calimary
calimary's JournalAw man... where to begin?
w: duhbya. dumbya. dry-drunk. Junior. george the lesser. bush2. Phony cowboy. All Hat No Cattle. Oily george. War Criminal. Little Boots. AWOL bush. The Pretender. Thief-in-Chief. White House Squatter. The Resident. Resident bush.
cheney: the dick. Darth cheney. War Criminal. The Puppetmaster. Dead-eye dick. Sultan of Snarl. Five Deferments. The Other Dark Lord.
rumsfeld: rummy. Skeletor. War Criminal.
condi: contradicta (proud to say I made that one up!). Kinda-sleezy. condiLiar. Backstage girl. War Criminal.
tony blair: bush's poodle.
john mccain: mcsame. Gramps. Grumpy. Dirty old man.
sarah: sarah Failin'. Failin' palin. Caribou Barbie. Tundra Tart. Snowbilly. Snow Grifter. Half-Governor. Quitterella. Word Salad sarah. Half-Baked Alaska. Bible Spice. Alaska Disasta. Mooselini. MILFy McMooseburger (Stephanie Miller special!).
lindsey graham: john mccain's shadow. Sidekick.
ted cruz: Carnival cruz. The New McCarthy. Whack Job. Crackpot. King of the Teabaggers
rick perry: Governor Oops. Governor Goodhair.
mike huckabee: Fuckabee. hucka-boo-boo.
mitt romney: mittski. Mr. 47%. Rmoney. mitt wrongney. Moneybags mitt. Dog-hater. Mr. Car Elevator. Bane Capital.
paul ryan: Eddie Munster. Lyin' ryan.
karl rove: kkkarl. Turd Blossom. bush's brain. "THE math."
rush limbaugh: flush limbaugh. Limburger. Limpballs. LameBrain. Gas Giant.
sean hannity: that-guy-whose-name-rhymes-with-Vanity. Gas Giant. Shammity.
bill o'reilly: O'Really. bill o'LIEly. billo. Falafel boy. bill o'loofah. Gas Giant. Shill o'Lie-ly.
newt gingrich: newt gangrene. Gingivitis. newt the Nasty. Husband-of-the-Year. Gas Giant. Asshole.
chris christie: crispy christie. Gas Giant. Asshole. Bully. Meanie. "Sit Down and Shut Up." Bridge-gate.
ronald reagan: St. ronnie. Raygun. Cue Cards. Doddering Old Man. Millionaires On Parade.
george herbert walker bush: Poppy. George the 1st. bush1. "Read My Lips." ghwb. "hw." Snippy. Preppy. Wimp.
andrea mitchell: Mrs. Greenspan.
joe scarborough: "Dead Intern." Morning Blow. Morning Schmo.
Bill Clinton: President Clinton. First Man? Mr. Popularity.
Hillary Clinton: Shillary. HRC. Madam Secretary. Madam President? Grandma.
Harry Reid: The Boxer. "Give 'em Hell" Harry.
john boehner: Boner. John of Orange. Orange Man. Worst House Speaker Ever.
mitch mcconnell: Yertle. Bad Sport.
rand paul: Dingdong. The Kentucky Pipsqueak. Junior. Brillohead. Libertarian.
scott walker: koch-sucker. Not Ready for Prime Time. Snot walker.
dan quayle: Dim Bulb. Pretty Boy. Dingdong. Mr. Potato Head. "No John Kennedy."
arnold schwarzenegger: Ahnold. schwarzengroper. The Terminator. The Governator. Der Gropenator.
larry craig: "Wide Stance."
david vitter: Diaper Boy.
joni ernst: Hot Castrator. Breadbags. Traitor.
tom cotton: Traitor tom. Tehran tom the Traitor Tot.
bobby jindal: Alfred E. Newman.
I'll think of more... there's a TON.
So do I and I plan to vote for her.
Seems to me if ANY woman is ready to be the First Woman President, it's Hillary Rodham Clinton. But she also happens to be the most ready of ANYBODY out there, from either side, who wants to run for the damn job. For me, though, sometimes I wonder who in their right mind would seek it in the first place!
I would like to join this group as well, if they'll have me!
I'm noticing a lot of opposition to the law.
My over-arching point, probably a little too ham-handedly presented (sorry about that, I feel maybe too strongly about this issue), was to pose general questions into the ether. Stuff for us all to think about. Not accusations. These are complex times filled with complex issues. One of my particular favorites at the moment is the one where the US and Iran are fighting on the same side against one enemy, ISIS. Okay, THERE'S a dilemma for you! And I think whatever side we might favor, we still have to ask these questions. Aloud. To ourselves. To each other. To others who might be listening in or otherwise lurking.
Meh, that stupid drumbeat again. It just seems to me that with these advance-level problems we need some very careful and considered thinking and questioning about it. We need to drill down into - "okay, what am I REALLY upset about, here?" Which I think is when you start exploring the whole idea of - how sacrosanct are religious rights? Whose religion, anyway? So are we saying religious rights trump civil rights and equal rights and economic rights and so forth? Then we're saying Judaism-centered or Buddhism-centered or Mormonism-centered or Islam-centered rights ALSO trump all those same civil rights and equal rights and economic rights and so forth, are we not? Try THAT ONE on, CONservatives! And hey, we Catholics aren't quite the same as the various kinds of Classification-Protestant Christians, so can we split hairs that far, then, too?
I'm really glad to see businesses inside and outside Indiana reacting to this as I hope they do. ESPECIALLY the home-town ones. That way we can exert pressure from the inside as well as the outside. Sometimes the locals speak louder and more pointedly anyway. We need every one of them we can get. There has to be a big fat stop sign gouged into the ground in front of them. And I say this as a Catholic. Conflicted but still a Catholic. I don't think ANY religion trumps this. NO religion should trump this. Because whose religion gets that privilege? Who's to judge?
SHEESH - does it always have to boil down to a bunch of unruly spoiled toddlers fighting over a single large cookie? Criminy. If everybody wants some, then they all have to share, dammit! They all have to make room. They all have to be okay with not having the whole thing to themselves when all the other kids in the room probably want the exact same thing! There's just no other option here. Everybody has to share. Take some, and leave enough for everybody else to have some too.
I think the under-theme and under-message here, if you will, is rigidity. Insisting on this kind of entitlement - of "I don't have to do such and such because my religion says I don't have to," thereby imposing YOUR distinct and specialized view on everybody else who has to deal with you - is the REAL meanie here. THAT is what has to go, seems to me. If we can't flat-out get rid of it in one fell swoop, then it has to be pushed back against, has to be resisted, has to be chipped away and steadily weakened and otherwise compromised. (Think termites.)
Maybe political and social and economic erosion is what gets this job done. I'm glad there are Indiana businesses thinking with more objective heads.
BUT AT THE SAME TIME, you have to look at who's legislating this stuff, who's introducing it in the legislature, who's supporting it there and pushing it toward the governor's desk, who the governor is, and how they got into those jobs to begin with. They don't just stroll on in. They win elections, in one way or other, by getting the biggest vote counts. So it's the voters. It's the voters. Those who are really in the statistical minority in large parts of the country, but who get out and vote on Election Day without fail (if they haven't already early-voted), always wind up shouting really loudly.
And they REALLY wanna win this next time. They've lost twice. They don't like that. Their dearest dream was to make President Barack Obama a one-termer. They failed. They don't like facing and admitting that they failed. Besides, THEY want all the power. And judging from the bombast we're hearing already, they want back in - BADLY, so they can do what they weren't able to do for the last six years, which is to tear down everything President Obama built, and in effect, completely negate and nullify his Presidency. They'd bulldoze his eventual Presidential Library and try to excise every mention of his name if they could. Kinda like the nutcases in the Middle East who tried to wipe the land free of false idols, including a priceless, irreplaceable historic Buddha statue rendered into the side of a mountain. ERASE his very EXISTENCE! As one teabagger lamented - "I want Obama GONE."
On our side, on the other hand, some of us find it awfully easy to throw in the towel and just go home and stay there. We get discouraged a lot quicker and more deeply than they do. Stop and think for a moment what the irrational "right" did after the Supreme Court handed down its Roe v Wade decision. Did they allow themselves to become inconsolable and just throw up their hands and stay home? Any "it's no use" types there? Well, maybe a tiny few, but the rest of 'em armed up and got militant and in-yer-face and started acting out a LOT and thundering across the airwaves and throwing loud nasty temper tantrums in public wherever and whenever they could. AND THEY NEVER TOOK "NO" FOR AN ANSWER. They never gave up. If one way was shut down for them, they came back around the side or from behind somewhere, or tried to chip a hole in the roof, or smuggle themselves in, disguised as a waiter or something. ANY loophole. ANY crack in the wall. Find it! And find it they have. Many of 'em, including candidates for office and for judicial appointments have talked all nice and such about how Roe v Wade is "settled law" but not for a minute did they mean it. I'm surprised nobody sat with one arm hidden behind their backs so you couldn't see their fingers crossed, through the years that I've watched coverage of this stuff.
I wish WE did that.
Thanks back atcha. It's SO damn vexing! "Vexed" is an excellent word for it.
Whose rights trump who else's? What tips the scale, ORGANICALLY - and I'm NOT talking manipulating it or putting your thumb on it? I appreciate very much the argument about civil rights and government intervention - or in this case, no government at all but company intervention (alerting his airline or supervisor). Do we want corporations in charge of that? YEEEEEEESH now there's a hornet's nest!
What should be done? What really weighs on me, besides the frailty of human nature, is how - okay, it's one in a fill-in-the-blank-with-an-ungodly-large-number here tragedy. BUT even just a single one in such a large and lopsided ratio just inconveniently happens to involve several HUNDRED people. Innocent lives each of whose number was not necessarily up, in and of itself, just because the one co-pilot decided his own number was up. The "honor system" was an EPIC fail here.
I sure as hell don't know what the answer is. I see it from several different directions, and find sense in most if not all of them, while being frustrated and befuddled with most if not all of them at the same time.
(edited to correct the auto spell check - that made "ratio" into "ration". I didn't catch it originally.)
My husband and I had an argument about this, earlier this morning.
He pointed out, correctly, that the civil libertarians would object. Privacy and all that. I think that's exactly what we'd see - and I'm so torn. Not sure I'm comfortable with that, much as I expect and support privacy protections for myself and everyone else.
I wanted to know why that fellow's doctor could NOT have reported this to the airline. What should be done when it's the "honor system" and he's supposed to alert his employer that his doctor says he's not fit to fly - and he doesn't? What to do when the individual decides on his/her own, to rip up the doctor's note anyway and go to work despite the warnings? I know - freedom-freedom and all that. But at some point, don't we have to take into account the safety of the HUNDRED-PLUS others whose lives are in the hands of the pilot and copilot on EVERY commercial jet?
I don't know what the answer is here, as far as protecting EVERYBODY across the board in a case like this. Yes, privacy. YES, being able to trust your doctor or therapist that your confidences during your treatment can remain confidential. YES I get that.
But when you have 100-200-300 or more people's lives IN YOUR HANDS as part of your job, should you still be entitled to that kind of confidentiality and privacy protection? What about the public's right to know? What about the FLYING public's right to know, and to be protected? What about "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one," as the "Star Trek" saying goes (and I think that, too, is a valid statement)?
What about this anyway? Just in general? We see this conflict ALL THE TIME anymore. Rights. Yes. We have them. We need if not all then certainly most of them. They're both necessary and a necessary evil. But do they have rankings? Are we ranking them in order of importance when we refer to "The fill-in-the-number-here Amendment"? Or is that more in order of appearance? We see all kinds of tugs-of-war especially as applied to the 2nd Amendment, for example - the most aggressive, active voice pushes from the "2nd Amendment Is Really the FIRST Amendment" side. There are 1st Amendment struggles of all kinds, because there are several different rights under that one primary umbrella. ARE THERE some rights that supersede others? Is there a first-among-equals? And if that one's true, then can we all agree on which one is the "most first"? (Yeah, SUUUUUUUUUURE we're gonna get there!)
Sometimes I have my doubts as to whether we'll ever be able to arrive at answers that all sides somehow find acceptable.
I used to work with a guy who, before he hired me, had produced an award-winning radio documentary called "When Rights Collide." MAN does that fit here.
Well, they do if they vote for assholes like pence.
I don't care what they SAY. It's how they VOTE (or if they give up and stay home, because there's no reason to vote, since both sides are the saaaaaaaame...).
REALLY??? You think both sides are REALLY the same? SERIOUSLY????
Would a Democrat have signed a law like this? Would a Democrat have even suggested a bill like this, much less moving to introduce a bill like this in the state legislature? 'Eh? Huh?
You Absolutely Positively Beyond-a-Doubt SURE that both sides are just all the same???? There's NO difference between them?????? They're ALL alike?????????????????????????????????
Just asking...
Yes, certainly, but please remember - that's how he got where he is now.
That's how he got to the governor's office in the first place. Thanks to the good people of Wisconsin - those who showed up to vote, AS WELL AS those who stayed home, claiming that voting was just gonna be useless. Well, how'd that work out for everybody?
Hey, I appreciate Wisconsin - the seat of the American Union Movement. I'm a union member myself, and I proudly and enthusiastically supported that boycott at the State Capitol and the whole Ian's Pizza thing a few years back. Many of us here on DU did. I don't know WHY that recall failed. I mean, I've seen the coverage and all, but it still doesn't make sense that that recall failed. And I find myself wondering whose fault that was. Did our side just not work hard enough? Did his side just lie more effectively? People were saying things like the recall wasn't necessary or it was overkill or they were just sick of having to go vote on something else yet again so soon after they already voted and blah-blah-blah.
The FACT is - the voters chose to leave him in office. Against the recall, and then next, when they had a chance to unseat him in his reelection efforts, they let that go through, too. So in my opinion, the problem still lies with THEM.
Sounds like he got the message from that movie as clearly as ted cruz got the message
from "Green Eggs and Ham."
I think this is what you get when you have this grooming thing that the GOP set up long ago. They'd take small-time players from the hinterlands who looked like they had some mojo and groom them, bring them along, school them in those wrong-wing one-sided think tanks, and teach them all the proper talking points and one-liners and zingers and slogans, and the deliberate repetition thereof, but it's less than an inch deep. They're a bunch of bots. And they really can't sustain on their own once they get into the BIG arena where the all training wheels are taken away.
This guy got pushed (or sweet-talked and flattered) into the deep end of the big pool - after having been formally relieved of his water wings.
KICK!!!
It turns out we CAN drag these bastards into the town square to be pelted with eggs and mud and rotten tomatoes! It's called the internet! And the town square is WORLD WIDE! EVERYBODY WHO CAN LOG ON, from ANYWHERE - now knows you've got card-carrying douchebags in your state legislature, New Hampshire. How proud you must be.
I looked through that story in the link for names of these bastards and, as usual, most of the guilty are protected by anonymity. So I suppose you'll have to go to the state legislature website and look 'em up individually. But I'd guess that because the Speaker of the House there is republi-CON, the majority is, too. That explains a lot. The mean-spirited, cruel, thoughtless ones usually ARE from the GOP. Our side generally tends not to do that shit nearly as much, if at all.
But there WAS this, in the comments section:
"It's obvious that the lawmakers were upset that 4th graders were able to put a bill together and they themselves can not."
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