The Gangs of Baltimore

Tags

Baltimore, police, racism

Watching the events play out in Baltimore is an education to some, to others, it’s a why question. Why didn’t this happen sooner? The fact is whether you like it or not, life in the inner city is purely shit for the average African-American citizen.

Every deck is stacked against the individual trying to survive. Poor schools, no jobs are just the beginning. We see nothing less than a systematic attempt to herd “unwelcomes” into small enclaves and then devote all our money and energies to “other interests.”

We not only condone racism in this country but we grow it.

We demean people even when we give them the pittances we do, by making them take drug tests, and defining what food stamps can be used for, and attaching so many rules and regulation to any sort of assistance that you end up in the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario.

And when people rise up out of anger and frustration and disgust at the injustices they endure, we blame it all back on them and their “fatherless” homes, where unfortunate black youths learn no morals or sense of obedience to authority. Above all that, they have no respect for their betters.

One young man fairly told Geraldo Rivera to take his white ass and get out of town. They recognize Fox for what it is, purveyors of hate upon their heads. Geraldo, the youth said, you are only interested in filming what you call “thugs” rioting. You and Fox haven’t been interested in coming here to report on the daily injustice that we face.

To those of us who have engaged in the criminal justice system in this country in large metropolitan cities, we know all too well of what the young man speaks. As Alan Dershowitz explained in his Rules of the Justice Game, “almost all police officers lie about whether they violated the constitution in order to convict guilty defendants”, (rule IV) and all prosecutors, judges and defense attorneys are aware of rule IV. Worse, they look the other way. Like it or not, it’s true.

The recent public exposure of these cases of police overreach, abuse and lying comes as no surprise to us. I recall a dear friend of mine, a street cop from Detroit, whom I had argued with good-naturedly about whether police could do their job and still tell the truth. He was called to testify on an arrest and to make his point to me, told the truth. The case was dismissed for lack of “probable cause”. He grinned at me, as he walked from the courtroom. “See what you get when you tell the truth?”

We understood it, and we accepted it as a the way life was. We knew that in most cases the officers were at least sure they had the right guy.

But there is a segment of police officers within each department who do not care. They figure one black body is as good as any other, and they have ambitions, and a host of emotionally based reasons for throwing their authority around and not caring who gets caught up in their game.

Therein lies the problem.

And a solution comes from an unlikely source:

The gangs of Baltimore.

The major gangs have declared a truce, and apparently are devoting their time and efforts to helping their community respond in a politically helpful way to the recurrent injustice visited upon them in general and in the Freddie Gray case in particular.

It boggles the mind. Young men hell-bent on killing each other, and unfortunately any innocents that get in the way, have come together and agreed that for now at least, they will stop the violence against each other, and help organize their community to stop police violence against them all.

This is no small thing. Thinking, educated, above middle-class men and women only a few miles away, encased in a glorious white facade of sandstone and marble, are unable to agree upon even the most basic of things because screwing the black guy in the White House seems paramount.

Yet these young men have agreed to set aside their differences and work together for the common good of their community.

And the gang has a good deal to offer should it choose to actually follow through. Long the center of loyalty, and business acumen (albeit illegal) it mirrors many good traits that the young can well adopt. Strong Black men, helping their community? What’s not to like here. They teach loyalty, respect, and how purpose can bring about change. Somehow in their matriarchal upbringing, they have managed to become quite savvy at things they aren’t supposed to understand at all.

They in a real sense complement their environment, reflecting an honest if not legal response to the tremendous burdens and disadvantages heaped upon them since birth. They have the ability to encourage the younger kids coming up at least in the character requirements of making their way in a racist world while still standing firm for dignity.

No one argues that gangs are stellar examples to our youth. They have not been since the days of the Irish gangs, the Puerto Rican ones or any of the others. But all ethnic groups plagued with the criminal element within have always managed to take those good attributes and bettered themselves and their communities. And the Black community is no different. It too learns the right lessons along with the less savory.

Larry Wilmore, on his show The Nightly Show, did a most important thing on Thursday. He sat down with gang bangers in a diner and just talked. And they were articulate, and politically aware, and sincere. And that matters and should matter, and should make us hang our heads in shame when we cannot expect better from our paid politicians, and we cannot seem to expect more of ourselves in insisting on our own justice from the tyranny of big money and big K Street influence.

Perhaps it will be the gangs of Baltimore that will lead the way in helping us to see that we are not without recourse in our own struggles to retake command of our government. We need merely to stop focusing on our differences and agree that we are not being heard. None of us, for anything. And it’s time to change that. And if it takes a gang to explain that to us, well, more power to them.

And that’s a compliment in case you didn’t realize it.

We participate in SoCS.

 

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The Conversation We Need to Have on Race

Like the post on war, this is a post I don’t write with joy. I write because sadly, it still needs to be said. But here I do not write in the anguish that I might hurt people I care about. I frankly don’t give a damn. For if you are hurt by what I say, then you damn well need to hurt because this shit has gone on quite long enough.

I don’t speak from some high mountain of arrogance, for I was raised in a racist environment where such things were taken for granted. I cast racial slurs as a child, mimicking the adults around me. No black face walked the halls of my high school or walked my neighborhoods let alone lived within it.

I was a child of the Civil Rights Movement, but surely not old enough to realize its importance at the time. Common sense, much touted as of late by a number of uneducated and thus defensive people I know, was not enough to show me or my friends and family that separating people by something so silly as skin color was stupid. It was not until I moved into the world and interacted with people of color that I realized the insanity of discrimination.

Later, I spent better than twenty years, living among, working with, loving, and befriending hundreds of people of color and  I saw all the more clearly how warped we become when we use such elements as divisions rather than celebrations of diversity.

We, in our days of college, when we sipped of the vine of how the world ought to be, and would be under our tutelage,  sincerely believed that all this would be behind us in the next generation, long gone by the 80’s, or at least by the 90’s.

There are a variety of reasons why this did not happen. Those who remained unexposed to integration through much of their adulthood did not move on to that better place. Much of it can be put at the feet of a misunderstanding of the role of truth and how it plays across the spectrum of the human psyche.

Those of us who are rational beings, driven by facts and rational conclusions think evidence, facts, and reasoned argument will carry the day. Truth changes mind we surmise.

But alas, it truly does not for a great portion of individuals. Study after study today shows that people in general, but most especially the conservative mind refuses to accept “facts” once their minds are made up. In fact, they become even more set in their error the more you present them with facts. They come up with all sorts of irrational reasons why they need not accept your data.  It is flawed (without explaining how), usually by being the product of “the liberal press”, a thing that in reality is hard to define, and harder to actually find.

When attacked for their intransigence, the bigot gets predictably defensive. Liberals are accused of “always playing the race card”. Worse, they attempt to adopt MLK as one of their own (he was a Republican they shout), but the ONLY phrase they know of all the things he said was the hope that someday little children would be “judged by the content of their character, rather than the color of their skin.” This they fervently insist is what they do. It’s not their fault that most of “those black people” whether they be young black men in low-hanging jeans, or incarcerated young black men, or poor women paying with food-stamps just “happen” to have no good character.

They are blind to the racism they exhibit even honestly, to the degree that they now accuse liberals of being the racists. This comes from the usual cesspool of right-wing media efforts used to gin up their fear while at the same time sanctifying their hate. Suddenly the Democratic Party “uses” blacks for votes while keeping them enslaved. Presumably Democrats and liberals in general aren’t versed in the “tough love” that conservatives know needs be employed to force “these people” to stand up for themselves and take charge of their lives in the white American” way. There are always the black Toms willing to dance to the conservative tune in return for a pretence of acceptance and a moment in the spotlight.

Nobody, it is true, wishes to face their own irrational hatred. Conservatives can be forgiven in some sense for their failures, but that does not mean that we can stop pushing back against the insidious evil of their defenses.

America is still racist. And it may be that it will remain so for a good long time to come, until at least every vestige of “that’s the way those people are” is eradicated from the family conversation. When aunt Carole and grandpa George have finally died and their anecdotes have finally vanished from family memory, maybe we can get beyond this ugly impasse.

The nativism which strangles us today in the guise of a vocal and ugly minority who can’t stop railing against “illegals” will, with the turn of time and the grace of God, be stamped down once again and relegated to the dust bin as it should be. Immigrants, ALL illegals at one time, built this country into what it is today. We cannot escape ourselves no matter how much we run. Meanwhile, millions suffer from the ubiquitous “other” leveled at them in the guise of “illegal” and cantaloupe calves”.

Ferguson shows us white folks what black folks have always known. We are deeply racist, unconsciously and consciously so. We make jokes at the expense of people based solely on their color, though we quickly give excuses as to why it’s about something else. That in itself should alert us that we still are diseased.

The abuses of Ferguson are appalling. They “shock the conscience” as the Supreme Court once announced. Yet they are not news to African-Americans ANYWHERE in America. It is not shocking to many of us whites either, at least those of us who have close ties to minority groups and have experienced first hands the uneven-handedness of law enforcement vis-a-vis black and brown communities.

This racism which is still so rampant has lain dormant in the public mind for decades. In some real sense Obama’s presidency has brought these things to the forefront. The incessant clamor by some members of the hardest of Right wing apologists that Obama is not a “real” American, not like us, not American at all, but Kenyan, not a Christian, thereby raising a religious test the opposite of that which faced John F. Kennedy regarding concerns about his Catholicism, has ironically brought forth exactly what they did not want. People are talking about the elephant in the room again.

So in some sense, the ugly racism expressed by the Tea Party at their rallies with their placards, and the “jokes” discovered in emails of elected Republicans, has served to bring the issue back to the fore. People who from some insane sick place in their minds refer to the President of the United States as the “anti-Christ” and a “monkey” have reaped their own whirlwind.

They have done the fine job of reminding us who have become complacent, that indeed this is not a post-racial world at all.

When I hear people become indignant that this official or that one fails to tout American exceptionalism, I cringe. With a history such as ours, starting with the near genocide of our Native Peoples, where do we get this notion of being exceptional? America started out an amazing dream, yet we had already begun our destruction of Native Peoples before we  began. And we continued it and racism long after, flouting in some real sense the flowery language of Jefferson’s Declaration.  We may forgive Jefferson as a man of his time, for the “all men are created equal” not meaning either women or men of color, but we cannot forgive that that failure proceeded to this very day.

People who have to “blame” some “others” for their own failures in life, must get up the courage to face themselves and their racism. They must admit that they have and do judge people based on a physical reaction to the color of their skin. Judgements are made immediately about their value, their likely occupation, and a whole host of attributes which are then barriers that must be overcome before they consider them in any way, “equal.” And in most cases this equality doesn’t extend to welcoming “them” into their families as relatives, or close friends.

There is no scientific evidence that color has anything to do with intelligence. Racial distinctions are not scientific by any standard, but are political constructions made for reasons of discrimination. 

As much as it may pain you to alter your thinking, you must do it. Justice demands it. And decency demands it. God demands it. Stop the madness. HONOR SELMA!

DC Teaparty rally

 

The End is Not in Sight Yet

Tags

editorial, Jr., March on Washington, Martin Luther King

It has been a momentous week in Washington. That’s saying something, given the gridlock that is the norm there.

If you are not old enough to remember the March on Washington in 1963, well, there was plenty of history to learn from last weekend onward. I was thirteen at the time, so I was aware, though surely not the way I am now.

PBS did a great job, giving us the “music of the March” followed by a great little history lesson of the organization and the organizers, followed by an informative look at Whitney Young, one of the major players who was neglected by the later power players as a “tom”, although nothing could be further from the truth.

Wednesday of course offered us the original speech and those of many others, along with the President’s.

One should not avoid the other “issues” of the March. Women, many of whom had significant jobs in the March organization, were shoved to the back, kept off podiums, and marginalized. (There is probably a whole psychology that could be explored here.) Bayard Ruskin was a major organizer of the march, yet he was completely marginalized given his avowed Communist beliefs and his open homosexuality.

Yet, given that, it was a monumental undertaking and a phenomenal success. It turned the tide of public opinion, and put politicians in a box from which they could not escape. They tried to, to be sure, but after the Kennedy assassination, it was like a deck of cards had collapsed, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 65, followed quickly.

I wonder how our Republican brothers and sisters viewed the events of the past week. It is unquestioned that they have done all they can to co-opt Martin Luther King, Jr. as their own, calling him a Republican, and announcing or rather pontificating that he would be opposed to much “liberal” legislation.

If I hear, “I believe like MLK did, that you shouldn’t judge a person by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character,” one more time,  I shall vomit. This is always in connection to some anti-African-American statement. Whether it be to vilify another Black actor for “playing the race card” (speaking up for justice for Blacks in whatever venue it is absent), or vilifying anyone who dares defend the “unfair” practice of affirmative action, a quick reference to MLK seems sufficient to establish one’s bona fides as a “non-racist.”

Of course their take on Dr. King is anything but correct. There is no evidence that King was a Republican, and his words suggest that he was a member of neither party. He considered the 1964 Republican platform to be racist, and actively campaigned against Goldwater. He thought little of Ronald Reagan.

What the uber Right refuses to remember is that King was murdered while in Memphis supporting striking sanitation workers. These workers were union men. King spoke out again and again against the economic inequalities that existed and favored redistribution of wealth. He was no fan of capitalism as it existed denying workers reasonable compensation for their work.

At least two of his closest aides had ties to the Communist party. One was an avowed gay man. These are not the signs of a TEA Party wannabe surely. People like Alan Keyes, Allen West, Herman Cain and Clarence Thomas would not have been in his camp, now would he have remained silent to their kowtowing to the white conservative element.

The usual lies about this week were rolled out by the usual players. Billo the Clown O’Reilly blatantly said that Republicans were denied a part in the festivities. This was not even remotely true. Both Bushes were invited, as were Boehner and Cantor. All declined for various reasons.

Such is to be expected of Fox of course, which routinely spouts lies, knowing that a minority of Americans watch them to the exclusion of all else, and will continue in their neighborhoods and blogs, and Facebook walls, to convey the lie to even more unknowing, unthinking individuals. With that Fox’s job is done–the lie will become “truth” to a minority of ignorant-loving TeaBirchers.

Meanwhile, nothing much changes. Fox and other crazy sites will continue to pretend that the Australian athlete who was gunned down, was killed by a couple of “black kids” when in fact there were three, and one was white. They will continue to bellow “why has the President not expressed his outrage?” when of course the two situations (this and the Trayvon Martin case) are in no way linked. Police in Oklahoma have stated again and again that race played no part in the shooting.

But something has indeed changed. John Lewis reminds us that voting rights continue to be a challenge, given that Republican-held state legislatures across the land pass law after law that limits the right to vote–of only those who typically vote Democratic. They are quite blatant in their explanations. There is no racial motivation they proclaim, but only political motives! They thumb their noses at us, claiming that they “have every right to make it hard for their opponents to vote”. Nothing illegal in that.

If voting is our most precious right, then people of color, seniors, students, and all those who threaten to power base of the modern Republican party, will rally to the cause. We will not stand still for this. And the modern NAACP and other battle-savvy warriors in the equality battle will lead us. They are rejuvenated by the behavior of the white power players. As Colin Powell said, this plan will surely backfire on the party. We mean to see that it does.

Dr. King would be proud of not where we are today, for we have much yet to do, but he would be proud of our determination to “let freedom ring”. We will get to the mountain top Dr. King, we will.

I Have Nothing to Wear to a Funeral

Tags

fundamentalism, gay rights, GOP, religion, social issues, teabaggers, women's rights

Disclaimer! This is not original thought. I give all credit to Andrew Sullivan in his thought-provoking remarks here. He makes some very cogent points, and when you add up the evidence, I think he might well be right.

Sullivan argues that the GOP as it exists today has ceased to be a political party. It no longer acts rationally, from a national party point of view, but rather has been captured by a group and is being forced to take on its persona.

He argues that the GOP is now nothing more than a religious party.

Think of a snake devouring a furry mouse, swallow by swallow until it simply disappears and is digested to be no more.

National political parties exist for the purpose of ostensibly giving voice to their constituents. We can of course argue that neither the Democrats nor the GOP exist for that purpose any more, but rather as a vehicle by which to motivate their constituents to vote them into office with the promise that it will benefit them. The book of apologies for not doing that is of course at the ready and is every two or four years, dragged out and used to “explain” why it was not possible to do most of what was promised.

National parties, however, tend to the flock if you will, by making it appear that they truly care.

We have terms for the political spectrum. Libertarian, Progressive, Liberal, Conservative, Reactionary, Anarchist, and so forth. Those terms are defined, and have over the eons of political discourse starting at least in Athens, come to mean something. But in this country, Sullivan argues that the term Conservative no longer means what it means around the world. For in this country, so-called Conservatives don’t act that way at all.

In England and in Australia, the Conservatives support gay rights. It is logical that they do so. They see it as a conservative thing. Since the objections to marriage equality come almost exclusively from the religious sector of society, true conservatives are determined to keep religion out of the governing region, as we too, by our Constitution, claim to desire.

Yet in this country, people who call themselves conservatives are vehemently opposed marriage equality. Moreover, these same people are exceedingly happy to have the state involved in women’s bodies.

Across the country in states controlled by Republican majorities, we find bill after bill  determined to interfere with Roe v Wade, bills  that are patently unconstitutional on their face. Planned Parenthood, the rallying point for so many Tea People, is facing such an onslaught of legislation deemed “regulatory” that it is closing offices all over. Women who wish abortions now face the real problem of transporting themselves hundreds of miles to find a provider. This is intended. It is working.

Every means is being used to embarrass and shame women, by forcing them like children to view sonograms, and endure body probes, and various “counseling” because surely women don’t understand what’s in their uterus.

These are not conservative actions. They are actions of those who wish the government to be MORE, not less intrusive in their lives. Except of course the rub is obvious–they don’t intend the intrusion to be in their lives–just yours.

If that is true of conservatives, what can be said of Libertarians who are even more hysterical at the idea of government. Yet Rand Paul, the libertarian + teabagger, finds himself not only opposing abortion and apparently in favor of all these attacks on women’s rights, but is also against marriage equality, finding, as insane as it sounds, that it will surely lead to marriage with animals.

A true conservative would be in favor (one would think) in their being as little government intrusion into the sacred sphere of voting. Yet across the land, conservative-held states are enacting again and again laws that make it more difficult to vote, at least for certain segments. Tea baggers, without batting an eye will tell you that they aren’t really sure that non-property owners should vote.

While some of the old-timer Republicans see the necessity of reaching out to the gay community and the Latino community as a means of party survival, not so the teabaggers. They figure that there must be a way to.” get more “white people to vote for them.” Do you hear that? Let’s become the White Party! What could be wrong with that?

And indeed, I suspect that the average teabagger, uneducated as they usually are, would agree. In the fundamentalist world they live in, Cain was that dark one who was banished. The mark of Cain has always been “being born black” to that crowd. It remains such, no matter how much the rhetoric changes. It spawns the “playing the race card” defense and the “uncle Tom black Republicans” we see today.

Couple that with the conservative love for loyalty to one’s “tribe” and suspicion of those not “one of us”, and you have all the makings for a racism that simply over rides common sense and evidence.

It brings you the likes of Phyllis Schafly and her continuous assertions that Latinos aren’t “our kind“, and should be ignored by the new GOP.

But it brings forth more than racism.

It brings forth the true agenda of the new GOP.

It has everything to do with theocracy. It has everything to do with scrapping the Constitution in favor of a new one that keeps the white folk in charge, and the “right” church pews filled.

In Pennsylvania, a right-winger blocked the floor speech of a fellow legislator, using a technical procedural objection, simply because he believed that his colleague was going to “speak against God’s law.”

Did you get that?

A elected legislator stopped another duly elected legislator from speaking on the floor of their state house, because he was going to, (he thought) speak against God’s law (as he interpreted it of course.)

How insane is that?

I assumed that following the whippin’ the GOP took in 2012, they would purge themselves of the virus.

I was wrong.

You see some attempt to do so in the Senate, but Cruz ignores the Old Guard.

Boehner is too in love with being called Mr. Speaker to stop them. He’s allowed them to control the House, and will reap the rewards of that decision in the future one hopes.

But an effective party?

The GOP is fading into oblivion and is being transformed into a party of crazy white people who have an unhealthy and wrong understanding of Christianity. They are pretty much convinced that all would be well if only “we” weren’t here, or in charge, or having any say in the way things are done.

So, yeah, it’s a funeral. And frankly, I’m going to miss the GOP. The New GOP? Be afraid. Be very afraid.

The Legacy of Race

Tags

Jr., Martin Luther King, Obama, racism

It is a stunning bit of serendipity that the President’s second Inaugural falls on this day we celebrate as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. It gives me pause to reflect upon the legacy of Dr. King, and how far we have traveled, and how far, sadly we still have to go.

Because our President is African-American, it is almost inevitable that the rabid minority who detest him with a fervor that reaches to at or near real hatred, are quick to point out (almost always unasked of course) that they are not racists. But they also go further, attempting in some drug-induced phantasmagoria to capture Dr. King as their own. They quote with self-satisfaction two facts: one, that Dr. King was after all, one of them, a Republican, and second they quote from his “I Have a Dream” speech, that they “judge a person by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin.”

To them, this settles the question. If anyone pursues the issue further, they are “race baiting” or “playing the race card”, trying to blame their circumstances not on their own limitations, but rather on a non-existent barrier that prevents them from reaching their goal.

Race still matters in America. No matter how politically correct we are, or how politically correct we witness others being, the ugly face of racism seethes just below the surface. My own father, a man as racist as any could be, became politically correct, dropping the “N” word from his speech, but he could snarl out the word “black” with the same venomous disgust as the other word. There was no mistaking his true views.

History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals. (MLK Letter from Birmingham Jail)

Race matters when those on the extreme Right refuse to legitimize the present office holder of the Presidency. Race matters when posters are painted of the Commander-in-Chief as a African Voodoo artist. Race matters when the emphasis is placed on Mr. Obama’s middle name. Race matters when the only African-Americans deemed acceptable are those who uphold the views of the Right that “everyone” now has an equal chance. Race matters when the majority of black Americans are “victims” of the Plantation Democrats, unable apparently to think for themselves, but need the Right to explain to them that “handouts” aren’t real progress.

When Planned Parenthood is attacked as a genocide upon the black race, rather than what it is, an organization that provides the only health care available to millions of women of color and otherwise, race matters.

Race matters when undocumented workers who pay taxes, and work for low wages doing the jobs that most white folks won’t do, raising their families to be hardworking, and law-abiding citizens, are called “Illegals”. When we seek to strip citizenship from their children because they are “anchor babies”, racism is dripping from our lips.

Race matters when our sisters living within the reservations still can be assaulted by non-Native men and get no justice.

Race matters in this country and we refuse to see it and deny it at our peril. For racial hatred is deadly, it eats at the fabric of society and destroys it from within. It keeps us from embracing each other with full acceptance, but mires us in the mud of distrust and suspicion.

We are not a society that is free of racism, any more than we are free of sexism, any more than we are free of our own versions of what is moral and what is not. We are not tolerant about many things, and there are those who say that to be tolerant is  to be accepting of that which we know to be wrong merely to get along. That is not true. To be tolerant is to recognize that we, each of us, do not have a corner on morality. Our version is not THE version necessarily. Being tolerant is being open to the possibility that there are other ways, ways better than ours. For the religious, it means we are open to the work of the Spirit to enlarge our world and to our understanding of Right.

Martin Luther King Jr., was not a Republican because he believed in the tenets of the Republican party, surely not as it exists today. He is not yours, Tea party adherents. He was a Republican because that was his only choice given the Dixiecrat Democrats, who were thoroughly opposed to civil rights for black people.

Martin Luther King Jr., was not in favor of simply having an even playing field, which you Tea party adherents claim. Such doesn’t exist in the first place. And secondly Dr. King spoke often about the inequality of wealth in this country and its dangers. In fact he wondered whether capitalism was a viable economic model if it resulted in such inequality and poverty at the bottom of the pyramid of society.

Martin Luther King Jr., died while engaged in support of sanitation workers in Memphis. He supported unions and knew that they were the only viable means of securing fair wages and safe working conditions for all workers.

Look within yourselves. We must each look within ourselves. Racism is insidious. Find it. Eradicate it.

   

 

 

‘nuf said?

He’s NOT a Hoarder, So He Says

Tags

Alan West, Election 2012, Foxy Noise, GOP, Humor, life in the meadow, Mitt Romney, racism, wacko media, Women's issues

The problem with most men, is that they have a tendency to have failed to grow up. It’s called “arrested development”.

You’ve heard me before about the peanut butter jar. Lid askew, peanut butter smeared on the side, a sticky knife stuck to the counter–that’s how we leave the scene.

No female, even a young one, would leave such a mess, but boys never grow up on this issue, or at least a substantial number of them don’t.

As many of you know, we’re in the midst of packing to move. Make that “I”m in the midst of packing to move.” The Contrarian has so far “packed” one drawer of ‘tools’ which now lies on the floor. He’s “planning” his next escapade into the closet any day now.

Meanwhile, I’m on my second tour, now packing haphazardly all the small items that are not at this date deemed essential. And clearing off out shelves of throw-aways so the piece of furniture can be picked up and toted out with ease.

So this morning, I’m clearing off the side board, which has been cleaned out, but still harbors a ton of “stuff” on top. I have a garbage bag at the ready to deposit the throw-outs, such as a forlorn pair of partially used candles and the corner off a bird-feed container. (Let’s just say, I’ve decided that housework is a joke at this point) Anyway, as I pick up this or that and stick in a general box for shipping, I come across a stone-like whitish object laying on the top.

“What is this?” I turn holding it for his perusal.

“Oh,” he grins a bit sheepishly, and then smiles, “that’s my tooth.”

Now, he had had a loose tooth for years, and finally it gave up and fell out. This was old news. Several months old, which tells you how long it has been since I took a serious clear the decks attitude toward that side board.

“YOUR TOOTH!!!” I shrieked. “What is YOUR TOOTH doing there?”

“Well, I didn’t exactly know what to do with it, ya know.”

“Well I can tell you where I would put it, you hoarder!”

“I am not a hoarder!” he wailed.

Uhuh, if you can top that one, please do tell.

¶

We purchased a car yesterday, and feel quite satisfied with our find. It was in our price range, in our model range, and seems to be in good working condition, nice body, and clean. It’s at the end of the driveway awaiting our leave-taking.

Much of this has been like somebody giving you a spoon at the Hoover Dam and telling you to dig a hole through it. For the longest time, you seem to make no dent, then a trickle of water is seen, and well, then, watch out! We are at that tipping point in the move where things are starting to really move fast. I’m actually starting to get excited.

¶

The lie that Willard promotes the most often is that “under Obama’s watch, over 800,000 jobs have been lost”. And of course he knows that it is not true. All the more egregious because the way he arrives at that number is to play a dishonest accounting game that should be beneath a guy why claims so much economic gravitas.

What Willard does, is start the counting on January 1, 2009. But Obama wasn’t even sworn in until January 20, 2009. As of March 1, 2009, the Economic Recovery Act had just been signed and little of the money disbursed yet, and the economic team was not yet assembled.  If you start the clock at the March 1 date, then the net loss was only 102,000 jobs, and then the tide turns and the numbers climb upward from that point.

Willard obviously knows this, yet it serves his meme to continue misleading people with this unfair time frame.

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Willard doesn’t want you to think that he shares the GOP agenda to put women in their places. So he has taken to surrounding himself with females in photo ops. The trouble is, the women he chooses are women who voted against the Lily Ledbetter Law and the Paycheck Fairness Act. I’m not sure how that is supposed to help, unless it’s to point out that Willard doesn’t agree with these laws either. In which case, he embraces I guess the GOP position enunciated in Republican-controlled legislatures all over the country–of controlling women’s lives and their bodies. If you would like the truth on the claim that 92% of the jobs losses were women, which is also a lie, then read this post with some good graphic evidence.

The man simply lies and lies.

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I assume that our delightful Rep Alan West figured it was a good idea to guesstimate that some 75-81 Congressional Democrats were Communists. Course he’s denying it now, but of course there is video, here. The Communist Party also had some things to say about the allegations.

That should sure help him out in his delusional idea that he might get a nod as VEEP.

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Oh this is just funny doncha think?

I just giggled when I saw it.

I wish I was some kind of artist.

But I’m artistic with words.

Or perhaps I’m not. But I enjoy thinking I am.

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That George Zimmerman chose to run for “help” to Fox Noise is no accident. It’s par for the course. It’s how Fox  is viewed, and no amount of denial on their part can fix that. It didn’t occur in some vacuum. It’s because of the things that are said there. And no greater proof of that is that on their website, they cannot keep the comment section scrubbed of the vile racist diatribe that is constantly being posted there by their followers. K Street has a link from Daily Kos and a listing of some of those comments with all their “likes” attached. You can read about ten before you have had enough.

And Then There Was Just Willard

Tags

economic issues, Election 2012, gay rights, GOP, Herman Cain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, racism, safety net, social issues, teabaggers, Women's issues

With Ragin’ Ricks departure, that would seem to be the end of it. Don’t tell our intrepid Newtsie though, because he thinks that all that Ricky love will now be coming his way and make that long-ago uttered statement, “I think it’s clear that I’m going to be the nominee” a prescient truth.

Meanwhile, all the courageous Refreakricans are coming out of the woodwork to through their imprimatur upon the oily anointed one. Even our own Terry Branstad leapt to indorse the candidate Willard as his new BFF.

Not to be outdone, that moral champion NOM, offered its heartfelt support. Finally Willard got the tit-for-tat that he bargained for. After all, a check for $10,000 and a pledge to fight the gay agenda until death was not too much to ask of the etch-a-sketch presidential wannabe.

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At Foxy, a mole is turning out some interesting video. It seems that our Willard was about to be interviewed by fav idiot boy Sean the Hannity, and the two were chatting it up before the cameras rolled. Willard was talking about his wife’s “warmbloods” which are the best horses of course for dressage (pronounced dra-saj for your unFrench types), while he himself preferred the smoother gait of his Missouri Foxtrotter. They both then chortled about how such a discussion would not be helpful on camera. And then, so we are told, Willard made some gay-type giggle about a pink tie. Since I can’t watch video, please tell me if the video doesn’t support my statements.

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Herman Cain has been talkative as of late. First he encouraged Willard to hire on the great disgraced Alan West as his running mate. West dutifully said that he would serve is called up, and then dutifully said that all those pesky social issues he’s been rabid about, aren’t important at the moment.

But Herm didn’t stop there. No, he decided to help Willard out with his woman issue. Herm, being the great woman’s advocate, had this to say about why women are flocking to President Obama:

CAIN: Yes, President Obama is very likable to most people, if you just look at him and his family. But if you look at his policies, which is what most people disagree with, it’s a different story. And I think many men are much more familiar with the failed policies than a lot of other people, as well as the general public.

You see, women are “other people” and they aren’t informed on important issues like the economy, so they are swayed to support the President because he is likeable and has a nice family. I’m both dumb and other in three sentences!

Thank you Herm. Keep on sending in your checks to NOW.

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Which has nothing to do with the poor sap legislator in Wisconsin who said that scrapping the employment equality enforcement was okay since, men care more about money than women do.

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Meanwhile, Chris Christie says America is turning into a paternalistic entitlement society, “with a bunch of people sitting on their couch waiting for their government check.” Well, first I might ask how he knows so much about couch potatoes? And then I might ask how he thinks that giving the rich more money to squander on pretty things at Tiffany’s helps put food on the table for those folks who have had their checks removed. Are they to become clerks at Tiffany’s?

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Just a laugh. Mikey Huck started his new radio show and his first call-in question was full of praise for the Huck and his refreshing new point of view. Turns out however that the caller was staged and a fake listener and was actually one of the executives of his own show. Oh Huck, that’s mighty unChristian doncha think? Lies are sinful Mike.

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I don’t know if you heard all the kerfuffle yesterday about George Zimmerman. He called Sean the Hannity and had a nice chat. But his lawyers were unaware, and when they called Sean, he was mum. And then they (the lawyers) said they had never actually met their client, only talked to him on the phone. And then they quit. Sort of. And George is not supposed to be in Florida, but maybe in Cuba. It’s all confusing, and well Willard was pissed at being pushed off the top story. Field Negro has an interesting take on it all. Ain’t it nice to know that in America if you are accused of racism, your naturally go for safety to Fox Noise? Yeah.

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We don’t, as individuals, spend a lot of time imagining what it’s like to walk a mile in somebody else’s shoes. We should. It’s called empathy. Feministing alerted me to this fine article at The American Prospect. This is deep and important look at the awful practice of trying to “undue the gay.” Anyone who suggests that gayness can be therapeutically “fixed” is both wrong and dangerous.