Is the tail wagging the dog?

When the tea party first rose its head a couple of summers ago, we were told they were all about ‘getting our fiscal house in order.’  Many proposed draconian, drastic cuts, others trooped around in three cornered hats and did the fife and drums thing.  What was not said was that they were also the social conservatives, the radical Republicans.

We can see now that the social conservatives finally got their nose under the tent and House Speaker John Boehner has been put on notice–do what we say or lose your job.  Boehner is a smart enough politician to know that there are just some issues you don’t  tack on as a rider to a budget.  Obviously he had no choice.

Perhaps we will all survive.  But we look absurd to everyone else in the world.  We have debt problems but we protect the very wealthy.  Some knuckle heads continue to think, even after 25 years of it not paying  off, that protecting the very wealthy will produce jobs. Where are those jobs?

We are involved in three wars, and we almost  shut the government down over abortion?  And not even the right to abortion–it was imaginary abortion.   The radicals wanted to kill off Planned Parenthood.  Now Planned Parenthood is universally known as the place where people who don’t want to get pregnant go.  Patients can get relatively inexpensive birth control and required health services.  Planned Parenthood also takes medicaid patients, unlike so many other medical facilities.  What idiots want to shut down places to get contraception in order to fight abortion?  Now where is the logic?

Most Americans don’t see abortion or Planned Parenthood as big threats to our country.  What they do see as threatening are rising food costs, foreclosures, joblessness, job insecurity, overcrowded classrooms, expensive health care costs and crime.  They don’t give a fig about abortion or the fact that some penny of their tax money might find its way into co-mingling money used for abortion.

The culture warriors need to be driven out.  We need to get on with running the country.  We need to tell these clowns that they are making us the laughing stock.  We need to make sure the tail isn’t wagging the dog.

Conservative Groups Boycott CPAC

ABC News:

Several conservative groups and individuals plan to boycott the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) which takes place later this month  (Feb. 10-12)  in Washington, DC.  Why are the groups boycotting and who are they?

From speakers like Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., to panels on “How Political Correctness is Harming America’s Military” and “Reagan at 100: Role Model for the Next Generation,” the agenda for the three-day gathering is chock full of personalities and events designed to fire up the conservative base.

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NASA Announcement: I want to believe

This afternoon, NASA will have a major announcement.  Naturally people are speculating that they are going to announce evidence of alien life.  Other speculation is that there are 3 times as many stars as previously thought.

I think they are going to tell us that the moon landings were a hoax, just like all the rednecks used to say and that NASA and NBC planned the hoax.  Just kidding, just kidding!

 

Would it be good news or bad news if alien life were discovered?  I am not so arrogant to think that we are the only beings out there capable of human-type thought.  However, I am not so sure I want them here. 

As more and more information has been released from the American vaults of secrecy, who knows what has been discovered or what will be released.

 

Banned Books Week (BBW) Sept. 25-Oct. 2

From the American Library Association:

Censorship can be subtle, almost imperceptible, as well as blatant and overt, but, nonetheless, harmful. As John Stuart Mill wrote in On Liberty:

If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

— On Liberty, John Stuart Mill

 

Banned Books Week began back in 1982.  It is always designated as the last week in September.  It is the only national celebration of  the freedom to read what we want.  More than a thousand challenges from every state have come in since 1982. 

 The following list is the top 100 banned or challenged classics:

 

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Defying Gravity Wins 3rd Place on America’s Got Talent

Credit: Trae Patton/NBC
Credit: Trae Patton/NBC

The VA Tech black light impressionist group, Defying Gravity won 3rd place in America’s got talent in the season finale last night. 

The group are fraternity brothers–Pi Kappa Alpha and got their start performing in a school talent show.  Pretty impressive.  Hokies continue to amaze us. 

They have been asked to play at the Hard Rock Cafe in Vegas on New Years Eve.  When asked about returning to Tech, the answers were iffy.

Now if the football team could only do that well. sigh.

Torches and Pitchforks

Democracy, the old-fashioned way
Democracy, the old-fashioned way

[UPDATE: At least one other blog has launched a character assassination of some of us here on Moonhowlings. Actually, I haven’t been sent a single word that is true. That’s the sad part. How can people be so self-righteous and yet be so incorrect in their assumptions?]

The Torches and Pitchforks gathering at Manassas City Chambers scheduled for tomorrow night @ 7 pm just might have to take to the parking lot.  The Manassas City Council will be holding a special meeting at 6:30 in the chambers.  It will be difficult for 2 meetings to be held at the same place at the same time.  Citizens time will be held and the same standards as any other Council meeting will be adhered to. 

This meeting will follow a closed session with attorneys scheduled for 5:30 p.m. 

Since this topic  cropped up last week, I have read and heard the word ‘Christian’ thrown around quite a bit.  That’s getting a little old.  Plenty of good Christian people, as well as people of other faiths, will be in attendance at the City Council meeting supporting an upscale adult boutique.  Some of the politicians who want to trumpet their religion to their base should be just as worried about dissing those folks who don’t consider themselves part of  the Conservative Christian movement. 

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What is Pornography?

    

From Netsafe Kids:

WHAT IS PORNOGRAPHY?

“I shall not today attempt further to define [obscenity]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it….”

That famous statement, uttered by the late Justice Potter Stewart in 1973 when faced with a case involving obscenity, illustrates the difficulty of trying to determine what constitutes obscene or pornographic content. The term “pornography” has no well-defined meaning, certainly no legal definition. And if a Supreme Court justice had trouble defining the nature of sexually explicit material, how easy is it for the rest of us—each of whom looks at the world in a different way? Lack of consensus is one reason the subject of pornography is such a contentious legal issue.

Pornography is a word thrown about all too easily.  We call lots of things ‘porn’ or pornography when we really don’t mean it.  We joke a lot about porn.  Obviously the XXX girlie shows are porn, aren’t they?  Anything that says XXX has to be porn and it has been my experience, if it has even one X, it is. 

I realized last week that people have very different ideas about what constitutes pornography.  A new adult boutique will be opening in the City of Manassas in the near future  and the townspeople are beside themselves.  I am asking what’s the big deal?  Another such shop exists on route 28 that has been in business for at least 20 years.  People don’t like the location of the new kid on the block, it seems.  Not in the City of Manassas!  So do we want to take what we perceive as porn and brush it under the rug?  Do we want it far away so we can sneak into the store and buy something we wouldn’t want our mothers to know about and not be seen by our friends and neighbors? 

Is Old Town Manassas the crown jewel where there are no secrets?  Young people (under 40) seem to have a lot easier time simply discussing things like sex toys and real fancy erotic underwear much easier than those of us who are post 40.  Yet, some of the people hollering the loudest are not in the post 40 demographic. 

The best example I can come up with when someone asks what is porn would be the John Bobbitt flick he made after he was sliced and diced.  Someone got Mr. Howler an advanced copy and he was all proud of himself for getting the coveted video.  I lasted maybe all of 30 seconds before I left the room.  Mr. Howler, tough guy that he is, was even grossed out and he didn’t last more than 5 minutes.  So is porn stuff that grosses us out?  Is it always sexual?  How do we decide what ‘community standards’ are?  Is the issue of porn on a collision course with 1st amendment rights?

Before we can decide what kind of shops we want to condone or condemn , it seems sensible to clarify what we really consider pornographic, obscene or indecent.  In doing so, we have to realize that our neighbors probably won’t come up with the same set of attributes. 

 

I Have a Scheme….Jon Stewart on the Glenn Beck Civil Rights Rally

Jon Stewart is going on vacation again for 10 days. grrrrrrr

Before he leaves, however, he did handle some important business. Jon’s humor is biting on this one. He rips Glenn Becks’ civil rights/restoring honor rally.

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The Real Impact of the AG Abortion Clinic Opinion

Rachel Maddow does an excellent job of showing how rights can be taken away by making whatever it is that people are trying to do  inaccessible.  Inaccessibility  substitutes for making an act illegal.  Its a rather cowardly, un-democratic means of getting one’s own political way.  Maddow  also interviews the executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice America.

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Maddow explains how hospital regulations would financially  burden abortion providers rather than making abortion safer (Double wide hallways, swinging doors, 15 mile proximity to emergency room, etc.) Cuccinelli’s explanation is vague and full of weasel words, so that the average Virginian really doesn’t know what is being said.

Cuccinelli  attempted draconian, technically illegal abortion legislation while he served in the Virginia Senate.  He was unable to ever pass his legislation.  Now he attempts to circumvent legislation by simply declaring his opinion to be law.  His attempts to codify his own opinion won’t fly for long. 

Cuccinelli will not last. Most people don’t like having other people in their bedrooms. It remains to be seen if McDonnell will execute Cuccinelli’s opinion into state policy. Meanwhile, Cuccinelli has driven Virginia so far to the cultural right that he endangers other Republicans who might not be extremists.

Finally, Maddow addresses something the rest of us have been aware of for a long time. There is a tendency to bully those who are pro-choice. Many pro-choice people feel too  intimidated to admit they are pro-choice, much less hold their legislators accountable for their votes. Every woman in Virginia must decide that the women of Virginia are capable of making their own morally appropriate choices. They need to decide today that they will not allow others to define them. Pro-choice is not being pro-abortion and do not let anyone tell you it is.

Senators demand investigating BP’s oil deal with Libya

Remember the dude who was released from Scottish prison back in August of 2009 and sent home to Libya?  He wasn’t just your run of the mill thug.  Megrahi had received a life sentence for his involvement in the Lockerbie bombing.  189 Americans lost their life on Pan Am Flight 103.   290 lives were lost in all. 

The public was told that Megrahi had only weeks to live and he was being released for  humanitarian reasons.  Americans were outraged at the time, but this guy just seemed to float off the radar.  Did I mention that Megrahi is still alive?   So much for days, weeks, or months left.

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Virginia’s love-hate relationship with federal spending

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Northrop Grumman is headed to Virginia. It is the 61st largest company in the United States and it is a huge defense contractor.

According to the Washington Post:

RICHMOND — At a news conference last week at Northrop Grumman’s Rosslyn offices, where a panoramic view of Washington loomed outside a floor-to-ceiling wall of glass, Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell ticked off the reasons he thinks the giant defense contractor chose to locate its new corporate headquarters in the commonwealth.

He cited the state’s low corporate tax rate, its business-friendly regulations and right-to-work laws that prohibit requiring employees to join unions.

One factor the Republican didn’t mention: The massive flow of federal spending that provides the core of Northrop’s business and has made it the nation’s 61st-largest company.

McDonnell has been a leading voice in railing against rising federal spending. But lost amid the calls for Washington to freeze or reduce spending is this twist: Although most economists agree that mounting federal debt could be dangerous to the national economy, Virginia has thrived on Washington’s decade-long spending spree, according to analyses done by professors at Virginia colleges.

Ten cents of every federal procurement dollar spent anywhere on Earth is spent in Virginia. More than 15,000 Virginia companies hold federal contracts, a number that has almost tripled since 2001. Total federal spending — from salaries to outsourced contracts — has more than doubled, to $118 billion, since 2000, as homeland security and defense spending skyrocketed in response to the 2001 terrorist attacks and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. By 2008, it accounted for about 30 percent of Virginia’s entire economy.

Federal dollars have filtered through the rest of the economy, too, helping to build the high-tech Dulles corridor and funding new homes and cars for federal workers and contractors and meals at local restaurants. The billions have helped fuel the economic boom cycles of the past decade and have cushioned the blow of the recent recession, particularly in Northern Virginia, where the unemployment rate has stayed stubbornly below 6 percent, less than the state and national rates.

“We have a rich uncle, I like to remind people — Uncle Sam,” said Stephen Fuller, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University.

Maybe Cuccinelli shouldn’t be trying so hard to piss off the feds. It sounds like Virginia is riding the old gravy train. To have less than 6% unemployment in this economy is enviable. To be getting 10 cents of every federal procurement dollar spent anywhere on earth is quite an accomplishment.

Much as McDonnell probably won’t like sharing the limelight, much of Virginia’s pro-business reputation was developed and nurtured by people like Mark Warner. Under the Kaine administration, Virginia was voted the number one state to do business in. McDonnell is savvy and should continue the tradition of attracting and maintaining businesses and a robust economy. He just needs to rein in his attorney general since much of that business originates with federal contracting.

136th Run for the Roses

It’s that time of year again…time to run for the roses.  The Kentucky Derby is the first leg of 3 important horse races.  The Kentucky Derby, the Preakness , and the Belmont Stakes haven’t produced a triple crown winner since Affirmed in 1978.

horse moving ears

The odds are given at the official Kentucky Derby site.  You can also read more about the contenders, trainers, owners, jockeys. 

Kentucky Derby 136:  Race 11, 6:24 p.m. EDT post time on NBC

There are 20 horses currently on the slate to run.  Of course, anything can happen right up to post time.  There is one filly running, Devil May Care.   Racing critics feel she has been off her game this week.  To read a little about the contenders, see the next page:

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Mother Earth–You Fickle Bitch!

ss-100416-volcano-update-2_ss_fullJon Stewart thinks people are always trying to make others feel guilty. Mother Earth apparently is no different.
He is also very disappointed in the lack of truly good descriptors for the volcano and its unpronounceable name. He names it Kevin. He can say that name. He attempts to help out the lack-luster coverage of the Icelandic volcano.

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