Showing posts with label teabaggers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teabaggers. Show all posts

Monday, February 10, 2014

Doahn Beh Stooopid

This absolute nut-fuggery came across my Facebook feed today, and I felt compelled:

DIVORCE AGREEMENT--
WRITTEN BY YOUNG COLLEGE STUDENT
The person who wrote this is a college (law) student. Perhaps there is hope for us after all.


DIVORCE AGREEMENT


THIS IS SO INCREDIBLY WELL PUT AND I CAN HARDLY BELIEVE IT'S BY A YOUNG PERSON, A STUDENT!!! WHATEVER HE RUNS FOR, I'LL VOTE FOR HIM.

Dear American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists and Obama supporters, et al: We have stuck together since the late 1950's for the sake of the kids, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has clearly run its course.

Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right for us all, so let's just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.

Here is a our separation agreement:


--Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a similar portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.

--We don't like redistributive taxes so you can keep them.


--You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU.
--Since you hate guns and war, we'll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military.

--We'll take the nasty, smelly oil industry and the coal mines, and you can go with wind, solar and biodiesel.


--You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell. You are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them.

--We'll keep capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street.


--You can have your beloved lifelong welfare dwellers, food stamps, homeless, homeboys, hippies, druggies and illegal aliens.

--We'll keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO's and rednecks.


--We'll keep Bill O'Reilly, and Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood . 

--You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we'll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us.


--You can have the peaceniks and war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we'll help provide them security.

--We'll keep our Judeo-Christian values.


--You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism, political correctness and Shirley McClain. You can also have the U.N. but we will no longer be paying the bill.

--We'll keep the SUV's, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Volt and Lea f you can find.


--You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors.


--We'll keep "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "The National Anthem."

--I'm sure you'll be happy to substitute "Imagine", "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing", "Kum Ba Ya" or "We Are the World".


--We'll practice trickle-down economics and you can continue to give trickle up poverty your best shot.

--Since it often so offends you, we'll keep our history, our name and our flag.


Would you agree to this? If so, please pass it along to other like-minded liberal and conservative patriots and if you do not agree, just hit delete. In the spirit of friendly parting, I'll bet you might think about which one of us will need whose help in 15 years.

Sincerely,


John J. Wall


Law Student and an American


P.S. Also, please take Ted Turner, Sean Penn, Martin & Charlie Sheen, Barbara Streisand, ( Hanoi ) Jane Fonda with you.


P.S.S. And you won't have to press 1 for English when you call our country.

I'm sharing this because it's probably the stupidest thing I've seen slide across my feed in a long, long time.  It's so stupid, in fact, that my first thought was "this must be a joke, it's satire, because no one is actually . . . well, that stupid."  A "law student" wrote this?   I'm trying to imagine a situation where that might be true.  I suppose, perhaps, a very rich, not particularly bright, breathtakingly entitled and sickeningly racist law student whose rich daddy and rich mommy have paid his way may have written it.  Or maybe a painfully hypocritical, student-aid using, scholarship-sucking, public education-enjoying law student.  But not a real person.  No.  No, this reads like every bad stereotype, and it is horrifying that anyone could possibly take this garbage seriously.

The person who chucked this my way said it gave her "Hope for us after all."

"Hope for us after all?"  No, after reading this (and realizing that we've churned out dullwits who would lend it an ounce of credence), I am feeling a lot less hopeful.

All that said, let's talk about it.  Let's talk about the fact that the states who vote the reddest are almost always the states that eat up the most in federal aid.  The states that whine the loudest about federal regulation are the ones whose citizens are most often facing threats to water and air safety because they keep voting for people who don't give two spits about them.  Let's talk about people whose medical bills have landed them living in their car, and yet they decry the "marxists."  You have been so hoodwinked.  You have been convinced that voting against your own best interests is somehow in your best interest.  The whole idea of "you can keep redistributive taxes, we don't like 'em" is a JOKE--you don't like them until some big coal company dumps a few tons of toxic waste in your water or a hurricane hits.  And then you like 'em just fine.

What this boils down to, at its most basic, is this: convincing stupid people to blame those even less fortunate than themselves for the state of things is the best way to create a mindless, cohesive voting block. All you have to do is get them to hate immigrants/gays/the poor/the sick, and voila! They're like a ballistic voting machine, just point 'em in the right direction and push the button! And it's human nature.  It is, it is human nature to blame the weak, to scapegoat, to otherwise point a finger at those who are in dire straights, because if you can BLAME them, you can feel like that'll never happen to YOU.

The vilifying of "intellectuals" has certainly helped this along.

I would actually love to see this traitorous and ridiculous new "America" come into being, because the floundering and failure would be a joy to see.  No military (no, you don't get to have them because our "redistributive taxes" pay for them, for their equipment, and for their training and upkeep.  Make your own military--you can probably conscript folks who've fallen on hard times, financially.  Perhaps restore slavery), no colleges (except the stray religious institution, which is hardly higher education and could only be afforded by the rich), and no hospitals.  Not with health care being a "luxury."  Stunted industry, zero ability to cope with natural disasters, and an infrastructure that, without those fancy taxes, crumbles to nothing in short order.  The very idea is so astoundingly immature that, again, I find myself wondering if it's not really satire.

And finally?  The utterly disingenuous and purely incorrect claim that the left is the realm of welfare and slobs and junkies, when study after study shows that the red states are, more often, the desperate resource suckers.  You want the highest level of federal "welfare" spending?  Again, of the top twenty federal dollar-sucking states, sixteen vote red.

That anyone would be so shortsighted as to say something like "You keep your solar, wind and bio, we'll keep the coal and oil" speaks volumes.  This is what happens when an education system fails and a political structure falls into the hands of a corporate power grid that benefits from ill-educated people who don't have any sort of realistic grasp of this nation (or this world, for that matter).   People who are proud of polluting, who wear their irresponsibility and lack of foresight as a badge of honor.  I saw a gigantic black pick-up truck the other day, jacked up halfway to Mars and covered with crappy Teabagger stickers, including one that read "Prius Killer."  Slack-jawed doesn't begin to cover it.

Can we keep Ted Turner, a multi-millionaire?  Can we keep folks who've spoken up against perceived injustice?  Like Americans are supposed to?  Whether they were right or wrong, they spoke up, and they did so using the big words and doing their best to understand the issues.  I'd take them over your George Zimmermans and Ted "Poopy-Pants Draft-dodger" Nugent any day.

Did I use the word "stupid" an awful lot here? Yes, I did, because when this sort of racist, mindless, thoughtless, careless, mouthing puppetry comes across my feed, it's the only word I can come up with that isn't truly, deeply offensive.  When I see someone argue that Americans should be controlled by corporate interests, should support corporate welfare, should support a system that allows business to control politics, I get mad.  When I see someone jab at the poor, ridicule Americans who take their love of country so seriously they DO something rather than pass around some dull-witted, ill-conceived, mean-spirited spray of vomit on Facebook or wave a flag while wearing a hat dangling tea bags, I get even madder.  And when I come across someone so utterly foolish that they actually believe that "pressing one for English" somehow DAMAGES them (what, is your finger broken?  You only have a finite number of button presses in you and you're almost out?), I want to scream.

And finally, spectacularly, amazingly?  The bag-o-hair dimwit who splattered this crap across my wall?  Is HISPANIC.

HISPANIC!  And not just ANY Hispanic, but Hispanic and spent time LIVING IN HER CAR BECAUSE THE MEDICAL BILLS FROM HER HUSBAND'S CANCER SURGERY WIPED HER OUT!  She says living in her car is so much more "convenient" because it allows her to travel where she needs to be for him without worrying about . . . blah, blah, blah.

I know.  The mind positively BOGGLES, GOGGLES, and WOBBLES at the self-deception there.

And for the record?  My Grandpa was an immigrant, and if dimbubbles like this had had their way, he'd never have gotten off that boat.

That's my rant.  These folks said it better OVER HERE and HERE.

Monday, December 2, 2013

Chronicling the Dead Keeps my Mind off the Living

I've been doing all things grave-y lately.  A lot of family history stuff, including scanning old family photos and letters.  I've probably said this before, but I'm going to say it again:

Mark your photographs!

Seriously!  We have stacks of unmarked photos that we'll NEVER really know who they were. We've had a little luck comparing them with records on the LDS Family Search site, but most of them are of folks whose identities are lost.  DON'T do that!

Here are a couple examples:

Zero clue, probably taken in Camden or Philly, 1930s, maybe?


Zero clue--we all agree the lady down front right looks like she could be related.



And my husband's side of the family is no better.  Most of them are more easily traced than mine, but they, too, have a crappy habit of not marking photos:

Mormon Missionaries, one of whom is a relative 
So we know where it was taken, but not who it is.

And then there's this amazing gem:

An actual tintype.  It's not in good shape, I had to "fix" her cheek in Photoshop because a chunk is missing.

So I'm saying it again--MARK YOUR PHOTOS SO YOU DON'T LEAVE FOLKS SCRATCHING THEIR HEADS AND WISHING THEY COULD PUT NAME TO FACE!

__________________________________________

In addition to the family history thing, we've been visiting local cemeteries.  Some of the stones, especially the hand carved ones, are really wrenching.  All backward letters and misspelled words and heart.  So much heart.



Plus, I've been cataloguing some English and Welsh cemeteries as I come across the headstones online.  I started in Herefordshire, hoping to come across something related to my husband's family, but got caught up in the history of it.  I now know that the Caroline Spooner was the largest Barque ever built at Aberystwyth.  That's "A-bur-uh-stew-uth."

If only someone would pay me to archive stuff like this.  Because I'm good at it, I love doing it (I do it for FUN), and it's important.  Except most folks don't think it is important.

Sadly.

______________________________________


Speaking of cemeteries, headstones, and the like, I've been noticing how, even in death, women are marginalized, they're minimized, they're lost to history because, so often, their "maiden" names are not included on the headstone.  So Margaret Griffiths gets married, becomes Margaret Davies, but her headstone only reads "Margaret Davies," or worse "Margaret, wife of Hugh Davies."  

Like she's just an aside, an afterthought.  As though she never was anything but an extension of the man she married.  Descendants run up against brick walls when trying to trace the women in their family's history.  Maybe, if they're lucky, they'll find a church record or census that relays the woman's birth name, but, often as not, that doesn't happen. 

That's got me thinking just how incredibly sexist the whole idea of "maiden name" versus "married name" really is.  Like a woman belongs to her father until some man takes her, renames her, and turns her from "maiden" to "matron." The historic meaning of "maiden" makes this glaringly obvious.  

_______________________________________________


A big "I wouldn't piss on your face if your teeth were on fire" shout out to those teabaggers on Capital Hill who have, once again, decided to slash my husband's transit benefit.  That's another 50+ bucks a month gone, though they've INCREASED the parking benefit (which we don't receive).  In other words, they're doing what they can to reduce ridership on mass transit so they can then claim that mass transit, which isn't supposed to "turn a profit" anyway, isn't turning a profit.  So they can slash mass transit funding.  So their buddies in the oil industry make more money off the increased number of cars on the road in an already devastatingly traffic congested area.

And they think we don't know what they're up to.  These are the same guys who squeal about some dead birds at wind farms, while protesting the fines levied against British Petroleum for oil spills that killed millions of birds and fish.

Luckily, they're going to give my husband his first raise in four years.

NOT!

Mmm hmm.  You can torch your damned teeth any ol' time, guys.

________________________________________


Still wandering around with a temporary crown in my face.  Which has the other side, where I have no molars, raw and sad because that's where I've been chewing.  Scared to death that, despite all the assurances that we have enough credit with the dentist's office to more than cover this, I'm going to go in on the ninth and be told I owe.

We have no money.  Seriously, none.  Which is why I was so careful to confirm, repeatedly, that this would carry no out-of-pocket cost to us.  But I'm scared.  Scared I'm going to utterly explode on them if they try to hold my permanent crown hostage in return for payment they said wouldn't be due.

_______________________________________

I'm going to close with a picture of a tree.  Because we live in a place with great trees.  Trees that dwarf and put to shame those sad, scraggly things in Utah.