Neva neva gonna get it, my lovin'

Via Jessica @ Feministing (and click the links in her story for more goodness).

I ignored the first article by Dennis Prager cause he's a douche and I know it. I try to ignore everything he says, but this is too much.

"Why would a loving, wise woman allow mood to determine whether or not she will give her husband one of the most important expressions of love [sex] she can show him? What else in life, of such significance, do we allow to be governed by mood?"

Sex=/=relationship. Men keep trying to force this idea into the minds of women they want to fuck. But suddenly, when it's within their agenda to reverse this idea, suddenly all there is to a relationship is sex.

Further, what else in life do we allow to be governed by mood? Well, eating. "What are you in the mood for?" Sleeping. "I'm tired but I don't feel like going to sleep yet." or "I'm in the mood for a nap." Gee, eating, sleeping, and fucking... all governed by mood. You might, by this, come to the conclusion that everything that humans do is, to at least some extent, governed by their emotions because humans are emotional creatures. Ya jackass.

My question to Mr. Prager is, why would a loving, wise man want to force his wife to have sex with him when she doesn't want to? For what else in life, that is so important to a relationship, is it enjoyable to force someone to do something they don't want to do? Sex is supposed to be fun for both partners, not just the man. Contrary to what you might think, Denny, it's a lot easier to get a woman to have sex with you if you respect her and don't force her to have sex when she doesn't want to.

I can't but comment on this gem, too:

"What if your husband woke up one day and announced that he was not in the mood to go to work?"

It's your job bitch. There's so many things in this one sentence that I have a problem with. First of all, Prager is one of these douchebags who gets all huffy about prostitution, and will try to exorcise anyone who even casually compares prostution to marriage. However, if it is my job to have sex, that makes me a sex worker, not a wife (although, for clarity's sake, I am neither). Secondly, if my hypotheitical husband announced that he wasn't in the mood to go to work, I would say "good, you can help me with the housework", or "good, you can finish painting the guest room", or even "fine, just stay out of my way I've got shit to do".

Finally, you're behind on your payment plan. We live in a capitalist society (and make no mistake, Prager's one of these neoliberal Reaganomics are from God kinds of assholes), so if it's my "job" to provide unlimited sexual satisfaction to my male partner, whether I want to or not (ahem), I'm fucking getting paid for it. There has to be some incentive, and don't tell me that providing me with a place to live and protection from actual rape (cause I couldn't do either of those things on my own -- and you know this guy calls stranger-rape "actual rape", I hate people like that with the heat of a thousand white-hot-pointy suns), is payment enough for being raped by my intimate partner. It's not. If it's my "job", I'm gonna get paid for it.

Also, just a little addendum here, there's consent involved in work too. If my boss asks me to do something that I don't want to do, (like, I dunno, have sex with him), I can say no and not get fired, and then sue for sexual harassment. If my boss asks me to do something that is unsafe or in an unsafe manner, I can refuse or negotiate a safer way of doing it without getting fired. If my boss asks me to do something that I can't do at the present time because I'm busy with something else, I can say "how about tomorrow". If my boss asks me to keep working when I'm off the clock, I can tell him I have plans or just say "I'll do it first thing tomorrow". As far as I'm concerned, for a stay-at-home-mom, in bed is off the clock... oh yeah, and your husband isn't your boss.

New Year's Resolutions... (yeah, right)

More Jazz.

More swearing.

Do super awesomely on the LSAT.

And maybe try life as a blonde...

Whaddya think?

Photo blog: Last week

Blizzard.

No, really.

Before and after...

Christmas at the ER...

It wasn't your imagination: 2008 sucked

Along with the many other things in which I have an interest (some might say perverted interest), I'm a student of both the Tarot and of Numerology (Astrology is interesting, but not so much my bag, for Astrology, visit Molly). According to some theories of these types of divination, each year has a card and a number assigned to it, based on a simple calculation. For instance, my birthday (March 14th) determined that my card for this year was The Hermit, my number 9.

3+14+2008=2025
2+0+2+5=9

The "global card/number" the number for the parts of the world which observe that this year was 2008 (as opposed to other calendars like the Jewish one, for which the year 2008 was mostly 5768, but partly 5769 -- I'll get to that one in a minute, but there are a number of calendars which observe different years for the same period of time), is gleaned by adding the numbers together and breaking it down to 1-22 for tarot significance, and further to 1-9 for numerological significance.

So...

2+0+0+8=10
1+0=1

In tarot, the 10th card of the Major Arcana is The Wheel of Fortune (image at right by Angie Chow). The Wheel of Fortune is pretty easy to understand. That is, events proceed as they will, regardless of intervention because that's just the way the world turns. The Wheel is a kind of "go with the flow" sort of symbol, but you can imagine that about 50% of the time, The Wheel does not turn in your favor. Like the game show, this year the Wheel of Fortune was pretty much all BANKRUPTCY tabs, so every time you spun the wheel, something shitty happened.

This, combined with the global energy of the number 1 (at once pure egotism and leadership -- consider the presidential transition we are currently in in the United States, going from ego-maniacal "decider"/"commander guy" to a leader with a healthy ego who isn't afraid of criticism or bad news), made for a pretty bad year around the globe.

Of course, you could argue that what I'm saying about the vagueries of the global card and numerological energy for 2008 could be said of any year. One could also argue that I'm picking examples that prove my point, but we are talking about divination here -- there are very few people who, when discussing divination from either side, DON'T pick-and-choose examples that prove their point, which makes the topic itself kind of difficult to discuss intellectually. That said, there are a number of things in the the year 2008 and the interpretations of the Wheel of Fortune and Numerological 1 that correlate. In short: 2008 sucked. (Your milage my vary, though, since each person, as stated above, has their own personal card and number energy, which is influenced by the global card/number in the degree that the individual is influenced by the outside world.)

There is hope, however. As the year ends, the energy changes. 2009's card is Justice. Justice, in the progression of the Major Arcana effectively sets right what was up-ended by the Wheel of Fortune. That is, this indicator suggests that the legislation promised by Congress and policies promised by President-Elect Obama will come to fruition: people will be able to get their homes back and/or renegotiate their mortgages; fairness will return to the American body-politic; and the Bush Crime Family may end up recieving their just desserts (from the caffeteria at Gitmo).

This indicator, combined with the global energy of the numerological 2 (and super number of 11), suggests that justice will be gained through cooperation -- wise cooperation because of the presented 11.

To summarize, 2008 came in presenting us with the opportunity for being #1. It turns out that we (we being the country) took this opportunity to become #1 in economic downturn. However, the Wheel turned and since the election we've shifted from the negative aspects of the number 1 (ego-mania, self-centeredness, greed, etc) to some of the positive aspects, eg. leadership (actual leadership not a guy in a flight suit declaring MISSION ACCOMPLISHED -- oy). Leadership that presently enjoys a 70+% approval rating. And as the Wheel makes its final spin (cross your fingers we don't land on that Bankrurtcy space!), we turn toward the opportunity for Justice to be had. For justice and cooperation. Of course, there is the opportunity as well to confuse justice with vengeance, but we'll see about that. But those are our opportunities, we may not take them.

Somebody didn't think this through...

Well, Twisty already beat me to this story, (and so did AmericaBlog), but I'm pretty sure everything that anyone's ever blogged about has previously been blogged about by someone else.

Anyway, it seems that the CIA thinks it's a good idea to trade the boner-ification pill Viagra to warlords in Afghanistan for information about... you know, whatever.

Anyway, Twisty makes a good point (I'm sorry, but it's true):

"The old bastards buzz along home, maul the harem, and come back singing
like canaries.

Wink wink, nudge nudge, puke puke.

The heart bleeds for the multiple wives of these old farts; after a lifetime of conjugal duty, these women were undoubtedly basking in sweet relief when the old warlord finally couldn’t get it up anymore. Naturally it couldn’t possibly occur to either the
CIA operatives or prurient Americans reading this amusing article clapping the
CIA on the back for its good old American ingenuity that some woman somewhere
was gonna have to pay the price in this “crucial battle.”"

Of course, this isn't nearly half of the story. Everywhere in the world there is a black market for drugs including Viagra, especially in war-torn countries including Afghanistan. Everywhere in the world rape is a serious issue, especially in war-torn countries including Afghanistan, where women are doused with acid for even thinking about going to school, and where sexual assault is used as a weapon. Now these warlords are being given Viagra, and since their power has never been abated by democracy since we never actually finished the job there -- these warlords can have their pick of any of the unwilling women inside or outside of the harem.

Moreover, cold hard cash is still more valuable than fucking Viagra. Even if these guys want to go start fucking the harem (or anyone else they choose), there's a good chance that they're going to sell these little blue pills onto the black market thus increasing their power by way of CASSSSSH. And still, no one bothers to think about the women involved here, and you can't ignore the fact that there are women involved here, and introducing a drug that allows a man who doesn't think of a woman as a person to fuck whomever whenever kind of leads to an increase in rapes.

Thanks CIA!

But, that's okay, it's totally justified, says the article.

"Among the world's intelligence agencies, there's a long tradition of using sex
as a motivator. Robert Baer, a retired CIA officer and author of several books
on intelligence, noted that the Soviet spy service was notorious for using attractive women as bait when seeking to turn foreign diplomats into informants.
"The KGB has always used 'honey traps,' and it works," Baer said."

Nevermind what the women think, they're doing something good for the USA by being raped for information. I don't know which is more insulting, that the United States is using a used by the KGB, or that it's justifying said tactic because the KGB did it and it worked.

Well, whatever works.

"Lappy is back!" or "Telling me you don't want to go out with me isn't going to shut me up"

Wow. What a couple of days. First, I hope you had a good Christmas if you're of the mind to celebrate it -- ours was postponed on account of snow, then Schmoogie burned his hand off fiddling with the plumbing (he's so handy -- no pun intended, actually he just singed a finger, but he's mostly fine). But tomorrow the 'rents are coming out to celebrate and give me presents, so all is well.

Oh, and my lappy isn't dead! But that's not why I'm posting.

When I came home with the assuredly fixed lappy (that assurance cost me $110 and some change), I checked my email and found a couple of comments needing to be moderated. Anonymous, a courageous young man left a comment on this post.

I'd much rather date the girl who wrote the other article than you, for
what it's worth.You sound like an entitled college student who just took a
philosophy class and wanted to show the world how unique you are because you
question things. And FYI, stop cursing so much. It makes you sound like a
jackass. (And yes, the irony of that last sentence is not lost to me).

Yeah. Real gem isn't it? Nevermind that I'm a)not single, b)don't care if someone who wants to police my language would or wouldn't want to date me, and c)a college graduate who took one philosophy class which had nothing to do with feminist. Oh yeah, and I'm not "entitled" as Anonymous seems to think, considering the hefty student loans.

There's not much to be said about this comment, I just wanted to point and laugh at an ignorant jackass who likes to police the language of women and thinks that he's so great that a pre-emptive rejection would devastate and shut up a feminist. Keep trying pookums, you'll hurt a woman someday. That day is not today.

Freidmanite by name and practice wonders what's wrong with the country

I know I said I was probably out for a couple of days while Narcissus was at the computer-doctor, but I do still have internets available, and there are still people who need telling off. Thomas Freidman, Mr. The World is Flat wonders:

"All I could think to myself was: If we’re so smart, why are other people living
so much better than us? What has become of our infrastructure, which is so
crucial to productivity? Back home, I was greeted by the news that General
Motors was being bailed out — that’s the G.M. that Fortune magazine just noted
“lost more than $72 billion in the past four years, and yet you can count on one
hand the number of executives who have been reassigned or lost their job.”"

Are you really that fucking naive? Haven't you been paying attention to what's been happening in this country for the last 35 years?! Our infrastructure is toast because in the 80s, when that very infrastructure was due for repair and rennovation the Gipper decided that that work was not to be done by the government because "government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem." Free Market Capitalism, something you have championed, Mr. Freidman, has caused our infrastructure to deteriorate; has cause the economic problems we're facing by calling regulation "socialist" and saying that regulation is bad. The rest of the world, sir, is "so much better than us" because we've had George W. Bush for president for the last 8 years and he's done his damndest to make sure that we give all of our tax dollars to Haliburton, KBR, CH2M Hill, CACI, and the rest of the disaster capitalist companies instead of doing the work ourselves because "government is the problem".

Over at the Agonist, this article was touted as being about Thomas Freidman wanting the US to be like the rest of the world. Well, I've been reading Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, and I can tell you the US is like the rest of the world -- except for the evil socialist parts. In the last 8 years, the Bush Crime Family has succeeded in doing something that Milton Freidman (the original Freidman) had been dreaming of for 30 years -- something even Richard Nixon refused to condone (in this country). Bush and his crony disaster capitalist pals turned what should have been government-run projects into cash-cows for their coroporate buddies.

You don't need to look beyond the current headlines to know that this is true. The Troubled Asset Recovery Program funds were dolled out to banks who have refused to account for how that money is being spent (on corporate spa trips and bonuses). We've gone from a 236 billion dollar surplus to nearly a trillion dollar defecit in the short time period of 8 years because Bush has kept close to the "free market" principles of deregulation, lower (corporate) taxes, and union busting. People are losing their jobs because of this. Our country is falling apart because of this. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is the best example of this locally, and you know that, like in Iraq, the reconstruction hasn't been finished because the same contractors were hired for that job too!

America, we have a disease. And while it's not as bad as some of the other economic models out there, we have to regulate it in order to keep ourselves from being miserable SOBs with sores all over our bodies; we also have to regulate it in order to prevent ourselves from doing further harm to the rest of the economies around the world. We DON'T have AIDS. We DON'T have Syphillus either. We have the capitalist strain of herpes. It's not fatal, but we've ignored it for far too long and it's caused us a lot of suffering. If we don't keep our capitalist herpes in check, we could end up with other illnesses that get in through the free market sores. Illnesses like totalitarianism, genocide, civil war, and the people responsible getting off scott-free because they made enough money to be above the law.

Look. You, as well as Mr. Freidman, need to read The Shock Doctrine. It'll make you FRANGRY, but you need to read it.

Mix of good and bad... (personal editon)

I may have killed my laptop. I took her to the computer doctor today, and should hear back in 1-3 business days. My hard drive is fine though, so if Narcissus is dead and cannot be revived, I'll be able to get a new laptop (I'm considering a Dell, after many years of despising their machines -- they're certainly better than they used to be). Right now, I'm on the Schmoogie's Alienware machine. Nothing on my computer can't be recovered or replaced, so it's really not that big of a deal, just a slight inconvenience that is going to cost some money that I don't have.

But I got my stitches out today. The wound's not too bad, and it didn't hurt much to have the stitches pulled out.

I really need to not be on the computer so much right now, though. I need to read and study. Which I'm gonna do now.

Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy (belated) Solstice, Happy Kwanza, and a very Happy New Year if I don't get back to you by then. By the way, what are you doing over these many holidays?

Snowed in.

Last night Dan Savage posted the image at left, providing final, difinitive proof that Seattle is completely unable to function when it snows. This image was taken outside of the Lusty Lady (the famous Seattle strip joint run by feminists, where the girls are protected from being molested, and paid a living wage). "No girls today. Sorry." They're all snowed in just like the rest of you poor motherfuckers. (Except, aparently, Dan Savage.)

This morning I made a valliant attempt to make to to work. I got up early. I put on three pairs of tights, giant socks (which I stole from Schmoogie), my snow boots, two hooded sweaters, a scarf, gloves, a hat, and my wool coat all to go stand at the bus stop for a fucking hour waiting. (And let us not forget that the ten inches of snow made it possible for me to nearly fall and break my face more than once on the way there.) According to the "snow schedule" (weekend schedule) on SoundTransit.org, the 511 (the bus I take to and from work every day) is supposed to have two busses per hour. There were no busses during the hour I waited at the bus stop in 28 degree weather, wearing 16 lbs of clothing and dancing around to keep myself relatively warm -- and for the record, the Spanx "high waisted panty" thing or whatever it's called, the one that sucks in all of your belly fat, really keeps the heat in; so fat shaming or no fat shaming, those things are fucking useful. No bus means no work.

I wanted to go to work today. I needed to go to work today. Now don't get me wrong, I like a day off here and there -- hell, days off, send me somewhere fancy! -- but after having spent much of the last 5 days couped up in the house, I'm going a little stir crazy. I love spending time with my dog and boyfriend, but 5 days locked in the house with Needy and Whiney is a little too much -- I'm sure if they had blogs I would get a cute nickname like Bitchy or something. I also enjoy going without a bra for a couple of days, being free from the almost relentless bonds of that patriarchal device which holds my boobies in place so they only jiggle in a visually pleasing manner when I run -- but this is fucking ridiculous!

Western Washington needs to learn to function when it snows. In the past it hasn't really snowed that much here, but since this is the... 6th snowfall of the year (including the freak one in April), we had better get used to the cold weather and snowfall and maybe think about reducing the incline of the hills in Seattle.

At least do it for the strippers!

Oh. My. Fucking. God.

(Via Feministing.)

Okay, the virginity craze has officially gone too far. For just $14.90 you can buy an artificial hymen.

Let me say that again: artificial hymen.

"No more worry about losing your virginity. With this product, you can have your
first night back anytime. Insert this artificial hymen into your vagina
carefully. It will expand a little and make you feel tight. When your lover
penetrate, it will ooze out a liquid that look like blood not too much but just
the right amount. Add in a few moans and groans, you will pass through
undetectable. Its easy to use, clinically proven non-toxic to human and has no
side effects, no pain to use and no allergic reaction."

Never mind the grammatical errors, this product allows a woman to fake being a virgin... with tightness and a tiny bit of blood. I don't think I can use words accurately enough to describe how disgusted I am at this. It's just too much.

Now sure, vagina-plasty to "repair" the hymen so a woman is effectively a virgin again is a horrible thing imposed by a culture that is obsessed for some god-awful reason with the almight hymen -- but the cost is just slightly prohibitive. So, why shouldn't there be a product that, for under $15 freaking dollars establishes the exact same principle? Then everyone can have their hymens back! No. Omg, ew. No. This is too much.

WHY?!

Third installation for Fiscal Responsibility

In my backyard...
















Check it out.

A tale of two art updates

Go on and take a look.

(And that's called a diptych.)

Obama wants B-ball court in Whitehouse -- Bowling lobby up in pins

Via the double-yew-ess-jay.

What the fuck ever.

Congrats Shepard

I love this picture. I can't wait to buy the copy of TIME with this image, but I may just be sold out by the time I get to the newsstands.

In related news, read the accompanying blog post.

I don't know what to say about the whole Rick Warren thing, which is why I haven't said anything. I don't think it's appropriate to have someone who is against gay rights and reproductive rights giving the invocation at the innauguration of a president who will act against that agenda... however, Barack Obama is a very good politician, and while this is pissing off not just the progressives on the left, but also a lot Evangelicals on the right, it's going to represent not that Obama disapproves of gay people, not that he disapproves of abortion and birth control, but that he wants to be friends with people who disagree with him. I think that's what this is about.

One thing that we have learned about Barack during the last two years is that he likes to talk to people who hold different views and understand why they hold those views. Once he has understood why they hold those views, he wants to come to some kind of agreement; maybe they can't agree that abortion is a moral choice, but they can agree that reducing unwanted pregnancy should be a priority; maybe they can't agree that gay people are entitled to civil rights just as anyone (and I truly believe that Obama said that he didn't agree with gay marriage because he had to) but they can come to an agreement that civil rights are important for everyone -- eventually with this line of progressive agreement, you can peacefully get people who had held diametrically oppositional views to come around and realize that while they may have some moral objection to something, their moral code is not what makes the law. I think that's what Obama is trying to begin by having Warren do the invocation.

I would still rather he have a Rabbi do it, and not a crazy one, but that's my preference. I haven't lost any faith in Barack for this choice. He's starting something big and we're not all going to agree with the steps he takes to achieve the ends, but that doesn't mean that he or the steps are wrong.

Reason People Think They Don't "Get" Art #629,622: Mark Rothko

"I don't get it."

It's okay, no one does.

Mark Rothko is famous for bright strips of oil paint on large canvases, and he was huge during the early years of Po-Mo. That is, post-modernism, essentially the "free market economics" of the art world -- a lot of people love it, and in this student-of-art-history's opinion, a lot of people are fucking stupid. Don't get me wrong, there were some good things that came out of Po-Mo, like there were some good things that have come out of free market economics (just don't ask me to name any), and artists didn't do nearly as much damage to the art world in the name of post-modernism as economists have done to the global economy in the name of free market economics -- but I digress, I wanted to talk about Rothko.

Rothko began as a modernist, vacillating between cubism and surrealism but eventually going off in his own direction. His most famous works, the "multiforms" became a sort of signature of the early years of Post-Moderism, and helped artists detached themselves from the rest of the world (although, one could argue that Modernism began this when art started to drift away from realism and the representation of what the artist literally saw, and started making art that was art simply by virtue of its existence). Abstract expressionism began with Rothko, who pushed this idea that his large paintings with giant blocks of solid color were somehow intensely spiritual, and while there's nothing wrong with it, the average person will look at a Rothko, read something he wrote about God and oneness and all things being equal and say "really?"

Now, a lot of artists are able to make weird art, talk about some kind of intimate relation to the work and/or god without alienating their viewers, but the mere fact that Po-Mo and especially abstract expressionism was entirely about alienating the viewer, those of us who consider ourselves contemporary artists begin to understand why most people stare at a piece and say "I don't get it". The problem with a lot of post-moderists works is that there is nothing to get, yet the artist bandies about making claims of experiencing some kind of deity through this piece and so it means so damn much to them and all they want to do is share their experience with -- wait, share? No. If they really wanted to "share their experience" of god with their viewers, they wouldn't have hogged the Peace Pipe.

Some abstract expressionists (Pollack, for instance) made the point, while talking about their work, that there was nothing to get. It's paint on a canvass, I like the way it looks. Pollack's work may have meant more to him than he claimed (although, it may have only been to the extent that it got him lots of free booze and cheap women), but allowing people to see in it what they wanted is something that I really like about Pollack's work. Other AE artists, while their art is not all bad (I do like Kandinsky), took their work far too seriously and those who didn't conform to the auspices of abstract expressionism were ostricised -- something that happens a lot in the art world, believe it or not; those who pluck things from their own brains and are then asked to discuss its meaning with people who have no clue what's going on have a tendancy to get big-headed and exclusionary about this whole business.

Back to Rothko, though. While maintaining that he was not, in fact, an abstract artist (an artist who creates work void of references to the outside world), he essentially described his work the same way an abstractionist would: he sought only to express pure human emotion, but made sure to pompous it up a bit by saying:

"The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationship, then you miss the point."

In other words, in order to "get" Rothko's work, it has to make you weep. You're not allowed to have your own experience with the work, you have to have his experience with the work in order to understand it. Except, it's impossible for one person to have the same exact experience as another person, so most people just shrug and say "I don't get it", and move on to the wing with all the Thomas Kinkade paintings. (Actually, museums don't have Thomas Kinkade paintings, he has a chain of galleries that are owned wholly by the artist, and while people think they "get" his work, there actually is nothing to get because Kinkade's work is more robotic and soulless than Pollack's because he's been painting the same things in the same way for 20 goddamn years -- at least Pollack died before his work could get old).

When you have the kind of experience with art that a lot of your "normal" non-artistic people have with Modernist and Post-Modern works, it's no wonder a lot of these "normal" non-artistic people shurg off the art world and say "I don't get art". It's unfortunate, because a lot of the artists who supported this exclusionary idea ("if you don't have the experience I want, then you don't get it") made great work and the appreciation of that work is limited because people are told you have to experience something in a particular way with no room for interpretation. Except the thing is, people know what they like. Art does move people. But not everyone is affected in the same way, and expecting them to be is insane and does a great deal of damage to the art world.

Artists simply cannot take themselves that seriously.

As promised, pictures of the injury

Scluptor remembers first aid training; forgets safety training

So, I did something stupid at work today. I was opening a package (chocolates from See's Candy sent by one of our contractors) and, while holding the box and an exposed box-knife in one hand I used the index finger of the other hand to get to the invoice on the top of the package. Long story short (I'll get to the bit about our broken health care system in a couple of days when I can type again), I now have three stitches in my left index finger and a migraine from the trauma and stress.

My officemates were very helpful, especially the moms in the office who helped me with my first aid, the office manager who found a doctor for me to go to and sat with me in the doctor's office while I waited for my stitches and made the executive decision that the office would pay for the co-pay ($20 for an office visit, rather than $200 I would have paid had I had to go to the ER).

Anyway, my head hurts and it feels like it took me 20 minutes to type this... but it's only been 12.

What a Boone-head

Via AmiericaBlog

Pat Boone says:

I drew a comparison between the violence that killed almost 200 innocent people in Mumbai, perpetrated by jihadists trained to hate and kill indiscriminately, and the turbulent, abusive mob events in our streets and in front of our churches. If you read the column, you'll see that I carefully stated. "Oh, I know the homosexual 'rights' demonstrations haven't reached the same level of violence, but I'm referring to the anger, the vehemence, the total disregard for law and order and the supposed rights of their fellow citizens. I'm referring to the intolerance, the hate seething in the words, faces, and actions of those who didn't get their way in a democratic election, those who proclaim loudly that they will get their way, no matter what the electorate wants!"

My whole point, stated clearly, was that "hate is hate, no matter where it erupts. And by its very nature, if it's not held in check, it will escalate into acts vile, violent and destructive." If I'm wrong about that, show me.

(Emphasis mine.)

Overheard on the Thom Hartmann program

"He's not a white supremacist, he's a white nationalist; he's representing the interests of whites who are still a majority in this country."

-Peter something-or-other, guest on Thom's fight-with-a-right-wing-loon segment

Okay... uh... do white people really need their very own advocacy group? Don't we have a majority-white congress? Hasn't every single president been white (up until this coming January that is)? Don't white people in this country have a history of being in power because in order to make this country whites subverted the power of non-white people? You're really going to try to tell me that continuing to advocate for the straight-white-patriarchal social structure in this country isn't racist? Come on. Wake the fuck up and smell the stench that is all around you. The interests of white people are protected -- our laws have always been written that way. People of color just want to make sure that they are treated equally, and that doesn't hurt white people or denigrate or subvert their interests. Don't fucking cover this shit up by calling it a "rights" group.

See -- the Republicans ARE out to destroy the unions

From the Countdown blog.