Random Thoughts

I can't wait to see how this turns out: a group of artists, creators, etc. who have become very jaded with the annual trade show that Comic-Con has become every year are now pushing for an alternative: Creator-Con. The discontent is palpable: over 2000 people have joined the Facebook page in the first week. I am absolutely in favor of this idea. I always used to be sorry that I couldn't go to Comic-Con in San Diego, but watching it from afar it looks like the focus has shifted completely from comics creators and artists (and fans) to something hijacked by the entertainment industry to use as a preview for upcoming movies and video games.

:: My opinion of Jesse James is that he can go fuck himself, but that's non-specific. I thought that before this latest scandal. Guy just rubs me the wrong way. I do think it's hilarious that he's going to sex addiction rehab, though. It's the catch-all excuse du jour.

:: Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin is a career soldier. And I don't spit on that, ever. Anyone who has put their lives in danger for the protection of their country is brave, case closed. And he's an Army physician, which is a noble calling.

However, aside from that, completely apart from the potential sacrifice Lt. Col. Lakin is willing to make... inviting your own court-martial by disobeying orders because you think President Obama isn't a US citizen is the willfully stupid act of a supreme dunce.

:: So, now that Obama is the one proposing offshore drilling, Republicans are against it. In other news, the sun rose today.

The price of oil and gas is going up again, by the way. Not because of demand or a shortage, but because the cocksuckers on Wall Street are artificially driving it up with speculation. It's a response to oil consumption going down. There is no sector of American life that these unregulated assholes aren't going to lay waste to.

:: I said Muqtada al-Sadr was going to end up in charge of Iraq a couple of years ago, and with this special vote taking place, that's probably going to happen. So, ultimately, we removed someone hostile to the US and are going to see him replaced with someone hostile to the US. Who could have predicted that? Other than history, I mean?

:: Geithner said that unemployment "is going to stay unacceptably high for a very long time." Everything he says sounds like the entire government just throwing up their hands and claiming there's nothing they can do. Where's our jobs program, guys? You're the fucking government. You have a responsibility to do something.

:: The first challenge to the Affordable Care Act came just two days after it was signed, as insurance companies decided to dither over the language when it comes to denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions. Does that star immediately, or in 2014? Doesn't the fact that there was even an argument show anyone the true motives of the insurance industry? These people have to be ordered to issue insurance coverage to children. This is not a system that works, even with the band-aid that's just been stuck to the gaping flesh wound by Congress.

And if you don't think every insurance regulation in the bill is going to be challenged by the insurers, you're crazy. And my guess it that unless they all make the papers like this one did, the insurers are going to win more often than they lose.

It's not like they enforce the old regulations, anyway.

:: So, let me get this straight: your sex life is a concern of the Catholic Church, but their sex lives are none of your business. Is that right? Are we really still letting an organization riddled with pedophilia lecture us and affect our legislation when it comes to abortion and anything to do with a woman's body?

Did you hear recently about the woman in Nicaragua who has cancer and can't get treatment because she's 8 weeks pregnant? She could get an abortion in order to get her life-saving chemotherapy, but because a woman's life is apparently meaningless when compared to the future of a fertilized egg, she is basically condemned to death. Or how about the 9 year-old Brazilian girl who was raped by her stepfather whose mother is threatened with excommunication if she gets her daughter, now pregnant with twins, an abortion? And then there's the threat that all Catholic social services to the poor will be removed from the District of Columbia if they offer insurance benefits to married same sex couples.

This is all supported by a Church that just can't keep its hands off of children, thinks the embarrassment of the clergy is more important than the sick abuse of little kids, and would rather see people--especially women--die than be taught about contraception and safe sex.

When is our government going to stop giving these people a voice in legislation?

:: Obama the candidate, 17 July 2007: "The first thing I'd do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act." Obama the president, 24 March 2010: signs an executive order affirming his commitment to the anti-abortion Hyde Amendment. Man, I wish Obama the candidate were president. Instead, it's someone else I don't recognize and probably wouldn't have voted for.

:: I know I'm not the only person who thinks the newest crop of right wing militant terrorists trying to dismantle the government would be hilarious if it weren't so stupidly dangerous.

First we get this asshole who flies his plane into an IRS building in Austin, something the Republicans (including wonder boy Scott Brown, Ted Kennedy's replacement, who is something of an idiot) try to morally equivocate instead of outright condemn. Funny, when bin Laden flies a plane into a building, they get angry. When one of their own does it, no so much.

The we have the far-right militia asshole who thinks he's leading some kind of charge against a tyrannical government, all while living off of government disability checks. So, big government is bad, or... what? (To say nothing of any Teabaggers who only have time and funds to chase Sarah Palin around the country because they're on similar government welfare, and who seem to have no idea that their Medicare is government-funded, apparently because they're stupid.)

Oh, and there's Silly Sarah herself, the one people should be comparing to Hitler (he was an idiot figurehead at first, too), talking directly to the stupid and the ignorant and telling them their stupid ignorance is really patriotism and patriotism takes the form of stopping people with Obama bumper stickers and giving them a talking to. Can't wait to see what happens in this country when that gets someone killed. I'm sure she'll do what the right has been doing for the last week and blame liberals for either purposely sabotaging their "movement" (if you can call something to unorganized and random a movement) or invoking that "there's violence on both sides" lie or simply telling everyone who isn't a crazy moron that it's their fault for stoking the crazed moronic fire.

We also have a GOP Congressional candidate, Stephen Fincher, who is out doing the usual rhetoric about the evils of big government and how the almighty free market (which we don't even really have in this country) is the answer to all of our problems, all while collecting $200,000 a year in farm subsidies. Hey, just like Michele Bachmann! Of course, the Tebagging rubes are eating this shit up, claiming that farm subsidies aren't an issue, despite Fincher's total hypocrisy.

We have a doctor in Florida, Jack Cassel, who refuses to treat patients who voted for Obama. So much for the Hippocratic Oath, I guess.

And then there are these Hutaree assholes who wanted to kill a cop and then kill other cops at his funeral as a way of bringing down the government, a plan that seems more inspired by Batman comics than anything else. The right wing came out to support these fuckheads, saying things like "wanting to start a civil war is not a crime" (the idiot at Classical Values) and "the timing seems convenient" (Glenn Reynolds). Of course the Hutaree shit-eaters are religiously motivated; two thousand years and the ultra-Christians can't stop burning everything down because they think Jesus will pat them on the head for it.

Isn't it just wonderful that these idiots who think the government is evil are asking for public defenders to plead their case in court?

Once again: any Republican who doesn't unequivocally denounce violence and denounce these treasonous rats who have committed it in the name of the right wing supports these fascist thugs.

:: Since I dumped a lot on the right wingers in this post, I do want to praise one, and an unlikely one at that: Bill O'Reilly.

This has to do with Fred Phelps and the Westboro Assholes who got out and picket peoples' funerals. They were picketing in 2006 at the funeral of a Marine who was killed in Iraq, once again spewing their venomous shit that dead soldiers are "proof" that God is judging the US for tolerating gay people. (A tolerance so institutional that we won't even let gay people get married, but why let facts and reason stand in the way?) The Marine's father sued Westboro and won an $11 million judgment against these--fuck, I don't even want to call them "people"--from a federal jury who said Westboro intentionally inflicted emotional distress on the family. The judgment was overturned on appeal this week, and now the father of a fallen Marine has to pay over $16,000 in court costs to the assholes picketing his son's funeral to further their own idiot agenda.

This is a travesty of justice, and the father is trying to take this to the Supreme Court. He can't afford the judgment against him, so Bill O'Reilly has actually stepped in and agreed to pay it, saying "It's obvious they were disturbing the peace by disrupting the funeral. They should have been arrested..." Thank you, O'Reilly, for doing the right thing here. In this case, we're agreed: the family's privacy rights should not be superseded by that kind of hate speech.