May God Have Mercy On Your Souls

I've got news for my Republican friends. Every single person who is going to recieve unemployment insurance under this bill is unemployed. Every single one of them doesn't have a job, and that's why they need this money. Now I know what the Republicans are thinking, they're thinking, why don't they just sell some stock? If they're in really dire straights maybe they could take some of their art collection and send it off to the auctioneer. And if they're in deep, deep trouble, maybe the unemployed can sell one of their yachts. That's what the Republicans are thinking right now. But that's not the life of ordinary people. The 99% of America who actually have to work for a living, that doesn't just clip coupons and live off of interest and dividends like my Republican friends do. That's why we need this bill to pass, because of the 99% of America that deals with reality every day. The people who will lose their homes if this bill doesn't pass. The people who will be living in their cars if this doesn't pass. That's why we need this to pass. And I will say this to Republicans who have blocked this bill now for months and kept food out of the mouths of children, I will say to them now, may God have mercy on your souls.

And here is the root of the problem. These rich bastards that run everything haven't got a clue what it's like to wonder where your next meal is coming from, or whether you might get laid off when you live paycheck to paycheck. They haven't got one iota of an idea of what it's like for the rest of us.

Not-So Breitbart Just Keeps Turning Up...

...like a bad penny! Because when you don't have truth on your side, you fight by using lies.

Racial firestorm surrounds USDA employee's ouster

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said that he would reconsider the department's decision to ask Shirley Sherrod to resign. Sherrod, the director of rural development in Georgia, was asked by department officials to leave her job on Monday after conservative bloggers posted an edited video of her saying that she initially didn't give a white farmer as much help as she could have 24 years ago, when she was working for a nonprofit farm aid group.

Sherrod says the video distorted her full speech, which described how she came to realize the white farmer needed her help and which she says was intended to promote racial reconciliation.

...

The two-minute, 38-second clip posted Monday by BigGovernment.com was presented as evidence that the NAACP was hypocritical in its recent resolution condemning what it calls racist elements of the tea party movement. The website's owner, Andrew Breitbart, said the video shows the civil rights group condoning the same kind of racism it says it wants to erase. Biggovernment.com is the same outfit that gained fame last year after airing video of workers at the community group ACORN counseling actors posing as a prostitute and her boyfriend.

What I want to know, are the people who made this decision so stupid that they believe anything that comes out of Breitbart or any of his associates' mouths? Really? Because, if you have any sense you should never believe a liar. Once someone has lied to you, you can never believe anything they say ever again.

A Terrorist by Any Other Name

They say that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. And apparently that is the truth since some right-wing wackos are lauding Joe Stack as a hero. Joe decided that he was mad at the government and the IRS and flew a plane into a building housing the IRS in Austin.

You see, all terrorists are pretty much the same. They are mad at "the man" (the government, or other power) and want to strike out at it. Except that usually they never hurt what it is they're mad at. Stack didn't hurt the government at all. Just like the terrorists on 9/11 who flew the planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. They were mad at our government too. But in both instances, neither party hurt the government at all. All they accomplished was hurting innocent people and destroying the lives of those close to them.

Apparently Joe decided that our laws didn't apply to him at some point about thirty years ago and tried to get out of paying taxes. And you know what they say about fighting the law. It wins. The thing that really gets me, is that he was complaining about the government taking everything, but if he had just been a law abiding citizen and paid his taxes, he probably would have done well for himself. How many people can afford to own planes? And he owned a house too, in Austin, in a fairly nice neighborhood. I mean, seriously. He obviously wasn't poor, but by breaking the law and trying to avoid paying taxes, he lost, and in more ways than one.

People who think that by perpetrating violence on innocent people, that it will accomplish something, are seriously fucked up in the head. And those who think that this idiot is a hero, are as fucked up as he was. I suggest if they don't like living in a free and democratic society, where taxes pay for services like the fire department and the police, they should scurry off somewhere, perhaps to a deserted island and form their own country and leave mine the hell alone.

US Government Sponsored Human Trafficking

As if allowing your employees to gang-rape women isn't enough, how about abducting people from their homes by promising them jobs in the United States, only to take them and force them to work for little pay in Iraq?

Buddhi Gurung, who calls himself a poor Nepali man, described how he was unable to get a job to support his wife and two sons during fighting by Maoist rebels and the army in 2004. When an agent promised him a job in America for $500 a month, he said he borrowed about $2,800 to pay him — but instead of going to the United States, he was taken to Jordan via New Delhi.

After a month in Jordan, he said he was put in a van with 11 others and driven to Baghdad. Twelve Nepali friends in the van that left just before his were abducted, paraded on television and eventually beheaded. Gurung said he wound up at the U.S. Al Asad Air Base where he was forced to work and paid less than the promised $500 a month.

"We would hear bomb blasts nearby and we knew our life was at risk," Gurung said. "I always wanted to go back to Nepal but neither my passport was with me, nor did I have any money or knew any other way to go back. ... Finally, after 15 months, I was permitted to go back to Nepal. ... This is how my life was saved."

Gurung and the families of the 12 Nepali men have filed a U.S. federal lawsuit accusing Houston-based defense contractor KBR Inc. and a Jordanian subcontractor, Daoud & Partners, of human trafficking.

When I was reading this, I was like, how in the hell did he wind up being forced to work in Iraq? I know that there are criminal organizations that abduct people, but surely once he was found by our people, he would have been sent home. And then I read that KBR was responsible, and it suddenly made sense. Why recruit Americans, who you'll have to pay really well, and pay hazard pay for going some place so dangerous, when you can just abduct people from third world countries and force them to work? This shit just keeps getting deeper. And our congressmen are tangentially responsible for everything that these contractors have done, by failing to have oversight of the situation.

I did a search but, there doesn't seem to be much about this case in the news. Surprise, surprise.

Thirty United States Senators who are For Rape

You know, I have to ask myself what in the hell is wrong with some people. I often wonder how it is they sleep at night. I also wonder how they manage to call themselves Christian. Of course, they're not really Christian. They're hypocrites, and if Jesus (if he even existed) were actually here, he would probably bitch slap them. But I digress.

How in the fuck do you vote to allow companies to allow their employees to be gang raped, and then have no legal recourse? How do you justify that? How do you just casually act like you're voting against that because it's "political". Tell that to the girl who was gang raped, you stupid, stupid fucks.

Oh, I have an idea about what would be just for these thirty poor excuses for humans that we call senators, but it would be wrong of me to say it. I'll leave it to your imagination.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Rape-Nuts
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

Alexander (R-TN), Barrasso (R-WY), Bond (R-MO), Brownback (R-KS), Bunning (R-KY), Burr (R-NC), Chambliss (R-GA), Coburn (R-OK), Cochran (R-MS), Corker (R-TN), Cornyn (R-TX), Crapo (R-ID), DeMint (R-SC), Ensign (R-NV), Enzi (R-WY), Graham (R-SC), Gregg (R-NH), Inhofe (R-OK), Isakson (R-GA), Johanns (R-NE), Kyl (R-AZ), McCain (R-AZ), McConnell (R-KY), Risch (R-ID), Roberts (R-KS), Sessions (R-AL), Shelby (R-AL), Thune (R-SD), Vitter (R-LA), Wicker (R-MS)

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/07/meet-the-senators-who-vot_n_312976.html

I would like to point out that a.) if there was any political point to them voting no on this, it was because these Republicans are a bunch of asshats who didn't want to agree with anything a Democrat might propose, and that b.) all of them are white males. Maybe they were just sorry that they didn't get in on the action, knowing that they could never be held criminally or civilly responsible for it. I wonder how they would have felt if it'd been their wife or their daughter that this happened to.

IMHO, I think they should pass a law that if you're working overseas for the government, that our criminal law applies to the employees who are working there if they violate the law, and these asshats who think they can get away with stuff like this could then be prosecuted criminally for it here.

Forced Motherhood and Automated Phone Calls

My mother-in-law got a phone call yesterday. She said that the right-wing nut jobs had called her with one of those automated recordings, begging her to send them money to support the passing of the Right to Life Act. Like that will be a cold day in hell. These people have decided that life begins at conception, and they want the government to force it on the rest of us. I really do wonder if they realize just how much this whole thing cheapens and makes a mockery of their religion.

I tell you what. You want to live in a country where birth control and abortion are illegal? Try Iran or Saudi Arabia. Well, actually even as backwards as they are, a woman can still have an abortion if she would die if she carried the child to term. And that brings me to another point. Before abortion was legal in this country, rich people would do one of two things. They would either pay their family doctor off and get him to say the mother's life was in danger and have him do it, or they would travel to Europe and have it done there. So, it being illegal is no problem for those who have the means to pay off the doctor, or to travel to another country.

However, if you're poor and don't have the money, guess what? You get to be a mother, like it or not, and now you have a(nother) mouth to feed. But don't expect any help from the State. These are the same idiots who want to do away with welfare, food stamps and WIC, because the dirty poor people are taking all their tax dollars. They only care about fetuses. I know they don't give a damn about women either, most of them are misogynist women haters. They're old white men, and if there's any women tagging along, I swear they have Stockholm Syndrome. They also don't give a damn about the children who are already here, the ones who don't have enough to eat and are living in abject poverty. There are 42 MILLION children in this country who live in families that do not make enough to meet their basic needs. The federal poverty level is already grossly low. You can't survive on that kind of income as a single adult, much less if you have other mouths to feed. So what I want to know, is where the hell are these people when it comes to the children who are already here? Oh wait, I know. Children starving to death doesn't win elections. Rhetoric and divisive issues do.

To go back to the argument of when life does indeed begin, the supreme court ruled in the decision of Roe v. Wade, that they weren't able to figure that one out. If these morons think that the congress can figure that one out, seriously, they have another thing coming. This is a philosophical question that has been argued for centuries, maybe even millenia, and we are no closer to knowing the exact moment life begins than we were when the conversation started. It almost seems as if the Christians are arguing that we are nothing more than our physical bodies, the sperm and egg coming together, making a zygote, and that's all. Hmm. That sounds exactly like what atheists believe. *blink blink* Yeah. I never did quite understand why they had a problem with abortion. It would seem to me, that from their religious beliefs, they would believe that if someone did have an abortion, the fetus would go and be in heaven with Jesus. Just one more contradiction from the unthinking Religious Right.

In fact, if these Christians are going to use their Bible as a guide, it repeatedly says that life doesn't begin until the baby draws it's first breath. It says that in multiple places. It also says that the penatly for causing a woman to miscarry is a fine paid to the woman and her family. If they had believed that the fetus was a "life" the penalty would have been death, as it was a "life for a life". But the Christians who comprise the Religious Right (if you can even call them Christians), are the biggest bunch of hypocrites I've ever met.

I don't want children. I came from abject poverty. I have seen it with my own eyes. I shouldn't have to have children if I don't want them and neither should any other woman. On top of that, I shouldn't be forced to by a government puppeted by a bunch of totalitarian theocratic religious fanatics. Jeez, is it possible that I could go one post without mentioning the Nazis? I'll leave that one alone. If you've studied history, you'll know what I'm talking about.

Sometimes, We Need a Laugh

I don't know why I bother reading my friends' status updates on Facebook. Half the time they're stupid, and the other half of the time they're stupid and infuriating. I hate the damned news feed!

I truly have enough stress in my life, with work and everything else. I don't really need to know that your "opinions" coincide with the talking head you heard on the radio this morning or on the television last night. Lack of critical thinking skills are really what is hurting this country right now. No one is able to think anything through, and are most certainly not able to think for themselves. Some moron on television or the radio tells them that A=B whether it does or not, and all of a sudden it is the truth of the universe that A does indeed equal B.

I really need a vacation. In lieu of that, a laugh will work too:





So what am I pissed about? I'm sure you've heard by now how a report from the Department of Homeland Security warns that right wing wacko groups could potentially try to recruit veterans as they return home. Seems quite reasonable, commonsensical even. And then the right-wing talking heads get a hold of it, and start screaming that the government is calling their precious troops terrorists. Which isn't what it says at all. But you'd have to have half a brain, or half a thought in your head to figure that out, and those idiots obviously don't. Or maybe they do, and they see that they have a useful tool in their hands, one that can be used to stir up the masses with lies and deceit. We can't have people happy and peaceful can we? Not when there are democracies to destroy in the name of money and power. And it's working too. Because plenty of fools are screaming, in their status updates on Facebook and elsewhere, about how they support the troops, and how they don't think the troops are terrorists. Well, no fucking duh.

If all this makes you as mad as it makes me, watch the kitten. It will cheer you up, for a few minutes anyway.

What Has the Government Ever Done for Us?

You know, besides the roads, the schools, the scholarships, the public grants to fund students, health care research, promote the arts (as any reasonable society should), the sanitation, the (horribly underfunded) public transportation. You know, what have they ever done for us?

And why are the right wing, racist fanatics the ones who are raving about this? Could it be because they feel disenfranchised because a black kid gets to go to college with public money? That must really be a kick in the balls to them. Stupid fuckers. That's the problem with this world. No matter what happens, what cruel lessons are played out and suffered by humanity, nothing changes. We don't learn a damned thing.

"Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most times he will pick himself up and carry on."--Winston Churchill

We have to pay taxes. It's part of being in an advanced and democratic civilization. Nothing would get done if we didn't. Indeed, we probably don't spend enough money funding the stuff that should be funded, like our crumbling infrastructures, and our schools that date from the turn of the century before last where students use books from before I was born.

And yes, a lot of money gets wasted, some of it on atrocity. But where the hell were these tax protesters when G. Dubya Bush was throwing billions of our money down a fox hole in Iraq? Where were they then? Oh, I know, we blow up brown people, and that's just fine and dandy. That doesn't fucking matter, because they ain't white and they ain't Christian, so why should we give a damn? Excuse the sarcasm. I've had just about enough stupidity for all my lifetimes, thank you.

I'll Drink My Tea, Thanks.

For all these morons who are holding "teabagging" parties tomorrow, I think it will blow up in their faces, pun intended. I don't know what they're smoking, but I make above the median income for the United States, and I got a tax cut. I am paying less in taxes right now with Obama than I was under G. Dubya Bush. Republicans don't cut taxes, unless you're rich. So, why am I paying less taxes now? Could it be because the Republican party is comprised of a bunch of lying bastards? Nah, couldn't be.

They want to complain about our government spending money? I'm glad the government spends money. *I* am the face of government spending. I am a private contractor on a research project that is being funded by our government. If the government stops spending money, I lose my job. And the thought of that pisses me off. What do these idiots think the government spends money on? Yes, I'm sure some of it is wasteful, but not all of it. They spend money on road work, building projects, and on research projects that are working to better everyone's lives. They spend money giving grants so students, who otherwise wouldn't be able to, can go to college.

You know the one thing I wish. I wish I made more money so that I would have the priveledge of paying more taxes. Pay me $300k a year, I'll pay the taxes on it! I wouldn't know what to do with that kind of income, but I'm sure I could think of a few things.

These sheeple can take their tea bags and shove them where the sun don't shine. As for me, I'll take my tea black, with sugar.

If Civilization Collapses, I'm Going Deer Hunting

I haven't written in a couple weeks. I don't know whether it's because I've had nothing to write about, or if I've been busy, or I've just not felt like writing.

I was trying to concentrate enough to focus on working on some side projects but I can never seem to concentrate enough to finish them. It's not helped either by the fact that I've found a really cool online game to play. XD

The Hunter is as close to real hunting that you can get! It's beautiful too. Even if you don't hunt, you should try it if only to wander around the environment and marvel at how real it looks at times. It's fairly accurate and gives a good feeling of how hunting really is, as much as a video game can. So, if I don't write much for the next few weeks you can bet I'm probably playing :D

Ah, and now for the rant. If I read one more time that it's all Obama's fault that the stock market is in the toilet because "...the market has fallen X amount..." since he was elected, I think I might scream. As if the previous two decades of mismanagement, deregulation, lax lending policies and a corrupt previous administration (who I'd like to remind you were in power from election day to January 20th), had absolutely nothing to do with the current predicament we find ourselves in. Yes, that had nothing to do with it, it's all Obama's fault [/sarcasm]. People are idiots.

They continue to vote the same jokers back into office because they believe the rhetoric. Republicans, Democrats, they're all the same. They want us to fight over petty crap like gay marriage so that they can continue to dismantle this democracy and strip us of our Constitutional rights so they can make a buck and extend their power. If you doubt this, you are part of the problem, and I'd like it if you'd get your head out of your ass, as the very survival of this country relies on it's citizens to be thinkers, and critical and suspicious of anything the government wants to do.

It's the same shit, just a different day. I don't think anything will ever change. This has all happened before now, and whatever lessons were learned from it, died with the people who learned them. They certainly didn't pass any of it on to a new generation. Well, as my dad used to say, sometimes you gotta learn the hard way. Well, this is the hard way. Depression v.2.0. It's gonna be some interesting times here. Perhaps the lessons we learn from it will carry on to those who come after us? Nah, that'd be too easy.

Pakistan and the Taliban

This isn't good for anyone.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090217/wl_time/08599187982000

The Pakistani government has given the northwest part of the country to the Taliban, citing that was what the residents of the area wanted. Codswallop. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled the region and some of the women who fled spoke out against it in Islamabad, insisting that it's not what the residents there want.

The Taliban there have torched schools and school girls, have murdered their opponents, and Pakistan's government thinks that the people there are going to speak out against the Taliban? It's like asking a hostage with a gun to his head whether or not he likes the hostage taker.

So what does some remote part of Pakistan have to do with anything or anyone, other than the unfortunate people stuck there? This is roughly 100 miles from Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. What no one in the press is saying, is that Pakistan has nuclear weapons. It has just conceded a large chunk of land as a safe haven, to a terrorist organization that would like nothing more than to have the entire world follow Sharia law and for women to be silent and hidden, or dead.

If the Taliban has a foot hold here, what prevents them from attempting to topple the government, or attempting to acquire nuclear weapons in Pakistan? Meanwhile we have squandered the goodwill of our allies, wasted money, time and resources fighting an unnecessary war in Iraq, when the real danger was in Afghanistan as a ton of military experts have been screaming for years. Now we have merely pushed these people over the border and have come closer to causing general upheaval in nuclear armed Pakistan.

The world, quite mad, sits by and does nothing, as usual.