Observations from the Window 8.13

This summer it seems like one weather event after another is a major news item. Just in the past week we've had out of control wildfires in the west, flooding in the midwest, resort swallowing sinkholes in Florida, and this morning massive thunderstorms in the northeast. We haven't even gotten to the peak hurricane season yet. At times like this it's good to be reminded that human caused climate change is just a massive liberal atheistic hoax.

I haven't mentioned America's tard in chief in some time, possibly because he has so much competition or possibly because I'm being overly politically correct, but this seems as good a moment as any to bring him back. I give you Rush Limbaugh during his radio show yesterday when he somehow managed to go from abortion to climate change with hardly a breath. He was commenting on Secretary of State John Kerry's remark that climate change was "a challenge to our responsibilities as the guardians, safe guarders of God’s creation."

"What about God’s creation called a fetus? See, in my humble opinion, folks, if you believe in God, then intellectually you cannot believe in manmade global warming. You must be either agnostic or atheistic to believe that man controls something that he can’t create. The vanity! These people on the one hand, ‘We’re no different than a mouse or a rat.’ If you listen to the animal rights activists, we are the pollutants of this planet. If it weren't for humanity, the military environmentalist wackos, the Earth would be pristine and wonderful and beautiful, and nobody would see it. According to them we are not as entitled to life on this planet as other creatures because we destroy it. But how can we destroy it when we’re no different from the lowest life forms? And then on the other end, ‘We are so powerful. And we are so impotent — omnipotent that we can destroy — we can’t even stop a rain shower, but we can destroy the climate.’ And how? With barbecue pits and automobiles, particularly SUVs. It’s absurd."

You can listen to the entire Limbaugh segment here, if you dare.

I like the beginning where Limbaugh corrects Secretary Kerry's use of the English language. More than likely it was a rather crude attempt at bringing attention to Kerry's Boston accent but as most of Limbaugh's listeners are rather crude I'm sure they fully understood.

Observations on Guns

The more I thought about what I wanted or needed to say about guns the more notes I had and the greater the threat of some massive post that made no sense to anybody. I decided I would break it into two parts. There is just too much swirling around in my head so first I'm going to get out some basic "facts" about why I think about guns the way I do. Maybe in the end it will be that long awkward post broken in two but I have to start somewhere.

At times it is a very emotional issue for me, at other times very fact based, which is very hard to explain to some people. Before I go any further let me get this out of the way, it has to stop. Every year more Americans die in this country from gun violence than died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Yes the second amendment guarantees the right to own guns but that right shouldn't override the most basic of Jefferson's rights, the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." When the Constitution was written muskets couldn't hit the side of a barn from 100' and there was no such thing as a semi-automatic musket. Does the second amendment give me the right to a nuke? I don't think so, so why a semi-automatic assault rifle with a hundred round magazine? Nobody needs to go to Cabella's for armor piercing bullets to go duck hunting. It's just insanity.

I grew up in a small town ruralish county in Pennsylvania, a state which has more NRA members than any other state other than Texas. In the fall the thoughts of a large part of the state doesn't turn to Penn State football but to hunting. Pennsylvania has more hunting seasons than I can remember. Small game, deer, bear, archery, and musket come to mind. All my uncles hunt and my dad does too although I always had the feeling he hunted more to be with his brothers than for any other reason. I love my uncles but I argue with them all the time and doing that has taught me two things about gun control. Like global warming it's just a bad term and if there is ever going to be a rational gun policy in this country it has to soothe the very real, if somewhat irrational, fear of rural Americans that somebody is going to come and take there hunting rifles.

For years I owned gun, a completely legally purchased and licensed hand gun. My one uncle taught me how to shoot it, took me to a safety class, and often took me to a shooting range where, to be brutally honest, I quite enjoyed shooting it and did much better than hit the side of a barn. Why did I enjoy it? Have you ever played a shooter computer game? If you have you and enjoyed it you understand even if you don't want to admit it to yourself. It's the same feeling just a 'real' feeling and not a 'virtual' one. Beyond that I wont get into it because it's one of those no win emotional issues of the gun debate. One extreme will say I'm evil because I enjoyed firing a gun and the other will say I'm bad because I got rid of my gun to prove a point.

Why do some people react with near hatred of the right when it comes to gun control? Because they have to deal with people like Texas Governor Rick Perry who yesterday told a wingnut meeting that teachers should be able to carry guns. Then there is former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee who thinks a mass shooting in an elementary school is the natural result of taking god out of schools. If his god is that spiteful it would allow twenty children to die to prove a point I'm so glad I don't believe in it. As for the National Rifle Association I'm not sure I can discuss them, least at the national level, without a touch of loathing. There answer to everything seems to be more guns. Guns in school, guns in church, more guns everywhere as if 300 million weren't enough.

But now it all comes down to one simple fact, twenty small children died in a way nobody deserves to die. As I wrote somewhere last Friday, what does it say about a country when it kills its children?

So you can see that, even when I'm trying to not be emotional, when it comes to guns in America emotion is never far away for anybody.

Sunday Observations 12.16

The past few months I've had some fun with the petitions on the White House website. Who wouldn't have some fun with secession, death star building, imaginary countries? At the moment there is a very serious petition you should take a look at; We Petition The Obama Administration To: Immediately address the issue of gun control through the introduction of legislation in Congress. At the moment it has 113,000 signatures or four times what is needed for an official response from the Obama Administration. It's very short, only five sentences, and you can sign it here.

That's all I'm going to say about guns at the moment. I had a few notes for today but now they all seem relatively unimportant as I look at them. The wingnuts made a big deal of President Obama planning on spending Christmas in Hawaii and thought he should cancel those plans if there is no fiscal deal. Petty as hell because they know damn well, as Joe Scarborough noted, he was born there. Some of us are lucky enough to be born in Hawaii and some of us aren't. I wouldn't mind spending Christmas on Kee Beach with lights in the palm trees and a Corona in my hand but I don't see it happening anytime soon. The wingnuts probably think the President should be spending Christmas in Nairobi.

Meryl Schenker, ZUMA Press

Here is a little something to remind you that even after the past few days there is always something to make you smile about life. Last week I posted a photo of Larry Duncan and Randell Shepherd, the gay bears, getting their marriage license in Seattle. Last Sunday the two were married in Seattle's First Baptist Church. While not religious at all the two said they wanted a church wedding because as Larry said, "Enough people have told me, ‘God hates fags,’ I want someone in a church to say, ‘God loves fags,’ to have that stamp on it." No word on where the happy newlyweds spent their honeymoon.

I did something yesterday I have never done before, went into a Japanese bookstore. If for whatever reason you ever want to feel totally lost in the world I suggest a Japanese bookstore. The most awesome looking books you'll ever see but I have no idea what they said.

Finally Jesuit Father Jose Funes, the head of the Vatican Observatory, assures us the Mayan Apocalypse is not going to happen this week. In L'Osservatore Romano he published an article in which he emphatically states the Mayan calender is 'irrational' which is something I'm sure a Jesuit priest would know something about.

I have to go now, seems hell is calling ....

Observations 11.20

As I have said before I try and keep my opinions to myself when talking about the Palestinian situation, it's just a no win thing no matter what I think or say. Jews having been killing Muslims who have been killing Christians who have been killing Jews for two thousand years. Sadly I don't think that is ever going to completely change. It seems more wars have been fought over supposedly peaceful religions than any other reason.

It's a little bizarre watching a war unfold on Twitter. One minute you can read as the Alqassam Brigade tweets every time it fires a rocket at Israel and a moment later the IDF announcing something called the 'Iron Dome' shot the same rocket down. Than there is a man who tweets under the name "News of the Middle East" from Oklahoma of all places. That is one person who does piss me off because he is totally pro-Israel and his av is a photo of President Obama with the Israeli flag behind him. Talk about not so subtle propaganda, Goebbels himself couldn't have come up with something better than that.

This is one of those videos I stumble onto while randomly chasing links. I'm not completely sure what the 'Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)' movement is but it doesn't really matter for my purposes here. The video was published in September, long before the current round of fighting began, and watching it I can't help but wonder how the turmoil is effecting these students. What they are doing, how they are coping, if they are even alive today.

Gaza, Palestine Youth Send Message to BDS Activists


link

Published on Sep 20, 2012 by Shahd Abusalama
Young Palestinian activists in the Gaza Strip ask their peers in the United Kingdom and around the world to build the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and attend the UK Student Palestine Conference at the University of Manchester on Sunday, September 23.

Observations from the Gallery 10.2

Warning, phone generated mini-vent to follow ....

Ash is tired of listening so I'm going to vent hear. I saw something on twitter that just irritated the hell out of me. I didn't bother replying to it because sometimes that's just what people are looking for and besides 140 characters just wouldn't do the job anyway. Also I really don't use twitter to chat, it's more I micro-blog, empty my mind, this is what I'm looking at, reading, or thinking about at any given moment.

October is LGBT History Month and somebody, who shall remain nameless, evidently tired 'history months' tweeted wanting to know when white history month is. Think about that for a minute, when is white history month?

Well let me tell them something. Whites really don't need a month because they wrote history so every month is white history month. For that matter every day is white history day. The history of art, politics, religion, and any other area you care to name. Except for rare instances whites wrote it because the winner writes the history and I can't think of any time in the last millennium where whites weren't the winners. Now that may sound racist at some level but as you can see by the photo I happen to be white so by definition this can't be racist. Hell I don't even like the term white unless we are talking about photography.

Before you ask about Women's History Month read the last paragraph again, insert men wherever I wrote white.

Vent over, Ash thanks you for listening.

Observations from the Gallery 6.5

More often than not a Sunday at the gallery ends up being an afternoon filled with art chat, or more precisely art gossip. Nothing material ever seems to get done as chat ranges from where the Whitney came up with half a billion dollars for their new museum to the usual who is sleeping with who gossip. It sometimes amazes me how much info you can get out of a single bottle of wine on a Sunday. But we aren’t always so damn shallow. Things can take a serious turn depending on events and the mix of acquaintances passing through. Today was such a day.

One topic was the happenings over at the New York Times where Jill Abramson became the first woman executive editor in the Times' history. Abramson than turned around and promoted Dean Baquet to managing editor, the first African-American to hold that position. These changes followed the hiring of Frank Bruni who is the first openly gay writer on the opinion page. Abramson, who spent last year running the Times' online side, replaces Bill Keller who was known for his tirades against social media. Maybe a sign of the times, no pun intended.

A more negative topic of conversation revolved around New York State Senator and Reverend Rubén Díaz who called homosexuality a lifestyle choice. Saying in a statement released after Mayor Bloomberg's speech in support of gay marriage “there is no just comparison between America’s struggle to overcome the evils of slavery and the promotion of the lifestyle of homosexuality.” Last month Díaz headlined an anti-gay marriage rally in the city at which the Rev. Ariel Torres Ortega said this:

"Committing sexual acts between man and man. And receiving the retribution of the things that they have done from straying away. And because they did not take God in count. God gave them over to reprimand their mind to do things that are not right, being against all justice, fornication, perversity, aberrations, malignity…those who practice such things are worthy to death, not only do they do it, but those who also practice it."

Now as you know I have never had a religious bone in my body so I'm not quite sure what he is trying to say other than gays should die. However I'm still holding out hope for lesbians, maybe he thinks we can be reformed somehow. I talked to a guy today who is 'religious' and straight and is just totally disgusted by that statement. He just hopes there is a special place in hell for such a man, I'll let you figure out what he meant by special place.

For the record you can read the full text of Mayor Bloomberg's speech here or watch it here.

“And the question for every New York State lawmaker is: Do you want to be remembered as a leader on civil rights? Or an obstructionist? On matters of freedom and equality, history has not remembered obstructionists kindly." Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg

Observations on Politics 4.13, TBFM

I may have mentioned before that I have a temper but I don't dwell on it because lately I’ve been doing a good job of keeping it under control. Well last night I was looking at headlines when I came across one that just made me want to scream or honestly just smack her. "Michele Bachman calls for criminalization of same-sex marriage during speech in Iowa." (l)

During a speech to the right-wing and anti-gay group The Family Leader Bachmann called Planned Parenthood the "LensCrafters of big abortion" and than said this, "In 5,000 years of recorded human history, neither in the east or in the west, has any society ever defined marriage as anything other than between men and women."

What a totally ignorant bitch. Numerous societies have a broader definition of marriage or family than that and a broader understanding of human sexuality than purely heterosexual. To me faith-based is in such direct opposition to fact-based that it starts to approach pathology. "If I believe it strongly enough, it's true!"  Iraq had WMD's, Obama is a foreign born Muslim socialist and the founding fathers wanted the American government to be based on a narrow, radical and extreme interpretation of the Bible. Believe it? It's true.

Igor Volsky of Think Progress was there and asked the Minnesota congresswoman if she agreed with the stance of group head Bob Vander Plaats that homosexuality is a risky lifestyle akin to smoking. Bachman's answer was "Um. I don’t have an answer on that. I don’t have an answer. Why don’t I have another question." Because you are so damn pathetic you don't deserve another question.

Bachman often quotes this verse from the Bible, "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination" (Leviticus 18:22). Personally I think the first part of it is might be true, it's much better with a woman, but I have no first hand experience with a man to base that on so please no e-mails. The larger abomination here is that Bachman was elected to Congress at all and that she is taken seriously as a contender for the Republican nomination for President of the United States.

From this moment on I will simply refer to Bachman as 'TBFM' or  That bitch from Minnesota.

Observations from the Coffee Shop 4.5

Just a copy of the transcript of Chris Matthews' final segment on "Hard Ball" last night. I don't usually just post other peoples words but I thought this was very good on the day President Obama announced his re-election bid. I wish there was somebody to push him just a little but I don't see who it could be in the Republican Party. I think it's a political party that has truly sold its soul to the rich, the corporations, and the far right religious zealots. I don't see how it can ever turn back now.

"Let Me Finish tonight with what I see happening to one of this country‘s historic political parties. The Republican Party has given us great moderate leaders in the past: Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower. It‘s given us flawed leaders who are nonetheless great Americans, I think of Ulysses S. Grant, for example, who won the Civil War and was a true believer in reconstruction after the war.

I don‘t know where the tradition I‘ve just described broke off and this new thing took over. I think it was passage of the Civil Rights bill back in ‘64, when the enemies of civil rights flipped from the party of Jefferson to the party of Strom Thurmond. Or maybe it was the Supreme Court ruling banning prayer in public school. But what we have today is a different, deeply different, Republican Party than the one that fought slavery and championed conservation in the old days.

I listen to Palin and Gingrich and Bachmann and Huckabee and what they believe. I listen to Romney and Pawlenty and now Trump trying to talk their language and I think we‘re talking something very different from the mainstream Republicanism, the kind that has long won in the independent, moderate suburbs, won with the people I grew up with, with my family, actually. Palin talks like thinking isn‘t necessary; it may not even be good for people. Gingrich uses his mind to say truly hateful things. Huckabee is a theocrat, someone who statements about the Mideast are downright incendiary. Mitt Romney knows better. So does Pawlenty. I‘d hate to see Haley Barbour start dueling in these woods. He might be smart enough to beat those folks at their own game.

But beware, Haley, or anyone else who‘s thinking of joining the jamboree. The evidence out there is that the Republican Party today, you can‘t say you believe in science, you can‘t say you believe in evolution or in climate change or in gay rights, or even in separation of church and state. If you do, you lose the zealots, and the zealots will be waiting for you in Iowa to make sure you eat your words.

John McCain tried to beat them, the zealots, once. The family values types went after his family. George Bush‘s father tried to take them on. Ronald Reagan managed to charm them, but he was a rarity. The danger today is that the only way to win the Republican Party presidential nomination is to get past the gatekeepers of the right, and they aren‘t looking to let anybody past who isn‘t dead right like them.

Maybe this is God‘s will, that Obama not have a reasonable opponent out there. How‘s that for an incendiary statement?"

Thirty Days of Truths, Day 19

My thoughts on religion ....

Oh religion, something I don't think I have ever mentioned before. If there is a topic one shouldn't write about its religion because you are sure to offend somebody along the way. So I'm going to say ahead of time I don't mean to offend anybody. These are just my personal thoughts and also it isn't something I think about much so it’s really just off the top of my head.

At one time I did attend a church every Sunday morning, did Sunday school in my little print dress, but I was but a wee thing back than. My mom wanted a well rounded girl but gave it up about the time I insisted on wearing jeans to church. That would have been about the same time my rebelliousness set in, along with the first inklings of my sexuality, and I realized I just didn't belong there.

I have never called myself an atheist or an agnostic, really I never call myself anything. Is there a God? If I have to answer that my answer is no. Is there some power in control of the universe? It gets a little tricky here because I do believe in fate, I think many things happen for a reason and at times you don't have much control over it. What happens when I die? Honest answer is I'm thinking worm food but than I also believe in ghosts so I'm not so sure. To be safe I want to buried in a wooden box because I don't want to spend eternity trapped in some overpriced metal box with no tunes and poor ventilation.

When you talk about organized religion I get a little bit harsher. On the positive side some of the greatest works of art and architecture have been created in the name of one religion or another. But on the negative side more people have died in the name of one god or another than for any other reason. Christians killing Muslims killing Jews in Crusades or Jihads or Inquisitions all through history and all in the name of the 'same' god. Sunnis killing Shias killing Jews killing Catholics killing Lutherans and on and on. The Middle East has been a religious killing ground since time began and probably will remain that until time ends. No religion can even begin to claim it doesn't have a bloody past.

Marx called religion the opiate of the people and to a certain degree he was right. What most people don't realize is what he meant by it by that. I had a professor who explained that Marx wasn't thinking of it as the church clouding peoples minds but more as the church comforting people in their times of need. The church itself is a quandary to me, it can do so much good at the local level and yet be so terrible at a higher level. Just politics with a different name I suppose.

Perhaps Gandhi said it better. "God has no religion."