Squirrel's Ink

Due to recent events I have been out of the news loop for a while (no internet on Long Island, and my family likes to get their news from Bill O'Reilly, PUKE.) Catching up on the two major pieces of bad news that happened while I was away makes me want to move out to a secluded cabin in the woods. Or possibly a commune. I don't understand. I just don't. I think Slacktivist sums up the spirit of the health care debacle very nicely here:

http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2010/01/stop-demanding-that-you-get-screwed.html

Which leads us to the fillibuster. I clearly remember being grateful for the fillibuster when Dems used it to block Harriet Myers. I don't remember Dems using it on Every. Single. Piece. of legislation. It's an effective tactic on the part of the GOP - now it looks like Dems can't get anything done. And maybe the smart move on the part of Dems should have been to threaten to get rid of the fillibuster, as I remember the GOP threatening to do when Myers was fillibustered.

At the very least, if someone wants to fillibuster, they should be required to stand up in front of Congress and read from the dictionary like they did in the old days. When there is no discomfort or consequence, there is nothing to stop the party out of power from doing what the GOP is doing now - bring the entire country to a halt.

And as for the Supreme Court decision ... I'm just appalled. This is why, personally, I'd rather have a Dem president then a Dem Congress.

All in all, it's been a rough week. I'm so glad that my Bill-O'Reilly-loving relatives only tried to engage me to gloat once and I successfully shook them off for the entire weekend.

I've noticed I get more political when I am angry, and after yesterday's conversation, I am very angry indeed. How can people tell such outrageous lies and not get laughed or booed out of the public arena? Why are people so willing to believe such crap? I think that's what makes me angriest - no matter how retarded the lie, people believe it. And that makes them retarded, too.

Sarah Palin herself tells reporters the bill number and the section that she is pulling death panels from. She does it, probably knowing that most of her followers will simply believe her instead of checking to see that such a disgusting thing exists. She gave details, she wouldn't do that if it was a lie! It is utterly retarded that I felt like I had to go and read the section in question (scroll to page 425) so that I can vouch that there are no death panels, because I am going to see people this weekend (my family!!!) who refuse to believe any news source other than Fox News.

Slacktivist posted a great news clip that shows the sheep running off after rumors without checking the facts first. It made me happy that Barney Frank responded so well.

Obama's website has a lot of links to well-respected (and therefore liberal and not to be trusted) newspaper articles and other resources that clearly state that the insurance companies are out to kill health care reform, a conspiracy that is totally believable, but it's also not as likely to raise people's hackles like euthanasia. Unfortunately, that one lie, that one tall tale, may be enough to not only kill health care reform, but kill Democrats, which is of course exactly why those fuckers did it. They didn't have anything constructive to add to the conversation, so they'd rather fuck up this country like we're still in the Bush era. (I know I keep harping on this, but how can people be so stupid? How do such stupid people find ways of feeding and cleaning themselves?)

To sum up: I am very angry indeed. I had very little opinion one way or the other on health care reform, since my health care problems have more to do with the fact that my Catholic employer wants to deny my access to certain products than the insurance companies themselves. I do not approve of what is happening now. I do not approve of people accusing the president of being a Nazi over provisions that do not actually exist. DO NOT EXIST. I do not condone lies. I frown upon screaming down intelligent debate. I don't know that I can do much about it, however - I live in a very liberal state, and have a very liberal f-list, both on LJ and on Facebook. All I can really do is seethe quietly in my air conditioned room, and try to come up with polite ways of telling my family to fuck off if they bring this up when I see them on Sunday.

My father, who works for Pratt and Whitney, may be laid off due to Department of Defense budget cuts. All family members who voted for McCain turned and gave me an accusing stare when this was announced. Just in case I was not clear on why he was being laid off, my mom felt the need to reiterate today that it was because of Obama's budget.

Saying, "Now don't be retarded" to a bunch of relatives didn't seem like a diplomatic response. Neither did "I still think infrastructure construction is a better use of our tax dollars than bombing the shit out of third world countries."

Help educate young minds (and Janet) about the Palestinian-Israeli crisis: suggest a few websites explaining what all the fighting is about!

Well. Obviously I know the basics. I could be better informed on more of the fine details, but that's difficult when most of the sites out there are all "KILL ALL THE JEWS!1!" or "KILL ALL THOSE PALESTINIAN TERRORISTS!1!!" I'd like to find at least one, POV-neutral (as much as is possible) source that is NOT Wikipedia that explains a little modern history. Possibly two newspaper op-eds, one arguing for each side, would also be helpful, but finding historical explanations of the conflict are my highest priority.

I've got this, but it's more focused on the last five years, with the creation of modern Israel reduced to a mere paragraph:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7818022.stm

What I envision for the lesson is we talk a little about what the kids know about the conflict from listening to the news, and then I give them a worksheet that has some questions and a map on it (I have a line map of modern Israel from earlier years), and we move to the computer lab where they use the websites that I have already vetted to find the answers to the questions.

Please keep in mind that these are 14-year-old high school freshmen.

Yesterday was a very good day.

My roommate and I went to a bar in the Lower East Side, I went insane with joy at the results, and nearly got myself run over by a taxi while running around the streets screaming. We attempted to pick up the voting freebies, but the line was too long at Ben and Jerry's, I hate coffee (Starbucks) and gave mine away to a homeless guy, and at the last stop they were ALL OUT of stock. :(

Today was also nice, though I did feel bad when I saw how depressed my ultra-conservative friend was.

Prop 8 was, of course, a big disappointment, but (almost) every poll I'd seen going in indicated that it was going to pass. What surprised me most was seeing LA County decided by less than a percent of a point. Really? LA? I expected that from Orange Country but . . . LA?

The good news, California dwellers and watchers, is that young people voted NO by a big margin - %60+. Change is coming. Conservatives are fighting a loosing battle. Once that right is there, it will be like abortion - even South Dakota failed to pass a constitutional amendment to ban abortion TWICE now. I even suspect they may know it - it would explain the hysteria that keeps coming from them every major election cycle.

That's all barring a major upheaval of some sort in our country, anyway. People are always eager to start beating on minority groups when terrorists/Great Depressions/etc are involved.

So my mom sent me this:



Needless to say, I was pissed off. I hit Reply All and sent back all of this:

Dear friends and family,

I regret to inform you that the video which has been passed on to you is complete and utter bunk. Obama was born in the US and has a US certificate. It is going to be a very short trial.

Photos of Obama's birth certificate are posted online at www.factcheck.org. The video that was forwarded to you is pinned on the presumption that factcheck.org is not actually a non-partisian organization and cannot be trusted. Obama, they say, sat on the board for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which received its funding from the Annenberg Foundation, the same place that factcheck.org received its startup funds. Their website:

http://www.annenbergfoundation.org/

However, Walter Annenberg was a Republican. He was buddies with Nixon and Reagan. His New York Times obituary goes on for five pages:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9800E3DE1038F931A35753C1A9649C8B63

But he's dead, you say? His widow is still involved in politics. She's a supporter of McCain, as listed on his own website – Leonore Annenberg of Radnor PA:

http://www.johnmccain.com/informing/news/PressReleases/1b838127-b4a0-4868-9906-62f555376089.htm


So if there are any political shennanigans going on over at factcheck.org, its far more likely to be in the Republican's favor rather than the Democrats. Check out the photos of Obama's birth certificate for yourself here:

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html

This video is not the first time that Obama's citizenship has been called into question. Here is a link from snopes.com, which specializes in debunking internet rumors, with a variation of this myth:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/citizen.asp


So now the question becomes: why isn't Obama going to court with his birth certificate? According to this site, he moved to have the case dismissed:

http://dockets.justia.com/docket/court-paedce/case_no-2:2008cv04083/case_id-281573/

No point making a court appearance for a case that will probably be deemed frivolous. Better to spend that time campaigning.

Sincerely,
Janet



If anyone is interested, here are some other problems I found, all within the FIRST MINUTE of the video.

**In the opening spiel, the guy (Molotov Mitchell) mentions introducing the public to “black liberation theology” and “liberation theology” “before anyone knew just how scary any of them are.”

This is a really weird claim. We learned a little about liberation theology in Catholic school. It's been around since at least the '70's, probably earlier, and was popular in Latin America. Although it is most commonly associated with Catholicism, the Church has distanced itself from liberation theology because many practitioners tended towards violence. So how exactly did Mitchell tell everyone about liberation theology before anyone knew how scary it was, when most of the really scary stuff happened when this guy was too young to hold a camera? I don't get it.

**Again in the opening spiel, the guy mentions cracking open the story on Barack Obama supporting infanticide. This claim might sound familiar: its the same claim that Palin has been making in her stump speeches recently.

To say the least, saying Obama supports infanticide is a distortion of the facts. Obama is pro-choice and votes to protect abortion rights. The situation, in brief, is that Illinois had a law protecting the lives of babies that were born alive after botched abortions. A new law was introduced to the State Senate that aimed to expand on this, but the language was so vague that it could possibly have been used to undermine abortion. Obama voted against this new law. Hate on him for being pro-choice, but lets not be silly and say he favors infanticide. Here is a Time magazine article:

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1849483,00.html

**”As an independent film organization, we've taken it upon ourselves to expose the corrupt things in Barack Obama's past, things the mainstream media has been all too willing to conceal.”

I find it difficult to believe that Fox News would be in on this conspiracy of secrecy, especially not when their man is down in the polls.

Note also how many times he repeats that he is independent, that he finds he needs to reassure people that he is not a conspiracy nut, etc, even as he implies that there is a conspiracy going on. He's making an argument from authority: “I must be telling the truth because I'm an independent, therefore I don't support either candidate, therefore I have no reason to lie!” He's trying to make people believe him based on who he is, rather than because he has all his facts straight. They're about as straight as that tower in Pisa.

**The screen goes black and the words “www.nohussein.org” and “www.obamacrimes.com” flash up.

Please note the name of that first website. It does not say “nobama”, nor does it say “nobarack,” both of which utilize names Obama is normally known by. Unlike George W. Bush, who uses his middle initial and so gets called “W” as a term of endearment by supporters, Barack Obama is almost never referred to with his middle name. So why does this website use his middle name in its web address or title?

His middle name triggers negative emotions with the sort of people this site is trying to influence – it makes people think of Saddam, it reminds people of his Muslim father, it makes people think “foreigner” and “terrorist.” In other words, this is an appeal to emotions.

In fact, the entire site is an appeal to emotion – fear. It repeats the bit about infanticide, and then goes on to talk about Bill Clinton vetoing the ban on partial-birth abortion. According to this site, Democrats = baby killers.

Don't be afraid. Be aware. Make an informed choice, not one based on lies and fear.

Whew! And that's only the OPENING SEGMENT! In only the FIRST MINUTE of watching, this guy has proved himself to be completely untrustworthy. I could do the rest of the video, but Heroes reruns are calling me.

BTW, I'm still voting Obama. In case you couldn't tell.