Everyone I Ever Was and Everyone I Ever Will Be

Originally posted by zombres at Please take a seat in the shaming room...

The Lily Ledbetter Act passed, and the Global Gag Rule is being lifted today!! This is just seriously overwhelming me over here, with so many good things happening in a few days after eight years of, "Oh, now what did that jerk do?" I mean, I know Obama will do things I'll grumble at him for, but he's sure building up a lot of goodwill with me.

Remember that little wish list of mine the other day?

omg

OMG

I want him and his family and his entire staff to be at my house right now so I can give them hugs.

((thanks for the links, ginmar!))

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Ohhhhh boy. *ahem*

Well, I'd like to see Don't Ask Don't Tell done away with. I want that stupid "oh, it's okay if you don't want to do your jobs, medical personnel! We understand!" law abolished. The Global Gag Rule? Out of here. Guantanamo Bay? Closed. (There were/are ways to deal with dangerous people in wartime. That was not it.)

I'm sure there are other things; my brain's too fuzzy to think of them just yet. But as long as I'm working up a wish list, how about the ERA finally getting ratified? That'd be nice.

This entire essay is just fantastic. And I must squee about one thing in particular--

Obama is planning to lift the Global Gag Rule.

Seriously, one of the very first things I thought when I found out he'd won was, "Great! Now if you could please get rid of the GGR, that'd be perfect" and apparently that is actually in the works.

Is it January yet?!?

Just got back from the voting booth! :-)


ETA:

I Didn't Vote for Obama Today

and

Dear Ella

Did you hear about the latest terrorist attack?

Probably not, because it was an attack on a mosque. Coincidentally (*eyeroll*), right after a ton of copies of "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West" were sent to people's mailboxes. Thanks so much for the hateful propaganda, Clarion Fund! Way to go!

Y'know, one would think that after decades of people who're usually on that side of the political aisle complaining about how violence and especially icky icky sex on TV will be the downfall of society, that they would realize that maybe constant barrages of this kind of hateful crap really aren't good? Just possibly?

Of course, I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for them to actually take responsibility for listeners taking action to go along with their constant nasty words.

Here's the worst quote, from the first article I read about it:

The room that the chemical was sprayed into was the room where babies and children were being kept while their mothers were engaged in prayers.

I just . . . incoherent rage, seriously. Who does this shit?

Thankfully, none of the injuries sustained were fatal, but I still want to find whoever did this and lock them up in a very tiny room for the rest of their natural lives (and that's my gentler side talking).

Hiiiiii, TV Guide channel! Just wanted to let you know that when I'm over at mom and dad's channel-flipping and come upon a little career retrospective for Heath Ledger, when I pause to watch it I do not want to have to flip away twenty seconds later because you've shown the stretcher with his body bag on it. There is no need for that. I avoided news channels for days after he died because I didn't want to see it and knew they'd be showing it endlessly. Can we maybe, say, cut that shit out?

I remember being horrified when I learned that some tabloid photographer snuck in and took pictures of River Phoenix in his coffin. I wanted to kick the hell out of him (okay, still do) but at least at the time I thought there was a difference between him and the 'respectable' news channels. But not so much, is there?

Because it all ties into a ton of other problems I have with any kind of televised news, and increasingly the print news as well. I've thought about getting cable back recently, but that answer might turn out to be no. After all, I can pick up any show I want to watch on DVD.

It's just too many things.

Olympic gold medal winner referred to as 'nude pin-up swimmer'.

The rape and murder of a child referred to as a 'sex-kidnap'.

The Hilary Sexism Watch and the Obama Racism/Muslim/Unpatriotic/Scary Black Dude Watch.

There's also the tiny little matter of the HHS proposal trying to excuse doctors/nurses/freaking everybody from doing their chosen jobs so long as their excuse is they don't want to help out those nasty sluts, but it's much more important to focus on Joe Biden's hair! Because that's the really important issue. Either that or Britney Spears is. Goodness knows we have to hear about everything she does, and the more scorn put into it the better.

Black people loot, but white people find. The man who held his own child captive for years so he could brutalize her in peace being cutely referred to as the “Dungeon sex dad”. Missing White Girl Syndrome. And of course, the endless closeups of people grieving. “How do you feeeeel?” That question never fails to make me wish the asker would get punched. Maybe then the other jackasses would take the hint.

Even if we do get cable back, any news channel is going to be on the 'not allowed' list while Kaylee's growing up. She doesn't need to be exposed to that.

“If it bleeds, it leads”? Not in my house.


((also, I promise I will post something cheerful next time. ;-)))

And I type that title with dry eyes.

It is weird, though. He was the first example I had of the Religious Right, what with reading Bloom County cartoons and Harlan Ellison essays about the Moral Majority as a kid. So it's strange to know that he's gone.

But this is the guy who blamed 9/11 on pagans, homosexuals, and feminists, so it's not exactly a bad kind of strange. My sympathies to his family, but I can't work up any for him.

We really need to get the gas gauge on our truck fixed. It's stuck on empty. Been that way for a while now, but yesterday we finally overestimated how much gas was in the tank and ran out about six blocks away from the gas station. Fun times. :-)

Chris bought me a couple of books I picked out for Valentine's Day-- a dessert cookbook and a book of baby names. Both of which I have way too many of already. Name books and cookbooks are addictions of mine, I swear. I'm going to be getting him a pair of steel-toed boots for a present after I get paid.

Might go see Hannibal Rising tonight; haven't decided yet. I'm about ten pages into the book.

Speaking of movies, finally got to see Oscar and Lucinda, which I loved. It ended a lot differently than I expected (I was anticipating something sad, because it's a general law of Ralph Fiennes movies that at least one thing will happen to depress the hell out of me), but the way they went about the last half of the movie was a surprise. And I loved their characters so much; the scene where they're having a race to see who can finish scrubbing the floor first is adorable and cute and utterly grinworthy.

In non-grinworthy news, it's looking like I'm not going to be voting for John Edwards. Too bad, but if he won't truly stand up for Amanda, that doesn't give me much hope that he'll stand up for anyone else. I would have absolutely loved it if he'd pointed out these quotes--

“As for the alleged abuse, it’s time to ask some tough questions. First, there is a huge difference between being groped and being raped, so which was it, Mr. Foley? Second, why didn’t you just smack the clergyman in the face? After all, most 15-year-old teenage boys wouldn’t allow themselves to be molested. So why did you?”

"Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It's not a secret, okay? And I'm not afraid to say it."

-- among others, and then said, "Go ahead, Mr. Donohue, let's talk about offensive language." He would've had my unending loyalty for something like that.