An Easter Miracle; a Resurrection of Sorts, Even....(Against Theocracy!)

Blog Against Theocracy; better late than never...

RIP Mrs. Coo (if you're looking for the miracle, read on:)






I just finished watching Religulous, Bill Maher's tour de force on the illogical, scary, and silly world of belief...and now on this first night of remembrance of the passing over of the angel of death, which, as I recall, has some lambs blood and baby killing in the story, Ive got to say that I'm happy to stick to the pagan bunny and the rites of spring that somehow got co opted by some story of Jesus rolling back a rock and rising to heaven.

So, in a Colbert-like over the top, what must have been fraternity hazing, that was passion play and sign of macho all rolled in one, some beefy football hunks from the local Sacred Heart University carried heavy wooden crosses some 25 miles from one church to another, complete with picture of the boys with the crosses outfitted with pillows duct taped onto them in the shoulder area so that they wouldn't actually hurt themselves, though they reported many blisters. All thats missing from that story are the whips!

I'm thinking that Religulous ought to be required viewing for this time of year. With the way things are, as Maher points out, most religious people in this country haven't actually read the bible all the way through anyway, and their belief sets are based on something other than striving for understanding of a spiritual path or where we fit in this world. There is certainly a lack of understanding of other religions and a lack of critical thought about the timing of all of this penance and miracle celebration.

Its at times like this that I wonder how we ever ended up here. Coming down from 8 years of fundamentalist leadership in this country might be, in hindsight, something like picking up the pieces after the inquisition, but we wont know in our lifetimes the full extent of how bad this really is; history will judge this time in a far larger context than we can see from inside this bubble. But its gonna look a little crazy, even if you keep the blinders on hoping that most of this can just move on by and end up under some rug somewhere. Historians are not that forgiving, it turns out; we can only hope.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Colbert's Easter Parade
colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest

Me, I'm clutching my Peeps close to my chest and waiting for the bunny to come hopping down the path with my prayer bear, and pretending that Ive got a basket coming from that rabbit, full of all the fantastic confections that Cadbury, Dove, and the Peeps company can come up with...

So here is my Easter Miracle (tm)...a veritable ressurection of sorts...for this year:

Mrs. Coonie was a rare bantam barred Aracuana that came to live with me via eggbid some time ago. I got her because Coo, my Aracuana roo would like her, or so I supposed. She was cute and cheap and, it turned out, from a fancy line of chickens and pretty special. Well, some 20 days ago, the unfortunate Mrs. Coo passed away due to...well, lets just say that she died laying an egg. The life of a chicken is hard, but the egg thing is what they do, and all I can do is to try to make it more comfortable for them. In any case, after that tragedy, I decided to grab her last egg and the couple that I had in the fridge, along with a couple of others and put them in the incubator just to see what came out. I had expected a hatch tomorrow or the next day but, look what was waiting for me this morning:




if this is Coonie's child it is a fancy bird from which I could perhaps sell the eggs for hatching or lease it out at stud....if its the bastard son of Woostie, or worse, the accidental-frizzle-roo-who-must-go-as-soon-as-he-crows (see, he was originally a hen, then he was suddenly a roo,) then hes a mutt pet. If it is Coonie's kid and its barred, its apparently a roo. If its Coonie's kid and its a hen then it could be any color but barred would be better. If its a mutt then nothing matters except that it keep its mouth shut so the neighbors are not bothered.

In any case, Happy Easter and RIP Mrs. Coo. You did good in a chicken sense of purpose, in that you replaced yourself and provided alot of tiny breakfast eggs along the way. The rest is up to the forces of chicken sex and all that entails....you tell me:

Coonie Aracuana:



Woostie Woo:


Only time will tell....

And since Jill has gone all soft and fuzzy today: c/p Brilliant at Breakfast

Edwards, Obama, Clinton, Lobbyists, and Campaign Reform...Money Talks... But Who is it Speaking For?

Digitotalitarians Unite!!



Here we go again.
Welcome Home!



Lets get one thing straight; No money is clean. I'm sure that the headlines about Edwards and Obama accepting donations from large corporations, and whatever the earth shattering revelations are in this world of overly literal campaigns and an undereducated populace that can only take in information in sound byte form, are interesting, but the fact, until there are actual facts that mean something, seems to be that this is a concocted line of what-ifs and maybes that don't add up to much.

We are frozen. Its as if, in this political atmosphere, no one should deviate from their position of 6 years ago, and no one should grow and change at all. I'm afraid of anyone who has learned nothing during this administration, much less the Bill Clinton Administration! But, besides the Rove instilled fear of the awe inspiring "flip-flop," I don't even see that as the issue here.
What I see happening is some form of desperate extrapolation to comb through every donation to try to connect it to some lobbyist...or the corporations that they represent.

We're all wading in the same pool here, folks, in that we could all be lobbyists, if you're gonna count the individual lawyer donations as a lump and the people who work for drug companies as a lump. Isn't that so many apples and oranges until every lawyer that has given cash to Edwards gets together and hires some guy to hand the money over in the interest of an issue or a set of issues? Then couldn't all individual blogger donations or Mom donations to Obama or Edwards also be called special interest contributions? Don't we all have special interests in whatever our pet issues are? So, where do you draw the line in tracing this stuff and who decides when a lobby is a lobby if its not formal? Its surely a slippery slope and I doubt that any candidate wants to have to pick apart every donation that comes in before there is some meaningful reform of campaign financing and lobbying, but isn't it safe to say that these lobby's are only formal if they are in fact formalized?.
But the wider message seems to me to be that Obama and Edwards don't want to accept donations from the overt lobbying population that has grown into a monster, and that Clinton is, as usual, carefully parsing her words to be sure to be so inclusive as to recognize that every lobby firm and every large corporation employs Americans. Now, that would be meaningful if deregulation had not allowed the top management and CEO culture to raid logical business structure, and suck all the money upwards....I don't believe that a Phillip Morris Lobby represents the guys who run the factory machines, and certainly not the pickers; probably not even the secretaries or administrators. So, when she says that she is supporting all Americans with her take on the lobby issue, she is saying that she supports the top tier of earners, because without corporate regulation back in place, there is no worker lobby of much substance out there....and certainly there is not a Phillip Morris Lobby that includes a Phillip Morris worker's lobby, representing the fact that the little guys will lose their jobs if big tobacco is hurt...This is all about corporations pushing their agendas forward so that the top guys can get really rich, really quick before the rules change again. And its clear to any of us in the real world out here that the agendas of large corporations largely do not represent the working people of America.
See, the bigger idea here doesn't have much to do with some donation that slipped past or some gotcha that Matt Drudge is looking for. its about the big picture and the desire to change things fundamentally. To assume that this stuff might effect you positively, beyond the fact that you may get killed by some drug or law that has been pushed through to your detriment, is fantasy and as likely as winning the lottery and having to deal with the "death tax" or a windfall tax. No, the conversation that Clinton is having that includes all Americans means all rich Americans, because this lobbying stuff is what goes on behind closed doors in the halls of power. To call it out is to open those doors and let some air in...and if that means that someone is out there looking through every contribution record to the Obama and Edwards campaigns, then so be it.

Lets try tying the fortunes of the top tier of corporate America to the fortunes of the bottom tier, and then revisit what the lobby is. How 'bout everyone gets a raise and that the big guys pay windfall taxes out the wazoo into funds set up for those who have lost their jobs due to technological advances that have allowed those windfalls? Don't get me started on outsourcing! How 'bout tying worker happiness and ability to achieve the American dream to how much a CEO can take home?...These guys will still surely get rich, but just not as rich...At some point its all just so much zeros on a statement anyway, isn't it?

Its a pretty bold move for Edwards and Obama to keep hammering this point, because surely it puts up the red flag to all the diggers out there to get to work to find the one bad contribution or person that works on a campaign who used to be a lobbyist...but, its an issue that needs to be addressed and I'm happy that its coming up. I'm also glad that we get a glimpse into the real Clinton, because her non-answers are rather frightening and it almost as if one tiny crack might let a ton of sludge loose that will not only be bad for the party, but dangerous for America.

I'm not perfect..OK, if you must know, I went to Wal-Mart some months ago and I bought some chinos for the kids that were probably made in China. I drive a Jeep that guzzles more gas than it should. I use air conditioning...hell, I love air conditioning! There are reasons for these things but I am not going to make excuses or go on about my carbon offsets. As I go along in life, I can certainly say that I've modified and changed and I am going to continue to do so. I need and want the tools to do that with, like a real hybrid truck that can get up my driveway in the winter. I expect that of anyone who is growing up in this life, and I certainly expect it of our leaders. We need the tools to make real choices and sacrifices, and we need leaders who aren't afraid to offer them. The deregulation thing has not worked out...lets just face it, change it, and move on.
And try really hard to look at who is profiting from these issues and leaving them as they stand. The hardest thing is probably to look at our own lives and to realize that some of the maintenance of the status quo by us is built on the fantasy that we might one day be in the class of the same people who benefit from these things.

Which brings me back to education. If we don't educate our kids, and ourselves, to think critically, make decisions, have ethics and morals, then how can we expect anything to get done?
What ever happened to that line of education? I think its gone in a haze of political correctness and some crazy tie-in between those things and religious upbringing. This idea is not true and doesn't fly. If we are so caught in political correctness that we cant even look to the past and talk about what was wrong or right with the way things went, then we are a country of sheep being groomed to be the rabble, while the elite get whats theirs.
No kid should leave the American school system without some critical real-life skills, decision making, and an idea of how great minds thought throughout history, and how the same is not only possible for them but expected of them!! Without that the American dream is dead and we might as well just prepare for the rapture.(...not!)

Kieth Olbermann on the Supposed Dem Boycott of The Colbert Report

Heres to my friend Vern, who scoured the internets...um...YouTube, until this was posted for us to see.... here at the RIP.
For any of you who have been living under a rock, Steve Colbert, formerly of Jon Stewart's The Daily Show, has a show weeknights on Comedy Central at 11:30 PM, in which he does the news as a spot on Bill O'Reilly "type" of anchor. Colbert IS O'Reilly...but he is also so much more. Any of you who read this blog even semi-regularly know that I am such a big fan of this guy and that I think hes an American hero. He not only gave the best Washington Correspondents Dinner speech EVER, directly to President Bush, who was NOT amused...but he has joined Jon Stewart and Kieth Olbermann as another leading light in the TRUTH, delivered in logical, funny, and understandable terms. These guys have guts and they started speaking truth to power long before any of the M$M made any sort of baby steps to get on board.
Here is Kieth on Rahm Emmanuel's suggested boycott of The Colbert report by Dems...in fear of the possibility that some Americans might not get the joke and might believe what goes on there is real.
Considering that during the "War on Christmas" this year, Colbert interviewed his guests in a fully decorated Jesus manger... and also considering that Colbert's "son" on the show is an eagle named Steven Jr who he tracks with a tracking device and sometimes he even sends spys like Rick Ocasek, of The Cars fame, to rescue the bird...all I can say is...Rahm, what the fuck is the matter with you? Maybe its low expectations of people and FEAR of speaking the truth that has gotten us into this mess.....who told Gore not to follow his passion? Who tucked Kerry in at night?
Us dems better get with the funny (you hear me Mark Green??) and we'd better get with it FAST!! People need it; it gets the point across; the dumbing down and blunting of the message to try to make it palatable to the middle of the country isn't working.

here you go...enjoy this montage of Colbert in all of his glory. This is what the Democratic Party is afraid of.....?