An appendage to my last post

This afternoon when I was driving from picking up a random Bat Mitzvah card for my missionary cousin to the post office, I realized a large part of why the Trayvon Martin case has affected me so deeply. It's the willful attitude that many have of blaming the victim. I mean, it really pisses me off. As I was driving I thought of this scenario:

Would someone say it was my fault that after a while of my mission trainer molesting me and demeaning me I fought back? Would someone say that it was unfortunate that she molested me in an even harsher way, but I had fought back, after all?

I mean, this is utter bull shit, and we all know it. Zimmerman stalked Trayvon. Trayvon was just a 17-year-old kid. He was scared and had a totally normal reaction for a kid of that age. There was both a flight and a fight in his reaction.

Someone explain the difference. There is none. This is part of the reason why it took so many years for me to say anything: I was so damn afraid that people wouldn't believe me, that it was my fault, that I deserved it. I mean, Trayvon was a teenager wearing a hoodie b/c it was raining. Shifty. AND the kid had the audacity of being black.

And here's the thing, that second paragraph up there happened to me. I fought back in this way or that, whatever way I could in the demoralized state I was in. It got worse. She humiliated me more.

So by the same dumb-ass logic that person after person has been posting about on FB, I deserved every shitty moment of my abuse after I fought back. In fact I deserved all of it b/c I was an American woman with big breasts. I was exotic.

Maybe if all these (Zimmerman apologists and the) people that deny that there isn't an undertow of victim blaming in the U.S. stepped out of their ignorant shit-box of privileged comfort and realized what they were saying, and how horrible it was, this nation could actually heal.

Because I know for EFFING DAMN SURE that I have no fault in what happened to me. I've been allowed to heal from a victim to a survivor. I have faith in God and think that Trayvon is a survivor, too, just not on this planet and that makes my heart ache.

Oh, dear me

It's the first day of class, so posting twice on my blog seems like a good use of my time.
I was skimming thru Tumblr and saw this post, which is blah blah blah election year blah blah blah.
But the BEST part, and the only part we should all care about, is that the guy who's gonna run as a democrat in the race created a website to challenge Ryan's proposed gutting of medicare called:

HandsOffMyGrandma.com


BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!


Seriously, it sounds so scandalous and just a bit pornograph-icky. 
Time to troll out the nun picture again.

Facepalm

That absolute facepalm of a moment when you post this about the de facto WASP hegemony (whose sovereign is HRH Dollar) to facebook:

People who complain about how extending rights to others means that you're somehow taking away their rights are pretty dumb. It's not that your freedom is taken away, it's that the privileged pedestal you've been coasting on is now being fairly populated by others and you've simply gotta work for things instead of being spoon fed your "successes."

and a Ron Paul supporter--a woman!--clicks "like."




just smh, S.M.H.

Broccoli

In light of today's excellent SCOTUS decision, I'm thinking I'm going to have some of my favorite vegetable to celebrate.

Seriously, tho, I'm quite relieved.

A follow-up

I haven't posted in 4 months and now there's a twofer today.
I have an idea about a way to save money and apply it in a more useful way.

#1 Did you know that the US spends 5 times as much on the military budget ($711 billion) than its closest competitor (China at $143 billion)? Do you know how much of that is needless spending according to an old Cold War mentality? Yeah, billions.
So how about we only spend 4 times as much as China? Then we can use the rest of the money to help the soldiers that are coming back. We can give them job training. We can apply better funds to physical recovery. We can apply significantly more money to help soldiers recover mentally from the horrors they've seen. Maybe this way we can drastically cut back on the suicide/day rate that the military now has. We can apply money to stop the rampant sexual trauma that women--and not a few men--suffer in the military.
Could you imagine if we did that?

#2 (This is based off the previous post)
For people like the person that I mentioned that pay so very little in taxes yet have exorbitant wealth, how about we draw things a bit more close. This family friend of ours pays about 40% in overall taxes, referenced wealthy person pays 13.9% in federal on some of his money--not all of it--and pays maybe 1% or 2% more on some of his money for other state taxes. Considering his $250 million in overall wealth, and that he only pays taxes on some of it, makes you wonder. Anyway:
So how about we don't even make numbers match? How about we have this wealthy group of people pay their taxes, use their loop holes, pay state taxes, etc., AND THEN we have them pay up to 75% of what middle class America pays? So then these wealthy tax dodgers end up paying only 30% in overall taxes. And it's still less than my family friend.

Now with all of this money, we can easily afford things every year like money for education and teacher training, money for job creation, money for research to develop 21st century industries so that we can compete on a global scale like we used to back when this type of money was applied to research.


How about we start with these two ideas?
But, you know me, I'm just a 1980s Republican. Or, in modern parlance, a socialist.

It's gotta be said

Mild rant. yeehaw:

Someone posted an absolutely horrendous thing supporting the mandatory drug testing laws in a few US states for people that need welfare. Pass the test, you get money. Seems like a good idea until you realize a few things:
#1 People being tested have to pay up front. They'll most likely get reimbursed later. But people with no money have to pay for it up front.
#2 The only requirement for getting this tested is being poor, no suspicion other than poverty. This also happens to be against both the spirit and the literal law of the IV Amendment.
#3 People on welfare do drugs per capita the same as the rest of America. White America? The same. Black America? The same. Hispanic America? The same. In fact, drug use is at the same percent across the nation regardless of wealth, skin color, etc. etc.
But really, we should pick on the poor people.
#4 It COST Florida more than $45,000 in the end. It didn't save them money, it cost them money. It didn't save them any money on welfare, nothing changed.

So FB poster went off about how he earns money and his 40% after federal, state, gas, food taxes shouldn't be going to these leaches on society.

Here's the thing, and I pointed this out to him (and he ignored it), a certain wealthy man has about $250 million dollars of personal wealth and he paid about 13.9% on a fraction of that, not even on the $250 million. If you add the rest of his property, etc., taxes, he doesn't even come close to paying half of what this 40% man pays.

So why on earth are we attacking the poor? If we closed the loop holes in this one man's taxes, we cover welfare for how many people for how many years?

Yeah, exactly.
So we should totally attack poor people, because they're the problem.

All kinds of info

I ran across this website that has all kinds of amazingly interesting (and sometimes disheartening) information.
Here's one tidbit that was especially frustrating to me:

There's the average for the U.S. and Kansas is in the best position. Utah's in the absolute worst, and it's not even close.

The overall tax burden once everything's taken into account is rather fascinating as well.

There's a lot of other stuff on there that didn't get my dander up, but I thought I'd point out those two lovely bits of info.

Today it hit me

I realized why so many people in the LDS church are enamored with Ron Paul. This article illuminated my mind.
A quote:

“The Ron Paul brand is actually relatively intellectual,” Cassino says. It’s “A brand that’s about, ‘I’m smarter than you are.’ … ‘All the politicians are telling you one thing but I know better.’ ” This is the brand for those who feel different, who see themselves as a little bit brainier and more marginalized than everyone else.

Followed up by this one:

It’s also that those drawn to Ron Paul are narrowly self-selecting—they are attracted to the idea of being the rare voices of reason in a culture of foolishness.

So why the connection? Mormons pride** themselves on having a special truth, they're "in the know." Of course many Mormons would find this appealing--for all the wrong reasons. Ron Paul's stances are a cacophony to many of the actual teachings of the gospel. But it's more about a special secret than an actual truth that is appealing.

Ugh.


**word choice used  for many reasons...

A small-ish rant

because I can use my blog to complain about idiots on facebook.

It's stunning to see how many of my Mormon friends are madly in love with Ron Paul. If the U.S. had followed his cockamamie ideas of foreign policy, the Church would not have had access to make the inroads around the world in such a fast manner. We would not have the connections that we've had over the last 70 years.

A presence in Southeast Asia? not a chance
How about South Korea (and its temple)? not on your life
Official recognition in Romania (the only place in Eastern Europe)? not even. That was Sen. Reid's connection.
The list continues and continues.
Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of current members wouldn't have ever heard of the Church.


But hey, if you're in the mood for a return to a strongly patriarchal society that favors only upper middle class white males and sends us into civil non-rights with the repeal of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which Paul would repeal), vote for Ron Paul, he's a sexist, racist peach of a man hiding his beliefs under a banner of "liberty."

He's a prick.

Last like this for a bit

Promise.

Here's the thing, people rail about redistribution of wealth and how it's whatever negative adjective they wanna use. The thing that kills me, absolutely slays me, is that tax policies are always going to sway wealth in one direction, this or that. The way the tax policies have been for a while has made it so that the middle class bears a heavier burden and the wealthy get wealthier.

People listen to this or that by an idiot like Rush Limbaugh and they think that the GOP is somehow trying to make it fair. They're not saving us from socialism. But only lucky for them, tons of people in the US have no idea what socialism is, so it works out great.

My mom has a heavier tax burden than most people b/c financially she's getting screwed by the tax codes. And by my mom, I mean your mom, and then your friend's mom, right on down the line. And that's not even talking about food, medical expenses and normal life and the taxes that are associated with that. When you add every tax together that you pay, including on food and clothes and gas, who do you think pays more of a percentage of income, Trump or you? You do. It's not even close.

So if you wanna know real truth, if you wanna know what's really up, if you wanna see what the tax code has really done to people, look here and then look here.

I'm not some crazy lefty liberal here. In this regard I'm very, very centrist. People just need to know the truth. You wonder where the middle class went? Now you know. Occupy Wall Street, don't dress in 18th century attire and spout false histories of our founding fathers.

And I promise now that I'll go back to my regularly scheduled blog posts about sports that no one but me cares about.

don't-get-itness

One of my favorite things right now are the posts "no religious test" line from the Constitution b/c that jerk doubted Romney's Christianity. But my favoritest part is how a chunk of these people have also posted things doubting Barack Obama's Christianity and calling him a closet Muslim (as though being Muslim were a bad thing).

The "don't-get-itness" is quite a thing to behold.

MoTab's Ron Paul Impersonator's Impersonator

On SNL there's this guy that they have impersonate Ron Paul:

Ronish Paul

 And there's this guy in MoTab that looks like the Ron Paul impersonator:

Ronishish Paul

 

 

And it made me laugh every time I saw him.

A bit ago

I posted something about this about a month ago. But here is a nice quote showing exactly what is going on and what will happen with even more vigor.

Families are too important for ...

Families are important; they are the backbone of any healthy society. (I imagine that the 4 people that read my blog would agree with me there.) I also feel that it's important to bring this to the forefront of many discussions about where we're taking our society.

I just wish that we could do this without moronic bunglings that make people who support strengthening the family a bunch of racist idiots that are filled with ignorant hate.

Here's the thing, broken homes exist across all races, in all countries, in all economic strata and whether or not the parents are married. Strong families exist across all races, in all countries, in all economic strata and whether or not the parents are married.



This is the reason why I'm so frustrated. Bear with me, because this sentence a current pledge that's making it's rounds in the upper echelons of our politcs is nasty:

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American President.

This is what drives me crazy, other than the basic stuff like letting black people know they just long for those slave days, it's not just one race that has broken homes. And what should the white people long for? How about people of Asian descent? Who would be dumb enough to sign it?


So how about this, to all you pledge makers out there, how about you quit making pledges, first of all, and, second, if you absolutely feel the dumb compulsion to, quit being racist prigs and making people who feel strongly about the importance of families look like self-righteous, hateful morons who don't know the real value of strong families, whatever their makeup may be.

This made me very happy

I had long supposed that this was the case and was glad that a more complete and narrowed statement was sent out today.



In totally snarky related news, I wonder what all of the LDS people on FB posting things like "I stand with Arizona" are now going to be posting.
Yes, I recognize how snotty that was, but few things have disgusted me more over the last couple of years.

I'm not jumping in with these guys.

I think being a Mormon can sorta heighten one's senses concerning religious freedom. Maybe not, maybe I'm just weird. Perhaps all of the Sunday School classes about the saints in Missouri and Nauvoo are stuck on repeat in my brain.


So thought #1: There's been a subtle switch of phrasing over the last bit that is interesting. What once was Christian men set up a nation has turned into Men set up a Christian nation. One word switching place has had far-reaching repercussions. I tell you what, Christian men (with some very differing views) setting up a nation is what really happened and it's significantly safer to our religious freedom to think of it that way. Any other way is no bueno and dangerous and is false history.

Thought #2: There's an undertow of "not-in-our-nation" that is kinda the flip of "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." Oklahoma, for example, passed a law banning Islamic or international law as a basis for decisions in courts. (This, thankfully, has a permanent injunction on it by a federal judge.) But what's really going on there is they're setting up an establishment of religion by piecemeal.

If you start defining what the US is or isn't by religion, especially as a means of exclusion, that's a religious test by default.


The reason why I think about this a bunch is because if this continues, Mormons are excluded. We like to think that we've made huge inroads, but if we allow people who are using religion as a weapon in elections to win and don't stand up for what the Constitution plainly says, we're in for a world of hurt. The people that do things like this do not love freedom of religion, they fear it.
Lots of Mormons like to walk hand in hand with socially/religiously conservative people thinking that they're in on the party. They're not, in the end, and they're going to find themselves out in the cold.




Whatever the reason, religious freedom has been on my brain for months and months and I wanted. throw a couple of half-formed ideas out into the blogosphere.

Truth as an Outlier

Sometimes I think more about the pattern of discourse and communication of something rather than the content. One thing I've noticed is that shows like The Ed Show and Glenn Beck purport to be about the spreading of truth and the exposure of lies, but really they're about ego massaging. The hosts massage their egos and the viewers are sure that they're in on a special secret knowledge that so many blind and ignorant people are too stupid to see. The majority of conversations are built on straw man arguments and vile and misleading diatribes.

Luckily the viewership for a lot of these shows is on the decline. These things are all about ebb and flow and they cycle (see Sen. McCarthy and the Adams-Jefferson presidential race).

I just wish more people would turn the TV off.



Also, I know that I fall sometimes into the group of ego massagers. I also know that I at times fall into the secret knowledge viewership group.

an email that I just sent

Thought I'd share:


Rep Herrod,

I was interested in your statements that you made during the debate about illegal immigration. Regarding your question as posted in The Deseret News: "In House floor debate, Rep. Chris Herrod, R-Provo, said he's tired of hearing that illegal immigrants are good people. 'They contribute somewhat,' he said, but the real question is should they be treated better."

I figured since you asked the question you would like the answer. In an article that can be found here, Elder Marlin K. Jensen, who was speaking at the request of the First Presidency of the LDS Church answered this question: "Meet an undocumented person," he said. "Come to know their family." Included in that article you'll find more information that will help you answer the question.
Another answer to your question is found in Matthew 25:40: And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Now that you have your answer about what should be done, I expect an email detailing how you are going to resolve your concerns regarding the worth of these immigrants. I also demand that you explain in your email to me what you are going to do to help our immigrant brothers and sisters according to the principles repeatedly described by the leaders of our Church.

I expect an email within the next two weeks.

Thank you,
Vanessa Swenson, great great great granddaughter of various immigrants










If you feel so inclined, please send him an email (cherrod@utah.gov) with any tips you may have for him.

2 Tim 1:7

I've been thinking a lot about 2 Timothy 1:7 lately. And by lately, I guess mean for eleven years.

I thought about titling this post The Ethics of Fear. Fear should never be the reason for a certain action. For a while I thought that if I was afraid of something, I should just do it because not doing something out of fear was irrational. Later I realized that doing something just because I was afraid of it was just as irrational. Fear simply shouldn't play a role in the decision. Fear as a motivator will never lead to lasting success in an endeavor.


Maybe the reason why this scripture seems so particularly salient presently is because of all of the fear-as-a-motivator blather that we've been hearing for the last few years. It's nothing new, but this tactic goes in waves. I'm sick of it. I change the channel. I ignore people when they talk like this. People win in the short run sometimes with these tactics, but the long-term effects are detrimental. Fear, simply, is not of God. Decisions based on fear cannot lead you closer to Him. Choices made based on fear will not give you greater knowledge and you certainly won't be able to tap into pure truth.


Two short videos, one from 1964 and the other from 1987 prove this point.

LBJ's ad that he ran only once before the 1964 presidential election:


The next video is President Reagan speaking at the Brandenburg Gate in 1987.


LBJ won the election, but it fed into fear and it certainly didn't help the feeling of the country at the time. Pres Reagan's speaks of the good that will happen and it gave us hope for a better future.

I wish we all could help to tamp down on the people spewing fear and lies out there. We would be better off as a society if we would push back against the fear, of this I'm sure.


My goal now is, if I feel fear, to take a step back and figure out why I'm afraid, try to put it aside and think about what I need to do. I'm aiming for peace, love and a sound mind.

There, I'm done bloviating again.
Oh, and as a facetious side note, if I were a football player, I would so put 2 Tim 1:7 on my eye black.

Compact

Few things confuse me more than the hatred toward immigrants. I am not, however, surprised by it, because anger toward immigrants and moronic anti-immigrant laws have been passed on and off almost since the get-go of our nation. They were always passed out of fear and ignorance (and, again, hatred).

About a month ago civic (like former governors) and religious leaders in Utah came together to create the Utah Compact which, especially in this current political climate, seems to be a solitary shining beacon of sanity. An opinion piece in the NY Times gave a shout-out to the compact yesterday. You can sign the compact. The LDS Church came out in support of the principles of the compact, as well.

Hopefully this will lead to reason around here. We need some reason and compassion on this topic.