Political Sign of the Month - April 2013

Advertising is the greatest artform of the 20th century. - Marshall McLuhan. 

I had a difficult time selecting the best Political Sign for April. I found the fabulous Political Loudmouth political sign website. You can go there and select your favorite. This one is my favorite because it is fiery. I am thinking it needs to be a Tshirt. 

The word sign has a number of meanings. The Oxford Dictionary says that a sign is

An object, quality, or event whose presence or occurrence indicates the probable presence or occurrence of something else.

Given that definition, I am going to propose that this House is really a Sign. I am not April Fooling. "The medium is the massage/message." -  Marshall McLuhan. 

Shaming and Blaming

Being an Anarchist and a generally Odd Person is trying on a regular basis. I say the Serenity Prayer a lot. And I need to . . . God grant me . . . 

My natural and instinctive response to North Dakota's new abortion laws is to fantasize burning the North Dakota State House down. These bills will kill women and harm families. 

Sanity came back when I read the Editorial in the Fargo-Moorhead Forum. The last paragraph in the editorial says it all:

The governor’s decision to sign the bills is more than a disappointment. He has unnecessarily put the state into a costly and losing legal struggle. More importantly, his deference to legislative malfeasance dismisses women’s rights and undermines best practices of medicine in North Dakota.

Be a terrible sin and shame to harm such a beautiful Art Deco building. And going to jail like the Cheryl Sullenger  filth is beneath me. Crazy person that I am, I am no terrorist.

So, having read the excellent editorial in the Forum, I was all kool and feeling reassured that there are sane folks in North Dakota, until I went to a message board and read this comment. And then I got upset all over again.

"These same politicians want to ensure that effective and efficient birth control is not available and they see abortion as birth control. It's not, but there seems to be no way of convincing these "folks" of that."

A big part of the oppressive control of women is shaming and blaming. I know this is a good pro choice person who sees herself as enlightened. And indeed, she is that. And yet, she is apologizing for women who do or might use abortion as birth control. She is apologizing because ultimately, in some obscure corner of her psyche, she feels shame about abortion. And that shaming is the only argument Forced Birthers really have, when I think about it. This is stupid counter productive pearl clutching. 

So I say, take a good hard look at reality, shall we? Anthropologically speaking, Homo Sapiens has three strategies for birth/population control - contraception, abortion and infanticide. These strategies are in use currently around the world.  Ipso facto. 

Those who restrict contraception and abortion make infanticide inevitable. That is immoral by any standard. My evidence? Ceausescu's Romania and the murder of street children in Central and South America and in India. Am I the only one who sees this?

Up Your Giggy, George W. Bush, Sideways

Wish George W. Bush a Happy Iraq War Day: Here is His Private Email Address - from Gawker

As we mentioned earlier, a hacker calling himself (or herself) Guccifer has penetrated the electronic worlds of George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, and a number of other political figures. Screengrabs of various email conversations that Bush, Clinton, and others have participated in have been floating around the internet. And it has come to our attention on this, the day of the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq on the orders of George W. Bush, that one of those screengrabs credibly displays Bush's private email address. 

It is: gwb@ogwb.org. Please let him know that you're thinking of him today.

http://gawker.com/5991411/wish-george-w-bush-a-happy-iraq-war-day-here-is-his-private-email-address?post=58405543

Frosting the Turd with UPDATE

The Republicans are making no plans to change their ignorant sexually repressive platform. They are aware that Tod Akin might as well have entered the national parlor and left a turd on the rug. So they are going to deodorize it as outlined in the Roll Call article I excerpt below. If you missed the event, I provide the video in question. 

Inside the NRSC's Comeback Strategy

• By Kyle Trygstad

• Roll Call Staff

• March 4, 2013, 6:53 p.m.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee plans to expand its press operation to train campaigns earlier in the cycle on how to better handle the kind of candidate missteps that have plagued its party’s nominees. The goal? To avoid what’s become known in GOP circles as “Todd Akin moments.”

“The campaigns that jumped off message not only infected themselves, they infected all the rest of the campaigns,” said Rob Collins, the new NRSC executive director, in his first extensive interview on the job. “So in this age of fractured but continuous, three-dimensional communication, we have to constantly plan for that and train for that and build for that.”

UPDATE:   The Growth and Opportunity Project  Report has been released. The Report evaluates what the GOP must do if they want to win elections. The report suggests that Republicans communicate their values to minorities more effectively. I excerpt part of the Report's recommendations for Women. 

5. Republicans should develop a more aggressive response to Democrat rhetoric regarding a so-called “war on women.” In 2012, the Republican response to this attack was muddled, and too often the attack went undefended altogether. We need to actively combat this, better prepare our surrogates, and not stand idly by while the Democrats pigeonhole us using false attacks. There are plenty of liberal policies that negatively impact women, and it is incumbent upon the party to expose those and relentlessly attack Democrats using that framework. 

There is not one mention of "legitimate rape" bills. No mention of attempts to relegislate Roe v. Wade and defund Planned Parenthood. We all saw that with our own eyes. They plan to language it all away. I find Republicans "scary" too: 

Now that we know their play (Frost the turd with yummy chocolate before they try to make us eat it again.), we must never never never give them credence or power again. Why? This is their playbook: 

“It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise.” 
― Joseph Goebbels