The Mitt's About To Hit The Fan

Imagine this.  You’re a 60-something gay Vietnam veteran out to dinner with your husband in New Hampshire when Mitt Romney sits down at your table uninvited to ask for your vote in overturning your state’s gay marriage law. You know, the one that allowed you to marry your partner of a few decades or so in the first place.

Are you more offended that Romney mistook your proud military heritage for blatant homophobia? Or just annoyed that homeboy had the hubris to invite himself to your date night, like some bizarre MTV reality television show, Republican Third Wheel? (MTV, if you’re reading. Let’s make this show happen, GaySAP! Lunch?)

Romney may as well have poured a coke over the couple’s heads and smashed their faces in their Potatoes au Gratin. Who crashes someone’s meal just to insult them? In a state that respects and honors the couple with full marriage equality laws, at that! Talk about losing your appetite.

Let’s hope for dinner’s sake that it doesn’t come to that.

Gay-On-Gay Hypocracy is So gay!!!

Something happened earlier last week that really got me thinking…and really got me riled up.

I was standing outside waiting for class to begin and there were a couple of people standing rather close to me.  Since they were so close, I couldn’t help but overhear part…okay most of what they were talking about.  Mind you, I don’t generally make it a habit to eavesdrop on others, but as it happens, these two were putting a lot of heavy emphasis on their S’s.  So much so, in fact, that I had to look down at the ground to make sure I hadn’t stumbled into a snake pit.  But I digress…

From what I could make out, they were talking about WORLD HIV/AIDS DAY.  I couldn’t help but think that it was nice to know others are, in fact, aware of this event.

Well……

As it turns out, their discussion quickly turned to them talking about previous friends of theirs who, it was at some point discovered, turned out to be HIV+.  I think that, statistically speaking, we all probably know one or two people who are living with HIV or has passed away from it.

Their discussion, however, turned ugly…

Prissy 1:  “Do you remember Emmy?”

Prissy 2:  “What ever happened to her?  I thought you two were friends forever.”

Prissy 1:  “You know she’s poisoned, right?”

Prissy 2:  “Shut the fuck up!!!  I KNEW it!!!  Is she dead now?”

Prissy 1:  “I don’t know.  She kept getting all sick so I kicked her out.  Once they’re poisoned, they’re disposable.”

Okay, now picture me leaning in to hear, so as not to take them out of context so that when I verbally stomp a mudhole in them I won’t be unjustified.

So I learned that people with HIV are referred to as “poisoned” or “poisonous”, and the word “disposables” was also used.

This reminded me of the summer my (now) ex and I moved here from Missouri.  We met a group of people on the lake and really had a great time with them.  They all seemed pretty cool, until, that is, the conversation – for some reason – turned to a person they knew who turned out to be HIV positive.  This conversation went pretty much just like the one above.  They were talking about how that person “came out” with the news of his HIV status and these people, quite simply, shunned them for it.  We tried to press them further because we couldn’t imaging that people here in California – GAY people here in California at that – could be so damned uneducated, intolerant and cruel.  Long story short, they made it clear that the ONLY reason this person wasn’t their friend anymore was because he was now HIV positive.

Until today, I really thought that this was an isolated incident of intolerance by a relatively small group of drunken idiots.  Obviously not the case.

That we could be on the tail end of the year 2011 and in what is arguably considered one of the most progressive states in the union, and you can still hear people ostracizing victims of a horrible affliction, quite simply baffles and sickens me.

I’ve had a conversation some time ago with an old online blogging friend in Boston about this very topic.  That being how apathetic parts of the gay community has become of late.  My friend Ted made an observation about some people he knew on the East coast.  He told me that he has friends who tend to either sleep around or are in “open relationships”, and the fact that they tend to “inter-mingle” when, as he delicately put it, “pickens are slim”.  In other words, when some of his friends couldn’t find a person to sleep with that was new or not of the regular social crowd, they would sleep with each other.  Then one of them came down with HIV and not only was this person unceremoniously drummed out of the group, he was also told point-blank that he was considered toxic and therefore needed to move before everyone found out.

The ironic part here is that this guy was originally from San Francisco.  He was treated so badly by other gays in San Francisco for being HIV+ that he had to move clear across the country and now lives in Boston.  So Ted said that when he heard this he was shocked beyond belief.  This still has a profound affect on Ted because this same guy committed suicide less than two years later when he went home to visit family and had the misfortune of running into those same ex-friends, who threatened to tell his family if he didn’t leave the bar they were all in.

I suppose I could over-simplify this by saying that because someone was taken off the meat market by being afflicted with an illness, his former friends decided he was radioactive and not only drummed him out of the sleep-around club but they threatened to ruin his life further by dragging his name through the mud.

But instead I will just say that if this is truly where we are 30+ years after the start of this malady…if even gays – whom I would have thought to be more educated and less apathetic or ambivalent – are shunning their friends for something like this…then this world truly has taken a gigantic leap backward.

Just a note to those who would force themselves to forget history…a lot of people died in the past 30+ years.  In a way, those deaths have led to more focus being placed on the EQUAL treatment of you and your friends.  Were it not for so much focus being placed on such a horrible illness, not to mention all the people – both famous and non-famous – dying, you might not be swishing around so proudly and openly and enjoying the chance to be so catty and nonchalant about something like this.  You can treat people like Kleenex if you wish, but over time, you get older, then you happen to notice that the Kleenex box is empty.

Unlike Kleenex, friends are not something you should so easily and callously throw away.

And in my humble opinion (and to beat this metaphor to death), I think your attitudes towards friends who are or become sick is FAR uglier than what’s in that tissue.

Stupid is as stupid does (or teaches).

As the stigma of homosexuality fades from public discourse, people are becoming more open about their sexuality and doing so at an earlier age. This is a sign of a healthy society. Yet, there is a segment of society that is deeply disturbed by this trend and it manifests itself in our schools as anti-gay bullying. The result has been a rash of suicide among gay teens across the country.

In an effort to stop this mindless harassment, Michigan is in the middle of passing “Matt’s Safe School Law” (official title SB 137) named for 14-year old Matt Eppling, a gay teen that committed suicide in 2002 as a result of bullying. Sounds like a reasonable response but that’s only if you’re a normal person. To a Republican, SB 137 steps on our constitutional right to hound someone until they kill themselves.

The exact language inserted by Republicans:

THIS SECTION DOES NOT ABRIDGE THE RIGHTS UNDER THE FIRST AMENDMENT OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OR UNDER ARTICLE I OF THE STATE CONSTITUTION OF 1963 OF A SCHOOL EMPLOYEE, SCHOOL VOLUNTEER, PUPIL, OR A PUPIL’S PARENT OR GUARDIAN. THIS SECTION DOES NOT PROHIBIT A STATEMENT OF A SINCERELY HELD RELIGIOUS BELIEF OR MORAL CONVICTION OF A SCHOOL EMPLOYEE, SCHOOL VOLUNTEER, PUPIL, OR A PUPIL’S PARENT OR GUARDIAN. (emphasis mine)

Amen!!!

So if you really believe that homosexuals are evil and immoral, it’s perfectly fine to tell them so as much as you want. Hell, your parents can get in on it, too! You can all get together and scream “You’re a goddamn disgusting fag and you’re gonna burn forever!” whenever you feel like it!

Just so we’re clear: this would be bullying a homosexual student.

But it’s OK because it’s a religious belief! Isn’t it funny how religious conservatives use their religion to excuse so many behaviors the civilized world considers to be immoral? Let’s put it to what I like to call the “Muslim Test”: Would these same tireless defenders of the Constitution allow a group of radical Muslim students to direct their “sincerely held religious  belief” that infidels should be converted or killed at a lone Christian student until that student was good and terrorized?

Don’t be stupid! That would be bullying the poor child and that would be wrong!

Muslim Test: Failed as always.

Once again, we see the Right indulging in its favorite past time: cloaking its bigotry and hate in “religious freedom.” In this instance, the freedom to drive children to suicide over a few cherry picked verses from the Bible. Because nothing says “Love thy neighbor” like bullying people you don’t like.

…

Read SB 137 here.

Read more about GOP callousness here.

Feel free to tell me what a terrible person I am either here or on Facebook.

Not Forgotten

I could post about all the good, bad and ugly that has transpired in the past decade, but the thought of doing that seems rather shallow and insensitive at the moment.  Considering those who aren’t with us because of the events of that day, I think I’ll just re-post the poem I wrote just days after the second tower fell.  I discovered that three of my friends who worked in the towers never made it out.

Pieces of a Flag

On a sunny Tuesday morning, it could have been any normal day.

Many of our East coast friends went about beginning in their usual way.

Coffee cup’s filling, friendly “Good morning’s” and the day’s work being prepped,

While in the skies above them the fingers of an unseen evil crept.

Thousands in the Standing Stripes and as many in the Star,

Would never have fair warning of their fates sealed from afar.

Men who hate our pride and freedom and want to make us pay,

How could we have known, for this, they’d take our friends away?

We lost a lot of friends that day, both in New York and in D.C.

The shock of what has happened is, even now, still hitting me.

There was one plane of four that by heroism, did not reach its mark.

The courage shown by those passengers is the epitome of freedoms’ spark.

Four planes, full of innocents, by evil-doers turned into missile’s,

Turned a peaceful morning into the noise of sirens, screams and whistles.

We watched…frozen…awestruck, as they tore into our country’s heart.

This nation, by resolve, will prove cowards cannot pull our flag apart.

We lost a bit of innocence that day at the hands of those morally depraved.

But what they keep forgetting is WE’RE AMERICA, Home of the Brave!!

We will rebuild…We must move on, and yes, we’ll overcome,

And to those we’ve lost we make this vow…we’ll remember you…every one.

Dedicated to Shawn, Rebecca and “Meryle”…

Friends I lost in the World Trade Center.

Any Wonder WHY I Lean Left???

I remember an interview a while back in which NFL coach Mike Ditka was giving a news conference one day after being fired as the coach of the Chicago Bears when he decided to quote the Bible.

“Scripture tells you that all things shall pass,” a choked-up Ditka said after leading his team to only five wins during the previous season.  “This, too, shall pass.”

Ditka fumbled his biblical citation, though. The phrase “This, too, shall pass” doesn’t appear in the Bible. Ditka was quoting a phantom scripture that sounds like it belongs in the Bible, but look closer and it’s not there.

Ditka’s biblical blunder is as common as preachers delivering long-winded public prayers. The Bible may be the most revered book in America, but it’s also one of the most misquoted. Politicians, motivational speakers, coaches – all types of people  – quote passages that actually have no place in the Bible, religious scholars say.

These phantom passages include:

“God helps those who help themselves.”

“Spare the rod, spoil the child.”

And there is this often-cited paraphrase: “Satan tempted Eve to eat the forbidden apple in the Garden of Eden.”

None of those passages appear in the Bible, and one is actually anti-biblical, scholars say.

But people rarely challenge them because biblical ignorance is so pervasive that it even reaches groups of people who should know better, says Steve Bouma-Prediger, a religion professor at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.

“In my college religion classes, I sometimes quote 2 Hesitations 4:3 (‘There are no internal combustion engines in heaven’),” Bouma-Prediger says. “I wait to see if anyone realizes that there is no such book in the Bible and therefore no such verse.

“Only a few catch on.”

Few catch on because they don’t want to – people prefer knowing biblical passages that reinforce their pre-existing beliefs, a Bible professor says.

“Most people who profess a deep love of the Bible have never actually read the book,” says Rabbi Rami Shapiro, who once had to persuade a student in his Bible class at Middle Tennessee State University that the saying “this dog won’t hunt” doesn’t appear in the Book of Proverbs.

It’s true…they have memorized parts of texts that they can string together to prove the biblical basis for whatever it is they believe in, but they ignore the vast majority of the text.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m just as guilty.  Being raised in a pseudo-Catholic family, my rubber-stamp response to anyone who might ask of my religious proclivities is: “I’m catholic…We never really read the bible.  We just took everybody’s word for it.”

Phantom biblical passages work in mysterious ways

Ignorance isn’t the only cause for phantom Bible verses. Confusion is another.

Some of the most popular faux verses are pithy paraphrases of biblical concepts or bits of folk wisdom.

Consider these two:

“God works in mysterious ways.”  (I usually say it thus: “The Lord works in mysterious, inefficient, and, breath-takingly cruel ways.”)

“Cleanliness is next to Godliness.”  (So by that logic, I could say: “Can’t find a napkin?  Use a tortilla.”)

Both sound as if they are taken from the Bible, but they’re not. The first is a paraphrase of a 19th century hymn by the English poet William Cowper who said: “God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.”

The “cleanliness” passage was coined by John Wesley, the 18th century evangelist who founded Methodism.

No matter if John Wesley or someone else came up with a wise saying – if it sounds proverbish, people figure it must come from the Bible.

Our fondness for the short and tweet-worthy may also explain our fondness for phantom biblical phrases. The pseudo-verses function like theological tweets: They’re pithy summarizations of biblical concepts.

“Spare the rod, spoil the child” falls into that category. It’s a popular verse – and painful for many kids. Could some enterprising kid avoid the rod by pointing out to his mother that it’s not in the Bible?

It’s doubtful. Her possible retort: The popular saying is a distillation of Proverbs 13:24: “The one who withholds [or spares] the rod is one who hates his son.”

Another saying that sounds Bible-worthy: “Pride goes before a fall.” But its approximation, Proverbs 16:18, is actually written: “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”

There are some phantom biblical verses for which no excuse can be offered. The speaker goofed.

They Started It!!!!

When phantom Bible passages turn dangerous

People may get verses wrong, but they also mangle plenty of well-known biblical stories as well.

Two examples: The scripture never says a whale swallowed Jonah, the Old Testament prophet, nor did any New Testament passages say that three wise men visited baby Jesus, scholars say.

Those details may seem minor, but scholars say one popular phantom Bible story stands above the rest: The Genesis story about the fall of humanity.

Most people know the popular version – Satan in the guise of a serpent tempts Eve to pick the forbidden apple from the Tree of Life. It’s been downhill ever since.

But the story in the book of Genesis never places Satan in the Garden of Eden.

Genesis mentions nothing but a serpent.  Not only does the text not mention Satan, the very idea of Satan as a devilish tempter postdates the composition of the Garden of Eden story by at least 500 years.

Getting biblical scriptures and stories wrong may not seem significant, but it can become dangerous.

Most people have heard this one: “God helps those that help themselves.” It’s another phantom scripture that appears nowhere in the Bible, but many people think it does. It’s actually attributed to Benjamin Franklin, one of the nation’s founding fathers.

The passage is popular in part because it is a reflection of cherished American values: individual liberty and self-reliance.

Yet that passage contradicts the biblical definition of goodness: defining one’s worth by what one does for others, like the poor and the outcast.

Citing a scripture from Leviticus that tells people that when they harvest the land, they should leave some “for the poor and the alien” (Leviticus 19:9-10), and another passage from Deuteronomy that declares that people should not be “tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor.”

We often infect the Bible with our own values and morals, not asking what the Bible’s values and morals really are.

Where do these phantom passages come from?

It’s easy to blame the spread of phantom biblical passages on pervasive biblical illiteracy. But the causes are varied and go back centuries.

Some of the guilty parties are anonymous, lost to history. They are artists and storytellers who over the years embellished biblical stories and passages with their own twists.

If, say, you were an anonymous artist painting the Garden of Eden during the Renaissance, why not portray the serpent as the devil to give some punch to your creation? And if you’re a preacher telling a story about Jonah, doesn’t it just sound better to say that Jonah was swallowed by a whale, not a “great fish”?

Others blame the spread of phantom Bible passages on King James, or more specifically the declining popularity of the King James translation of the Bible.

That translation, which marks 400 years of existence this year, had a near monopoly on the Bible market as recently as 50 years ago.  If you quoted the Bible and got it wrong then, people were more likely to notice because there was only one text.  Today, so many different translations are used that almost no one can tell for sure if something supposedly from the Bible is being quoted accurately or not.

Others blame the spread of phantom biblical verses on Martin Luther, the German monk who ignited the Protestant Reformation, the massive “protest” against the excesses of the Roman Catholic Church that led to the formation of Protestant church denominations.

It is a great Protestant tradition for anyone – milkmaid, cobbler, or innkeeper – to be able to pick up the Bible and read for herself. No need for a highly trained scholar or cleric to walk a lay person through the text.  But often the milkmaid, the cobbler – and the NFL coach – start creating biblical passages without the guidance of biblical experts.

You can see this manifest today in living room Bible studies across North America where lovely Christian people, with no training whatsoever, drink decaf, eat brownies and ask each other, ‘What does this text mean to you?’’

Not only do they get the interpretation wrong, but very often end up quoting verses that really aren’t there.

Michele Bachmann just signed the following “Marriage Vow”…and the pandering racist dumbing-down of America continues…

THE MARRIAGE VOW
A Declaration of Dependence upon MARRIAGE and FAMILY1
Faithful monogamy is at the very heart of a designed and purposeful order – as conveyed by Jewish and Christian Scripture, by Classical Philosophers, by Natural Law, and by the American Founders – upon which our concepts of Creator-endowed human rights, racial justice and gender equality all depend.2
Enduring marital fidelity between one man and one woman protects innocent children, vulnerable women, the rights of fathers, the stability of families, and the liberties of all American citizens under our republican form of government. Our exceptional and free society simply cannot endure without the transmission of personal virtue, from one generation to the next, by means of nurturing, nuclear families comprised of sexually-faithful husbands and wives, fathers and mothers. We acknowledge and regret the widespread hypocrisy of many who defend marriage yet turn a blind eye toward the epidemic of infidelity and the anemic condition of marriages in their own communities. Unmistakably, the Institution of Marriage in America is in great crisis:

1.  Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA‟s first African-American President.3
2.  LBJ‟s 1965 War on Poverty was triggered in part by the famous “Moynihan Report” finding that the black out-of-wedlock birthrate had hit 26%; today, the white rate exceeds that, the overall rate is 41%, and over 70% of African-American babies are born to single parents4 – a prime sociological indicator for poverty, pathology and prison regardless of race or ethnicity. 5
3. About one million U.S. children suffer through divorce each year – the outcome of about half of all first marriages and about 60 percent of remarriages, disproportionately affecting economically-vulnerable families.6
4.  The taxpayer-borne social costs of family fragmentation exceeds $112 billion per year, especially when all costs to the justice system are recognized.7
5.  Social protections, especially for women and children, have been evaporating as we have collectively “debased the currency” of marriage. This debasement continues as a function of adultery; “quickie divorce;” physical and verbal spousal abuse; non-committal co-habitation; pervasive infidelity and “unwed cheating” among celebrities, sports figures and politicians; anti-scientific bias which holds, in complete absence of empirical proof, that non-heterosexual inclinations are genetically determined, irresistible and akin to innate traits like race, gender and eye color; as well as anti-scientific bias which holds, against all empirical evidence, that homosexual behavior in particular, and sexual promiscuity in general, optimizes individual or public health. 8

The Candidate Vow:
Therefore, in any elected or appointed capacity by which I may have the honor of serving our fellow citizens in these United States, I the undersigned do hereby solemnly vow* to honor and to cherish, to defend and to uphold, the Institution of Marriage as only between one man and one woman. I vow* to do so through my:

1. Personal fidelity to my spouse.9
2. Respect for the marital bonds of others.10
3. Official fidelity to the U.S. Constitution, supporting the elevation of none but faithful constitutionalists as judges or justices.11
4. Vigorous opposition to any redefinition of the Institution of Marriage – faithful monogamy between one man and one woman – through statutory-, bureaucratic-, or court-imposed recognition of intimate unions which are bigamous, polygamous, polyandrous, same-sex, etc.12
5. Recognition of the overwhelming statistical evidence that married people enjoy better health, better sex, longer lives, greater financial stability, and that children raised by a mother and a father together experience better learning, less addiction, less legal trouble, and less extramarital pregnancy. 13
6. Support for prompt reform of uneconomic, anti-marriage aspects of welfare policy, tax policy, and marital/divorce law, and extended “second chance” or “cooling-off” periods for those seeking a “quickie divorce.” 14
7. Earnest, bona fide legal advocacy for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) at the federal and state levels.15
8. Steadfast embrace of a federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which protects the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman in all of the United States. 16
9. Humane protection of women and the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy – our next generation of American children – from human trafficking, sexual slavery, seduction into promiscuity, and all forms of pornography and prostitution, infanticide, abortion and other types of coercion or stolen innocence.17
10. Support for the enactment of safeguards for all married and unmarried U.S. Military and National Guard personnel, especially our combat troops, from inappropriate same-gender or opposite-gender sexual harassment, adultery or intrusively intimate commingling among attracteds (restrooms, showers, barracks, tents, etc.); plus prompt termination of military policymakers who would expose American wives and daughters to rape or sexual harassment, torture, enslavement or sexual leveraging by the enemy in forward combat roles.18
11. Rejection of Sharia Islam and all other anti-woman, anti-human rights forms of totalitarian control.19
12. Recognition that robust childbearing and reproduction is beneficial to U.S. demographic, economic, strategic and actuarial health and security. 20
13. Commitment to downsizing government and the enormous burden upon American families of the USA‟s $14.3 trillion public debt, its $77 trillion in unfunded liabilities, its $1.5 trillion federal deficit, and its $3.5 trillion federal budget.21
14. Fierce defense of the First Amendment‟s rights of Religious Liberty and Freedom of Speech22, especially against the intolerance of any who would undermine law-abiding American citizens and institutions of faith and conscience for their adherence to, and defense of, faithful heterosexual monogamy.

The Vow of Civic, Religious, Lay, Business, and Social Leaders:
We the undersigned do hereby solemnly vow* that no U.S. Presidential primary candidate – nor any primary candidate for the U. S. House, Senate, Governor, state or municipal office – will, in his or her public capacity, benefit from any substantial form of aid, support, endorsement, contribution, independent expenditure, or affirmation from any of us without first affirming this Marriage Vow. Furthermore, to uphold and advance the natural Institution of Marriage, we ourselves also hereby vow* our own fidelity to this Declaration and especially, to our spouses.

So help us God.
* NOTE: Or, “solemnly attest”. Each signatory signs only in his or her individual capacity as an American citizen and current or potential leader; affiliations herein are for identification purposes only and do not necessarily imply formal embrace of this vow or the sentiments herein by any institution or organization.
Signatories:
Name Candidacy or Title/Affiliation Date
____________________________________________________________ _______________
____________________________________________________________ _______________
____________________________________________________________ _______________
____________________________________________________________ _______________

END NOTES AND SOURCES:
1 The Marriage Vow is a work product of The FAMiLY Leader (www.thefamilyleader.com), a public advocacy organization affiliated with the Iowa Family Policy Center, and collaborating supporters across the U.S. political and ideological spectrum, who recognize that enduring, healthy marriages are necessary to healthy children and a healthy American society. Sociological data squares with tradition to argue that self-centered adult egos and agendas in American families must be subordinated to the long-term interests of America‟s children.
2 Genesis 2:18-25; Mark 10:2-9, Ephesians 5:22-33; Sherif Girgis, Robert P.George and Ryan T. Anderson, “What is Marriage?,” Harvard Journal of Public Policy, Vol. 34, No. 1, pp. 245-287, Winter 2010 (available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1722155); Jay Budziszewski, What We Can’t Not Know: A Guide, Spence Publishing, 2011, pp. 38-39; The Declaration of Independence.
3 Lorraine Blackman, Obie Clayton, Norval Glenn, Linda Malone-Colon, and Alex Roberts, “The Consequences of Marriage for African Americans: A Comprehensive Literature Review,” Institute for American Values, 2005 (www.americanvalues.org/pdfs/consequences_of_marriage.pdf).
4 Gretchen Livingston and D‟Vera Cohn, “The New Demography of American Motherhood,” Pew Research Center, (Revised August 19, 2010) May 6, 2010; Centers for Disease Control, National Center for Health Statistics, National Vital Statistics Report, “Births: Preliminary Data for 2008,” April 6, 2010, Table 1 at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr58/nvsr58_16.pdf.
5 Robert Rector, “Married Fathers: America‟s Best Weapon Against Child Poverty,” Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 2934, June 6, 2010, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/06/Married-Fathers-Americas-Greatest-Weapon-Against-Child-Poverty; Cynthia C. Harper and Sara S. McLanahan, “Father Absence and Youth Incarceration,” Journal of Research on Adolescence, Vol. 14, No. 3 (2004), pp.369-397. Data from National Longitudinal Study of Youth, the 1979 cohort (NYLS79).
6 William J. Doherty and Leah Ward Sears, “Second Chances: A Proposal to Reduce Unnecessary Divorce,” Institute for American Values, to be published in 2011.
7 Scafidi, Benjamin, The Taxpayer Costs of Divorce and Unwed Childbearing (New York; Institute for American Values, 2008, ISBN: 1-931764-14-X), Appendix A, pp. 22-30.
8 No peer-reviewed empirical science or rational demonstration has ever definitively proven, nor even has shown an overwhelming probability, that homosexual preference or behavior is irresistible as a function of genetic determinism or other forms of fatalism. Furthermore, no peer-reviewed empirical science or rational, scholarly demonstration has ever definitively proven, nor even has shown an overwhelming probability:
(1) That society‟s interest in the physical, psychological and sociological health of infants, children, young people and other minors is not best upheld through the enduring institution of legal marriage, especially faithful monogamy, as between only one man and one woman;
(2) That society‟s interest in a healthy, vibrant, and growing indigenous population and workforce to drive economic growth and actuarially support public and private pension, benefit and entitlement systems is in any way advanced by undermining the institution of faithful, lawful marriage as between only one man and one woman;
(3) That the longstanding religious liberties of American parents, children, religious and civic leaders who adhere to Jewish and Christian tradition, teaching and sacred texts regarding faithful heterosexual monogamy are not jeopardized by recent or pending redefinitions of legal marriage to include same-sex unions, polygamy and other kinds of intimate relations;
(4) That practices such as adultery, bisexuality, homosexuality, anal intercourse, group sex, promiscuity, serial marriage, polygamy, polyandry and extramarital sex, individually or collectively, lead to general improvements in:
a. Human mortality; See for example, Robert S. Hogg et al, “Modeling the Impact of HIV Disease on Mortality in Gay and Bisexual Men,” International Journal of Epidemiology, 1997, Vol. 26, no. 3. From the abstract: “In a major Canadian centre, life expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 20 years less than for all men. If the same pattern of mortality were to continue, we estimate that nearly half of gay and bisexual men currently aged 20 years will not reach their 65th birthday. Under even the most liberal assumptions, gay and bisexual men in this urban centre are now experiencing a life expectancy similar to that experienced by all men in Canada in the year 1871.”
b. Public health,
c. Public health costs (Medicaid, Medicare, etc.)
d. General health care price inflation (medical, hospital, insurance, etc).
e. Incidence of single parent households and related social costs,
f. Incidence of epidemics and pandemics,
g. Incidence of:
i. HIV/ AIDS (Human Immunodeficiency Virus);
ii. Other retroviruses like XMRV, HTLV, etc. (affecting venereal fluids, semen, breast milk, blood);
iii. Septic bacterial infections (such as from E Coli);
iv. Hepatitis (forms of which are transmitted via fecal-oral, venereal contact);
v. Chancroid (Haemophilus ducreyi);
vi. Chlamydia (Chlamydia trachomatis);
vii. Granuloma inguinale or (Klebsiella granulomatis);
viii. Gonorrhea (Neisseria gonorrhoeae);
ix. Syphilis (Treponema pallidum);
x. Herpes simplex
xi. Genital warts
xii. HPV (Human Papilloma Virus)
xiii. Phthirius pubis (pubic lice)
xiv. Sarcoptes scabiei (scabies)
xv. Trichomoniasis (Trichomonas vaginalis)
xvi. Anal incontinence
xvii. Abortion
xviii. Abortion-related complications
9As applicable if married now, wed in the future, or whenever interacting with another‟s spouse, a person of the opposite sex or of personal attraction. No signer herein claims to be without past wrongdoing, including that of adultery. Yet going forward, each hereby vows fidelity to his or her marital vows, to his or her spouse, to all strictures and commandments against adultery, and to resist the lure of pornography destructive to marital intimacy.
10 Personal infidelity often destroys two marriages and two families.
11 It is no secret that a handful of state and federal judges, some of whom have personally rejected heterosexuality and faithful monogamy, have also abandoned bona fide constitutional interpretation in accord with the discernible intent of the framers. In November, 2010, Iowa voters overwhelmingly rejected three such justices from the state Supreme Court in retention elections. Yet, certain federal jurists with lifetime appointments stand poised, even now, to “discover” a right of so-called same-sex marriage or polygamous marriage in the U.S. Constitution.
12 Justice Scalia‟s dissent in Lawrence v. Texas (http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-102.ZD.html) holds that laws against such things as bigamy/polygamy, prostitution, bestiality, adult incest — customs historically rejected within the United States — may become Constitutionally-inevitable under U.S. Supreme Court logic which could be used to invalidate the Defense of Marriage Act and laws, in the overwhelming majority of states, against so-called same-sex marriage and near-equivalents. This is particularly problematic with regard to polygamy, a demographic and strategic means for the advancement of Sharia Islamist misogyny, for attacks upon the rights of women, for the violent persecution of homosexuals, for the undermining of basic human rights, and for general religious and civil intolerance for Jewish, Christian and other non-Islamic faiths under Sharia law.
13 U.S. Bureau of the Census, American Community Survey, 2006-2008; W. Bradford Wilcox, William J. Doherty, Helen Fisher, William A. Galston, Norval D. Glenn, John Gottman, Robert Lerman, Annette Mahoney, Barbara Markey, Howard J. Markman, Steven Nock, David Popenoe, Gloria G. Rodriguez, Scott M. Stanley, Linda J. Waite, Judith Wallerstein, “Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-Six Conclusions from the Social Sciences,” Institute for American Values, 2005
(http://americanvalues.org/pdfs/why_marriage_matters2.pdf); “Parental Involvement and Children‟s Well-Being,” Heritage Foundation, FamilyFacts.org, at http://familyfacts.org/briefs/40/parental-involvement-and-childrens-well-being (April 15, 2011).
14 Chairman Dave Camp, “Democrats‟ Ticking Time Bomb, Part III (Middle-Class Families),” The Tax Tracker, Committee on Ways and Means, U.S. House of Representatives, July 28, 2010; Robert Rector, “The New Federal Wedding Tax: How Obamacare Would Dramatically Penalize Marriage,” Heritage Foundation WebMemo No.2767, January 20, 2010, at http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/01/the-new-federal-wedding-tax-how-obamacare-would-dramatically-penalize-marriage; Nick Kasprak, “The Potential Impact of Expiring Tax Cuts on Low-Income Taxpayers,” Tax Foundation Fiscal Fact No. 250, October 7, 2010, at http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/26766.html (April 28, 2011); Parental Divorce Reduction Act, SB 556, New Mexico Senate, 50th Legislature, 1st Session, 2011, § 2, at http://www.nmlegis.gov/Sessions/11%20Regular/bills/senate/SB0556.pdf (April 26, 2011); Benjamin Scafidi, Ibid.; William J. Doherty and Leah Ward Sears, Ibid.
15 Although signed by President Clinton in 1996, the U.S. Justice Department has abandoned good faith legal defense of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the repeal of which President Obama favors so states may be forced by courts to recognize so-called same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. Therefore, we hereby applaud the commitment of Speaker John Boehner and his House Leadership to bring about appropriate legal intervention by the U.S. House of Representatives, in defense of both DOMA and the institution of the Congress itself; a binding act of the Legislative Branch of the federal government has been abandoned for ideological reasons by the Executive Branch.
16 For the event that activist Federal courts or the U.S. Supreme Court may ultimately strike down DOMA or state laws limiting legal marriage to one man and one woman, the signatories hereby vow to support a Marriage Amendment which would constitutionally define and limit legal marriage or marriage equivalents in the U.S. to one man and one woman, thereby especially protecting American women and children from Sharia polygamy, same-sex unions, and other debasements of Judeo-Christian hetero-monogamy. To date, the ONLY states whose elected lawmakers and governors have enacted same-sex marriage on behalf of their constituents are: Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and New York. In all 31 states in which marriage has been put to a vote of the People, same-sex marriage has been defeated and natural marriage has been upheld (Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin).
17 Human trafficking, child pornography and prostitution, pimping, sexual slavery and forced abortion are inherently coercive of vulnerable females. Infanticide and abortion are inherently coercive of the babies who are killed; as a matter of human rights, we reject any form of intrauterine or extrauterine child killing which is partial-birth; live-birth; post-viability; third trimester; involving fetal pain; taxpayer-subsidized; based on gender or disability or racial discrimination against the baby; without fully-informed consent; without disclosure of pregnancy care and adoption placement options; without disclosure of abortion‟s eugenic and racist history; involving a minor without parental knowledge or consent; in disregard of conscience objections of health care professionals and institutions; involving cloning or experimentation on non-consenting human subjects; involving dangerous abortifacient drugs; or for alleged necessities other than to save the life of the mother.
18 See, e.g., Center for Military Readiness: www.cmrlink.org/HMilitary.asp, www.cmrlink.org/WomenInCombat.asp
19 We do not oppose peaceful Muslims, only the intolerant system of Sharia Islam: Princeton‟s Bernard Lewis, dean of Western scholars of Islam, says, ” „My own feeling is that the greatest defect of Islam and the main reason they fell behind the West is the treatment of women,‟ he says. He makes the powerful point that repressive homes pave the way for repressive governments. „Think of a child that grows up in a Muslim household where the mother has no rights, where she is downtrodden and subservient. That’s preparation for a life of despotism and subservience. It prepares the way for an authoritarian society,‟ ” (The Wall Street Journal, April 2, 2011 at A13). Sharia Islamist aims are abusive of women, young girls and Judeo-Christian notions of gender equality, civil tolerance and liberty. Over the long run, Sharia polygamy, multi-partner childbearing, demographic jihad and the persecution of Jews, Christians, blacks, artists, feminists, gays, freethinkers and other non-conformists poses a threat to Western human rights in general, and to American liberty in particular.
20 See, e.g., Julian Lincoln Simon, The Ultimate Resource and The Ultimate Resource 2, Princeton University Press, 1981 and 1996, respectively; Mark Steyn, America Alone, Regnery Publishing, 2006; Ben J. Wattenberg, Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future, Ivan R.Dee, 2004;“Demographic Winter: The Decline of the Human Family,” 2008, SRB Documentary, LLC, 585 West 500 South #110, Bountiful, UT 84010; It is beyond debate that 50 million American abortions since Roe v. Wade have thrown actuarial assumptions about Social Security, Medicare and public and private pensions into chaos.
21 United States Department of the Treasury, Bureau of the Public Debt (December 2010). “The debt to the penny and who holds it”. TreasuryDirect. Retrieved March 2, 2011.
22 Amendment 1: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
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Short Man..Shorter Fuse

I think I’m suffering from what can only be described as my “Queeriod”.

I’m bloated.

I’m bitchy.

I cry for no reason.

I’m retaining water…

…and pizza…

…and Twinkies…

…and air…and…

I have cramps (though this could be from the bangers).

I’m having migraines every couple of days.

I’ve gained weight for no reason (stop looking in my shopping cart!!!).

The idea that men experience a monthly cycle is not new. As early as the 17th century, the Italian physician Santorio Sanctorius, after carefully measuring the weight of his body, along with it’s various excretions (Santorio was nothing if not thorough), discovered a monthly cycle in body weight of approximately two pounds. He noted that the peak of the cycle was accompanied by feelings of heaviness and lassitude.

In later centuries there were various attempts to establish the existence of a male cycle. The late decades of the 19th century were a particularly fruitful period for some reason, with a number of authors (Gall, Stephenson and Campbell, if you must know) finding evidence for monthly fluctuations in mood, energy and sex drive. Later in 1929, a study found that men have emotional cycles of about one-month to six-weeks in length (as a friend of mine had suggested). During the low period of the cycle, men were reported to feel apathetic and indifferent. During the high period they reported more energy, a greater sense of well-being, and lower body weight. Hmmm. This explains my reaction to Dorito’s as well, I think.

It is probably not coincidental that all these symptoms have been associated with serum levels of testosterone. During periods of low serum testosterone men report feeling apathetic and indifferent. During periods of high serum testosterone they report more energy, a greater sense of well-being, and lower body weight. In fact a whole market in testosterone supplements has emerged to service aging men whose levels of serum testosterone have fallen.

But the experts who weigh ponderously on such matters say that a monthly hormonal cycle in men has not been established. Part of the reason has been the lamentably thin body of research devoted to the topic (I couldn’t find a single modern study). But it’s also a function of testosterone itself. Testosterone levels are notoriously difficult to calibrate because they’re often dependent on one’s psychological state, which in turn is largely a function of circumstance. Leaders of every kind (tribal, political, business) have higher relative levels of serum testosterone. Levels drop sharply in men who lose there jobs or watch their teams lose. And that’s not just in men. Women in high level corporate positions have higher levels of testosterone than their sisters in less driven professions.

Given the sensitivity of testosterone to life’s ups and downs, it’s easy to see how a discernable and very real cyclical pattern might get lost in the background noise. Perhaps the best evidence available to us is anecdotal. I know that I go through periods of high energy, high sex drive and periods of the opposite. I’m familiar enough with these cycles to know that any particular state will not last. While I can’t say with any confidence that these cycles revolve in a regular pattern, I can safely predict that if I’m feeling crappy on Monday, I’ll be feeling better by the weekend. Whether that constitutes a “Male Period” I can’t say. All I know for certain is that if science ever establishes its non-existence, I’ll never be able to use it as an excuse for bad behavior.

Then I’ll just move on the excuse of “Manapause”.

Honestly…Is this the BEST the Republican and Tea Parties can do???  These are the people you want speaking for you?  Worse yet…Are these the people you want us to believe would be more qualified to ruin – sorry, I mean RUN – our future?

Hmmm…At the risk of sounding uncouth…(and as my father used to say) you can go piss up a rope.  There is no one out there who can or will convince me that they, even remotely, take any of these so-called candidates seriously.  And if you do then people should throw rocks at you just for being that stupid.

I’ve watched this “debate” – or as I prefer to call it, “Pander-Monium” – and here’s what I’ve gleaned from what they are laughingly calling answers…

Pawlenty – Regarding you referring to “Obamnicare”, you had the chance to pounce on that tonight when you were standing NEXT to Romney..Instead you showed how two-faced and cowardly you are by throwing it at Obama.  You pussied out on your chance to show how genuine you claim to be.  I guaranty you’ll be out tomorrow AGAIN comparing Romney to Obama on the healthcare issue.

Paul – You’re still a wacky crazy old fart who no one can – or should – take seriously.  But you’re good for a laugh…don’t ever change.

It's Official...Until She Drops Out

Bachman – Wow, what can I say?  Everyone on the news networks is saying you were the clear winner of this “debate”.  That’s saying a lot, considering I’ve always thought you were the biggest biggoted pandering piece of shit politician…second only to former President George W. Bush.  So you being considered a winner of anything should come with a ticker tape parade.  You’re lucky Sarah Palin isn’t actually going to run…she might steal your “Queen of the Stupid” tiara.

Gingrich – Should I even bother?  Oh yeah…you are the political version of a seat filler at the Daytime Emmy’s.  You had no official or serious role there, but you evened out the lineup.  Good for you.  By the way, your Contract For America has, as of the end of this debate, been cancelled.  Buh-Bye!!!

Romney...Queen of the Flip-Floppers

Romney – You might win your party’s nomination…but you’re going to hell for lying and you are the king of flip-floppers.  There’s no reason to honor you with more words.  Wait, except these…you committed voter fraud earlier this year when you voted in Massachusetts (even though you don’t actually live there) and used your sons basement apartment address to do it.  As if someone with your millions would ever live in a basement apartment.  C’mon…who the hell do you think you’re fooling???  You deserve to lose based solely on your many faces, your forked tongue, your pandering flip-floppery and your gigantic head.

Santorum and Cain…hmmmm…what can be said about you two?  Actually neither of you matter so I don’t care.  Take your biggotted lying asses off the stage.  No one gives a damn what you think, and your chances of winning anything of significance is about as likely as me having sex with a woman.  But I’m not one to judge…for all I know your sick close-minded uneducated four tooth-having robot-fearing Medicare-using Dixie-loving doctor-murdering race-baiting fear mongering base probably would vote for you.

So anyway, I watched this boring and mostly uneventful freak show with about the same amount of zeal as one would watching a bull castration.  Not that I had any illusions that some great big newsworthy exchange or hair-pulling would happen.  But one always hopes there might actually be an answer given during one of these so-called “Question & Answer” debates.  All I saw was each and every one of those “candidates” dodging the issues as usual and avoiding any chance to point out what sets them apart from the person standing next to them.  They actually spent more time doting on one another and quoting each other in a positive way and still managed to point out how everything in life was Obamas’ fault and that they would overturn everything he’s ever done. 

If you missed this over-priced puffed-up freak show then count yourself as one of the lucky ones.  All we got tonight was the typical bumper sticker tag lines and yawn-inducing wedge issues.  Not the least of which was gay marriage, DADT and illegal immigration.  Once again, really?  That’s all you pandering howler monkeys can come up with?  How many times do I have to tell you, you Republiculous human wannabe’s, that if you persist on using me as a wedge issue I will come over to your house, climb up onto your dining room table destroy your white bread marriages by deflowering myself with your cucumber centerpiece!!!

Honestly, I’ve seen more staunch Republicans at a Log Cabin Republican sock-hop and more committed Tea-Baggers at a Gay Pride Parade.

Wow, now that I think about it, I really can’t wait for the next Republican Debate.  But this time, do me a favor, make it more believable.  Make sure it none of the above.  Instead make it Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, Tom Skerritt, Gary Sinise and Larry Miller.  At least we KNOW these people aren’t serious about running and won’t act like they know what they are saying.  And yet, they still seem more believable.

Third Time's A Charm...Right Lord?

Okay, so there’s this California preacher who foretold of the world’s end only to see the appointed day pass with no extraordinarily cataclysmic event.  So now he has revised his apocalyptic prophecy, saying he was off by five months and the Earth actually will be obliterated on Oct. 21.  Great, I just unpacked and now I have to repack in five months??  I have to say that my better half and I were quite disappointed because we’ve been looking so forward to a nice trip and then bam…nothing.  So we just did the next best thing to ascending to Heaven…we went shopping at Riverpark.

Harold Camping, the John Smith wanna-be who predicted that 200 million Christians would be taken to heaven Saturday before catastrophe struck the planet, apologized for not having the dates “worked out as accurately as I could have.”  All that money and he can’t afford the calendar app for his isaiahPhone?

He spoke to the media at the Oakland headquarters of his Family Radio International, which spent millions of dollars – some of it from donations made by followers – on more than 5,000 billboards and 20 RVs plastered with the Judgment Day message.

It was not the first time Camping was forced to explain when his prediction didn’t come to pass. The 89-year-old retired civil engineer also prophesied that the Apocalypse would come in 1994, but said later that didn’t happen then because of yet another mathematical error.

Through chatting with a friend over what he acknowledged was a very difficult weekend, it dawned on him that instead of the biblical Rapture in which the faithful would be swept up to the heavens, May 21 had instead been a “spiritual” Judgment Day, which places the entire world under Christ’s judgment, he said…as if we weren’t under a big enough magnifying glass held by Washington.

The globe will be completely destroyed in five months, he said, when the apocalypse comes. But because God’s judgment and salvation were completed on Saturday, there’s no point in continuing to warn people about it, so his network will now just play uplifting Christian music and Veggie-Tales programs until the final end on Oct. 21.  

Ooops...False Alarm...Everyone Go Back To Your Lives And We'll Catch You In October!!!

“We’ve always said May 21 was the day, but we didn’t understand altogether the spiritual meaning,” he said. “The fact is there is only one kind of people who will ascend into heaven … if God has saved them they’re going to be caught up.”  I’m assuming it’s those with better timing and a more accurate calendar.

Josh Ocasion, who works the teleprompter during Camping’s live broadcasts in the group’s threadbare studio sandwiched between an auto shop and a palm reader’s business, said he enjoyed the production work but never fully believed the May 21 prophecy would come true.

“I thought he would show some more human decency in admitting he made a mistake,” he said Monday. “We didn’t really see that.”

Follower Jeff Hopkins said he spent a good deal of his own retirement savings on gas money to power his car so people would see its ominous lighted sign showcasing Camping’s May 21 warning. As the appointed day drew nearer, Hopkins started making the 100-mile round trip from Long Island to New York City twice a day, spending at least $15 on gas each trip.

“I’ve been mocked and scoffed and cursed at and I’ve been through a lot with this lighted sign on top of my car,” said Hopkins, 52, a former television producer who lives in Great River, NY. “I was doing what I’ve been instructed to do through the Bible, but now I’ve been stymied. It’s like getting slapped in the face.”

Camping’s hands shook slightly as he pinned his microphone to his lapel, and as he clutched a worn Bible he spoke in a quivery monotone about some listeners’ earthly concerns after giving away possessions in expectation of the Rapture.

Family Radio would never tell anyone what they should do with their belongings, and those who had fewer would cope, Camping said.

“We’re not in the business of financial advice,” he said. “We’re in the business of telling people there’s someone who you can maybe talk to, maybe pray to, and that’s God.”  Asked whether God had given solid confirmation to the date of Rapture and also the mathematical formula with which he kept coming up with these dates, Camping looked at his Rolex watch and then patted his tattered Bible.

Then he said that he wouldn’t give away any of his possessions ahead of Oct 21.

“I still have to live in a house, I still have to drive a car,” he said. “What would be the value of that? If it is Judgment Day why would I give it away?”

WHORE-A GAMI

Let’s back up a little first.  About ten years ago I began my own little conspiracy.  There was something wafting in the air that could only, I assume, be detected by myself and the few other true political bloodhounds.  The faint scent of Right-Wing Holier-Than-Thou moxie was drifting past our nostrils and a red light went on in our heads.

Something was coming.

Things were about to change.

The Right Wing was huddling up, planning a kegger and America was wearing a cheerleaders’ outfit.

It has long been my belief that Republicans were mapping out the complete destruction of every good political change since the Amancipation Proclaimation.  More to the point, not only did I simply believe this to be true, but over the years I’ve had help proving my theory…and by some of the most unlikely allies I could have ever imagined.  I’ll thank them at the end of this post in the Credits section.

So here is my conspiracy theory:

Rich white men want to turn back time so that they can recreate the two-party system…Rich & Poor.

Fuck The Poor, Precious!!!

In other words, they want to kill (yes, I said the word kill) off the middle class.  How else do you explain the Right Wings’ concerted effort to do away with Medicare, Social Security and also force everyone to purchase the most expensive – and all-too-often – unusable insurance policies?

Lining the pockets of the rich at the expense of the middle class and poor is the oldest sin in my opinion.  The sad fact is – and there is no pleasant way of saying this – until those generations that were raised on material needs and “the American dream” die off, we may never evolve towards a truly agrarian society.  It is, in fact,  because we are so money-driven that any form of non-monetary society is out of the reach of the human species.  We simply can’t imagine life without the means of buying/having more things.   As is the normal daily case, there are far too many of us who want nothing more than to maintain the status quo.

People are still paying ever-increasing prices for gas/oil, yet Republicans push every congressional session for more subsidies for the oil companies.  State and Federal Republicans lobby to end the bargaining rights of everyday workers, cut their pay, off-shore jobs to other countries, lobby to privatize Social Security and keep the minimum wage down to the poverty level, etc.  All the while giving themselves an annual pay raise, enjoying premium tax dollar-paid healthcare (for life) and are wined and dined by lobbyists who represent the very companies who they still insist deserve even more tax breaks.

The avarice is obscene.  The hypocrisy is so palpable it actually has a smell.

By the way, it’s not that these claims are unsubstantiated…one need only watch the daily news to see the facts. 

Yet we wonder every day, “How the hell do these assholes keep getting elected?!?!”  The answer is going to seem a little mean to you, but when you sit back and think about it, you’ll see I’m right.

...And I slept with your Toaster Oven!!!

Americans scare easily, and Republicans figured this out during the McCarthy era.  Don’t believe me?  Mention the words “robots and Social Security” in the same sentence to old people and watch them crash their motorized chairs into a wall out of sheer panic.  the irony here is that these same people who the GOP count on each election cycle for guaranteed votes are the exact same people the Republicans are trying to deny Social Security and Medicare.  If it weren’t so damned inhuman (not to mention unChristian) the irony would almost be knee-slappingly funny.

Okay, so I’ve drifted off point here, but that tends to happen with me, so deal with it.

Getting back on track, it’s time for this new generation to wake up and stop thinking none of this affects them.  I know this to be true, because I am dating someone considerably younger than myself and, up until about a month ago, he wasn’t really interested in politics.  I’d even watch my news programs when he wasn’t around because I knew how bored he thought this stuff was.  Don’t get me wrong, he respects my political interests and never put me down for it.  Then one day, I was watching and he came home and caught a bit of what was being said..and he got angry.  Not at me watching, but that he had no idea that the topic of discussion was even an issue.  Now I notice that he follows politics a little more closely.  Something inside his mind actually woke up and made him see that there is a whole lot of bullshit going on out there and too many people who want to profit from the misery of others.  I simply said to him, “Welcome to the political circus.”

I told him about my theory of how the “have’s” want to squash (not to mention create more of) the “have-not’s”.  So I feel good about that.  Not so much trying to brainwash them into my way of thinking – I’ll leave that tactic to the republicans and religious folks).  No, I just feel good knowing that I might have helped someone open their eyes and see that evertyhing we in the political fray bitch about so much actually does affect them…no matter how detached they are from the process.

So anyway…getting back to my conspiracy theory…

I realize that I won’t be able to convince you I’m right.  In fact, most people tell me I’m full of shit…then I’ll get a call, message or email sometime down the line telling me I was right.  (color me surprised)  I do know, however, that some of you will be tougher nuts to crack.  No biggie.  Just do us all a favor, watch a little news and at least try to dip your toe into the cesspool of politics.  Because if you don’t educate yourself to the underhanded shenanigans of politics, then you’ll never really understand what really happened to your job, home, or life.  Everything they do in politics – from your local leaders all the way up to state and Washington levels – affects you no matter how young (and now that includes fetuses and embryo’s) to not only the elderly, but long-dead people as well.

I just don’t want to hear people complaining about how they lost their family because they lost their house because they lost their job…and still claim the Democrats are the cause of all their ills.  Believe me when I say I’m not always impressed with the Democrats, either…they tend to be such pussy’s when it comes to not wanting to piss people off.  I do, however, respect the ones who swim against the tide because it’s what’s good for the common good and general welfare of people as a whole, rather than looking out for the profits of their donors.  I am a firm believer in speaking my mind and gearing whatever I vote for towards the betterment of all people, and I know that by doing so, I am pissing off all the right people.

So it’s time to stand back up. people.  Straighten up your back, stick out your shoulders and start acting like the evolved species we truly are.  You don’t have to vote like a Democrat to evolve, but if you do vote republican, at least have the balls to question their motives and actions.  Don’t just vote for someone because they can scare you into a hole with their words and tell you everyone else is responsible for your ills.  After all, “The Flintstons” was not a documentary!!!