Archive for October, 2008

Ok, now we get to finally see some actual scenes from the film (far moreso than from the teaser from the past summer). Gah, now we have to wait until next summer to see this installment. I swear, the kids will be out of college before the last film is said and done.

So Palin continues to deride those areas and individuals who don’t vote Republican in the election, that they’re really anti-American. They’re traitors to their country, and they don’t really love god, the flag, or apple pie.

I was reading over a post by a blogger who was extolling how Palin will ride to the rescue in 2012. Why this soccer mom – the idea of a muggle deciding to get involved in politics is a nice idea, even up to the state legislature level – getting any real consideration. All she can do is evade answers to any real questions. She’s uneducated, uninformed, and dangerously so backwater that I wonder how she allows herself out of the house (her mentality is shades of women supposed to be barefoot and pregnant).

I suppose what pisses me off most about this election more than most is that the Republican’s only option is to come from a platform of fear. If you don’t vote for us, you’re a trator. If you don’t vote for us, you’re killing our children by encouraging terrorists to bomb the US. The lists goes on.

Big city people have an infinitely better sense of the bigger picture than yokels from backwater hamlets. But it’s just those small town, small minded people who are still clinging on to the idea that those WMDs are still out there in Iraq. All they know is their own backyard and care about the next PTA meeting. There’s nothing wrong with living in a small town, but really, don’t pretend to know about (or care about) things that go on in the world that happen beyond the county lines. Palin’s a great one to push for the new bake sale, but she has no business being on a national (let alone international) stage.

What the fuck? Are people in this country really so dim that they think Palin’s a good idea? The notion that she might be one heartbeat away from the Presidency is mortifying. Granted she’s the MILF next door, but she’s simply not that bright or informed. And being someone who can’t make up her mind unless God tells her to, that’s even more scary.

Here’s another of her latest commentaries:

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who has accused Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists," has refused to call people who bomb abortion clinics by the same name.

When asked Thursday night by NBC television presenter Brian Williams whether an abortion clinic bomber was a terrorist, Palin heaved a sigh and, at first, circumvented the question.

"There’s no question that Bill Ayers by his own admittance was one who sought to destroy our US Capitol and our Pentagon. That is a domestic terrorist," Palin said, referring to a 1960s leftist who founded a radical violent gang dubbed the "Weathermen" — and who years later supported Obama’s first run for public office in the state of Illinois.

"Now, others who would want to engage in harming innocent Americans or facilities that it would be unacceptable to… I don’t know if you’re gonna use the word ‘terrorist’ there," the ardently pro-life running mate of John McCain said.

Early this month, after the New York Times ran an article highlighting the ties between Obama and Ayers, Palin told a campaign rally in Colorado that Obama "sees America it seems as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

Attacks on doctors who practice abortion and on family planning clinics in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s left several people dead and scores wounded.

Eric Rudolph, the extreme right winger who planted a bomb at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, which killed one person, was sentenced three years ago to two life terms in jail for an abortion clinic bombing in Alabama in which a policeman was killed.

Of all the Faire seasons of recent memory (now granted I’m already well famous for having a somewhat spotty one at this point), I don’t believe I’ve ever experienced or seen one quite as rough on a personal side as this one.

I don’t think there’s a producer I know of that hasn’t had deeply personal problems this year: separations, divorces, major surgery, death in the immediate family, loss of home, loss of job, everything one could imagine almost. With each next person chiming in that they had to take some personal time to step back, another story was waiting around the next corner.

It seems like another lifetime ago when I hopped into the car to head off to set up for the Symposium weekend back in Feb. I still have a particular feeling that I’d gone up the hill to Tahoe, but never came back down again. I wonder what it’ll be like to go back again next year – who will I be by then, how will it feel to go back to where really everything started (and ended).

Life goes on. So does hope, and aspirations, and love, and friendships. Even as close as it got this past year to it not going on – I learned a great deal about myself and about what I want out of life, both in the near as well as longer term.

And I learned to no longer be afraid. Of myself most notably. I’d blamed faire for many of my behaviors – but doing so was really like an alcoholic on a bar for their addiction. It was a crutch, an enabler, but I was letting myself get swept along instead of standing up and doing what I really wanted most.

Now for the Holiday season, and then to 2009. I hope most earnestly that 09 is a vast improvement for myself, my friends, and my loved ones over what came in 08.

I’m not a fan of fanatics of any persuasion. Rather by definition a fanatic can no longer thing for themselves but is only fully driven by their abject and blind faith in their world-view (most notably in instances of religion).

I got another of Fred’s spam email’s, and this one was a diatribe of Obama’s comments that America was a nation of many religions and not just one (talking about Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc). This email actually took exception to the statement. How bloody ignorant does one have to be to not at least see the comment as one of fact. You might not like the idea, but I’d really not realized how much the counter-reformation was still alive and well in the xenophobic kneejerks that happens when people realize that there’s not just followers of the Jesus Cult making up the citizens of the USA. Rather by definition Christians are all just lapsed Jews anyway, but that’s a theological joke, so let’s move on.

Now don’t think that I’m not annoyed by the fact that all the religions can have their festivals and events, but have a large Christian event and people will get all bent out of shape. Christians should entirely be able to celebrate their holidays (enough with this getting twitchy whenever there’s a christmas pagaent or carols). I sword to never associate with any ACLU after their roughshod attacks on my hometown’s christmas program. Nothing like seeing a 50 year old tradition vanish on a whim. But while I support those, I would also say that if the community wanted a kwanzaa event, or beltane, or whichever, they had an equal right. And the size and attendance to each will be proportional to it’s pervasiveness in the community. But they should all be able to have their time. It only serves to enrich the community as a whole.

Militant Muslims, like militant Christians are equally types of terrorists. Each speaks about wiping the other off the map before the other guy can do it to them. They interpret the Bible and Koran each as giving them full leave to kill the infidels. While most plain thinkers reading either book will walk away with messages of “be nice to each other”.

Someone like Palin is one of those who scares me with the idea that people can still honestly believe that the world is a few thousand years old, that the bible is absolute literal and infallible truth. That in a thousand years we are still a few lines of rhetoric away from another Crusade in the Holy Land.