The Head of the Beast?

I'm still trying to get my head around the fact that George Jr is our 9 trillion dollar man. Did you like the little 300 dollar tax rebate you got from him 3 years ago? Well, it got biblical on you. It went forth and multiplied. Sort of.



According to thedenverchannel.com "The increase to $9 trillion represents about $30,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States."

"Is this the first time?" you ask.

Answer: "It's the fourth such move - increasing the debt limit by a total of $3 trillion - since Bush took office five years ago."

Ah, I guess not.

This from the man who promised fiscal conservatism. Georgie has presided over the 3 highest deficits in our history. Is this a math problem? Surely this drink addled idiot doesn't really understand the damage that he's done. Maybe he's just fallen in with bad company, with gun slinging oil industry servants posing as vice presidents, with Arab business connections that get free rides out in the middle of terror attacks and saucy business deals opening up our valuable ports.

Yes, this whole thing has reached mythological proportions. Just what did the heroes do in mythology when confronted with such a destructive beast?

Cut off their head.

But, we know that in this case, targeting the president would be cutting off the wrong end.

Our country is being led by the ass-end of the beast.

Dick Lamm and the anti immigration phone spam

Here's an email I just got from a friend, thought I'd just share it with "all" of you!

Hi,

Are you a Colorado voter? Did you recently get phone spammed by former
Colorado governor Richard D. Lamm?

Perhaps you remember Dick's 2003 speech warning about the fatal dangers of
multiculturalism? "History shows that no nation can survive the tension,
conflict, and antagonism of two or more competing languages and cultures."

The text of it is here:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/lamm.asp

Well, what I don't like about phone spamming is that generally you get no way
to respond back. Well, maybe there's a way if you listen to the whole thing,
but I personally disagree strongly with Mr. Lamm's position and don't want to
spend time listening to a recording of it.

But I did want to call him back and tell him so.

It's only fair. After all, he did call me first. And I'm on the Colorado No
Call list.

It took a while, but I found some contact information for him on the internet.


If Dick has called you, perhaps you'll take the time to call him back. Issues
like immigration are important enough to dialog about and dialog requires that
you have a chance to respond.

Here's the contact information.

Richard D. Lamm
Center for Public Policy and Contemporary Issues
2199 South University Blvd.
Denver, CO 80208
303.871.3400

Fax 303.871.3066

I encourage you to share this information with anyone you think may be
interested. A dialog on the issues can only happen when we speak back.

Emergency contraception

A pharmacist refusing to fill a prescription for emergency contraception is like a vegetarian waiter refusing to take an order for steak. If it's against your personal values, then get another job.

Meat eaters don't show up for a burger at a vegetarian restaurant. Yet they reasonably expect to find beef at a burger joint. Ordinary citizens reasonably expect a pharmacy to be the place where they can fill the prescription given to them by their medical doctor.

Anti-choice activists should ply their trade openly and politically and not hide behind the white medical coat of a pharmacist. And pharmacies should fire the infiltrators that take positions intended for legitimate pharmacists.

Faulty Intelligence

Did you vote for the democrat in the last election? I did. I even supported his campaign. But I've discovered that my decision was based on "faulty intelligence." Happens to the best of us.

In fact, the fellow who's senate campaign I supported has something to say about "faulty intelligence." Ken Salazar's website blames a whole lot of things on "faulty intelligence."

Specifically he thinks that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was based on "faulty intelligence." The administration says that the attacks on September 11, 2001 were possible because of "faulty intelligence" and this same group of actors claims to not have known that the levees would break in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

But the missteps of the current administration haven't been the result of faulty intelligence. They aren't even the result of a lack of intelligence, although a good case can be made. The mistakes and tragedies of the current administration are based on the fact that they have a different agenda than the rest of us.

Let's take the biggie: the attacks of 9/11/01. Faulty intelligence? Nope. The towers had been targeted repeatedly, the administration knew it. Planes flying into buildings? The administration knew it. An excuse to militarized everything in sight? Priceless.

What about Katrina? Have you seen the latest video? Well, I guess that all of that smoke and mirrors about being "uninformed" falls into the same big box of horse pucky as the faulty intelligence about the 2001 terror attack. The president stayed on vacation, Condi Rice went shoe shopping and then out to the theatre. New Orleans drowned. The worst U.S. disaster in history should give ordinary citizens the opportunity to spot the problem, but it is being used to justify militarization of domestic resources.

Let's be clear. Democracy is not a military state. The closer we move toward militarization of domestic civilian life, the farther we move from our democratic values.

Most of us recognize that the Patriot Act and the administration's militarization designs are a part of moving us away from our democratic values...but not our Democratic senator, Ken Salazar. He supported the president's plans to invade our privacy and jeopardize our freedoms. Oh yes, he stood against it until they produced a legal fig leaf to cover up the gross assault on our constitution. But once he could dance to the music of obfuscation he jumped up to jig.

What we need is a democratic candidate that actually supports democracy.

I guess my previous support of him was based on faulty intelligence.

meat won't save you

I've recently seen a few billboards around town touting beef jerky as a masculine snack. Probably the movie "Brokeback Mountain" is making everybody pretty nervous, especially around early-January-rodeo time.

There's one billboard in particular that caught my eye. It says "Because banana chips lead to figure skating." It doesn't take a mathmatician to figure out that figure skating is cultural shorthand for homosexuality in men.

I gotta tell ya. If you are one banana chip away from a homosexual act, all the beef jerky in the world isn't going to save you.

Beef, it's what you're using for cover.

Well, it’s a crime in Georgia....

According to WSBTV in Georgia

“Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter is checking out reports that runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks may have broken off a previous engagement shortly before the wedding.”

Mr. Porter is investigating the ways in which Ms. Wilbanks may be charged with a crime, a felony if he can swing it. There’s no question but that her fellow Georgians are all het up about it. They thought they were grieving a heinous crime of kidnapping and goodness knows what against the flower of well to do white womanhood, a tragedy that unified.

Now they find that this uppity female took a look at her impending southern marriage and did something quite masculine about it: she took off.

A motivational speaker has published a self serving press release that offers to help women with the solution that Ms Wilbanks should have implemented:

“ women tend to gather with other women when faced with stress. ...a woman’s intuition prompts her to seek support and rapport with other women. By doing this, a woman can still maintain her composure and make better decisions about her next move. Had Wilbanks relied less on her masculine response of needing alone time and instead, used her feminine response of seeking comfort, she would have looked at her upcoming marriage in a new light.’”

Now there’s her crime: a masculine response. I imagine that’s a felony in most of the South and think about how important it is that a woman maintain her composure and see marriage in a new light.

Not the harsh light of morning that might reveal a future of endless boredom masked as service to others, disappearing behind your husband’s good name.

After all, isn’t that what all this fuss is about? Men run off and leave women at the altar daily. We understand that. We accept that. We rarely have the nation holding it’s breath and looking for the errant groom. I’ve never heard of a prosecutor trying to pin a felony on a wayward fellow. Nope. Not in this country.

Not in Georgia where decent outraged people like Mr. Porter have amended the state constitution to declare that marriage is defined as being between One Man and One Woman. Viva la differance...because after all, if marriage can exist between two men, or between two women, then we would see that marriage can exist between equals.

And I guess that’s a crime in Georgia.

You don’t know Jack!

I’m so sick of corporate radio. I feel like a trapped rodent careening down the stressed out freeways of my life while I punch buttons frantically searching for some escape.

Yes, I listen to CPR and KGNU, especially when BBC News or Free Speech Radio News is on. I like WINGS, too.

None of that represents an escape, however.

I know that KGNU offers very interesting music. If I took the time to listen I could learn a lot.

I’m not proud to admit it but I really like pop music. To my credit, I like Hindi Pop, Latin Pop even Arab Pop music as much as I’ve ever enjoyed American Pop.

I want to tap my toes, I want to sing along, I want to loose track of my environment just enough to realize I’m oops! over the speed limit. Is that so wrong?

No. what’s wrong, as far as I’m concerned is the insane repetition. There are moments when I can punch 3 radio buttons and hear the same song on three different stations. That’s wrong. Everyone seems to be dealing from the same deck. Yeah, okay, different formats, same lack of depth and creativity. Lack of real personality.

I’m tired of knowing that my favorite jocks are broadcasting from the coast and in all my years of shuffling stations I’ve never heard a woman broadcaster that didn’t make me cringe.

I want lots more music that easily moves me, and I want a sense of connection while I listen.

It got worse when I went south for a couple weeks. A brand new city, something completely different from home....until you turn on the radio. Then America is the same all over. I was unnerved.

But maybe that’s why Jack! is so popular.

I remember when I first heard Jack. He gave me the creeps right away, Sure he played all the songs I liked and said all the right things. “Locally programmed and locally owned.” How did he know I craved to support the home team? His careless defiant attitude was attractive though I hated to admit it. “Playing what we want!” he growled. I hated him, but I listed.

Then I left town again.

Imagine my surprise to find him muttering the same things into the ears of another city! How could he?!!

Ah the cheating son of a slick format. I knew it was too good to be true. As soon as I got back to my hotel room I hit the ‘net and found Jack! all over the place.

I still don’t understand what loophole he’s speaking through when he growls: “locally owned and locally programmed” but Jack is a radio bigamist.

It’s only my fault that I was so vulnerable to his lies, but can toe tapping, steering wheel slapping, off key singing desire be so wrong?

We’re only vulnerable when we don’t know Jack.

Dead Catholics, nearly dead Catholics and the great Catholic unborn

You can’t even throw a rock these days without hitting a dead Catholic, at least if you are throwing a stone at a nearby television set, and how many places can you go these days and not be within a stones throw of one of them?

I’m not trying to pick on the recently departed Pope, after all, he’s not my pope. He might not have been your pope either if you are a part of the nearly 76% of the United States that does not identify itself as Catholic. Nope, for most of us United States citizens, the pope is not our spiritual leader.

That might surprise you if you were trying to figure out “just how Catholic is this country anyway?” while watching the boob tube. It would seem that we’re all Catholic these days.

But you’d be wrong. We’re not. I’m certainly not and I can’t wait for the news to get back into the business for which it receives constitutional protection; the business of educating the electorate on issues of political importance.

It is of political importance that the United States Congress recently stood on its collective head in an unsuccessful attempt to interfere in a private medical decision for a near corpse in Florida at the behest of her Catholic parents, while at the same time cutting funding for medical programs that would save a statistically vast number of lives...but you really can’t video tape a statistic. Statistics rarely give you the satisfaction of seeming to follow an arbitrary balloon.

Meanwhile, in Texas, our president’s “hometown,” Sun Hudson had his ventilator removed over his mother’s objections because the money ran out. The medicaid money.

In my opinion is it better to let some of these people die? Maybe. But neither you nor I want to put me in charge of your family’s most devastating life decisions. It’s none of my business, I’m not a doctor and I’m not your spiritual leader.

I’m not your governor either, but if I was I still wouldn’t consider myself an expert on your faith. That’s not stopping our Governor Owens. No, if you are raped and you get yourself to a hospital in Colorado, you may or may not find out that there’s a way to prevent pregnancy from occurring as a result of this heinous felonious assault.

That’s because Governor Owens believes that institutions have First Amendment rights. Not individuals, they are already protected, Institutions.

The Governor is concerned about the rights of Institutions under our Constitution. The Governor is concerned about what an institution thinks, feels, believes and has to say. He expresses his concerns when he uses this phrase: “by forcing an institution to say things to patients that it explicitly does not believe to be morally or ethically valid...”

I’ve got a news flash here. An institution doesn’t have beliefs, nor morals, nor ethics. Institutions do not have rights; particularly not rights endowed by (a divine) Creator. People do. Rape victims do. Citizens do.

And as citizens, we need to take back the public space. We need to take it back from the commercial industry of the entertainment-news. We need to take it back from those with a religious agenda for the rest of us.

There are some decisions that are private, and they need to stay that way. They may be agonizing, devastating and polarizing, but they are deeply private.

There are some decisions that are public, like supporting or opposing a politician or an elected official.

Governor Owens isn’t my conscience, he’s not my spiritual leader and I deeply regret that he is my governor, not only because we have such different views about personal decisions and about the role of government. But more than that, because Governor Owens confuses the difference between people who rightfully have ethics and morals and need to make decisions; and institutions which do not.

Governor Owens lacks the clarity of judgment to represent me.

Somebody hand me a stone.