A Setup For A Joke If I Ever Heard One

TRIGGER WARNING: POLITICS!

The first I heard about Benghazi was about ten days or so  before the election.  A conservative who insists on trying to chat me up on Google+ made a post calling me out by name to ask me my opinion on it.

I hadn't heard anything about Benghazi being a scandal at all at that point, but his take was that it was a terrible blow to the Obama administration. I'd heard about the tragic attack, of course, and that was all I'd heard.

The conservative didn't link me to anything verifiable.

I Googled and couldn't find anything verifiable. 

I'm still not sure what the elephants seem to believe they're going to accomplish.  This won't bring the dead back, and there is a lot of fingerpointing and dickwaving but I'm still not sure what the goal is, other than to try to make President Obama look bad and maybe possibly weak on foreign policy and security? 

But yet, the elephants are bloviating hot air into it as much as they can to try to make it a horrible scandal.  I'm not sure what they're trying to accomplish, as President Obama has already won his second term.  They can't unseat him, and the American people are not really going to sit still for them trying to obstruct, stonewall and sandbag him like they did for the last four years -- hence the huge margin by which he got his second term.

And today, after they had their meeting with Susan Rice, one Republican was heard to remark, "I am more disturbed now than I was before". 

It sounded like a straight line to me, given how frenzied the right has been since President Obama was elected the first time.

So... well... here ya go.

So Much for Girl Power

...is it me, or does it really undermine the point if you're a female DJ cheering on a female making the valid point that toys do not need to be turned powder puff pink so girls know it's okay for them to play with them...by dedicating a superhero song to her that's about a male hero when there is a perfectly good female superhero song that fits the station's playlist?

Forgive the weird skaggyness of the art.  The GIMP and I are going through something right now and we may end up taking a break and seeing other graphics programs if it doesn't figure out what I need from it.

Suspended Hostilities?

Generally speaking, I used to be a big fan of the holiday season.

No matter which holiday, nor who was celebrating what, you could count on certain things:

• Cooler weather
• People would be a little nicer to each other
• Happy children
• Certain foods would be brought out that you only get this time of year
• A year could be put behind us and we could look forward to making the most out of the year to come.  

But in recent years, this time of year has developed some troubling tendencies:

•  Stress for grownups
• Grinchy and bah humbug attitudes
• Black Friday
• Forgetting all that stuff in the previous list

Black Friday has scared me for a while.

They call their sales "doorbusters"  as if they are encouraging you to bust the doors, and at some subconscious level,  consumers respond to that.   We know the stores get a small amount of some awesome big ticket item that they'll have more of in the weeks remaining until Christmas, but there's something that drives them to compete for it on Black Friday.

Every year there's a story of Black Friday violence.

This year:   somebody got shot at Cumberland Mall near me, and a guy had a heart attack in a Target; the crowd kept walking.  And a woman used pepper spray on other shoppers for an X-Box (and will not face felony charges for it).

It's like we take Black Friday as tacit permission to give up the thin veneer of civilization we wear the rest of the year, and go all Mad Max. And the poor retail people and customer service people working that day, who'd rather be home with their families, are the ones who have to face this tsunami of hostility from shoppers determined to get the best deals before anybody else

But the thing that has turned this year into a time of dread for me? The War on Christmas.  The idea that saying "Season's Greetings" or "Happy Holidays"  is an indication that they are willfully and intentionally tyring to stamp out Christmas and thereby also stamp out Christians. 

The truth is that as recently as 40-50 years ago, nobody had a problem with saying "Season's Greetings" or "Happy Holidays".  It wasn't considered a soulless denial of Christmas and Christianity.  There were even icons like Perry Como singing songs entitled "Home for the Holidays" and nobody freaked out about it.



So for everybody who actually took "Happy Holidays" in the spirit intended, rather than considering it an attack and an excuse to open hostilities -- thank you.  You have my sincere appreciation. 

Ultimate Bigotry

It has never been written anywhere in stone that any fictional character was permanently immutable.


There has been more than one Flash -- but oh, wait, all the successors have been white, too.


There has been more than one Wonder Woman -- oh, those people who carried the title have been all white too.


There has been more than one person wearing the cape and cowl of Batman -- whoops, all white, then it's all right, huh?



Hate to break it to you, but:

Miles Morales is not the first biracial character to go by the name Spider-Man. That honor goes to Miguel O'Hara, Spider-Man 2099. 

Spider-Man is not the only caucasian super-hero out there. White children still have superheroes out there they can identify with: 98% of the superhero characters out there, produced by every comic book company, are white males.  And the ones who are other colors, like green?  They were white before whatever made them change colors.

Marvel and DC attempting to embrace diversity is a good thing.  They are trying to do better than the less enlightened times in which their companies were first established.  Those days were the ones in which black people did not have civil rights, and were not permitted to sit anywhere they wanted, marry who they wanted, or live where they wanted. 

They're trying to do better than the 70s, even, when they added black characters, but had to tell you with their names and their costumes that they were black. 

They're trying to more accurately reflect the population of their readership. 

By freaking out about this change, you are showing your -- heh -- true colors as someone who secretly resents minorities being treated as equal. 

Thanks for showing us who you are, reminding us we're not really in a post-racial America, and that we still have so much work to do.

Score One For The Women's Health Team!

Discovered on Twitter (thank you Jake Tapper)  that the Obama Administration has rescinded Bush-era conscience rules that allow doctors/pharmacists/paramedics etc to deny women health care based on their consciences.

A Little Poem From My Uterus And Me

In case you haven't heard, the GOP is doing the  "ask for a spaceship when all you want is a skateboard" thing.  That means they make demands that are extremely outrageous  and back down on them, so that they seem reasonable and conciliatory when they ask for something not quite as outrageous.  And so they can say what  big meanies the opposition are for not acknowledging how accomodating and flexible they've been.

Examples, you need, examples I got:
House Republicans Try to Redefine "Rape"

Georgia bill turns woman into criminal if she has a miscarriage (which Utah tried before, and so did South Dakota) but cannot prove it was a miscarriage.  She will be investigated and if the investigators are not satisfied, charged with prenatal murder, a charge which carries the death penalty.

As if having a miscarriage is not horrifying and traumatic enough by itself -- any woman having one and not having a doctor sign off on the fact that it was just  nature/God's will/an unfortunate accident  will be potentially eligible to be put to death for something she could not control.

My sister has a beautiful little girl about to turn three.  She had a son who went to Timeheart three months after birth.  She is about to give birth to another little girl in the next 60 days.   Every one of her pregnancies was wanted.  And every pregnancy she's had has been a high risk pregnancy; giving birth to my nephew nearly killed her.

She's had a tubal pregnancy and least one miscarriage in her life.  If this bill were to become law, she'd be considered a murderer if she were here and had another miscarriage.  They'd call DFACS on her and take my niece away from her. And jail her when she's already suffering from the loss.

But worse yet?  If a woman has a miscarriage because she was mugged or abused or otherwise injured by an outside party?  They don't get charged. The woman does.

The GOP wants us to be outraged by these ridiculous, misogynistic laws, so that when they offer some other law to punish women for being sexual and for wanting the choice of what to do with their own eggs and their own bodies -- it will seem much more reasonable, and will likely go through without much pushback.

Keep your eyes and ears open.

PUSH. BACK.

Natural Enemies

Things like this tend to aggravate me.

Congressman ignores constituent asking "who's gonna shoot Obama?" until called on it

Only when called on it did Cong. Broun denounce it.  His excuse? He didn't want to dignify it with a response and let the Secret Service handle it.

News flash: It's the Secret Service's duty and job to check into threats to the President no matter what. They would've done it anyway.

But this is a month and a half from when Rep. Gabby Giffords was shot and everybody agreed to tone down the violent rhetoric.

Guess Broun either didn't get the memo or -- surprise, surprise -- didn't mean it.

Arizona Is Completely Out Of Hand

I know I promised more personal hygiene movie ads, but this came out of the brainpan first.

Arizona doesn't seem to think their new laws are racist, but:

Arizona Schools Removing Teachers With Accents

Arizona Expands Its Discrimination

The Right Fiddles While Arizona Burns...?

Arizona Law Endangers America's Immigrant Heritage

Yeah, okay, whatever.

It's all about stopping illegal immigrants.

Teachers with accents are being moved from teaching English.

Ethnic studies stopped.

Pull the other one. It's got bells on it.

Considering what the white guys did to the Native Americans, it's pretty hypocritical IMO. 

Goldberg Polanski Rage

Triggery. Please click past the jump with caution.