New Left Hipster?

I took this quiz.

This is my result.

You are a New Left Hipster, also known as a MoveOn.org liberal, a Netroots activist, or a Daily Show fanatic. You believe that if we really want to defend American values, conservative hatriots must be exposed and mocked for every fanatical, puritanical, paranoid, fact-allergic, reality-challenged, obstructionist ideal for which they stand.

I don't know if that's good or not. If memory serves, it's not good to be a 'hipster'.....times like this I need my niece to tell me. I will say that on most questions I wanted an 'all of the above' option.

Otherwise, it is pretty much accurate. I don't tolerate stupid when it's me or others...especially others. (I live me and have to forgive my own stupidity)
I find it surreal that the only news shows I watch, other than Rachel Maddow, are on Comedy Central, another landmark on this road to hell we have been on for 30 years.

the wonders of the universe

It's that time again...since this has been a really weird week for me, I like that I can start up my computer and be comforted by the fact of our pale blue dot is a wonder. I love that universes and galaxies are still being formed out there and for the first time we can see it happening. How freaking cool is that?

So let's go see what's out there.....take it away Sir Redshirt......

favorite quotes and lyrics

My niece asked me to choose my favorite Green Day quote. I asked if she wanted quotes from the band members or lyrics. She said I was free to choose. I'm good with lyrics, but not actual quotes....but I just found one. I am listening to a preview of Awesome As Fuck here.  While listening, I'm looking through my favorite Green Day site and I found this one quote I like a lot.

"And for our fans, they're just crazy people anyway. I always look at people in a Green Day shirt, and I think, 'What's wrong with that person? What kind of hang-ups does that person have?' Obviously, it's not just the catchy songs, it goes deeper than that." - Billie Joe

I will be thinking on Green Day lyrics, but it got me thinking of all the other lyrics that I really like from other artists. That is my job today. That and calling Directv to change my programming. That is my Sunday without football and a brand new war. yay. 

If you want, you can list your own Green Day lyrics or any other lyrics that strike your fancy in the comments.

America or Amerika?

We are still the United States of America, right? We are still a representative democracy with the power to the people, right?
Wrong. All you have to do is look to Michigan. The new governor is well on his way to creating his own little state bought and paid for by your tax dollars and given to corporations.
I am posting this post in full .

The phrase "company town" is loosely applied to any locale dominated by a single employer. But real company towns – the kind built, managed, and subject to the paternalistic control of private enterprise – have been an important part of American economic history. From Gary, IN (U.S. Steel) to Pullman, IL (now part of Chicago) to Hershey, PA to Alcoa, TN to the hundreds of textile mill towns of the South and coal mining towns throughout Appalachia, municipalities founded without incorporation or elected government are more numerous than many Americans realize. To live in these places meant to depend entirely on the munificence of one's corporate nobleman for the services one usually gets from local government. It usually meant getting paid in company scrip usable that limited one's economic transactions to company-owned banks, stores, and so on. Some company towns, notably Hershey, PA, were considered relatively swell places to live. Most, as in the case of Appalachian coal company towns, were efficient means of brutal exploitation and debt peonage.
Michigan's widely reported 'Financial Martial Law' bill, soon to be signed into law by teabagging mannequin Rick Snyder, is portrayed by leftists as another salvo in the ongoing Republican war against teachers and public sector unions. I find that conclusion overly linear and too simplistic. This legislation – which allows the Governor to declare financial emergencies and appoint individuals or corporations to serve as city managers with the power to dissolve local elected councils and nullify employment contracts for public servants – is the first step in an effort to do away with municipal and local government altogether in favor of quite literally having private enterprises replacing government and contracting out its functions to the lowest bidder. How beautiful it will be: Wackenhut cops and local jails, Waste Management goons collecting trash, utilities sold off to Aqua America and Exelon, tax assessments mailed to homeowners from a financial services boiler room in Bangalore, and municipal employees of all types fired and replaced by temps from Manpower, Inc.
Gives a new and literal meaning to the phrase "company town," doesn't it? And the kicker is that the Governor is empowered to pay the new city managers any amount he sees fit before turning over total control so that they may further profit from a variety of harebrained privatization schemes.
This legislation speaks to the ideas that have kept right-wingers' hearts aflutter since the early Reagan years. It's not removing government from the private sector; it's replacing government with the private sector. For-profit education corporations running the schools. Private military/security outfits as cops. Subscription-only fire protection and ambulance service. City property auctioned off to developers (with zoning laws created ad hoc by unelected city managers; sure, you can bury nuclear waste here!) No pesky citizens, city councils, or local laws to get in the way. Corporate owner-governments that can charge you whatever they're bold enough to charge for services and utilities. And there's not a goddamn thing you can do about it. Your government will be a board of directors in some office park in Arlington, VA.
What a beautiful vision. It's like watching the Koch brothers masturbate.

And you don't think your vote counts? Oh, it's just the midterms, there aren't any reasons to vote unless there is a presidential election......

That kind of thinking really pisses me off. If it was only you, the ones that don't do your civic duty, I would be fine with you being an idiot and not voting. But it isn't just you. Teabaggers want the fascist state they think President Obama is implementing. They think it's a great idea....and THEY VOTE! The people who didn't vote because it didn't seem important or the parties are the same or I'm going to show Obama!.....you did this. YOU. So get your ass in gear and volunteer or give money if you can....get involved. State and municipal elections matter more to your every day life than what happens in Congress.

The founding fathers created this government for the people, by the people. Guess what? YOU ARE THE PEOPLE!

...the world is spinning round and round, out of control.....again.....

One day us humans may figure out how to live with each other, but until then.....more war! not that I don't think Libya needed to be dealt with long before now, I do think it is the Arab League's business. They should be taking the lead, with the US only in a support role.

And since we now have a President who is not a 'cowboy' (god help us, we barely survived), I don't expect anyone in the Obama administration to do this. But just in case, since it seemed to be so well liked by the public the last time. Here is a BBC article telling us who the major players are in Libya. So, before you see the playing cards, you already know who they are....just consider this a little useful knowledge.

I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue......

You ever wake up and all of a sudden you feel like your place in the world isn't where you thought it was? Maybe you even feel that you don't belong anywhere? I woke up like that today.

2009 and 2010 have been the worst years of my forty something years. I had hope that 2011 would be better, but I woke up this morning and realized it isn't.

2011 is sucking just like the last 2. I don't usually feel sorry for myself. I hate it as a matter of fact. Today, there just doesn't seem a way out of this funk.

Growing up, I never felt like I was in the right body. I always felt older than I was. Until I turned 35. 35 was the age I always felt growing up. It was a bitch at 13, I can tell you. Maybe that's just what being a 13 year old girl is like, I don't know. I thought when 35 felt right, that life would just go swimmingly. Ha! I never thought I would ever use that word "swimmingly"....anyhoo, it went all right for a while and then the calendar turned over to 2009.

I have never been a person who suffers from depression. Low self confidence, low self esteem, yes, but not depression. Today, all I have been able to think is maybe I do now. I have no idea. All I know is that today, I really don't give a damn. I feel like every one out there, friends included, don't really give a damn and why would they? I don't have an answer to that today. I really don't like this feeling at all.

How much fun am I today? None. I can usually talk myself out of the negative thoughts and the negative soundtrack that usually runs through my head. I can't today. I think the last 2 years are finally catching up with me. It sort of feels like I have been wandering through a fog all that time. Over that time, I thought, I should feel worse about this, but I didn't. I floated through. I don't like thinking that, it seems hollow and empty and I don't think I am that. Maybe I've just been paying too much attention to the bullshit that passes for our current society. I don't know. And today, I don't really care.

Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and wonder what the fuck I was thinking today. I hope so, but I will be preparing for the day to be just like this one. woohoo.

and the beat goes on....

I should have The Plum Line  on the side.....

Gitmo isn't open because the administration doesn't want to close it, although its efforts in this area are ripe for criticism. It's still open because Republicans in Congress successfully frightened Democrats in Congress out of giving the administration the necessary funds to close it when they had control of Congress. In the process, they've managed to obscure the original reason detainees were brought to Gitmo -- to keep them away from the scrutiny of the federal courts. Once the Supreme Court held that federal courts had jurisdiction and even habeas rights, the facility was useless for that purpose. Republicans are determined to keep it open not because we can't safely imprison terrorists in the U.S., but because they feel its ongoing presence vindicates Bush in the eyes of history.

sad, sad state of affairs....

My thoughts exactly......

He doesn't have to because we now live in a country where there is no penalty whatsoever for Conservatives who are grotesquely and serially wrong about matters of life and death. And so well-paid buffoons like Brooks have no incentive to learn the lessons of Iraq that other, less-privileged citizens have paid for with their lives. Instead, he and his ilk are left with their lives, fortunes and positions of power in American politics and media blissfully untouched, free to whitewash their failures over and over again, unmolested by the inconvenient realities of the pain and ruin they left in their wake.

read it here

if you think about it rationally, you know they are out there.....somewhere

the truth is out there.....

there are so many universes out there...it's more likely than not.

adding:

with all those universes out there....you really think we are the only ones?

I don't get it, it's my uterus...

I have the privilege to be reminded that this is someone’s life, not the New York Times Most Emailed Article. And it is an honor to be reminded. It makes me work harder. Being an abortion provider has meant that I drive home from work knowing I did something, actually everything in my power, to support people who needed it. It’s a privilege and it’s fucking awesome.

read the whole thing here

must read....

I can't remember the last time the political discourse made this little sense. We have Americans demanding action on job creation; we have congressional Republicans deliberately trying to make unemployment worse; and we have a media that prefers to pretend that the deficit matters more than the economy.

Can I get an amen? Go read the whole thing here.

must read....

The most casual participant in the political process knows exactly what they will get when they vote for and elect Tea Party types and the more extreme right Republicans in general. No, he never came out and said "Hey, I'm gonna ream you public employees so hard you won't walk right for years!" on the campaign trail. He might even have said a lot of sweet sounding things to the contrary. Only a voter lying to himself or completely ignorant of politics, however, would actually believe it. It's time to stop being angry with Scott Walker, which makes no more sense than being angry at a dog for barking and chasing cars. Instead, our anger is more fairly directed at the swing voters who decide American elections – the kind of mushy, ill-informed "independent" who would vote for him and then be shocked to learn how extreme his brand of governance is. People like Walker will continue to get elected so long as there are voters who are willfully ignorant of what candidates really stand for or so easily duped that a few sound bites can overwhelm all available evidence that the Governor-to-be supports an agenda of the kind of corporate cronyism and pathological hatred of government that defines people of his ideological stripes.

via Gin and Tacos

must read....

via Balloon Juice

I have never wavered from my view, expressed among other places in Blindside in 1995, that thanks to the almost incredible, if unnoticed, speed with which Japan has been building its lead in advanced manufacturing, the United States has been losing economic position faster than any Big Power since the implosion of the Ottoman empire a century ago. Nothing indeed has shaken my conviction that already by 2000, the United States had become an economic Potemkin village — a largely hollowed-out hulk whose eroding competitiveness was overlooked at the time merely because so many commentators, not least the ten highly influential observers on this invitation list, were busy proclaiming the myth of Japan’s economic oblivion.

Why Stephen Colbert Rules the Universe

Because everyone should see this at least once.....

life.....birthdays....family

My family got together for my mother's 79th birthday today. She enjoyed having all of her children and some of the grandkids around....and the cake. After the cake and ice cream, I took my niece (a very good artist) and her boyfriend to see the coolest picture that hangs in the local hospital. It was drawn by a 12th grader using white charcoal. I never remember to get a picture of it...old age sucks. Anyway, we found a really cool used CD and record store. We walked in and I heard this..... how freaking cool is that?! I know! I haven't heard Kix since, I couldn't even tell you when. I have the album on cassette and no cassette player. It's one of those you don't remember or can't find on CD to replace the collection. And when I log into itunes, I am usually looking for something specific and never browse. They also have a record store poster for American Idiot that will be mine next payday. :)

Mom has been home from the hospital for a week and seems to be getting stronger every day. It's much nicer with her at home. Thank you to everyone for the well wishes and good thoughts. Since she is home and we are getting back in the groove of normalcy, I should be back in blogging mode soon. I never realized how tiring it is when you have someone you love in the hospital. All the worry and driving....anyway, I'm glad it's done and my mother is on the mend.

this life like dream ain't for me

I’ve said this before, and I will say it again. Unless your proposal includes a substantial increase in taxes and a substantial amount of cuts to the military budget as well as ending the farm subsidies and giveaways to big oil and big energy and big business, you can kindly just shut up about the deficit and the debt. Additionally, any cuts to entitlements need to include cuts to the CURRENT recipients, not grandfathering the boomers and then wondering why the cuts never materialize in the future.
If you aren’t going to do those things, just shut up. You aren’t serious.

John Cole

quotes....

via Steve Benen

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R) of Alabama was asked on CNN this morning whether he considers that "a good start." He replied:

"No, it's not. This is a ten-year budget. It sets the president's plans and what the country should do for the next 10 years.... $1 trillion reduction is insignificant and does not get us off the right course."

I assume he meant to say "wrong course," but misspoke. Fine.
But literally two minutes later, in exact the same interview, Sessions reflected on House Republicans' proposed cuts.

"[E]ven the $100 billion House proposal in reducing spending will amount to $1 trillion. And that's a step. I mean, because, you carry it out for ten years and you save $1 trillion in that fashion."

Remember, Jeff Sessions is the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, so presumably he has some familiarity with these issues.


so yay for the American people.

quotes....

The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.
— Aldous Huxley

fuck. my. life.

today is one of those days when I just want to tell everyone to fuck off. and what good is having a blog if I can't do that? I did that once as my facebook status and some weenie (a friend of a friend) comes onto my wall and tells me I shouldn't use that kind of language. And since I didn't tell her then, fuck off. It's my goddamn wall and if I want to say fuck off to everybody, then I goddamn will. so to cheer me up I am posting this video....if you ever have one of these days, maybe it will help you too. and because there aren't any good versions of this live on youtube, you get the one with the words.....

"So I opened my door to my enemies and I ask could we wipe the slate clean? But they tell me to please go and fuck myself. You know you just can't win."

the people you meet online.....

In real life, I don't have a lot of friends. I have always kept a small circle of people whom I trust and tell my secrets to, it's the cancer in me I guess. It always amazes me when I look at my facebook friends list and see the friends I have made online. Sure, I have caught up with the obligatory high school and Page School friends, but there are those people whom I met during the 2008 election that mean the most to me.
During that election season I perused many sites to find out the latest news and info and in doing so found some of the many people, whom I have not met in real life, who have become my bestest friends. I have always been shy until I know someone, very quiet and reserved but still full of smart ass retorts. (I get that from my daddy and have a hard time holding that in). One of the places I frequented was Bob Cesca's Goddamn Awesome Blog. It's not called that anymore, Bob removed the "Goddamn" and I always still feel a pang of hurt when I go to his site and realize it's gone. Anyway, that's where I found people who were like me. They believed in the things I believe in. And the best part? They do snark very well. I wish I could do snark the way they do. It all seems so easy for them. Me? I never think of something snarky until 3 hours later.....such is my life. Anyhoo, they are all very smart and know policy and history and can snark....who wouldn't love friends like that?
There was a group of us at Cesca's who found a common thread and became friends. Hell, I only got on facebook because they had made up a Cesca group and I wanted in. For me, they were the 'cool' kids and damn if I wasn't going to be one too. I don't know what I bring to the table with them, except my smart ass ability (which sometimes doesn't travel well through the vacuum tubes), but they accepted me and have become some of the best people I have ever 'known' in my life.
There are a couple of others that I didn't meet through Cesca and one of those people inspired me to finally write up a blog. "That One" is Redshirt. I haven't been posting so much because my mother has been in the hospital for a while and I have been freaking out and feeling weird feelings and then Egypt distracted me for a while, but I just noticed that Redshirt had written is 1000th post. Congrats dude! While I was over there I noticed he has added my little blog of ramblings and disjointed thoughts on his blogroll. I can't tell you how wonderful and scared that makes me. I love Redshirt, if you couldn't tell, and I admire his blogging ability and all the snark and Star Wars and Star Trek you could ever want. And I don't know anyone else, other than me if I would've thought about it, who would post a pic from one of my favorite all time movies ever - Dogma. Buddy Jesus, Hell yeah!

So to all my friends I have met online, thank you. You have been there through the worst 2 years of my life and have comforted me and made me laugh. I hope I can give you just a fraction of the joy you bring me everyday. To those few from my real life who know me as Vera Lynn, thank you for keeping my secret and continuing to be my friend. And to Redshirt, thank you. Thank you for inspiring me to come out of my shell and spew forth my weird thoughts.

And seriously, I love George Carlin and Dogma and all, but a tat of it? Hell no.