OH YEAH!!!!

I am LOVING this!!! Fuck with 'em but good!

LOVE this!

Lajeunesse doesn’t see it that way. “Should someone lose their job over this? No way. Right or wrong, there’s no way we’d fire one of our employees for something like that. We’d much rather 86 an entitled-acting tech nerd.”

“We’re not trying to be jerks at all,” Meinert says. “If you walked in here with a video camera we’d ask you to stop. If you’re speaking too loudly on a cellphone we’d ask you to leave. That should be obvious. With Glass, there should be etiquette around its use, and we feel that in a setting like a café or bar they should just be taken off and not used.”

"We’d much rather 86 an entitled-acting tech nerd.”
OMG!!! LOVE it!!!

Womenomics! BRILLIANT!!!

Indeed. He seems to be very much about things they don't believe in.

I LOVE the specific reference to trickle-down. YES!!!!!!!!! Fucking PIRACY!!!! And THEFT!!!! Which, is a sin and one of the Ten Commandments before the Catholic Church was even around to start talking about sin.

Pope Francis in some ways feels like a breath of fresh air. I hope he's well protected. And I hope maybe, just maybe... he'll become as forward-thinking about women in the priesthood. Maybe that's too much to ask. Sigh - we've only been at it for at least two thousand years that I know of. But this Papal letter is extraordinary! He is the leader of more than a BILLION Catholics worldwide. One of the most successful religious franchises ever known. This is the kind of thing Catholics should be loud 'n' proud about. THIS is what we should be out there making a big stink and a big noise about. THIS accursed, toxic, and downright SINFUL, repeat, SINFUL trickle-down BS. This shit that started 30 years ago with reagan. He's the devil who brought that curse into the house. That became something good and desirable and damn near sanctified. Selfishness became okay. Cool, even. Certainly the underlying motivation behind too many laws and legislative campaigns that have born fruit in the last few years. They started building this with the rise of ronald reagan.

We HAVE TO reverse the reagan curse!

I guess I kinda overdo it sometimes, in my disgust with ronald reagan. But I kinda feel compelled. Somebody's gotta speak the truth about him. He's NO saint. He's not even close. Maybe he did some nice things on a personal individual level, and maybe close-up and close-in, he was a kindly, harmless, amiable old man. But put him in any sort of position of overlordship, if you will, whether it was the Screen Actors Guild or the White House, and he begins to wreak havoc. His ideas, having been allowed to be implemented on his watch and beyond, have led directly to the mess we're in today.

Mainly:

1) The distrust of government. His inaugural declaration (one of 'em anyway) was that "government is not the solution, government is the problem," and that nauseating "the nine most terrifying words in the English language" BS: "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." ronald reagan's political sons and daughters have gained enough of a foothold in positions of power both at the state level and nationally that they can seriously threaten to shut down the United States government and throw the entire national economy into a tailspin. Nationally, their deliberate obstruction has led to a widespread public distrust of government. These assholes have gotten into office in the House and Senate and proceeded to prove the need for that distrust. "Government BAAAD. Let's show you how and why!" They've been hellbent on fucking things up. Putting impediments and blocks and holds in the way, every way they can think of, slowing things down, stopping things outright. Stalling and shelving ideas that had a chance at one point. The election of - GASP!!! - an African American to the Presidency just gave 'em an excuse to boil over. They're hellbent on proving that government is bad, by MAKING IT BAD with their own actions and statements and strategies. They're not interested in figuring out how to fix it or improve it. Improvement to them is a big fat fetid void. Fixing it means getting rid of it altogether.

They have enough clout and electoral wins at the state level to adversely affect state laws. Just ask women who like their doctor's office AND the real estate between their necks and their knees kept off limits to Big Brother in Washington (and yeah, it's mostly male, too). Just ask anyone, black, white, brown, wrinkled, or whatever, who had to stand in line for almost the whole damn day just to exercise his/her LEGAL right to vote. Just ask any teacher or parent who would rather see their precious child taught science in science class, and keep the creation story where it belongs: in credible and comprehensive religious studies, theology, philosophy, or even ancient history class.

2) Nobody tells me what to do. I'm sorry, but sometimes somebody has to. If you wish to live in a civilized society in which we ALL try to get along peaceably even while acknowledging that we're not all alike, you have to have some sort of internal or external hierarchy telling you what to do. In other words - governing you. Internally it's your conscience that hopefully has been developed by someone other than a selfish bunch of sociopaths. Externally it's the authority figures around you, ranging from teachers to bosses to police to - yes, government employees. "Getting the government off yer back" is unworkable - particularly the way the reaganistas did it. Their idea of "getting the government off yer back" was getting the government out of big business and industry and big banking. Damn those pollution laws anyway! Get rid of 'em! Free market! Free market! reagan underscored that internationally by turning his nose up at the World Court. His various declarations that the U.S. is exempt from any of your steeenking laws. American exceptionalism, dontchaknow. That one certainly has been handed down, most recently, to bush/cheney. Look at their track record for lawlessness that they've demonstrated overseas during those miserable years! That could explain why many people in other countries view the U.S. as almost a rogue nation - if not as one, flat-out.

And that's another thing -

3) The sanctity of the free market. Oh yeah, that'll help. That'll fix everything! Nobody should tell business how to do business. No rules! No regulations! Too restrictive. Freedom is what we need. Well, okay, but only within reason! We have to consider what one considers "freedom." Freedom to price-gouge? Freedom to cheat? Why can't I play fast 'n' loose with other people's hard-earned retirement money? Freedom to pollute? Why shouldn't I just dump it where I want to? None o' yer business. Why can't I pay whatever salaries I want to - regardless how low and unsustainable? Oh it'll cost too much. Well, with the biggest of 'em, doing the literal right thing in the public interest for the greater good, they can afford to spend a little more, with their obscene and still growing profit margins. THIS freedom isn't free, either. You're NOT free to shit on your neighbor or cheat your customers or maneuver yourself into having an edge at their expense. I realize it's commonly done. But you shouldn't have the "freedom" to do that! SHEESH - we now have a Pope who seems to feel that way...

4) IGMFU.Stands for "I Got Mine, F-U." Screw the poor. They're just lazy moochers and they deserve it. Doesn't God want you to be rich? That's how you know you're Blessed of Him. Me for me. ayn rand says I'm entitled to keep the whole thing and that I don't have to share. I'm hailed as a "job creator" even though I'm mostly just hoarding my resources and whining about "uncertainty". You're on your own. That's how it's supposed to be. John Wayne. (And reagan was certainly the poor-man's-John-Wayne, schtick-wise.) Rugged individual! Get a job. Start a business (Oh sure! Magic cure! Like everyone everywhere is equipped to do that. As if!). And the always-popular "God will provide." It was suddenly a good thing to be selfish, to not want to pay taxes toward the greater good - because nobody called it that. They blasted it as "Communism" and made it smell bad.

Reagan made a LOT of genuinely stinky things smell like the finest Parisian perfume. He made crime and cheating honorable and even all-American. He made shit seem to taste like chocolate pie. And 30 years later, all we have is indigestion and acid reflux of the worst political, cultural, and societal kind. He lulled much of America to sleep and let the velociraptors in. MUCH of what ails us now can be traced directly to the rise of ronald reagan.

We need some POWERFUL personalities on a global scale, whose voices reach across all the boundary lines, to start rolling back the damaging advances of the reagan juggernaut. Thirty years is enough, I think. Maybe Pope Francis is what's needed. SOMETHING certainly is!

We HAVE TO reverse the reagan curse! It's VITAL!!!!

Totally! She just laid a big stinking rotten egg on the "60 Minutes" brand.

It was previously still a pretty good solid credible enterprise. Yes, it took some hits. But this is a HUGE black eye. And it's all Goldilocks' fault.

Intriguing idea, I must say!

Thanks for bringing it up, Amimnoch!

OH YEAH!!!!

BIG THUMBS UP!!!

You just reminded me of this pathetic middle-aged woman I saw interviewed on TV

back during the 2008 campaign. There was this collective GOP hissyfit being thrown over one little isolated case where then-candidate Obama had been seen without a flag lapel pin. And this woman - SHEESH-on-a-Shingle!!! She sat there describing her disgust over this. She was in her 60s, had recently been laid off, had no financial support, no savings, and no health insurance. But by God she wasn't going to vote for ANYBODY who wasn't wearing a flag pin!

Jerk!

That is all.

You make me think that - for Thanksgiving, I guess I would wish an afternoon with Eloise

for everyone here!

Next best thing: the "Eloise at Christmastime" book! Delicious and Utterly Intoxicating!!!!!