arely staircase
arely staircase's Journalhappy birhday, kirk watson - a true texas progressive
I sure wish you were still my voice in the legs.
gender roles, stereotypes, postcards, and leap year
i had no idea that it was concidered acceptable for a woman to propose marriage to a man during (and only during, of coure) leap year back in the day. the recurring assumptions in these "jokes" are that marriage is akin to punishment for a man - how ironic given how subserviant women were generally expected to be, especially in marriage, at the time.
also assumed is that "pushy" women are ugly.
http://www.slate.com/slideshows/double_x/crazy-old-postcards-showing-women-proposing-to-men-during-leap-year.html#slide_1
why i can't oppose the death penalty in all cases
let me preface this by saying i support repealing the death penalty as it stands in my state (texas) and the others that have it. it is applied to minorities at a much greater rate than whites and it has undoubtedly resulted in the execution of innocent people (Todd Willingham here in my state)
but as a moral and ethical choice, i simply cannot take it off the table for the soldier or soldiers who murdered those poor children in kandahar. i just cannot.
sorry for whomever this pisses off (and i hope you are still my friends) but the person who did this deserves to have their own life taken from them. and when i say the person who did this, i mean the person who has been proven to have done it through due process.
gullibility
i have noticed a distinct trend among acquaintances and coworkers. the same people who forward innacurate right wing e-mails also send easily debunked ones of the non-political variety - that take two seconds to debunk if one has access to the internet (as they clearly do.) sometimes it will even be quack medical advice that is easily refuted if they would take those two seconds to check it out before sending potentially harmful information to their friends and coworkers. almost to a person, they belong to fundamentalist churches that interpret the bible literally and one was recently ripped off for several thousand dollars in some sort of scam.
It’s Not Just National, Obama Improving In Swing States Too
President Obama’s improving national approval numbers are certainly helpful to his re-election efforts — they drive a positive narrative after years of disappointing news on the economy.
But while nationwide numbers provide a snapshot of the country’s mood, the battle for the presidency will be fought state by state. So are Obama’s numbers also looking up in the all important swing states? It sure looks that way.
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/02/obama-improving-in-swing-states-too.php?ref=fpblg
Syrian Activists Live Stream Their Revolution
Mainstream journalists are barred from entering Homs, so a team of activists decided to record the offensive themselves. The activists positioned their cameras atop buildings in the city. Each morning the view is blue sky, a minaret, a sea of rooftops. Then come the booms.
.......
In one video, shot in a field hospital, Dayem walks through gruesome heaps of dead and injured people.
"We're not animals. We're human beings. We're asking for help," he says. "We're asking for your help. They're hitting us with rockets. They've not stopped with these for four hours now. They're gonna kill us all.
"If you don't help us now, they'll kill millions, and no one'll find out about us. Please, someone help us."
That same hospital itself was later hit by a rocket. The team immediately sent out a video of the aftermath.
.......
As for Dayem, he says he hopes that once the Syrian revolution is over, he can just go back to being a regular guy.
"I just want to go back to my life — listening to music, seeing my friends — and forget about all this," he says.
http://www.npr.org/2012/02/15/146895947/syrian-activists-live-stream-their-revolution
I find it good to think about people like this before I start my day. It helps me put things like someone cutting me off in traffic or the kid who never does his homework in perspective. My life is pretty good in grand scheme of things.
what if the president spoke at a neo-nazi, kkk prayer breakfast?
and what if while he were there he spoke about tolerance and compassion and brotherly/sisterly love? wouldn't that be a wonderful world in which to live? obviously it would never happen in the real world as we know it (security, politics and so on.) but just imagine such an awesome thing.
the reason i offer this idea is, obviosly, as a response to those who say the president's speech at the national prayer breakfast is equivelent to speaking before such white supremacist groups. if it is, however, one must also include in that hypothetical what message he would deliver. and to be consistent in the analogy it would have to be the message mentioned above.
personally i have longed for a president who would give a speech like the beautiful, eloquent, loving christian one the president gave at the national prayer breakfast. and as far as the first black president addressing neo-nazis and otherwise white supremacists in a manner that confounded their misguided world views, i can only say - i pray to live in such a world.
is asking a black man to dance a "jig" racist?
that's what the woman on google+ asked the president to do. the one who said her husband was out of work. i know it is a dance:
Jig - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaen.wikipedia.org/wiki/JigCached - Similar
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The Jig (Irish: port) is a form of lively folk dance, as well as the accompanying dance tune, originating in England in the 16th century and today most associated ...
but it is also a racial slur:
Urban Dictionary: jig and a pigwww.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jig%20and%20a%20pigCached - Similar
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a combination of two insults... 1 - "jig"...abbreviated version of jigaboo - a racial slur against blacks
so what gives?
Agents Provocateur
had to have been behind the flag burning. what better way to divide and conquer? nobody who is genuinely trying to rally the working class would do something so sure to piss off its members. - or at least alienate them from the movement.
think about it. the ptbs (and their police lackeys) have been proven to plant people in crowds to make real protesters look bad and that is clearly what this is.
i am sure that the real protesters will denounce this blatant attempt to paint ows as something they are not - anti-american . for once we have a genuine populist grassroots movement, and the 1 percent will stop at nothing to dicredit it.
All the way to the convention
“But the fact is, this race is going to go on. The conservatives clearly are rejecting Romney. He is nowhere near getting a majority. And the fact is, once you get beyond Florida, these are all proportional representation states, and he’s not going to be anywhere near a majority by April,” Gingrich explained to ABC’s Jake Tapper Sunday morning. “And so this is going to go on all the way to the convention.”
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/defining-florida-romney-camp-talks-up-a-win-while-gingrich-looks-beyond.php?ref=fpb
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