Enlightened Liberalism's Journal (original) (raw)

| | Sunday, July 19th, 2009 1:15 pm - He's Got The Whole World In His Hands... misterc The video below is not new. I've seen it before a few times, and I'm sure so have many others. I just happened upon it today, and it started me thinking (I know. I know. You may want to sit down for this.).( Proceed With Caution...Collapse ) (Communicate) Friday, May 15th, 2009 6:13 pm - He's Gay! That's Why! Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 6:59 pm - The Gathering Gay Storm misterc I have to wonder if these people in the National Organization for Marriage ever knew that the $1 million + they spent on their "I'm Scared of Gay Marriage" campaign would bring more laughter & ridicule than any actual support for their paranoid delusions??From Funny Or Die... (Communicate) Sunday, April 19th, 2009 5:25 pm - Put Away Your Umbrellas! misterc As Frank Rich wrote in his Op-Ed yesterday for The New York Times:It is justice, not a storm, that is gathering. Only those who have spread the poisons of bigotry and fear have any reason to be afraid. (Communicate) Friday, April 10th, 2009 6:01 pm - Marriage Equality Polls & Numbers & Charts...Oh My! misterc Just read a recent poll by CBS News about the slowly-but-surely growing acceptance of equal marriage rights for same-sex couples by the public in general, and--as an admitted NON-expert as regards polling--I found myself pretty encouraged by the numbers I saw!Below the cut, you will find more information on the poll & my totally amateur analysis of the information I found. The charts & the words are not the most professional things you will ever see, but I hope it helps to explain why I find more hope every day that fate (or, your own personal version thereof) is definitely on the side of the good guys (and gals) in this struggle. P.S. If you want to take a closer look at the charts included in the article behind the cut, just make clicky on them to increase their size. ( If you're interested, read on...Collapse ) (1 Communique | Communicate) Sunday, March 8th, 2009 2:52 pm - Rush Job misterc David Frum, a well-known conservative who works with the right-wing American Enterprise Institute and is editor of the equally right-wing website, New Majority.com, penned a column recently for Newsweek in which he attempts to lay out the case against Rush Limbaugh from a die-hard Republican point of view.I agree with Mr. Frum on very few things, but I certainly agree with him on one point: if Rush Limbaugh, with his gargantuan ego, keeps on insisting that he is the Chosen One--the anointed guardian of conservative Republican purity--as well as the party's biggest & loudest mouth, the pusillanimous political pachyderms will more than earn their electoral & historical fate. The ever-shrinking Elephant Party, who've been actually behaving for so (too) long like bulls in a china shop, have left the shop (i.e., our country) in shambles, and have been properly politically punished for the mess they've left for the next guy. You'd think that the few Republicans that are still left standing might have actually learned something from the past couple of national elections, and that they'd be thankful enough to still have a job that they'd want to who work to help fix what they've so blithely broken, but apparent repeated mass repudiation of their neo-con agenda means nothing at all to a party more beholden to ideology than to anything even resembing the common good. Nope. No, sir. Rush says that's socialist talk, maybe even communism. If the minority Republicans buy Rush's line that it's not the message that's defective, it's that the volume at which said message has been broadcast hasn't been cranked up enough & if the "R's" insist on simply standing in President Obama's way complaining about the mess & the smell they have made as he & the other Democrats attempt to sweep out the shards & the elephant droppings, they might as well get used to their well-earned status as the increasingly-irrelevant Party of "No". I have to say, it couldn't happen to a more-deserving group of dittoheads.I've included some of my favorite parts of Frum's article behind the cut below, and I've highlighted one sentence in particular that shows that at least SOMEONE in the Republican party has been paying attention.( Enjoy:Collapse ) (Communicate) Sunday, January 4th, 2009 11:13 am - Who went & made Obama President?!?!? Oh, that's right, WE did! misterc I almost, kinda, sorta, a wee bit, feel guilty in posting this article from a website called 23/6, that reports on the absolute shock & fear that the same neo-cons & their enabling political pachyderm pals who blithely drove our country into the current ditch in which we find ourselves are enduing as they watch Barack Obama pick the people who will be running the federal government. My mother taught me to never gloat, so I very nearly hate to rub what is supposed to be a victory for the entire country (even the world) into the faces of those who have to be dragged kicking & screaming into the 21st century. They cannot believe that the President-Elect, to use 23/6’s words, “… isn't appointing the same people John McCain would have appointed if he had won.” What the…???Amazing how deep & dark runs the GOP stronghold State of Denial, isn’t it???What nerve of Barack Obama to behave like he has not only won the election, but got the most votes of any US Presidential candidate ever!! I think there’s a pretty good reason for that, though: EX-MAVERICK-TURNED-BUSH-SIDEKICK, JOHN MCCAIN & HIS LIPSTICK-WEARING-PIT-BULL OF A SOUL MATE SARAH “THE MOOSE KILLER” PALIN ACTUALLY LOST THE ELECTION OF ‘08—even if “only” by about 9 ½ million votes!I guess, since they long ago ran out of anything approaching real ideas & since they obviously have nothing constructive to add to the new national conversation, all the Republicans have left is whining & obstruction, and--if history is any indication—they’ll soon run both of those strategies together with their political fortunes & any real chance they have to be part of a badly-needed solution to the ugly mess they’ve worked so hard to create—even further into the ground before you know it. While I'm not really one to encourage or offer hope to a political group who largely has no compunction whatever in promoting the idea of befouling our nation's most sacred document with the codification of a permanent second-class citizenship for GLBT people, perhaps all is not necessarily lost for the (formerly) "Grand" Old Party. In the link above to the 23/6 article, there's an awesome pie chart included that provides some pretty good advice to the remnants of Dubya's party, in case they still believe in life after (near-political) death. (Communicate) Monday, November 3rd, 2008 4:21 pm - Funny Obama dance :-) Sunday, November 2nd, 2008 4:54 pm - "We're Here To Take Away Your Rights..." misterc I am not a Mormon-hater, and I realize that there is good & bad in all religions, but the Latter-Day Saints have put up some BIG, BIG money in California to take rights away from people who are guilty only of simply following their hearts & loving another human being of the same gender so much, they want to create a government-sanctioned pact with one another promising to take care of & love each other. No matter the scare tactics the Yes-On-8 (or the Yes-On-2 supporters here in Florida) employ, here's their ugly bottom line: Plain & simple: These people are committing their millions & their energy to stopping love. You'd think they'd have something better to do as they seek God's heart.Watch the video. It's truly disturbing... (Communicate) Friday, October 24th, 2008 9:01 am - Antic-crisis inaction plan v_novikov Here are my presentation for Slideshare's crisic contest. If you like it and have an Slideshare account please support me by voting. (Communicate) Friday, October 10th, 2008 4:06 pm - New Livejournal community for very broad politics! Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 6:14 pm - Sarah & the gays... Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 5:23 pm - Reason #5,765 that I love the junion Senator from Ilinois misterc NO...not his OBVIOUS expertise in basketball (that's reason #17,509).NO...not that he has at least enough of a knowledge of geography that he knows that Iraq & Pakistan do not share a physical border (that's reason #213)NO...not because he's aware of the countries that currently actually exist on this planet (that's reason #27).Reason #5,765 is that he knows exactly what Fox "News" is...(Sorry, no YouTube for this clip featuring the always glorious & magnificent Stephen Colbert).Please do cut & paste it into your web browser, though, it's really worth it! (Communicate) 4:12 pm - Obamamania sweeps through Baghdad Saturday, May 24th, 2008 2:35 pm - Hillary Clinton explains Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 8:38 pm - Today's Thoughts limestone Moyers on the Daily Show mentions how in the 1960's the spread between the wealthy and the poor was 35 fold, and today its 72 fold.But is that a fair assessment? If humanity as a whole has increased its lot, then what does it matter if a few at the top horde a little? Isn't total well-being a sufficient measure of progress? If Moyers is trying to point out that stratification spells doom, then what is the evidence of that?I say no big deal. And I'd like to use sports as a metaphor.I would surmise that the spread of wealth between professional soccer teams, globally, is greater now than ever. Where in the '60's I'm guessing the difference between the poorest team and the richest was, say 100 fold, today it may be 2,000 fold. I'm speaking of payroll per team per club. (Some clubs support multiple teams at different stages.) But the issue is not differences between payroll but the quality of play, or to be more comparable, quality of life of the players, especially the poorest. I mean, who cares about the lifestyle of the Beckhams when the overall condition for the players has improved dramatically. Let the Beckhams have theirs. It won't last forever anyway.Which brings up another interesting issue, how long does today's wealth last compared to past eras? (2 Communiques | Communicate) Thursday, April 17th, 2008 3:30 pm - On Western Imperialism Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 7:01 pm - The Obama elitist myth under18politics The Obama is an elitist myth that has been circling the media for a few days.The GOP has done the same thing every four years. I can still remember Hannity shouting outraged "He drinks green tea!" as that by itself made Kerry an unacceptable president. Lipton actually sells green tea in locations as American as Iowa, or Kansas. Hell - Bush, watch out. I hear green tea is all the rage in Texas nowadays.Obama is apparently an elitist because he's Ivy-educated and lives in a million dollar house in Chicago. He's an elitist because he doesn't hunt, or maybe it's because he is against the war.This is coming from a party who's president went to Yale, who's own father was president and who was a millionare right out of school. McCain's wife, Cyndi, actually belongs to the family that owns the million dollar business: Heinz ketchup. McCain lives on a million dollar ranch in Arizona.What's worse is that the Democratic elite, Ms. Clinton included, are eating their young and calling Obama an elitist. Where did you go to college, Ms. Clinton? I'm pretty sure it was an Ivy as well. Ms. Clinton is also saying what an elitist Obama is because, get this, he's anti-gun. In her own book she details the success over a gun control law that was passed when Bill was in office.Obama is actually the poorest candidate. He's very wealthy, by any standards, but his money is nothing against the other two candidates. And humble, American beginnings? His father was a poor Kenyan immigrant and his mother wasn't exactly the richest girl from Kansas.Papa Bush made a phone call and got into Yale. Obama worked his ass off to get into Harvard- and really, what's more American and real then working hard to succeed?Jean.This was orignally posted on my blog, under18politics.blogspot.com , just started. Looking for other writers. (Communicate) 4:18 pm - Speech on Virginia Tech and School Violence aciel Hi everyone,I guess I'm not really a "future" liberal anymore so much as a current progressive, though no doubt I'll still be one in ten years.I just wanted to share with you all a speech I gave at the University of Texas today. I graduated from Virginia Tech last May, three weeks after the shooting, and I lost a lot of close friends. I'm now a graduate student at UT.The speech:http://aciel.livejournal.com/240030.htmlI'd also like to point you to the memorial pages for the victims:http://www.remembrance.vt.edu/biographies/index.htmlThe things I talked about are issues nationwide, not just in Virginia and Texas. Too few U.S. states participate in reporting information on felons and dangerous people to the FBI's background check system. These systems save lives.If you would, please link to the speech and biographies in other communities (progressive and conservative). Keeping guns out of the hands of the so-called bad guys is an American value. We have a right to feel safe in our schools. (Communicate) Thursday, March 13th, 2008 9:03 pm - those skittles thecouchpolit "NEW HAVEN, Connecticut (AP) -- Michael Sheridan was stripped of his title as class vice president, barred from attending an honors student dinner and suspended for a day after buying a bag of Skittles from a classmate.School spokeswoman Catherine Sullivan-DeCarlo says the New Haven school system banned candy sales in 2003 as part of a districtwide school wellness policy. Michael's suspension has been reduced from three days to one, but he has not been reinstated as class vice president. He says he didn't realize his candy purchase was against the rules -- although he did notice the student selling the Skittles on February 26 was being secretive. "The Wellness Policy is presumably geared toward enforcing Wellness!! BE WELL! Or get sacked!! So, the lesson of the day for Michael Sheridan was: next time when you buy Skittles/Pot/Crack or whatever from a classmate, don't get caught!! That is some Wellness Policy, my friends. I want to know what happened to the guy who sold Skittles. 20 years maximum security prison for pushing illegal sugar? Shot dead during hot pursuit? Was he an undercover cop? 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