The End of Slick Rick

What's that sound? I know, it sounds like "government nigg....of...theh..." Sounds like a stutter? It's so much more satisfying than that.

That is the sound of Rick Santorum committing political suicide. *POW*

Democrats will be sorry to see him go. You disagree? I don't. You see, if Rick Santorum somehow managed to gain the Republican nomination there would end up being a mass defection in the GOP voter ranks. If The Poor Little Rich Mormon won pretty much all Republicans would back him, even if he wasn't their first choice. But if Santorum won the nomination every Republican with half an ounce of sanity left would vote for Obama... not because they wanted four more years of Obama, but because they would rather live through that than see Santorum in the Oval Office for anything other than an ass kicking.

And while there will be many Santorum supporters who whine and snivel that he was not calling the President a n%$#!r, and even some who will scream "Yes he was, and Republican Jesus Bless him for it!" There will be more who quietly step away and fade into the shadows so as not to be in any way affiliated with him.

Slick Rick your time is done. I would say rest in peace but... nah. None for you, you racist, sexist, theist pig!

Not in God's Image

I always find it interesting when a leader who claims to be Christian decides that he or she can pick and choose what parts of the bible are important, and which aren’t. Which of the teachings of the prophets, or even Jesus (Remember that guy? The one that died a slow and painful death for you?) is relevant to human life. I’m not going to waste time talking to the moron in question this week. Instead I want to talk to other Christians... real Christians.

First, I should let you know that I am not a Christian. I’m Asatru, a believer in the ancient gods of Asgard. But, I have read the bible. In fact, I’ve read it more times than the average Christian. So, I find it very easy to look at things from a what is supposed to be a Christian point of view. I know what the most sacred precepts and tenants of the Christian faith and life are supposed to be. Foremost among them is that Man was created in God’s image.

Now, having said that, I would like to talk about Georgia State  Representative, Terry England. Here is a man who wants to make women carry stillborn babies to term, or at least until they go into ‘natural labor’ like “cows and pigs do.” I know what you’re thinking. It’s either A) he’s an ass, or B) it’s God’s will.

If you answered A you’re right... and I’m not talking to you. You don’t need a talking to. You’re head is screwed on right. But, if you answered B then we need to have a discussion. Sit. Down.

I know it’s tempting, and even seems logical to go with “God’s will”, but I would like to ask you something. How is it God’s will? We’re not talking about abortion here. We’re talking about a baby who’s heart has stopped beating, it’s neurofunction is flat, it is dead. I’m going to say that again... we’re talking about removing a baby that is already dead. God has already spoken. He has already made His decision and decide that that particular child would not enter the world. How is it God’s will to make a woman continue to carry it?

Let’s examine what excuse Mr. England used. He pointed out that cows and pigs do it. Tell me, as a Christian, does that make sense to you? Every single version of the bible says that you were made in God’s image and that you are above the beasts of the land and sea. But Mr. England says that’s if it’s good enough for a cow or pig then it’s good enough for you or your wife. Cows defecate in their own beds and pigs bathe in mud. These are animals with hooves, not hands and feet, which the bible squarely says are not equal unto Man. So, why would a good ‘Christian’ like Mr. England say such a thing?

Well, lets examine the options. First, he’s probably one of those people that think women fall into the same category as animals, that they are not human, therefore not part of mankind. Or, he’s betting that you’ve forgotten that part about being above the animals of the land and sea. Maybe he doesn’t believe that any of you, male or female, were created in God’s image. I tell you though, I’m kinda hoping that it’s not option one. After all, if it were then that would mean that he believes that he, and every other heterosexual man on Earth, was fornicating with farm animals. Maybe he thinks that’s a good thing. Maybe Mr. England gets off on it. (Suddenly homosexuality doesn’t seem so bad, eh?)

In the end, his motives are not clear, only his implications: that you, your wives, your sisters, and your mothers are no better than the animals of the land and sea. His implications are that you are not divinely created, and especially not in God’s image.

Next time you hear sacrilegious crap like that call it for what it is. Almost makes me wish ya’ll would bring back stoning people to death. Almost.

Honor

Every once in a while we see something that reminds us that not everyone 'on the other side of the line' is an idiot. Today's blog post by Filthy Liberal Scum, Justin Rosario, is one of them.

Look people, you can scream about fairness and political correctness all you want, but there are times when I draw the line. How women and children are treated in many other countries is one of them. Justin echoed my beliefs perfectly in his post. If your culture espouses the abuse of women and children simply because they're women and children, then your culture is screwed up. You're beliefs are wrong. Women are not property and children are not slaves.

It's sad, horrifying even, to hear about incidents where women and girls are forced to marry their rapists just so the family can 'save honor'. If that's your idea of honor then it is this Asatru's belief that you're going to spend eternity in the pit next to Loki. I want nothing to do with that warped sense of 'honor'. It's not honor. It's the exact opposite of honor.

Honor would be if the father and brothers of the rape victim hunted the rapist down and demanded he be prosecuted for his actions. Some might say hunt him down and kill him... slowly... but there is also honor in things like a fair trial. Honor is about justice, not saving face. Honor is about doing the right thing, not doing the popular thing. And if forcing an underage girl to marry her rapist is popular in your culture, then your culture should end.

The Filthy Liberal Scum will say that it should 'change'. But, no, I don't agree with that. Things like this evolve out far darker and deeper roots. If the vine is diseased the roots needs to go too. I'm sure I'll get bashed for that, but it's how I see it. Yup, my conservative side is showing. And I am unrepentant.

The GOP Magic Show

The GOP has been working overtime to put on a huge magic show for the American public. The show is not just for the benefit of their fans, but also for their rivals, the Democrats. And very few onlookers seem to be seeing the show for what it is: an illusion to keep us all distracted from the real issues facing America this election year. 

From Rick Santorum's cries of religious freedom to Rush Limbaugh's remarks about women who use birth control, the GOP has manged to keep the majority of America captivated with their three-ring circus. But, birth control is not an issue this year. It hasn't been an issue for 60 years. The real issues, that the GOP is terrified registered voters will remember, is the economy and jobs.

Why doesn't the GOP want us to remember this? Because there has been a significant decrease in unemployment over the last year under a Democratic president. A president who is intent on staying in office for a second term. If the American public remembers that it's jobs we should be thinking about they might start realizing that this Democratic president took a huge mess and actually made some headway in cleaning it up. That might earn him votes!

Unfortunately, Liberals are playing right into the GOP's hands. Every time the GOP, or some member of their ranks, makes ridiculous statements or inflammatory remarks about birth control Liberals go into a frenzy. Screaming and yelling begins, things start flying across the room, and hour upon hour of tv time and page upon page of written media pours out on the birth control issue. "How dare they!" "War on Women" and more start flooding the lives of everyday Americans. All of this, from both sides, ends up distracting voters from the actual issues regarding this year's election.

And the American public eats it all up. After all, it's easier to forget that you're broke when you have something to entertain you or piss you off.

So, what we have is the GOP standing on a stage with it's arms spread wide. In one hand they have a nice bright, shiny sparkler. The Liberals are watching, entranced, eyes fixed on the sparkler, while John Q. Public watches them.

And all the while, in the GOP's other hand, the one no one is paying attention to, our economy and jobs are being covered up.

Here I am, stuck in the middle with you

Here’s a disturbing thought...

I recently decided to take a closer look at the extreme wings and find out what they really thought and were up to. I found the liberal left-wingers (the ones who lean so far left they need a crutch to hold them up and keep them from falling over) to be very open and up-front about what they believed and wanted. In fact, this info is everywhere, all over the web, in the newspaper, and even fliers all around any given town (not to be confused with bumper stickers that only make a statement and don’t give any actual information).

I didn’t run into any boards or chatrooms that required membership to read, just participate. I’m not saying they don’t exist, I’m just saying I didn’t see any.

The Lefties approach a lot of what they’re talking about with massive amounts of humor and sarcasm, which I have to admit makes it hard for me take them seriously. Most of the time all I can do is sit there enjoying the free giggles, while hoping they really aren’t as stupid as they sound. For the Lefties, attacking the other side’s policies and candidates resembles a mob of stoned teenagers engaged in a food fight, with occasional adult begging for order before finally succumbing to the second-hand smoke and developing a contact high.

On the other side of the coin, however, I found something far more disturbing. The extreme right doesn’t want anyone to know what they’re up to. They give out well placed and sort-of-well worded press releases and very obviously employ an army of professional publicists. Unfortunately for them, these are publicists who weren’t good enough to get a job somewhere else. But that’s not the part that I find scary.

No, the part that I found really disturbing was that I didn’t find a single board or chatroom that allowed someone to read without joining. It might not have bothered me so much, but some of them posted the current thread topics for the public. One such topic that really caught my eye was “Obama Opposition Research - Post All Negative Information on Presidential Misrepresentations” on the national Tea Party site teapartypatriots.ning.com. And, of course, when I clicked on it I was asked to sign-in or become a member to view post.

Really? This is one reason (one of many) why I’m a member of the ‘middle’. The idea of either side actually getting to rule this country with impunity scares the ever living shit out me. One side doesn’t appear to be able to stay sober long enough to make any major decisions, while the other side is a bunch of sneaky-ass bastards who plan surgical strikes against anyone who opposes them. One side would spend us into the ground trying to help everyone, while the other side would let millions die just to save a buck.

And what’s really, really scarey, is that both sides think they can justify how their beliefs are the right ones, and actually believe it. I guess Stealers Wheel was right. Clowns to the left. Jokers to the right.

And here I am, stuck in the middle with you.

On Tea Baggers and Filthy Liberal Scum

A friend recently asked me how people can reconcile having special needs kids with claims of being conservative. He was working under two assumptions. First was that every conservative gets assistance from the government to help support their special needs children in the form of things like SSI. The second assumption was that by saying they were a conservative they must be saying they’re members of the Tea Party. I cannot speak for all conservatives, only myself.

Now, I’ve already had my discussion with my friend, and hopefully cleared these matters up for him. My friend, Justin, otherwise known as the Filthy Liberal Scum, is a smart man. He’s capable of asking intelligent questions and actually listening to the answers. I have not found the same can be said for the majority of the members of the Tea Party, or Tea Baggers, however. Or many on the extreme left for that matter. I found my conversation with Justin quite refreshing.

So, for the rest of you... On the Tea Party: Being a ‘conservative’ does not equate to being a Tea Bagger. Neither does being a registered Republican. From my point of view, the Tea Party is nothing more than a group of inbred idiots with too much money. This is what happens when we let rednecks marry their cousins so they can keep their bank accounts ‘in the family’.

Too harsh? Perhaps. But, from what I’ve observed, the ambient IQ of Tea Baggers isn’t on-par with the rest of the human race, or Republicans. It’s sad, really, when a woman yells and screams about having to pay for other people’s laziness, when her husband is a member of a Labor Union. Kinda makes you shake your head in wonderment. Or when someone else screams and yells about how they want to shut down every single 'welfare’ program, then bitches about people who don’t put their kids in public school like 'normal people’, instead of homeschooling. Really? Are we aware of the fact that the public school system is the single largest welfare program in the nation? I am. Obviously they aren’t.

No, I am not a member of the Tea Party. I’m a member of the Republican Party. I want smaller federal government, not a lack of it. I want the power to make my own decisions to stay with me, not some committee back in DC. I want the people who were voted into office to do the jobs they were elected to do (whether I voted for them or not), not hand their duties off to committees and super-committees filled with people I’ve never even heard of. I don’t want to see the end of all welfare programs, I want to see the ones we have fixed so they work right and we, as a nation, aren’t hemorrhaging cash out of every orifice. but no, I don’t want to see the creation of new ones.

On the note of receiving assistance for my special needs kids... what I get comes in the form of reduced or waved tuitions and fees for special teachers and therapists from local organizations. Some of these organizations are publicly funded and some are private. I do not get SSI for my kids. My husband and I work our tails off to provide for the children we chose to have, for better or for worse, disability or no disability. My kids do not get Medicaid. We have private insurance, which comes with that working our tails off part. I did apply for Medicaid at one point, but was informed we made too much money to qualify for the one that would be useful (Medicaid A). I didn’t yell and scream when we were denied. I shrugged, said, “Okay” and worked that much harder to provide my children with the help they needed.

Part of that 'working harder’ was quitting my job so I could homeschool my kids because they public school was failing miserably at dealing with my children’s needs. I went back to school myself to study graphic art and writing so I could open my own business that I could run out of a home office. I gave up things like nice clothes, parties, cable TV, and dates with my husband so that my kids could get the help they need and always have access to a parent when they need it. Which is about 20 times more often than a normal kid does.

Instead of hiring someone to do every single thing for my kids, I took classes on how to do those things myself. For instance, when my physically disabled child’s doctor said she was going to need daily physical therapy for the rest of her life I took the money I might have used to pay the daily PT tech for the first year, and had her main PT (the one with the PhD) enroll me in classes so I could learn to do it myself. When another of my kids was born with type-1 diabetes I borrowed the money from my grandmother, not the federal government, to take nutrition classes so I could ditch the dietitians at WIC… who didn’t actually have any clue what a T1D diet looked like anyway.

Do I do everything myself? Oh, hell no! I am not a medical doctor, and I will never pretend to be. And there are certain things that would just be inappropriate for me to do myself. My kids still see general practitioners, endocrinologists, developmental specialists, orthopedic surgeons, physical therapists, educational therapists, and more. I simply choose to do everything I am capable of doing for them myself. If that means I don’t get a smart phone, drive a new car, or go out to dinner with my husband every other week like we did pre-kids, sobeit.

None of this, however, means that I look down on people who cannot do what I do. I do not look down on the family that sends their autistic kid to public school, nor do I look down on them for receiving SSI for that same kid. It’s hard. Life is hard. And not everyone has the same strengths I do. It doesn’t make them weak. It just makes them different.

A friend of mine, a public school teacher, once asked me, “How do manage to teach three different kids at three different grade levels?” My response was, “How do you manage to teach 30 different kids without letting one or five slip through the cracks?” That doesn’t make me better than her. It doesn’t make her better than me. It makes us different. To each his own.

When it all comes down to it, that is how I reconcile being a conservative with having special needs kids: To each his own. Others may have their own reasoning, but I can’t speak for them. I can only speak for myself... and I do. Often.

Enough Stupidity to go Around

3 years ago my husband and I were looking to buy a house. The bank had approved us for what we considered an obscene amount of money, but we weren't willing to borrow that much. We knew how much we could afford to spend, which was a little over half of what the bank wanted to loan us. With that in mind we went looking.

Because of the size and various special needs of our family we had very strict requirements for a house. It had to be big; big enough to house 3 generations, and accommodate those of us who work from home. It had to have an efficient kitchen since we have to make almost every single thing we eat from scratch. It also had to have a large enough back yard to put in a larger than average food garden AND an outdoor therapy center, including a special pool.

We didn't care about the things people normally care about when buying a house, like the appointments. We didn't care what color the walls were, what kind of flooring it had, or whether or not the splash boards in the kitchen were pretty enough. These things were all cosmetic and could be changed later. We didn't care if it was landscaped, and in fact, considered it a plus if it had no landscaping of any kind. That way we could start from scratch and wouldn't have to bother with ripping things out to put the things we needed in. 

Knowing we couldn't afford much, we were going for the basics, which would suit us fine.

Our search actually began 5 years ago, but it was 3 years ago that we stumbled upon a house in the northwest Phoenix Valley that had all of our requirements. We looked at the asking price and scoffed. It was waaaaaaay over priced. So we put in our bid... at which point the seller scoffed.  He was actually very rude, and insisted that he was never, ever going to sell the house for such a small tidbit of money. He insisted he was going to make a profit, and at the offer we made he would only break even.

Like I said, that was 3 years ago. This morning I got a notice from his realtor informing me that the asking price of the house had been lowered... to $40k less than what we had offered him 3 years ago. In his email he said he was very excited to inform us of the price reduction on the house we wanted so badly.

Someone needs to grab that boy by the knickers and give him an atomic wedgie to help shove his brains back up into his noggin.

A lot can happen in 3 years. For us, 3 years meant watching our rent go up and up and up, along with our renters insurance. 6 months ago our rent was twice what our mortgage would have been if we had bought that house at the price we offered.

Because we lived in a rental we weren't able to make changes to the house that would have brought our bills down, like a solar hot water heater, which we could have gotten through my husband's work for next to nothing. Our energy bills were outrageous. Because we couldn't plant everything we needed (or even a tenth of it) our grocery bills were through the roof. Our cost of living had grown to twice what our income was, and that was just for the necessities. We were borrowing money every month... every single month... just to get those necessities, while our friends and neighbors complained about not being able to afford the latest greatest car anymore.

To shorten up this tirade... we moved. 5 months ago we folded up and moved back to the old family farm were I spent my younger years. It is not ideal. We have 6 people living in a 2 bedroom house. The property is severely run down and require so much work I get tired just thinking about it. My husband's new job pays half what his old job did, and I don't have as much time to work on my own business as I did living in Phoenix. There's just too much to do. The upside is that we won't have to borrow money very few weeks just to get by. The downside is that we can no longer afford things like site-built houses that are just adequate for our needs.

We will have to put a new house in here, hopefully this summer, but it will probably be a mobile home. We found one that is actually quite nice, but we have to stabilize our income to even consider it.

Now, who do I blame for this mess? Most people would like to blame the banks and government. I'm more practical than that. I blame the multitudes of enormous idiots, like the seller of the house we wanted, who bought up entire streets worth of vacant lots during the height of the housing bubble, filled those streets with houses, and then asked for 3-5 times what they were worth. This is what the moron selling that house did, and he was not a corporation or developer. He was sales manager at a retail outlet. A "regular Joe". One who decided to buy high... and like so many idiots, got stuck selling low.

Here's the deal folks: banks are like grocery stores. If no one is buying a product the store will stop carrying it. The same applies to maxing out massive lines of credit just because you have it. It is the responsibility of the individual to balance his or her own books. You have to be practical in your spending. You do not deserve an attached bath and office nook to your master bedroom just because you're an American. A family that only makes $50k/yr cannot afford season passes to Disneyland. And no, Idiot, you don't get to blame the bank if you spend $30k more per year than you make.

Get a clue, learn to mend your own clothes, plant a seed for your own tomatoes, and wield a paint roller on your own walls. And for the love of all that's real, don't break out your credit cards every time you see something shiny!!

Carry on.