Archive for the ‘Slavery’ Category

“This is a big fucking deal”  -Joe Biden.

“The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.”  -MLK

The Devil is thriving in the Catholic church.

The Ides of March have passed.

The health care bill passed with some drama.  As it should.

Outside, the wind blows hard.

My favorite part is that they lied without shame and cheated overtly and they still lost with ceremony all around them on worldwide television.  Republicans sucked the other day like they haven’t in decades and it was all on display.  They barked like dogs and continue to whine like toddlers.  Shameless.

I readily confess I don’t have my brain wrapped entirely around this bill and some specifics of the reconciliation language.  I have been paying attention.  I didn’t for a time and then I did again.  I got kinda sick of it all.  It does suck.  The bill.  As in sucking chest wound suck.  A mandate without fierce oversight, a mechanism to not only compete but provide accountability and barometric pressure is pure dumb.

A license to ill.

It was on it’s head already.  I sort of understand the economic imperative behind the mandate but throw us a bone bitches or don’t even bother touching me there.

 

I just can’t help but get caught up in the symbolism.  I know the bill sucks but it does accomplish some pretty important shit.  I’ll defer to the fantastic Ms. Maddow:

“On September 23rd…

• All kids get covered (no pre-existing conditions)
  
• Can’t get dropped if you get sick (no more insurance companies dropping you)
  
• No more lifetime limits (on benefits)
  
• Children can stay on until 26 (coverage up to that age)
  

On January 1, 2011…

• Premium payment reformed (80-85% for medical care) with rebate if you don’t use coverage
  
• Free Medicare preventative care (no co-pays)
  

By 2014…

• Total ban on all pre-existing condition denials
  
• Health exchanges open
  
• End to annual limits on benefits

Republicans want to repeal this…”  -democraticunderground.com

I’m not sure I want to “do” Rachel but I’m positive I want to get her drunk and cuddle.

So yeah, some good stuff.  It’s just that it barely flirts with incentive for fairness via non profit competition.

That’s the part I liked the most when we started this whole thing.  I see it as key.  Public option, extended Medicare, whatever.  Vital.  We have miles to go before we sleep.

Single payer, Universal, whatever label you choose and whomever you choose to accuse,  the richest spender nation on the planet ought to be covering it’s people.  We buy half of all the weapons.  Half of all of them.  Half of all the weapons made for war, we buy.  I don’t think we’re as big as Canada geographically, but our dick is way bigger.  Can you hear me now?  WAY bigger.  We could take Canada in 72 hours without the military.  They don’t have many guns but we do.

What exactly are health exchanges?  We now know they will be open.  How many?  Where?  I’ll assume that’s good news.  A place to trade bandages and syringes.  Do I have to volunteer?  I’m gonna have to choke a bitch.  I’m gonna have to read this bill and the 157 page reconciliation.  I’m working like twelve hours a week and taking a class.  You can see how I’m underwater.

My feet hurt and it’s humiliating.

It’s a simple problem and the answer is simple.  Shave five or fifteen cents off the defense budget and we can throw in some jobs for infrastructure.  Health care, jobs and mortgage relief.  We spend half the entire global budget on weapons and ten times as much as our nearest competitor.  China.  That there is my idea of Socialism, spending way too much of the people’s money on things they vehemently disagree with.  Wait, that’s Communism.  Isn’t it?  When they can’t afford roof and bread it is.  There is your Goddamn communism.

That there is your buttock.

Wars are your ass.

Your ass mam, has gone missing.

I’m trying to make a point here.  We still are a wealthy nation, despite our recent financial regress.  Much of it was concentrated without equity in the last decade but there is plenty of money right here in River City.  There is no reason, moral or fiscal, we should be denied this right.  It insults my intelligence when anyone complains about paying for it.  They talk about health care being 15 to 18 percent of our GDP.  The defense budget is well over half of every dollar you pay in taxes.  We spend so much fucking money on weapons, it makes the world go round.

Literally.  The world turns because of America’s efforts to be able to kill everyone of us.  Thank God for us.  Don’t piss us off.

Still, I’m impressed and finally proud again of the Democrats.  They pulled it off and scared the crap quite literally out of the obstructionist asstards by supplying them with an example of lockstep so long taken for granted as a fundament in the Republican playbook.  Smoked them at their own game.  Here’s hoping this bodes well and emboldens this heretofore assemblage of invertebrates.  See little Billy, we knew you could do it.  Now get your little ass back out there because the game isn’t even half over.  Be a Democrat for fucks sake.

Now the crazies come out like corpses of Laurel & Hardy with giant red eyed rats speeding off and away from their persons and pockets and folds.  Slack jawed zombies repeating obsolete talking points and swinging scythes.  The Baggers.  The Birthers.  The Hawks, Neocons, Bigots and Bible thumpers.  What an egregious ship of fools.  Obsructionist pricks for infamy.  Avoid their rodent familiars and do not dance with either of any of them.

It’s not safe to drink their liquor.

They really are beginning to parody themselves.

I’ve always thought that being a good loser is important.  I’ve been on the losing end enough to approach being gracious I think.  I’m hopeful that losing has humbled me, it sucks and it shames me but I try to learn and stuff and be polite about it.  The way one loses speaks volumes about one’s character.  If you listened to Boehner on the floor the other night or The Human Shitsmear and Butt Boy Hannity these last few mornings you might think the sky is about to kill you in your bed.

Not good losers, but excellent assholes.

These pricks are the epitome of sore losers along with the entire lock step, teeth full of Orios, lime green plastic tumbler full of cherry Kool Aid and rum mouth breathing members of the 1/4 Paradigm.  That was a pretty cool sentence.  If you don’t know about the 1/4 paradigm, categories are on the right on the main page.  Just scroll down.  I have a fairly general theory about relativity and how it applies without bias but with predictable pattern in a sociopolitical context.  I offer a bold constant.

I don’t really know about other countries but I understand very well that one of every four people in this country are ignorant dipshits.  My “1/4 Paradigm”.  In stores near you.

You’d think an invitation was extended to a banquet just ahead of the apocalypse.  You’d think because we passed a weak ass health care bill we were courting Satan himself.  The bill sucks.  Hello irony.  Fuck us in the neck.

The reaction has been of the meanest of spirit and bafflingly irrational.  Childish and callow.  Pointless.  Some fourteen state attorneys general have or intend to file suit.  Futile.  Not going to happen, if any single case enjoys a day in court it will be ashes, ashes and they will all fall down.  A waste of time money and the attention of even the dumbest citizens.  Give me a break.  Might as well piss up a rope.

Children of the corn.

What has my attention is the ugly and still gathering brutal reaction of the great unwashed.

Bricks through windows and awful terrorizing threats directed at our elected representatives that have finally and with courage, attempted the right thing on behalf of us all.  Stupak came around and they went after him like a common enemy.  Cheers Bart.  Those were your people.  An articulate bunch.  Very brave and very cool.

Kucinich is still the king of composure and principal.  What a class act.  I think Maddow and Kucinich should snuggle.  Just then, Dennis’ hot, six foot tall, copper haired, wife with a scorching accent enters the room in a black skirt, pumps and a line up the back of the stocking.  Nobody gets the Kucinich cool like I do.

Cantor’s claim of a bullet is looking dubious.  I bet that little prick is lying.

What frightens me is the virulence and vehemence, the irrational fury of those that would oppose a leap forward.

What makes me sick is the publicly elected officials who foment such dehumanizing disregard for common decency and difference of, or deference for, an opinion.  This is America.  We aren’t ever going to be herded onto boxcars for mass extermination.  If it ever happens here it will last an afternoon, maybe a day.  I’m not referencing irresponsible roundheads like Limbaugh, Hannity or Beck but rather the Boehners, Bachmanns, Cantors, Kings, Grassleys and Demints.  Allegedly responsible representatives who hobby, trade and wage in fear and dangerous incendiary nonsense.

Dirty, filthy immoral bastards who would blow anyone for $20k.  How do these people get taken seriously?  See above.

They deliberately cultivate and collect the same brand of bigoted, racist and ignorant subhuman that so violently opposed civil rights legislation.  Dumbass mouth breathing fucktards.  A handful of those folks have ended up being assassins.  Murderers.

American tradition and legacy is such that justice and liberty for all eventually prevails.  When there is will there is way.

It can take a while and never without a price.  The vulgar and profane consistently manage to extract more than a pound of flesh.  They are arrogant and bereft of humility.  At this pace, there will be blood.

They will go too far unfortunately and their cause will be consigned to history as ill advised and malattempted.  Political leprosy.  Social pariahs.  Just like McCarthy, Nixon and Dumbya’s entire posse.

These people are as ridiculous as they are dangerous.  There will be blood.

Just do the best you can to think peace.  It’s gonna get ugly.

It just might start rural.

All these earth quakes.  Bound to be a volcano.  See what I’m saying?

Health care is no mere privilege but a right that comes with being born human at least.  I believe that.  I always will.

Drinks for my friends.

There is a kind of brutal asymmetry about the death of Jesse Helms today, the same day that both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson shucked their coils mortal in 1826. The birth of our once great country. A campaign season with the first ever African American leading in polls for President.

Happy Fourth of July.

Likely the best thing to be said of him, he had the courage of his convictions. He was consistent. Still, I wouldn’t cross a country road to piss on his grave. Mr. Helms was an evil bigot.

He opposed Martin Luther King Day in 1983.

“Helms once deeply offended a black colleague, Democratic Senator Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois, by singing part of “Dixie” on a Capitol elevator.

Soon after the Senate vote on the Confederate flag insignia, Sen. Jesse Helms (R.-N.C.) ran into Mosely-Braun in a Capitol elevator. Helms turned to his friend, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah), and said, “Watch me make her cry. I’m going to make her cry. I’m going to sing ‘Dixie’ until she cries.” He then proceeded to sing the song about “the good life” during slavery to Mosely-Braun (Gannett News Service, 1993-09-02; Time, 1993-08-16″

“White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races.” -From a campaign ad Helms was involved in creating.

Another ad featured photographs Helms doctored to illustrate the allegation that Graham’s wife had danced with a black man. (FAIR 2001-09-01, The News and Observer 2001-08-26)

A former Democrat, Helms straddled the Republican expoitation of racial division in the south to fuel his own success.

He consistently opposed gay rights. Although he did once describe the genitalia of Strom Thurmond as “gorgeous” and a “splenderous tract of man flesh”. This, despite the fact that Thurman’s unit had seen battle in an African American vagina.

He was instrumental in the ascendency of Ronald Reagan and therefore a major player in the birth of contemporary conservatism. Neoconservatism. The beginning of what may be the demise of our republic.

Jesse Helms was an asshole, I regret that I have but one toast to hoist in celebration of his dirt nap.

Drinks for my friends.

James Dobson, leading evangelical, founder of Focus on The Family and therefore self righteous dipshit, took it upon himself to open fire on our man Obama today for suggesting in a two year old speech that it is impractical to govern solely on the basis of scripture.

Um, no shit. By the way, Our Man was speaking to a liberal Christian group named Call To Renewal.

“Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy?” Obama asked in the speech. “Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount?” -CNN.com

Dobson said, “I think he’s deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own world view, his own confused theology,” Dobson said, adding that Obama is “dragging biblical understanding through the gutter.” -CNN.com

Well I for one would like to believe he was pointing out just how stupid and archaic so much of the Christian dogma actually is. Probably not though. I suspect he was merely saying it is impractical to base policy on an ancient text, regardless of the reverence it still enjoys.

For what it’s worth, I’m still plenty pissed at our man over the FISA thing.

I think any debate that entertains the inclusion of any amount faith into politics or government is witheringly wrongheaded and spurious. I am weary, wary and leery of it. Big suprise from an agnostic huh?

It is abundantly clear that the founding fathers had every intention of keeping church and state separate. News flash; your religion, faith or beliefs are your own. You chose them or were probably indoctrinated. I just don’t care and I’m completely unwilling to hear about it or them.

I don’t care and I don’t have to because I’ve long since made up my mind and this is America.

The idea that any religious bureaucracy wields even a modicum of influence on political discourse in this country inspires a gamut of emotion in me that ranges from disgust to rage. When I encounter it, my knee jerks as if to say fuck you in the neck.

Do people like like Dobson believe they have some kind of moral superiority and it is therefore incumbent on them, perhaps even their duty, to foist their wisdom on the rest of us? Yup, they do. That’s why I loathe them. So many insincere zealots. The quantity of their conviction almost always belies the depth of their hypocrisy. An inverse relationship that we are treated to over and over.

Larry Craig, Mark Foley, Cardinal Mahoney, Haggard, Swaggart, Baker, Roberts, Falwell, Tilton……………

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion–several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven….The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste.
– “The Lowest Animal” -Mark Twain

Were it up to me, no religious spokesperson would be allowed to comment on public policy, legislation, campaigns or the merits of titty bars. Not even from the pulpit. Any who dared break the rule would see their own house of worship taxed to the fullest extent of our convoluted tax code.

A portion of the revenue would be used to reconstruct said place of worship so that it’s entire exterior would be of glass. This house of whatever God, would then be afforded the opportunity to reduce it’s tax burden by allowing it’s own worshippers to throw stones at itself.

Honestly, I don’t have a problem with Jesus. Basic Christian tenets are pretty sound. I like the one about do unto others and that one about judge not lest ye judged. Good stuff.

I can’t help but despise a good number of his fans. They should be allowed their primitive rituals and blind faith. Whatever gets you through the night is your business. Keep it that way and we’re cool. Fail to respect that and I’m free to fire flesh shredding salvos of logic at you until the lies, evil, ignorance and corruption are all that’s left.

Upon molesting the bull, one automatically qualifies for the horns.

“So much blood has been shed by the Church because of an omission from the Gospel: “Ye shall be indifferent as to what your neighbor’s religion is.” Not merely tolerant of it, but indifferent to it. Divinity is claimed for many religions; but no religion is great enough or divine enough to add that new law to its code.”
– Mark Twain, a Biography

Drinks for my friends.

Absolutely nuts that the birth of this nation condoned the ownership, exploitation and abuse of men, women and children.

How do we explain that?

Ignorance among people unable to think for themselves?

Nope, not entirely. Economics. The filthy fucking lucre. Slaves were the economic engine that drove this country into the nineteeth century. Slaves. Slaves harvesting tobacco and cotton.

Revisionist history would have us believe that our nation was rent asunder over this practice a mere century later. Not entirely true.

Again, there were prevailing economic issues as well.

Slavery was the root and the rot but not the flag.

The enslavement of humans was the moral imperative. As long as one believed that those of a darker pigmentation were somehow inherently inferior and ought to be supine, well then, we had a difference seperating us worth killing for.

That, and all the jobs were going north.

There were a lot more stupid rednecks back then.

Crazy. We killed over a half a million of ourselves.

There were heros on both sides.

Even though right and wrong were as clear as black and white, pun, forcefully intended, that ridiculous fucking flag lives on. That, Confederate flag.

Then we commenced killing natives and every goddamn buffalo we saw. Another story, probably just as bad, but we killed most of them so you don’t hear much about it.

We give them casinos now.

Can I tell you what I think happened last night?

Texans figured they had more stomach for a white woman than a black man. I can’t help but believe the same happened in Ohio.

And there we are.

He took cities, she took counties. Forgive me, but it was the rednecks versus the um, informed.

I realize how thin the ice is underneath me.

I’ve always felt that catering to the rural vote is tactically arduous but strategically simple. That is where Billary went, because they had to. She saw her own hide start to smoke and she got on with it.

That is where our man Obama went too. Same idea, opposite direction. He went to the cities. Sights set too low, perhaps as a result of a campaign not used to being flush with cash. A mistake.

What they may have done here by accident, is begin down a path that is as much about a white woman against a black man as it is about anything else.

They have begun to divide.

Not yet guilty, both poised to make matters worse if they’re not careful.

I do think that’s what happened.

I think it sucks.

Drinks for my friends.

A rambling response to my friends blog. PhatShady

Careful with the opiates my friend.

It is a fascinating post. If prostitution is the world’s oldest profession then perhaps slavery, in one form or another, is mankind’s oldest way of life.

Without question, America would not be the economic and military powerhouse it is today, even in it’s current wobbly state, without the broken backs of just about every color.

Look at what we did to Native Americans.

The Irish an the Italians suffered under some pretty brutal discrimination in the 19th century in America. The Irish for example, were simply here to escape poverty and a famine in their own country.

They got drunk. They were unemployed. Bastard children. The rest of America loathed them.

Long story short, forgive my brevity here, light skinned immigrants have gradually but steadily been able to integrate into American society and culture. If your skin is a different color, or your features are demonstrably different from the anglo saxon/protestant, you know, norm? Here in the melting pot? Well, the whole thing moves way slower. As we speak, it’s still a century behind in some ways and spectacularly so in some places.

I think it’s kinda funny and absurd that idiot Romney has the temerity to call Reverend Al a bigot. Boy, that was dumb. And yeah, I think Al was going after mormons. To be completely honest with you, I enjoyed it. I give him a pass. The church of latter day saints has, at least in recent history, been racist by way of DOCTRINE.

So I say, fuck ’em.

I’ve finally found something that Christopher Hitchins and I can agree on, limey arrogant prick that he is. Religion is toxic. Does more harm than good. Al’s a pentecostal minister. In my mind, much less wierd than the sacred underwear wearers.

And I like Al. I have nothing but disdain for guys like Willard Mitt Romney and Ralph Reed. Methinks they are racist pricks. And insincere. Who names their kid Willard Mitt? Sheezus.

Al’s speech at the Democratic convention in ’04 was a motherfuckin house afire. His great grandfather was owned by the Family of Strom Thurmond. I like Al.

Sorry Phat, got a little carried away.

So anyway. Baseball has been taken over by Latins and South Americans. I got no problem with that. Except the rich white infrastructure. Dumbya had a piece of the Texas Rangers ya know.

Sorry again……………..

Sometimes males behave in a fashion towards the opposite sex that causes me to cringe. We tend to be rude, to objectify and conduct ourselves as compassionless, insensitive and sometimes sociopathic fucktards. I’m regularly embarrassed.

It’s really a wrongheaded, testosterone fueled shame.

And I admit, I’ve been guilty of it.

Women, on the other hand, can be guilty of many of the same things. Often they choose to generalize and view us all as Cro-Magnon beasts, barely tolerable save for our ability to make fire and bring home meat.

Most of the time, it’s not fair.

There are times however, that I don’t blame them.

Now, white men. It’s not the first time I’ve had a reason to pause and feel that sting of shame over something another caucasian has said or done. The last few days however, have been a little beyond discomfiting.

We’re all well aware of the horrors committed by us, white men, throughout history. Vast genocides of indigenous peoples. Bullshit religious crusades. Supression, discrimination, enslavement and exploitation. We suck.

I’m sorry and I’m doing the best I can.

Then, just yesterday, it came to light that in a recent interview, a man I have admired until now, stuck both feet in his mouth in such a way as to make me wince hard. He didn’t stop there. After he’d ignorantly masticated his own feet, he beat himself about the head and neck with what was left of his bleeding stumps.

I’m talking about Joe Biden.

The first time I noticed him, his teeth clenched and he was ready to come over the table at John Ashcroft during one of the very first forays into torture conducted by congress during this war.

Yesterday I heard him say, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy … I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

Articulate, bright and clean?

Oh, man.

Then other things came to the fore. He’s a plagiarist. His remarks about immigrant employees of convenience stores are just despicable. “you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.”

What?

You know, I don’t give a mad fuck what he meant or was trying to say. If he is dumb enough, out of touch enough and ignorant enough to say such things, and he clearly is, then this man has no business representing a single voter in America.

It occurs to me that Joe Biden is a racist.

That sucks. Although I never paid too much attention, I liked what I saw. But I didn’t see this.

Not nearly enough good for the bad, methinks.

Bullshit on that. Drinks for my friends.