Oh look- it's a douchebag parade!

Apparently some god-bag right wing blog is all in a huff cause I'm a shameless abortion having hussy.

No- I am not giving you a link to where. I don't believe in torturing people I generally like, but if you are a masochist and wanna read about a bunch whiny asswipes crying over the poor baybiesssssssssss- go find it in comments.

We now return to our regularly scheduled patriarchy blaming.

A note for the nice guys

I'm going to do for you what no one ever did for George Sondini, not the women who said he was "nice, but...." and not the PUA that he went to to find out how to pick up young women. I'm going to tell it straight up and hopefully you'll get a clue. If you pay attention, you'll be happier, and maybe one less misogynistic asswipe will think it's his duty to kill bitches and hoes.

1) When we say "you're such a nice guy" we are trying to let you down easy. Sometimes it's because we actually care, but usually it's because we think you might be a bit of a sociopathic nutbag and we don't want to push you over the edge.

2) Stop thinking that "nice guy" equals nice. It doesn't. It means we can sense the desperation coupled with woman-hate coming off you. You reek of it, like a sick animal. Try being a good guy instead. Good guys are polite, sweet, thoughtful, well groomed, etc, AND don't think they deserve to get laid simply because they don't beat women. Good guys are the kind of guys you can trust never to turn into stalkers or date rapists. They can handle rejection. They don't hate all women just because a cheerleader in high school never gave them the time of day.

3) Because it's sooooo important- lemme reiterate: Good guys can handle rejection. They don't spend weeks mooning over some woman who they are too scared to actually ask out. They don't build women up in their minds as the end all be all of their existence because they lack the courage to ask a simple question "do you wanna go out sometime?". They can take a "no", or a "I've got a boyfriend", or a "I'm not really dating right now" and roll with it. Rejection hurts and at some point everyone gets rejected, but they move on and find someone who does want to go out with them. If you don't have the mental stability to handle a "no" or twelve, then you have no business dating anyone. Get to a shrink's couch before you hurt someone.

4) No one deserves sex. You won't die without it. But if think you deserve sex, if you treat sex as an entitlement rather than as a way for 2 people to make themselves and each other feel good, then you are way less likely to ever have sex. Sex is not a hard won prize found at the bottom of a cereal box. You don't get sex just because you wore the right shoes or went to the gym or didn't force yourself on someone or said the magic words that secretly unlock a girl's panties. There are no secret words like that.

5)Pick up artists are a sham. Save your money. Their tricks are tired, cliched, and any woman who isn't pass-out-drunk sees through their crap. You wanna try handing out a "neg", then you better be prepared for a woman to roll her eyes at you and then gossip with her friends about the "douchebag who thinks Mystery is the shit". There is really only one recipe for sex- take 2 people, who are both attracted to each other AND want to have sex with each other, add condoms and privacy. That's it. It's pretty simple.

6) There isn't someone for everyone, but there are more people out there that have potential than you think. Are you a middle aged man? Are you trying to date 20 somethings? Are you either George Clooney or Bill Gates? No. Then those 20 somethings are going to steer clear of you. Take a good, objective look at yourself. Are you short? Fat? Skinny? Bald? Poor? Old? These are not insurmountable problems. But just like you want the hotties to give you a chance despite your imperfections, you maybe wanna give more women a chance than just the cheerleader types who ignored you in high school. Besides, men who find a broader spectrum of women attractive have more sex, not less. And don't you want to have more sex?

7) Just because one (or 12 or 20) women treated you badly does not mean all women are money grubbing whores. Remember how I said we can smell the woman-hate coming off you. That's where it comes from. Look, I've had some dudes do some criminally horrible shit to me, like life threateningly awful. But I don't hate all men. I give each dude the chance to show me who he is, and I've never made the same mistake twice when it comes to dating. You need to do the same with women. If you find that the same thing keeps happening to you with different women, then the problem is you and not all women. You are attracted to the kind of women who will treat you badly, and you need to figure out why.

8) No one is attracted to a door mat, but this doesn't mean that you should be an asshole instead. If you like a woman, ask her out. Send an email or call her. ONCE. Not 17 times just to make sure she got your other messages. If she's into you, she'll reply. If she's not, she'll give you some kind of "thanks but no thanks" or she won't reply at all. If she was on the fence and you just showed some crazy stalking behavior with the 17 messages, you've just blown it. Confidence means being able to take the risk that you'll be rejected, and being able to be rejected with grace. Assholes are just the flip side of the nice guy- they are what happens when nice guys get rejected. And they don't get laid either.

9)Stop complaining that "women only like assholes". Perhaps all the women you like only date assholes (which says something about who you are attracted too) or perhaps your definition of asshole is wrong. Those guys you think are assholes are probably confident, non-stalkers with some charm and a decided lack of woman-hate.

10) Be interesting just because interesting is fun. Men who turn themselves inside out trying to make themselves attractive to women are boring and creepy, just like women who are completely focused on finding a husband are boring and creepy. Read a book, travel, find music you love or play in nature if that's your thing. Do things that you find enjoyable. Be passionate about something other than getting laid and learn to talk about it. Talking is wayyyyyyyyyy more important than what kind of car you drive or how big your paycheck is or whether or not you have a full head of hair.

And if you are not sure if you are a nice guy, I'd suggest checking this out.

So much better than dealing with rape apologists

There is a Fraggle Rock movie in the works and I am so happy about it I just might pee myself from joy.


So to get my mind off douchebags who think rape is genetic- I'm gonna have to sing along to this happy little video

Men's worst fear

is that women will laugh at them.

Women's worst fear is that men will kill them.

Think about that while the stories about murderous douchebag George Sodini (Sorry OD- links to Jezebel) come out. Three women are dead because he couldn't get laid. And the MRA wankers want to though him a fucking parade. (Not a link to Jezebel).

Let's get one thing straight- no one deserves sex. No one. Not even George Clooney deserves to get laid. Sex is not a shiny prize you win at the end of a battle. It's not a reward for good behavior. It's not something women owe to men who have enough human decency not to rape them or beat them.

But if there is one thing that Sodini did, it's that he proved that Nice Guys(TM) really aren't nice. Women stay away from them because they can sense the asshole hiding right under the surface. And every single women I know has had a problem with a guy like Sodini at some point. It's one of the things that the internet has made both better and worse. Now at least we can deal with the asswipes from a distance, long before they get our phone numbers or addresses. But we still end up with an inbox full of downward spiraling crazy rants.

Sodini is just the end product of rape culture. He was a man who thought that sex was owed to him, but wasn't willing to cross the line to actual rapist to get it. Instead he choose murder. In a post feminist society, Sodini might have been able to recognize that his desperate need and douchebaggery were the reasons he wasn't getting laid, as quite a few former Nice Guys have. But instead he blamed the problem on us bitches.

And that got women killed. That is why our worst fear is that you'll kill us. That's why catcalls are frightening and not flattering. That is why it's hard to give a guy we don't know well a flat out "no". We never know when our saying no will get us hurt.

Puts that whole fear of rejection/ being laughed at thing in perspective, doesn't it.

For I don't know what reason

old(er) men like to chat with me. I don't know why, but they do.

So today I'm sitting outside at work enjoying a smokey lung treat (back off you anti-smoking crusaders, nicotine is the only reason I haven't turned into a violent outlaw- yet) when random dude walking down the street stops to talk to me. He's probably in his late 50s, white, bearded former hippy looking dude.

Random dude: That's my favorite thing, sitting in the sunshine and having a smoke. But I'm all out.

Me: (because while I may or may not believe in god- I do know that cigarette karma is real!!!!!!!!!!!)Here, have one of mine.

Rd: I'm divorcing my 3rd wife

Me: That sounds like 3 wives too many

Rd: Nooooooooo. I love them all. A warrior never stops loving a woman. I still love all the girls I loved in high school.

Me: I just think some people are the marrying kind and some people aren't. I am not.

Rd: I don't care what you think, or what you know, I just care what you believe. What do you believe is the color of truth in a warrior society?

Me: What does a warrior society mean?

Rd: You can't answer my question with a question! A warrior society is a good society, not like this one. This is a predator society. Answer the question. What is the color of truth!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is turning into the kind of argument that you have with wingnuts and religious fanatics and libertarians, basically anyone who holds that there is only one good answer to everything and it's theirs. It's a disingenuous style of debate and people that use it are almost always douchebags (and wrong).

First, answering his question with ANYTHING other than a question would mean that I subscribe to his view that there is such a thing as a warrior society and that it is a preferable thing to what we have now. Since I don't know what a warrior society is in his mind (and in my mind I'm pretty sure it's paternalistic and old fashioned) I needed him to provide information before I could even think about answering.

Second, I was being polite, friendly and not argumentative. I asked him what he meant while maintaining the demeanor of a well trained shrink. But just asking him to clarify his views pissed him off enough to start yelling. (Ahhhhh the patriarchy does NOT LIKE TO BE QUESTIONED!)

So from this little exchange I'm going to give you all some tips for dealing with disingenuous debaters (works very well on the forced pregnancy shitstains).

1. Stay calm. It's hard, cause dammit sometimes you just want to punch them in the face with a sack full of their own stupidity.

2. Biggest fallacy ever when you're debating someone is that you are going to change their mind. That is not your goal. Sometimes (rarely) it happens, but the real goal is to sway the minds of the listeners. If you're arguing and no one is there to watch, use it for practice. But if you argue with someone only to sway them, you've already lost the fight. You'll take it personally when they don't change their mind and that will make you less focused on finding the flaws in their logic and more focused on trying to find a way to frame your argument so that they can see your point of view. Forget it.

3. Answer questions with questions. Make them clarify exactly what they believe. You will either get them mad enough to storm off by doing this, or they will turn themselves around in their mis-logic until they're confused. For example, a guy once said to me "there is no speaking for the white men anymore!" I countered with "Well the president is a white dude (this was pre-Obama) the supreme court is almost entirely white dudes, congress is mostly white dudes, so are most of the CEOs in this country. Which one of them isn't speaking for you?"

4. Don't let them set the parameters. This is where framing comes in and it is most important. For example, any phrase that sets the moral high ground in their territory like "we can both agree that abortions are bad". Counter with "Why are abortions bad?" the response will be something about killing bayyyyyyyyybies! You can come back with "But abortions save the lives of women, especially 3rd trimester abortions. Are you saying that abortions are bad because they save women's lives?" Or when weirdos on the street ask you about "the color of truth in a warrior society". It's total rubbish and his question has no logical answer, but by answering it I would have to acknowledge things that aren't true.

After I refused to buy into Random dude's worldview of a warrior society without him clarifying exactly what that means, he stormed off saying that I must be a "very sad person". Which means I win. While I am a lover of the personal insults to the package size of your average troll, when someone flounces off because they can't be logical then the game is over. And anyone who saw that just saw a big whiny ass baby go crying home to mama.

Congratualtions

Scott Roeder, terrorist, murderer, and forced-pregnancy proponent says:

"I haven't been convicted of anything, and I am being treated as a criminal"

Congratulations Mr. Roeder, you've just joined the ranks of douchebags like Hans Fritzl who cannot understand why they are being punished for committing a crime.

The patriarchy hurts men too

So there is this student, very young, very sweet, kinda typical 19 year old every dude. He has a wee bit of a crush on me (he's too young, they have to be old enough to buy vodka) but he's not obnoxious about his little crush. He's just mostly sweet and dumb in the way that 19 year olds are.

So yesterday he was in my lab and just had to show me this fabulous comic he just saw. It was of an older woman in a bikini who had been catching some rays and because her gross droopy old boobies were sagging she had a stupid tan line. Yeah, I can hear you all laughing at that one. Hahahahahaha. Old women should know that if they aren't hot sex bots they should cover up and stay home. Sooooooooooo funny and completely original. Nobody ever makes fun of women for not being super fuckable all the time.

I didn't laugh. I didn't do that thing we do when we're stuck in uncomfortable situations with douchebags where we fake laugh kinda just to get out of the situation. I just said "that's incredibly sexist" and went back to work. I could see that what was about to come out of his mouth was "come on, it's just a joke" but I think he stopped himself at "co".

So thanks patriarchy, you just took a perfectly sweet dude and turned him into a douchebag.

(Not exactly off topic- but has anyone seen the video for Eminem's We Made You? I know it's like shooting fish in a barrel to point out his rampant woman hate- but EVERY SINGLE PERSON he picks on in that video is a woman except for Brett Michaels. For a dude so full of anxious masculinity, I find it totally cowardly and unoriginal that he doesn't go after fellow rappers or anyone who could actually kick his ass, but he goes after the already brutalized. Wow tough guy, way to prove your street cred)

Remember all those times

I told you peeps that "libertarian is shorthand for douchebag" or maybe asshat, I can't remember now.

Two stories of Libertarian asshatery today, both involving Facebook scumbag Peter Thiel. First, Libertarians want their own private island kingdoms (close enough to home so that they don't have to deal with expensive things like military protection but still able to get out of paying taxes). I say good riddance, but will happily become a pirate queen and rob all you non-taxpayers blind. You think the Coast Guard is going to come to your rescue when you've committed treason? Hardly.

Next, Thiel thinks girls are the downfall of society.

Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron.

Ah yes, women who vote and participate in society bring it down. Funny how science proves him wrong. countries that have more freedom and equality for women actually have stronger economies and higher standards of living. But Libertarian asshats rarely let the facts get in their way of plotting world domination.

(I am now fully convinced that Facebook is the root of all evil- especially since it has become a tool for ex-boyfriends, including Kid's stalker daddy, to track me down and pester me long after I sent them packing)

(Also- does Thiel seem like the absolute archetype for the evil "genius" in kid's cartoons. I can totally see him rubbing his hands together and trying to invent a magic laser that disappears all the females in the world cause "girls have cooties")

"Girl Talk" is codeword for misogynybag

Kid and I were taking our usual bus ride home tonight. This particular route is known for it's perpetual lateness, being one of the longest routes in the city. Our bus wasn't any later than usual, but it was being driven by a trainee with a trainer sitting close by to give tips, etc.

So Kid and I grab an open seat at the back of the bus and the dude behind me starts screaming about how slow the bus is moving (no slower than normal, mind you).

Screaming dude: Fucking move it! Push it! Push it! Fucking girl talk is for breaks, shut up and drive! Move. Rock it! Push it! This is no time for chit chat!

This tirade goes on for about a mile. I'm tired, grouchy, I already had a headache before I got on the bus. Dude is not just screaming in my ear, but he's being a great big misogynist douchebag while he's at it (can you guess what gender the trainee and trainer are by the "girl talk" comments?)

So me being me, I turned around and asked the douchebag if he could "Just knock off the misogyny?"

So his little tirade turned to me instead "fucking bitch better shut your mouth I wasn't talking to you bitch just be glad I'm getting off this bus or my evil twin would show you what's up"

He gets off the the bus, and I turn to the Kid.

Me: How much you wanna bet me that if the driver were a dude that asshole would have shut up.

Kid: Nothing, I'd lose the bet.

Girl talk. I fucking hate that phrase. It implies that any discussion done between two women (or girls) is frivolous and should be ignored. In the case of the misogynybag, it was meant to convey the idea that his time was wayyyyyyyyy more important than anything these two women could possibly be talking about, even if what they were talking about was their work and how to do it better. If they didn't shut up and pay attention to his needs, then they weren't doing anything worth while.

And people wonder why I hate movies and tv that doesn't pass the Bechtel test. Until we see women talking to other women as being just as important as anything a man might talk to another man about, everything out of our mouths will just be considered "girl talk".

"But of course this isn't a recession"

I've been having the same kind of fights with people for the last few months. It's almost always over politics or economics, and it's always with people who are very uneducated on either topic. I can always see them coming from a mile away. They are the kind of people who spout talking points like they are fact but have no idea of the history or theory used to create those talking points. They are the libertarians who have never read Adam Smith (or put him in historical context) but just like to repeat the "Taxes bad!" theme. They are the kind of people who believe their opinion is important simply because they have one, not because they are right. It usually ends with me screaming "For god's sake read a fucking book you moron!".

Political theory does not begin with the Daily Show and end with Colbert and just because you've ever held a dollar in your hand does not make you an expert on the financial crisis.

So I'm reading Jezebel this morning and I come across this cute little quote:

The banking crisis was touched off by the mortgage crisis and both contributed to the financial crisis that most economists had been predicting because of everyone's willingness to spend money they didn't actually have.

Oh for fucks sake, this crisis was not caused because people spend $3 at Starbucks everyday or own more pairs of shoes than they can wear and put it all on their credit cards. We spend less of a percentage of our incomes on food, clothing and electronics than we did 50 years ago. Consumer goods are cheaper than they used to be. We may have more of them, but we spend less money on them than our parents did. That's why poor people can afford to spend $200 every 5 years or so on a new TV but can't afford $1000 a month for health insurance.

We don't have savings now because we don't have the incomes to support them. Wages have been stagnant for damn near 30 years while inflation keeps going up. And inflation is greatest in housing, education and healthcare. So if wages are stagnant, people find ways to make up for the lack of income. They invest in something that is useful to them both now and in the future, like their homes. Homeownership and equity have been the only things making people able to live a middle class life since their wages aren't keeping up.

(As a kind of aside- isn't it funny that two of the major areas of inflation, health care and education, are things that the government could provide easily to everyone if we weren't afraid of the big bad socialist label. Universal health care and universal education from preschool to grad school would have gone a fuck of a long way towards mitigating the need pay for those things through housing equity).

But that's all local. People's desperate need to fill in the gaps between wages and cost of living did create the housing bubble. If you buy a house and want to keep the resale value up, you spend $40k on a new kitchen or replace all the floors with hardwood. Eventually it gets to the point where you have to keep improving your house because all your neighbors have and your home value will go down if you don't keep up with the Jones. Ergo- housing bubble.

But the housing bubble alone is not what caused the banking collapse. The banking collapse was caused by a combo of deregulation, Alan Greenspan's douchebaggery, and opaque bundling practices that left investors in the dark. None of those things are the fault of the individual home buyers who just wanted a piece of the American dream.

Anyways- now that I have ranted and raved for a bit, let me point you to 2 people who do know what they are talking about economically.

First- Niall Ferguson (who is responsible for the title of this post)

“There will be blood, in the sense that a crisis of this magnitude is bound to increase political as well as economic [conflict]. It is bound to destabilize some countries. It will cause civil wars to break out, that have been dormant. It will topple governments that were moderate and bring in governments that are extreme. These things are pretty predictable. The question is whether the general destabilization, the return of, if you like, political risk, ultimately leads to something really big in the realm of geopolitics.

And then Joseph Stiglitz on Democracy Now talking about how Obama has missed the mark on the stimulus and isn't actually fixing any of the problems that caused the depression.

Go forth and learn my little chickadees. And then feel free to punch any Republican or libertarian in the eye until they spend at least 5 minutes reading something factual.

Dear Fauxgressive Liberal Dickwads

Do you believe in choice? I mean really truly with your whole heart believe that people have the right to control their own bodies? Or are you just saying that you believe in a woman's right to choose because 1)no intelligent woman would ever sleep with you if you said otherwise and 2) you want to have abortion as an option in case your girlfriend's birth control fails.

Maybe I'm being a bit too hard on the boys here. How about you girls? Do you really believe in choice, or do you believe in choice under certain conditions? Do you believe it's ok for a poor brown woman to have abortions, but make snide comments if she chooses to have babies instead? Have you complained about poor single moms draining the system with their multiple babies? Have you bitched about someone having multiple abortions instead of using birth control or just keeping their legs shut?

Choice is simple people. It means that people get to decide for themselves whether or not to have babies. Period. You aren't really pro-choice if you are denigrating someone's choice TO reproduce. You are actually just as bad as the forced pregnancy douchebags, but coming from the opposite direction. Just like it's not a big leap fro the forced pregnancy nuts to go from banning abortion to banning birth control, it's not a big leap from limiting the number of pregnancies a woman can have to forced sterilization.

Here's the truth peeps- there is absolutely no good reason to have babies. None. Every single reason anyone will ever give you for having babies is, at it's core, a selfish one. Same thing is true for people deciding to not have babies. AND THAT IS OK. Really, it is. It's a choice that we have to make on our own. And for some of us, the actions of say a poor single mom who seeks fertility treatments and ends up with 14 kids seems insane. But I bet the idea of choosing to never have kids at all seems just as insane to her.

And lets not forget how fucking sexist and classist all this Octomom crap is. If she were married, she'd get her own reality tv show to help pay for all the babies. She'd have giant corporations falling over themselves to donate diapers and clothing and cars. But she's single, and poor, and has a "funny" name that doesn't exactly sound waspy. And that makes people think it's okay to tear her to shreds and hope for disaster to strike her kids.

So if you really, truly, absolutely think you are pro-choice, ask yourself if you can support someone else's choice when it goes against everything you believe? If you can't, you're not really pro-choice. Instead, you're giving the forced-pregnancy blow hards fuel for the fire when they scream about forced abortions.

In which I break out of my normal behavior patterns

I am not the type of person who asks for advice. I will vent or rage or gossip, but I rarely ask for other people's opinions on what I should do. Instead, I mull things over, I research and I generally only talk about things once I've already made up my mind to do it. I do, however, ask for help once I know what kind of help I need.

But this time I am going to ask for advice and suggestions.

I need a new career. I need some kind of career path that will make us middle class with minimal investment in education/ training as far as time and money go. There is a strong possibility that my current job will end in the near future and even if it doesn't I need a living wage and benefits (which I don't get here).

I thought about nursing (cause after the Kid goes to college I could take a nursing degree anywhere in the world) but the older I get the more squeamish I get. I've been known to hide my eyes during the gross parts of House.

Skills- well I've got 15 plus years of office admin experience. But I have maxed out my potential as admin extraordinaire and am tired of the pink collar ghetto. I also have experience in health and welfare benefits management (which I quite liked because of the technical knowledge required regarding health care law). I am good with technology but not an uber geek. I am more of a fast learning end user and pretty good at teaching it (see last 5 years of employment as lab rat). I've also done a good bit of writing/editing/proofreading on the side. I like proofreading legal briefs quite a bit, despite the fact that I never edit blog posts. (Plus I need a good grammar book, I can never remember when you use colons vs. semi-colons)

Have almost got my AA (one quarter to go and no financial aid money left- fuckles).

I have near super power levels of deciphering bureaucracy speak, legal rules and regulations, etc. I once nailed a bank manager for not following federal banking rules for making deposits available. He said it was the first time in 12 years that he'd been wrong about it.

So peeps- what do you think I should be when I grow up?

(ETA: During the writing of this post Ruth and I have been emailing back and forth about my not finishing my degree in poly sci for the same reasons mentioned here. Even just getting an under grad degree in poly sci ONLY qualifies me to be a cab driver. Ruth thinks I'd do well in economics (I am geeky enough about it) but it might be a bit like going to law school- too many douchebags to make it tolerable).

Forced Prengancy FAQs

Forced pregnancy douchebags are just soooooooo predictable, they bore me to tears.

So instead of repeating the same arguments over and over or debunking the same lies time after time, I think we need a cheat sheet. We need a handy little card we can pull out when the fuck nuggets come whining and annoying. And I want all your help in creating this handy little guide, so send me the stupid things you hear most often from the fucknuggets and we will come up with a pithy guide to shooting them down and elucidating their asshatery. Perhaps I'll even come up with a pocket guide you all can print and laminate for in-person encounters with forced pregnancy blowhards.

I'll start off with a few:

1. But it's a life and it deserves a chance to live!

So do most patients waiting for kidney transplants. Can I tie you down and force you to give a kidney to one of them? Or maybe just haul you in for weekly blood donations? Or bone marrow? Or a sliver of your liver? Wait you mean you don't want to be a life support machine for another person against your will. Funny, neither do women.

2. But there are so many people who want to adopt.

If those people were really doing it purely for the children then there wouldn't be so many kids in foster care. For every child that is adopted there are 2.5 that are waiting for parents, and most of those kids are brown or black. The likelihood of being adopted gets even smaller if the child is disabled. How many foster kids have you taken in?

3. But what if you abort the second coming of Jesus or the guy that will grow up to cure cancer.

Seriously, is your god so inept that he'd let the second coming of Christ happen to a woman who will have an abortion. Isn't he supposed to be all knowing and shit? As for the cancer thing, there are literally millions of people working to cure it, the one loan dude theory of science is mostly false and seriously outdated.

4. But we've aborted an entire workforce and now we have to hire illegal Mexicans.

Better that we should have an entire class of people between the ages of 0 and 36 who were raised by parents who didn't want them. Well if they lived that is. We could just end up with an rash of Casey Anthonys. There is also the theory that legalized abortion led to a drop in crime rates cause unwanted children are more likely to commit crimes. So fewer abortions, more murders of living people. How is that a gain actually?

(please note that I am pro-immigration and that I am just repeating the douchebaggery in #4)

So that's my start. What have you got? If you are a lurker who doesn't feel like delurking- send me an email.

What could actually persuade me to vote for the unity pony.

If he got off the campaign trail, went back to Washington and started doing his job of governing the country.

None of this I'll show up if the vote on the bailout bill (TARP) is close but won;t make a speech crap. He needs to show up. He needs to say "I'm going to do my job to fix the country. And BTW- Fuck you Paulson and Bush for this shock doctrine attempt at blackmailing the country into handing over 700 billion bucks and retroactive immunity."

If he did that, I could actually vote for him. But as usual, Obama comes up with a half assed attempt that doesn't fix anything but makes him feel better about being a douchebag.

Dear Blogger Boyz

It's too late for flowers and candy.

Perhaps if your candidate hadn't spent the last 6 months being a misogynist douchebag things could be different.

Perhaps if he hadn't thrown everyone under the bus except for you, things would be different.

Perhaps if you all hadn't jumped on the Why won't the stupid bitch quit already campaign, things would be different.

Perhaps if you all hadn't spent the last three weeks declaring that the white underclass couldn't possibly have valid opinons and that they are all just racists, things would be different.

Perhaps.

But it's too late.

In fact, I think another post-sexual white woman said it best with this.

Happy Happy News

Some of you may know that I have been in a raging battle with Seattle Housing Authority for the last year over how they calculate my income when determining rent amounts. Today, after repeated attempts just to get information on how my income is calculated, I finally had a hearing...

AND I WON! I did the fricken impossible- I won! Just little old me, without any legal assistance or even much preparation other than printing out my tax records that I didn't even need.

I have been asking for the numbers that they use to calculate my income because SHA's numbers are consistently between 25 and 30 percent higher than my actual income. I was never given a real answer, I was just told that the numbers come from the Unemployment office and to deal with it. When I asked for proof, it wasn't provided. When SHA sent me their determinations (which I have 10 days from the letter date to answer of I give up any right to question their determination) the letters either were never sent or when I did receive them the postmark was 5 days after the letter date, giving me no time to request a hearing. I have been lied to by SHA staff, I have been hung up on, I have had child support that I don't receive calculated into my income. When the hearing date was finally set, my douchebag of a case worker said "It doesn't matter- it's not going to change anything".

Ha!

A little about the hearing:

It's informal and mine was more like a mediation than an actual hearing. SHA got to present their case first, and in addition to the facts that I have been begging for, like how my annual income is calculated, the douchebag case worker thought it was pertinent to throw in things about how she thought my paystubs were fake (I get paid via direct deposit, so my "paystubs" are computer printouts from the college.) that my rent was going up because I "choose to live in an overpriced apartment" (I've been in the same apartment for the last 4 years without a rent increase- SHA payments standards have gone down for this year in a budget saving measure, but that has nothing to do my choosing an overpriced apartment) and that I have been abusive with the letters that I have written.

In the end, it made her look like a petty, vindictive asshat. When I finally got to present my case, I explained that within the first 5 minutes of the hearing I had figured out how they miscalculated my income because I finally got the mathematical breakdown of how they figure my wages.

I work for a college, and I only work fall, winter, and spring quarters. During the summer my income is ZERO. But SHA, rather than looking at my entire annual income, was only taking income from one quarter and multiplying it by 4. Douchebag's manager jumped in to say that there is precedent for using all annual income instead of one quarter in the case of school employees and she agreed to recalculate my income based on an entire year.

This infuriated Douchebag- she felt the need to point out that I wouldn't get any special reviews of my income if they use the whole annual income to calculate my rent. I said "I would rather have my income calculated fairly than have to deal with another special review from you".

I was happy, Douchebag's manager was happy. Even the judge was happy. Walking out, the judge said "It's rare that everybody leaving one of these hearings is happy with the results" then he looked at Douchebag and said "well, almost everybody".

I've been doing the happy dance ever since! All I wanted was for my income to be correctly calculated. It sucks that it took a year to get it corrected, and there is no possibility of them reimbursing me for the amount that I was overcharged last year- but it's fixed now.

I am not going to kill something

Maybe.

No nicotine. Rahhhhhhh.

Once again my paycheck is late and the administration is being a giant douchebag. Arghgggg.

Fortunately our director's wife just moved to a job in the payroll office. She's finding stuff out and making it all better. That is the only reason I am not there pulling my best Godzilla impersonation.

I forgot to put on my stupid patch.

Just one drag, please. No, bad bad girl.

Stay tuned for more incoherent ramblings from a nicotine junkie in the throws of withdrawl.

Libertarian is just another word for asshat

I saw this little clip today of John Stossel (asshat extraordinary) getting a verbal smackdown on the Scarborough Report. It made me happy, Stossel is an idiot. Even other libertarians think he's a douchebag, according to the guy sitting next to me on my return flight from Cancun, but Stossel is really just spouting the same bull other libertarians spout.

On the surface, the idea of libertarianism sounds good. It's all about liberty, freedom from government restraint and interference. When it comes to social policy, I am down with liberty. I don't think the government should tell you who to sleep with, how to sleep with them, who to love or who to marry. You want to homeschool your kids, or maybe unschool them. Fine with me. You're the one who is going to have to try to get your kids into collage after years of letting them play video games instead of learning how to read (I actually know someone who is doing this- so it's not conjecture). But that's about as far as libertarianism works.

See Libertarians are all about the capitalist ideas of Adam Smith, but I swear to god they have never read Adam Smith or studied the context in which he was writing. The basic premise goes something like this: All governments are corruptible so governments should have as little power as possible. Everything else should be left up to the free market because competition keeps business from being corrupt.

The first part is right, all governments are corruptible. The second part is a load of bullshit. The thing about corrupt governments, at least in democracies, is that the people have the ability to fire the entire government when they are fed up enough. Conversely, unless you have a fat wad of controlling stock, there is no way to fire the board of a corporation.

Second, Smith was writing at a time when trade guilds controlled the markets with an iron grip. You couldn't start a business without guild approval, you couldn't get into a guild without serious cash and some family connections. So the average joe on the street couldn't set up his own fabric weaving business. Smith wanted to eliminate the stranglehold guilds had on the potential merchant class by creating a free market, a market where anyone could get into a line of business and anyone could buy goods from whomever they want. As long as businesses stay relatively small and monopolies are avoided, this can work very well. But not so in the modern world.

The problem comes when one entity becomes so large that it is capable of manipulating the market to eliminate competition (Wal-Mart, Microsoft) or to influence the government (Diebold, Haliburton) or to hide serious problems with it's products (Merck's hiding of problems with the drug Vioxx). In this way the giant corporations of today have become the trade guilds of Adam Smith's time. They eliminate competition and maintain too much control to be seriously considered "libertarian". Let me give you an example, if Merck had been regulated by a more powerful FDA then fewer people would have used it and suffered dangerous complications and death. But because of it's large size, Merck could control what information was released about it's products even though some of the hidden information was necessary for the public good.

Much like pure democracy, where every single person votes on every single aspect of public life, libertarianism only works on a very small scale. In a small town where people could actually meet once a week for a town hall meeting and all decisions about how long to make the red lights last at intersections and what day trash pick up should be could be done by a quick yay or nay vote, pure democracy works. In a small system where no one business is allowed to monopolize others and all businesses have the same restrictions and opportunity, then the quality and price of the product are actual factors of competition and people are free to choose the best good for their needs.

The real basic premise should be something like this: All governments are corruptible, and all businesses are corruptible, so it is up to the people to elect politicians who will monitor businesses for the general welfare of the people and to keep business influence out of politics so the monitoring process is less corruptible. The main point is this- both business and government work for the people. Business gets it's reward for a job well done with our dollars and government gets its reward with our votes. However, neither should be given free range or unrestrained power. It is only through the diffusion of power through individual votes and dollars that corruption is kept to a minimum.