Tag Archives: Politics

Why do Republicans hate America and the Earth?

This is a bit long but you will benefit from watching all of it. It gets extra hot at 31:30.

I love the look on that woman’s face at 31:38 and again at 31:47. LOL.

This particular member of congress, Don Young from Alaska, needs to get unelected. Frank J. Vondersaar seems to be the guy running against him, and this seems to be his web site. You can donate money to help Frank’s campaign here.

I was originally made aware of this testimony from a blog post at Get Energy Smart blog, HERE. Please go check that out.

I am Iowan. I am barn.

I’ve known very few real Iowans. I know people who live there now but are from the Twin Cities, but I’ve only met a handful of native Iowans. One of them is a dear friend, most are only vague acquaintances. Six of them were landlubbing pirates of no value to humanity whatsoever.1 But I’m sure Iowans are mostly wonderful people who are well intentioned, hard working, intelligent, and are just as good as anyone else. Nonetheless, states have personalities and personalities have reputations, and people who live in states contribute to making those personalities and reputations. And for that reason I’m sure I’ll be forgiven for what I’m about to say. About your stupid state.
Continue reading I am Iowan. I am barn.

Minnesota AGW Denialist Jungbauer Disembowled by Respected News Anchor Don Shelby

I woke up this morning and the world was slightly different than it was the night before. Well, it probably always is a little different each day, but there are certain times when you notice this. I’m not talking about the bits of siding, roofing, and trees scattered about the landscape because of the very severe thunderstorm we had last night, although I suppose this is indirectly related.

If you are not a Minnesotan this will take some explanation:
Continue reading Minnesota AGW Denialist Jungbauer Disembowled by Respected News Anchor Don Shelby

Driving The Patriarchy: Demonic Males, Feminism, and Genetic Determinism

Behaviors are not caused by genes. There is not a gene that causes you to be good, or to be bad, or to be smart, or good at accounting, or to like bananas. There are, however, drives. “Drives” is a nicely vague term that we can all understand the meaning of. Thirst and hunger are drives we can all relate to. In fact, these drives are so basic, consistent and powerful that almost everyone has them, we share almost exact experiences in relation to them, and they can drive (as drives are wont to do) us to do extreme things when they are not met for long periods of time. While eating disorders are common enough and these affect a hunger drive, it is very rare to find a person thirst themselves to death.
Continue reading Driving The Patriarchy: Demonic Males, Feminism, and Genetic Determinism

“Monkeys on our backs” by Richard Tokumei will not even make good toilet paper

Richard Tokumei has written a book that is so bad he is ashamed to put his own name on it. “Richard Tokumei” is the pen name of a ‘writer/editor in Southern California [with] degrees in Humanities and Phychology from the University of California Berkeley” and he has produced a book designed to anger everyone who hears of it in order to create needless sensation and thus, sell copies. Which, once people get their hands on, will make rather low quality toilet paper.
Continue reading “Monkeys on our backs” by Richard Tokumei will not even make good toilet paper

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I’ll write you a Rapture-check

It didn’t really occur to me that anyone actually believed that the world was going to end the other day. Honestly. I had assumed that some crazy preacher made the claim, that it was being used to scam the gullible here and there, but that almost no one was really taking it seriously. But, in reading a few of the post-Rapture updates, this is clearly not the case. And, I’m sure that this is one of those things everybody else knew and that I was blissfully ignorant of.
Continue reading Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I’ll write you a Rapture-check

Justin Bieber’s New Haircut

Many years ago, during The Roe v. Wade Fight (Part II: The Rise of the Right Wing Yahoos) a student came to me and asked for a break because she wanted to join a bus full of Brandeis students heading down to DC to protest stuff. I told her not to worry about the quiz coming up, just go and do her civic duty. That’s when she chose to casually mention that “at least these days, we know how to do it, not like in the old days when protesters against the Viet Nam War were violent.

This caused me to whup her up side the head. Verbally, of course.

I explained that in the old old days, when the population spoke up against authority, their villages were burned and people were randomly identified as trouble makers and impaled on stakes. I talked about the early union protests, and how one workers’ village was burned to the ground with the women and children hiding in the wooden houses. I mentioned the US Amy using machines guns on veterans protesting for their rights in Washington. And so on. And, eventually I pointed out that the reason she could drag her sorry ass down to DC and have a nice peaceful protest was because of her fore-bearers, not because she and her friends had “figured something out.” Previous protesters stood in front of onrushing mounted police or railed against soldiers carrying live ammo knowing a) “I might be killed” and b) “If I am killed, it will reduce the chance that the state will be able to use these techniques on future generations of snot-nosed privileged Harvard undergrads.”

But at least, she wasn’t primarily interested in the 1980s equivalent of Justin Bieber’s New Haircut. So, now that I have your attention, here are a few current news stories:

Continue reading Justin Bieber’s New Haircut

When will this madnes end?

If you live in Georgia, and have a miscarriage, you will be investigated, if recently introduced legislation is passed. The bill proposed …

… by House Republican Bobby Franklin would make abortion the legal equivalent of murder and require miscarriages to be investigated by authorities.

Franklin’s bill would classify the removal of a fetus from a woman for any reason other than to produce a live birth or to remove a dead fetus as “prenatal murder.” Physicians indicted for alleged “prenatal murder” would have their license suspended until they were found innocent of the crime.

Although the legislation would not place any criminal penalties on natural spontaneous abortions, it would require miscarriages to be reported by hospitals and other medical institutions, and a fetal death certificate issued.

The rhetoric from Wisconsin is that the voters voted for the elimination of most collective bargaining when they voted Scott Walker into office. When recently asked if his anti-union efforts are payback against those who supported his opponents, he said, “The simple matter is I campaigned on this all throughout the election. Anybody who says they are shocked on this has been asleep for the past two years.” He gave the same basic story at other times as well. It turns out he lied.

Also in Wisconsin, a pro-union website has been blocked for access via the Capitol’s Wi-Fi connection.

Anyone trying to use the state Capitol’s Wi-Fi connection to access www.defendwisconsin.org Monday and early Tuesday received an error message.

University of Wisconsin-Madison Teacher Assistants created the website to share information with protesters and let them know where volunteers were needed. Democratic party officials claimed that it was available at the Capitol until at least last Friday.

“In a direct assault on the First Amendment, Scott Walker’s administration is blocking access in the Wisconsin Capitol to opposition websites,” Wisconsin Democratic Party press secretary Graeme Zielinski told CNN.

Who controls Scott Walker anyway? Turns out, the Koch Brothers do, as revealed in this pranked call in which someone faked being David Koch calling the real Scott Walker:

Wow, Imma try that. Who should I be? Who should I call?

Fear, Loathing and Misogyny in the Upper Midwest

Two local stories you might be interested in from my neighborhood.

First, a girl high school wrestler advanced yesterday but was beaten today in the state tournament in Iowa. Why is this interesting? Well, first, this is not a girl wrestling on a girl’s team. It is a girl wrestling on the regular team which happens to be traditionally boys. Second, she advanced yesterday when one of the favorite to win, a boy, refused to wrestle a girl, apparently because he things the sport should be reserved for boys. (I dunno … in his case, maybe wrestling really is a gay sport? Who knows?)

Anyway, Cassey Herkelman beat Joel Northrup by default when he walked away from the match. To be fair, I’ll give you Northrup’s official statement:

On Thursday, Northrup said he respected Herkelman and Black but didn’t think girls should compete against boys in wrestling. In a statement issued through his school, he called wrestling a combat sport and said “it can get violent at times.”

Though I must say I got a bit of a different impression when watching this on the news. In any event, Northrup does not really respect Herkelman or the sport if he feels that he can make unilateral decisions about what the rules are despite the existence of a system that is in charge of those rules. The only truly honorable thing for him to do, other than fighting the girl, would be to resign from the sport. Don’t you think?

Herkelman had a 20-13 record going into the tournament but was defeated today by Matt Victor.

The next story is about a threatening obnoxious fax sent to Congresswoman Betty McCollum by an area teabagger.

Both are reported on CBS/WCCO but I also watched them on the news. McCollum represents Minnesota’s 4th district (mainly Saint Paul and nearby suburbs), and is a liberal democrat, has been in congress for about 10 years and sits on important committees. She recently proposed to cut advertising betwen themilitary and NASCAR. The advertising is expensive, (for 7 million you get a sticker and a couple of driver appearances) they are looking for cuts, there is no evidence that it is effective, and most of the military branches have already cut their use of NASCAR as an advertising outlet. The only reason to keep doing this is for political purposes. It makes sense to stop this funding.

Therefore, a teabagger, who would be happy to stop funding to efficiently save the lives of little wide-eyed children or bunnies, and probably collects most of his income form government sources that he opposes, sent Congresswoman McCollum a fax threatening both her and President Obama, depicting racist and violent acts of a crude sexual nature.

Is social networking for political action just a covert form of …. Community Organizing?

Youth for Tolerance, Invisible Children, Save Darfur coalition, Million votes against farc … Who are these organizations connected to? There is a long list of them. Who is the US State Department working with? MTV? NBC? We need to keep an eye on them. We can’t tell if they are right or clean or left or dirty. Are they front groups? There is a long list of them. You need to do your own homework but don’t use a Google search. It seems like Google may be in bed with the government. Why is Google being kicked out of all of the other countries of the world? Is Google just a shill for the United States Government? Who is Jared Cohen exactly? Is he a private citizen or is he a secret operative working for the United States Government? He is the second Google executive who has been exposed as an instigator of a revolution. Are you really comfortable with a government partnering covertly with media organization and search engines, with social networking, so they can Bring Change that the people in Washington has designed? Are they using what we used to call Propaganda, but that we not call … Community Organizing?

Dog Whistles and Conspiracy Prompts have been italicized.

You might ask where I got these crazy ideas. Below the fold:

Continue reading Is social networking for political action just a covert form of …. Community Organizing?

The US House has just voted to repeal the health care reform law

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 245-189 to repeal President Obama’s health care law.

I’m sure I’m speaking to the converted here, but if you happen to live in a US Congressional district with one of those representatives who voted to repeal this law, I’d like to pass on one whopping big “Fuck You” for not doing enough in the last election.

And, if you don’t like that, feel free to send me one as well, because I live in one of those districts. My representative is a virtual clone of Michel Bachmann but without the big hair. And he will be hearing from me.

Details.