Tag Archives: opinion

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If Not Now, Then When?


I can't think of anything rude enough to say to this man. I really can't.

I can’t think of anything rude enough to say to this man. I really can’t.

This, of course, does not address why there is violence in churches, temples, and other nominally religious locations all across our country.

Okay, now I thought of something to say to Mr. Huckabee.

  • You are an attention whore, and an embarrassment to Arkansas.  Please go away.  You contribute nothing to any meaningful dialogue and your ignorance and intolerance shame us all.

This was a horrific event.  Every time something like this occurs, the Right screams about their rights.  They circle their wagons and point fingers at everyone else, blaming anyone who speaks up about the elephant in the room (ironic, really) for politicizing tragedies for their own agenda.  If the time to discuss gun controls is not now, then when?  It seems that they approach gun control in the same way as the couple with the leak in their roof.  Wife says, “Please fix the leak, dear.”  Husband says, “No need, babe, it isn’t raining.”  Later, a rainstorm occurs.  Very wet and disgruntled wife says, “Will you please fix it now?”  Husband says smugly, “Can’t darlin’.  It’s too wet outside.”

Even a cursory look at differing countries will show startling differences in gun fatalities, and even a cursory glance at gun control laws in those countries will show you why.  This situation has passed ridiculous and moved into sad and pathetic.  If the GOP is such a party of Pro-Life principles, why don’t they care about the numbers of lives altered and lost through their fight against any changes to gun regulation?  No, don’t answer, I think we all know the reason for that, anyway.

My heart and thoughts go out to those affected by the shooting in Connecticut   I am so very sorry for you.  There aren’t any words to ease the pain, but I hope as a country we might finally learn something here.

*this  graphic was found on the Facebook page of Lefteous Indignation.  Check them out sometime.

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Well, Here’s Your Problem……..


Buried somewhere in the mystical rituals that must be traversed to attain Republican Party Representative status, there must be some version of a voir dire wherein the aspiring candidate must prove that he or she has never read George Santayana.  They are at it again, this time in the Ohio House Committee.

Ohio House Votes To De-fund Planned Parenthood

The moral of this story is much the same as any number of frustrating and irritating political stories we have seen over the last few years.

Remember the election, GOP?  Yeah, the proverbial ass kickin’ you just received?  I know you are all scrambling around pointing fingers in any direction but your own.  Pundits and analysts are trying to figure out what went wrong, and how your projected numbers could have been so wrong.

This is what went wrong, guys.  This is the type of legislation you seem obsessed with pushing through, and we all know that.  We learned that if we want the government out of our love lives and our bodies, most of y’all must go.  Y’all learned nothing.  You are still trying to wage a war on women.  We don’t like it.  If you don’t stop it, we will smite you.

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Charity, Assistance, & Helping Others………A Division In Outlook


I have been arguing with a family member today about extending a helping hand to others.  At some point it became clear to me that in this, as in politics, & religion, & pretty much our entire world-view, we would never see eye to eye.  If he weren’t family, I doubt we would even have any impetus to talk at all.  Thinking about it afterwards, I think his viewpoint and mine can be fairly said to represent the extreme ends of the Left/Right spectrum.

It seems to me that the majority of far lefters and Liberals are impassioned and moved to pay forward without conditions or strings, or at least with minimal ones.  We do not want to dictate terms or hold up hoops to jump through.  We don’t necessarily expect to induce those we aid to conform to our ideologies, and we are not very concerned with alternate or opposing viewpoints in the face of tragedy.  If we see a need or a place to lend a hand, we want to do just that.  We also do not expect reciprocation or immediate return, because our investment is in humanity in general.  We want to make things better for everyone, everywhere, not just ourselves & our own interests.

Far righters & Conservatives, on the other hand, seem to me to be far more driven by control issues.  Public works and other assistance programs are viewed with distrust and resentment.  This could be because when aid is given through these channels, each individual contributor (either by taxation or donation) is a step removed from decisions regarding perceived worthiness.

In conversations I have had with my mostly Republican, far right, Conservative family and friends, I see a fairly consistent theme in regard to who deserves help.  The main thing they all seem to agree on, and I totally oppose, is the sentiment that no help should be given until the cause, or person or persons, in need submit to qualifying standards.  It would seem, at least from them, that being in need is not enough.  You must prove to be sufficiently needy, and your need must be of an acceptable nature.

This is a fairly good reason why having sane, rational, reasonable Moderates from both sides is so important.

As a fairly extreme Liberal, I recognize that I and those like me occasionally need a gentle redirecting hand to help us do the most good for the largest group.  We can be easily diverted and spend an enormous amount of time and resources in areas that perhaps could have been better used elsewhere.  That in no way negates what good we might do in those ares, and it in no way means we should not continue to try to lend a hand wherever we can, but we need a balance.

Likewise, Conservatives need a nudge to be less interested in exactly what the needy do in their private lives, and more concerned with the actual benefit derived from the action of giving.  Assistance should actually be assistance.  It should not be a lever to force obedience, nor should it be a method of weeding out or penalizing those who disagree with you.

We need someone to bring us together, and to force us to play nice in the world’s sandbox.  Clearly, we won’t ever do it on our own.

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A Plea For Reason………


For those readers in the US, I have been watching media sites since last night, and I am disheartened by your unrelenting attitude of petulance and  hateful jibes.  I have something to say, directly to all of y’all…………

C’mon, guys. Can we wind up the self pitying, sad, apocalyptic, and frankly mean posts, already?

I have some news for you.

My president won. Not because of Latinos, although they helped. Not because of enlightened women, although we helped. Not because of those in favor of freedom of choice, religion, and true liberty (for everyone instead of one cherry-picked group), although they helped.

No one minority or special interest group did this. We did it together. We read, we watched, and we listened. We talked, blogged, and spread our message far and wide.

There was no conspiracy. There was no blackout. There was simply a very large segment of the population who wanted to move forward. We don’t want war. We don’t want to pay higher & higher taxes so that the insanely wealthy can pay an even smaller percentage than they do now. We want accountability. We want progress.

We want the right to live without being micromanaged, and we want the same right for everyone else….including those who are currently continuing to throw mud and vitriol at us.

No, we aren’t lazy. No, we don’t want handouts. We want a safety net, for ourselves, and for everyone else. We care about all of our fellow citizens. We want to cooperate, and we want to see bipartisanship.

Let’s do this. Let’s do great things for all of us and stop rolling in the mud.

My President is your President. He is OUR President, so let’s show him the respect he earned and deserves.

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Why I hope Conservative Christians Will Fight Gay Marriage Tooth and Nail Till their Teeth and Nails Fall Out

Reblogged from Away Point:

Click to visit the original post

With marriage equality battles in front of the voters in four states, the faithful are out in flocks to defend traditional matrimony.  I don’t know exactly what traditional means in this context. It certainly doesn’t mean biblical, or it would include captive virgins and sex slaves and fathering children for your deceased brothers. It certainly doesn’t mean Mitt Romney’s version of traditional, since…

Read more… 1,520 more words

I can't say enough positive things about this blog. LGBT rights are dear to my heart, and this post took my thoughts and phrased them far, far better than I ever could. I'll be visiting here often, I think.
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Oh, Sanity And Reason, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Us?


A small note on my unusual silence the last couple of weeks…….

It isn’t like I haven’t had scores of things I wanted to shout about.  There are plenty.  Too many, in fact.  I seem to have become buried alive in election cycle stress syndrome.  I can’t open any of my multitudinous (I love that word, and never get to use it) news and political sites without being assaulted by an avalanche of offensive and terrifying articles, posts, quotes, soundbites  and developments.  I have been hiding, frankly.  I’m kinda’ afraid if I begin to talk about any current events, I’ll deteriorate into full-on Southern-belle profanity.  For those who know southern ladies, y’all know there is no language on this Earth quite like ours when we are good and worked up.

I would like to pose a few questions to the world at large though…….

Who the hell are these undecided voters, and what, pray tell, is the cause of their indecision?  Much like Sheldon Cooper, I have the urge to ask them if they have recently received a sudden blow to the head.

Your candidate is offensive, pretentious,  obnoxious, and rude.  He is boorish and totally impolite.  He is completely disrespectful.  Now, come the second and third debates ( and VP debate) and the first thing out of y’all’s mouths is that the VP and POTUS are RUDE?  Wah.  Boo hoo.  I have news for you guys.  Lies, misconstrued facts, and politicizing events for your own selfish ends and gain–especially when you were pointedly asked not to by surviving family members in the case of Ambassador Stevens–deserve no polite treatment or mollycoddling.  What pathology do you guys suffer from, that you all think you are entitled (see what I did there) to set the terms for the way everyone else behaves?  Only from the rabid right do we see people whacking others over the head with metaphorical shovels while screaming “Why are you persecuting us?”

DOMA is finally getting put where it deserved to be from the first moment it was thought up…..in the trash can.  Case by case, court by court, I love to see it go.  When it finally disappears for good, and when lovers all through our nation are ultimately able to love and be loved by the partner of their choice, how precisely will that affect ANY of you?  The sacrosanct institution of marriage in our modern times is beset right, left, and sideways by unfaithfulness, separation, and divorce.  In a great many cases, multiple-remarriage and divorce.  Why deny same sex couples the right to be as happy as all of us straight couples, since we are all clearly ambassadors of nuptial Utopian living?

In reference to the absolutely staggering amount of propaganda, lies, filth, perversion, stupidity, and insanity directed at women and their right to make choices about their bodies and health (specifically reproductive health) :  Piss off.  I can’t be any more clear than that.  You people are insane.  You are not rational.  You are frankly frightening.  An incredibly astute gentleman once said “I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.”  Thank you, George Bernard Shaw, for reminding me that you can’t reason with some people.

Yes, I know the last was not a question, but it was certainly a statement I felt needed saying.

I look around and wonder, what on Earth must other countries think of us?  I suspect that if the nations of the world were a family reunion, we would be the inappropriate uncle who wears his underwear outside his pants and speaks in non-sequiturs that make everyone uncomfortable.

Sigh………..

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Pro-Choice As Defined By Sarah Jane……


I have had it.  No more tippy, tippy toeing around, folks.

I have been holding off on making any public Facebook posts about the pro-choice issue because it was one of the last couple of areas I hadn’t caught H-E-double hockey sticks for from my family.  Yesterday, though, I got a lovely (not really) private message from my annoyingly holier-than-pretty-much-everybody cousin accusing me of being an Atheist and wanting to know what went wrong.  I kid you not.

You know why?  Because I have steadfastly refused to repost anything from that embarrassment to our state Mike Huckabee’s public statements.  Because I do NOT support Chick-Fil-A.  Because I have shouted loud and long about the evils of legislation intermixing with religion.  I’ll tell you what went wrong, ma’am.  Religious fanatics have been trying to overtake our government and turn it into Nehemiah Scudder-ville.  I don’t want to live in Scudder-ville.  Arkansas is bad enough.

I refuse to skirt the issues anymore.  Y’all thought I was outspoken before, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

what is pro choice?

So there.

We now return to regular programming, already in progress………………….

(thank you to Liberal Hippie Nerd from whom I reposted the graphic on my Facebook feed.  It’s a great page, check it out.)

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There’s A New Diagnostic Tool A’Comin’……….


All around the world, every day, pregnant women suffer needless complications that could have been treated and in some cases prevented, because their area or their personal circumstances prohibit access to diagnostic equipment and care.  Statistics vary on the rate of mortality and injury because of delayed or absent care, depending upon which source is referenced…..but frankly, ANY rate at all should be considered unacceptable and something to diminish as much, and as soon, as possible.  I was recently made aware of a group who are working towards reducing those numbers.

Check these guys out : WinSenga Project.  Original article on Google+ here.

This is a fascinating idea.  I hope to see progress towards implementation, ultimately reaching many, many mothers-to-be who would have otherwise been without needed diagnostics and care.  Great work, guys.  Keep it up, and here’s hoping for lots of positive results and success.

* again, thank you to my G+ friend Euro Maestro for alerting me to this!

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Another Light Extinguished………


Michael O’Hare has passed beyond the rim, to join Tim Choate, Andreas Katsulas, Jeff Conaway, and Richard Biggs.

He was a phenomenally gifted actor, and by the accounts I have read from those fortunate enough to meet him at conventions, a genuinely nice man.  He will be missed.

michael ohare

Rest Peacefully, Sir.