Flies On The Wall #48

Flies On The Wall #48

Hypocrisy, another word for Republicans

There's nothing more pathetic than watching John McCain thump his sunken chest in the hope of making it sound like a war drum over the conflict between Russia and Georgia. Leaving aside this:

"McCain's campaign strategist Randy Scheunemann was a lobbyist for Georgia until recently, and remained part of Orion Strategies until May 15. OS had signed a $2 mn. deal to provide "strategic advice" to the Georgian government." read more

It is also pathetic that he talks about invading sovereign nations being wrong somehow when other countries do it, but okay when America does it and invents lies to justify it.

"President Bush committed an impeachable offense by ordering the CIA to to manufacture a false pretense for the Iraq war in the form of a backdated, handwritten document linking Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, an explosive new book claims." read more

What are they going to make the poor stooge do next? Justify torture? Oh, wait a minute. He already has.

"It's a mighty fine line to walk. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) opposes torture. But when the Senate held a vote yesterday that would effectively prevent the CIA from employing torture by restricting interrogation techniques to those under the Army Field Manual, he voted against it." read more

And in a very telling sign that the Republican party is completely devoid of any kind of platform that would appeal to anyone but the more extreme wingnuts that makes up their base, the Swiftboat Losers are back. Way to say we ain't got nothing to offer the American people so we're just going to fling shit.

Hypocrisy, another word for Republicans

Bush Cronyism, the shameful legacy

Many years from now when historians look back on the Bush years, one of the issues thoroughly analyzed and discussed will be the nepotism, cronyism, and lobbyist dollars that permeated all levels of his administration and defined its policies.

The major topic will be the path of lies and deception two Texas oilmen paved with greed and bigotry in order to take the country to war for oil. They had help from old friends like Ken Lay and Enron:

"Curtis Hébert Jr., Washington's top electricity regulator, said he had barely settled into his new job this year when he had an unsettling telephone conversation with Kenneth L. Lay, the head of the nation's largest electricity trader, the Enron Corporation.

Mr. Hébert, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said that Mr. Lay, a close friend of President Bush's, offered him a deal: If he changed his views on electricity deregulation, Enron would continue to support him in his new job." read more

Historians will describe how Bush and his Texas Mafia buddies used the prejudices of the dumbest and most poorly educated Americans to support their personal enrichment program. One of the ways was using cold war tactics of fear and bigotry to polarize the country. And to further insult the poor stooges who lined up to choke down those free hot dogs at pro-war rallies, they borrowed these tactics from the Russians.

"During the 1990s, Russian energy companies were notorious for cooking their books, defrauding their shareholders — and using political connections to cover shadowy deals. So, readers of Russian newspapers were not at all surprised over recent stories about an energy giant that was misbehaving in this manner. What was unusual was that the company in question was Enron — as quintessentially American as the Texan heartland where it is based." read more

But the story will also be about the dangers of allowing greedy asshats to define public policy based on their own self-interests . It will be about the incompetence of people owed favors and put in charge of agencies they knew nothing about. It will be about the lack of compassion that comes with a job that one considers payback and not a responsibility to uphold. The examples of this are endless and the words Hurricane Katrina, Iraq, Enron will forever stain the Bush presidency. Here's an interesting list of Bush Mafia appointees: Bush Cronyism

But the victims of these cruel policies based on nepotism and greed will not receive the same attention because they are powerless to object loud enough to be heard. They will join the list of sad statistics buried under the weight of so much evil that history measures it by the group instead of by the individual.

And if there's one thing the Bush Mafia excels at, it is beating down the victims of its policies. They do this in many ways, but mostly by turning away and ignoring problems they create but don't care enough about to feel any guilt whatsoever. When Barbara Bush, the matriarch who birthed this cruel and incompetent litter of psychopaths, commented that she didn't want to pollute her beautiful mind with thoughts of all the dead killed by her sadistic son, she spoke for all of them, for their policies, for their incompetence and cruelty.

from her Wikipedia page:

"On March 18, 2003, two days before the beginning of the war on Iraq, ABC's Good Morning America asked her about her family's television viewing habits; she replied:

I watch none. He [former President Bush] sits and listens and I read books, because I know perfectly well that, don't take offense, that 90 percent of what I hear on television is supposition, when we're talking about the news. And he's not, not as understanding of my pettiness about that. But why should we hear about body bags and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or that or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that, and watch him suffer.^[8]

While visiting a Houston relief center for people displaced by Hurricane Katrina, Bush told the radio program "Marketplace,

"Almost everyone I've talked to says, 'We're gonna move to Houston.' What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas... Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality, and so many of the people in the arenas here, you know, were underprivileged anyway. This is working very well for them".^[9][10]

In 2006, it was revealed that Barbara Bush donated an undisclosed amount of money to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund on the condition the charity do business with an educational software company owned by her son Neil Bush.^[11]"

Hurricane Katrina will be remembered as the first American city lost by a sitting President, and also for how FEMA came to define the type of inept payback cronyism the Texas Mafia brought to the White House. This first link, The Truth About FEMA is a blog post by a woman on one of the mailing lists I'm on, Child-Free By Choice. It describes her attempt to get help from FEMA after flooding destroyed her home. She's still waiting.

As I was reading it I found myself wondering if FEMA personnel were just incompetent, or if they simply didn't care enough about people to hold positions helping disaster victims. This blog entry, FEMA sucks major butt, by someone who went through the certification process, shows it may be a combination of the two: they're incompetent and they don't care, which is why they were chosen for the job in the first place.

Then there's the kind of cronyism that demands only payback for political contributions and favors without regard for the effects such incompetence will have on real human beings. For example, FEMA knew the trailers they bought from some well-connected crony were harmful. But holding someone accountable meant taking back an owed political favor, so people had to get sick instead.

"The Federal Emergency Management Agency since early 2006 has suppressed warnings from its own field workers about health problems experienced by hurricane victims living in government-provided trailers with levels of a toxic chemical 75 times the recommended maximum for U.S. workers, congressional lawmakers said yesterday." read more

This kind of cruelty and incompetence is what happens when political favors determine appointments. It removes the objectivity of political appointees in favor of paying back lobbyists, large donors, and friends of the family who may hold twisted and pathological ideals that have to be ignored, like Barbara's disdain for body bags.

For example, what kind of fascist mentality created this situation where victims of a natural disaster are treated like inmates in a prison camp?

"I'm extremely depressed to report that things seem to only be getting sadder concerning the people so devastatingly affected by Katrina last week. Two car loads of us headed over to Falls Creek, a youth camp for Southern Baptist churches in Oklahoma that agreed to have its facilities used to house Louisiana refugees. I'm afraid the camp is not going to be used as the kind people of the churches who own the cabins believe it was going to be used.

Jesse Jackson was right when he said "refugees" was not the appropriate word for the poor souls dislocated due to Katrina. But he was wrong about why it is not appropriate. It's not appropriate because they are detainees, not refugees. " read more


Or forced to live in situations that if they occurred in a third world county, the paid media propagandists would be all over it decrying the inhumanity of it all.

"Dozens of families evacuated from a FEMA trailer park that had been plagued by sewage leaks and power outages were in temporary homes Monday, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency said it had requested work permits to dismantle the site this week." read more

Situations like this will only get worse with the rapid privatization of government services. Few people realize that once you privatize something, the oversight and rules are weakened and discarded. Here's an example of what happened with the privatization of the food stamp program.

"Area residents used to waiting up to one hour to talk to someone at a call center to receive Medicaid or food stamps, had to wait 90 minutes before addressing a legislative commission Thursday in Kokomo.


The legislative study commission conducted the first state hearing on problems since the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration signed a contract with a private company to handle eligibility for the two programs." read more

And of course, once these privatized crony companies realize the profit that can be made without actually helping people, it only spreads.

"A move in Congress to limit the role of private firms in doling out food stamps is dead for now, allowing Texas to move forward with its privatization plans.

U.S. House and Senate negotiators voted late last week against including a privatization ban in a $300 billion farm bill that lawmakers hope to finish this week. The ban would have prevented states from allowing employees of private companies to interact with people who are applying for food stamps or to decide someone's eligibility for the program." read more

Whenever you combine money, politics, and favors, what gets lost is compassion, caring, and an insight into the bigger picture that is America.

"Over 7.5 Million People Denied Medical Care by Health Plans Since Bush Took Office." read more

And the cruelty begins to take on absurd proportions when laws are passed to avoid helping the victims of these policies, such as the cities who are voting "do not feed the homeless" laws.

"Las Vegas criminalized giving food to even a single transient in any city park.

In August, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit challenging the Las Vegas ban, saying it violated constitutional protections of free speech, right to assembly and right to practice one's religion. A federal court in Nevada has prohibited the city from enforcing the ordinance until a final ruling is issued.

Advocates for the homeless feared it wouldn't be long before other cities passed similar laws.

Already, the cities of Dallas, Fort Myers, Fla., Gainesville, Fla., Wilmington, N.C., and Atlanta have laws restricting or outright prohibiting the feeding of the homeless. In Fairfax County, Va., homemade meals and meals made in church kitchens may not be distributed to the homeless unless first approved by the county. " read more

Excuse me, but hungry people are not creatures in a zoo you fucking morons!

And if you think you're immune from these kind of policies based on paying back political favors, all I can say to you is don't get too attached to water because it's the next thing on the greedy bastard's auction block.

"If adequate water for drinking and sanitation is essential for life, shouldn't we consider water a human right? Not everyone thinks so. In February, the United Nations Human Rights Council missed a critical opportunity to recognize a human right to water. As a result of lobbying by the United States and Canada, the council derailed a European-backed declaration, accepting instead a weaker resolution that actually protects a corporation's right to sell water." read more

And for the most ideologically motivated of Bush appointees who think it's okay to spy on it's own citizens, I have this message for you:

designs from Ursine Logic stores Visit Ursine Logic

Bush Cronyism, the shameful legacy

I'm finally dumping Comcast

It's been a long time coming but today was the final straw. In attempting to fix their spam problems, Comcast disabled being able to send mail from a comcast account without changing ports. The problem is their fix doesn't work and it also prevents me from receiving mail. Of course, their chat person just copies and pastes canned responses. I tested this. I wrote that I was going to cut off my head and put it on a stake outside corporate headquarters. I got a canned response of I'm sorry you're having problems with your mail. Please click on this link, blah blah blah, even after I said the link made things worse.

So I called about DSL service and will be changing over in a few days. In the meantime use my gmail address. I've never had any problems with that one ever. Google, unlike Comcast, doesn't punish its users for their inability to deal with spam.

I'm finally dumping Comcast

Flies On The Wall #47

Flies On The Wall #47

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

The Manipulated Mind

Today I had one of those mercifully brief conversations via email with a poor fool who claimed to be in the army. He could barely put a sentence together and most of his accusations were on the level of a fifth grader shouting insults to anyone within hearing distance. My first inclination was to dismiss him as too stupid, too uneducated, too enamored of slogans and sound bites to be what he claimed to be. But then I remembered this article by Fred Kaplan I read a few months ago called Dumb and Dumber. Here's an excerpt:

"In order to meet recruitment targets, the Army has even had to scour the bottom of the barrel. There used to be a regulation that no more than 2 percent of all recruits could be "Category IV"—defined as applicants who score in the 10^th to 30^th percentile on the aptitude tests. In 2004, just 0.6 percent of new soldiers scored so low. In 2005, as the Army had a hard time recruiting, the cap was raised to 4 percent. And in 2007, according to the new data, the Army exceeded even that limit—4.1 percent of new recruits last year were Cat IVs."

I realized then he was probably a charter member of the lowered standards club, and when he began to spout "war on terrah" programmed responses to me I realized he was just another tool of the puppet masters he didn't have a clue were controlling his strings. If he was halfway smart enough (unlikely) to Google the phrases he was lamely trying to type, he'd see how they were spread around to people like him like shit on a cornfield.

One person who did bother to type in some phrases was Dr. Danielle Allen who tracked down the origins of the Obama chain mail that falsely accused him of being a radical Muslim. According to an article in the Washington Post An Attack That Came Out Of The Ether, Dr. Allen reached a virtual dead end until she typed certain syntactic phrases in Google that seemed to repeat in the chain letter and Internet postings:

"Poring over these early articles on the topic, Allen noticed what she thought was an important pattern. In each instance, someone had posted the articles on the Free Republic Web site, prompting a discussion involving the same handful of people, with several expressing a desire to spread the word about Obama's supposed faith."

The Propaganda Machine method used by Fascists, Nazis, and run of the mill petty dictators in Banana Republics, the Pentagon and other tyrannical organizations, do very little of the leg work themselves. They put the word out in someplace where the frenzied do their feeding, and then they let the uneducated and deluded minions, like the "soldier" who quoted slogans to me today, spread their propaganda for them.

But in order to do this effectively, they have to keep the messengers in a state of constant fear. Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine is excellently reviewed by Chris Barsanti's Brave New World.

"Believers in the shock doctrine are convinced that only a great rupture-a flood, a war, a terrorist attack-can generate the kind of vast, clean canvases they crave. It is in these malleable moments, when we are psychologically unmoored and physically uprooted, that these artists of the real plunge in their hands and begin their work of remaking the world." (from The Shock Doctrine)

The article describes how effective tools such as economic distress caused by gas prices, increasing food prices, and the home mortgage meltdown are when used by those who want to control and manipulate the population. When you take away the safety nets, the ability to survive, you are left with terrified and confused human beings who are looking for any way out of their horrible situations, anyone to blame for the sudden and inconceivable reality they are now forced to live. By taking away the familiar, the comfortable, the necessary, such manipulators send these organisms into shock and thereby control them the same way one controls a lab rat with electric shocks.

And it's usually based on greed and financial gain. If enough people who could make a difference choose to ignore disasters such as Katrina, eventually they and their buddies can go in and put up expensive beach front condos where the poor were literally washed away from. They don't even bother to justify it. Just as the Fascists saw themselves as entitled to rule over the masses because of some privileged delusionary mindset, and just as the Nazis and their belief they were the master race allowed them to kill millions of people, these neo-bastards don't consider those who die to make them rich worthy of a moment's thought. They can't be shamed because they have no shame. They can't be made to care because they have no conscience. It's all about the money and the power that comes with it. They laugh at tools like the soldier who spouted the propaganda they wrote for him. They'd kill him as easily as swatting a fly no matter how good a puppet he was for them.

Propaganda and the creation of convenient and stupid political human tools to spread whispering campaigns are as old as the first politicians running for office against each other for a chance to feed at the public trough. As Bill Shunas writes in Fraggin':

"For forty-four years, Cold War propaganda held sway in this country. It had a large role in allowing politicians and corporations to have their way in domestic and foreign affairs — even if their way had nothing to do with the Russian or Chinese menace. For all practical purposes the menace mainly was an excuse for corporate America's efforts to secure markets and raw
materials in other countries and feed at the defense industry trough at home. If the standoff with the Soviet Union hadn't existed, then they would have liked to invent it."

Barsanti's article ends with the following chilling paragraph:

"It would be nice to think that (Milton) Friedman and others like him were and are just the ivory tower deep thinkers of repute, that like Marx and Engels, they don’t deserve criticism for the evil done in their name. It’s hard to believe that, though, once Klein brings up the case of Orlando Letelier. In August 1976, Orlando Letelier (one-time Chilean diplomat, at that point
working for an American progressive think tank) published an essay in The Nation, “The Chicago Boys in Chile”, which included a charge that Friedman personally shared responsibility for Pinochet’s crimes against humanity, that there was “an inner harmony” between the free market and unlimited terror. A month later, as Letelier was driving to work in Washington, D.C., a bomb planted in his car by a member of Pinochet’s secret police exploded, killing Letelier and a colleague. Today there’s a memorial commemorating the location of the assassination, a physical testament to the “inner harmony” that threatens us all. "

The Manipulated Mind

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

Flies On The Wall #46

Flies On The Wall #46

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

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

Bush and Hitler

I'm not one to let myself get overly upset with politics. I usually say my piece and move on with a minimum of tissue damage to myself and others. Politics just ain't worth the pain. But today was different. Today I watched the height of the Bush Hypocrisy movement cross the line in the sand that says hey idiot if you cross this, you're a bigger hypocrite than any of us ever thought possible...even with all the evidence to the contrary. Today he crossed it.

It's taken me most of the evening to calm down. Not only did he bring up the painful subject of Hitler to the people who most suffered from him, he did it as a political play, a swipe at Obama. That alone would be shameful enough, and you have to give the Democrats credit for responding forcefully to such a sordid long distance swiftboat attempt. But worst of all, he did it with the full knowledge that his own grandfather, Prescott Bush, helped make the Nazi death camps a reality with his bank's financial backing. He did it with the knowledge that his own family profited from the evils of Nazism and Fascism and that he has applied those familial lessons to his own continued march to enrich himself at the expense of others.

I could go on but instead I suggest you read the best commentary I read today from one of my favorite bloggers, Larisa Alexandrovna. As usual she hits it right on his evil, fucking head. All the President's Nazis.

Bush and Hitler

Flies On The Wall #45

Flies On The Wall #45

Mia and Jocko

I'm used to the horrible things that people do to each other. I grew up hearing about them. I've lived long enough to see and experience some of them for myself. One might say I've developed a sort of insular tolerance to humanity's inhumanity to itself. Others might say it's how I survive as a sentient being in a world that brutalizes those who feel. It doesn't really matter all that much since I've come to accept the world around me as an entity that is not always reflective of the me that I am, the me that prefers compassion to intolerance, love to hatred, peace to war, and a good honest friendship over a superficial relationship of any kind.

Yes, I've come to accept that humans in many cases simply suck. And yesterday I had that verified. I never met Jocko but I do value as friends some who loved him. And I'm horrified that this gentle little creature who drew so many into his little spirit is now dead at the hands of some awful person. He was protecting Mia who is now missing. He died trying to save a little spider monkey who is very much missed. He died horribly and I've wept on and off for him all day, for the awful things human do to innocent creatures, for the helplessness and innocence of love that gets destroyed by monstrous human beings.

Please click on Mia's name and help find her. My friends Peer and Victoria Winter who volunteer at the zoo and are friends with all the animals, especially loved this little monkey and his friend Mia. They've put up a 5, 000 dollar reward for her return. If you have any information at all, please click on this link and let someone know. You'll find the contact information there.

And please world, I have a request and that is to please be kind to one another, please treat each other nicer, please love more, please help make this a world where things like this don't happen so much.

Mia and Jocko

Flies On The Wall #44

Flies On The Wall #44

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

Small Towns, Small Minds

I grew up in cities where intellectual stimulation was something normal and highly sought after. Most of my friends were solidly working class who worked their way through college as I did. Rich people were something we made fun of and spit in their water glasses when they ate at restaurants where we worked. I never met one person who didn't have to worry about finances who wasn't also a real asshole. I grew up knowing there were two kinds of people in the world-- those with money, and those without. One had power, the other did not. One was loyal and kind and compassionate, the other would sell his or her own offspring for a few dollars.

The list goes on and on, and over the years the stereotype held true as I began to follow politics, the arts, and the world of power and intrigue. People like George Bush were the ultimate proof that money made people mean, cruel, inept, and encased in a bubble that was filled only with their own kind--unless they needed a photo op and then they'd hold the nasty little poor kids and try not to look too disgusted. Or they'd invite some leader of an advocacy group for the poor to their home or event or fund raiser to show their civic responsibility. But if these photo ops tried to date their sons and daughters, or goddess forbid, tried to become their friend! well...let's just say they learned really quickly there was a difference between public and private realities.

Given my feelings about rich people, it was a simple mistake to think the utter selfishness, the total cruelty, the malicious and destructive lies and gossip, the scapegoating, the appalling shifting of blame and responsibility for their own mistakes to someone, anyone less powerful, less part of the group was easily explained as traits of the rich and entitled.

For some cruel reason, I ended up having as acquaintances far too many children of the wealthy and upper middle classes. Maybe because in the community where I lived the only other choices were religious crazies, high school drop-outs, or meth losers. I've written often enough how these rich people's brats were the first to stick me with unpaid bills and borrow money they never repaid, and how they made selfish choices rather than practical real world decisions about everything they did and thought.

Given these experiences and how I felt about rich people, it was an easy mistake to make that they were shallow, small-minded, cruel, selfish, and well-versed in the art of scapegoating just because they were children of the rich and had been pampered all their lives and felt they were entitled to something just because they wanted it. It was an easy explanation, and in many cases, there was some honest truth behind it.

But lately I'm beginning to understand what was really wrong with these people and it had nothing to do with money. While only one or two actually knew what it meant to be poor, most grew up comfortably if not wealthy. They grew up believing they were special. They grew up believing their world was so perfect that nothing else dare intrude upon its perfection.

But it had nothing to do with money. It had to do with the fact that many of them lived for decades in a small town and chose not to let anything else into that sheltered little world that could disturb the fantasy--like the Internet for example.

Instead they chose to live in these tiny little incestuous groups where gossip fueled everything. Even though many of them were now in their 40's, 50's and even 60's, they never really mentally graduated from High School. Their world continually recycled from nonsense decades old. They slept with and married each other and then had affairs and broke up over each other. They passed the same ideas around like a dirty pair of socks. And they grew smug and intolerant of anyone but their own little groups.

I understand now that people like me terrified them. I didn't have children. I didn't go to their hippie churches and pretend it was somehow different from the religious crap they were raised with. I didn't automatically take the side of someone who was wrong just because they were married or fucking someone from "the community." And horror of horrors, I wanted more than their shallow friendships and mean-spirited gossip.

The breaking point for us came when I met and related to fascinating people I met through online connections. To them the Internet, the world wide web, even email was something for sex predators or at the most, to make airline reservations for those trust funded treks around the world.

The social aspect of it did not exist for them. They couldn't allow it to exist because it meant they would have to change how they viewed the world and each other. They would have to wake up and see they became the dinosaurs of the modern world. They would have to see that the same thoughts kept getting recycled in their community over and over again without ever picking up anything new. "New" was not allowed because it challenged their positions in the pecking order they worked so hard to build. They may have been losers in High School but their cliques were now solidly and firmly in place, just like a nice solid tomb.

What finally drove me away was a divorce between two people who were married for twenty years. Within days it was no longer about the divorce. It became High School all over again with sides being drawn up, dirty tricks being plotted, lies being spread, trash being scattered and every one's personal issues fighting for the lead dog position.

I walked away and my life immediately began to improve. The quality of my friends improved. I more more money. I found a way to make a living doing something I love. And when I look toward my future I see many wonderful paths left to explore, many wonderful people to meet, many new ideas to share.

And the amazing thing? I never left town. I just left them. And last I heard, they are still involved in the daily destructive rituals of feeding on each other instead of looking to see what else is in the world besides their small little lives.

Small Towns, Small Minds

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My sister-in-law is selling her amazing ranch in Boulder, Utah. Check out this special piece of paradise, and if you know anyone looking to buy 80 acres surrounded by national parks and forests, pass on this link to them Rancho Vaquero.




Here's some more pics:

Looking for your own private ranch?

Flies On The Wall #42

Flies On The Wall #42

Child-Free by choice online book club

I've tried several online book clubs and they always degenerate into discussions of children, pregnancy and all the assorted horrors around that. That really spoils it for those of us who came there to discuss books. So I'm delighted that one of the child-free by choice list members has started a yahoo book discussion group that will focus on adult conversations about all kinds of books. So if you want some adult conversation around good books, come join.

Sign up here

Child-Free by choice online book club