Hair today, gone tomorrow

Numbers in the name of your business always class it up. Remember that you budding business owners!

Due process, schmoo process

Obama has kept the worst parts of Bush/Cheney's illegal wars of terror on our civil liberties and he's gone them one step further. Now he's killing American citizens with impunity and no one on seems to care much.

Now I'm sure Anwar al-Awlaki wasn't a nice guy and he very probably meant Americans harm and he may have plotted to kill citizens of this country. And the world may be a better off place in the wake of his state sanctioned murder but one thing still stands out about his death: he was a citizen of the United States of America and as such he was entitled to due process of law, which meant that he had a right to face his accuser in court, a right to defend himself, and he was innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. I don't give a shit what the CIA or some shadowy military intelligence outfit said he did or didn't do, he was a citizen of the USA and that means he had rights. It doesn't matter that he lived in Yemen and said shit about the USA, he was still a citizen and he had a right to free speech, which means he could say what he liked. It doesn't matter if you hated what he said, he had a right to say it.

What matters here is that whoever is in the White House can, under the Bush/Cheney/Obama rules of war, determine who is and who isn't a terrorist and then they can murder them without having to put them on trial in a court of law. This is what Bush hath wrought. This is what we've become, a nation of bloodthirsty savages who are no better than the people we claim to hate and fear and have gone to war against. We have met the enemy and he is us.

I trust the intelligence gathered by the CIA about as much as I like organized religion. Intelligence has and always will be manipulated and twisted to fit the whims of those in power. If one day Obama or whoever takes office after him one day reads my blog and decides that he doesn't like it, he can call me a terrorist and fire a drone at my home. He can have me clapped into irons and taken to Gitmo. And I can't fight it. I won't have the rights that so many men and women fought for for so many years because the rules have changed, they were changed by a little thing called the Patriot Act. Remember that? Remember how Obama was going to roll that back? Yeah, how'd that go for us? About as well as his promise to rescind the Bush tax cuts.

The process of turning the presidency into an imperial branch of government that answers to no one that began with Nixon really got it's legs during the Bush/Cheney years and now it's being driven even further under Obama. And that is one of the main reasons why I will never vote for Obama again.

I'm ashamed of what our nation has become. I'm ashamed of Obama. I'm ashamed that hardly anyone is ashamed. We've become what we were supposed to be fighting against. And the sad fact is, we'll never ever go back to 'normal.'

Sunflower!

Found photo bonanza

These photos are from two contact sheets I bought today at a local antique store for two bucks each. I estimate that the pictures were shot in the mid to late 1950's. I'm also pretty sure that both these sheets, as well as the others that I didn't buy but hope to one day, are all from the same family/estate. These two that I bought today are full of photos of this family's home, their maid, their pets, and a trip to the race track. I love these so much it hurts.

I'll post the rest of these on my scan blog.

Saturday morning crica 1972

Clown time is over

Or, has it just begun?

They're not kidding

The ATF has decided that anyone who uses marijuana legally is not allowed to own or use a gun.

Crazy huh. People who smoke pot can't use or possess a firearm but these raging asshats can:



Once again common sense has been shot and killed.

Barns of the week

Their silence is deafening

Of course the for profit media is going to be silent on the Wall Street protests, the corporate media is owned by Wall Street after all. What galls me about the whole thing is the silence from National Public Radio (NPR). Those cowards must fear losing corporate underwriters for their increasingly crappy news shows. Well, they may not lose any corporate underwriters but they sure as hell lost me. I'll never give those cowards another cent. Let those right wing twats Maura Liasson and Cokie Roberts make up the difference, they can use their corporate media salaries to keep the stooges at NPR going.

Hey you! Watch out!

Watch out for that duck!

I'll bet the dirty old broad is picking their brains for naughty information

Public dissent

This past Saturday was a great day to hold a public protest against the legal fiction that corporations are people. A local fellow organized what he billed as 'The Rally For The Humans' and since I love a good public protest I went gladly.

What started out as an overcast cool morning gave way to a sunny and warm afternoon. Which was nice because it brought out all sorts of folks to our event.

This gal was serious and mysterious with her sign. I liked the sign of the guy behind her, the riff on the flag of the corporate states of America.

I got to meet a friend from the blog and Facebook world that I hadn't met in person yet. That's her with the big smile. She's cute as a button in real life. And very nice too.

The signs with the fewest words are the best, they drive home the message of the protest in such a great way.

This little dude is a friend of mine and I loved his sign that featured a riff on one of my favorite knock knock jokes. His mom and sister came to the event as well.

Speaking of that little dude's mother, that's her with a great sign right there.

I liked the fact that this guy dressed up for the protest and that his sign had such a biting sense of humor to it. Well done guy!

No local protest would be complete with out this little lady, our buddy Snad.

This gal had loads of sass and was dishing it out to anyone and everyone. I liked her a lot.

Very clever signs.

This couple heard about our rally and they drove up from Oak Ridge, which is about 110 miles away from my fair city. We also had people from South Carolina in addition to all the other regional folks who attended our protest.

One of the local corporate owned media outlets did a decent story on our event, which is a step up from the horrible stories they did on our rally to support teachers and other public employees a few months back. So all in all I think our event was a success because we got lots of attention and we raised consciousnesses about this issue. And it's always good to show folks in this area that there are liberals and progressives who aren't afraid to speak their minds and take to the streets when necessary.

There's a short video on our rally on You Tube. Click here to see it.

And the last word on the days events goes to hipster dude:

"I was against corporate person-hood before it was cool, so PBR me bitch."

Done

We had over 100 people come out to protest the legal fiction that corporations are people yesterday.

I'll post more about the demonstration tomorrow. And I'll share more pictures too.

Takin' it to the streets

I'll be attending an anti corporate personhood rally here in my lovely town later today. I'll be carrying this sign:

I'll have more pictures and a full report on the Rally For the Humans tomorrow. In the mean time, keep calm and protest on.

The brush pile

Could it be bigger or are we needlessly diverting brush from it?

Words of wisdom

How has the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell affected you so far?

"It upset me so bad that I had to go back to using training wheels on my bike."

"Dude, fuck some 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' bullshit. Can't you see we got a kid to raise here? Hopefully we can get on that new MTV 2 show Preteen Mom so we can make some coin. Pampers ain't cheap homey."

"They asked. I told. We plotzed!"

"I got a sack full of gay mail to deliver to gay males which means I no longer have time to save the whales or to sniff Christian Bale's snails. So you could say it took the wind is out of my sails."

"I just canceled my plans to go join the Marines. I was gonna go and join up but now that I might have to get gay married or have sweaty sex with a bull dyke, well that's just too much for me to bear. I want to defend my country and all, but I draw the line at letting some drill sergeant drill me. So instead of leading men into battle or doing whatever them Marines do, I'll go into the family business of providing out of date magazines to the waiting rooms of doctors and dentists."

Creepy feral house of the week

I played with the color a little bit to make it even creepier.

I just sent this letter to my idiot teabagger Congressman

"I respectfully request that you support raising taxes on the wealthiest citizens in this country so that we can get the economy moving again. Study after study has shown that raising taxes jump starts the economy and that cutting deficits in a recession hurts the economy. So I request that you vote to raise taxes to get America moving again and if you don't that you resign your office ASAP."

However I have my doubts if he'll do what I ask.

Cents and sensibility

There is a place, a place that every conservative politician, every teabagger, every Republican should hate. In this place they have strong labor unions that protect workers, high taxes that are used to pay for universal health care, and heavy regulation on business and industry. According to the conventional wisdom, which no conservative or teabagger or Republican really possesses, this place should have a floundering economy that's mired in permanent recession or worse. This place must be hell on earth. But instead, they love this place but they don't ever want to see it's success replicated over here.

What and where is this magical place you ask? Well, it's a country over in Europe and it's an economic powerhouse even though it has stringent regulation on business and industry, even though it has 'socialized medicine,' even though it's workers are overwhelmingly represented by unions and they get three more weeks of vacation that Americans do.

It's Germany.

That's right people, Germany. By all accounts what with the strong unions, the workers getting more time off than we've ever gotten in this country, the high taxes, the redistribution of wealth, the socialized medicine, and the stringent regulations on business and industry Germany should be a basket case. According to the right wing economic pundits and the Milton Friedman acolytes, Germany should be the little country that couldn't. But guess what? Not only is Germany surviving. it's thriving. And it's doing so because of the high regulations, the high taxes, the strong unions, the universal health care, and the numerous holidays it's citizens enjoy.

The reason why the global downturn hasn't hit Germany is simple, there is still demand in Germany for manufactured goods because German workers can afford them. And German workers can afford them because they have strong jobs, employment security, a strong social safety net, and a government that is forward thinking and creating alternative energy jobs. And also because of the fact that on all German, and most European, corporate boards workers have a voice because it's required by law that workers have a seat at the top table.

Germany is doing so well in fact that the buildings and the memorial monument being built at 'Ground Zero' in New York city are being built with steel imported from Germany. Imagine that, the Germans with their highly regulated industry that relies on 'expensive' alternative energy, high unionization, with their highly taxed workforce, can still export steel cheaper than it can be made in the USA.

So the next time you hear a teabagger, a right wing TV or radio pundit scream about unions, keep in mind Germany is one of the most highly unionized countries on earth and it's an economic powerhouse. When they say that fair and equitable taxes and socialized medicine will kill an economy, remember that Germany has high taxes and government run health care and it's the economic leader in the western hemisphere. When they tell you that regulation is strangling business and industry, tell them that Germany has much more regulation that we here in the USA do and that German companies lead the world.

For years they said that if you look closely at the design of a bumblebee it shouldn't be able to fly and yet it does. Well, now I'm telling you we can have a fairly taxed country that has single payer health care for all and one that regulates business and industry in the interests of the highly unionized people. And we actually had that country once, we had it starting in the aftermath of the Great Depression and we kept it going until we allowed Reagan to dismantle it starting in the 1980's. We can do this, we can learn from the successes of post war Germany and we can be great once more.

Home schooling strikes again

This is from a Christian school's yearbook. Not quite homeschooling, but close.

And yes, I know some of you homeschool and I'm not mocking you.

View of the week

A summer evening in Limestone TN.

Arf

I did a slew of these linocut prints on 3 x 5 cards yesterday. I love how each of them is alike yet so very different.