Saturday, March 26, 2011

Oh crap

Both Geraldine Ferrero and Diane Wynn Jones died today. Ferraro was
the first woman to run for VP. Wynn Jones wrote Howl's Moving Castle
along with numerous other amazing kid's fantasy books.
suckage

Friday, March 25, 2011

That's who the pick to do the mortgage fraud perp walk?

Go to the NYTimes and search for No Mortgage Brokers Behind Bars, But
Borrower Is or something to that effect. It's Nocera column if that
helps.
Isn't it lovely how that dilligent agent dug and dug and dug till he
could prosecute a borrower? I know I feel safer knowing that as long
as there are enough zeros attached to the dollar amount that you
steal, you'll be safe and sound. But your everyday mortgage holder
better watch what they say over cocktails.

When therapy clashes with reality

So i have an awesome therapist who's been hitting me hard with the
cognative behavioral stick. It's a wee bit hokey, but it works. Last
week (after the perfect apartment debacle) she made me write and
repeat 'I deserve good things to happen to me'. Today I went and saw
an appropriately priced place and Dickens could not have written a
slummier hole if he tried. Massive woodrot, security system that's
been broke so long that tenants have faded notes up reading ' honk or
yell for apartment 5', the floors were so uneven that I'm not sure if
it's a structural issue or if the lumps were dead things under the
carpet. But this is what the social worker thinks is appropriate. So
how does that mesh with the therapist telling me that I deserve good
things? Someone's view is scewed and I'm not sure whose.

about that AT&T Tmobile merger

Black Agenda Report has a petition to ask the SEC to stop the merger.
Go sign it for me because I can't from my TMobile phone.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Excuse me

while I go hide under a table to vomit and cry.
What? Like you've never left a dentist's office feeling the same way?
Of course it's the Kid who had the drilling done, so he's the one in
pain. But fucking medicaid, which only pays for (some) dental for
children is only paying the drilling portion. The dentist gave kid a
temp filling for free when i nearly (ok, not nearly but actually)
cried when they told me it would be 660 bucks to actually crown his
tooth. fucking fuck fuck fuck. That's more than I make in a month.
That's more than I make in 2 months. Argghhhh. I'll be the girl
hugging her knees and rocking under the table in a corner covered in
tears and vomit mumbling 660 dollars over and over.

Dammit child, stop growing!

Children always pick the most inopertune time to grow. We are on our
way to the dentist and the convo goes like this: Me: go rebrush your
teeth, for a whole 2 minutes, and put on a shirt without a hole in it.
Kid comes back a few minutes later in a dirty shirt. When I complain
he tells me all his other shirts are 'too short to wear in public'.
Damn. I'm allready trying, vainly to scrounge together money for a
past due electric bill and phone bill (so we can have lights and
internet in our new place when we find it) and mattresses that aren't
bed bug infested (700 gets us 2 brand new sets), and maybe a couch and
a tv from the thriftstore. So if you are a dude or have a dude in your
life who has some decent men's xl tees and hoodies you were planning
on sending to thrift store heaven, send me an email. i will totes take
them off your hands.

One simple rule for being an ally and not a douchenozzle

Are the people that you're fighting people with equal or greater
privilege than yourself? Yes? Congrats! you're an ally. No? YOU MIGHT
WANNA CHECK YOURSELF.
That's really all there is to it. Always fight upward. It might seem
like swimming upstream, but remember that you're clearing the way for
the mass of people behind you.

No food stamps for you (or your kids)

If you're a striking worker and the GOP gets there way (and let's be
honest, it's not like we have a labor supported democratic president
to stop this visciousness). You allready can't get food stamps for
yourself if you're in an academic college program (you can for your
kids though). So let's add another class of 'bad' poor people to the
list of folks who should starve to death. Poor college students who
try to rise above their station by getting an actual degree instead of
a technical certificate, striking union families who try to rise above
their station by demanding fair compensation. Man, it seems like the
only thing you get when you actually do pull yourself up by your boot
straps is an empty plate.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

The buck stops where again exactly?

Oh, it's Hillary's fault that Obama went into yet another war (without congressional consent). So far I've read the the Great O was "nagged" into bombing Libya, that he's an "effete" dude who let the foreign affairs girls "henpeck" him into bombing, etc. etc. etc.

Look, I like Hillary. I think she would have made a better president (or at least we would have had a better healthcare plan and someone in the executive branch who can at least spit out the word poverty) but she's way more hawkish than I am. But she's never denied that, unlike Obama. He pretended to be the anti-war president, but instead of ending either of the two official wars we're fighting, he's added a third. He is the president. The buck stops with him. That's true for the both international relations and domestic policy. If he really is anti-war, like he claimed to be in the primaries, then he's one giant leaking diaper of a coward if he can't stand up to his own cabinet. But I think it's worse than just cowardice. He's an opportunist who uses the words people wants to hear regardless of what he actually intends. If he was really as concerned about giving opportunity to the protesters screaming for democracy across the Middle East and North Africa, then Bahrain, Yemen, Morocco, etc would also be getting the straifing treatment. But those countries have either oil and a friendly (to us) dictator or no oil and why the fuck should we care. Libya is the only country where foreign military presence means actual spoils for the foreigners. That's why we're bombing. That's exactly what an opportunist does, uses the hearstring pull of possible democracy to explain why we're bombing, while really he just wants to drink Libya's milkshake.

So liberal dudes and conservative whiners alike, you can all quityerwhining that Obama is some pussy-whipped dude. Chill with the sexism and perhaps your fucking critiques will hold a little more water. (Because if you have to resort to sexism, racism, etc etc to make your argument, then your argument wasn't true to begin with).

Monday, March 21, 2011

If they really wanted to reduce abortion numbers

and by 'they' i mean both republifuckers and democrats, they would
start talking about child support enforcement. Per the last census (i
can't read the 2010 census on my phone) 70 percent of all child
support cases in this country have a past due balance and in many
states over 50 percent of all cases haven't seen a payment in over a
year. Woman are logical creatures, and since a huge number of women
who have abortions are already mothers, perhaps they are having
abortions because they already know the partners aren't going to pay
their fair share. The last time any politician talked seriously about
child support collection was Bill Clinton in the mid 1990's. But child
support falls mainly on the shoulders of manly men, and heaven forbid
a politician of either party shame them for failing to do their part.
Shame is a women only business in politics.

To steal from Corrente-It's all about the rents

Fucking AT&T, purveyors of extremely high-priced yet crappy cell
service, is buying T-mobile. I love T-Mobile. There service is great
and their prices are cheap-ish. they are decidely more expensive than
craptastic prepaid services, but it's worth it as their product is
vastly superior. Or at least it was until fucking AT&T decided to buy
it. There will now be only one gsm cell phone service in the country
and really just 2 major nationwide cell phone companies, AT&T amd
Verizon (I'm not counting Sprint. Nobody counts Sprint). I know the
freemarketeers like to blather about competition, but where the fuck
is it? We pay more for cell phone service than Europeans & Asians and
have crappier quality to boot. And in a year I'm going to be faced
with jacked up rates and crappier service because we like utility
company monopolies. Fuckers.