For those of you that don’t know, a battle has erupted in Maine.  The state legalized gay marriage earlier this year, and immediately, one of those reactionary, backwards, right-wing organizations of insecure people who somehow feel their rights are threatened when other people are given the same rights started a ballot initiative to overturn the legalization of gay marriage in Maine.  This has turned into a huge campaign, with the same backers as the people that supported Proposition 8 last year in California. Hell, they didn’t even bother to change commercial scripts. (Why pay the writers twice for the same message?  It makes financial sense, at least.)

I am, in fact, a supporter of gay marriage.  I could make an impassioned plea on behalf of gay friends and relatives about justice and equality.  Instead, I’ll let Philip Spooner, a decorated World War II veteran and lifelong Republican, make a better case than I ever could.

I salute you, Mr. Spooner.

VS – 10/22/09

P.S.  An interesting aside:  over the weekend, I overheard a Mormon friend explaining how her babysitter quit because of the church’s support of Proposition 8.  Her defense?  “The Mormon Church wasn’t the biggest supporter, nor did it put in the most money.”  She either didn’t hear me or ignored me when I said “But it was a supporter.”  To me, her argument was like saying, “Well, I wasn’t the highest-ranking klansman, I wasn’t the most muscular klansman, and I wasn’t the richest klansman. . .but I helped keep minorities down anyway.”  Then again, she had already offended me not ten minutes earlier, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by anything else ignorant coming from her. . .not that I’ll hear it, because that friendship is pretty much over.

Some insight into my blog-writing process:  every day, I read the Huffington Post, New York Times, and various other internet news sources looking for interesting things to write about.  Once I find something, I bookmark it in a folder called “blog ideas,” to look into later or do more research about – or totally ignore.  Of the things that I find, maybe 20% of them actually do get written about here; for others, I lose interest, the moment’s urgency passes, I just don’t have enough to say on the topic to justify a full entry, or I just never get around to the actual writing part. (I do have a life, and it sometimes gets in the way.)  Sometimes I just don’t know what to say.

Now that my list has grown way too bloody long, I’ve decided to share some of the things I didn’t write about before.  However, since there are so many, I’ll have to limit my comments on each item to just one or two lines and let you read the links.

Basically, this is my bookmark clearing-house.  Ready, set. . .go!

1. Missouri coffee drinkers share the hot, steaming cup of love!

2. Smarter than the average bear?  Maybe.  Smarter than a top-of-the-line bear-proof canister? Definitely!

3. When this guy says he’s “gotta see a man about a horse,” call the police.

4. You know the real estate market is rough when people get violent over Monopoly properties. . .

5. It’s not just Alaska’s problem:  rape victims in many places often have to foot the bill for examinations and rape kits.

6. Something to keep in mind next time you call someone a slut. . .or are called one yourself.

7. When you’re tripping balls, every bush is on fire and can talk – so was Moses just high?

8. Conservative think-tank (they can think?) Heritage Foundation calls a bill pushing for harsher child-rape penalties “overcriminalization.” People, I beg you, do not trust Republicans around your children.

9.  Yes, Dear Canada, America is, in fact, on crack.

10. The Chinese have better political sensibilities than we do; they trust sex workers more than politicians.

11. Proof that God has a sense of humour: A British actor in a swine flu prevention commercial came down with – wait for it – swine flu.

12. What you’ve always suspected is true:  your brain really is working against you. As is the CIA.

13. If you only click one of these links, for the love of all that’s good and holy, make it this one about how and why conservative are always wrong. . .with historical evidence to back it up.  Brilliant!

14. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder – and the Photoshop of the photo editor.

15. I don’t know how to fix the obesity problem in this country, but I’m pretty sure that this is the wrong tactic.

16. Looks like freedom of speech only goes so far. . .

17. Why is John McCain the only Republican willing to stand up to conservative nutjobs? There’s gotta be more somewhere. . .

18. When a machete- and gun-wielding convicted killer gets better health care than his surviving victim, something is well and truly fucked up in this country.

19. Who’s really out to kill Grandma? It ain’t who you’d think.

20. “In recognition of your service to this country, we’re going to take away your child custody rights. Thank you!”

21. Welcome to Tennessee, where you can carry guns in bars, parks, and – wait a second, maybe not so much the parks.

22. “‘Round these here parts, you start wavin’ a picture of  Obama with a Hitler ’stache, you can ’spect a asswhuppin from an old Armenian man, and that’s how it should be.”

23. If you’re in a POW camp, Monopoly is a great, fun way to pass the time – or, you know, help you break out.

24. So, that high-tech phone you’ve got?  Chances are, if it gets stolen, its makers would rather force you to buy a new one than help you get it back.  The bastards.

25. Last but certainly not least, some sexual assault prevention tips that are guaranteed to work!

Whew!

VS – 09.22.09

I have been thinking, for the past few days, about racism.

“Racism” is being launched into the airwaves fairly often nowadays.  While conventional left and middle wisdom do not blame racism solely for the. . .vociferousness of protests against health care  reform and President Obama, the pundits certainly do seem to believe that racism is a significant factor in the protests.

And they’re right.

You hear President Obama being called a fascist, a socialist, a Marxist, a Kenyan, a communist, and more by people who, when confronted, seem hard-pressed to define any of the labels that they’re throwing at him (except Kenyan, and honestly, I doubt that many of them could even find Kenya’s general location on a map or, as much as they claim to love and want to preserve the Constitution, seem to remember that as long Obama’s mother was an American citizen, he is an American citizen, no matter where he was born).  The man can’t even continue the tradition of giving a Presidential address to schoolchildren without right-wing parents getting up in arms about it, for fuck’s sake!  (For the record, I am proud to say that my daughter’s school didn’t send anything home or call any parents about the speech and showed it at the scheduled time without fanfare or fallout.)  If you take a good, hard look at the people protesting, and the ludicrous claims and scare tactics coming from a very vocal minority of this country, I promise that you too will be left with the strong impression is that what these people are really angry about is the black man in the White House.

Racism.  There’s that word again.

Racism, I believe, has a basis in primal human nature.  It is natural to fear what is different from one’s self, from one’s own experience.  It is also a natural human reaction to be fearful of change.  The loss of what is familiar, what is comfortable, what is known, can be a very frightening thing, and that is a natural reaction, to be afraid of the unknown.  However, fear of difference and fear of the unknown can and often do turn into dislike, disdain, prejudice, hatred. . .racism.  What we’re seeing in these protests is the result of fear not only left unchecked, but, in many cases, fed and nurtured and used by leaders, elected or otherwise, on the political right until it either mutated into racism or merged with already-held prejudices and became an even bigger monster (but not a monster dumb enough to forget to cloak its true nature by tossing out a “social-Marxist-fascist” smokescreen).

And the left shares the blame.

Yeah, I said it.  The political left is partly to blame for these protests.

How so?  By trying to enact reform beneficial to all Americans?  By winning new congressional majorities in the last two elections? By daring to put a black man in the White House?

No.

By demonizing people who were just afraid.

Remember what I said about it being an intrinsic part of primal human nature to fear change, to fear the unknown, to fear what is different from oneself?  It is.  And instead of talking to these people and trying to understand why they were afraid and calm their fears, the left instead labeled them “racists” and “rednecks”  and “ignorant” and ostracized them, shunned them, tried to make them ashamed of merely being human, being afraid. . .and drove them right into the open arms of the people on the right that were willing to use them for ratings, for money, for political power.  A lot of these people were just scared of a strange face, a face unlike their own, and when they turned on their TV to look for answers, they saw, instead of reports emphasizing the commonalities of all people and how the President is just a man like any other, they saw emphasis of difference and division: the first black President, the relevance of the black vote, the Latino vote, the Asian vote, the white vote, and the people who looked like them, who were largely white and older, being labeled as “racists” and “opponents” of change.  I’m not saying that some of those labels weren’t correctly applied; far from it.  I’m saying that the labels got overused and, in their overuse, succeeded more in alienating a section of the population than in actually hurting their intended targets. . .leading to those feeling alienated and disenfranchised right now, holding up signs of Obama with a Hitler mustache and parroting the words of the people who gave them ways to channel their fear into a cause instead of making them feel ashamed for being afraid.

For being human.

Don’t get me wrong;  I’m not defending racism at all.  I’m saying that the left blew a chance to win over many of the hearts and minds that they drove to the side of the extreme right-wing demagogues.

It’s not too late to correct the mistake.  It takes understanding, compassion, and most of all, calm, reasonable, logical debate.  Understand that these are not necessarily bad people on the other side of the debate.  Have the compassion to listen, and in debate, give them the knowledge, of human commonalities, that can defeat a fear of the unknown, of another people.  Remind them, hell, show them that most African-Americans are not gangsta rappers, most Asians are not martial arts experts, most Muslims are not terrorists, and most Latinos don’t even know who Carlos Mencia is.  Knowledge is really the only way to defeat the media-promulgated stereotypes and show everybody (because there are minority racists, too) that we are, as our President said, far more alike than we are different.

Not doing this, not fighting back with knowledge, will only lead to more of the same thing thing you’ve seen this summer: more loud voices covering fear with nationalism or patriotism, more walls of anger with fear hiding behind them, until finally people stop yelling and start acting. When that happens, then, if nothing else, we’ll know for sure one commonality:  everybody’s blood is red.

VS – 09.17.09

I had originally planned to post today about the large numbers of articles, essays, and such that I have bookmarked and had intended to write about, but just never got around to it.  That idea went out the window when I saw this headline at the Huffington Post:

When Getting Beaten By Your Husband Is A Pre-Existing Condition

And I thought, are they f***ing serious? Go ahead, read the article.  I’ll wait.

Done?  Good.

So, yeah, they’re f***ing serious.

You can be denied medical insurance coverage (if you live in one of the eight states that go unnamed in the article or DC) if you’ve ever been the victim of a domestic assault.  Seriously.

You know, we have more than enough of a problem in this country with domestic violence going unreported.  As if the social stigmas and legal quagmires of actually seeing your attackers punished weren’t bad enough, now the women who have the courage to stand up and fight also run the risk of losing or not being able to attain medical coverage if they do stand up and say “no more.”  It’s like being punished for being a victim, yet again.

This is so incredibly outrageous that I can’t even wrap my head around it.

There are people out there who read this article and think, “Well, it’s their own fault for being in and/or staying in an abusive relationship.” (Really, there are; read the comments.)  As someone who has spoken with several women who had been or were in abusive relationships, I can honestly say this: you don’t know someone’s abusive until they start up the abuse.  Yes, there can be red flags that, from an outside perspective, would indicate such, but an outside perspective lacks emotional investment and can have a bias that makes interpretation of the signals invariably subjective, and easily dismissed from either side.  Besides, flags are only indicators of possibility; they are not ironclad guarantees of an abusive personality.  The really smart abusers would make sure they didn’t give off such flags, anyway.  Also, no abuser beats a woman on the first date. . .or the second, or third, or, in most of the cases I have known, not until marriage.  When meeting someone new or entering a new relationship with possibilities, everybody (and I do mean everybody) puts their best foot forward, puts up their best sides and doesn’t show the true whole of themselves.  Men and women both do it, abusers and non-abusers, and not everyone does it with any sort of malign intent.  Some fear rejection needlessly, some rightfully fear rejection, others are just nervous or shy; there’s a million why people do it, and I’m not arguing for or against any of them, only acknowledging that they exist.  My point is that it can take a long time to really know someone, to really know all sides of their personality, no matter how much one already loves what one has seen of another person. . .and even then, it’s possible to hide certain sides until it’s too late.  (I’m speaking from personal experiences on that one.)

All that just to say that it’s complete B.S. to blame the victim of domestic violence for being a victim of someone else’s sickness, and morally and ethically wrong to punish them again by denying or canceling medical insurance for them.

And if that’s not enough to give you some outrage about how the insurance industry treats women, go ahead and click here to read about how difficult and costly it is for women to get pregnancy care, how women in some markets pay up to 140% more in premiums than men of the same age for the same amount of coverage, and how women can be denied coverage simply for having had a caesarian section.

What utter crap.

VS – 09.14.09

(Vagabond Saint is out sick this week.  Filling in today is nationally syndicated columnist and former McDonald’s Spokesperson Hamburglar, with a special edition of his Ask The Hamburglar advice column.)

Ask The Hamburglar!

Today's Guest Columnist

Q: Dear Hamburglar,

I have been married to a wonderful man for 8 years now.  Our marriage is fine, but I can not stand his mother!  Every time she comes over, she nitpicks about the tiniest things, like a little dust on the counters and a little laundry here and there! We both work full time and are raising 5 children and don’t always have time to take care of the little details.  How can I get her to get off my back?

Woman On The Edge
A: Yeah, I know I’ve not been around for a while.  You might have noticed me missing from McDonald’s commercials for the past decade or so.  That’s because they shit-canned me.  With an extra helping of shit, to be honest.  That’s right, McDonald’s, leading employer of 30-year-olds without high school diplomas and #1 provider of childhood obesity, canned me.  Why?  They said I was a bad role model!  ME!  Yeah, I steal hamburgers.  So what?  I’m hungry, and that’s just how we roll back in Robbulstan.  Besides, every time I stole some burgers, I always got my ass humiliated and sent to prison in the 1930s, from the look of my goddamn uniform.  You’d think that would be great for kids, ’cause it teaches them not to steal shit. But nooooooooooo, I’m the one that’s a bad role model, out of all those freaks and bizarro people I worked with there.

Let me tell you something about Birdie:  we didn’t call her “Birdie” because she could fly and had a pilot’s license.  We called her “Birdie” because she was higher than the fucking stratosphere all the goddamn time.  (While we’re on the bird theme, we could have called her “Cockatiel,” if you know what I mean.)  If she had hollow bones like a real bird does, they were most likely stuffed with coke at any given moment.  If you could snort it, inject it, smoke it, or drink it, Birdie had it in large fucking supply.  Why do you think she was always walking in circles, making airplane noises?  She wasn’t just being cute, she was higher than Amy Winehouse in a three-way with Keith Richards and another equally-high Keith Richards.  And I’m the bad role model.

Q: Dear Hamburglar,

I’m in my junior year of college and, for the first time in my life, I’ve found a woman that I’ve fallen in love with.  The problem is, I’m a virgin.  I don’t even know all that much about sex, and I don’t know how to break it to her that I’m really inexperienced.  I’ve heard that’s a big turnoff for women.  Is that true?  Should I tell her or should I just buy some porn and learn about it on my own first?

Inexperienced In Illinois

A: For all that I could say about Birdie (and there’s a lot), at least she’s from this planet.  Grimace is a fucking illegal alien, and when I say “alien,” understand I am not fucking around, alright?  That guy’s from outer space somewhere, I swear.  We never could get a clear answer out of that clown.  He’d just play stupid whenever we tried asking for his green card and cry whenever he saw a picture of Pluto.  On top of being in this country, never mind on this planet, illegally, he’s gay too.  That’s right, Grimace is a big ol’ Purple Penis Eater.  You might be wondering how a vaguely-conical alien blob that never wears clothes could even have sexual organs.  Trust me.  They’re there.  And if he gets drunk, there’s a 98% chance he’ll show them to you, and then you can have haunted goddamn nightmares, too.  Don’t ever go drinking with that fucker and pass out near him, is what I’m saying.

Q: Dear Hamburglar,

I need help!  One of my old buddies from school wants me to be the best man at his wedding and his fiance is great, but it turns out that the woman I’ve been a “friends with benefit” with for years is her mother, and the woman who joined in for three-ways sometimes is her aunt!  What do I do?

Scared Of Exposure

A: Ronald McDonald?  Oh, don’t get me started on that asshat.  Of all the freaks there were in that group, he was the motherfucking King, bar none.  First of all, that’s not makeup.  That’s what that jackass really looks like.  It’s like someone gave the fucking Joker a perm and a goddamn horrible dye job.  On top of that, the guy just couldn’t keep it in his pants.  Many times we had to sneak out of town because he got caught groping a kid, an employee, a manager, or a manager’s spouse.  It was just a goddamn shame.  You know what they say about guys who wear big shoes?  Well there’s a lot of disappointment comin’ for women who like guys with big floppy shoes, and let me put the emphasis on “floppy.”  It’s like he couldn’t get it up, so he tried to attack everything in sight to make up for it and popped pills of all colours like a madman.  It was fucking tragic.

I remember one time we went into a McDonald’s in Laredo, just putting in an appearance for all these kids and their parents that had shown up, and Ronald just fucking walks in, whips his shit out, yells out “You want fries with this, bitches?” and starts laughing maniacally.  6 billion served with hush money, that fuckin’ day.  And I’m the bad role model that got fired.

Fucking bastards.

********************************************************

Hamburglar’s nationally-syndicated column, “Ask The Hamburglar,” appears in over 250 newspapers nationwide.

This just in. . .

Next week, President Barack Obama will give a special address to America’s children.

On a side note, he will also give a speech to America’s students.

VS – 09.03.09

The Good:  Barney Speaks Frankly

You know how elected officials always have to be respectful and gentle with their constituents, no matter what level of insanity or inanity is currently issuing from said constituent’s mouth like a tidal wave of crazy?  Well, that behaviour has been tested quite a bit in the recent town hall meetings on the healthcare debate.  No one wants to be seen as making light of their constituent’s concerns, no matter how baseless, derogatory, or outright ludicrous those concerns are, right?

Right!

For everyone except Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank.

For those of us that have been wishing our elected representatives would stand up to the whackos showing up and town hall meetings and loudly displaying their ignorance, Barney Frank’s recent town hall was a godsend.  Check out how he handles a woman who calls the health care reform bills “a Nazi policy” (because the Nazis were all about making sure everyone had affordable health care).

Thank you, Barney Frank!  We need people to stand up to these ridiculous claims and assertions coming from the right, someone willing to call a spade a spade and show how baseless and inane these scare tactics are!

Barney Frank is my hero right now.

The Bad: Giant Rat-Eating Plant Discovered

You read that correctly:  a plant big enough to eat rats has been discovered.  Even more frightening, it’s been named after David Attenborough!

This is bad in several ways.

One, if plants have gotten big enough to eat rodents, how long do we have before they get big enough to eat people?  Clearly the plants are on a mission to stop killing humans through allergies and pretty-looking poisonous plants and just go for outright eating us!  The plants must be stopped, now, before it’s too late!

Stop the plants before anyone other than Rick Moranis suffers!

The second thing that is really scary about this is that the plant was named after Sir David Attenborough.  While those of us who know who Attenborough is know him as the soft-voiced narrator of a bajillion nature shows and a harmless, endlessly curious naturalist, the decision to name a carnivorous plant after him makes me wonder: what do the botanists know about Attenborough that the rest of us don’t? Clearly there’s some rodent-sized skeletons in his closet!  The world needs to know the truth about Sir David Attenborough!  Is he on the side of the carnivorous plants?  Is he even now preparing England for their invasion?  Has he been seduced to the green side by Poison Ivy?

Sometimes treason is completely understandable.

Whatever Attenborough’s hiding, we need to know!

The F***ing Bizarre: Professional Dick Fears For His Own

I’ve read this article several times, looking for the punchline.  Either I haven’t found it or the humour is just so subtle that I can’t see it.

Rush Limbaugh and Jay-Z having a “beef”?  President Obama is coming to cut your penis?  Rush Limbaugh being on anyone’s balls without crushing them beyond repair?

It’s just. . .I can’t make jokes about this.  It makes too many jokes about itself.  Just read the article, seriously.

***********************************************************

Thanks for the reading this installment!  Be here next time when things get even stranger!

VS – 8.26.09

So, I was informed today by a smoke shop owner that the rumours are true:  clove cigarettes have been banned in the US, and after September 17th, no more will be imported.

I have issues with this.  On my fucking birthday, no less.

The argument was made that flavoured cigarettes are more attractive to kids.  I don’t want kids to smoke, certainly.  I am completely against that.  However, it’s already illegal for people under 18 to buy cigarettes.  What good is banning the flavoured kinds when all cigarettes are already illegal for minors?

An argument, against this law, was made that the law banning clove cigarettes is unfairly discriminatory.  How could it be called so?  Because only one country in the world makes clove cigarettes:  Indonesia.  It’s a mammoth industry there, and this law just cost them one of the biggest markets for, well, everything in the entire world.  It’s also where Barack Obama spent a fair amount of time as a youth.  Way to completely screw over one of the countries that raised you, you fucking ingrate.

Notice above you there that I said that cloves are made in Indonesia.  That’s right, there isn’t a single brand of clove cigarette that is produced in America.  Not one.  So not only does this law screw Indonesian cigarette makers, it gives their etiquette-mandated complimentary reach-around to American tobacco companies instead.  It knocks off one of their major competitors.

Don’t think this law favours American companies enough yet?

It bans cigarette flavours like cloves, vanilla, cherry, grape, bacon (you knew somebody somewhere was working on a bacon-flavoured cigarette), orange, banana, any and all soprts of sweet cigarette flavours (even though cloves aren’t really sweet).  Except one flavour.

Menthols.

Made right here in the good old U.S. of fucking overzealous nanny-state A., by good old American tobacco companies.  In a law banning every conceivable flavour of cigarette other than plain tobacco, somehow menthols are still legal.

Political fuckery at its absolute finest here, people.  And the media has been completely ignoring the blatant use of legislation to eliminate competition for American companies, possibly because, in this current political climate, smokers and homosexuals are still completely okay to demonize and legislate against.

I’m still not going to buy American-made cigarettes.  It takes me a but a few weeks to get a passport, and Canada is only three hours away.  I’ll spend those few weeks buying every pack of clove cigarettes that I can, to hold me until I have the passport.

In case I haven’t made it clear, this law really, really fucking pisses me off.

More later.

VS – 08.20.09

I have just sent this letter to President Obama, using whitehouse.gov.  This missive was prompted by the news that the Administration may be willing to drop the public option in order to get health care reform passed.

*************************************************

Dear Mr. President,

I am very very concerned about the health care debate in this country and am planning to attend a MoveOn.org event tomorrow on the topic.  I am extremely alarmed at the notion that you are willing to compromise the public option in order to achieve some sort of reform.

Mr. President, as a citizen of the United States, as a taxpayer, as someone that voted for you, I am begging you: do not relent on the public option.  We want it, we need it, it must be a part of any real reform.

My brother was hospitalized, and nearly died, earlier this year for complications resulting from diabetes.  Four years ago, he was in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit and spent a week in the Superdome, where he suffered from many infections, malnutrition, and some trauma, for which he received counseling.  He is unemployed and has no health insurance.  My mother, who has been supporting him, is a schoolteacher and facing rising medical costs of her own due to advancing age.  He was unable to afford the medication for his diabetes and so ended up hospitalized, something else that they cannot afford unless my mother is somehow able to persuade her insurance company to cover him as a dependent.

I myself am currently unemployed and have no health insurance.  I am lucky in that my mother’s daughter has a great job and excellent health insurance, so my daughter is covered.

But we, and millions of people like us across the country, need a public option and the attendant subsidies proposed .

I know it might seem like a losing battle.  Every time one turns on the TV and watches the news, there are people screaming about how this health care reform should not be passed, how it is socialistic, anti-American, will create “Death Panels,” and is evil.  There is so much coverage of the screaming, yelling people and naysaying Congresspeople that I can see how one could easily be swayed into believing that health care reform is not what the majority of Americans want.

But you must remember two things.

The first is something that you yourself said (and I am paraphrasing here): TV loves a good ruckus.  They do.  In its current sad state, our news media, the “fourth estate” that is supposed to bring us truth and counter spin in service to the people is now almost completely in service to the twin masters of their corporate owners and ratings-gathering sensationalism.  The conflicts taking place in town hall meetings make for far better TV for those masters than do the calmer, more rational, more genuine debates, and so they do not get coverage.  It is said that the conflict must be selling because we are watching it, but in fact, we are watching it because, in our desperate search for truth, there is nothing else.  Save for the oases of The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, and The Rachel Maddow Show, there are almost no places on TV in which one can get glimpses of actual truth and counters to the spins and falsehoods propagated by those who would harm America for their own gain.

The second thing to remember is this:  the people yelling and screaming so loudly are a minority in this country.  By and large, they are ill-informed and betrayed for personal gain by those they want to trust.  They are afraid of changes to the status quo, even if those changes benefit them.  America is changing, it is becoming a better country, and while for some there may be racist undertones to that fear for some, the bottom line remains unchanged: they scream, and rant, and yell because they are afraid.  It’s hard to fight fear with logic and truth, but if we as a country and you as our elected representatives give in to their fear or manipulate for political gain, we will all suffer.  It’s a difficult fight, true, but not only is it a battle that must be fought, it is a battle that must be won.  Here. Now. Lives depend on this and we cannot falter.

While I understand your desire to compromise and achieve bipartisanship and consensus, I must tell you:  it’s time to give it up.  Time and time again you have offered your open hand to your opposition; in response, they have spit upon it and slapped it away.  The Republicans have no interest in bipartisanship, save that of not doing it so as to score political points with people who are afraid of change, with people who would rather put their fingers in their ears and yell into the wind than acknowledge the approaching thunder of change.

Do not give up the public option, Mr. President.

I plan on posting this letter in its entirety on my blog at http://vagabondsaint.wordpress.com .  Please do drop by for a visit, won’t you?

Sincerely,

**********************************************************

See?  I can write a really long letter and not use the “f” word.

Feel free to go to whitehouse.gov and copy and paste this letter for your own use, though I would advise coming up with your own anecdotal evidence first.

VS – 8.16.09

Welcome to the next installment of The Good, The Bad, and The F***ing Bizarre!

The Good: Geico Saves A Bunch Of Money

Geico Insurance announced today that it would be saving itself a bunch of money by no longer advertising on Glenn Beck’s short bus to Crazytown FOX News show!

Not looking at Glenn Beck

Mr. Beck claimed last week on long walk off a short, insane pier Fox And Friends that President Obama is a “racist,” with a “deep-seated hatred of white people, or white culture.“  He, of course, offered no evidence to back up this claim, unless one considers the deep, abiding love and respect that Obama has for his late Caucasian mother and grandparents to be indicative of a secret hatred for them.

Don’t bother re-reading that.  It won’t make any more sense the second time.

Beck later came 3 steps back down the nutjob ladder clarified his statement by saying that he never said that Obama doesn’t like white people, only that he hates them, and that Obama “has a problem.”  Somebody has a problem, and it has something to do with a lack of a dictionary.

The walk-back didn’t do enough to appease, well, any thinking person, leading to several petitions and movements calling on advertisers to stop supporting Beck’s crazy-tinged hate speech show by pulling advertising.  Geico responded to one of these, emailing ColorOfChange to notify them that they had pulled their advertising as of August 4.  Men’s Wearhouse and Sargento have likewise announced that they have pulled their advertising from the idiot parade Beck’s show.

So, let’s here it for advertisers finally taking some responsibility for the content of the shows they sponsor, eh?  I think that’s pretty good!

The Bad: Health Care Reform Town Hall Protests

I’m all for civil discourse, and we should all have the right to question our elected officials and get answers from them.  It’s a free exercise of the First Amendment, to voice our concerns.  That’s part of what America is all about, right?

So what’s my problem with the people who are protesting at town halls?

Well, aside from their being so ignorant as to not know that Medicare is socialized medicine run by the government, their stated tactics of being loud, disruptive, and shouting whenever anyone, including the elected officials, tries to speak are the complete opposite of what the First Amendment stands for.  They are denying the same rights they claim to be exercising to others, which is about as unpatriotic as one can get.  Your rights do not include to right to trample on someone else’s rights.

I’m not going to say more about than that these protests are a bad thing, for both the health care debate in particular and America in general.  If you’re wondering why I say that, just wait until one of these Astroturf protests comes to serious blows and people start getting hurt or killed.  It’s coming, I promise.

The F***ing Bizarre: Bizarre Games Of Cats And Mice

Two very strange things for this one.

The first,and a great thanks to my best friend for bringing this to my attention, is the Florida man arrested for possession of child pornography, after police found over 1,000 such images on his personal computer.  This is, so far, remarkable only for the ongoing exploitative debacle that is the stain in humanity’s underwear commonly known as child pornography.

Where it gets interesting is the man’s excuse for the pornography being on his computer:  his cat did it.

I swear, I am not making that up.

The man claims that his cat downloaded the images by “jumping on the keyboard” when he left the room.

Any time that you think your cat hates you, just remember:  it hasn’t yet tried to frame you for a crime that will get you shanked in the prison yard.

Yet.

The second item of note is again from Florida, but involves a man getting too friendly with a mouse. . .specifically, Minnie Mouse.

A 60-year-old Pennsylvania man has been convicted of misdemeanor battery for groping Minnie Mouse, or rather, a woman in a Minnie Mouse costume, at Walt Disney World in Orlando. According to the accosted woman, she “had to do everything possible” to keep his hands away from her chests.  You know, there’s just so many jokes that could be made here, but out of respect for what was no doubt a traumatizing experience for that poor lady, I’ll refrain.

I do believe I have said before that furries are harmless.  Let me amend that:  most furries are harmless.

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That’s it for this installment. . .till next time, please try to avoid watching Glenn Beck, being an idiotic ass at a town hall meeting, being framed for a serious felony by your cat, and feeling up anybody in an anthropomorphic animal costume!

I’ll see the ones of you that manage to do all of that next time!

VS – 8.11.09