The Difference Between Democrats and Everyone Else

This video just about sums up what happens when racism, bigotry, and a Texas schoolbook education meet up with the reality that Teahadist crazies didn't get their way over Health Care Reform.



Then there's this. One of their own turned on them and actually said those kind of crazies in the video were responsible for the defeat. Of course, as is the case with extremism of any kind, there can be no individual opinions outside from the sanctioned herd talking points. So, of course, for his honesty, David Frum was fired

This eating their own is what separates the Goposaurs and Teahadists from the Democratic Party. You see, Democrats know that no one will ever agree on anything because Democrats understand everyone is different. It's why there's a Democratic Party. It was needed to include everyone that was rejected by the Republicans as not being rich, white, male, or ugly enough. All those orphans had to go somewhere.

And then there's this whole leadership thing, as in being led around by your nose by a leader. Democrats just aren't into that kind of thing, kinky though it may be. Democrats certainly aren't adverse to kinky, but they prefer that their leaders aren't peeking in the bedroom window and judging them for being kinky. Democrats prefer that kinkiness remains a personal matter between them and their current favorite BFF's.

And that everyone shares a brain thing? Uh uh. That's too Borg-like for most Democrats. Anyone telling them what they should think is more likely to get an answer that explains in multiple footnoted and annotated examples, exactly why they can't go along with that idea when so many other ones exist that may "possibly" be better. Notice I said "possibly." No true Democrat would risk offending someone by implying they weren't capable of being leaders too.

And in that one small but very vital difference is what will eventually empower the Democrats so they're actually able to create the world we all want to live in together. The Republicans are so caught up in being absolute rulers that they fail to see the value of their followers. To them they are people to be used, paid, manipulated and lied to for corporate gain. That's why crazies like the fetus paraders and the Teahadists grow from them like boils on a giant ass. They all want to lead and no one wants to follow.

To see the power of how this works in favor of the Democrats, check out this video about leaders and followers. It will show you what true strength really looks and feels like, and let me tell you, that kind of power gets shit done.





In order to spread this wonderful message of communal following, I offer the following for your amusement and use.

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The Difference Between Democrats and Everyone Else

Hate and History

The older I get the more I look back in time and patch it together with the present. Things only seem different until you lay them side by side, strip away the defining edges of time, and let them exist as separate entities.

In doing so, the ugliness that intermingles with the good becomes a common pattern. As a woman I don’t have to physically go back in time to hear the taunts, the ugly accusations, the hysterical fears that were part of women gaining the right to vote three short decades before my birth.

I heard and lived the same language in the late 1960’s when as a young woman I fought for an equality granted to only half of America’s citizens at the time. I was spit on, had garbage thrown at me, was accused of trying to destroy the sacred American family by wanting to be paid the same as a man for doing the same job.

I didn’t let them stop me because I’d heard them before as a young girl, the same hateful words, the same spewing hatred from the mouths of bigots who tried to stop the civil rights movement and failed. But not before people died so others could live as equals in America. Not before my heroes were gunned down by men who feared equality, who fought against it with an ugliness that not even time can ever forgive.

Over and over again I heard the hatred, the ugliness, the lies invented out of nothing to control any kind of change trying to reweave the American fabric into something more humane, more in tune with the visions of its founding fathers.

I heard that I was a communist, a socialist, a traitor, a godless damned inconsiderate feminazi bitch for daring to want a world without war, for daring to have the courage of my convictions by refusing to support war in any way, refusing to see it as inevitable, as necessary, as anything but an unspeakable act of sanctioned murder committed for political gain.

But the hatred didn’t end there. It continued again wrapped in religion and the flag so it could be patriotically directed against Gays and Lesbians.

Religious bigots found Jesus was a convenient excuse to justify meanness and hatred against anyone different. They dug up  those ugly old words from the past and used them to deny equal rights to their own Gay/Lesbian family members and neighbors.

They used the same old hysterical fears to rage against Americans who were not white, Christian and Republican with a venom that steadily poisoned the last drop of compassion from their hearts.

And since the election of President Barack Obama, they don’t even bother with the hooded sheets anymore because hatemongers such as Limbaugh, Beck, Palin, and those pathetic tools of the Insurance Corporations and Wall Street bankers—the teabaggers, spread their hate for them.

But maybe, just maybe when they let the the majority of American people who are still somewhat sane and fair-minded human beings see their actions over Health Care Reform, it’s possible they caused some well-deserved dirt being kicked over them for yet another generation.

Their behavior was shameful. It was ugly. It was the mentality of mobs who were directed by their own hatred, whose chains were sufficiently yanked so they would the bidding of anyone who stirred their fires of hate.

For all their claims of independence, they were the most completely manipulated crowd of fools ever assembled for someone else’s purpose. Their grandchildren will cringe in shame at the blood these “morans” contributed to their veins. They will deny kinship with them. They will mock their stupidity. They will curse their legacy. And they will never forgive them for the darkness they brought upon the land.

But if they have one purpose for those with an ounce of sanity and compassion inside themselves, it’s to pay attention because hatred and bigotry don’t go away just because inroads are gained into the darkness of its mean little heart. Equal rights won’t guarantee equal respect. Civil rights won’t create an equal world.

Those are battles that must be fought generation after generation because the same words, the same language, the same hatred and lies lay dormant waiting for the next paradigm shift to make itself known. And then they rise up from the cesspool  of the past and try to destroy progress once more.

To paraphrase several versions of the same idea: those who remain silent in the face of evil, allow it to flourish. Speak up now or force your grandchildren to apologize for you decades from now. The choice is yours.

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Some thoughts on Extremism

I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, but lately I'm coming to the realization that extremism is synonymous with stupid. You sure as hell won't see an Atheist come knocking on your door demanding you become an Atheist.

But every crazy ass christian thinks they have the right to bother me with their ridiculous fairy tales. They memorize a few phrases that suit their agenda and discard everything that doesn't (Do you hear me, you gay hating shrimp eaters?)

These same so-called Christians have read very little of the Bible and instead rely on some unholy intermediary to mainline them meaty chunks from the pulpit--along with an underlying political agenda cloaked in the dubious morality of religion. Atheists aren't nearly that stupid, and most of them can actually read an entire book all by themselves. And gasp! Think for themselves, which makes them mostly immune to religion.

As an Atheist who prefers to mind my own business, I have no desire to go invading their churches with my ideas and opinions of how the world should work according to me, but their intolerance and fear of anything different regularly sends them to my Godless Heathen store for no purpose other than to inflict their religion on me.

This is what I mean when I say extremists are stupid. Do they really think they can annoy me into giving up my ideas for theirs? Do they really think that by flooding my comments section with stupid crap (usually filled with "creative" spelling), they can convince me of anything?

They have done more to destroy religion with their intolerant and mean shit than any Atheist could have done, and yet they fail to see this. They fail to see when a church gets involved in politics, they are no longer a church. They are a political arm of lobbyists and proponents of agendas that see them as no more than tools to be used to gain wealth and power. No Atheist would allow themselves to be used so stupidly.

They've also pretty much destroyed the whole god is love argument with their use of religion to justify hatred, intolerance, bigotry, and the subjugation of the poor and helpless. Somehow they've convinced themselves that religion means keeping people from having things they don't want.

The idea that if you're against abortions don't have one, or don't marry a gay person if it freaks you out that much, is alien to them. How would they feel if I denied them the right to eat chocolate ice cream ever again because I prefer vanilla? How is it any freaking different than what they're try to inflict on everyone?

But this extremism doesn't stop with religion. Take this idiot for example, who wanders into a store for Child-Free by Choice and calls the store owner a douche bag. Does he think that's going to make those who've made that choice suddenly decide he's right and they should breed like fucking rabbits? Or does it more than likely say, as the response pointed out, that misery loves company and he can't stand that someone else is having fun he can no longer have?

Once again, rather than change anyone's mind, this extremist idiot has only succeeded in pointing out his intolerance, his misery, and his flat out jealousy over not knowing he had a choice until it was too late.

I have a mind and I'm not afraid to use it, nor do I allow anyone to do my thinking for me. That means I'll never succumb to religious dogma or embrace hate as my personal savior. I like having my own mind.

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I try and not let the extremists get to me because like all phases of existence, they too shall pass. One of these days they'll take that book written by people who believed the earth was flat, and ride off the edge of the planet like strings of lemmings following each other into the abyss. Once there, away from all the nice people in the world, they'll have nothing better to do than turn on each other and leave the rest of us alone.

Some thoughts on Extremism

The Flowering Self

"Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality." -Nikos Kazantzakis

One of the most life changing lessons for human beings is the realization that everything in life is a choice. From the moment we get out of bed in the morning, we choose who we will be, who we will present ourselves as to the world. We put on our clothes as costumes, as disguises, as props for what we want to convey and then we step out on the stage and perform to audiences of individuals all doing the same thing.

There's an absurdity in this behavior, an unconscious mocking of ourselves for playing along with a game that gets refined by whatever hands are currently pulling the strings. But the thing is, we give our puppetmasters the strings to control us with. It's our script they're using to control us. It's our fears, our biases, our intolerance, our judgments that create the strings for others to use on us. As a result everything we are is a costume someone else has dressed us in so we can perform in their version of reality.

The tragedy is that we aren't born this way. We came into the world as optimists, as believers in the theory of all possibilities that could be picked up, tasted and swallowed. The world revolved around our own vision of things. It took shape according to what we wanted from it, what we perceived as our place in its universe.

But somewhere along the way, the shaping of group consciousness took place and the individual self was subdued and steadily beaten down by tools such as religion, school, and that scourge of all decent humanity--consensus. We were no longer free to stick things in our mouth and taste at will.

If we tried to stray from the path set out for us, we were reminded of the perils in doing so because there were no good ways to say individual. Instead such people were described as anti-social, not team players, fringe dwellers, and lone nuts.

And yet we worshipped the cult of the individual, especially the rugged variety. It was a mythical cult that was and is still written about with awe, with wonder, with the sanctity of breath reserved for wondrous things and unattainable desires. It's like heaven and the old saying that everyone wants to go to there, but no one wants to die to get there.

We grew up worshipping the individual but feared him or her at the same time, and it's easy to understand way. Think of a herd contained within a wild pasture. See the comfort of knowing all the animals are in place. Visualize the ease of drawing a pen around them all in one flawless slash of movement.

Then imagine that one little sheep, that one individual little creature who never stepped outside the "taste as you go" school of life, but instead kept stopping, kept rewriting the plot to reflect changing consciousness, different realities, new ways of looking at the world. This little sheep became the source of all fear just for getting up in the morning and being his or her own sheep.

It is why churches came along and put controls on sex and love, two states that no amount of self-righteous pontificating can interrupt once they are set in motion. There's more rules for controlling those two behaviors than any other. But it is wasted effort, a moral version of beating one's head continually against a wall in the hope that the wall will collapse before the head does.

It is why forests and all wild nature was either destroyed or put under control of some entity that wanted to either exploit it or preserve it by keeping anything but sanctioned and approved individuals from it.

The control freaks saw that Nature was far more powerful than humans, far more powerful than any deity. They saw it had the ability to capture, to hold in its grasp and transform the ordinary in us to the extraordinary that goes beyond self. Once that metamorphosis took place, they knew control was a lost cause.

It is also why any kind of substance that allowed mental escape was controlled and either outlawed or puritanically dispensed at high cost. Drugs were designed to put people in a state where there was no disturbing reality, no too obvious change from one mood, one truth to the next. Variation of mood, of being, of relating was seen as wrong. Stability of existence was seen as a positive instead of the most spirit killing weapon ever devised--other than religion.

And it was especially why hate and division was always promoted over love and tolerance. Like those penned up sheep, humans wer easier to control if they were all hungry, tired, horny, and ready to be eaten at the same time. It was far easier to pipe canned entertainment into the pen than it was to hand the stage over and invite something new to emerge from the chaos.

But within that stew of overly simmered sameness, there was always the sheep that strayed outside the herd, the one that was a bit odd, who preferred the taste of flowers instead of grass, who gazed at the sky and saw clouds and birds and tall mountains instead of some scolding, foul-tempered deity.

That was the one I wanted in my life. That was the one I wanted teaching me. That was the ones I wanted to love and call friend because he and she were what gave meaning to my life. But more than anything, I also wanted to be that for them as well because without the circle that leads us back to each other, we don't really exist as authentic, empathic human beings.

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The Flowering Self

Fighting back with Humor

One of the best counter-protests to hatemongers was this one and others that used humor to fight back. I laughed so hard when I saw the signs protesting that cesspool of religious bigotry called Westboro Baptist Church with silly signs. And of course because this manner of protest was so unique and funny, the media focused on it instead of helping spread Phelp's sick and twisted message with their coverage. It effectively neutered him and his message in a non-violent and uplifting way. What a wonderful way to fight back!

Let's face it, folks. We live in a world where wingnut tools like Limbaugh/Palin/Beck serve masters that benefit from a divided country. Hate is the most effective method of control ever invented, and these bile-spewing cretins are doing everything they can to make sure we are so filled with hate we can't think for ourselves. So, here are some suggestions to neutralize the poison they spew on a daily basis.

1. As a political junkie, I tend toward seriousness and present the assorted crimes of congress critters with varying degrees of outrage. Lately I've tried to find the humor in what they do, because it certainly is there. For example, there is no more worthy of ridicule figure in the Health Care Reform battle than Mr. Fake Baked Boehner.

Rather than spend a lot of time writing about his ties to corporate masters which has been discussed to death already, why not start a movement to outlaw tanning booths because they cause cancer? We could call it the Bad Boehner Skin bill. Or we could do something like tax tanning booths to pay for Health Care Reform.

2. One of the most ridiculous and twisted things I've seen are the anti-choice idiots waving jars of pickled fetuses around at their demonstrations. Why not show up with canned hams and wave those around with signs that beg people to save Babe the Pig?

3. And of course there's the pathetic teabaggers who named their grassroots movement after a sex act and then got screwed by the astroturfing of their little party by the Goposaurs, who did the exact same thing to the wingnut Christians. So guys, how did that promise from Karl Rove to outlaw abortion and send Gays to Gitmo work out for you?

But I digress into a painful memory for the poor deluded American idiot version of the Taliban. They really did believe Rove and just don't want to talk about it anymore. But you can show up at the next Teabagging party with your own signs demanding that Karl Rove produce his birth certificate.

Seriously, the best way to fight back is to lift up the rock and let everyone see who these people are. Any video clip of Michele Bachmann is good for hysterical laughter because she puts the crazed in fucking crazy. Same for DeMint, Bunning, and the assortment of bottom feeders who crawled up from the sewers to represent the most ignorant and inbred of their bible-thumping constituents, and moral cretins like Gingrich, Limbaugh, and Beck. Sometimes embellishment gives the fake veneer of truth to their words, and letting them speak for themselves does far more to discredit them than any amount of ridicule could. And of course, a funny sign or two can't hurt.

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Fighting back with Humor

Message Of The Day

Opiate Religion by godless_heathen
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Message Of The Day

Cult Of The Sinner

As I was mainlining my daily Olympics fix today, there was one sport I couldn't avoid, no matter how many times I changed the channel--The Tiger Woods Repentant Sinner Marathon.

It was like some demented Groundhog Day movie playing over and over again, with the faces changing from his to Clinton's, to Ted Haggard's, to Spitzer's, to Sanford's. The contriteness! The guilt! And sometimes the wives popped into the scene, barely holding back the urge to bludgeon so clearly etched on their collective faces. It's all such soap opera, such high school meanness, and more than anything--the chance to feel self-righteous at the expense of yet another poor idiot who got caught doing what most people get away with doing.

I felt I was being thrust into the private life of someone I don't know, will most certainly never meet in my life, and could care less about other than as a cultural phenomenon surrounding a game I care even less about. I needed a bath to wash away the feeling that part of the cultural morass called America, still keeps a foot in medieval times where public hangings and spitting on adulterers in stockades was good, clean fun for the entire family.

I also saw it as a clear example of how religion unearths and propagates the most demented side of human beings. This charade of public humiliation we've come to expect as part of the punishment for actions that don't affect us personally, are none of our business, and should have been left back in high school with the rest of the immature crap we were expected to grow out of one day.

But we unfortunately live in a time where anyone who has been caught operating outside the rigid guidelines set by others for everyone but themselves, can never hope to regain control of his life without the public confession, the throwing of himself at the feet of the masses and begging for forgiveness.

We've collectively formed the Church of the Self-Righteous Asshole by refusing to change the channel, turn off the TV, stop reading the tabloids when THE SINNER takes the public humiliation podium and begs for our forgiveness.

We the judgmental congregation wait with stones in hand for an act of contriteness that might fall short of the sin. We listen, we condemn, we gossip, we chatter like a bunch of moronic crows in the hope we can throw at least a couple of those stones, that we can draw a little blood, that we can be the ultimate judge of someone else's life.

But the sordid truth is the only wrong the sinner can do is fail to entertain us, for that is what other people's private lives have become to many of us--a pathetic and cheap entertainment. We devour the details. We swallow the stories, the backroom gossip, the speculations. We know more details about some lame-ass celebrity than we do the members of our own families, and we can't wait to share them over and over again as if each tidbit were worry beads for the terminally stupid.

It makes me question how much we have actually evolved as a species when crap like this takes up so much of our lives.

Cult Of The Sinner

The Corporate States of America presents...

Last week Senator Franken tore into Comcast CEO Brian Roberts over conflicting responses he gave regarding the proposed merger with NBC. read more



And previously a few weeks before, the Supreme Court put the control of elections in the hands of Corporations by giving them a blank check to buy any politicians they want, no matter who the American people would rather have represent them. This decision insured that party affiliation will cease to matter and candidates will represent entities such as banks, Pharmaceutical companies, the Insurance lobby, agri-business, Wall Street, and anyone with the millions and millions of dollars required to run for office as a voice of the "people."

There is no clearer example of how bad this can get than that found in NBC's coverage of the Olympics. Most Americans don't realize what an obscenity this coverage has become because they're not allowed to see anything but NBC's little handpicked circus.

People like me who live on the border with Canada receive in the moment live coverage through Canada's CTV, while viewers in Seattle, 90 miles south, and much of the country, have to wait for taped versions airing hours later. (By the way, my cable service is Comcast which means they are CHOOSING to block Seattle viewers from an event happening in their own backyard.)

And if anyone wants to go online to try and find live coverage, they'll run into a blockade set up by the marriage from hell between NBC and Comcast. There is no live coverage. Between the two of them, they've made sure no one gets to watch any Olympic coverage that hasn't passed through their biases and filters.

As a consumer with a small window of choice, I've noticed some glaring differences in the coverage between CTV and NBC. The most obvious and the saddest for Americans, is that Canada still remembers the Olympics are a sporting event. They try to cover as many events live as possible, and they show taped events only when it wasn't possible to show two things at once. Even then, there's access on another Canadian service for those who must watch their favorite events live.

While they praise their athletes, they are fair about it and show as many of the other competitors as possible. Their coverage is like the Olympics of a few years ago when everyone gathered to watch their favorite events live...even if they were televised at 3 am. There were dead times, there were athletes from obscure countries, there were unrehearsed moments. And there was excitement, anticipation, fun and a sense of the whole world watching at the same time.

This was the spirit of the Olympics, an event that began as a break from war and hostilities to put on an athletic event that allowed nations to compete with each other and bring honor to their nations in a peaceful manner. And it is a spirit the Canadians clearly understand and share as much as possible with anyone who wants to take part.

In contrast, NBC/Comcast do not see the Olympics as an athletic competition. For them it is a marketing event, a chance to herd "viewers" into a common pen they have no choice of allowing themselves to be herded into if they want to watch the show. Once in this pen they are bombarded with advertisements and messages designed to sell you everything from drugs to your next president.

And their coverage is filled with jingoistic praise and slogans for the individual athletes--as long as they are American and have a wealthy future of many endorsements waiting for them. Everyone else is irrelevant, unless they come from one of the many evil empires America has to keep thumping its chest over, so the sheep will continue to give them even more money for war. Then it becomes hero vs. villain, a real comic book depiction of what other countries take as a serious athletic competition.

American commentators talk incessantly through the events, chattering inanely about petty gossip and endorsement futures, while the Canadians remain respectfully silent except for the moments when they explain the technical aspects of an event as if they had an intelligent audience interested in what they have to say. American commentators talk as if their audience was a captive test group for the corporate marketing departments who study the right buzz words to win the consumer dollar.

This is sad because the Olympics were meant to be a time of peace when all nations came together for some good, old-fashioned fun. It's a shame that in America, that fun has been handed over to the corporate ringmasters interested only in financial gain and propaganda.

I wish everyone had the opportunity to watch the Olympics as they were meant to be watched. It might end some of the cynicism, the divisions, the mean-spirited attacks on each other that seems to grow bigger each day. But then, maybe that is what the corporate interests fear. They can only profit from hatred and division. It's their bread and butter and they're not about to give it up.

But you can fight back by writing to Senators such as Al Franken and letting him know he has your support at preventing a merger between NBC and Comcast because with their Olympics coverage they've given the American people a very clear picture of why this merger is a very bad idea. And it's your right to have what our neighbors to the north have so skillfully demonstrated is the right of everyone to enjoy--a sporting event meant for the world to share together in real time.

The Corporate States of America presents...

The Bully Culture

As I read about Goposaur Shelby's blanket hold on Obama's nominations (read more), I was reminded of this creepy kid I went to school with when I was about ten or eleven years old.

He was a big, hulking, sullen mass of walking resentment. We all knew he had a shitty home life, but back then, considering the school and the neighborhood we were in, who didn't? He always harassed the youngest and the weakest, terrorized the shyest student, and mocked the most helpless. He lied, cheated and stole to get what he wanted. He got angry if he didn't get his way, and he implied what he believed was the only truth and those who believed differently were idiots, living on another planet, or commies.

Acording to Bully Online, he was a classic bully who fit the following characteristics:

* has never learned to accept responsibility for their behavior

* wants to enjoy the benefits of living in the adult world, but who is unable and unwilling to accept the responsibilities that are a prerequisite for being part of the adult world.

* abdicates and denies responsibility for their behavior and its consequences (abdication and denial are common features of bullying)

* is unable and unwilling to recognize the effect of their behavior on others

* does not want to know of any other way of behaving

* is unwilling to recognize that there could be better ways of behaving."

The shameful bullying engaged in by Shelby and his Republican Party is symptomatic of the cultural illness that has taken hold of this country. We have become a nation of bullies where one person can hold the rest hostage until he or she gets their way. This is not just the seedy realm of GOP political operatives and their ethically challenged enablers, but has infected just about every aspect of our society.

But not all bullying is obvious. The kissing cousin of the Political and Schoolyard Bully is Little Miss Entitlement, who is otherwise known as "I have an opinion and will make your life hell until it becomes your opinion as well." She (or he) has perfected the meme that in other times what was considered rude, nosy, none of your business, or excessive interference in someone's personal life--is now the holy grail of good for you as wielded by Joan of Political Correctness.

Here is a perfect example: A school in Kirkland, Washington has censored parts of Snow White because, as they ironically claim, it encourages bullying and other not so nice behavior. (read more) It's freaking Snow White, not little Miss Sunshine! But in their perfect vanilla world, I'll bet the evil stepmother is merely having a bad day and we should all be more understanding of her shortcomings, because in their world no one ever has to take any responsibility for their own actions. It's ALWAYS someone else's fault.

These people would never in their addled little imaginations ever see their own actions as bullying. They would never understand that by censoring something instead of explaining it, they are raising their children in a world that does not exist. They are sheltering them from truths that will whack them smack upside their poor deprived little heads the minute they have to live in the real world. They will never understand this because the idea they might be wrong, that their ideas might be wrong, that their actions might be wrong, would never occur to them. They are always right, which is what bullies also believe.

And they share this obsession with forcing others to live in a world they made for them, with the ultimate bully cult: religion. What do you want to bet those who made that decision for EVERYONE'S children, also share characteristics with the really whacked out religious loonies who engage in things like shunning, ostracizing, and denigrating anyone who might believe differently? How closely do they fit this description from the Wikipedia page on bullying?

"...social aggression or indirect bullying is characterized by threatening the victim into social isolation. This isolation is achieved through a wide variety of techniques, including spreading gossip, refusing to socialize with the victim, bullying other people who wish to socialize with the victim, and criticizing the victim's manner of dress and other socially-significant markers (including the victim's race, religion, disability, etc)." read more

I think being called stupid by a character invented in the 30's pales in comparison to their method of handling it. I suspect they're just looking for an excuse to control, convert, and manipulate information that already suits what they believe, just like any politician with an agenda, any crazy christian looking to inflict their version of imaginary playmates on everyone else, and any bully looking to intimidate the weaker kids into giving up their lunch money.

But the biggest damage done by bullies is the festering wound religion has opened up in this country. It has become a political tool used to manipulate voters into supporting the agenda of corporate sleaze balls. It has become the ultimate bully that treads on the individual rights of citizens, inflicts its agenda on politics, schools, the media, and people's personal lives.

What especially defines it as a bully is that no matter how much power or influence it has, it always wants more. For a bully nothing is ever enough. There is always more lunch money to steal, more humanity to destroy. A bully will not engage you in discourse but will shout you down, beat you up, and then proclaim him or herself the victim.

I believe this disgusting takeover of our country has come about because of the enablers who are like that Kirkland school. No one wants to stand up to a bully, and they count on that. They shout. They whine. They intimidate. They threaten to sue. They hold meetings where they reinforce each others biases.

Isn't it time to make these people grow up? How about if the next time some whiny ass Christian comes up and claims persecution, instead of walking politely away or being reluctant to attack their "personal belief," why not stand up for your rights to have some beliefs of your own? Why not say fuck you and your bullshit? They sure aren't shy about making what you believe seem evil or wrong or not worthy of the air it takes up to express it. Grow a pair and tell them to go back under their rock where everyone thinks the same as they do, and you will believe what you want, thank you very much.

The next time some corporate whore of a politician decides to throw a temper tantrum to continually fatten his own bank account stuffed from corporate "donations," why not get on the phone to him or her and remind them who they're really working for, and if they don't get it, vote their asses out?

And the next time some Little Miss Entitlement whines to you that rules and standards set by them are for your own good, remind them you also have rules and standards and it's time they really practiced some equality and lived by yours for a change. If not, then replace them. They are not the boss of you, even though they think they are. They're just schoolyard bullies who grew up and got someone to pay them to continue to be schoolyard bullies.

It's time to buy a broom and clean up some messes you helped cause by being too nice, oblivious, or indifferent. If you want to live in a Democracy, you're going to have to build it from the ground up again. It's what happens when you let the crazies take over. You have to clean up the really shitty messes they leave behind. Maybe next time, you'll pay better attention and speak up sooner and louder and you won't have to get on your knees to scrub the shit out of the floorboards.

Too Stupid For Science by godless_heathen
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Tax Political Churches by orsobear
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The Bully Culture

Thinking For Yourself

I start my day by reading different blogs that represent several points of view on the daily topics. Many of them are billed as Progressive, Liberal, Left of Center, but what keeps them from being a choir singing the same song in different keys are the comments sections. They are a veritable stew of Democracy in action--messy, loudly argued in caps and emotional opinions, and always filled with wonderful twists on old ideas that actually make one think instead of simply sucking in and then shitting out.

This is something that separates the Goposaur/Right-Wingnuts from everyone else on the web. On the blogs I read, anyone can post in the comments section. You don't have to ascribe to the basic tenets of the blog perspective. You can vary from the entire Left of Center dialogue and post just about anything you want, whether it is as a member of the extreme lunatic arm of right wingnut teabagging crazies screaming about birth certificates and Socialism, all the way to semi-rational if misguided points of view that center around the delusion the last decade was one of unheralded peace and prosperity thanks to the dumbest president who ever occupied that office.

As much as I disagree with some of these posters and think they're barking up a tree rotten in the center from decades of unregulated free-market thievery, I believe they have as much right as I do to post their opinion. This is a vastly different perspective found in most right-wing blogs that ban a poster at the first sign of thinking differently, at the first inkling that the talking points are not being swallowed whole and passed on in unfiltered chunks.

They are terrified that someone will come along and disturb the carefully tended group think they spent months cultivating. They are afraid the sheep will wake up and realize they've been manipulated and used. They do not want to take the risk that the talking points carefully written by their masters will actually be read and discussed in an intelligent and unbiased manner. So they ban all dissent, all ideas that are not locked into the party line and communal mind.

This kind of lockstep thinking is why I could never be a Goposaur, and most certainly never a teabagger who squeals about independence but spouts verbatim talking points that are so cut and paste cookie cutter, you can type them into google and find them all over the web without any variation. Where is the independence in such regimented thought control?

It is pathetic and sad. It is mind control that is robotic and unforgiving. It is stripping all individuality from the person and turning him or her into a piece of machinery under the control of corporate handlers.

I will never be the kind of person who can take orders from someone without question. I could never check my individuality and choke down talking points I'm then expected to go post verbatim on every "enemy" blog on the web. I couldn't ever let someone own my mind or expect me to be a voice for them and not ever speak with my own. That is not what I was put on this planet to do. It is not me.

I am someone who prefers to do my own reading, to do my own analyzing, to do my own thinking. And when I do post a comment on a blog it is because I came to it on my own with the information I gathered on my own. I would never ever let some clown like Rush Limbaugh tell me what to think and I certainly would never go and post his talking points instead of my own.

But then, as a Progressive, Liberal Democrat this kind of thinking comes with the territory. The umbrella has to make room for everyone or we foolishly don't feel we have a right to call ourselves a Democracy. We can't exclude people for any reason because that's not our right. It defeats the whole idea of America if we say only one class of people gets the rights and privileges of citizenship and the rest get only a token piece.

It is why we support equal rights for people of all colors, gender, sexual preferences, and spiritual beliefs or lack of them. We take Democracy seriously and we don't believe it benefits the sacrifices of our founding fathers if we give up our individuality to goosestep to someone else's ideology.

And those talking points? I'll write my own, thank you very much. It's my right and obligation as an American to speak with my own mind, my own words, my own beliefs.

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Thinking For Yourself

Religion: The Making Of Mean People

Way back in the dark ages of the 60's, groups of young and glassy-eyed gigglers would pounce on you in airports and college campuses to proclaim their love for Jesus. These "Jesus Freaks" as they called themselves, were annoying but harmless as they really believed they were spreading a special message from their spiritual leader to love one another.

They were joined by their equally glassy-eyed but chanting and flower offering kin, the Hare Krishnas. No airport was safe from their good-hearted but increasingly annoying invitation to chant your way to blissful idiotic happiness.

But somewhere in the last couple decades, the message of love in both these cults got lost to the mean-spirited, hateful and politicized rhetoric that Christianity has become. The Hare Krishna's fell into abuse and depravity from all that love and chanting, and the Jesus Freaks went from preaching love to bombing abortion clinics, murdering doctors, hating gays, and loving executions and war.

Political thugs and media whores have taken advantage of an increasingly dumb and religion-befuddled population by turning them into mobs programmed to hate on command. They learned what the other religion-based regimes learned: give the population a religion they can use to justify their hate and you control their balls for life.

Of course, the logical question is what use could a group of ignorant hating morons be to anyone, other than flying planes into buildings? And the obvious and sad reason is they can be used and used, and then used some more by those who see them as convenient political tools to advance their personal enrichment agenda.

To how many fundie whackos did Karl Rove promise he would get abortion outlawed if they only voted for Bush? Or how many pockets did he and his fellow Goposaur thugs pick with the promise that the donations would banish all gays forever from the face of the planet? Or that those scary brown and dark-skinned people would never be allowed to live next door to them? Or that immigrants were all bad and would never be allowed to walk on the sacred ground of America to take their toilet-cleaning jobs from them again? All they had to do was vote for Bush and god would be happy and not strike them dead.

Rove and the other paid whores of the super-rich played these poor fools like the morons they were. It was a small step from filling them with Jesus wants you to donate to these candidates this week, to getting them to die in the new wars of the new Christian crusade grounds in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it was sadly an even smaller step to use religion as a wedge to divide the country against itself so the thievery could go on undetected as Americans fought Americans over ideas.

Centuries from now, if our poor planet still exists, the History of this time will seem incredulous to ordinary human beings. They will ask themselves, as we ask ourselves now when we read our own history of the last few decades, how could people just sit around and watch whole groups of people be murdered and villified in the name of religion? They will wonder why no one stood up and said this is wrong, this is evil, this is not what Jesus meant when he said to love one another, to live in Peace.

And the answer will be found in the following, the voices who will become through the historical passage of time, our own voices. Is this whose voices you want to speak for you many years from now? Is this what will cause future generations to say of us: they were wiped out by their religious intolerance for any cult but their own.

Pat Robertson on the Haiti Earthquake, an event that will definitely make the history books. Watch

South Carolina Lt.-Gov. Andre Bauer on how our generation dealt with the poor and the hungry, a subject that will be part of history because the sheer numbers of those going without food in one of the wealthiest countries of the world is definitely material for future generations to study. Watch

Is this the voice of Christian love you want representing you many years from now because the issue of overpopulation and therefore abortion, will definitely be a subject in future history books. Read

And how will you feel when they talk about the military, those who fought in our wars? No, not THOSE veterans. Those are too ordinary and history is already suffering from a glut of them. This is the army that will make the history books and shame you in your grave. Read

And of course, no history will be complete without the intolerance that was honed and used like a sword for dimwitted morons to stab themselves with by that religious Tool-in-Chief, George W. Bush. Read

But the complete package, the most astonishing bit of history that will appall and confound future historians will be the livid hatred that only decades of festering racism can unleash on the first African-American President--especially that directed by so-called men of god. Read

What they will see from the perspective of objective Historians with decades of previous thought to ponder, is a culture of hatred fostered by people who used religion as a ways and means to achieve intolerance, political power, and personal wealth. And unless we throw off these masters who control this country through the most ignorant layers of humanity, the last chapter in the historical records will end with us destroying each other over whose god reigned supreme.

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Religion: The Making Of Mean People

Useful Idiots

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Useful Idiots

What I Believe

I had one of those interesting email exchanges tonight with a reader of this blog. He wanted to know exactly what I believed if I didn't believe in god. After the obligatory explanation that according to the gospel of me, there's nothing for me to either believe or not believe in, we moved on to what I consider a legitimate question.

Of course I believe in something. I believe in a lot of somethings. I believe first of all that we are personally accountable for everything we do and think, because outside of ourselves, there's nothing to lay the blame on.

Yes, events shape us, but that's the extent of it. How we respond to that shaping defines who we are as human beings, and god has always seemed a too convenient place to dump personal responsibility. Not having that excuse, I'm left with only my sense of honor and integrity to believe in and guide me.

One of the issues that disturb some of those I discuss my Atheism with is the notion of punishment and reward. As one believer wrote me "But without God there is no punishment for bad people who aren't criminals, and no reward for people who are good and deserve to be eternally blessed for it."

My response to her was that of course there was punishment and reward, but it was punishment and reward that left third party smiters out of the equation. If a person is bad, there's nothing anyone really has to do but wait patiently. The badness doesn't go away; it just finds a bigger audience who eventually puts it all together and says: this is a bad person. Then they adjust their relationship and interaction with that person based on their individual needs and tolerances.

It has nothing to do with vengeance but a whole lot to do with awareness that all relationships are between two people, and anything else is interfering in the natural process of human interaction.

I believe in peace because I think war destroys our humanity. Each death, no matter how small, be it fly or elephant, takes something from us to accomplish. Think of the first time you killed a fly. There was an uneasiness about it, a sort of gnawing sense that it was wrong. Your first swat was probably gentle, tentative, and filled with the total awareness of what you were about to do.

It became easier after that and with each one it became easier because there was less humanity to stand in the way. Eventually it became commonplace and it meant nothing to kill dozens of flies mindlessly each day. This is how war operates on a larger scale because each battle is a fly and each war is the death of human dignity pieces we will never regain.

I believe in being nice to people because it is one of those seeds that gets spread around and keeps growing. Compassion is like a smile. It spreads easily, even if only briefly. I believe those moments grow into larger ones and are an important part of the stitching together of a better world.

I believe in taking care of one another because as corny and trite as it sounds, we really are the world. If we all picked one person to give to, to make sure they had something extra in their lives they might not have if it weren't for us, we would have that better world a lot quicker than the pace it is moving now.

I believe in love because it's the only thing I've seen that can change people. The trick to love is learning how to channel it positively so it doesn't consume you and those around you. It's a fire that can do a lot of good if it is used to burn only for good things, ideas, passions, and dreams.

I believe in the power of music to change the world. As long as we have access to each other's music, we have something to share that doesn't require language to communicate. In fact, not understanding the words is what may eventually save us because it strips the politics, the biases, the blame, the whining, the desperation from it and leaves the pure musical message that enters our hearts and minds as it was meant to do.

I profoundly believe in the awesome healing power of nature. I have yet to meet a person, a drug, a healer, or anything written, described, drawn, painted, defined that even comes close to what happens inside of us when we let the majesty of an ocean sunset, a refreshing pine-scented breeze, a perfectly blue sky, a field of flowers touch our hearts and say hello to pieces of self we didn't even know we had.

So you see, I do believe. I could go on and on because there's a whole lot more I believe, but as you can already see, my lack of belief in what you believe doesn't make me empty. I feel pretty full and satisfied with my existence. And I don't have to give it away to anyone--real or imaginary.

Sunset Over Bellingham Bay by orsobear
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What I Believe

So Many Stupid People, So Few Asteroids

I read a lot of blogs. I read the comments section of blogs. When I'm not working, I read. And as in real life, the quality and subject matter varies according to the authors. But it's in the comments left behind where the real consistency is often found, where the types wrap themselves up in their predictability and let everyone know who and what they are almost immediately. Here are the types I see most often:

1. SPAM In the top position are spammers, the cut and pasters who want to give me a huge penis and also gigantic breasts. Yeah, those work really well together. And I don't have to worry about paying for them because everyone wants to lend me money so I can also afford to buy all the drugs I'm offered on a daily basis.

2. GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY TALKING POINT is the winner of the second position. These are the equivalent of the seedy looking guy handing out leaflets on the street corner. Once upon a time when the Goposaurs had endless money to buy propaganda, they paid shills to go post the daily talking point on the opposition's blogs. Now that they spent all their money on tea bags, they have to rely on the "one issue crazies" to spread the word for free. That's why you'll find badly spelled and grammatically creative diatribes about birth certificates and other whacked out conspiracy fantasies smack in the middle of a discussion of northerly bird migrations. Nothing stands in the way of them posting their talking point, no matter how bad the fit.

They do have their counterparts in the Liberal version who post passionate and tediously long polemics on what they perceive should be obvious to everyone who has at least a graduate level degree in political science, and the fact that most people don't is usually proof that the world really is going to hell...and they'll be glad to postulate why in postings that exceed the length limit and have to be carried over to the next post, and sometimes the next.

3. THE FETUS MILITIA In third position are the absolute crazies who turn every discussion into the holy fetus war. And they always make a point of mentioning how they're guaranteed the right to bear the arms they're going to practice the sanctity of human life with by killing abortion doctors. Often you don't even have to read their posts because they're instantly recognizable by their incomprehensible sentence structure and words that were never in their miserable little lives, meant to be spelled so atrociously.

4. GOD'S IDIOT CHILDREN In position number four are the real whacked out loonies who go on about how we're such a great nation because we have freedom of religion and goddamnit they will fucking kill your ass if you don't happen to share the freedom of their own particular religion and prefer one of your own, or none at all. They've taught me that the most fervent the believer, the greater variations of fuck they will use in their posts, as in fuck you you fucking fuck go fucking rot in fucking hell.

5. HELP MY CAPS KEY IS STUCK In position number five is angry white male who can't figure out how to unstick the caps key. Usually has an assholes on line email addy and is fond of phrases such as Nobama and Obamacare with various references to nazis, stalin, commies, socialists, birth certificates and patriotism. No matter what the discussion, he will leave an angry, hate-filled, conspiracy-theory fueled, badly spelled attack against Obama all typed with HIS CAP KEY STUCK.

These are just a few of the regulars who frequent some of the blogs I read. I chose them because they're so common and so predictable that you can almost see the next word before it's typed. The phrases are so similar, the sentence structure so wonderfully creative, the ideas so deliciously insane that in some strange way, they make my day as it lets me know once more that when whoever the great "they" is with the nets, there's a whole shit load of crazies in line for capture before me so I can slip easily away unnoticed for a long long time.

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So Many Stupid People, So Few Asteroids

Imperfect Humans and the cleansing of memory

The end of one year and the beginning of another seems to set ghosts dancing on the edge of my days until I acknowledge them in some way. I usually pacify them by writing a poem, making some art, or just sitting with a glass of wine and remembering what they brought to my life, what would be lacking without their transit through my reality, and how they left the dust of some of themselves on me in some way.

Today the ghost took the shape of a man I met many years ago. I was at a very disillusioned point in time. I'd just survived a serious illness and wasn't sure I wanted to get my hopes up and believe I was going to live. I was like a rock in the river that the water washes over in degrees of cold, heat, purity, and sediment-stuffed surprise attacks. He was the ultimate cynic and of course I had to check out what made him this way because he seemed to come by it so naturally it was almost a gift.

There's an old joke that the most dangerous words a woman can say are "I can save this man." But in his sense of salvation it was less the man himself I wanted to save, than it was I wanted to understand what he represented. I thought if I could understand the depths of the system that made him who he was, I could learn something previously unexplored about the nature of war and use it for peace in that roundabout way of believing if you know the enemy, you can defeat it on its own battlefield.

For us the battlefield was mental. He was arrogant, opinionated, highly intelligent in that raw, forced disciplined way of being intelligent that comes from systemic discipline rather than desire to know and understand. He spent much of his life as a piece of machinery in a country that didn't value him as a human being beyond what he could contribute as a functioning piece of working asset.

That made him shit to relate to in any way but intellectually, and in that he excelled. His mind was a mysterious path that I jumped in eagerly to explore. I wanted to know what made him so cold to those he professed to love with a passion found only in the pages of his favorite literature, and I realized it was because he never learned to value human beings. He grew up knowing he could be easily replaced at any time, that he had no value beyond what he could provide in the moment, and that if he wanted to succeed in maintaining a relative and safe anonymity, it was best not to dwell too long in the emotional realm because that was the path to danger.

Of course this was unacceptable to me. I was and am the ultimate romantic when it comes to people's mental playgrounds. I know there's something special hidden inside everyone and I dig and dig until I get a glimpse of it. Sometimes that's enough for me, and at other times it is the hand that reaches out and drags me down the rabbit hole.

He was the biggest rabbit hole I ever fell into and it was a trip that while I have no desire to ever repeat again, I wouldn't trade for anything because it gave me an understanding of what war, what meanness, what lack of respect for a humanity creates in a population.

I'm a stubborn woman and because I believe in people's essential goodness, I was able to relate to him in a way that satisfied me at the time. I stuck to the path that we shared: literature, cultural music, and nature. I didn't want to look too deeply inside the part of him that was cruel and callous, that could profess friendship and then cut your heart the next day for his own amusement.

He was the little Prince of every mother who thinks her son is the chosen one, and the nightmare of every woman who tried to relate to him on an emotional level. I watched him go through relationships as if they were disposable jars he could stuff with his dreams and then throw away when they became too ordinary.

I think if anything defined him, other than being a train wreck son of a flawed human system, it was that he feared the ordinary. As he was growing up, the sensitive child he must have been at some time was brutally smacked down and he learned to adapt and mimic the ordinary mediocrity of existence. He didn't stand out. He didn't draw attention to himself. He merely existed.

But within that existence there was a lovely and nurturing escape: books. It was our deepest connection to each other, this eternal appreciation of books as lifesaving devices. I always carried a book around with me as a child. It was my foil against the shyness that haunted me most of my young life, the fear of interacting with strangers, the terror that someone would hurt me or tease me or try and destroy me. For him, it was the small glimmer of hope that maybe one day life would resemble something close to what he read about rather than what he was forced to live on a day to day basis.

But for both of us, the books that saved us also spoiled the ordinary for us. We could never settle for anything that was tedious, mediocre, boring. Life had to imitate art or it was neither life nor art.

I eventually couldn't handle how he treated women, the callousness in which he broke their hearts and walked away without a second glance when they stopped being princesses in magical kingdoms needing rescuing, and instead became ordinary women. I could understand it, but I couldn't condone it. So I walked away. It broke my heart in a way I never expected it to, but to stay would have damaged my honor, my integrity, my sense the world as a beautiful place.

Even after all these years he remains in my thoughts and for him, for all the potential that I hoped he would one day realize, I made something beautiful for him, something to contemplate, something to say thank you for the first lessons on what it meant to point a camera at something and have it return back at least a small piece of what the eyes and heart saw and created together.

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Imperfect Humans and the cleansing of memory

Special message for Fred with the aol address

You win the award today for the most intolerant, stupid bag of skin that ever walked the earth. These designs were made especially to piss people like you off. Enjoy!

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Are you having fun yet? Good. I'll make some more designs especially for you. Make sure you leave me some nice email again, but keep in mind if you threaten me or any elected official, then the fun times are over and the authorities get to read your badly spelled and insane diatribes. Right now I'm just using them for inspiration much as you use pics of Sarah Palin to inspire yourself...uh, you.

Special message for Fred with the aol address

So many stupid people, so few asteroids

Today has been a veritable bonanza of the lesser human species. Those who read this blog or subscribe to it see only a small portion of the hate that god's less intelligent bastard children like to direct my way. I delete them almost immediately so as not to give them the attention they so desperately crave.

Once in a while I'll actually respond publicly, mostly because my way of fighting is no violence allowed, but I am allowed to use mocking and humiliation to expose how ridiculous some of these wingnut losers are, so ridiculous are they in fact, that I can't possibly take them or their idiotic ideas seriously.

For people like that, all you need to fight them is a good dose of ridicule. They have nothing to fight with but slogans handed to them by others and so they get stumped if they have to think outside the words they were given. Eventually their tiny little minds get confused at having to come up with a thought, so they slink away beaten and bewildered with a mob of other people laughing at them all the way home.

Anything loses its power and mystique when it becomes a joke. And there's nothing as funny as someone who fails to realize they're that stupid and that manipulated until the asteroid lands on their dumb asses.

But you don't get to see the real crazies. They always save the best of their RANTS typed all in caps and filled with the most juvenile of badly spelled words for my private email. I suspect because deep down inside their cheesy little souls even they are embarrassed being them and they don't want too many others knowing how lacking they are in just about everything.

So you didn't get to see the gems that arrived today and had that baked in musty scent of having recently left a Palin teabagging party where they all sucked each others...ideas...until there was nothing left but a dank cesspool left behind by their now drained communally shared brain.

These are the ones who desperately want to believe they are part of some movement that's bigger than the parking lot outside the convenience store, or the church hall they got a discount on because no one got the stench of intolerance out of the walls enough for anyone to pay money for it, or the Palin rallies where a huge crowd is defined as having to take your shoes off to count the rest of the people.

You see, they really do know that they're irrelevent. They suspect the Goposaurs used them to get other Goposaurs elected but weren't really on their side when it came to passing the draconian social restrictions they wanted to inflict on the rest of the planet. They got nothing from their darling little W except used and it must sting like, well...hell.

And they're being used again by their teabagging masters who see they're too dumb to not make the same mistake twice, and so they manipulate them once more to get the new version of Goposaur elected, the real crazies that will be even easier to manipulate than that pathetic fool, Bush. The idiots see Sarah Palin as their savior, and their masters see her as an easily manipulated tool motivated by greed. It's almost too easy.

But what makes it really easy is religion. These people who write me are so fucking stupid that all someone has to do is claim Jeezus and they'll let you abuse them and use them and manipulate them until there's nothing left but an empty sack of used up shit.

It's not that difficult to see how some whacked out christian nut job like Huckabee heard only that the piece of shit wanting a release had found Jeezus, and so let him go without further thought so he could murder four cops in Washington state. To believe the fundamentalist whacko shit Huckabee believes in, you almost have to suspend independent and critical thought. And the moment you do that, you open yourself up to manipulation by others who use their brains for something other than a hat rack.

The kind of people who write me these letters are no better than the goosestepping morons who believed that god wanted them to kill Jews for him. In religious wars, no matter how big or small, all it takes is one fool manipulated for his intolerant ideas wrapped up in religion to convince him to kill. And they don't even have to look for others because he will find them for his masters as long as they feed him the bullshit he craves. Yes, they tell him, this time you will win. This time we will make everyone follow your religion, your hatred, your bigotry, your intolerant world view.

And he believes it because if he had half a brain he wouldn't believe the crazy crap he thinks is religion but is really hate wrapped in a godly body bag. He's the kind of person that allows himself to be used and used and used until he's just another old diseased and burned out whore for the rich and powerful.

He's the one carrying the signs at the health care reform rallies begging the insurance companies to fuck him one more time for Jeezus. He's the one pasting pictures of holocaust dead on a piece of cardboard so he can demonstrate his undying faith in the sanctity of human life--as long as that life is not dead Jews. He's the one drooling over Sarah Palin as President while his own wife still has a black eye from his fist and is only allowed the Bible as reading material. He's the one who bellows against the Taliban for demanding everyone follow their religion and give up all their rights, and yet fails to see how he's demanding the same thing and is therefore no better than the Taliban he condemns.

You know I could go on and probably will in the days to come because I'm finally fed up with these pathetic excuses for human beings. But for now I'm going to make myself a cup of tea, put some music on, and allow myself a nice break from having to deal with anything more today.

I've said my piece and I will say it again because I can't work for peace, I can't be an activist for the planet earth if I don't expose the dangers that threaten us. There is nothing more dangerous than ignorance because those who are ignorant are the tools of anyone and anything who sees a temporary use for them. I've said it over and over again and I'll say it again--those who hate are easily manipulated and owned by any master who comes along, while those who love are the ones who are truly free.

I prefer to love, but woe to him or her who mistakenly perceives that as a weakness. Unlike you, I don't succumb to phony color-coded terror threats, monsters under the bed, or hate filled preachers spewing intolerance from the pulpit. I am my own woman and that makes me far far stronger than any of you weak and intolerant haters will ever be. And love is MY higher power.

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Godless Damned Degenerate for Peace

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Godless Damned Degenerate for Peace

Embracing Your Inner Lunatic

I had an interesting conversation this evening with someone I don't know very well but whose intelligence always intrigues me. He has a way of phrasing his thoughts so that others can take part in the process of their formation. Tonight he lead me down the path of creating peace by equating the direction toward it as an inward focus spreading outward.

This is not to be confused with the simplicity of saying peace begins from within. That misses the whole point of it being a participatory process that involves the idea, the desire, the sharing, and the action. For example, I can say I want peace, but what does that really mean? Does it mean I have to sit cross-legged and dream inward and hope something leaks out and basically infects others? Or does it mean that I am an activist who seeks to promote peace as a part of my activism?

That is the path my friend took me down tonight and after a few hours of reading, of thinking, of talking about other things to other people, I think I can give him somewhat of an answer. But it won't be a short answer because it's not so easily explained. I can only give examples from myself and hope it makes enough sense to others so they will join me on the same path wearing their own shoes or no shoes or maybe just dragging along behind me. The possibility even exists they could be leading me somehow.

First of all, it does begin within. But the question one has to ask is what is the within? To me it includes the ability to laugh, to mock the absurd, to challenge the mean, to disabuse the intolerant, to speak up against the ingrained.

I have the perfect venue for doing all of that. I design t-shirts and other things with my world view on them. I make fun of and challenge racists. I promote tolerance while attacking intolerance. I point out the evils of war, organized religion, hate, and just plain old fashioned stupidity that is the real cause of much of the earth's many problems.

In all this I try and be myself, to be true to what I believe and am. That's always the hard part because we are social animals, no matter how much we try and claim we are not. I am no different that way. I prefer being liked instead of disliked. I love being loved. I want to be appreciated. I want to be accepted. I want to be part of the whole I dream about and try to create.

But at the same time I can't let myself be led by those wants and desires. I lose my integrity if I apologize for the parts of me that are controversial. How can I effectively argue for a secular world that doesn't bludgeon and kill people over religion if I am not upfront and unapologetic about my Atheism?

How can I speak up for civil liberties if I don't practice them myself by advocating for people's rights to control their own bodies? If I want to have abortions, smoke pot, marry someone gay, drink vodka for breakfast, and vote for politicians who respect those rights, it is my body and my business. But I have to be all those things sincerely or I will be just a well-meaning hypocrite.

If I want a better world with resources that will last so future generations can share in them as I have shared in them, then it becomes a social and spiritual obligation to speak up against things that damage the planet whether they are small acts of refusing to use things that will end up in a landfill, all the way to pointing out that treating your vagina like a clown car is not a matter of whether you can afford to breed like Duggars but instead is a matter of selfishly using up resources that belong to future generations.

It is the same with war. I can object to Iraq and Afghanistan the same way I objected to Vietnam but unless I do more than object, there will always be war because its existence does not depend on me. It depends on those who profit from it--the arms merchants, the pentagon procurers, the politicians who pretend it's about honor and not about campaign contributions from the war profiteers. In my teens I marched in the streets, I camped out at Federal Buildings, I helped my friends write the kind of essays that would allow them to file as Conscientious Objectors, to convince draft boards they were not fit to kill another human being. Now I write those words on t-shirts and spread the message all over the world.

But does it make any difference, does it change anything? Of course, because if  I've learned one thing in my years on this planet it's that we need company to effect great change. Yes we can talk about single people who have made a difference but that is denying that we are not moles living in a pile of dirt waiting to be hosed out of our warm den. I am who I am because of others in my life, because of the examples I looked up to and also those I looked down on. You never know who's going to influence you until you get old enough to look backwards in time.

So yes, it all begins from within and spreads outward, but what varies is the all. That's how the path defines itself, by the all that we are. Once I realized this on more than an intellectual level, everything else just fell into place. I understand that we are all more than the messenger, more than the doer, more than the believer. We are the whole that moves as one with all our integrity and honor intact toward a goal that benefits everyone. In fact, the best goals are those that leave us out of the equation completely and allows us to do for others without the need for a reward, or a thank you, or anything but the knowledge that even a small step forward is progress if we do it sincerely.

And in all this I am reminded of one of the most interesting people I met in my life that of course I didn't fully appreciate until years after his death. He was my uncle's friend and died shortly after playing at his memorial service when he was in his 80's and blind. I don't know why he popped back up in my memory after all these years, but I suspect it's because I saw him then and I see him now as a man who truly lived his life as the man he was. Reading about him has been an entertaining process because everyone has a story, an opinion, a memory of the man as they perceived him, so I will share the googleness that exists around his name: http://tinyurl.com/ennio-bolognini and let you choose what you will to entertain and inspire you.

Inner Lunatic from Crazy Old Lady Of Peace Store
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Embracing Your Inner Lunatic