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Bart Stupak Has Given Me a Wonderful Idea.

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

The Stupak Amendment, if you have been living under a rock, is an amendment to Affordable Health Care for America Act that will not allow Government supplied or subsidized heath care plans “to pay for any abortion or to cover any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion”. It was voted in to the House version of the health care bill. In simpler language it is nothing but an attempt to limit access to abortion. Abortion is legal. End of story. Access to it should not be limited by some rich old white guy that will never need one. Never the less, it was voted in.

Why did he introduce this amendment? Because he is morally opposed to abortion and doesn’t think that tax dollars should go to something a taxpayer is morally opposed to. Well shit, I didn’t know I had a choice on where my tax dollars went. I would like to thank Michigan Democratic Representative Bart Stupak for enlightening me.

Now that I know that morals effect my taxes I would like to that this time to mention that I am morally opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I am morally opposed to government funding of faith-based initiatives. I think this means I am due for a refund. You know what, screw it, I don’t need the few bucks back. Keep it. Just do me a favor and split what I am owed between health care and the space program.

P.S. Here is a list of Democrats that voted in favor of this amendment:
http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=15915
If one of yours is on this list make sure to let them know how you feel.

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

man up, Senator Reid.

Friday, November 7th, 2008

So turncoat Lieberman says he’ll stop caucassing with the democrats if they take his chairmanships away.

Um… and this matters WHY?

Since he supported the party’s candidate for president?  Since he votes along with them so often?  Why is it important that he say in the caucus when he does nothing to further the goals of the democratic party, and actively works to keep them from being acheived?

Come on, Reid, boot the deadweight.  It’s not like you can count on his votes in the future, or his support for the president-elect’s agenda.  Let him bluster.  So what if he goes to the GOP.  Does anyone really think they’ll pass over a longtime Republican to give mumbly Joe a chairmanship on their side?  Shit, they picked Caribou Barbie over him on the McCain ticket!  Cut him loose, and he can see how popular he really is on either side.

victory

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

So after the screaming and the jumping up and down and the tears and the people dancing in the streets (literally), I’ve had a couple days to reflect.
I really do have to give McCain credit… after the sleeze and near race-riots he presided over, after the way he inflicted Bible Spice on all of us, I think he may have saved his reputation with one of the classiest and most heartfelt concession speeches I’ve ever seen.

Good for him. I’ve never hated McCain. I hated that he was so willing to sell his soul to the Rove wing of the party after what they said about him and his kids in 2000, though, and that he let the same extremist religious fanatics run his campaign now.

And then, well, there was Obama’s speech. I don’t think we’ve seen a man like Obama on the national political stage in at least a generation. I wonder if this is how my grandparents felt listening to JFK (since, after all, my mom is 51, she was a kid when JFK and MLK were killed, so it has been that long). I figure kids will study the speeches of Barack Obama along with those of FDR, Lincoln, and JFK for generations to come.

Yes, this is a triumph for African-Americans. No question about it. But that, in and of itself, makes it a triumph for us all. It shows we have moved past the nation we were, and although I don’t expect him to take the oath of office and have racism disappear overnight, this does send a message. So many people have bigotry in their hearts, and console themselves with the belief that everyone thinks as they do, and is too afraid to say. We’ve turned the light on them now, though. Today they have to look around and see that no, most people don’t believe as they do, most people don’t have deep seeded hates, and they are in fact a member of a rapidly shrinking group. Maybe some of their beliefs will be challenged, both by seeing our president-elect and his amazing family, and by seeing how few Americans believe as they do. After all, people can change.

And there is another triumph here, one of ideology. For my entire adult life I have been told that what I believe is outside the norm, that I’m on the left fringe, that this is a conservative nation, and liberal is a dirty word. I never believed it, though. Look at what happens when social security is in danger, look at how every single politician talks about their support for free public schools… two fine socialist institutions. Look at abortion- the GOP makes it a platform issue despite the vast majority, some say over seventy percent of adults, thinking that it should be legal at least to some degree beyond just rape, incest, and a mother’s life.
More than that, for my entire adult life I have been told I am in some way not a true American. That because I live in a city, work with a computer, don’t attend church, have gay friends, whatever, I’m somehow not authentic. Real Americans live in the country, or at least the suburbs. They’re blue collar. They’re christian. They drive pickup trucks, not coupes and subcompacts. God knows Palin said enough about it over the last few weeks.
And now we know, the “unamerican” parts of America are the majority. Most of us do work in offices, we’re cube dwellers on the whole, not plumbers, and even though most people say they’re christian, on the whole we as a nation don’t go to church, we aren’t bigots, and most people who might not be actively in favor of gay rights are generally pretty much live and let live about the whole thing.

And if anyone else makes a latte crack I seriously will beat them with a seventh grade US history textbook. Since that is the year us pre No Child Left Behind students learned that the US revolution was born in coffeehouses.

Decision ‘08: America Wipes Her Ass.

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008

We are finally here. It was a long and amusing process. There have been a lot of exciting moments and probably an equal amount of screaming-at-the-TV moments. All of those moments are inconsequential compared to the small moment you will have when you step inside that voting booth.
Now go. Vote. This post will still be here when you come back from doing your duty as a citizen of this great nation.

Back? Voted? Got your sticker and your free coffee from Starbucks?
Good.

Before I start spitting my anger and sarcasm I would like to take a moment out to thank Madelyn Payne Dunham, the grandmother of Barack Obama. Thank you for helping to shape Senator Obama into the man that will hopefully be our next president. She got the chance to vote for her grandson in the presidential election but she sadly will not have the chance to see him lead. My heart and wll wishes go out to her entire family. Madelyn Payne Dunham was 86.

I’m going to be kind of sad once this is all over. I’ve never yelled at my television this much when I wasn’t watching hockey. This has been an exciting time for me. Nerve wracking, but exciting. I really enjoyed watching the McCain campaign venture into the inane with their bullshit attacks and fear mongering. For all the shit they threw at Obama, after all the times they tried to link him to terrorists, extremists, socialism, after all that the make an ad that ended with saying Obama wasn’t ready to be president… yet.
Yet.
The yet implies he will be ready eventually. But at the same time they want you to believe he is evil. How the hell are we supposed to take these fucksticks seriously if they refute themselves?
All the slander, all the lies, the fear mongering, the bullshit, the general douchebaggery coming out of the Republican mouthpieces to me feels frantic. And judging by the current numbers over at Pollster the American populace is ignoring it. Pollster has Obama at 291 electoral votes (273 strong, 18 lean), McCain at 142 (129 strong, 13 lean). 105 in the tossup. With that math McCain could take all of his strong states, all of his lean states, all of the toss up and, get this, all of the Obama lean states and would still lose. It would be close but he would still lose.
All that and I am still nervous. I think after the last two elections no democratic voter should feel comfortable.

One thing that does make me smile is the final Senate Score Card from fivethirtyeight.com:

That looks like good news doesn’t it?

I hope when this is over we can finally tell the Republican party what they deserve to hear:

Get the fuck out.

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