Category Archives: History

November 27, 2012 · 0:00

Blowin’ in the Wind

I take war pretty darn seriously when it comes, so I try to pay attention to the rumblings and rumors of yet another conflict.  That way, I can be sure to make my feelings known.

That probably comes from the fact that when I was in 9th grade everybody in my entire school got on a bus and drove down to Washington DC to that huge rally on the Mall.  Me and John C were the only two kids left behind.  Spending a day with John C was NOT my idea of a good time, but my parents wouldn’t let me go.  I’ve never gotten over it.

I DID make up for it though.  In 2003 I saw Peter Paul & Mary live on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, singing Blowin’ in the Wind and Give Peace A Chance, just like they had back in 1971.  We were all there to protest the impending invasion of Iraq the next day.  George W Bush flew overhead in Marine 1 on his way back from Camp David.  He hovered over us, just long enough for the assembled protesters to flip him the finger.  I’m sure he returned the gesture.

For this new war?  I got no warning, no notice, nothing from MoveOn.Org or Code Pink or anybody else.  How could that happen?  I’m on every single political email that goes out to special people like me.  And you know what a news junkie I am – I read everything.  Still I missed it.  Damn.  Because this war might be in my living room before long.  And yours.  Or maybe it will snake its way upstairs, into our bedrooms.

It’s The War on Men.

Yup.  At least according to Phyllis Schlafly’s niece, anyway.  Oh you remember Phyllis, don’t you?  She was one of the main spokespeople behind the anti Equal Rights for Women movement.

Why didn’t she just stay home and bake?

So, in keeping with having a family full of non-feminist women who stay home and bake cookies, Phil’s niece, Suzanne Venker works outside of the home.  She “stumbled” upon a bunch of men who are unhappy with women and who say that they aren’t going to get married.  Not no way, not no how.

Why?

Because “Women aren’t Women anymore.”

Well, I’ll be.  Excuse me while I check on my lady parts.

Now Suzie wrote about it (well sort of, it’s an article on Fox).  She claims that men haven’t changed.  Apparently they still have all the same instincts that they had back in the day.  But women?  They’ve changed.  And not for the better according to Suzie.

They’ve gotten uppity.  They want to work.  They want to get paid for working.  They want to use their hearts and their minds.  (And I bet they still want Equal Rights.)  THE NERVE!

Suzie also says that this whole attitude on the part of women, well

“[It] has not threatened men. It has pissed them off. It has also undermined their ability to become self-sufficient in the hopes of someday supporting a family. Men want to love women, not compete with them. They want to provide for and protect their families – it’s in their DNA. But modern women won’t let them.

It’s all so unfortunate – for women, not men. Feminism serves men very well: they can have sex at hello and even live with their girlfriends with no responsibilities whatsoever.

It’s the women who lose. [Sniff]  Not only are they saddled with the consequences of sex, by dismissing male nature they’re forever seeking a balanced life. The fact is, women need men’s linear career goals – they need men to pick up the slack at the office – in order to live the balanced life they seek.

So if men today are slackers, and if they’re retreating from marriage en masse, women should look in the mirror and ask themselves what role they’ve played to bring about this transformation.  [Emphasis mine all mine.]

Perhaps it is the fact that in the decades that most of us have lived in [and I think we can assume that Suzie has been stuck in a perpetual space-time continuum] well, we’ve been able to make our own choices about when to have children, and a whole mess of other economic issues that earlier generations of women couldn’t because they were barefoot and pregnant.

But fortunately, Suzie tells me not to worry about this war.  You see, I can actually do something about this one.  And actually, you can too.  I’m relieved.  Aren’t you?

Women have the power to turn everything around. All they have to do is surrender to their nature – their femininity – and let men surrender to theirs.

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Filed under Childhood Traumas, Criminal Activity, Family, History, Humor, Hypocrisy, Mental Health, Politics, Stupidity

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November 7, 2012 · 0:00

I’ll shut up now

You might have noticed, but I’ve been a bit, ummmm, opinionated lately.  OK, so I’m always opinionated, but lately I’ve been opinionated about politics and I pretty much stopped writing about anything else.  My bad.

In case you didn’t notice, I have reason to celebrate.  So do you.  Here in the US we re-elected President Obama and Vice President Biden.  We elected intelligent folks to the US Senate over the “Rape Rappers.”  Women had great success except for the one who made money off of scantily clad women rolling around in mud while wrestling in an undoubtedly dignified manner.  Three of the stupidest Congressmen were defeated (Alan West, Todd Akin and Joe Walsh).  And we still get to laugh at Michelle Bachmann.

My blog has reason to celebrate, too.  Every Republican I made fun of, with the exception of my BFF Michelle, lost.  Damn I’m good.


But I’m going to do you, and especially my international readers, a favor.  I’m going to shut up about politics for a while.

Well, at least I will after I tell you that Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell has already let President Obama and the new Senate know that he won’t cooperate.

Portrait of an ASS

Now remember, Mitch is the guy who stated in 2008 that the Republican’s primary job was to make sure that President Obama was a one-term president.

How’d that work for you, Mitch?
But did Mitch learn his lesson?  Nope.  Here’s what he said today:

The American people did two things: they gave President Obama a second chance to fix the problems that even he admits he failed to solve during his first four years in office, and they preserved Republican control of the House of Representatives. The voters have not endorsed the failures or excesses of the President’s first term, they have simply given him more time to finish the job they asked him to do together with a Congress that restored balance to Washington after two years of one-party control. Now it’s time for the President to propose solutions that actually have a chance of passing the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and a closely-divided Senate, step up to the plate on the challenges of the moment, and deliver in a way that he did not in his first four years in office. To the extent he wants to move to the political center, which is where the work gets done in a divided government, we’ll be there to meet him half way.

Ummm, excuse me Senator McConnell?  You lost your chance of gaining control of the U.S. Senate in an election year when there were tons of vulnerable Democratic seats.  You blew it.  So shut up and learn how to get along.  Stop stamping your feet.  Cooperate.  That’s what’s in the best interest of our country.

 

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OK.  I’ll shut up now.

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Filed under Campaigning, Conspicuous consumption, Criminal Activity, Elections, History, Humor, Hypocrisy, Politics, Stupidity, Voting

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November 4, 2012 · 0:00

Don’t Take It Just From Me

I’ll be busy for the next few days.  So I will let one of my idols remind you of what you’re sick of hearing me say:

Elections matter. 

VOTE on November 6 if you haven’t already!  If Obama wins, which I hope he will, I will be able to get off my soapbox and re-establish myself as a humor blogger instead of a political one.  You can thank me later!

VOTE!

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Filed under Campaigning, Childhood Traumas, Elections, Global Warming, Gun control, Health and Medicine, History, Politics, Sandy, Voting

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October 24, 2012 · 0:00

Oh, Now I Get It!

It’s  getting really confusing.

Here’s my problem:

If it is God’s will that  a woman gets pregnant when she’s raped, how do these lady parts that shut down and prevent pregnancy fit in?

You see why I’m confused now, don’t you?

But naturally, Bloggers have saved the day.

Yup, they answered my question.  Illustrated the situation.  And now you too will understand it all.  You’re welcome.

Here is a guide posted on one of my favorite blogs, DailyKos.com  (that’s where I learn all kinds of fascinating things).  I just had to share this illustration so you won’t be confused either.  It was originally posted there by Connecticutie but updated by brainwrap today in light of Richard Mourdock’s comment at last night’s debate.

Understand it now?  Good.  I knew you would.

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Full disclosure here.

I am not pro-abortion.  I have never had an abortion, and I recall how when I was young and single that I grappled with the question:  “If I get pregnant, what will I do?”  It was never a question that needed an actionable answer.  I was lucky.  Many others weren’t.

You know, I don’t know or know of anyone who is, actually, pro-abortion, come to think of it.  And you know what?  I think that the moniker “pro-choice” is a poor one.  It’s part of the problem.  It sounds too much like a casual decision.  And of course, it is anything but.  I think that the poor name choice demeans the difficult decision that women, either alone or with their partner or their parent or a caring friend, must grapple with.  Richard Mourdock, Todd Akin, Paul Ryan and the rest of the jokers in the GOP shouldn’t be in on this very personal crisis resolution.

We should call it something else.  But I’ve been  unable to come up with a better name, either.  Maybe that’s why we got stuck with the one we got.

Nevertheless, we fought the battle over abortion 40 years ago.  Forty Fucking Years Ago.  And people who knew that it was better to have it safe and regulated as opposed to done in back alleys under unsanitary conditions at the cost of many women’s lives, well they/we won it.  It happened just over a decade after the first contraceptives were approved for use in the United States.

And of course, the GOP is against contraception, too.

A Romney presidency will basically guarantee that the folks who don’t really understand how human biology works will control all the things we women need to control our reproductive health.  Which, of  course, significantly impacts our economic health as well.

[Hey!  Maybe this is the GOP jobs plan — keep women barefoot and pregnant and out of the workplace!]

Many of these Republicans don’t even quite understand how basic human biology works, but they are willing to legislate it nevertheless.  They don’t actually know when in the, ummm, process, conception occurs and/or how contraception actually occurs.  They don’t understand that oral contraceptives do not prevent the sperm from fertilizing the egg but rather prevents the fertilized egg from implanting in the womb. 

So that fertilized egg?  If the GOP has its way, that egg becomes more important than the mother.  Yup.  That’s what the “Personhood” Amendment does.  The one VP Candidate Paul Ryan sponsored along with Senate Candidate Todd Akin.  It gives property rights to fertilized eggs.  Human ones, that is.  They haven’t made any inroads in giving chicken eggs the keys to the henhouse. Yet.

A Romney presidency will guarantee Supreme Court appointments will overturn Roe v. Wade.  Everybody knows that.

And Obama victory will prevent that.  A Democratic Senate will prevent that, too.

But there is more.

In the last 2 years while the GOP has controlled the U.S. House of Representatives, they have passed 55 bills outlawing abortion.  They have passed 0 jobs bills.  Yeah, that’s a ZERO.  A big goose egg (ahem).  And of course, they campaigned on JOBS, JOBS, JOBs! in 2010.  That’s the promise that gave them the House of Representatives.  And then they blocked all bills that would have helped create jobs.

We really need to get rid of these crazies.  We need to get rid of the nutcases, the fanatics that want to control our bodies, eliminate our liberties, stop on our freedoms and who then wrap it in the flag and sing The Star Spangled Banner.

Well, Damn it, that’s my flag too, and my national anthem.  Keep your crazy ass hands off of them both.

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Filed under Campaigning, Childhood Traumas, Criminal Activity, Elections, Family, Health and Medicine, History, Hypocrisy, Law, Politics, Science, Stupidity, Voting

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October 23, 2012 · 0:00

Wait, Wait, I have a Question!

OK, I am not even going to try to be cute or funny or anything of the sort.

Here are my three questions for Mitt Romney:

Q:  If I move to the Middle East, do I get to control my own lady-parts andget equal pay for equal work?  Because you don’t think I am entitled to do that here in the U.S., do you?

ROMNEY: Well, my strategy is pretty straightforward, which is to go after the bad guys, to make sure we do our very best to interrupt them, to — to kill them, to take them out of the picture.

But my strategy is broader than that. That’s — that’s important, of course. But the key that we’re going to have to pursue is a — is a pathway to get the Muslim world to be able to reject extremism on its own. […]

And how do we do that? A group of Arab scholars came together, organized by the U.N., to look at how we can help the — the world reject these — these terrorists. And the answer they came up with was this:

One, more economic development …

Number two, better education.

Number three, gender equality.

Number four, the rule of law.

Q:  If you change your position on every issue based on who you are talking to, how the hell can any foreign leader know when you mean what you say, when you’re pandering, and when you are telling an outright lie?

And lastly, at least for the moment,

 Q:  You frequently talk about all your record in Massachusetts, about which you claim to be very proud. If you did such a bang up job, Why are the folks in Massachusetts going to vote for President Obama?

 

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If you live in the United States and would like to help GET OUT THE VOTE, you can make calls no matter where you live through the Obama website:  http://www.barackobama.com/

Remember, Elections Matter.  So do results.

 VOTE DEMOCRATIC!

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