Things I will say on the internet that will probably make you mad...cause I'm mad.

I know I haven't spoken a lot about politics lately on there. I still read about it a lot, but lately it seems like the only thing to really point out is the ridiculousness, the downright death defying dumb crappiness, of it all. At one point, while reading some of the outrage that the Health Care Haters poured forth, I just wanted to run to my daddy and say "has everyone always been like this?"


He's been into politics twice as long as I have, and 100 times more, so I feel like he could really tell me if the circus has always been this bad, or if I'm really witnessing a turning point. A new McCarythism. Which is what it seems like. Is this the internet's fault? Now that more and more uneducated, selfish, biased hacks are able to find a free voice? I want to launch into rants about the general populace's stupidity, but then I have to remind myself these assholes aren't the general populace. And I blame that squarely on the media, online and other.

The smaller people get to be louder now, but I can't let myself forget that most people in the country don't just glom onto one extreme side or the other, that they are otherwise decent people who aren't great people, but who are trying to survive and get by and don't spend half their waking hours on the internet reading about this stuff. That most Republicans aren't fire and brimstone gay beaters, and most liberals are not...well...me. If there's one thing watching my dad as a child taught me, it's that you have to speak to people as individuals and figure out what their immediate needs are, because that's what they care about and what they will act on. And if you care about people, you should work on those things first. Some people make lots more money than me, so they care about taxes. Lots more people make less money (or just about as much money as me), and they care about public education, and potholes, and healthcare.

Believing what the tv tells you is how The Fear starts.

And if I care more about the needs of the moderately poor, then I just have to get them to vote. Never forget the lesson about voting. The whole point of this fucked up system is that whoever gets the most votes wins, and then they run things for a while, until someone else wins. This should be the accepted rules of the game. Unless you are from Texas and you are this guy. Who wants to repeal the 17th Amendment and allow states to APPOINT their senators. WHAT.

So anyway, here are some of my political feelings today:

1) Of course the Health Care bill is not what we wanted. There's no public option, and that was a large part of what some of us were pushing for. But it's a compromise, and it makes things somewhat better. Not all the way better, but somewhat. If Obama himself had come to me and said "hey, the only way I can get the votes for this is to sign an executive order that says we won't provide more public funding for abortions and that means insurance companies won't be likely to offer it", I would have been like "alright, well that doesn't change much does it? It's bullshit, but alright, make the deal." Because the health insurance I have now wouldn't have paid for an abortion anyway. And the health insurance I had for most of my adult life, which is to say NONE, wouldn't have either. Frankly, I'm with Planned Parenthood on this one. They singlehandedly prevented me from becoming pregnant for ten years, and I feel pretty confident that they've got my best womanly interests at heart.

2) Hey Republicans! Feeling low, cause you think this bill is a bad idea that will bankrupt the country, and force you to buy insurance you don't want, and be complicit in killing babies? Angry that now you, as a participating citizen who uses streets and utilities and firemen and cops, will now have to foot a tiny bit of the bill so poor people don't die? Well guess what? Try electing people who aren't mercantile idiots. When you elect congress people like Bachmann and Boehner, this is what you get. When you voluntarily put people into office who can't take a shit without consulting a lobbyist, and whose only career aspiration is to get invited on Fox News as a consultant, you are fucking screwed. I don't give a crap about your media personalities and their destructive weevil little minds. They aren't policy makers. But your policy makers are dumb! I know there are well-spoken not dumb Republicans. I meet them in real life sometimes. But why don't I ever see them on the news?

And calm the fuck down. This bill and every other piece of legislation coming out of the Hill is so far from Socialism as to be laughable. I mean, it is laughable. It makes me laugh. In a very sad sad elitist way. A condescending laugh really. ALSO LOTS OF REPUBLICANS DRINK COFFEE SO STEP OFF.

Democrats - we're guilty of this too, if in less degree. We have some people sitting in that Congress who are real dickwads (ahem Stupak). JUST BECAUSE A PERSON IS EXPERIENCED AND REALLY OLD, DOES NOT MEAN IT IS GOOD EXPERIENCE. This bill should not have taken as long it did, and it illustrated just how many horses asses are being allowed in DC. Hillary should make you all sit in the corner. The Republicans are not going to remain laughing stocks forever, even though it really seems like it.

3) I cannot even find words for how pissed I am that this Unabashed ToolBox has the balls to insinuate Christiane Amanpour is too Iranian to be the new host of "This Week". Also, and the Salon article didn't really touch on this, he says her profile in Washington has been "widely considered to deficient".

"Consider: Whenever CNN has thrown one of its big election-night, convention, or presidential debate spectaculars, drafting nearly every living staff member to appear, Amanpour has had a conspicuously low profile. "

That's a bad thing? Did she not give someone enough face time, or enough money? Oh my god, that just makes me wish she could be the host of everything.

Anyway, what I'm really mad at here is the idea that being Pro-Israel or Anti-Israel is suddenly a really important qualification when the person isn't bowing down to the Israel lobby like Wolf Blitzer. Israel IS A COUNTRY. It's not a fucking moral decision. I can be anti- Israeli policy and not be an anti-Semite. It's not like being Pro-Women or Pro-Gay. And those things should have nothing to do with her qualifications either, because the whole point of being a journalist is being objective, remember? REMEMBER?

This is What I Think About These Things, Though I Should Be the Last Person You Ask

1. The moon water thing is pretty fucking awesome, mostly because anytime there is an ice record of anything, I have fantasies of the life I probably should have had, staring at long sample tubes of interstellar ice history and discovering weird alien bacterial greatness. I mean, yes, the fuel thing is nice, but I think they're just throwing that out to the public to make the mission seem useful and practical. For some insane reason, people don't see getting a history of this corner of the universe frozen in time as a reason to throw things at the moon, which I don't understand. It's the moon! It's ice! Or, I should say, the possibility of ice!

It bothers me that people have lost their enthusiasm when it comes to space programs. It's like, if this doesn't advance weapons systems, what's the point? Oh, I don't know, maybe having some sort of knowledge of the way the rest of Existence works, and therefore not being completely helpless and defenseless to the whims of the universe? We'd get a lot further, with a lot more funding, if we could somehow convince people that really, they should search for proof of God. Let's track God down. Let's find his fucking home address.

2. As you might have heard, there was this serial killer in Cleveland. He killed a bunch of women, most of whom were the kind of women who disappear and nobody does anything about it, which is a hard, sad fact. This story gets to me, because it happened in a neighborhood that I have come to know better this past year, because a lot of my buildings have been in or near there. The police actually searched a school I went to earlier in the year for bodies related to this case. And there has been a lot of outrage in the community about the fact that the police never put the pieces together, and they should have done more to find these women, and did this happen because it's a poor black neighborhood? There were apparently complaints, and smells, and missing person reports.

I have no idea whether or not the police dropped the ball on this, but I'm sick of the Cleveland media encouraging this kind of community martyrdom like some sort of blood sport. I've heard exactly one interview that didn't make me mad, and it was with a guy who actually lives in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood where this happened. He pointed out that the reason this happened in this neighborhood is because this is a place where you can get away with bad stuff. It's the kind of neighborhood where people who live there do disappear, because they have drug problems. And the people with drug problems live there because its cheap and they don't get caught. There are tons of empty houses. Lots of squatters. And then there are also decent people who are just poor, and would prefer to live in a safe neighborhood. This guy pointed out that the people who live there need to take responsibility, and police their own streets if they really want things to change. They need to be aware of their neighbors, and their families, and notice when strange things happen. They need to talk to each other and build networks.

In the end, a serial killer is a strange, unique event. It's very possible that something like this could have occurred in a middle class white neighborhood too. While it is a terrible thing to have happened, a nightmarish thing for those people who lived near him, the lessons we take out of this should not only be criticism of the police procedures, but also a lesson about how easily we let people disappear in our society. The people who could have told us how awful and dangerous this man was were people getting high with him, and they didn't say anything because they didn't want to get in trouble, or they knew no one would believe them. They were so used to being in terrible situations, because they were homeless, or crackheads, or otherwise unwanted, that it never even occurred to them to tell anyone at all.

We should think about how this might not have happened if drugs were not illegal, therefore controlled, and if we wouldn't have whole populations that we've made into criminals instead of helping with their emotional and pyschological problems and giving them treatment for their addictions. Or we need to think about how we raise our little girls, how we give them self-esteem to help them deal with life's problems, so when they are broke or beaten down by consequences, they don't turn to strange men with drugs, they care enough about themselves to not get into dangerous situations, and they feel comfortable going to family or friends for help.

When something like this happens, everyone is at fault, and no one is at fault. Monsters are monsters either way.

Also, as a sidenote, with all the poor people, missing people, and uncounted people in the world, I guess I'm constantly surprised I'm not walking around a world littered with corpses. It seems like there should be skeletons and dead bodies and remains in every inch of the earth, there's just so many of us!

3. I wish people would stop attributing things to Racism or Sexism that are actually issues of Classism. It wasn't because they were black that the police didn't pay enough attention to the Mt. Pleasant complaints. They didn't pay attention to them because they were poor. The Healthcare war isn't about defying Socialism, it's about paying for poor people. You know who gets cancer from pollution? People who are poor and live next to industry.You know who dies in the War? Poor people. You know what kind of women need abortions and rape clinics? Mostly poor ones. Oh, also any social programs? There for poor people. Given all this, it would seem to make sense if rich people supported abortions, because then they might have less poor people bothering them. Yet another example of Republicans not having a lot of logic on their side.

4. This Stupak Amendment thing. I am not a moral supporter of abortion, though my morals seems to get grayer and fuzzier the older I get. I am however a practical supporter of abortion. Until the sex education system in our country is reformed to focus on preventative measures and realistic contraception, I think it is irresponsible to not make abortion available. Plus, who am I to dictate what you do and don't do to your own fucking body? If I'm going to be anti-choice, then that's also going to have to include anti-joining the army, anti-bubblegum vodka, and anti- plastic surgery of all kinds.

Living in a democracy is pretty fucked up. Because whether or not we like it, most people in this country are Pro-Life. Which means as a majority, they should get what they want. We lean on this principle of Majority Wins when it's something we want, like an end to a war, or a public healthcare option. But the majority in this country is also pro-God, anti-gay, and pretty fucking selfish. So how much should we actually let the Majority get away with? If the Majority had won, would we have had an end to slavery, or let women get the vote? When it comes down to it, the Populace is pretty fucking stupid and petty.

So either compromises will be made in the name of the Majority, or we divide up different sections of the country by political doctrine. Like, all the really really liberals move to the West Coast. And the moderates get the Plains States. And the super hard core Born Agains get Florida.

I don't know. In my perfect world, there are no elections, and all the rules jive with my moral view, and people just have to live with it. I'm kind of a fascist. Nobody should put me in charge of anything.

Conversations in My Head

Conversation 1:

(Note: I have no idea how Mr. O’Reilly feels about companies having to provide health care, specifically. I just know he’s a douche. I apologize in advance if in fact he actually believes all companies owe it to their employees to provide health care and should be forced to by the government. I’m just pretty sure he doesn’t.)

Edit: apparently Mr. O'Reilly listened to me? We have some telepathic connection? Or he's decided to let Beck carry on the torch.

Me: So you don’t think health care should be something that companies are forced to give their employees, right?

Bill O’Reilly: Absolutely not. Socialism blah blah blah….

Me: And do you believe everyone deserves health care?

Bill O’Reilly: Blah blah blah self-determination blah hard work blah blah

Me: So people should only choose to get jobs where they get health care?

Bill O’Reilly: Corporate rights, the market place, blah blah blah

Me: So what we’re saying here is that Wal-Mart is a bad place to work, because no one would work someplace without health care if they had a choice. Right?

(Here Mr. O’Reilly’s head slowly starts to inflate and turn yellow)

Me: Of course, I’m assuming that all human beings believe everyone deserves to have an option for health care, if they are hard working and taxpayers. I mean, I believe EVERYONE should have health care, but at the very least your constituents should have it. I mean, here’s the ironic thing. Probably most of the people who watch your program DON’T have health care, if they’re so working class and blue collar and redneck and American ect. You don’t get health care by being a roofer, construction worker, gas station attendant, ect. But they’ve been raised to feel like unless they earn it by being some successful stockbroker, lawyer, or demagogue, they don’t deserve it. You are telling your listeners that unless they are rich, they are not entitled to expect anything of their government, that in fact the fight of their life is to stop the government from interfering with money they have not made, nor can realistically expect to ever make. And you’re telling them that if they are stupid enough to work at Wal-Mart, screw them.

(Completing its transformation, O’Reilly’s daffodil yellow smiling round face rotates in a circle, like a trapped balloon. It slowly starts to float in my direction, opening its black slash of a mouth to reveal great white shining teeth)


Conversation 2: (this happened to a friend of mine, and while it did not end this way, it should have.)

Abortion protester: Evil! EVAAAL! Take a picture of the sinner!

Me: But they don’t even do abortions here. I’m getting birth control.

Abortion protester: EVIL!

Me: Wait, you don’t believe in birth control either?

Abortion protester: All methods of stopping God’s holy swimmers are the work of the Devil.

Me: Is it more evil for me to prevent getting pregnant, or to get pregnant and have an abortion?

Abortion protester: It is evil to have sex outside the holy covenant of marriage.

Me: Who said I wasn’t married? How do you know? (I’m not)

Abortion protester: People who get married don’t use birth control.

Me: Listen, you’re obviously not a logical person, but try to understand this. You think I’m evil, and a bad person. So why would you want me to have kids? Why wouldn’t you want everyone who believes such bad sinful stuff to stop having children, so your kind can overpopulate the planet and have a chance at the general election?

Abortion protester: Your children are innocent, and should be raised by good Christian families.

Me: So you want me to have the child, and then give it to you?

Abortion protester: Yes, the baby deserves a chance to know God’s love.

Me: I can guarantee you that raising a bastard child who’s told not to become his sinful mother every time he does something wrong, who can’t even know his own bloodline because they were evil, is not the way to propagate your ideas. Also, Veggie Tales are secretly gay subversive.
Like you.