I'm so tired of the apologists for oligarchy, the pretenders to plutocracy. The working people have been so effectively broken by the promise of "some day," and "if you just work hard enough," and and and.... It seems that the stinging epithets that do the most damage are reserved for those of us who WORK for a living. Who are the truly "entitled"? The truly entitled are those whose billions in offshore accounts, who hide their wealth from the tax man because, after all, "only the little people pay taxes."

There's an article on Salon today (http://www.salon.com/2013/03/25/defeating_useless_rich_people/) about the threat from the "rentier" class to our economy and to the millions of unemployed and underemployed (or over-employed, as in working two or three low-wage jobs where one decent-wage job should be). In it, Michael Lind expressed his observations about this economic threat, and made his suggestions for combatting it.

"Today America’s powerful rentier interests, particularly those in the FIRE (finance, insurance and real estate) sector, are mobilizing campaign contributions and paid propaganda to promote what I called the Rentier Agenda: low taxes on those whose income is derived from capital gains; the privatization of public infrastructure and the deregulation of regulated private utilities, to generate windfall profits for investors in privatized or deregulated agencies; and a macroeconomic policy that serves the interests of creditors, at the expense of slow growth and mass unemployment, rather than productive businesses and workers. Similar observations have been made by many on the left and some mavericks on the right." 

As soon as the article by author Michael Lind was posted to Facebook, out came the apologists for the powerful:

"...Spoken like a true Bolshevik. Maybe if the workers OWN the ideas, the patents, the means of production, they can talk about 'entitlement.'"

So...what I want to know is: Where are the terms that stick to the uber rich like "Bolshevik" sticks to those who struggle against the obscene accumulation of wealth? People who use "Bolshevik" as a pejorative always amaze me. Yes, there are some individuals who had an idea, made it into a fortune, and "prove" the "great american dream" theory. However, there are millions whose "great american dream" was crushed by the oligarchs who don't play well with more than a handful of people (mostly men) who think and act just like them. And it is true that that bazillionaire's IDEA depended on the actual LABOR of many other WORKERS. And that that bazillionaire makes even MORE $$$$ by moving his jobs to countries where slave labor exists and where environmental protections do not. Where are the words for the predatory class that conjure up the fear and revulsion that "Bolshevik" does?????

Loss & Grief

On Valentine's Day this year, I lost one of my dearest sister-friends, Sandra. The unusually early beauty of this Spring brings me both pleasure and pain -- pleasure at being able to do May garden work in March, pain at not having Sandy around to enjoy it with me.

She was a Master Gardener, whose flower gardens thrived wherever she was. Over the years, she shared with me the most fantastic iris, instructing me on how to plant the rhizomes correctly. She accidentally gave me her giant white bearded iris -- the only one she had -- and I promised to return it to her at the end of the growing season. I remember marking the giant stem with a white bread tie so I could split the rhizome and give her back her unintentional gift. I will always think of Sandy when those iris bloom.

She was a masterful cook, and baker. She always brought unusual, healthy, and delightful dishes to potlucks. I have added her Pomegranate Rice to my repertoire, and, as with the white iris, will always think of her when I make it.

Sandy was an organic farmer for years, and started a community-supported agriculture (CSA) group with members in Madison and near her farm. I never had tomatillos or jerusalem artichokes until I joined her CSA. Each delivery came with a newsletter with recipes for the "stuff in the box." Good, healthy, nourishing food, grown with love. Lots of love, and hard labor.

Sandy was a master bridge player in her middle years, and I tried to learn the game, playing as her partner with two other dear friends. It was a good thing she had a storehouse of patience and kindness, because she was very good at the game, and I never was. That's the sign of a true friend -- someone who won't kick your butt for screwing up a contract.

There are lots more things I'd like to say by way of documenting her impact on my life, but they will have to wait for future entries. Just let me say, "I love you," one more time, with feeling.

Miss you, Miss Sandra. Miss you badly.

Mean Spirit

These are, unfortunately, interesting times. These are, frankly, depressing (not recessing) times. The attacks on working people are completely out of the closet in every state in the union controlled by a republican governor and legislature. The attacks are mean-spirited and happening on dozens of fronts, purposely trying to exhaust us and thin the resistance to their grand plans to bankrupt the US and turn it into One Corporation, Under Some Malevolent God, With Liberty and Justice for None But the Rich.

And those attacks are well funded by the Koch brothers, the Bradley Foundation, and other right-wing operatives with dollar signs in their eyes, and greed and malevolence in their hearts.

That sucking sound you hear is a giant vacuum cleaner, cleaning out your pockets, your wallets, your bank accounts. Where is all that money going? Let's see...hmmm...it's being sucked up the chimney to the top 2% of the US population -- the uber rich, those who really need the money, after all.

The shopping list of the uber rich looks a lot like the following. (And you can check the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) web site (http://www.alec.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Model_Legislation1) for more items on their list.)

1. Break the unions (they have too much money to spend against us in elections)
2. Destroy the middleclass (they consume too many resources we want)
3. Kill the public schools (they educate the masses and that just causes more problems for us)
4. Rig the elections (gotta love those electronic machines!)
5. End government health care, social security, workers' compensation, unemployment insurance
6. End women's reproductive rights
7. Gut the environmental protections
8. Pack the courts with conservative/reactionary judges
9. Your items here......

If the poor, workingclass and middleclass don't stop believing Fox "News," Glenn Beck, the mega-church bigoted religious nutjobs, the National Enquirer and the National Review, I need to start looking for a new species to hang out with. Educate yourselves about local, state, national, and global political issues. Care about what happens to people who aren't exactly like you. VOTE! THINK FIRST. And confront those who are too cozy with money and power.

War on Workers in Wisconsin

It's the middle of February, barely 6 weeks after the right-wing puppet governor, Scott Walker, took over the State of Wisconsin. He, along with his anti-democratic, anti-worker Assembly Republikkkans, are taking orders from the obscenely wealthy Koch Brothers, a Kansas conglomerate that funds climate-change deniers, and anti-union candidates.

It's hard to convey the feelings that go along with uncovering the deeds of these "evil doers" (as G.W. Bush might say...), but it is important that we, the working people of this country, the front-line fighters in the war, get it together and stop these billionaires NOW. Before it's too late. Before the great experiment in democracy is but a brief paragraph in a textbook, written by our enemies.

You can start taking action right now by never buying these products, because buying them puts money into the hands of the Koch brothers, who will use it immediately against your very self interests. And thank you to the Silenced Majority Portal.

Boycott Koch Industries Products - Climate Deniers & Tea Party Backers
A list of Koch Industry/Georgia-Pacific Products:
Angel Soft toilet paper
Brawny paper towels
Dixie plates, bowls, napkins and cups
Mardi Gras napkins and towels
Quilted Northern toilet paper
Soft 'n Gentle toilet paper
Sparkle napkins
Vanity fair napkins
Zee napkins

Other KOCH brand names under their Invista division:
Dacron
Antron
Cordura
Lycra
Coolmax
Solarmax
Tactel
Polarguard
Stainmaster
Comforel
Thermolite

Christianity - a literal cover-up

You'd think that people out to overwrite one religious system with another would have more imagination, but I guess not. On a lark tonight, I looked up Saturnalia, and looky what I find:

In the Julian calendar, the Saturnalia took place on Dec. 17; it was preceded by the Consualia (Dec. 15) and followed by the Opalia (Dec. 19). The celebrations typically lasted for a week (Dec. 17-23), ending just before the (late imperial) festival for Sol Invictus (Unconquered Sun) on Dec. 25 (the Solstice in the pre-Julian calendar). What is it that the Christians call their central religious figure? and the date they chose to assign to his birth date?

http://www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/BA/Saturnalia.html

If women were doing this, they'd be burned at the stake

"In Dublin the Abusers Were Protected"

But no, it's men, hiding under their priestly frocks, doing their dirty deeds for centuries and intimidating the victims and their families into silence. So of course no one even puts the word "evil" together with the word "men." Nor do they consider that the entire institution is corrupt.

The secrecy and silence that the churches have used to build their pedophile empire must end. How convenient that they've managed to do this while blaming a woman ("Eve") for everything.

People who live in glass houses....

This is the kind of dope on the DOPES that I have hoped for for decades. I want people to be exposed for their hypocrisy, and I want the SHEEPLE to stop believing the "holier than thou" manipulators, be they religious bs artists or politicos. Anybody else have any inside info on those who pretend to be perfect, please pass the info on to The Daily Kos.

Women Stand Against Extreme Patriarchy in Iran

It's the Handmaid's Tale on steroids. Women enslaved, and god/religion used as the justification. Women raped, and then punished for it by death (usually by burying her in sand and stoning!) Women blamed for men's inability to control their sexual and violent urges. And where has the West, the bastion of freedom and equality, been? Standing with hands in pockets. Making the world safe for sharia law in Europe and the U.S. Where is the International Women's Protective Army? Obviously men will not free us. It requires women around the globe to stand up for their sisters and pressure each government to stand against the brutal repression of women by Extreme Patriarchy!
Our sisters in Iran deserve our support!

Would somebody PLEASE put the last nail in this coffin???

Sure'n it must be Sunday, my day to preach. This news just added lighter fluid to the pile of faggots building at the feet of the Catholic church:

Pupils Abused For Decades in Irish Schools
Panel Finds Misconduct by Priests, Nuns Until 1990

LONDON, May 20 -- Thousands of children were physically and sexually abused by priests and nuns in orphanages and reform schools in Ireland from 1930 to 1990, a government commission said Wednesday in the first official accounting of the full magnitude of a scandal that has wrenched the deeply Roman Catholic nation.

The 2,600-page report, which capped a nine-year investigation, said rape and sexual abuse were "endemic" in boys' institutions funded by the state but run by the church. "A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys," it said.


The commission said documents found at the Vatican showed that religious orders knew of numerous abuse complaints but covered them up, worried more about scandal than about protecting children.

The Christian Brothers ran many of the residential boys homes in Ireland, and more allegations were made against it than against all the other male religious orders combined. The Christian Brothers successfully sued the commission in 2004 to keep its members unnamed, noting that many of the brothers were dead and could not defend themselves.
View the 2600 page report:

Increased persecutions of child "witches"

Is your child a "witch"? If the child lives in Nigeria, and possesses any of these traits, yes indeedy, he or she must be a witch.
* cavorting
* learning disabilities
* stubbornness
* ailments such as epilepsy
Who can tell if a child is a witch or not? Wait for it -- THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Deja Vu all over again. "The role of the international Christian community in this cannot be underestimated," Foxcroft said. "Unfortunately, the fact remains that this belief system is being spread by so-called Christians."
These are the same people (or close church relation, anyway) of the people who believe abortion is a sin, that deprives a creature of god a chance to live. And what do these church people do with the children brought to life in this loving environment? Beat them, torture them, kill them. With god on their side, I'm sure.

Marilyn French, feminist author, died May 2, 2009

The author of The Women's Room, one of my favorite feminist fiction novels, had these coupla things to say, which I quote here for posterity:


“My goal in life is to change the entire social and economic structure of western civilization, to make it a feminist world.”

“I was always a feminist, because to me a feminist is simply any woman who thinks women matter as much as men do.”

“All the women I know feel a little like outlaws.”
Thanks for Violet Socks for collecting some of the best quotes. http://www.reclusiveleftist.com/2009/05/04/marilyn-french-quotes/

The patriarchs are addicted to violence because...

And we wonder why we have the level of violence on earth that we do....

"It's well known that TV violence holds an attraction for most viewers and this attraction translates into ratings and profits. Because of this most media executives have been reluctant to admit that media violence is in any way responsible for violence in our society.

If it weren't for the ratings and profits involved, producers would undoubtedly be much more willing to acknowledge the harm in TV and film violence and do something about it.

Instead, we have such things as the American Medical Association finding that shows that in homes with premium cable channels, or a VCR or DVD... '...children typically witness 32,000 murders and 40,000 attempted murders by the time they reach the age of 18.'"

"Because ours is a puritanically-based society and we have problems with depictions of sex, we tend to eroticize violence. For many people this creates an unfortunate, often even unconscious, link between sex and violence." from Sex Research, Censorship, and the Law)

The puritanical roots of our culture, mixed with a steady dose of violence coming at us in high-def, have made sex inseparable from violence. It seems only logical to assume that the same is going on under the robes of the islamic fundamentalists, even without the benefit of a daily dose of fictionalized violence. Their doses come from what you might call extreme reality tv. Every time I read about another woman (especially rape victims!) whipped or buried in sand and stoned, I smell extreme patriarchy, barely camouflaged raw sexual sadism.

The patriarchs of this "religion" prescribe sadistic whippings, stonings, and murder as "religious" punishments for male-defined infractions of religious code. Who benefits from this "religion"? Men. Who enforces the bizarre, blame-the-victim rules? Men. Who pays the price? Women, mostly, but both women and men all around the world pay it, too, in many ways.

If you peek under the robes of history, you'll find sado-masochism in nazi germany, the reformation, the crusades, the burning times, sharia law. These political and/or religious episodes, cleverly disguised as religion or state, institutionalize the physical abuse of the "weak" (women, children, jews, homosexuals -- whoever the dominant male designated as "other").

The primary output from these events is sexual sadism. No wonder the mullahs wear robes -- they need them to cover up the state of arousal they enjoy as voyeurs.

Yes, I know the following information comes from a "right-wing" web site, but it pretty well sums up what I'm trying to say. Why otherwise would male islamic soldiers voluntarily become suicide bombers if it weren't for the promise of a rewarding afterlife raping virgins???

The following quote is from Islam is to religion as sadism is to human

"Comparatively, it is imperative to comprehend that a sadistic person is not after sex, he seeks a sick way of dominance and pain over his victims, he wants to be in control of the action. A person being raped, for example, really has no control over the situation, the subject literally being coerced.

Violence, weapons, injury, or torture fascinates a sadistic person just as it fascinates an Islamist. Both enjoy getting their subjects (be it humans or animals) to do what they want them to do by frightening them through a series of intimidation, fear and terror. Both take pleasure in the psychological or physical suffering of others.

This is exactly how the Islamists have been ruling over a peaceful and sophisticated country, Iran, for 30 years. They have completely restricted the activity and independence of the people of Iran. In the cycle of prison horrors and terrors, the Islamic Republic of Iran uses many old Soviet techniques, ranging from harassment, intimidation and tortures, to mechanical devices designed to inflict gross tissue damage. They employ psychological and physiological techniques, (an example is Ziba Kazemi's case, an Iranian-Canadian journalist), such as solitary confinement and sleep deprivation. The Islamic Republic's lackeys are commonly using these techniques on the Iranian youth while the Islamic Republic dreams of world Shi'a domination."

God save me from your followers!

Too big to fail? Then it's too big, period

Too big to fail? Then they're too damn big. The gluttonous era of one corporation swallowing another whole, and becoming mega-international conglomerates that are too big to inspect, govern, audit or correct, must come to an end.
I never thought I'd agree with anything published in Business Week, but this issue of bailing out monster corporations that have looted and pillaged the global economy has me and millions of others seething and hopping mad.
"The last time I got screwed I at least got kissed"
Who said it first? I dunno, but it sure fits the current situation. Sure...let's give bonuses to the bastards who brought down the house of cards. They certainly deserve more money...more money out of MY pocket. Yeah, that's the ticket.
Thanks, Bush, Cheney, and all yer buddies. And now back to blaming Obama for this mess.

Is it Spring yet?

It's about time to take up the keyboard again. I admit that getting through the last several months of the dubyah regime took everything I had, and even in the waning days I kept expecting him -- er, Dick -- to pull some National Emergency crap and completely suspend the Constitution, what's left of it, that is.
Oh well, sign the Indict Bush petition here: http://www.impeachbush.org/site/PageServer?pagename=homepage

and let's hope Obama keeps at least one cell open in Guantanamo for George, and one for Dick. Let's not forget DH Dick.

Oh yeah, and while you're on the web signing things, join the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (http://www.vhemt.org/). I did. "Phasing out the human race by voluntarily ceasing to breed will allow Earth's biosphere to return to good health. Crowded conditions and resource shortages will improve as we become less dense."

I'm not sure about that "as we become less dense" part -- we humans are pretty damn dense, if you ask me.

"Come from the Shadows"

One of the best albums Joan Baez released was "Come from the Shadows." Full of songs about people resisting the powers that constrained and tortured them, listening to it always makes me hope that humans can indeed get their butts up off the couch, turn off the friggin' plasma tv, and take action against the liars and looters. Sadly, the album is out of print. Little wonder...gawd forbid the people should organize....
Anyway, in my own attempt to turn off the tv and organize, I'll be adding links to this site to groups of women organizing for women. Wimmin for wimmin. Womyn for the planet. Women for human rights. Wimmin doing wonderful, inspirational things with nowhere near $700 BILLION dollars. We need to inspire ourselves, because the boyz certainly ain't gonna do it for us.
See "SisterLynx" in the right margin...and go ye therefore and RAISE HELL. Make Mother Jones proud.

Today's rant - September 27, 2008

The early days of Autumn, the last blast of 80-degree days, and cooler nights. Not to fear, though. We've still got six more weeks of hot air as this two-year-long election campaign finally winds down. This campaign for u.s. p-resident has been going on too long, mostly because the current p-resident became such a huge liability that even his own party was in a hurry to get beyond the bush era. I've almost worn out the Mute button on the remotes in the house, trying to avoid the yammering that masquerades as news and as analysis anymore.

Lard hep us. Now we're in the home stretch and the talking headz are besides themselves talking over each other. Just what we need -- more White Men Talking. Who won the debate? Did McBush's attempt to duck the debate cost him? Did his joke in Scranton offend enough Irish to make a difference for Obama? Does Palin's living in proximity to Russia qualify as "foreign policy experience"?

Here's a couple things I really want to know: Do the evangelicals give a crap about anything but their self-fulfilling armageddon prophecies? Do the anti-abortionists give a crap about any of those babies after they're born? (Rhetorical question...no need to answer....) Why am we, the working people, elected to pay for the looting and pillaging that has gone on since Raygun de-regulated the whole stinkin' country?

Do any of you feel like your needs will be addressed by EITHER of these two candidates? Have you seen who's financing both of these campaigns??? What do you expect when we get candidates bought and paid for by the rich, the lobbyists for global corporations, and the RWNCOA (that's Right-wing Nut-Cases Of America)? As Molly Ivins always said, "Ya got to dance with them what brung ya."

Change is coming, alright. Yup. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

still think they count all the ballots and count them correctly???

http://www.molvray.com/acid-test/2008/07/evidence-of-election-tampering-reaching-critical-mass/