself no longer works and is languishing in some landfill for the next generation to deal with.

"The origin of our current culture of debt goes back to around 1973. That's when America's long run of unprecedented economic growth (which began shortly after World War II) hit a wall. OPEC raised
oil prices, and European and Asian nations became industrial competitors. This was the beginning of the decline of the U.S. manufacturing economy and the end of wage growth for the American worker. Thirty-five years later, the U.S. median wage per worker still hovers around the 1973 level. For male workers, most affected by deindustrialization, wages have actually declined slightly since 1973" read more


But in order for the corporations to continue gouging the average consumer by selling them 300 dollar refrigerators that will end up costing them 3000 dollars in a couple years of paying interest on the unpaid balance, they need the cooperation of the government to throw more money their way and refuse to help the consumer in any way that would threaten those corporate profits.

"The principle of government helping big business and refusing government largesse to the poor was bipartisan, upheld by Republicans and Democrats. President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, vetoed a bill to give $10,000 to Texas farmers to help them buy seed grain during a drought, saying, "Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character." But that same year, he used the gold surplus to pay wealthy bondholders $28 above the value of each bond--a gift of $5 million. " read more

It also requires taking over all the safeguards put in place to help the consumer or small business person compete in the marketplace.

"..since 2003, 15 federal investigations have found that Fortune 500 firms are the actual recipients of most federal small business contracts. It has been estimated that large businesses receive over $100 billion a year in federal small business contracts. ABC, CBS and CNN have all aired investigative reports which have found firms like: Rolls Royce, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Raytheon, IBM, Xerox, Dell, John Deere, General Dynamics, GTSI, Home Depot, Titan Industries, Hewlett Packard, Battelle and British Aerospace Engineering (BAE) have all received millions of dollars in federal small business contracts." read more

In light of this, warmongering morons like Newt Gingrich are powerless to get their war on as they would have to convince the corporate whores that ideology is more important than money and that's not going to happen. There's only one thing that corporations fear and that is the loss of their money flow. They know if a world war broke out and suddenly bombs were dropping on American cities, they'd wake up to a financial catastrophe not even their paid servants in Congress could bail them out from. Think of how you bank, how you pay your bills, how you buy and use services. If cable companies like Comcast can't even keep their service up in a storm, can you imagine what would happen if just a few of their access points were bombed to shit? No one could do banking, no one could pay their bills, automatic payments and deposits would stop.

Their worst fear, and one that is becoming more possible with each bailout that rewards corporate greed and incompetence and refuses to help people who are losing their homes, jobs, savings, and retirement plans, is that people will stop paying their debts. There's no debtor's prison in this country. And when you have nothing left to lose and your credit is already shot, what's to stop an ever growing desperate population from simply walking away from their credit card and other bills the same way they're walking away from mortgages and car loans?

"So until real relief is forthcoming, citizens who are in distress should simply destroy their credit cards and stop paying the monthly bills. People are already doing this. Arrearages and defaults are climbing, and credit card debt is starting to be viewed as the next bubble to burst. But so what? If people have to use a credit card, that means they can’t really afford to buy whatever it is they think they want. If they can afford it, they should use a debit card instead." read more

What is now a trickle of people giving up on their debts would be a tidal wave if war broke out in this country, and because the arms merchants depend on corporate whores to bankroll their deadly toy purchases, they're not going to create a war that will effectively kill their golden goose. The only way a third world war would happen is if everyone lost everything, even the corporations. And even then, without the necessary funding for crime families like the Bushes to profit from it, any war would more likely be a revolution where mobs took to the streets and burned down banks and collection agencies. Any talk you hear of a stimulus package for the ordinary American is to prevent this from happening and not to save anyone from living under a bridge and sleeping in the box that once housed their refrigerators and flat screen televisions.

A funny rat with a sad expression says "After eight years of Bush all I
have left is hope." Great to wear for the inauguration and to celebrate
the election of Barack Obama as President. You can purchase it or other items with this design by clicking on the design or visiting Ursine Logic stores President Obama shop.

economy, corporate bailouts, world war three, ww3, cafepress, ursine logic, President Obama, labor unions, war criminals

War Profiteers Vs. Corporate Thieves

Got Big Old Atheist Balls?

One of the things that separates rational people from outright raging lunatics is politeness. You never ever see a group of militant Atheists blocking traffic with the equivalent of mason jar fetuses shoved in people's faces. You never ever hear Atheists demanding that everyone believe as they do or a group of their specially selected chosen ones will kill you. You never ever read Atheists filling up the letters to the editor, congressional reps mailboxes, and media head offices with demands that all programming, all reporting, all legislation be written to favor just their own select group. Atheists are just too reasonable to stomp all over everyone else's rights.

I'm not advocating violence or mean acts or hard core activism. I'm merely suggesting if Atheists want to enjoy the same rights to live in this country as the religidiots, then we can't just sit back and simmer in our reasonableness. Therefore I'm offering a selection of t-shirts that will at least let Atheists some big old in your face balls. There's nothing violent about a t-shirt, but they are an excellent way to spread the message about a cause that requires a lot of words to explain. And of course, all the following are available on buttons, stickers, and other items as well at Wild World Shirts Anti-Religion Shop if you can't afford a t-shirt. Or just click on the design to take you to the shop where it is offered.

First, the tame offerings for those of you who prefer to keep a low profile and avoid the threat of serious beatings from the "tolerant" folks down at the local church farm.

A noose forms the backdrop for the words on this shirt "Religion is a leash in the hands of the powerful." Perfect gift for Atheists, Freethinkers, and anyone tired of religious extremists.

Here's a great t-shirt to piss off the religious right and their cannibalistic vampire cult: "You've given your love to Jesus and I've rented mine to Cthulhu." At least Cthulhu is an honest monster.

---

Now, let's step it up a bit with these next two selections:

Next time you're forced to deal with a bible-thumping religious nut, wear this shirt, button, sticker that says: "The Bible was written by the same people who said the earth was flat."

When an organization gets rich from the bottom of the pyramid supporting it through donations and converting others to give money to it as well, it's called a Ponzi or Pyramid scheme...or religion.

---

Now, let's match some of these loony xtian tax avoiding whackos with some more out there designs:

You don't need anyone doing your thinking for you. You're a freethinking non-believer of anything you can't personally see and touch. Your shirt says: "Jesus saves you from thinking for yourself."

There's one sure way to stop idiots from killing each other and us over whose imaginary playmate should rule the world: Atheism. As the shirt says: "Atheism, the cure for Religious Violence."

---

And finally, here's a couple that will take some very large Atheist balls to wear in public where you can get beat to death with some Jesus Is Love worshipper's cross:

In nice letters dripping blood are the words "I gave my love to Jesus and now he never calls." Great gift for your favorite Atheist, or buy it for yourself and wear it to scare fundamentalist whackos.

A bewildered pink easter bunny hangs on a cross with colored eggs below it and the words "The Easter Bunny died for your sins." Funny gift for Atheist, Freethinker or get a t-shirt for yourself.

---

And of course, no Atheist posting would be complete without my own personal favorites:

A bright yellow smiley outlined in blue with blue letters says: "Smile! You just met an ATHEIST." Great shirt or button to wear to let people know Atheists are all around them.

Tired of having religious crap flung at you from the bible-thumping kool aid drinkers? Back them off with these words: "Thou shalt not inflict your religious crap upon others."

anti-religion, Atheist humor, anti-Christian, anti-xtian, Cafepress, Ursine Logic, Atheist t-shirts, Atheist gifts

Got Big Old Atheist Balls?

Cafepress Ceramic Travel Mugs Back In stock

For those of you who have been waiting, the ceramic travel mugs are back in stock at Cafepress. I have one of them and they are really nice. They make excellent Christmas presents. Here's one I made to celebrate the upcoming inauguration of Barack Obama on January 20, 2009:

Click on image to purchase or visit Ursine Logic

Cafepress, ceramic travel mugs, back in stock

Cafepress Ceramic Travel Mugs Back In stock

Time to put the religious crazies back in their boxes

The religious crazies, having lost the election, have stepped up their hateful efforts to turn this country into an English language version combination of Iran, the Taliban, the Inquisition, and the mother of all door knocking campaigns: the Crusades. And before I get mail telling me I give these loonies too much credit for being able to organize and think their way out of an outhouse, keep in mind I see them, as their puppetmasters see them, as simple tools to be manipulated for control and rampant unchecked war profiteering and financial looting.

It wasn't the crazies who put out conflicting is Obama a Muslim or is he an America hating Christian courtesy of the Reverend Wright? It was their masters, the Fox (fake) News, the Murdochs, the Kristols, and other neocon war profiteers who pulled their strings. read more. And as an aside, as crazy as that preacher sounded, he seems tame in comparison to someone like Falwell or Dobson or others who tried to blame lesbians and liberals for 9/11.

Christian crazies like to think of themselves as an army, and in this sense they are correct. But they are dead wrong in thinking they are an army with orders from god. Their true marching orders come from the neo-cons, the Halliburtons, the corrupt senators and house members who pander to anyone and anything to keep feeding at the trough. They are controlled, directed, and led like obedient sheep to the polls to vote away the rights of Homosexuals, Women, and non-Christians.

They are emotionally brainwashed to sign up for wars that are nothing more than land and oil grabs under the guise of Crusade II, the shameful 21st century sequel. And they are so blinded, so ignorant, so brainwashed that they can't see the hypocrisy of demonizing an entire race of people (Arabs) as religious extremists (Muslim) because their extremism (Islam) is not their own extremism ( Fundamentalist Christianity.) No one tells these poor fools that the very word "fundamentalism" is what makes them no different than the fundies who flew their planes into the twin towers.

But just in case you manage to find someone who both calls him or herself Christian and is actually willing to engage in a civilized dialogue based on the understanding that religion and faith is a personal preference and not a law, here's some excellent sources to begin the conversation:


Is God in the Constitution?

"It has often been seen on the Internet that to find God in the Constitution, all one has to do is read it, and see how often the Framers used the words "God," or "Creator," "Jesus," or "Lord." Except for one notable instance, however, none of these words ever appears in the Constitution, neither the original nor in any of the Amendments. The notable exception is found in the
Signatory section, where the date is written thusly: "Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven". The use of the word "Lord" here is not a religious reference, however. This was a common way of expressing the date, in both religious and secular contexts. This lack of any these words does not mean that the Framers were not spiritual people, any more than the use of the word Lord means that they were. What this lack of these words is expositive of is not a love for or disdain for religion, but the feeling that the new government should not involve itself in matters of religion. In fact, the original Constitution bars any religious test to hold any federal office in the United States." read more

The People, not the Government are America

"The American Constitution begins with the phrase "We the People," and its significance cannot be overlooked. This establishes that sovereign power rests with the people and that all government power and authority derives from the consent of the people. It's a repudiation of older European ideas that governments are established by God and derive their power or authority from God (for example, the divine right of kings). It's also thus a repudiation of the Christian Right's arguments today." read more

In doing some reading on the conflict between Atheists and Christians, I found this great collection of articles and news bites from a group called Atheists of Silicon Valley. Here's some of what caught my immediate attention:



"A British atheist group has a bus ad campaign:

“There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

The American Humanist Association also has bus ad campaign:

“Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake.”

The Atheist Foundation of Australia tried to do a bus ad campaign: “Sleep in on Sunday mornings.”

Who wants a similar campaign here? Email Mark.

You can contact me (MarkxThomas) at m_w_thomas @ hotmail.com (Remove the spaces around the '@' character.)

Be sure to put Atheism in the subject line so that the spam filter and I will know that it's not spam. I won't open any attachments.

Thanks,
Mark"

I plan on sending Mark an email, and since I live in Washington state where the very wise Governor has chosen to honor our rights to worship or not worship in equal manner and has therefore allowed both a manger and a plaque promoting Atheism in a government building for the holidays, and in so doing has incurred the wrath of that mouth-foaming nutcase Bill O'Reilly, I encourage you all to protect our rights by speaking up for freedoms the God Party are trying to steal from us one tantrum at a time. Get involved in repealing Proposition 8, requesting that your own beliefs or lack of them be represented at any publicly funded place that allows Christian holiday displays, and not letting your own voice be silenced because the religious extremists think the loudest and most obnoxious side wins.

Atheist, Atheist, Repeal Proposition 8, separation of church and state, Governor Gregoire, Washington state Atheist plaque

Time to put the religious crazies back in their boxes

Overturn Proposition 8

Bumpersticker from Ursine Logic's Gay Right's store. click on image to purchase.

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.

Bumper sticker from Ursine Logic's Wild World Shirts. Click on image to purchase.

overturn proposition 8, prop 8, separation of church and state, tax the churches

Overturn Proposition 8

And now for a break from politics...

Cafepress has an agreement with the makers of the Flip Mino camcorder that makes them available for us to design and offer in our shops. I've been having mass fun making designs for these things, and my guess is they'll be wildly popular holiday gifts just because they're a camcorder for under 200 dollars, are small, quick and easy to use. And they make it really easy to upload what you've just recorded to youtube. I'm offering them as the suggested manufacturer's price because electronics of any kind are just not a money maker. I see them more as a way to let people know that I have this really bizarre side of my personality that makes weird designs just for fun. So here's a couple of my faves I made last night.

Click on the images to find out more and to purchase one. If you want to see all of them I've made so far, visit their special section in Ursine Logic  FLIP MINO CAMCORDERS And if you have a design or photo you want on one, I'll be glad to make it for you. Just send me a custom order request to ursinelogic@gmail.com.

Flip Mino camcorder, cafepress, video camera, custom designs

And now for a break from politics...

The Bush Legacy

If you're like me, you probably spend at least a couple minutes a day holding your breath and hoping that George Bush doesn't start some distraction somewhere to take people's minds from his colossal failure as President. He has trashed the Constitution, tortured prisoners like some third world tyrant, destroyed the economy by putting all the tax burden on the poor and the working class, created the largest housing scandal since his father and brother enriched themselves on the previous housing scandal, allowed incompetent and unethical slimebag thieves to steal everything that wasn't nailed down, revived Fascist ideology in a way not seen since his grandfather kissed Nazi ass in order to make a few bucks, let a city die so his cronies could move in and build beachfront property to line their own pockets at the expense of those Katrina displaced, and collaborated with oil companies to murder and maim thousands of Americans and Iraqis to make himself and his immoral cronies even richer.

I could go on, but the list of his crimes against the world and against his own country is so long that it would take me days to list them all. Many have sardonically suggested that his memorial library contain comic books with blood and oil dripping from them. Others have suggested hauling him in front of a war crimes tribunal and then placing him before a firing squad--the traditional end to petty tyrants who cause mass death and misery to line their own pockets.

But that's all too far in the future and it will take years to pin the bastard down and chop the legs off accomplices he paid to protect him from his crimes. His escape to Paraguay where he purchased some getaway property, just as the Nazi war criminals did at the end of World War II, may be delayed due to the will of the people there electing a leader whose politics no longer guarantee a safe haven for thugs like Bush. I have hope he will eventually have to pay for his crimes because they are world wide and war criminals are usually hunted down by more ethical countries than the USA. But for the time being let's give him a truly fitting memorial to the disaster his Presidency will be remembered as and help name a sewage plant for him.

There's a movement to get the following initiative on the ballot in California. "Should The City And County of San Francisco Rename The Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant the George W Bush Sewage Plant?"

And help spread the word. My friend Jimi and I have made some designs to help spread the word. Get a few buttons and pass them around. Buy some stickers. Put a poster in your window. Let's help get George W. Bush the recognition he deserves. Just click on the image to go the shops that sell everything you need to get the word out.

And if you have your own products and websites devoted to this cause, do feel free to post links and photos in the comment section to help spread the word.


My store

Jimi's store

The Bush Legacy

Thank you, George Carlin

In 1972 George Carlin was arrested for saying out loud in front of a public audience the seven words you could never say on TV. There was no Internet then to run to and find out what he said. The radio stations would have found themselves unplugged the minute they even hinted at what he said. The few newspapers who dared to print approximations of the "offense" were so filled with dashes and asterisks they might as well have been written in a foreign language.

We all had to guess and draw from our very large collection of "bad" words we thought they might be, words many of us, including the moralists who enforced the ridiculous laws, used on a daily basis. Any one of us could have landed in jail at the time for saying fuck in public or telling someone they were full of shit and have it overheard by the morality police.

But the most absurd thing is that it wasn't only kids who were trying to find out what the words he said were, it was also adults, people like me who were already in our 20's, 30's and older who had to guess at what verbal crime occurred to warrant a comedian dragged off in handcuffs and charged with violating OUR public decency.

The temptation is to refer to then as a simpler, more quaint, innocent and quiet time until you remember it was also the decade of assassinations, anti-war demonstrations where people actually died for daring to get out on the streets, and where university students were gunned down by the national guard during a peaceful protest.

There was nothing simple about that time. Nor was it especially moral. In fact, it was the very government who was prosecuting a comedian for saying forbidden words on a stage who were also running an illegal and immoral war where thousands were dying, and who were trampling on civil rights and the constitution in a way that was unimaginable...until Bush became president and brought it all back, even in some cases, with the same cast of evil-doer characters like Kissinger, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and the whole Iran-Contra lie, cheat and steal your ass off murdering thugs.

But the important thing for people like me to remember is that I owe George Carlin big time. I make my living by selling t-shirts on Cafepress with designs and words that consist of just about every single word that he was arrested for saying in public. I write in this blog and use language I could have been arrested for just a few short years ago.

Without George Carlin I would never be able to sell a shirt that says "Fuck your lies, Mr. President" and have people buy it to wear in public without fear of being arrested.

Without George Carlin, I would never be able to sell stickers and buttons that say "Dick Cheney is an evil, lying cocksucker."

Without George Carlin, no one would be able to drink from a coffee mug that says "Why is that lying sack of shit still President?"

Without George Carlin, I probably would be working as a Squall-Mart greeter instead of happily making designs that would have landed me in jail not so long ago.

So from this old rabble-rousing child of the anarchic part of the 60's (I couldn't afford the mandatory designer hippie clothes so I became an anarchist as they didn't give a fuck what you wore) a big, heartfelt fucking thank you, George. We'll miss you.

Thank you, George Carlin

Cheney Hearts His Cousin

(Image of Cheney and family member by William Edwards. Visit his Cafepress shop)

***

I've always wondered how Cheney could mistake his best friend for a duck and shoot him in the face. Now we know part of the answer--he's an ignorant, inbred mother-cousin-sister fucking inbred moron as he stated in his own words.

Of course, a man who would shoot his own friend couldn't possibly anticipate that such a joke would further the idea that incest and inbreeding was natural to him as he's spent most of his life in bed with the oil companies. This article, United States Of Oil, was written in November 2001, shortly after 9/11. Here's a quote from the article: " The Bush administration's ties to oil and gas are as deep as an offshore well. President George W. Bush's family has been running oil companies since 1950. Vice President Dick Cheney spent the late '90s as CEO of Halliburton, the world's largest oil services company. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice sat on the board of Chevron, which graced a tanker with her name. Commerce Secretary Donald Evans was the CEO of Tom Brown Inc. -- a natural gas company with fields in Texas, Colorado and Wyoming -- for more than a decade."

You can't get much more inbred than that.

***

However, this whole topic of ahem...brotherly love got me curious about the whole subject since part of my family tree has roots in Iaeger, West Virginia.



(Image from cousin Sandra's collection of the Garner (among other names) side of the family in Iaegar, West Virginia)

First, let's start with some actual facts. Here's a quote from an article in Salon called "Origins Of The Myth."

"In 1980, anthropologist Robert Tincher published a study titled "Night Comes to the Chromosomes: Inbreeding and Population Genetics in Southern Appalachia," based on 140 years' worth of marriage records. He concluded that "inbreeding levels in Appalachia … [are neither] unique [n]or particularly common to the region, when compared with those reported for populations elsewhere or at earlier periods in American history."

***


(Family Wedding photo from cousin Sandra's collection...they look kind of uh...related, don't they?)

Then let's move on to the land of kissing cousins, i.e. the United States of America. Here's the link to the following information if you want to verify it to non-believers.

The following states allow first cousins to marry: AL, AK, CA, CO, CT, FL, GA, HI, MD, MA, NJ, NM, NY, NC* RI, SC, TN, VT, VA (and Washington DC). (NOTE: The NCSL actually includes TX in this list, but TX banned first cousins from marrying back in 2005.) *NC does not allow double first cousins to marrying.

Six other states allow first cousins to marry under certain conditions*: AZ, IL, IN, ME, UT, WI. *Only if they are over a certain age or cannot bear children.

Ironically, WV does not allow first cousins to marry!

ALL states allow second cousins to marry.

Then you have the other side of my family who were mostly from a few square miles of each other in Trieste.

***



(Image was taken in Trieste when it was a free territory. My mother is sitting on the pillow)

***
Currently it is part of Italy so here's the law regarding incest in Italy:

"In Italy, incest is punished as a criminal offense (Art. 564 Penal Code) if, and apparently only if, it causes 'public scandal'. Penalties may vary from a minimum of one to a maximum of five years of reclusion; if incestuous relationship took place, penalties are raised to a maximum of eight years. Incest committed upon minors is punished as a serious kind of statutory rape."

***

If you want to look up your own country, here's the link.

So, next time you're at the family reunion, keep this in mind:

(Image from my cafepress shop, Ursine Logic.)

Cheney Hearts His Cousin

What Child-Free By Choice Means

When I came of age in the 60's and 70's, one of the big issues of the day was overpopulation. It was a subject that took on new relevance with the advent of reliable birth control such as the pill. And it spun off into an idea that was radical at the time: having children was a choice not an obligation.

At the same time as the pill came on the scene, there were other factors at work such as the growing Feminist movement that also served to show women had more choices than staying home and popping out babies. Even though the idea of equality for women was not a new idea, it finally reached the mainstream in the 60's after JFK appointed Eleanor Roosevelt as chairwoman of President's Commission on the Status of Women. Much of what we consider "women's issues" now, such as equality in the workplace, maternity leave, etc came from the studies conducted by the commission.

With this new awareness of women as more than baby machines it was inevitable that large numbers of us realized we could do more with our lives and leave behind a more powerful legacy of work, art, literature, music and contributions to the sciences if we remained child-free. A book that influenced many to remain child-free was Ellen Peck's The Baby Trap. She presented a powerful argument that used real world examples to show not everyone needed to breed to live and enjoy a fruitful life.

As I grew up and matured into an adult woman I had many examples of successful and child-free women to show me this was a valid choice in a world faced with hunger and wars brought on by overpopulation. The images of starvation in places like Ethiopia really affected me and a lot of people my age. We saw the devastation and accepted our role in it and knew our contributions, although small, would be large ones if more people believed as we did.

Many of us chose not to bring children into a world always at war and running out of precious resources. It allowed us to move forward and learn to create a legacy that came from our hearts and minds instead of from our physical bodies. And for the most part the rest of the population was okay with this. They considered it strange, eccentric at times, but completely and totally our choice.

One of my reasons for opening up a Cafepress store that is devoted completely to the child-free by choice is because this tolerance for "our choice" has changed in the last few years. There's almost this rage at those of us who made this choice, as if we are somehow defective or threatening to those who choose to breed. I've had less hatred directed toward my left of radical politics and my Atheism than I've had directed at me because I actively promote a child-free lifestyle.

I consider this hatred as stemming from the Entitlement Movement that believes having babies somehow gives one special powers over the rest of the population. These special powers translate into such things as forcing adults to watch only kid-oriented television, movies, and have access only to child-safe entertainment and lifestyles. The old-fashioned idea of parenting being something that took place in the home has fallen down the pit of letting the government, the schools, and the churches raise children instead of the parents. The Entitlement Movement never learned about off switches, v-chips, filtering software, or adults only, and those of us who choose a child-free lifestyle have to suffer for their ignorance and inflated sense of me-me-me.

My child-free by choice store is one way to bring the choice back to life and out of the hands of the entitlement bunch. I have a range of designs that include options such as overpopulation, anti-war philosophies, and yes, some that the breeders by choice will consider mean and insulting. The reason for those is that parents sometimes fail to get the idea that not everyone wants to interact with their children, not everyone thinks it's okay to let children run over every one's right to existence, and it draws on the old-fashioned idea that you had them so you raise them.

I will be adding designs on a more frequent basis now that it is it's own store instead of a section in Ursine Logic, and I'll also be adding cat and dog designs as many child-free humans devote a lot of time to making sure our furry companions have a good life. For those who think the child-free are selfish, just check out how many of us do support causes that deal with poverty, hunger, the environment, and saving innocent furry creatures that others have abandoned to a life of misery and death before you drop words like "selfish" so casually.

And if you have a favorite design idea or phrase you'd like to see on a t-shirt or other item, do drop me a line and I'll put it together for you because it's time we work together to save what's left of this planet's precious resources.

My email is ursinelogic at gmail dot com. Hate mail will be posted with a link to your email, and threats will be forwarded to law enforcement. On no other topic have I been forced to post that warning, which tells you how rabid breeders can get when their world view is threatened.

Peace.

What Child-Free By Choice Means