Heaven forbid an American president should show some respect for other cultures and customs instead of arrogantly expecting the world to bow to him. When in Rome and all that. The almost never right wing are losing their lunch over Obama bowing to the emperor of Japan. Interesting how they conveniently forget a former president puking on the Prime Minister during a state dinner. No bad judgment there. But they'll keep worrying about the bowing, that way they won't have to contribute anything constructive to the conversation.
When most people have an upset tummy they have the sense not to go out in public and they certainly don't eat anything they can't see through.
BBB
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Saturday, November 14, 2009
This 'N That
OMG! People have lost their freakin' minds. Funny how the right likes to quote the Founding Fathers as gospel whenever the subject of gun ownership comes up, but not for anything else. John Adams, the Founding Father most likely to be ignored by those ruled by their reptilian brain, once said "we are a government of laws, not of men". And two even more appropriate quotes to the discussion of whether or not terrorists should be tried in New York, which directly suffered from the crimes of the accused, are also from Mr. Adams
My pug is cuter than a French bulldog. Of course that is my biased opinion, but Shai always gets attention when we go out, as do most brachycephalic breeds. One of the reasons I got her was to meet people and she definitely accomplishes that, but all they want to do is talk about how cute she is. It's amazing how everyone knows the names of the dogs at the park and who they belong to but not the owners names. And sometimes we talk to each other for hours. About our dogs.
The health care debate rages on, with nothing useful being accomplished. I will probably never leave Reno, the VA facilities are too good. I had another asthma incident this week but they nipped that sucker in the bud. My doctor had switched me from Flovent to Asmanex, it got a little colder one morning and even though I stayed two aisles away from the soap aisle in the grocery store, wham! Three hours after I arrived at the urgent care clinic I was out the door with an antibiotic because I was at risk for pneumonia, tapered doses of methylprednisone to reduce the inflammation in my lungs (and as a side effect my joints feel better) and Tessalon Pearls for the coughing since I'm allergic to codeine. This is in addition to the blood pressure med and the synthroid I just started because my thyroid is giving up the ghost according to the doctor. Mom is 79 and only takes two meds, this does not bode well for my old age.
When I worked at Universal Studios the secretaries were unionized and when our contract came up for renewal several things happened. The first time they initiated a two tier wage system and then got rid of everyone on the top tier. You get what you pay for and at $7 an hour in Hollywood all you get are bimbos who want to meet a movie star. It took about six months and 90 percent of us had our jobs back. I was working in the black tower, which happens to be a closed environment, during the second set of negotiations. This time Universal got the bright idea to eliminate sick days because they said the secretaries were using them for personal business. Flu season came around and within days half the building (executives) were out sick because the secretaries worked while ill and recirculated air contaminated with viruses was distributed around the building. Sick days mysteriously showed up again.
I'm glad I renewed my library card. Friday night television is just like Saturday night. Useless for entertainment. CBS, which doesn't have very many successful new shows, has cut the amount of episodes of Numb3rs to 16 from 22 as it prepares to cancel it. Not for lack of viewers, but because they say it's too expensive since it's been on so long. Fox canceled Dollhouse after completely botching the timing, audience and advertising. What do those two shows have in common? You have to pay attention.
BBB
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.Both of those statements were made while defending the British soldiers after the Boston Massacre. Inconvenient truths, indeed. But not nearly as inconvenient as old Ben.
And, even more importantly:
The law no passion can disturb. 'Tis void of desire and fear, lust and anger. 'Tis mens sine affectu, written reason, retaining some measure of the divine perfection. It does not enjoin that which pleases a weak, frail man, but, without any regard to persons, commands that which is good and punishes evil in all, whether rich or poor, high or low. 'Tis deaf, inexorable, inflexible. On the one hand it is inexorable to the cries and lamentations of the prisoners; on the other it is deaf, deaf as an adder, to the clamors of the populace.
Any people that would give up liberty for a little temporary safety deserves neither liberty nor safety.The Republicans wetting their pants are determined we shall have neither. Honestly, why are they so scared? Timothy McVeigh was tried, convicted and executed by the same justice system, why isn't it good enough for foreign terrorists? What do we stand to lose by showing the world, and ourselves, that we apply the law equally (sort of) to every accused criminal? Or is it that New York isn't Texas and Republicans are afraid that the state can't meet the burden of proof? New York has plenty of experience, they paid the highest price and they deserve to prosecute the offenders. Or at least the ones hat are still living.
My pug is cuter than a French bulldog. Of course that is my biased opinion, but Shai always gets attention when we go out, as do most brachycephalic breeds. One of the reasons I got her was to meet people and she definitely accomplishes that, but all they want to do is talk about how cute she is. It's amazing how everyone knows the names of the dogs at the park and who they belong to but not the owners names. And sometimes we talk to each other for hours. About our dogs.
The health care debate rages on, with nothing useful being accomplished. I will probably never leave Reno, the VA facilities are too good. I had another asthma incident this week but they nipped that sucker in the bud. My doctor had switched me from Flovent to Asmanex, it got a little colder one morning and even though I stayed two aisles away from the soap aisle in the grocery store, wham! Three hours after I arrived at the urgent care clinic I was out the door with an antibiotic because I was at risk for pneumonia, tapered doses of methylprednisone to reduce the inflammation in my lungs (and as a side effect my joints feel better) and Tessalon Pearls for the coughing since I'm allergic to codeine. This is in addition to the blood pressure med and the synthroid I just started because my thyroid is giving up the ghost according to the doctor. Mom is 79 and only takes two meds, this does not bode well for my old age.
When I worked at Universal Studios the secretaries were unionized and when our contract came up for renewal several things happened. The first time they initiated a two tier wage system and then got rid of everyone on the top tier. You get what you pay for and at $7 an hour in Hollywood all you get are bimbos who want to meet a movie star. It took about six months and 90 percent of us had our jobs back. I was working in the black tower, which happens to be a closed environment, during the second set of negotiations. This time Universal got the bright idea to eliminate sick days because they said the secretaries were using them for personal business. Flu season came around and within days half the building (executives) were out sick because the secretaries worked while ill and recirculated air contaminated with viruses was distributed around the building. Sick days mysteriously showed up again.
I'm glad I renewed my library card. Friday night television is just like Saturday night. Useless for entertainment. CBS, which doesn't have very many successful new shows, has cut the amount of episodes of Numb3rs to 16 from 22 as it prepares to cancel it. Not for lack of viewers, but because they say it's too expensive since it's been on so long. Fox canceled Dollhouse after completely botching the timing, audience and advertising. What do those two shows have in common? You have to pay attention.
BBB
Friday, November 13, 2009
There Will Be A Republican President In 2012
And why? Because there are few true Democrats in office and those of us who have regularly voted Democrat are going to vote with our butts. As in not voting, donating or participating in a political process that consistently discriminates against a majority of the population and tells us that it will be for the best to take the least troublesome road. Taking one for the team. What a joke. It's more like spreading your legs and pretending to enjoy being raped.
Having met Obama when he was at Occidental College, I knew from experience that he was not going to be the best president for the women of the party. He was insufferably arrogant, had no respect for women and nothing has changed since then. It was always about him and never about the people who supported him or what they needed. Talk is cheap and gays, women and other disenfranchised Americans are finally seeing the true man behind the curtain. He has always been the embodiment of "enough about me, what do you think about me?"
Imitation health care reform is a good case in point. What kind of "reform" excludes women? How are women who have jobs that consistently pay them less than men doing the same work with the same education so they are dependent on the crumbs that men leave for them, feed the unwanted children they are forced to have and satisfy their Viagra charged husbands ever going to have equality?
While I am past the age of worrying about getting pregnant, it disturbs me that young women are being forced back into the Donna Reed era. It boggles my mind that I had sex education classes in the fourth grade in the sixties but today's girls are taught abstinence instead. I'm willing to bet that none of my classmates in fourth, fifth and sixth grade had unwanted children because we all knew the consequences of sex on the stick figures used in the class. Birth control was explained to us, in detail, in the seventh grade. Who knew that schools located on military bases during the cold war would turn out to be so progressive in comparison to today's education system?
When I joined the Army I met women who didn't know that sex was the cause of pregnancy. IVF hadn't been invented then so there really wasn't any other way but that's beside the point. High school graduates who didn't have a clue as to how their body worked. While I may have found it hysterically funny that someone would think that because I was biracial that one breast would give white milk and the other chocolate, I also found it terribly sad. Granted I was in Alabama and the other girl was from Tennessee, but that is no excuse.
Women are not playthings, we are not baby factories, we are not sex toys, we are equal human beings. We have thoughts, feelings and dreams just like the boys and men around us and deserve to be treated like the intelligent persons we can be when we are given the same opportunities. We want to be doctors, lawyers, scientists, astronauts, accountants and parents, not gestational vehicles for men who need pharmaceutical help to recapture the glory days of their youth. But thanks to the Stupak amendment that is the role young women will be forced to play.
My own attitude toward paying for abortions has always been the same. Everyone is entitled to one mistake and one that affects the lifetimes of the people involved almost always requires a little outside help. That being said, while I'm willing to have my tax dollars pay for one abortion, I am not willing for it to be on a repetitive basis. Sex education and birth control should be one of the requirements for any type of government help. Then you are on your own. Except in unusual circumstances such as the life or health of the mother and the viability of the fetus. Would the fetus be able to survive if the parents are unable to provide for it without government help? I've worked with developmentally delayed adults and know how devastated and lost they become when their parents die and their siblings move on.
Conservatives always want it both ways. All children should be born in every circumstance and then no matter how impaired the child is, they are to survive without government help. Poor women shouldn't have abortions or convenient access to birth control, while at the same time their husbands are getting free samples and subsidized prescriptions for "erectile dysfunction" so they can have sex everyday. No matter what the consequences.
With the mindset described above it won't be long before spousal rape is a thing of the past, every woman should be providing for her husband's sexual needs whenever he desires. As women lose control over their own bodies, their lives are sure to follow. When my ex and I bought a house in 1978 my income wasn't included because I might have a baby and be unable to work, can those days be far behind?
Historically Democrats have been the party of women, but women's votes are no longer treated with respect and since we won't have candidates that represent our views it doesn't really matter who runs the country. It won't be us or anyone sympathetic to our wishes.
Democrats may have won this battle for false health care reform, but they have lost the war. Which wouldn't surprise me as being their goal all along. There are very few other conclusions that can be drawn from their willingness to do nothing that the people who voted them into office have asked for and everything to do with who bankrolled their campaigns. If Democrats won't represent women when they have a majority in Congress as well as a Democratic president, what good are they?
Any way you look at it, women are going to be worse off in 2012 than they are today and the eighties and nineties really will have been the golden years for women. The young women of today are in for a rude surprise if they think they can rest on the laurels of those who protested before them. They've been braless for so long they can't conceive of an age where it was a requirement. If they aren't willing to fight for their rights why would those of us who blazed the way want to revisit an issue that we thought was resolved, for a generation that takes so many rights for granted that they are willing to stand by and return to second class status? If Democrats don't start changing their attitude toward women most of us won't support the party in 2012 unless the opposing candidate is the equivalent of Osama bin Laden. And that should frighten someone.
BBB
Having met Obama when he was at Occidental College, I knew from experience that he was not going to be the best president for the women of the party. He was insufferably arrogant, had no respect for women and nothing has changed since then. It was always about him and never about the people who supported him or what they needed. Talk is cheap and gays, women and other disenfranchised Americans are finally seeing the true man behind the curtain. He has always been the embodiment of "enough about me, what do you think about me?"
Imitation health care reform is a good case in point. What kind of "reform" excludes women? How are women who have jobs that consistently pay them less than men doing the same work with the same education so they are dependent on the crumbs that men leave for them, feed the unwanted children they are forced to have and satisfy their Viagra charged husbands ever going to have equality?
While I am past the age of worrying about getting pregnant, it disturbs me that young women are being forced back into the Donna Reed era. It boggles my mind that I had sex education classes in the fourth grade in the sixties but today's girls are taught abstinence instead. I'm willing to bet that none of my classmates in fourth, fifth and sixth grade had unwanted children because we all knew the consequences of sex on the stick figures used in the class. Birth control was explained to us, in detail, in the seventh grade. Who knew that schools located on military bases during the cold war would turn out to be so progressive in comparison to today's education system?
When I joined the Army I met women who didn't know that sex was the cause of pregnancy. IVF hadn't been invented then so there really wasn't any other way but that's beside the point. High school graduates who didn't have a clue as to how their body worked. While I may have found it hysterically funny that someone would think that because I was biracial that one breast would give white milk and the other chocolate, I also found it terribly sad. Granted I was in Alabama and the other girl was from Tennessee, but that is no excuse.
Women are not playthings, we are not baby factories, we are not sex toys, we are equal human beings. We have thoughts, feelings and dreams just like the boys and men around us and deserve to be treated like the intelligent persons we can be when we are given the same opportunities. We want to be doctors, lawyers, scientists, astronauts, accountants and parents, not gestational vehicles for men who need pharmaceutical help to recapture the glory days of their youth. But thanks to the Stupak amendment that is the role young women will be forced to play.
My own attitude toward paying for abortions has always been the same. Everyone is entitled to one mistake and one that affects the lifetimes of the people involved almost always requires a little outside help. That being said, while I'm willing to have my tax dollars pay for one abortion, I am not willing for it to be on a repetitive basis. Sex education and birth control should be one of the requirements for any type of government help. Then you are on your own. Except in unusual circumstances such as the life or health of the mother and the viability of the fetus. Would the fetus be able to survive if the parents are unable to provide for it without government help? I've worked with developmentally delayed adults and know how devastated and lost they become when their parents die and their siblings move on.
Conservatives always want it both ways. All children should be born in every circumstance and then no matter how impaired the child is, they are to survive without government help. Poor women shouldn't have abortions or convenient access to birth control, while at the same time their husbands are getting free samples and subsidized prescriptions for "erectile dysfunction" so they can have sex everyday. No matter what the consequences.
With the mindset described above it won't be long before spousal rape is a thing of the past, every woman should be providing for her husband's sexual needs whenever he desires. As women lose control over their own bodies, their lives are sure to follow. When my ex and I bought a house in 1978 my income wasn't included because I might have a baby and be unable to work, can those days be far behind?
Historically Democrats have been the party of women, but women's votes are no longer treated with respect and since we won't have candidates that represent our views it doesn't really matter who runs the country. It won't be us or anyone sympathetic to our wishes.
Democrats may have won this battle for false health care reform, but they have lost the war. Which wouldn't surprise me as being their goal all along. There are very few other conclusions that can be drawn from their willingness to do nothing that the people who voted them into office have asked for and everything to do with who bankrolled their campaigns. If Democrats won't represent women when they have a majority in Congress as well as a Democratic president, what good are they?
Any way you look at it, women are going to be worse off in 2012 than they are today and the eighties and nineties really will have been the golden years for women. The young women of today are in for a rude surprise if they think they can rest on the laurels of those who protested before them. They've been braless for so long they can't conceive of an age where it was a requirement. If they aren't willing to fight for their rights why would those of us who blazed the way want to revisit an issue that we thought was resolved, for a generation that takes so many rights for granted that they are willing to stand by and return to second class status? If Democrats don't start changing their attitude toward women most of us won't support the party in 2012 unless the opposing candidate is the equivalent of Osama bin Laden. And that should frighten someone.
BBB
Sunday, November 08, 2009
Sunday Morning Musings
The commentators at Faux News want the military to screen Muslims and thinks that they should be treated as potential threats. How 1940s. And just a few days after running the story of the 442nd Regiment and the 65thh anniversary of their rescue of a Texas infantry regiment during WWII. Crazy people are just that, crazy. It doesn't mean that everyone who is Muslim is crazy. Or a terrorist.
Emphasizing the three Rs means that other courses get lost, such as history. A survey in Britain revealed that kids between 9 and 15 have a rather inaccurate view of the past, such as Hitler was a soccer coach and Auschwitz was a WWII amusement park. The Holocaust was the celebration of the end of the war and that America entered the war because a nuclear bomb was dropped on Pearl Harbor.
The insurance company rescue bill has passed. Thank goodness I have VA health care. My doctor actually listens to me, explains his reasoning and follows up to make sure he covered all the bases. Everyone should be so lucky. The minute health care reform became about insurance reform the battle was lost. Money talked and reform walked. Health care will not become less expensive and as more companies move their jobs overseas there will be fewer jobs that provide health insurance benefits. Soon the only people who will have coverage will be the Congress critters, their constituents can only hope that Doctors Without Borders will provide services to Americans in addition to serving other Third World countries.
Sacramento politicians are whining again. The poor widdle babies. Making $116,000 a year and they're protesting a cut to their additional $35,000 a year per diem rate, a $400 month car allowance and free health care. Their constituents are unemployed or work for companies who have cut benefits and increased premiums and the state lawmakers don't think it's fair for them to have to do the same. An 18 percent cut in benefits has them up in arms while other state employees who actually provide services to the public and make much less have had their salaries cut by 18 percent by eliminating their work days and calling it a furlough. It must be nice to have a job where the first requirement is that you are clueless. Marie Antoinette would be so proud.
Yes, the Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms, but why does someone who isn't a member of a "well regulated militia" have the right to deprive innocent bystanders of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? The last few days the news has been filled with the unfortunate shootings at Ft. Hood, Orlando and now Amarillo. It's pretty sad when a tourist can't stop in a bar without being shot for no reason. How many dead people will it take before American society realizes that not everyone can or should have a gun? Charles Whitman shocked the nation in 1966 and forty three years later nuts are still running around with guns and a willingness to use them.
Diarrhea of the mouth? You betcha! Someone as ethically and morally challenged as the quitbull should keep her mouth shut and attend to the problems in her own family before telling other people what they can, cannot or might do.
I want a cloaking device. Not to hide me, just my fat. I'm more into the Eureka personal model than the Star Trek battleship model.
BBB
Emphasizing the three Rs means that other courses get lost, such as history. A survey in Britain revealed that kids between 9 and 15 have a rather inaccurate view of the past, such as Hitler was a soccer coach and Auschwitz was a WWII amusement park. The Holocaust was the celebration of the end of the war and that America entered the war because a nuclear bomb was dropped on Pearl Harbor.
Twelve percent of respondents said the symbol of Britain's Remembrance Day is the golden arches of McDonald's, rather than the poppy.I wonder how American kids would have answered the questions.
The insurance company rescue bill has passed. Thank goodness I have VA health care. My doctor actually listens to me, explains his reasoning and follows up to make sure he covered all the bases. Everyone should be so lucky. The minute health care reform became about insurance reform the battle was lost. Money talked and reform walked. Health care will not become less expensive and as more companies move their jobs overseas there will be fewer jobs that provide health insurance benefits. Soon the only people who will have coverage will be the Congress critters, their constituents can only hope that Doctors Without Borders will provide services to Americans in addition to serving other Third World countries.
Sacramento politicians are whining again. The poor widdle babies. Making $116,000 a year and they're protesting a cut to their additional $35,000 a year per diem rate, a $400 month car allowance and free health care. Their constituents are unemployed or work for companies who have cut benefits and increased premiums and the state lawmakers don't think it's fair for them to have to do the same. An 18 percent cut in benefits has them up in arms while other state employees who actually provide services to the public and make much less have had their salaries cut by 18 percent by eliminating their work days and calling it a furlough. It must be nice to have a job where the first requirement is that you are clueless. Marie Antoinette would be so proud.
Yes, the Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms, but why does someone who isn't a member of a "well regulated militia" have the right to deprive innocent bystanders of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? The last few days the news has been filled with the unfortunate shootings at Ft. Hood, Orlando and now Amarillo. It's pretty sad when a tourist can't stop in a bar without being shot for no reason. How many dead people will it take before American society realizes that not everyone can or should have a gun? Charles Whitman shocked the nation in 1966 and forty three years later nuts are still running around with guns and a willingness to use them.
Diarrhea of the mouth? You betcha! Someone as ethically and morally challenged as the quitbull should keep her mouth shut and attend to the problems in her own family before telling other people what they can, cannot or might do.
I want a cloaking device. Not to hide me, just my fat. I'm more into the Eureka personal model than the Star Trek battleship model.
BBB
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