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

Political Sign of the Month - March 2013

Bless this Woman just standing there in her blue hat. Bless all the women and the photographer too. A special shout out to the guys way in the left and right corners of the photograph. Way to go, Dudes. God love prochoice men just standing there in their socks. I know S/He does.

Protesters opposed to legislation requiring women seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasound demonstrated outside the Idaho Capitol in Boise on March 21, 2012. (AP Photo/Jessie L. Bonner)

Rabid Racism and the Voting Rights Act

Eclectablog, the premier Michigan events and politics blog, brings us the story of two Black Nurses suing for racial discrimination in the workplace. 

2nd nurse sues Hurley Hospital for complying with racist’s demands; original lawsuit goes to federal court

A second nurse has joined Tonya Battle in filing a lawsuit against Flint hospital Hurley Medical Center. Carlotta Armstrong claims that ... she was subjected to racial discrimination when administrators complied with a blatantly racist father’s demand that no African American nurses care of his baby in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).

What a fricking mess. In my opinion, this racist man presented a serious security risk for the whole hospital. White supremacist racists cannot be regarded as rational and must be thought of as dangerous given the bomb found at a MLK Day parade. 

The hospital had a big problem that was really scary. And by law hospitals cannot decline to treat someone for having an unfortunate or frightening political opinion. And the hospital is responsible for safety of everyone in the hospital. 

Unfortunately, the hospital chose a top-down solution. They put up a sign instructing Black nurses not to handle the racist's baby. All the nurses went ballistic. Professional dignity alone would demand nurses object, never mind respect for colleagues whatever their race, religion or politics. 

The smart way to deal with it would have been to call a meeting of the whole nursing and security staff and give them input into the decision making. And honor that input. The whole staff might all very well have decided to humor the scary man. No doubt in my mind that is the best course of action. That group decision would not have been imposed upon black staff. Democracy works. Maybe we should all give it a try. 

The Voting Rights Act of 1964 is up for renewal. I was in High School in the early Sixties. I had a friend who was a great artist. He also happened to be black. Nobody is pinker than me and I had red hair. One day I exuberantly took his hand while we were walking down the street. Traffic stopped. Catcalls began. We were engaged in shocking unacceptable behavior. Just ambling along. 

Two coffee houses, the Trivia and the Capri, were shut down because students from the High School went there to hear Beat poetry and play chess. No alcoholic beverages. Black and white folks together. Unacceptable. It was a "friend" of mine who reported the fraternization to high school authorities. And the Trenton Suits shut that whole thing down. 

Alabama, did you say? It was Trenton New Jersey in 1960. Race relations in this country were bad news for everyone. I do not want to go back to that. Once was enough. We cannot do without the Voting Rights Act. Especially in light of the voter suppression billboards that mysteriously appeared in minority neighborhoods this last election. 

I love you, America

Fuck the Koch brothers with Sheldon Adelson's dick. I was so afraid of Citizens United. All that corporate and foreign money pouring in to influence our election seemed unbeatable. And then we WON.

Here is what you rich Dumb Asses accomplished. You energized the American people. I used to read articles decrying how few people vote. Now you Authoritarians are reduced to using dirty tricks to stop Americans from voting. 

You also showed us that all the money in the world cannot buy or bamboozle real Americans. Folks waited in lines for hours to give you the finger of doom. Patriots every single one of them. 

God bless you my fellow Americans. You make this nasty Old Lady very happy. 

O lands! all so dear to me--what you are, (whatever it is), I become a part of that, whatever it is; . . .  - Walt Whitman

Just goes to show that all the money in the world will do you no good if you choose to live in Dumbfuckistan. 

Note: I did not make any Cock jokes. It would have been too easy. 

Asshats on Parade - Humiliation Version or Beat Me, Daddy, Eight to the Bar

Narcissus by Caravaggio

Narcissus was the beautiful youth in Greek myth doomed to gaze enraptured at his own reflection forever.

Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance and a deep need for admiration. Those with narcissistic personality disorder believe that they're superior to others and have little regard for other people's feelings.

This, from his blog, is the Testimony of Cardinal Mahoney regarding his sin and crime of aiding and abetting the secret rape of hundreds of children in his diocese.

"Given all of the storms that have surrounded me and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles recently, God's grace finally helped me to understand:  I am not being called to serve Jesus in humility.  Rather, I am being called to something deeper--to be humiliated, disgraced, and rebuffed by many.

I was not ready for this challenge.  Ash Wednesday changed all of that, and I see Lent 2013 as a special time to reflect deeply upon this special call by Jesus.

To be honest with you, I have not reached the point where I can actually pray for more humiliation.  I'm only at the stage of asking for the grace to endure the level of humiliation at the moment.

In the past several days, I have experienced many examples of being humiliated.  In recent days, I have been confronted in various places by very unhappy people.  I could understand the depth of their anger and outrage--at me, at the Church, about injustices that swirl around us.

Thanks to God's special grace, I simply stood there, asking God to bless and forgive them."  

The rape of children in Mahoney's diocese is all about his suffering. The anger of their parents is Mahoney's apotheosis, a special sign from Jesus. 

Mahoney is the victim. But, like Christ, he will forgive us. I do not know whether to laugh, cry or vomit. God save us from the mad priest.