Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

Bush Compares Iraq War with WWII

Bush Calls Iraq War Moral Equivalent Of Allies’ WWII Fight Against the Axis
“They will fail, because the terrorists of our century are making the same mistake that the followers of other totalitarian ideologies made in the last century. They believe that democracies are inherently weak and corrupt and can be brought to their knees.” But, he added, “America will not run in defeat, and we will not forget our responsibilities.”

Democracies aren’t inherently weak and corrupt — it’s just people like George W. Bush who make them look that way. Oh, rest-of-the-world! Don’t judge all of us or our system of government by the behavior of the jerk we were foolish enough to put into office.

Bush’s comparison of the Iraq war with World War II is really offensive. Sadam Hussein may have been a bad guy but he was no Hitler. Iraq may have tried to take over Kuwait, but they never had anything even close to the imperialist aspirations of the Japanese and the Germans during WWII. The war in Iraq is about oil — don’t let anyone try to persuade you otherwise — it’s about the United States securing access to OIL. Any “moral” components are purely coincidental.

My own father was a sailor in the Pacific during World War II and, though he’s been dead for over 30 years now, I feel pretty confident that he’d have been offended by Bush’s remarks too. I’m pretty sure he’d have considered this whole war in Iraq a HUGE mistake.

I’m a Friend of Riley’s

Friends of Riley – An Adoption Nightmare
Remember Riley? The little boy whose adoption by his loving parents was blocked by an immoral judge because his parents happen to be lesbians? You’ll be happy to know that things are looking a little brighter for him! A new judge has taken over the case and, thanks to the generousity of many people, some of the huge legal bills his parents have incurred are starting to get paid.

There’s other great news about Riley, too. He’s now got his own web site! Click on Friends of Riley to visit. The site will be kept current on what’s happening with Riley’s case. There are lots of pictures of Riley and his family AND the site contains a PayPal link for donating to Riley’s cause.

I want to assure those of you who may (wisely) be suspicious of internet sites where someone tells a sad story and then asks for your money: Riley’s situation is, unfortunately, quite real. I have known one of his moms for a couple years now and she’s an honest and good person. You can donate to Riley’s fund knowing that every dime is going to a very good cause.

Become a Friend of Riley!

Okay, now I just want to write a few words about the kind of “justice” system that would take a child from the only parents he’s every known — loving and good people — and place that child in the home of an unrelated man with a history of violent behavior ONLY BECAUSE THE PARENTS ARE LESBIANS. That’s not justice, people. That’s bigotry, pure and simple. It’s small-minded, ignorant, evil ASSHOLE behavior of the worst kind. I say it’s of the worst kind because an innocent child is being hurt in the process. An innocent child.

Even if you’re a person who’s maybe not completely okay with homosexuality, and we can discuss that another time, surely you can imagine how horrible it must have been for little Riley to be ripped from the arms of his mother and taken away by a stranger. Can you imagine the mental and emotional scars this is leaving? This little boy needs to be back with his family full-time for good.

Visit the Friends of Riley site. Donate some money if you can. Look at the pictures of Riley and his family. They’re just regular people. No horns or cloven hooves in sight. They look like they’d be nice people to know, eh? Spread the word to your friends and relatives: THIS is the kind of thing that happens when bigots are placed in positions of power. Children get hurt.

Okay… I know… that was a bit of a harangue.

Sorry. I just get so pissed off by stuff like this.

Too Old For a Babysitter

Salon.com News | The FCC’s cable crackdown
This summer, [FCC Chairman, Kevin] Martin hired one of the activists, Penny Nance, to work in the FCC’s Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis, a position that will allow her to advise on indecency issues. Nance founded the Kids First Coalition, a group that fights abortion, cloning and indecency in the name of “pro-child, pro-family public policy.” She has long been one of the nation’s leading anti-pornography crusaders, testifying repeatedly before Congress. During the last presidential campaign, she appeared on Fox News as a “suburban stay-at-home mom” to say that women believe President Bush will “protect our children.”

What a nitwit.

I’m a woman and, believe me, I never appointed her to speak for me.

Anyway, this pretty much tells you everything you need to know about Kevin J. Martin. There’s nothing pro-family about removing control over the home television from a child’s parents and placing it in the hands of the government. It’s not the government’s place to decide what’s appropriate for your children. It’s up to YOU. And it’s certainly not up to the government to determine what’s appropriate viewing for adults. I don’t need a “babysitter.” Like pretty much every adult, I’m fully capable of turning off the television if there’s something on it I don’t want to see. I don’t want or need anyone else to do that for me. When the government tries to take control of what goes on in the privacy of your own home — like what you watch on television or what you allow your children to watch — that’s anti-child, anti-family public policy. And don’t let people like Kevin J. Martin or his pet whiner Penny Nance tell you different.

These people are NOT looking out for you. Not really.

They just want to control you.

When they can control what you see on television, they’re halfway to controlling what you think.

Don’t let them do it. Fight censorship! Let the FCC know that you don’t want them usurping your role as a parent or insulting your intelligence as an adult television viewer. Sign up for e-alerts from SpeakSpeak News and you’ll get some great suggestions for what you can do to keep the government’s nose out of your television set.

Bolton Following in Cooney’s Footsteps?

Global Warming’s Red Pencils
Two days after Andrew Revkin’s story on Cooney’s editing escapade appeared in the New York Times, Cooney suddenly resigned to go to work for — could you guess? — ExxonMobil. Kinda like in a science-fiction movie when the alien infiltrator is found out and proudly rips off his humanoid skin and marches back toward the mothership.

Paul Rauber’s post on the Sierra Club site documents the disturbing similarities between former White House Environmental Quality advisor, Phil Cooney, and our new UN Ambassador, John Bolton. Like Cooney, Bolton has already put his grubby little red pencil to work on the Millennium Summit draft, eliminating any suggestions that the US would help the rest of the world get the global warming problem under control.

Global warming problem?

What global warming problem?

Tomatoes

These are my tomatoes. My tomatoes that I grew myself, yes, with my own hands and my own dirt. These are just a few of my tomatoes, in fact. There have been 6 or 7 before them, and there are 10 or 12 still on the plant ripening. These I just picked today, though, and they’ll spend the next couple days perched on the back of my stove waiting to be eaten.

There’s nothing that compares to the taste of a fresh tomato right out of your own garden. One you know has never been sprayed with chemicals of any kind or dipped in wax like they do with the ones at the grocery store. One you’ve watched grow from a little yellow blossom on the tomato plant.

They taste so much better than anything you can buy.

Neglect

Mark and I were having lunch at Don Pablos yesterday (tortilla salad without dressing and a cup of “prairie fire” bean dip with some chips — yum) and I couldn’t help but notice a woman and a little girl who were sitting a couple tables over.

The little girl was maybe 1 year old. She and the woman were sitting with another woman and her 7 or 8 year old son.

At one point the little girl began crying. As I see so often out in public, the mother completely ignored the child’s cries. Maybe she thought if she didn’t pay any attention to her, the little one would stop.

No such luck.

After five minutes or so of crying, the woman finally handed the little girl her ‘blankie’ — which, incidentally, I noticed had been half on the restaurant floor beforehand.

That helped a little but not much.

The little girl then leaned halfway out of her highchair in order to rest her head on her mother’s arm.

The mother just kept on eating and drinking and talking to her friend. It was one of the most pathetic things I’ve seen in a while.

That poor little kid. Pretty clearly, all she wanted was to be snuggled by her mother. All she wanted was some love and attention and, really, is that so much for a 1-year-old child to ask? Don’t they deserve that?

I believe there’s something psychologically wrong with a person who can be in a room with a small crying child and not want to immediately pick that child up and comfort it. And I’m talking about ANY child — even a stranger’s child. It’s horrifying to me that a person could be sitting right next to her own crying child and not try to comfort her.

This is neglect of the most insidious kind. What is that little girl learning from these experiences? That she cannot rely upon the one person she should be most able to fully trust.

I noticed, too, that during our entire time in the restaurant, neither of the women ever spoke to the little boy at their table either. Two neglectful mothers. Two children who will probably grow up at least a little bit twisted because they were never REALLY given the love and attention they deserved.

God, but there are some really loathsome people in this world.

Cognitive Dissonance and the Iraq War

AP Poll: Military Kin Likelier to Back War
People with friends or relatives serving in Iraq are more likely than others to have a positive view of a generally unpopular war, an AP-Ipsos poll found.

This isn’t a surprise. Social psychologists have known for a long time that people tend to adjust their beliefs to be consistent with the circumstances of their lives.

Wikipedia’s article on cognitive dissonance summarizes it well: “In brief, the theory of cognitive dissonance holds that contradicting cognitions serve as a driving force that compels the human mind to acquire or invent new thoughts or beliefs, or to modify existing beliefs, so as to minimize the amount of dissonance (conflict) between cognitions.”

Here’s how I explain it: People will believe whatever they need to believe in order to live in the world in which they’re forced to live.

So, it’s really no surprise that people with family members serving in Iraq tend to be more supportive of the war. They have to support it. The alternative is believing their loved one is endangering his life for no good reason — and that’s just too painful a thought for many people to live with day in and day out.

Stupid Is As Supid Does

Evolutionary Times: Science isn’t democratic
The real lesson to be taken from the results of the Harris poll is that the general public has a poor understanding of evolution. This is a real problem and it needs to be addressed by better science education, not by watering down content – or perverting education standards – to avoid offending someone’s sensibilities.

Of course this is the same kind of thing I’ve been saying all along. Somewhere along the line, Americans have become stooooopid. It’s embarrassing, really. All the Europeans are laughing at us.

Anyway, check out Gerry L’s site Evolutionary Times. His posts contain lots of links to interesting news and blog articles about evolution education in the US. I don’t know about you, but I’m adding him to MY list of RSS feeds.

A Reason for Hope

Death in Duluth by Dennis McManus, Reader Weekly, Issue 333, August 25, 2005
Considering the circumstances of our society which make hunting unnecessary, hunting is every bit as immoral an act to me as abortion and war are to others. I am just as saddened, just as angered, just as disgusted that the society I live in condones it as those other people are about abortion and war. The notion that any of us are just supposed to shut up about it is truly totalitarian and isn’t going to happen.

Dennis McManus is truly a kindred soul.

Sometimes it can feel like you’re the only person in the world who really gives a damn about animals — who really understands that they don’t exist simply for our use. Then, you run across something like this wonderful piece written by McManus for Duluth’s Reader and you take heart.

It’s good to know you’re not alone.

It gives a person a reason to hope for a better world.

Even the Northland Has Its Share of Fools

Living Out Loud: Gaza pride! by Dennis Kempton, Reader Weekly, Issue 333, August 25, 2005
So, my point, gentle reader, is that “Palestine” isn’t anything really but a name given to Israel as punishment by Romans and perpetuated by British colonization in the 20th century.  Palestinian “liberation” came, actually, in 1946 with the establishment of Israel.  The so-called “Palestinians” are just Israeli Arabs who challenge the very existence of Israel and have since the UN re-established Israel in the world after the horrors of Nazi Germany.

And “Israel” is just a name given to a chunk of land supposedly promised back in ancient times to a bunch of Middle-Easterners by their God.

If you’re going to use the “it’s just a name” argument like this fool has, you should at least have the intellectual honesty to apply the same reasoning to your own position. But, no. Dennis Kempton, the author of this nonsense, isn’t coming from a position based in reason. He’s arguing from faith.

He has faith that God is on the Jews’ side.
He has faith that God really meant for Jews to control the land known as “Israel.”

He also, apparently, has faith that if he mentions Nazi Germany often enough, his readers will forget all about the simple fact that the Palestinians were not nazis. Most of those who’ve been displaced in the past 60 years by American and European Jews settling in the Middle East were simple farmers and businesspeople whose families had been living in that part of the world for generations.

If you can’t tell by now, I’ll let you in on a little secret. I am a Jew opposed to giving even one pebble of Israel over to those Arabs who say they have a claim to Palestine (which is nonexistent anyway.) Yep. I make no apology for it, either. If those Israeli Arabs dislike the thought of living in Israel—a sovereign and recognized nation—they can leave.

What a complete moron. What’s REALLY disturbing is that there are lots of people who have the same twisted ideas. These people scare the hell out of me.

Yeah, you Palestinians (or whatever name you want to call yourselves — it’s all okay with me), just leave. Leave your own families and your own history and your OWN sacred cities. Just leave. That’s fair… right??

Of course it’s not fair. And it’s not right. And Dennis Kempton is an idiot and so is anyone else who has his kind of jingoist myopia.