Into the Belly of the Beast

Tags

abortion rights, astronomy, cosmology, Election 2012, GOP, Herman Cain, Italy, life in the meadow, Politics, theoretical physics, Women's issues

We drove into the belly of the beast 130 miles to a courthouse in up-state Iowa.  We came, we saw, we think we conquered. Meaning the judge will issue his findings and order within thirty days.

We have been involved in a claim for money. It was claimed we (my husband actually) owed almost all of a legal debt going back THIRTY YEARS. We claimed and provided documents to prove that every single penny had been paid. The other side provided no documents to the contrary. Confronted with this, admissions were made that we were correct. The claim is now, “Well, I want so more anyway” or words to that effect.

The questions of the judge make it quite clear to me that we will be fully vindicated.  Phrases about “woman scorned” and “filthy lucre” and “money-grubbing” and so forth would be inappropriate, unless you choose to use them by reading between the lines. It’s not worth further explanation.

These things happen to us all, usually more than once in a lifetime. We are happily going along our merry way, when somebody or some entity (usually some government bureaucracy) stands up between us and our goal and demands we spend time, and often money to prove what we know to be true, and what we often believe the other person does as well. It amounts to using legal means to exact retribution emotionally. It’s call harassment.

As I said, whatever happens, we are done with it. And I have a confidence (as does our lawyer whose documents and law went in unopposed) that we will be completely vindicated. We are feeling as if a burden has been removed. We turn our attention to plans for our future.

♦

Well, it was a busy day in the world of politics. We returned to the home front and dashed off to vote for our state senate race. This was a critical one because if our candidate didn’t win, the Senate in Iowa would be tied between the two parties. Happily, the Democratic candidate did win.

The Mississippi referendum to declare a fetus a “person” was defeated. The draconian laws passed in Ohio to take away the rights of unions was soundly recalled. The  Republican creator of the Arizonan immigration act, Russell Pearce,  was recalled in a special election. In New Jersey, voters increased the majority of the Democrats in the Jersey legislature. In Maine, voters restored a “same-day” registration to vote that had been repealed by the GOP controlled legislature.  All in all, a pretty good night for the cause of right (left) versus wrong (right).

♦

Speaking of the Mississippi referendum, the wackos on the extreme right are already promising “God’s wrath.” So I guess we should be looking for earthquakes, off-season hurricanes and other such “natural” disasters to befall the Mississippian populace. Or perhaps only the 58% of them that soundly defeated the act.

♦

Perhaps it might be fun to recall what one can get away with saying today but would have cost you your head in centuries past?  Such a thing happened to one Dominican friar Giordano Bruno in 1600 who dared to suggest that our sun was likely no different from other stars, and that they too might well have planets about them. The Inquisition did not tolerate such obvious claptrap.

Nowadays, we talk about multiverses, dark matter, string theory, and inflation (not the money kind!). A nice article in Discovery Magazine, should you be sick and tired of politics.

♦

Notorious womanizer and all-around harass-master, Herman Cain, Silvio Berlusconi is set to resign as Italian Prime Minister. Un-named sources claim that Mr. Cain, sent  a telegram to the beleaguered Italian Stallion-in-his-own-mind: “Dude you are screwed. Stop.”

♦

Let me just say this about that. The that? The Penn State scandal. What the f**k were you ADULT men thinking? How many wrongs does it take before you step up and PROTECT CHILDREN? And I don’t care how big an idol that Joe Paterno is. Simply advising somebody of the problem (don’t tell ME any details) is not enough. Did anybody ever think to call the POLICE? This reminds me for all the world like the hideous scandal in my own Church and its utter failure to act immediately to stop the abuse.

♦

It appears that Herm Cain’s defense to sexual harassment charges are quite simple. “Her claims were found baseless because she was unable to bring forth any corroborating witness.” Yes, every time that a man has tried to man-handle me, he waited until there were plenty of witnesses around. You are a pig Herm.

♦

And that’s all I got today. So you know you got it all. HA!

 

 

Amazing Wires in the World of Wireless

Tags

classes in America, Glenn Beck, Higgs boson, physics, racism, redistribution of wealth, right wing wingnuts, science, Supersymmetry, teabaggers, theoretical physics

I used to think of myself as being on the cutting edge, or close, when it came to technology. The key word is used. We are as cave dwellers today. We have yet to have a cell phone. We have no lap top, no high-speed internet, no iTunes, no plasma screens, no flat screens of anything. Mostly its finances. And location. Here in the dark hole of “the country” we spend most of our time crying out to a modern world, “can you hear me now?”

Well, we decided to discard our old phone. The static was becoming unbearable. We now have two phones, both mobile, with their little “homes” in the office and in the kitchen.

Since the Contrarian takes care of all things DVR and computer, he decided that I should become the savant where it comes to the phone. He plugged all the stuff in. That’s the wire stuff. I do the wireless stuff, and let me tell you, it’s every bit as real as cords that trip and coil around your throat.

I have managed, as of now, to program the date and time. They do not make the manuals very “instructive” if you know what I mean. Instructive I guess if you are used to that sort of thing. Not so much if the last thing you programmed was a tape cassette recorder. Wish me luck!

We got the damn fool phone on a shopping excursion yesterday. I”m back to my monthly menu planning. Just ask me what we are having say, March 16. I can tell ya. Impressed?

I got my hair cut again, finally. I swear, next time I’m going to tackle the hairdresser, brandish a curling iron, and demand strict attention. All I get is ” oh, yes I see, uhuh, no problem.” Then they blithely go about the business of doing exactly what they decided was “right for me” all along.

Speaking of hair, mine grows at lightening speed. I’m always mildly surprised when the mail doesn’t bring a request by the local university to make me the subject of a study on hair growth. But so far, the postman has only brought bills.

***

The Q Blog, has a most interesting entry today about racism’s tenacious hold on America. It relates to an incident that I was utterly unaware of dating back to the Mayor Daley years of the 60’s and Martin Luther King, Jr.

It’s been my contention here certainly, that a good deal of criticism of Obama is located in deep-seated and deeply denied racism. Certainly the rabid right simply drips bigotry in their refusal to use the word African-American, their denigration of all African-American groups such as the NAACP and others as “racist” institutions playing the “race card,” and their heaping on of vitriol against all African-American leaders,  as fanning the flames of divisiveness in their “race baiting.”

They cover this by a unitive demand for “equality” meaning no affirmative action, and applaud those that set up various means to “help the beleaguered white man.” A group in Texas has been formed to seek out white males for “scholarships to college.” Their name starts out as “The Former Majority”. In Texas, Latinos and African-Americans now outnumber whites in the state. Of course if Obama would do something about “illegals” this would not be the case, but of course that is “his plan.” Yeah, they aren’t racist at all.

***
“Wake up a little Susy!” the Everly Brothers cried. And theoretical physicists are pretty much in chorus. SUSY, standing for SuperSymmetry, is the current love child of the discipline, making all other things “work” in the rarefied world of subatomic tinkering. Problem is the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland has yet to find the Higgs Boson, so-called “God particle”. Things are gearing up for another go at it at LHC, but if it’s still not found, major revamping of the popular theory may be in order.

I know it keeps me up at night worrying. Sure it does you as well.

***

Republicans literally spit out of the phrase “redistribution of wealth” as if it were some evil. Obama was accused of this following the Joe Plumber meeting of this, and it became the rallying cry which ginned up the wacko right. COMMUNISM, SOCIALISM, and any other OTHERISM!!!

A Harvard business professor polled Americans on what they think is the income distribution in America, what it actually is, and where Americans feel it should  be. Darned if Americans don’t believe in redistribution of wealth, and darned if they think things are more equitable than they really are! Take a look at the charts, the numbers are truly staggering. Oh you idiot teabaggers, if only you could READ!

***

Propagandee, over at Urantia Sojourn, has a really fun look at Glenn Beck through the “eyes” of deceased historian Richard Hofstadter. The parallels between the extreme right-wing that Hofstadter was talking about in 1964, are strikingly similar. Read it and see if you don’t immediately see the shadow of Beckian insanity? I suggests we might all benefit from picking up a copy of Hofstadter’s work, The Paranoid Style in American Politics. Look for it in the archives of Harper’s. There’s a lot more here, so please link up to this one. It’s a bookmark, and source of further reading.

***

As to updates on all the other major stories we’ve been talking about: Things remain all screwed up.

Related Articles

• Why The Left Lost It (thedaleygator.wordpress.com)
• Miles Mogulescu: The Paranoid Style in American Politics: Its Past, Present and Future (huffingtonpost.com)
• Anti-intellectualism and Wine (fermentation.typepad.com)
• Americans HEART conspiracies (politico.com)