I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange

IllinoisLady

Blue...forgot to tell you how much I liked the "down to the brass tacks and all " Fla. license plate too. 

The flower is stunning.

Jackie

IllinoisLady

Quite a thought in this:

bluedahlia

bluedahlia

Jackie, but we're posers because we have an opinion and it goes against money over people!  You'd think being a cancer survivor, one would have a wee but more compassion for others.  Apparently, being a part of the human race doesn't count.  WE must live in the filth to have an opinion.  I feel totally privileged to live where I do.

bluedahlia

Season Premiere tonight....right after True Blood!

bluedahlia

This is totally "WTF Material"!

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/07/14/florida-justice-marissa-alexander-gets-20-years-zimmerman-walks/

Enjoyful

Yeah, but if we got rid of guns, teenagers wearing hoodies could freely roam the streets packing their Skittles and iced tea.  

bluedahlia

The Horror E, The Horror!

RetiredLibby

Charles P. Pierce's latest rant from "Esquire" on the atrocities of Republican approaches to the immigration bill and the Farm Bill. Charlie does have a way with words:



JUL 12, 2013

The Republican Flying Monkeys Triumph

By Charles P. Pierce at 9:30am



People up early to go rowing on the Potomac likely had to scull their way between the floating chunks of the last of John Boehner's self-respect that were littering the surface of the river on this fine summer morning. Whatever human compassion he brought to Washington with him, Boehner sold off for scrap years ago. Whatever political courage he ever had he peddled piecemeal on the cheap. All he had left was his personal integrity and his basic humanity, and those are drifting towards Virginia even as we speak.



Earlier this week, Boehner pretended he was leading the House when Steve King and the flying-monkey caucus pretty much killed off the possibility of immigration reform for the balance of the president's second term. Republican senators wanted a bill. Republican power brokers wanted a bill. Hell, Boehner wanted a bill. But the House is not being led by John Boehner at the moment. He is no more the actual Speaker Of The House than Julia Louis-Dreyfuss is vice-president of the United States. The House Of Representatives is being led by the vicious and demented Id of one of the two major political parties that we have allowed ourselves to have in this country. The House Of Representatives speaks with the savage vocabulary of ancient and durable prejudice. The House Of Representatives speaks with the twisted syntax of frustrated white supremacy.  The House Of Representatives speaks with the cruel and singular voice of unreasoning prejudice and inhumanity. There is no Speaker Of this House. The Id speaks, and it speaks for them all.



Witness yesterday's callous and shameful fandango regarding the Farm Bill. Last week, a traditional Farm Bill failed to pass the House because the flying-monkey caucus thought it was insufficiently harsh on people who use food stamps. So, yesterday, as Democrats went fairly far up the wall, the flying-monkey caucus went one better. They simply took out the food stamp provisions entirely and passed a Farm Bill containing all those sweet, gooey subsidies and gifts to big agribusiness. They were very, very proud of how clever they had been, and they exhibited their shiny red rumps to all the world.



By splitting farm policy from food stamps, the House effectively ended the decades-old political marriage between urban interests concerned about nutrition and rural areas who depend on farm subsidies. "We wanted separation, and we got it," said Representative Marlin Stutzman, Republican of Indiana, one of the bill's chief authors. "You've got to take these wins when you can get them."



Do we need to mention that Mr. Stutzman is a member of the Class of '10, when the country decided with malice aforethought to elect the worst Congress in the history of the Republic? Do we need to mention that this bill has no chance of passing the Senate, or of being signed by the president, or of ever becoming law in this country? Of course, we don't. That isn't what this brutal act of maladministration was about. That isn't what this House is about any more. We've made jokes about how Eric Cantor has Boehner's balls buried in a Mason jar in his backyard. As far as governing the country goes, the rest of the House is more along the lines of Origen of Alexandria who, when he found himself tempted by the sins of the flesh, seized a knife and, as Flann O'Brien's vision of St, Augustine puts it, deprived himself in one swipe of his personality. Whenever the House majority feels itself tempted by the sin of actually governing, out comes the blade and all of them sing soprano harmonies.



They do this to demonstrate that government cannot work. They do this so that they can go home and talk at all the town halls and bean suppers to audiences choking on the venom that pours out of their radios and off their television screens about how government doesn't work, and how they stood tall against it, and against Those People who don't want to work for a living. (When Stutzman says he's a "fourth-generation farmer" who doesn't want the Farm Bill to be a "welfare bill," the folks back in LaGrange County don't need an Enigma machine to decode what he's saying.) They do this out of the bent notion, central to their party's presidential campaign last fall, that anyone on any kind of government assistance is less entitled to the benefits of the political commonwealth. And they all believe that; the only difference between Paul Ryan and Marlin Stutzman is that Ryan has been a nuisance for a longer period of time. That the country rose up and rejected that notion in a thundering manner is irrelevant. What does the country matter in the Third Congressional District of Indiana? There, they believe government cannot work, and they elect Marlin Stutzman to the Congress to demonstrate to the world that it cannot.



Our Congress is now a cut-rate circus with nothing but eunuchs as performers. Some of these people, like Stutzman and his colleagues in the flying-monkey caucus, become eunuchs by choice. Some of them, like John Boehner, are drafted into the position. Their job is to be forcibly impotent so that the government itself becomes forcibly impotent. They are proud of what they do. They consider it a higher calling to public service that they decline to serve the public. They sing a soprano dirge for democracy in Jesus's name, amen.



---------------------------------

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Flying_Monkeys_Triumph



I love Charlie Pierce.



L

Anonymous

Enjoyful = I'm pushin' my LIKE LIKE LIKE button for your post.....

Blue got me confuzzled with her comments - who's dumb enuf to question anyone's right to an opinion? confuzzled

night all - hope everyone has a pleasant night, and good morning to the other side of the world....thought of you in NZ - I'm rereading some of my favorite Janet Frame...

alexandria58

RL - nice article.

Good morning, all.  Happy Monday.  My DD flew off the Israel yesterday for 10 days.  She took over my life while she was here, but I miss her now.

Hope the week brings good things to everyone.

pupmom

Blue, I'm reading Mandela right now, and substitute the word "Afrikans" for poor and you have Apartheid. 

bluedahlia

Yes Yorkie......that's what it looks like from the outide looking in.

Sunny, for you!

Anonymous

Thanks, Blue...LOVELY, lovely, lovely, hope all are having a good day.

Thinking of Athena...

this is for everyone..

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/opinion/trayvon-martins-legacy.html?hp
NY Times
Trayvon Martin’s Legacy

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

July 14, 2013

It may not be possible to consider the case of George Zimmerman, who was acquitted Saturday of all charges in the killing of Trayvon Martin, as anything but a sad commentary on the state of race relations and the battle over gun rights in America today.

Certainly it is about race — ask any black man, up to and including President Obama, and he will tell you at least a few stories that sound eerily like what happened that rainy winter night in Sanford, Fla.

While Mr. Zimmerman’s conviction might have provided an emotional catharsis, we would still be a country plagued by racism, which persists in ever more insidious forms despite the Supreme Court’s sanguine assessment that “things have changed dramatically,” as it said in last month’s ruling striking down the heart of the Voting Rights Act. (The Justice Department is right to continue its investigation into whether Mr. Zimmerman may still be prosecuted under federal civil rights laws.)

The jury reached its verdict after having been asked to consider Mr. Zimmerman’s actions in light of Florida’s now-notorious Stand Your Ground statute. Under that law, versions of which are on the books in two dozen states, a person may use deadly force if he or she “reasonably believes” it is necessary to prevent death or great bodily harm — a low bar that the prosecutors in this case fought in vain to overcome.

These laws sound intuitive: who would argue that you may not protect yourself against great harm? But of course, the concept of “reasonable belief” is transformed into something deadly dangerous when firearms are involved. And when the Stand Your Ground laws intersect with lax concealed-carry laws, it works essentially to self-deputize anyone with a Kel-Tec 9 millimeter and a grudge.

It has been a bad year so far for gun control. But if anything, cases like this should be as troubling as the mass killings that always prompt a national outcry and promises of legislative remedy. We were heartened that President Obama, in his statement after the verdict was issued, took the opportunity to denounce once again “the tide of gun violence” sweeping the country.

In the end, what is most frightening is that there are so many people with guns who are like George Zimmerman. Fear and racism may never be fully eliminated by legislative or judicial order, but neither should our laws allow and even facilitate their most deadly expression. Trayvon Martin was an unarmed boy walking home from the convenience store. If only Florida could give him back his life as easily as it is giving back George Zimmerman’s gun.

pupmom

Great commentary Sunny!

gardengumby

A lot of people thought and said that because America elected Mr. Obama as POTUS that meant racism really was dead in the United States, and in fact some of the more racist among us actually use that to "prove" that racism no longer exists.  Unfortunately, that is not at all the reflection of reality.  In our "post racism" world, we see instead the resurgence of "authorized" racism - not just in the South, but throughout the country.  It's both sad and terrifying that a young man carrying candy and ice tea cannot walk near his own home OR ANYWHERE ELSE without being accosted and then killed by a vigilante who then miraculously is found guilty of nothing - not even manslaughter. 

IllinoisLady

What everyone said and double for Pierce. 

Jackie

IllinoisLady

Anonymous

Gardengumby - more of what you were saying http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/07/15/america-s-regression-under-obama-more-backlash-than-progress.html

crazy4carrots

This is an interesting read and brings out a lot of info about the Twin lakes Retreat community.  Most people (largely white) bought at the high end and then when the housing market went kerboom, the values fell, owners left and several minority families moved in, to the chagrin of the HOA.  Zimmerman was a renter there and the HOA were happy to have him around to keep an eye on "those" people.  Ugh.  And they claim this tragedy wasn't racially motivated.......

http://redyankeepress.blogspot.ca/2012/05/zimmerman-gets-little-help-from-cracker.html

bluedahlia

Anonymous

oooohhh...borganvilla ( sp???) love it...strange something so beautiful has no smell.  "Flowers" are the same as "leaves" but in that gorgeous fuschia color....

crazy4carrots

Shouting out to Athena!

 

 

gardengumby

C4C, I read the blog post above and felt that it made a lot of unwarranted assumptions.  I also felt that the author was himself racist in assuming that it was due to the crash that minorities purchased homes in the development.  Nowhere is any proof provided that either the police or Zimmerman himself was hired to provide any type of intimidation practices toward minorities, but that is the underlying assumption in the article.  Nor that the development wasn't at least somewhat ethnically diverse from the outset.

Now - I freely admit that I do not live in the South, but it sounds to me like the writer of the blog doesn't either.  It also sounds like he's making a lot of assumptions regarding items about which there is no (apparent) evidence.  I don't like what happened to Trayvon Martin, and I don't like the fact that Mr. Zimmerman was found innocent (IMO he should have been charged with manslaughter from the get go, though - I didn't think they'd be able to make a case for murder.)  It's just that the situation is bad enough without pouring fuel on the coals....  JMO.

RetiredLibby

Krugman's column today about the regressive bent to starve hungry people and kick them when they're down:

New York Times

July 15, 2013

Hunger Games, USA

by Paul Krugman

Something terrible has happened to the soul of the Republican Party. We’ve gone beyond bad economic doctrine. We’ve even gone beyond selfishness and special interests. At this point we’re talking about a state of mind that takes positive glee in inflicting further suffering on the already miserable.    

The occasion for these observations is, as you may have guessed, the monstrous farm bill the House passed last week.       

For decades, farm bills have had two major pieces. One piece offers subsidies to farmers; the other offers nutritional aid to Americans in distress, mainly in the form of food stamps (these days officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP).       

Long ago, when subsidies helped many poor farmers, you could defend the whole package as a form of support for those in need. Over the years, however, the two pieces diverged. Farm subsidies became a fraud-ridden program that mainly benefits corporations and wealthy individuals. Meanwhile food stamps became a crucial part of the social safety net.       

So House Republicans voted to maintain farm subsidies — at a higher level than either the Senate or the White House proposed — while completely eliminating food stamps from the bill.       

To fully appreciate what just went down, listen to the rhetoric conservatives often use to justify eliminating safety-net programs. It goes something like this: “You’re personally free to help the poor. But the government has no right to take people’s money” — frequently, at this point, they add the words “at the point of a gun” — “and force them to give it to the poor.”       

It is, however, apparently perfectly O.K. to take people’s money at the point of a gun and force them to give it to agribusinesses and the wealthy.       

Now, some enemies of food stamps don’t quote libertarian philosophy; they quote the Bible instead. Representative Stephen Fincher of Tennessee, for example, cited the New Testament: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” Sure enough, it turns out that Mr. Fincher has personally received millions in farm subsidies.       

Given this awesome double standard — I don’t think the word “hypocrisy” does it justice — it seems almost anti-climactic to talk about facts and figures. But I guess we must.       

So: Food stamp usage has indeed soared in recent years, with the percentage of the population receiving stamps rising from 8.7 in 2007 to 15.2 in the most recent data. There is, however, no mystery here. SNAP is supposed to help families in distress, and lately a lot of families have been in distress.       

In fact, SNAP usage tends to track broad measures of unemployment, like U6, which includes the underemployed and workers who have temporarily given up active job search. And U6 more than doubled in the crisis, from about 8 percent before the Great Recession to 17 percent in early 2010. It’s true that broad unemployment has since declined slightly, while food stamp numbers have continued to rise — but there’s normally some lag in the relationship, and it’s probably also true that some families have been forced to take food stamps by sharp cuts in unemployment benefits.       

What about the theory, common on the right, that it’s the other way around — that we have so much unemployment thanks to government programs that, in effect, pay people not to work? (Soup kitchens caused the Great Depression!) The basic answer is, you have to be kidding. Do you really believe that Americans are living lives of leisure on $134 a month, the average SNAP benefit?       

Still, let’s pretend to take this seriously. If employment is down because government aid is inducing people to stay home, reducing the labor force, then the law of supply and demand should apply: withdrawing all those workers should be causing labor shortages and rising wages, especially among the low-paid workers most likely to receive aid. In reality, of course, wages are stagnant or declining — and that’s especially true for the groups that benefit most from food stamps.       

So what’s going on here? Is it just racism? No doubt the old racist canards — like Ronald Reagan’s image of the “strapping young buck” using food stamps to buy a T-bone steak — still have some traction. But these days almost half of food stamp recipients are non-Hispanic whites; in Tennessee, home of the Bible-quoting Mr. Fincher, the number is 63 percent. So it’s not all about race.       

What is it about, then? Somehow, one of our nation’s two great parties has become infected by an almost pathological meanspiritedness, a contempt for what CNBC’s Rick Santelli, in the famous rant that launched the Tea Party, called “losers.” If you’re an American, and you’re down on your luck, these people don’t want to help; they want to give you an extra kick. I don’t fully understand it, but it’s a terrible thing to behold.

-------------------------------------------

Yes.  Yes, indeed.

L

crazy4carrots

GG - I don't disagree with your comments.  However, when it comes to "assumptions" , yes indeed, many have been made and not just by the author.  I refer to the assumption of the Defence in the trial about the manner in which the altercation took place.  I know that they were only doing their job, and I criticize the Prosecution for not doing theirs.  A lawyer friend pointed several things out that, in her educated opinion, were overlooked by them.

The whole matter is extremely disheartening.

gardengumby

I didn't watch the trial at all, but am not at all surprised that there were many "assumptions" made by Mr. Zimmerman's defense team.  I was commenting only on the blog post.  It is disheartening.  I just think it's important to point out thinking errors not only on the right, but also the left - it's my experience that they are harder to see when I basically agree with what's being said - as a result I try to put on my "critical thinking" hat when reading or hearing stuff.  If this country is ever going to get it's act together, both sides have got to do better.  'nuff said.

bluedahlia

IllinoisLady

alexandria58

Love Paul Krugman!

Sad goings on in this country.