Well…with the recent supreme court ruling that corporations can freely contribute to political campaigns, some of them have started to do just that…and with predictable results; they are donating to predominately repub candidates who they can rely on to favor businesses over the people. Target is one of those companies and I will not have profits that I have helped them make go to political causes and politicians who want to go back to the days of Bush..to the days when de-regulation of business led to the biggest meltdown since the great depression. We progressives need to become more aware of what is going on in our country and use both our political and economic power to make sure we don’t go backward, to make sure that the small steps in leveling the playing field that have happened in the last two years are not lost. So…I will never set foot in Target again and I hope that some of the rest of us will do the same….after all, profit and power is all they understand and it is up to us to take some of that profit and power away…
All posts by James DeVol
July 29th
Well…out to Ada again yesterday..won the night in pool and feel like crap today..oh, well…I knew that was going to happen so I’ll live with it…not too much to do today and that is probably good…just not too motivated to even do this right now but I know it will get better as the day goes on…more later…
Phyllis Schlafly is still in the 50′s…..
This is a placeholder until I get done working out…I have to comment on some statements that Phyllis Schlafly made this weekend campaigning for a repub here in Michigan.
Well…I’m back…decided to get a bike ride in, too, before I came back to this. I’m not going to bury the lead this time….just going to give you Sclafly’s (who is the head of the anti-feminist Eagle Forum) quotes at a fundraiser for republican Rocky Raczkowski who is running for congress from Michigan. She started out by saying “obviously the blacks voted for Obama…but, do you all know what group was the second biggest? Unmarried women, 70% of unmarried women voted for Obama, and this is because when you kick your husband out, you’ve got to have big brother government to be your provider.”
I am just stunned by these comments; that this kind of attitude is still in the mainstream of the republican party and is a harbinger of what you will see if you vote these troglodytes into office. Oh, ole Rocky did the republican dance of condemning the comments but that is just diving for cover when one of their own speaks what is really in their minds. That whole party is still mired in the 50′s when Phyllis was flitting from country club to country club; when you could have one income families make enough money that they could have a good life…but the repubs and their cronies made sure that ended.
Phyllis, I can give you many good reasons why unmarried women voted for Obama that you can’t understand…they are tired of the invisible discrimination that goes on in the good old boy networks that still dominate American business life..they are tired of having the choices in their lives limited by a repub party dominated by men…they are tired of being second class citizens that the Christian Taliban would have stay home barefoot and pregnant….to me, that shows a lack of respect for more than 50% of our population; a resource that we need to make this country a better place…my life is better for the strong women that have been in it (that includes my daughter and, of course, G, K, and T) and to dismiss them as needing to be dependent on anyone is a slap in the face that is all too common coming from the repubs…geez….
July 28th
Well…up at 5:30 this morning but no booze last night…don’t feel a whole lot better but I hope that will change as the day goes on. Need to go grocery shopping today since I am getting really tired of chicken all the time..but the fresh veggies form C have been a welcome change. Still not much closer to the cliff today so far but you never know…it will be nice to get the hell out of here for a while today to go out to shoot pool…more later….
July 27th part two…
Well…it has not been the easiest of days…I did get the car cleaned but it was so much effort to do anything today that I am exhausted…so this will probably be the last post today…doing this usually makes me feel better but it has seemed like work today and any writer will tell you that when that happens, you need to just walk away for a while…at least a couple of hours anyway. It seems like the cliff edge is coming closer again but I’m not sure…it will probably be clearer tomorrow…
Whew…
Well…it’s later in the day and reason has substituted for pain….so I’m glad I’ve waited this long to come back today, or I would have had to delete any post that I would have written. It’s been a tough couple of days emotionally for me but I don’t want to get into that as yet…I will later, but it gets back to the change thing that I struggle with all the time and how it relates to friendship. I see mine dying all the time and I really don’t know what to do about it…I usually attribute it to the changes that come with differing stages of life; stages that I’ve already gone through but is that it? That’s the problem, I don’t know. I also don’t know if I have the energy or desire to try to construct new ones…just to have them die and end up back here thinking about it again.
I do know one thing…that I have depended on these relationships too much; have given them more value than I should have; even defined myself by them…but that is just me..basically all or nothing when it comes to everything…you get a huge high when it is working but I don’t know if the inevitable low and pain is worth it….more later….
Oh…I would like to claim that first line as my own…but, it is borrowed from the song “Live My Life Again” by Jim Fox…
July 27th
Well…did go out with G last night but again, it had the feel of an ending…like we were just going through the motions because we’re supposed to not because we want to….hmmm….not much to do today…might go out and hit a bucket of balls for something to do. Or, I was going to clean up the car since it hasn’t been washed in a couple of months….and the windows are starting to get that film on them that I hate…at this point, I don’t really know…more later…
July 26th part two…
Well…I guess I need to lighten up a little here huh? It’s been a pretty normal day with a few things that I needed to get done and did, so now I’m just sitting here nursing a thigh injury but the weird thing is, I can’t figure out how I got it. I felt fine after the ride this morning, but when I sat down on the couch, it was like fire shooting up the outside of my thigh…kind of like a cramp but it is so unpredictable in when it hurts that it is a new one for me…oh, well…first injury in a while so I guess I shouldn’t bitch, huh? I could tell a joke or something but I don’t know any….hmmmmm…well…I’ll end it here, then…just waiting to hear from G to see if she wants to go out…..
Once there is Red Wings news, I’ll start getting back to the daily postings about my team…I should do some about racing but I’m just so bored with it right now that I can’t even work up any outrage over the team orders by Ferrari yesterday in the F1 race….I wish we could still get the WRC on the dish…those rally drivers have got to be the bravest ones on the planet and the wrecks they have are the coolest…reminds me of the dirt tracking we used to do when I was a kid…and that is a story for another time…later…
Here’s another point…
Well…have been reading about this little doozy for a couple of weeks now and it has taken this long for me to get the whole thing straight in my head…not really, it’s a pretty black and white issue for me since I really have a pretty thick streak of libertarianism in me and I do believe that we can’t go wrong if we follow the constitution. But, what we have again is the right wing elites selectively trying to ignore the constitution when it suits their political goals. Oh, I guess I’ve buried the lead again…let’s go back..this is about the proposed building of an Islamic community center (something like an Islamic YMCA) within a couple of blocks of where the World Trade Center stood. As you could predict, Newt, Palin, Limbaugh, and the rest of the repub elites have gone crazy on the issue, butting themselves into a community issue where the plan for the center was approved 29-1 by the local council. They have gone so far as to lobby both the city and state of New York to make sure this doesn’t happen. But, I guess they’ve never read the first amendment which prohibits the governments interference in religion or, more probably, they have never cared for the constitution other than to us it as a prop or to incite their followers.
I say to them: you can’t pick and choose what part of the constitution you will follow; look how well that worked out with ole GW….hypocrites all…geez…
How can they be for freedom and liberty?
Well…I’ve talked about this before to my friends, but not since I’ve had this post….How can the republicans be for freedom and liberty when they have no problem with using the government to control personal behavior? They want to de-regulate corporations and business; to give them the freedom that they want to take away or to keep away from individuals. Doesn’t anyone see anything hypocritical about this? Oh, but that’s right, they are the party of the hypocrite..the party that spews family values out of one side of their mouth all the while visiting prostitutes (David Vitter, that means you) or vilifying gay people in the name of religion (Ted Haggard, I’m sure you’ll recognize yourself here) while he was visiting male prostitutes. And let’s not forget ole Newt…on his third or fourth marriage with at least two of them ending because of his affairs. But that kind of behavior is not really what this is about…it’s about the right wing elites who use your and my freedom as a political prop…who don’t care about your freedom to be let alone; who want to control what women can do to their bodies, to control what everyone can put into theirs, and to control who you can marry.
So, the next time you hear them talk about the Obama administration “taking away our freedoms”, remember it’s the repubs who want to use the government to control you and your life, not the Democrats. Geez….