Friday, October 23, 2009

Mother in law IV

So she’s annoying…again.

She’s already been pissed off the last week. Just not talking, making comments to my wife when I’m not around, and generally just being a pain in the butt. The one thing that pissed me off the most was that the wife & I have been wanting to do a fondue for a few weeks now, and we decided to do it this weekend. I told my wife we should call one of her nephews up and see if he wants to have it with us. Its a great social dinner and since we hadn’t seen him in a long time this would be a good idea. Well telling my MIL this she said that she should make something else in case he doesn’t like it. I explained what a fondue was, since I don’t think she really knows, she made a face, turned around and walked away.

If she goes to make something else I’m gonna lose it. Its bad enough she’s been pissing me off with her attitude this past week, I don’t need her to start in on a plan, and the reason we invited the nephew up in the first place. Right now I can just see her complaining the entire time we’re eating. I’m gonna lose it I swear.

In the spring we are gone, in the spring we are gone, in the spring we are gone.

This is my mantra.

I can’t wait.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

PBS ‘The Warning’

It should be ‘The Warning, hung, drawn and quartered, minced, then staked, drowned in holy water, cremated and remains spread to the four corners of the earth’.

Go see the full episode (55 minutes) at the link below.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/view/

You really have to watch it. If you’re at all interested in how the financial meltdown happened, watch it. The amazing thing is that big business is still fighting against regulation and refuses to see the risk. The scarier part is that the President has filled all his financial advisers with people who don’t want any sort of regulation either.

The US economy is a house of cards, again, and there is a strong wind blowing. How are we going to survive the next collapse?

I’m not one for fear mongering, but this is scary stuff.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Equal Rights

Not much to say here. I’ll let the video do the talking.

Thank you Philip Spooner, not only for your service in WWII, but for fighting for what is right now. This is what you fought for.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Rachel Maddow

Well I’m gonna post two videos, and wow, what videos. This is from the Rachel Maddow show, which is on MSNBC.  She is a left leaning commentator, but has gone after President Obama on stuff he has done too. Probably out of all the TV commentators on all channels she is the best, and she is new to it as well. She’s smart and researches the hell out of her topics, so when guests come on she is well up on their issues. She’s had both right wing and left wing guests on. She doesn’t ask fluff questions and doesn’t let her guests get away with anything. As you’ll see.

One thing to note is when Maddow questions some of the people Phillips work with, he rushes to defend their ‘patriotism’ when Maddow said nothing about that at all. This is a tactic that is used in arguments to deflect you away from the real issue and to get you to go on the defencive. I’m glad Maddow didn’t let that stand.

While I give credit to Maddow for being honest, and I don’t disagree with her, I am on the fence on if it was the right thing to do. This was a hard hitting interview that let both sides speak, both sides sat there and debated without yelling. Why is this so hard to do on other shows?

Now I agree with Maddow, Americans for Prosperity is hiding its sponsors which brings up all kinds of questions, and AFP president Tim Phillips gives lame excuses. It is not unknown for health insurance companies to pay groups such as this one to push their agenda. It has nothing to do with the regular Americans, they just dupe people to follow their lead by using phrases like ‘Obamacare wants to kill your grandma’ and idiotic stuff like this. In other words some of these anti-healthcare reform groups outright lie because they are paid to do so. None of these millionaires are ever going to be in the same position many of their followers are in. Facing foreclosure due to medical bills, getting kicked out of their insurance due to large medical problems,  losing insurance because they lost their job, etc… They are pushing this because they are paid to, and has nothing to do with patriotism, great Americans, freedom, democracy or anything else they are saying its related to.

I’m sorry that the blog has become more political lately, I’ll try and tone that down. Maybe its time for a Mother-In-Law update?

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Orly Taitz Part II

First off, here’s a baby ripping apart Taitz’s legal arguments.

Actually I think Judge Land was laughing as hard as this baby was when he ripped apart Orly’s legal ‘arguments’ and handed down a $20,000 fine on good old Orly.

Heh heh. Pardon me but I’m giggling away at this.

Counsel Orly Taitz is hereby ordered to pay $20,000.00 to the United States, through the Middle District of Georgia Clerk’s Office, within thirty days of the date of this Order as a sanction for her misconduct in violation of Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

I think the best part is when he says her responses are delusional and a waste of the courts time. Saying she used press conference sound bites and speeches. (see the above link for this)

If you’re wondering what this was about Orly Taitz conned another military officer into letting her represent their case. Which is more of this ‘birther’ nonsense. Obama’s not the real president so he can’t send me overseas…. Blah blah blah.

There is an attempt to get her disbarred, and I hope t succeeds, because as humourous as she is, she’s also wasting valuable court time with this crap.

But for now, I’m giggling away like the baby is.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Two shockers revisited

Well Stephen Colbert talked about the Conservative Bible:

The Colbert Report Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Tip/Wag - Conservapedia, Louvre & Honda Unicycle
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Michael Moore

I talked with my mother about this too, and she’s a Conservative Canadian, so not so far right as American Conservatives, but she listens to Dobson who is a far right American Conservative. I asked her what she thought of what they were doing and she was shocked. When I told her that Conservapedia claimed that the bible had a ‘liberal bias’, she started laughing out of shock. She asked what country this was coming from, and when I said the US, she said, ‘Ahhh…. That makes sense.’ And I suppose it does considering how crazy the US is getting these days. Which is a perfect segue into the next topic.

Hey ya’ll, lets go kill us some traitor democrats.

While that is not exactly what they’re saying, it might as well be. Rep. Broun (Republican – of course) of Georgia said (at a town hall meeting) this:

“You’re exactly right. We’ve lost a lot of freedom in America. People just don’t understand how much we’ve lost. I believe the First Amendment and the Second Amendment are the cornerstones of freedom, and we’ve lost a lot of our rights, the Second Amendment. In fact, I’m chairman of the Second Amendment Task Force fighting for Second Amendment rights. Those gun rights are actually critical to prevent treason in America, and we must know (applause). These First Amendment Rights, our freedom of speech and all the other things that are going on are just absolutely awful.

“I’ve gotten to be good friends with Justice Antonin Scalia, who he and Justice Clarence Thomas are the only ones who have any concept of what the Constitution is supposed to be and, and do what they’re supposed to do as justices by upholding the Constitution. But, in fact every, when I was sworn into the Marine Corp, I was sworn to uphold the Constitution against every enemy, foreign and domestic. We’ve got a lot of domestic enemies of the Constitution (applause) and one of those sits in the speaker’s chair of the United States Congress, Nancy Pelosi.” (applause)

This is from an elected public official, a Congressman. Its all hidden behind ‘2nd Amendment rights’, just like ‘Jim from Oklahoma’ tried to do. This is playing to the crazies out there, and one of these days something terrible is going to happen.

When President George W. Bush was in office and he went out to speak, people were arrested for wearing the wrong t-shirt (no, I’m not kidding this actually happened). Now the Republicans want to be able to take guns to Obama’s speeches. And with the amount of crackpots who are talking about killing off ‘traitorous  liberals’, and ‘taking back the country’, there is a very real threat of something very bad happening. Specially since no Republican thought they needed to exercise there 2nd Amendment rights under Pres. Bush. If I were in charge of the Secret Service, with every Pres. Obama speech that have people openly carrying guns, I would have two agents, openly having their hands on their guns following the nut with the gun. He touches his gun they take him down. You simply do not mess with the security of the president.

These are very scary times we are living in now. The media has a 1st Amendment right to lie (Fox News won that right in court), and they are using it to stir up the nutjobs in America. Cause that’s what gets ratings. It doesn’t matter they are giving voices to wackos that represent 1% of the country, they are the ones getting the attention. Its going to end very badly and no matter what happens its not good for America at all.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Two shockers today

I am simply stumped today. Perusing my daily news sites I came across these two things that frankly shocked me.

Conservatizing the Bible

As of 2009, there is no fully conservative translation of the Bible which satisfies the following ten guidelines:

Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias

Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, "gender inclusive" language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity

Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level[

Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle".

Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as "gamble" rather than "cast lots" using modern political terms, such as "register" rather than "enroll" for the census

Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.

Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning

Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story

Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels

Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word "Lord" rather than "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" or "Lord God."

Wow, just… wow. Rewriting the bible to skew it towards your ideology. The ONLY things out of this list I could understand is changing ‘cast lots’ to ‘gamble’. Everything else is pure bullshit. Yes lets get rid of the word ‘peace’ because its changed meaning, and the bible should not talk about peace. I guess they are going to replace it with ‘war’. I think my favorite parts are they want the bible to push ‘free market parables’ and they want the bible to push how men should be bossing around women.

The other shocker today comes in video form:

I originally caught the link here. Don’t forget to hit the link to part 2 of the video on that page.

Can someone please get the Secret Service involved? If this guy is telling the truth he, and his ‘clan members’ need to be brought down and thrown in jail. What they are planning is nothing more than terrorism. You can dislike Obama all you want, but threatening to overthrow the government by violence is terrorism plain and simple.

While I am trying to leave the US its not because I don’t love the US. I do, its a great country full of great people, but frankly this kind of stuff flat out scares me. More and more its being quietly encouraged by hate filled talk radio and some politicians and the media. The more people hear it, the more they think its ok and that their views are in the mainstream, when they are not. I saw one interview (sorry I can’t remember who it was, or where it was) and this guy said that this was exactly the type of thing that was going on in Israel when the Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a radical right wing crazy, who felt as if he was saving the country from a ‘dire fate’. He also tried to defend the assassination on religious grounds. These are the fires being stoked right now and that scares me.

*edit* I actually did call this one in to the Secret Service. The guy may be joking, the guy may be real, but in either case its not something I want to just wait to see what happens.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Americans at their finest

Chicago was considered for the next Olympic games, in fact Obama went to the Olympic Committee to try and help Chicago get it. I don’t think he went because Chicago is his hometown, but rather that it would mean approximately $22.5 Billion dollars and over 300,000 full time jobs for the US. Isn’t that what is important?

Well Chicago lost to Rio and Republicans loved it.

 

This is from a meeting of Americans for Prosperity. They cheered when the US lost its bid to host the Olympics. They cheered when the US lost $22.5 BILLION in revenue. They cheered when the US lost 300,000 full time jobs. Someone needs to tell them which side they are on. This goes beyond political parties, this is a country thing, just as everybody got behind President Bush after 9/11 because it effected us all, so too the Republicans should get behind President Obama on this. But, sadly, we have seen time and time again that there are Republicans who want nothing to do with Obama, and will never get behind anything he does.

If a Democrat, or a Democratic group, had done the same thing Republicans would have called them ‘traitors, ‘un-American’, etc… We saw this when anyone disagreed with President Bush during his eight years in office. It didn’t matter what it was you were just supposed to obey. If you disagreed with the Iraq war you were said to be ‘endangering soldiers lives’, or ‘siding with the terrorists’, etc… Sadly looking over the past few days of media headlines I don’t see a major mention of this glee these people had because the US lost its bid. Why is there the double standard in the media?

There are a lot of issues I have with President Obama, I don’t like a lot of what he is doing, but on this issue all Americans should have been behind him. Shame on these people, and all others who were happy the US lost. Shame on them.