Old Time Religion

Someone explain this one to me:

• 742 American adults surveyed on use of torture against suspected terrorists
  
• 54 percent of those who go to services at least weekly say it's often or sometimes OK
  
• In survey, people unaffiliated with any religious group were least likely to back torture

Kenai Peninsula Borough- Broken Brains Lead to Broken Budgets

The condensed version of the story is:

Dave Cary was elected as the mayor of the the Kenai Peninsula Borough as a "cut taxes and reduce the budget" candidate. (Strangely he also claimed as mayor to have the ability to protect your gun rights. I don't think he was pandering at all with that addition to his platform.)  He won.

Previous to that election the voters of the Kenai Peninsula had repealed a sales tax in a vote put on the ballot by the Alliance of Concerned Taxpayers (ACT). 

The mayor is now planning to reduce property taxes on us over taxed Alaskans.  

Which leads to the great republican plan of underfunding government to destroy it. The borough is facing a budget shortfall. The mayor has said everything is being scrutinized for cuts. Education is not being spared and he has proposed a reduction in the school districts budget. The outcomes of that will be great. Less education is what we need now in this world. That will help the growth and quality of life for people left on the Peninsula. 

The impact on my kid's education is already being felt. Due to this budget turmoil, his school has had to delay and possibly not hire a replacement teacher. This is in a K-12 school with a teaching staff of 4. By this time of the year good teachers that are looking for new schools probably have jobs lined up for next year.  We will still hope that our second or third choice turns out to be an adequate educator for our children. Thanks a bunch Dave and Alliance for Concerned Taxpayers. You are really making the Peninsula a great place for families. 

Much in this post needs further exploration, such as:

Who are these ACT people?

What is a lifelong educator, our mayor,  doing minimizing education?

Many of his supporters have fingered teacher unions as the culprit. Does Dave get a retirement fought for by unions?

How does a borough mayor protect your gun rights?

Who voted for Carey and are they the Senior Citizens who live here 5 months a year and are always showing up for the subsidized lunch program?

Why don't grandma and grandpa want their grandkids the best education they can get? 

How does our tax burden compared to other boroughs and counties?

What is it like to live in a progressive state?

 

Texas and Alaska Untie!

I think Texas as well as Alaska Secessionist better watch out. 

As a child growing up in Texas, back in the 1970's I can remember the secessionist spouting off about how horrible the Union  was treating Texas. I was not real sure what their gripe was or is now. It is unfocused, and seems to be about their feelings when Democrats get into power. I think it reminds them of Reconstruction or something. They just hate loosing so much that they are going to take their ball and go home. 

A quick search on the internet doesn't really turn up an actual political party espousing splitting from the Union. There is the Texas and Southern Independence Party that wants to re-establish the Confederate States, but this wouldn't work for Texas. They really don't like or trust Oklahoma. OU recruits too many of the good football players. But there is the Texas Republican Party. Although dissolving the Union doesn't show up in their party platform, which is a scary document. The whole Texas Republican website is scary to me with stuff like this:

I did not know we were supposed to use the Bible to rate our political party. I mistakenly thought that was what the Constitution was for. My mistake.

I hate to brag AGAIN about Alaska kicking Texas' butt again, but Alaska has Texas beat in this area too.  We have the Alaska Independence Party. Our governor's husband was a member once. There are also rumors that she is a AIP "Manchurian Candidate." I can't wait for that episode of the Wasilla Hillbillies. The party is libertarian, with reservations. Like we want roads and keep that Permanent Fund money coming but privatize everything else.  They are always are around during the elections both when Republicans are in office as well as Democrats.  They definitely get points for perseverance. 

Histories of the World

Been lazy on updating the blog. I spend time pissing people off on the Alaska Standard site. Too much fun.
But my sister sent this viral email to me that I had to respond in kind to. The original email is followed by my response:

For those that don't know about history ... Here is a condensed version:

Humans originally existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunters/gatherers. They lived on deer in the mountains during the summer and would go to the coast and live on fish and lobster in the winter.

The two most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer. These were the foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into two distinct subgroups:

1. Liberals, and
2. Conservatives.

Liberals developed the concept of mass prodictOnce beer was discovered, it required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early humans were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That's how villages were formed.

Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to B-B-Q at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as the Conservative movement. The hunters were effective and soon they had slaughtered most of the game in but there was so many of the soon

Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting learned to live off the conservatives by showing up for the nightly B-B-Q's and doing the sewing, fetching, and hair dressing. This was the beginning of the Liberal movement.

Some of these liberal men eventually evolved into women. The rest became known as girlie-men. Some noteworthy liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the invention of group therapy, group hugs, and the concept of Democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that conservatives provided.
Over the years conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land animal on earth, the elephant. Liberals are symbolized by the jackass.

Modern liberals like imported beer (with lime added), but most prefer white wine or imported bottled water. They eat raw fish but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu, and French food are standard liberal fare. Another interesting evolutionary side note: most of their women have highertestosterone levels than their men. Most social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, dreamers in Hollywood, and group therapists are liberals. Liberals invented the designated hitter rule because it wasn't fair ! to make the pitcher also bat.

Conservatives drink domestic beer, mostly Bud. They eat red meat and still provide for their women. Conservatives are big-game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers, firemen, medical doctors, police officers, corporate executives, athletes, members of the military, airline pilots and generally anyone who works productively. Conservatives who own companies hire other conservatives who want to work for a living.

Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to govern the producers and decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans. That is why most of the liberals remained in Europe when conservatives were coming to America . They crept in after the Wild West was tamed and created a business of trying to get more for nothing.

Here ends today's lesson in world history:

It should be noted that a Liberal may have a momentary urge to angrily respond to the above before forwarding it.

A Conservative will simply laugh and be so convinced of the absolute truth of this history that it will be forwarded immediately to other true believers and to more liberals just to tick them off.
And there you have it. Let your next action reveal your true self

My "angry" response:
The true history is that the original conservative went extinct eons ago. Many of the “conservatives” today don’t believe this because they deny the science of evolution. This should ensure their extinction as a class, but fortunately for these conservatives, the liberals continue take pity on them and share the medical and technical advances that are possible through the understanding this basic science fact. Every year a lot of conservatives line up for the newest evolution of flu shot that the liberal establishment continues to produce.

The deal was that the conservatives continued to hunt until they had depleted much of the game around their caves. They got through the lean times because of the gathering, mostly done by their woman. Studies show that a majority of the calories consumed in hunter/gatherer cultures come from gathering activities. So the men would sit around in their dark, dank caves and moan and grunt about how good the “good old days” were. They would scream about how their life was being ruined by so and so as they got sotted from their fermented berries or fishheads or whatever they could catch a buzz from. All the while the women were out working. This pattern of behavior continues in many “conservative” households.

It was during this roaming around looking for food with a baby stuck on each breast and dragging 4 other dirty children, digging up roots and picking berries for their man’s fermented muck, that these women ran into communities of liberals. They were entranced with the warm homes, the plentiful food, the public education, the public trails and sanitation. They were amazed that the women would have smaller families and have the option to breed or not. They would return to the cave and have their drunken man collapse on the gathered food, tell them it was god’s will to have another child and then fall asleep after he had impregnated her for the 14th time.

In these communities they found real beer too. Not the stuff that their men were drinking back from that hole in ground in the cave. The cultivation of grains happened through the application of principles of evolution. It took science and experimentation to mass produce beer. Some woman took some of this excess beer back to the caves, with the grains to make it. The conservative tribe changed the beer into a light watery substance they called “Butt Wiper” because of the gastric effects typically occurring the next morning. Of course this is now Budwieser. The liberals continued to produce beer of quality and substance. This understanding and cultural legacy of good beer eventually led to the legalization of homebrewing by the great President Carter in 1979, which then spurred the development of the microbreweries that has raised the quality of beer worldwide.

But I digress. Over time many of the women and some conservatives’ children would spend vacations in the liberal villages. Many never went back to the cave and the liberal communities flourished while the conservatives’ numbers dwindled. Eventually the conservatives became just a bunch of old white men sitting around complaining about the high taxes in the liberal communities and how the dykes and socialists were destroying their cave communities.

Ski Day

I went skiing with the usual folks and found Tracy's camera in my coat pocket. So I took some pictures. 

Healthcare, Again

Updated below-

I saw this post over at that "evil" Daily Kos site. Long story short, the United States healthcare sucks. We all know it. It is dragging this country down. 

Then I read this post over at the Alaska Standard. The author is upset because Family Planning moneys are included in the Stimulus Bill that is making its way through Congress. The guy lifted the entire thing from the Heritage Foundations blog. That is plagiarism, but his point seems to be that liberals are trying to reach into his man-gina and rip the babies right out of him. Family planning is health care. Maybe it shouldn't be in a stimulus bill, but in the short run, healthcare money will get spent and will get spent quickly. Evidence that video above. If we want money in the economy this is the place. There is no pleasing these conservatives, so we should just stop trying!

UPDATE:

I have never had an update before! But this is too funny. Over at the Alaska Standard that I cited above, they have removed the plagiarized post after I called them out on it. But they left a clip of Nancy Pelosi and the comments section. Now the author has posted the "original" text in the comments and included citations for his sources and claimed that they were in the original post. I don't know why he would remove the text then. I think he might be lying!!! Such fear of being seen as weak, or wrong.

 I am sure that I have been lazy and lifted text and not cited it correctly. That would be wrong, and a mistake. If it I found out, and someone gave a shit, I am sure I would correct it. Admit the mistake and work at doing better. It would at least mean someone was reading this. 

The richest part of the whole exchange is the author tries to call me out and put me down by referring to me as "Mrs. Freshwrestler." Ouch! Using the feminine as a slander in a post that has to do to do with reproductive rights is pretty inDICKative of his level of intellectual development.  

More update- Obama had the funds removed from the bill to please the conservatives. Please , don't please the conservatives. They lost. THEY LOST. WE WON. That money better show up somewhere and soon.

Nerd?