The Misleading Media

This is the kind of garbage the media needs to be called out for propagating.  PoliticusUSA is a Liberal Sheet; yet, posts such misleading nonsense as, "57% Of Republicans Say Dismantle Constitution And Make Christianity National Religion".  You dig into the damned poll they are referencing and your find that it is based upon the opinions of 316 Republicans all of which are Rightwing, primary voters.  By Politicus' own admission, "The poll’s crosstabs reveal that support for making Christianity the official religion is strongest among Mike Huckabee (94 percent), Rick Perry (83 percent), and Ben Carson (78 percent) supporters."

While we continue to lament the toxic ramification of the deep partisan division in this country, here to my way of thinking is part of the root of the poisonous tree.  I don't believe that this 316 people comes anywhere near to representing the opinions of a majority of the Republican Party. It is my understanding that the moderate and establishment Republicans hate these guys - not to mention Conservative Independents. You understand that this is just the educated view of a damned well informed citizen.  I can imagine the effect this might have on some who are not as well informed or able to follow politics as closely as I do. 

As I said this poll represents the opinions of 316 members of the so called base of the Republican Party. These are the crazies that the media has built up into legions. It is crap. It sells publications and boosts cable ratings, but has no relationship to the truth. While partisan members of the media might justify this stupidity as stirring up their own base, in my opinion it has had the opposite effect.  It has in fact plunged millions into a sense of hopelessness and lethargy bordering on despondence that has kept them away from the polls.

For the record, I have been a registered voter in the state of Colorado since November 12, 1971. I have never been called for a national poll. I don't know anybody who has ever been called. I don't know anybody who knows anybody who has ever been called.

My husband is a math guy. He gets statistics. I hate math and detested stats. I hid in the library reading Shakespeare until Regis made me take a class in statistics to graduate. Brad says that they can be made to show anything depending upon the agenda and objectives of the people using them. Damned if it isn't the truth.

The beginning of this duplicity for hire in the most recent postmodern era is with Reagan and his plausible deniability through disinformation. Post 2008 when Mr. Obama came into office having committed the sin of being black in the eyes of these Rightwing loons, the whole agenda has swollen like a cancer on the American people. I believe that post 2016 when the historians take over, and I don't mean that insect O'Reilly, we are in for a rude awakening as we find out just how badly we have been played for the benefit of corporations and corrupt politicians.

57% Of Republicans Say Dismantle Constitution And Make Christianity National ReligionHowever, for the time being, to quote Fox Mulder in the last episode of the X-files, "Liars do not fear the truth if there are enough liars."  Give that some thought.

57% Of Republicans Say Dismantle Constitution And Make Christianity National Religion

In Defense of Our Sister

I hate social media sometimes.  It is a goddamned nursery; a place for infant souls to have tantrums without fear of a well deserved spanking.  

Last night Patricia Arquette gave an impassioned acceptance speech at the Oscars.  I have seen it, and I have listened too it closely more than once.  She is absolutely right in what she said on behalf of women.  It is, in fact, time that those we have supported, fought for, and loved do the same for us.  It is, in fact, time that women’s equality becomes more than a slogan.  Pay equity, unquestioned and unfettered access to healthcare and the freedom to decide when and if we will have children must be more than just political footballs to be kicked down the field, back and forth, between the pseudo Left and the ugly Right for the purpose of scoring political points.

Arquette is an actress not a politician.  She is not a public speaker in the way Mr. Obama is, nor was it incumbent upon her to be either.  Yet even though she stood up on a national stage and said bravely and without equivocation that the time has come for the concerns of women to be seen with clarity and purpose as the equal of all civil rights causes, within moments of her speech the fulminating and festering sewer of social media was churning out and spewing its usual filth.  Feminists, or so they call themselves, were tearing into her, dissecting her speech with malice of forethought and the intent to diminish, destroy and dilute her message.  Why? It didn't meet their standards and criteria; as if any speech by anyone had an obligation to do so, or the rights of any speaker depended up their narrow minded acceptance.

Well, as an old Feminist who was going to jail for the cause long before some of these Facebooking and Twittering brats were motile sperm I have this to say, if you can’t get your ego out of the struggle, sit down and shut the fuck up.  The grownups are at the barricades.  We have no time for daycare or for explaining to the simple minded that you can’t simultaneously defend and attach the rights and value of your sisters.

Enough is a Enough

ATTENTION COLORADO RESIDENCE:

I am angry. I am beyond angry - I am livid. House Bills 1161 and 1171 will come up for debate next week at the State level. These bills allow businesses to discriminate against people on the basis of religion. THIS IS NOT RELIGIOUS FREEDOM, IT IS RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY. I have just contacted my Senator and State House Representative, in addition to the President of the Senate. Both Senators are Republicans. I told them to keep their bloody God in church and out of public policy. Please, if you live in Colorado - where the Right enjoys a one vote majority in the Senate - do the same.

I suspect this is aimed largely at the LGBT community. We need to BOYCOTT any business involved in this shit. We need to rip any so-called public servant a new one who dares to propose that their religion supersedes the laws of this land, the Constitution and the human rights of any individual regardless of race, creed, color, gender or sexual orientation.

It is time to raise hell. Brad saw a bumper sticker not to long ago that said, "Please Jesus protect us from your followers." It isn't all of Jesus' followers, just the ones who are in power. So let this be our rallying cry, "Please Jesus protect us from your fake followers and false prophets."

Can I get a witness?

The Depth of Meaning

I guess that I am a cynic, but I don’t take people at face value.  For instance, I don’t think that Mike Huckabee loves God.  I think that he, like so many other clowns in the Rightwing clown car, is playing on the primeval fear of the ignorant to springboard to power.  This is extremely dangerous because it is this deep-seated fear that lead to the horrors of the Crusades, Inquisitions and Burning Times, to name but a few atrocities.  After much thought, I also don’t think that he is crazy.  I think he – like the rest of the parasites – plays crazy like a violin. 

I don’t think that people who, for instance, put firing ranges in their front yard in Florida are defending the 2^nd Amendment, Freedom or Liberty.  I think they are selfish, recalcitrant and defiant children who haven’t enough inside of themselves to live as adults so they seize on the trappings of adulthood.  I don’t think they give a damn about anyone else’s Freedom or Liberty, much less comprehend that those things must be shared by all to be meaningful to any; and accordingly they aren't old enough to own a gun.

I don’t think that parents who fail to vaccinate their children are engaged in naturalism or thoughtful parenting.  I think they are lazy and that they are counting on the phenomenon of herd immunity to protect them.  Clearly they haven’t reasoned out the fact that such immunity is a percentage matter.  That is to say the fewer the number of herd members vaccinated, the less effective the immunity of the whole.  I can find no other explanation for people who even when idiotic theories are roundly disproven persist in adhering to them to the potential detriment of those same children. 

I will not accept government hating as mitigating in these situations.  I have seen too many of these “government haters” put their sticky hand out to collect the government’s largess or jump on the bandwagon, political or otherwise, to suck off her tit which is by the way our tit.

No this isn't about faith, ideology, principle or values.  This is about the use and often the abuse of people by other people whose depth of soul as National Lampoon once said, “…would scarcely get your feet wet.”

What of the Common Good

One of the reasons that we enjoy the standard of health that we do in this country is our Public Health System.  Excellent public health is based upon the idea that the greatest good for the greatest number – that is to say the common good – is derived from the critical axiom that medical research grounded in sound scientific principles and disseminated to as many people as possible without bias will create a population knowledgeable and ethical enough to utilize medical advances arising from the research.  To wit: vaccinations.  

This insipid foolishness that vaccines – instrumental in irradiating such monstrous disease processes as smallpox and polio – cause what many fine scientists believe  is a genetic disorder is an example of just how selfish, stupid and stunningly self destructive we have become as a nation.  That the concept of the common good has gone by the wayside in this country, even to the point of being itself considered un-American, is bad enough.  However, the fact that every third stumble-bum who can manage to seize a microphone either by virtue of political ambition, a claim to expertise or the accident of celebrity thinks they have a right to turn their necessity into medical fact is enough to make one want to run around the room screaming.

Choice and Libertarianism my Aunt Rosie’s girdle, this is nothing short of criminal negligence and insanity.  I have said before and will say again, the rubber will meet the road when an unvaccinated child contracts Rubella and takes it home to an unvaccinated and pregnant mother.  The compromised infant conceivably born from such a pregnancy should present an instructive and humiliating moral dilemma to this freewheeling, Libertarian, most Christian nation and its prolife coalition. 

What of the child you ask?  Ask the parents or better yet, Rand Paul, Chris Christie and the legion of empty headed, gorgeously coiffed, well turned out, gargoyles who haunt cable and social media like the memory of a bad smell.    

The Work of Serious Writers

Writers write.  That is what we do.  We may not publish; we may not sell, but we write all the same.  A committed writer, like other committed craftsmen or women, has a vested interest in maintaining the integrity, precision and truth of the craft.  When we meet we speak of quality, of story lines, character development and the use of the language to make a serious contribution to the lexicon.

Recently I have met with a small group of people who seem to have confused the art and craft of writing with street peddling or carnival barking.  I have met their ilk before.  Most writers have had the misfortune to be trapped in a meeting room or lecture hall with people who insist that the writing, the work, the quality of the craftsmanship is irrelevant because a professionally designed and snappy cover is what the reader wants to see.  A slick one liner or tight, yet empty, blurb will draw the reader in because they haven't the time or intellect to think much about what they read.

Well if this were true there wouldn't be much point in the serious work of writers.  However, I don't think it is true.  I don't believe that literate people have to be tantalized like children or seduced like hormone soaked adolescence with sugar and trickery.

There is no doubt that marketing plays a part in selling books.  Accordingly I submit, indeed I insist, that the foundation of a good marketing strategy is an excellent, well written, beautifully crafted book. Flummery is not the work of serious writers, and is best left to professional peddlers.