Writegal

Only a chosen few will be taken in the Rapture. The rest of us will be left down here to suffer for eternity. And your little dogs, too.

A large number of people — way more than will actually be saved in this Rapture-thingy — think they will get to go upstairs. Believing so must give them a sense of joy, maybe even  hope. But this is tempered by a major concern — what about the beloved pets?

Well, would-be-Rapturees, it's your lucky day! For 110 dollars and 15 dollars per additional pet, rest (in everlasting peace) assured that Rover will go to a good atheist home after you've magically disappeared.

Y'all, there's a menagerie of musings in my head about this.

To begin with — apparently, this is not a joke. In fact, there's more than one site offering such a service. But it is most certainly a scam. 110 dollars? Whoever created this is a genius!

I want in on this. For 110 dollars, even 10 dollars per person (greed is a sin, you know), I'll take care of your dry-clean only clothes and furs after you've gone. You don't want the damned heathens looting your walk-in closets and tossing your silks in common washing machines, do you? Hell no!

Ok, in all fairness, one site does include the following note: "A portion of income generated from advertising on this site is contributed to community food shelves/food banks in Minnesota and New Hampshire." But just a portion, mind you. Not the whole amount to feed the living humans here and now — that would be crazy!

Next, a question about the souls of the cute and furry. If God created all creatures, why don't the animals get to go, too? One trip on the Arc all those millenia ago and that's it? Is peeing on the rug really such a terrible sin?

There are 6.7 billion people on Earth. We are all sinners, some more than others. I'm thinking this Rapture selection will be very small, very exclusive. So, how will we know when it has happened? So many people disappear everyday, and we don't even notice. How do we know the Rapture hasn't already happened?

Also, what if you just happen to be kidnapped or disappear or die naturally and lay undiscovered, Rre-rapture, but the network of atheists doesn't know? What if Snowball ends up starving in your apartment, and later on, gets taken in by devil-worshipping (e.g., liberal) neighbors or given to a kill pound by relatives? And you've paid $100 or more for nothing!

I guess a sucker is left behind everyday.

While browsing through these sites, I did have a reality-based idea and was pleased to find that others had thought of it too. Military pets. There are networks out there for soldiers who don't have anyone to take care of their pet during their overseas deployments. I love that there's an alternative for military personnel to giving up their pets for good and never seeing them again. They sacrifice so much to serve their country — it's not too much to ask to come home to a best fuzzy friend. One program even has sponsors like Pedigree and Whiskas — these are not scams, they're just awesome.

Obviously, I have not done my usual thorough research. I don't know the details about the Rapture or where the religions stand on animal souls. Nor do I want to. I have better things to do with my time. But, occasionally I like to take a break from health care, tea parties, foreclosures, and endless wars and amuse myself. So please, don't enlighten me. Don't correct me. Instead, use that energy to volunteer at an animal or human shelter and do your little part to make the world a better place. Because, honey, we're all stuck here.

Since her unfortunate introduction to the rest of the country last summer (thanks a lot, McCain!), Sarah Palin has proven herself to be many things: corrupt, incapable of debate, completely ignorant of foreign affairs,  hypocrite (charging that Obama "palled around with terrorists while she and her husband belonged to a political group that once asked Iran for help in seceding from the U.S.), a liar (by claiming that her husband had never been an AIP member when he was — even McCain staff knew that), unwilling to take advice, and unable to either form or convey a simple thought. After reading her editorial in The Wall Street Journal today, I'm convinced that she has just plain lost her mind. In this embarrassing opinion piece (opinion indeed), she writes:

...is it any wonder that many of the sick and elderly are concerned that the Democrats' proposals will ultimately lead to rationing of their health care by — dare I say it — death panels? Establishment voices dismissed that phrase, but it rang true for many Americans.

Let me explain that last sentence — even though legal and media fact checkers (and anyone who has ever read the healthcare bill) have repeatedly shown that death panels were a myth, a blatant lie, Palin doesn't need those pesky facts to get in her way. She said it, Republicans regurgitated it, and fear-ridden, ill-informed Americans believed it. Hence, it must be true! 
She just can't let it go. The term "death panels" must play in her mind like a loop. She must cling to it, mentally, like a reassuring mantra.

Or maybe it makes her feel special. Much like when she told the McCain staff that she loved saying "palling around with terrorists," she just loves saying "death panels." Because when she does, people pay attention to her. Like they did when she was Miss Wasilla. Like they did when she was a fancy tee-vee sports reporter. Like the salespeople at Nordstrom did when she had $180,000 to spend.

But why is anyone listening anymore? And, more importantly, the part that scares me — what future vicious, damaging fabrications will her followers believe?

From CNN:

White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified — more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it.

Ah, the evangelical mind. God forbid we believe in evolution, but torturing other human beings is A-OK.

Can I get an Amen from my fellow secular liberals?!

Bruno is meant to "expose the rampant homophobia across the United States." The title character, a gay Austrian fashion reporter, "appears to have anal sex with a man on camera." The MPAA had a hissy fit over the dude-on-dude scene and handed down the harshest rating a non-porn film can earn.

Yet last month, The Last House on the Left was released with an R rating, and critics and audiences alike shunned it over the detailed, graphic, violent rape scene. One critic called it "stomach-churningly anti-human." The MPAA shrugged and gave it an R rating.

A teenage girl is brutally assaulted — yawn. Two adult men engaging in non-violent consensual intercourse — madness! In a review of the documentary, This Film is Not Yet Rated (which exposes the biases of the board members — and the board members themselves), Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter noted:

Board decisions in recent years reveal a strong middle-class, male, heterosexual bias. The board has declared that female orgasms in certain films go on "too long," and it comes down hard on shots of female pubic hair. Gay sex receives harsher treatment than straight sex. Graphic violence, even against women, skates free of the dreaded NC-17 rating.

The MPAA's answer to the anti-gay accusation: "We don't try to set standards, we just try to reflect them." Translation: "White, middle-class America hates the gays, so we do, too."

Ron Howard is considering working on "an adaptation of The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft — which is a graphic novel from Mac Carter and Jeff Blitz that takes elements of Lovecraft's struggles in real life and combines them with a fantastical element that includes transforming all of his darkest nightmares into reality"

You want to know Lovecraft's darkest nightmare? Barack Obama as president.
Artists, Lovecraft readers, and gothic/emo students everywhere have also chosen to ignore Lovecraft's larger-than-life racism and how intertwined his hatred was with his work. It's not enough that a bunch of "fans" gather at his grave in Providence every year to "celebrate" the man. A fan-created Lovecraft website contains a page explaining the misconceptions about the author. They don't even touch racism. They don't even try to justify any of the following:

The mass of contemporary Jews are hopeless as far as America is concerned. They are the product of alien blood, & inherit alien ideals, impulses, & emotions which forever preclude the possibility of wholesale assimilation...

The primal savage or ape merely looks about his native forest to find a mate; the exalted Aryan should lift his eyes to the worlds of space and consider his relation to infinity!!!!

Let's not be bothered by things like truth, reality, and history. Let's all go to the movies!

I've been acting silly lately. I've spent my time thinking about the people out there who have lost their jobs, their homes, their healthcare, even their health. I've thought about those who sleep in their cars, on relatives' couches, or on park benches. I should've been thinking about the people in this country who are truly suffering: bankers' girlfriends and Brown University students.

I'm always a bit late to the game, so I just discovered Dating a Banker Anonymous, a blog written by the wives and girlfriends of Wall Street's finest (the financial rats who, in the absence of the regulation cat, destroyed our economy) who are learning to go without the necessities. That is, go without jewelry, opera tickets, facials, weekend trips to Europe, decent sex, and large allowances. These women thought they had attained their goal — you know, relationships based on the exchange of sex for money. If they can't be distracted by shiny things, they might have to face the fact that they serve no real purpose in life.

Initially, I thought, like many others, that this was a joke. As the days go by, it appears that these women are very real and very serious. A beauty writer (Seriously? Beauty writer? Could you be more useless?) in New York told The New York Times: "One of his best friends told me that my job is now to keep him calm and keep him from dying at the age of 35," Ms. [Dawn Spinner] Davis said. "It's not what I signed up for."

That whole sickness-health/richer-poorer thing...who knew you were supposed to mean it?

The media has mentioned a "feminist backlash," but I have no doubt that behind every foot-stamping girlfriend is a pouting, empty-handed banker.

The suffering is not limited to Wall Street. It extends all the way to Thayer Street...in Providence, Rhode Island, home to Brown University. Brown students are best known to my fellow locals for blindly walking straight into oncoming traffic on a daily basis. I guess a high SAT score means never having to look both ways before crossing the street. Anyway, Thayer Street is the trendy, crowded shopping center of the college hill universe. Vintage clothing stores, an art house movie theatre, and, of course, a Starbucks line the busy one-way road. All was right in the Brown world...until two pizza joints opened too close to each other. And now, like, ohmygod, the young are lost. A freshman writer in the Brown Daily Herald student newspaper complains,

The war between Antonio's and Nice Slice is affecting thousands of Brown students...the central location of Antonio's and Nice Slice on Thayer and their close proximity to one another makes choosing one pizzeria over the other particularly grueling.

The unemployment rate in Rhode Island has reached ten percent. A few weeks ago, a homeless man froze to death while sleeping under a bridge. But...too many pizza options...what's a boy to do? Surely not volunteer, or fundraise, or even be aware of the world around you. When the tough gets going, take to the blog! Take the student newspaper's editorial page! You're spoiled as hell, and you're not gonna take it anymore!

Is there blood coming out of my eyes?

I don't like the auto bailout plan any more than the next person. I don't for one second believe that this will save the jobs of auto workers, the plants they work in, or the towns they live in. I do believe that CEOs will continue to earn fat bonuses and fly privately. It also galls me that wealthy Americans have sneered about welfare queens and irresponsible behavior (No investment portfolio? Madness!). It's just plain different when old white millionaires have their hands out — who cares that they've driven these gigantic companies into the ground? (For the love of Pete — whoever that is — are ya gonna stop making $#%@*& Hummers already?) Republicans and moneyed conservatives also rail against government interference — deregulate! Drill baby drill! Unless we're talking about your private sex life or begging Congress for billions. But the world markets crashed overnight on news of the Senate not passing the deal, and I was certain our market would follow today. Eventually, it will. What is an American citizen to think?

Yesterday I read that Democrats quietly slipped into the deal a pay raise for federal judges. "District judges and lawmakers now earn $169,300 a year... There is concern among many policymakers that judges are not paid enough relative to the importance of their offices..." That's tough. Teachers and nurses everywhere feel your pain.

This morning I learned that the deal fell apart in the Senate because Republicans wanted auto workers to have their wages cut significantly. Now now, auto workers — think of the poor, disadvantaged judges.

Now I'm reading in Salon about Republican politicians who voted against the deal and benefit from having foreign auto plants in their states.

I ask you again — is there blood coming out of my eyes?

There's a special place in hell for Republican senator Bob Corker, whose area does have one domestic plant...which will soon close (they need to make room for the Volkswagen plant coming to his Tennessee town). It was Corker vs. the auto-workers union:

             ...Mr. Corker admitted to the union's representatives that
             discussions over wages were "largely about politics in the
             G.O.P. caucus."

             Mr. Corker said he proposed that wages and benefits of 
             U.A.W. members be competitive with lower rates at American
             plants run by foreign rivals...Without that agreement, Mr.
             Corker said he could not sell a compromise to other Republicans.

Apparently, this is how it works now: Republicans so badly want to screw over American workers that they will bring financial disaster to foreign markets. 

Republicans — made in America!

From CNN: Huckabee, Palin Top List of 2012 GOP Contenders, Polls Says.

Well, isn't that special? A lying moron and a white-supremacist evangelical. You stay classy, Republicans!

 

A Wal-Mart worker is trampled to death on Black Friday. To those of you who killed him, to those of you who stood by, those of you who tried to trample his co-workers as they tried to help him, and to those who complained when the store was closed due to the tragedy — you all make me almost ashamed to be a human being. Nothing you can buy, no matter what the price or how badly a loved one wanted it, is worth killing someone.

I've been following the stories about the racist undercurrent at the recent McPalin rallies (from both the candidates and audience members). A week later, after universal condemnation from the media and a continued drop in the polls, McCain decided to do what he should have done instantly — ask for respect for his opponent as a human being and a candidate. But now he's surprised by the response of his ignorant followers when they boo him. What does he expect after encouraging it for a week?

I'm ashamed of both McCain and Palin. I never agreed with them on the issues and I never planned to vote for them, but at least they did not thoroughly disgust me as human beings. In the 21^st century, two political candidates for president should not have tried to distract the public from a serious economic crisis (for which they have no plan to help) by insinuating and outright (and falsely, as proved) accusing their opponent of being a terrorist and allowing racist, dangerous, and murderous reactions from their crowds.

The socialist charge has been the most innocent, due to Obama's plan for government-aided health care. Call me whatever you want but, as we can plainly see in Canada, making sure its citizens are alive and healthy seems like a pretty good move for any government.

Obama the terrorist. Is this the attitude a politician should encourage? That if he's black, he must be a terrorist? If he has an unfortunate middle name (over which none of us have control and which is completely meaningless), then he's a terrorist? If he is well traveled and educated, a terrorist?

And the William Ayers connection? Once again, proven to be exaggerated by the McPalin campaign and now irrelevant. From The New York Times:

"The suggestion that Ayers was a political adviser to Obama or someone who shaped his political views is patently false," said Ben LaBolt, a campaign spokesman. Mr. LaBolt said the men first met in 1995 through the education project, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and have encountered each other occasionally in public life or in the neighborhood. He said they have not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Mr. Obama began serving in the United States Senate in January 2005 and last met more than a year ago when they bumped into each other on the street in Hyde Park....Since 2002, there is little public evidence of their relationship.

From CNN:

CNN's review of project records found nothing to suggest anything inappropriate in the volunteer projects in which the two men were involved... There is no indication that Ayers and Obama are now "palling around," or that they have had an ongoing relationship in the past three years. Also, there is nothing to suggest that Ayers is now involved in terrorist activity or that other Obama associates are.

Now, if we're going to insist that past social associations have bearing on someone's presidential abilities, let's take a look at the new Salon article linking Palin with "violent...right-wing...successionists" of the Alaska Independence Party who were once sponsored by Iran. The AIP is described as:

...rubbing shoulders and forging alliances with outright white supremacists and far-right theocrats, particularly those who dominate the proceedings at such gatherings as the North American Secessionist conventions, which AIP delegates have attended in recent years. The AIP's affiliation with neo-Confederate organizations is motivated as much by ideological affinity as by organizational convenience.

Apparently this isn't the first time Palin has taken part in bigotry for political gain:

While Palin played up her total opposition to the sales tax and gun control — the two hobgoblins of the AIP — mailers spread throughout the town portraying her as "the Christian candidate," a subtle suggestion that Stein, who is Lutheran, might be Jewish. "I watched that campaign unfold, bringing a level of slime our community hadn't seen until then," recalled Phil Munger, a local music teacher who counts himself as a close friend of Stein.

Nor was Troopergate the end of her ethics violations and abuses of power:

When Palin won the election, the men who had once shouted anti-government slogans outside City Hall now had a foothold inside the mayor's office. Palin attempted to pay back her newfound pals during her first City Council meeting as mayor. In that meeting, on Oct. 14, 1996, she appointed Stoll to one of the City Council's two newly vacant seats. But Palin was blocked by the single vote of then-Councilman Nick Carney, who had endured countless rancorous confrontations with Stoll and considered him a "violent" influence on local politics. Though Palin considered consulting attorneys about finding another means of placing Stoll on the council, she was ultimately forced to back down and accept a compromise candidate...

...Emboldened by his nomination by Mayor Palin, Stoll later demanded she fire Wasilla's museum director, John Cooper, a personal enemy he longed to sabotage. Palin obliged, eliminating Cooper's position in short order. "Gotcha, Cooper!" Stoll told the deposed museum director after his termination, as Cooper told a reporter for the New York Times. "And it only cost me a campaign contribution." Stoll, who donated $1,000 to Palin's mayoral campaign, did not respond to numerous requests for an interview. Palin has blamed budget concerns for Cooper's departure.

And this is not ancient history for her:

When Palin ran for governor in 2006, marketing herself as a fresh-faced reformer determined to crush the GOP's ossified power structure, she made certain to appear at the AIP's state convention. To burnish her maverick image, she also tapped one-time AIP member and born-again Republican Walter Hickel as her campaign co-chair. Hickel barnstormed the state for Palin, hailing her support for an "all-Alaska" liquefied gas pipeline, a project first promoted in 2002 by an AIP gubernatorial candidate named Nels Anderson. When Palin delivered her victory speech on election night, Hickel stood beaming by her side. "I made her governor," he boasted afterward. Two years later, Hickel has endorsed Palin's bid for vice president...

...Just months before Palin burst onto the national stage as McCain's vice-presidential nominee, she delivered a videotaped address to the AIP's annual convention. Her message was scrupulously free of secessionist rhetoric, but complementary nonetheless. "I share your party's vision of upholding the Constitution of our great state," Palin told the assembly of AIP delegates. "My administration remains focused on reining in government growth so individual liberty can expand. I know you agree with that ... Keep up the good work and God bless you."

CBS News has also covered Palin's association with the AIP. Less than 24 hours after the Troopergate verdict, Palin stoked another non-economic fire at a rally in Pennsylvania:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin charged into the culture wars Saturday in Pennsylvania, painting Sen. Barack Obama as a radical on abortion rights.

"In times like these with wars and financial crisis, I know that it may be easy to forget even as deep and abiding a concern as the right to life, and it seems that our opponent kind of hopes you will forget that," Palin told a crowd in Johnstown. "He hopes that you won't notice how radical, absolutely radical his idea is on this, and his record is, until it's too late." (Translation: "Gosh-darnit, I have no idea how to fix your economy, so I'm gonna stand here all folksy and talk to ya straight about the beauty of life, and repeat how wonderful America is, and how mean reporters are to me with their questions.")

Now she's no longer claiming that Obama will let domestic terrorists blow you to East Chuck and dare to actually hold diplomacy talks with foreign leaders, but get this — the big scary black man will kill your babies!

You want to talk about radical:

Palin opposes abortion in all cases, including rape and incest, except when a mother's life is in danger, and said she believes Roe v. Wade should be overturned and the decision given to the states.

McCain voted for the Prohibit Partial Birth Abortion bill in 2003 and "yes" for Prohibiting Funds for Groups that Perform Abortions amendment in 2007. He believes Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned, and also supports the Supreme Court ruling upholding the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act.

Palin also talked about a remark Obama made about sex education while campaigning in Johnstown in March, when he told a voter he didn't want his daughters "punished with a baby" or "punished with an STD" if they were not educated about sex and made a mistake.

"So I listened when our opponent defended his unconditional support for unlimited abortions and he said he said that a woman shouldn't have to be 'Punished with a baby,' " Palin said as the audience jeered at Obama. "Ladies and gentlemen, he said that right here in Johnstown. 'Punished with a baby.' It's about time we called him on it."

I wonder if Bristol feels "blessed?"

I'm sure you all will soon hear about Obama supporting "infanticide" by voting against a bill that was supposed to protect fetuses born alive (a hysterical pro-life nurse and Fox News/Bill Donohue favorite, Jill Stanek, claimed, falsely, that late-term abortions were being performed at a Chicago hospital, and the still-living babies were left in soiled linen closets to die) but in actuality chips away at abortion rights. Obama's reasoning for his nay vote — that sanity, common sense, and a doctor's Hippocratic Oath dictate that A) obviously measures would be taken to keep any such fetus alive and B) if such measures are not taken, those actions violate already existing laws. He was backed by the Pro-Life-run Illinois Attorney General's office.

Fun extra tidbits about Jill Stanek — she sponsors billboards in Africa that read: "Faithful condom users die." She posted, as fact, an urban legend about the Chinese eating aborted fetuses. "She works with Eric Scheidler and his father Joe Scheidler who [are] violent anti-abortion activist..." And she believes that birth control should be outlawed — not just abortion.

Eric Zorn of The Chicago Tribune and Obama's website can provide further details. Or you can listen to Palin shoot her mouth off some more.

To all this, the ever-calm, thoughtful Obama responded:

"They can run misleading ads, and pursue the politics of anything goes, they can try to change the subject. They can do that what they want to do because the American people understand what's going on — but it's not going to work. Not this time."

I sure hope not.