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Monday, November 2nd, 2009
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3:53 pm - great halloween-related work conversation I forgot to transcribe
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12:59 pm - yesterday's fancy dinner
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| Tuesday, October 13th, 2009
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10:12 pm
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It's so frustrating talking about politics with my parents, who used to be a lot more political when I was younger, but apparently just don't have the time, energy, or patience to keep up with anything anymore. I remember them furiously opposing seatbelt and helmet laws even though my stepfather's son died in a motorcycle accident partly as a consequence of not wearing a helmet, and now my mother can do nothing but equivocate about this Everyone Has to Give Money to Insurance Companies By Law bullshit [which I don't even know if she KNEW about before I mentioned it - what!?!!?].
A: I just can't believe they're going to REQUIRE everyone to purchase health insurance!
B: *noncommital noise*
A: No - does this not offend you, somehow? IN LIEU OF 'SOCIALISM' WE ARE GOING TO END UP WITH A SITUATION WHERE THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TRIES TO FORCE INDIVIDUALS TO DO BUSINESS WITH A GROUP OF PRIVATE, FOR-PROFIT CORPORATIONS
B: Well, something has to be done.
A: Hey, you know what? You're getting at least some Medicare. I'm not holding my breath. I don't see why your generation should have any input here.
I bring up how it's possible not to drive a car so 'well people have to have car insurance' doesn't actually represent a 'precedent;' that hadn't even occurred to her either. YEAH REMEMBER THE GM BAILOUT WHERE WE REQUIRED EVERY AMERICAN TO BUY A CAR OH WAIT NO
I remember having this same sort of argument with my parents during the Clinton administration about various issues [such as FCC deregulation]; this is around the time they started responding with non-specific rhetoric about the political necessity of compromise. My opinion now, as then, is that unless your priority is immediately resolving conflicts [even if just superficially], there's no sense in "compromising" with people who aren't making reasonable arguments or at all interested in compromising with you! All that accomplishes is warmly, fuzzily, making everything dysfunctional.
Insurance companies exist to make a profit. They have no motivation for refraining from abusing public funds to that end. Period.
current music: The Game Owls - Fury the Twelve Arms Spinning | Powered by Last.fm
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(comment on this)
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| Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
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10:03 pm - obligatory polanski post
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So what's with all these scumbags defending Roman Polanski? Jesus. It's really too bad this motherfucker wasn't at home the night of the Tate/LaBianca murders. But I guess then we'd never have gotten to witness the heartwarming spectacle of people making idiots of themselves by tripping all over themselves in order to apologize for the asshole [NO PUN INTENDED HAR HAR]. OH MAN THE FACT THAT THIS GUY FLED THE COUNTRY TO ESCAPE PROSECUTION IS TOTALLY A GREAT ILLUSTRATION OF HOW AMERICANS ARE A REVOLTING PURITANICAL LYNCH MOB. How the fuck do you fail so hard as to pick THIS as an illustration of that notion, when there are so many better examples? Arrghhh! Also, it's great how people are all like OH MY GOD IF YOU'RE SO CONCERNED ABOUT THIS QUIT DREDGING UP THE SORDID PARTICULARS OF THE CASE THE VICTIM DOESN'T WANT TO DEAL WITH IT. Fuck you. Fuck. You. Said sordid particulars wouldn't have to be dredged up if people weren't being dismissive of them. It's not exploitative to discuss the circumstances of a crime when evaluating its severity, sorry. And yeah, victims of sexual abuse OFTEN want to "just forget about it..." but that's how cycles perpetuate themselves. It's not just "society acting vindictively and against the victim's wishes." Taking refuge in avoidance out of psychological necessity, pretending this horrible thing didn't happen to you isn't true closure [even if it might be the more lucrative solution], and to say that we must never reopen old wounds, let sleeping dogs lie, etc., doesn't even come close to passing for a "value." The alternative to such isn't ZOMG PURITAN WITCH HUNTZ!!!11, it's simply the truth.
Anyway, I played Taboo with some friends the other night and like every other clue we came up with was about Roman Polanski. wtg, dude, you're more famous now than you've ever been!
current music: Crimson Muddle - Lamentations Psychotiques | Powered by Last.fm
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| Friday, October 2nd, 2009
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12:40 pm - blah blah healthcare blah
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What a clusterfuck.
1) Forcing people to patronize insurance companies or face a fine isn't going to "fix" the insurance industry, any more than fining homeless people for not owning houses is going to reduce the price of real estate. And this whole "we won't fine you for not having coverage if your income is so low that having health insurance would suck up more than 10% of it" thing... okay, how the fuck is "HEY YOU HAVE TO TITHE 10% OF YOUR INCOME, MINIMUM TO THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY" somehow less objectionable to anyone than HEY MORE TAXES? Which, incidentally... if I'm already spending 2/3 of my income on rent and another probably 15% on food, guess what; another 10% on the cheapest possible insurance that's probably going to deny me coverage anyhow STILL CONSTITUTES AN EXPENSE I CANNOT AFFORD WOW.
2) I don't see how the Federal Gov't even has the authority to require individuals to purchase any "service" from other private concerns as part of their citizenship. I guess one could argue [in bad faith, I think] that the authority to regulate interstate commerce includes such power, but what if your insurance company and doctor are in the same state as you are? Doesn't state law trump Federal jurisdiction over any transactions in that situation?
3) I honestly can't decide whether most of the Democratic party has just completely sold out to their corporate backers, whether they've lost touch with the reality of things below the uppermost middle-class stratum, or whether they're senile enough that they actually believe there is any "compromise" in these proposals. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter what I think, because I'm just going to keep getting call centres and form letters in response to my attempts at engaging my representatives. I honestly don't know how I'm going to stay out of debt if this shit passes, which is something I've been proud of - even if I live poorly, at least I'm not part of this cancerous cycle of debt that's supplanting any actual economy. So much for that shit, I guess.
current music: the Missing Teens - James Call's Peter and the Wolf | Powered by Last.fm
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| Saturday, September 26th, 2009
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1:01 am
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| Monday, September 21st, 2009
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3:40 pm - shitty, shitty week
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*One of my best friends just lost his dad. I am really looking forward to having an incredibly difficult time getting the day off work to attend his funeral because my absence is always a minor catastrophe. You'd think with how little these guys pay us they could afford to spend a little extra cash on thoroughly training new employees rather than expecting them to magically train themselves when we're outrageously-busy 90+% of the time and have been all year. That seems unlikely, however, considering the fact that it's apparently considered an "unreasonable expense" to have to replace a coffee maker's filter basket after three years of it being in heavy use about 18 hours a day.
*One of my other friends can't get a decent job after going back to school for a Second and More Pragmatically-Useful degree because her classmates all applied for their jobs prior to graduation and listed the qualifications they didn't yet officially have. We had a nice little conversation about how we've been raised all wrong and how we're doomed by virtue of being too principled no matter what we do and don't do and blar blar blar. Maybe I'll see her at the funeral, if she can afford to go.
*I'm pretty furious at a certain high-profile local employer for brushing off a recent case of sexual harrassment that is so unbelievably over-the-top that I won't be surprised if they have to deal with a lawsuit when someone winds up being raped by the responsible party. OH WELL I GUESS THAT'S THE COST OF DOING BUSINESS
*I wish there was some kind of Survivalist Bootcamp you could attend, like a boy scouting program for adults run by Ted Kaczynski. I also wish people had to learn anything substantial about history and citizenship in public schools.
*It sucks watching the Morlock/Eloi division develop, and knowing evolution will one day render you obsolete.
current music: Bohren & der Club of Gore - The Art of Coffins | Powered by Last.fm
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| Saturday, September 19th, 2009
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12:18 pm - [old news] on van jones
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32712017/ns/politics-white_house/
1. Who the fuck cares what Mike Pence has to say? Why is he suddenly being quoted everywhere? I guess after GWB and Palin he seems "articulate," but... ugh! It's interesting, by the way, that the racism that one heard in the more "special" parts of the US during the election is now apparently a major plank of the Big Republican Comeback Strategy. Boy, oh boy. I mean, I'm not the biggest fan of the Obama administration at this point, but to argue assert that the man "hates white people" and be taken seriously... uhhhh. This kind of gives me a new understanding of the reasons for the thinking behind the far-left notion that minorities "can't be racist" - because of the scale involved. Jeez. OMG WHITE PEOPLE ARE CLEARLY UNDER ATTACK - what? Really? Hmmm. Yeah, I noticed everyone of miscellaneous European extraction suddenly disappeared from the House and Senate, and every single one of my superiors at work has now been replaced by a Mexican doppelganger, and I've seen more than two black, hispanic, or middle-eastern freshman college students since the beginning of IU's school year... oh wait, no.
2. I like how it's unacceptable for a political appointee to have called assholes assholes, or to ever have doubted What We Were Told about the 9/11 attacks, while it's COMPLETELY acceptable for politicians to have had an emotional response to them that involved rubber-stamping a baseless war and a great deal of scary secret-police antics.
Whatever.
current music: Timeghoul - Infinity Coda | Powered by Last.fm
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| Thursday, September 17th, 2009
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12:24 am - worldviews[,] as more ships[,] passing by day
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A somewhat more conservative coworker's response to my pissing and moaning today about the Senate bill's YOU MUST PATRONIZE THE HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANY OF YOUR CHOICE EITHER THROUGH YOUR EMPLOYER OR PERSONALLY FROM BIRTH TO DEATH OR PAY A $1000/YEAR FINE involved worries that too many eggs ought not be put in the Government basket, as "free" elections might not be around forever, and therefore my argument in favor of the Public Option[TM] that one has marginally more control as a voter than a stockholder doesn't hold up.
This person didn't disagree with my assessment that it was ridiculous to pass a law forcing people to patronize a business and hope that more or less permanently guaranteeing it a customer base equal to the population somehow increases the quality of its services, nor did they have any alternate suggestions about making healthcare more accessible or affordable. Instead, we talked about how things have changed since WWII. It seemed a little tangential. Okay. I guess it's just a question of whether you distrust The Government or Other Mega-Corporations more. I guess. I don't know how they think an economy is going to operate outside the auspices of governmental control of some sort but whatever. Probably the GLORIOUS INVISIBLE HAND OF THE FREE MARKET. Given more time, I'd have gone the route of "so should we get rid of Medicare also or are you saying the amount of ZOMG SOCIALISM we had thirty years after the New Deal was exactly right?" It's such fun to bring up Medicare to Baby Boomers.
Another brought in a recent edition of that dream dictionary by the mysteriously-hard-to-research Gustavus Hindman Miller for my perusal. I had to try to explain that its lack of an original publication date made it somewhat useless to me, since I could only place him historically as a result of a brief note about its release "before" a certain lecture of Jung's in the 1910s or 20s, and culturally as a result of inferences, and as a disbeliever in the sort of Spiritualist nonsense in Miller's own introduction, I require such context in order to disentangle the man himself from his wrongly-universalized personal language [which of course he has DRAWN FROM THE ETHER USING HIS INTUITION PSYCHIC SOUL-FACULTIES OR SOMETHING and in no way influenced by his own waking experiences], but I never have time to articulate anything this nuanced or complicated anymore because we[and especially I]'ve been so hopelessly-busy of late.
(I had better finish my thing for Arktau Eos soon ; the Equinox is in less than a week. This weekend, I suppose.)
I'm pretty sure I'd be as addicted to cellular phone use as everyone else there if I had one that had any sort of web browser or text messaging plan or how the fuck ever it works, based on my past behavior with the Internet in general.
current music: Root - Upálení | Powered by Last.fm
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, September 14th, 2009
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3:51 am - an open question
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Do you ever wonder if your contribution to The World is essentially useless? Why or why not? How frequently? What do you think about this, and how do you deal with it?
current mood: None, or other
current music: Aluk Todolo - Woodchurch | Powered by Last.fm
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| Saturday, September 5th, 2009
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1:13 am - anachronist
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| Thursday, September 3rd, 2009
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1:59 am - one small good thing
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Nicole brought over a copy of Shigeki Gomi's Fantastic Medical Tarot, THE TERRIFICNESS OF WHICH CANNOT BE OVERSTATED. Jeez. I felt like I was reading The King in Yellow, and I'm not talking about the Robert W. Chambers novel!
Oh my oh my oh my!
current music: Ｊ・Ａ・シーザー - 撫子かくし | Powered by Last.fm
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| Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009
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1:30 pm - a letter I wrote my congressman...
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12:25 am - steampunk on stormfront
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So apparently this whole "steampunk movement" thing is inspiring not only bored goths but racist kids who feel the 'negativity' of cyberpunk as an artistic genre reflected too poorly on the achievements of 'white culture' to be appealing.
...YEAH. :/
of course steampunk as a literary trope was hardly devoid of dystopian energy or sentiment, overall, but LAWL GOOD MARKETING SUBCULTURAL INCLUSIVENESS MUST TRUMP ALL MORAL UNCERTAINTY. WAY TO PUT THE "PUNK" BACK INTO IT, KIDS.
I'm interested to see how the purveyors of this ludicrous notion of a single broad artistic trope as synonymous with "a subculture" fancy they are capable of responding as "a subculture" to something of this nature. Artistic tropes are, of course, at least somewhat apolitical by nature [particularly when they're fundamentally grounded in fictional circumstances], but this aspect of the situation kind of underscores once more for me the utter silliness and vanity of billing any purely aesthetic movement as a "culture" of any stripe and trying to KEEP it apolitical. And really, if you're going to draw false [or, to put it less unkindly, "new"] etymological connections between steampunk and "punk" as signifiers*, you can hardly keep deeper politics out of it at that point with a straight face! arrrghhhh nobody cares even though they're the ones who posited these connections between things to start with for totally vapid reasons and this is exactly why I left ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) anachrotech
Oh, I guess this was posted like a whole year ago. Oh well. I don't make a habit of reading this website, because even though I do love things that I violently hate, I certainly don't have time to troll it effectively or even peruse it extensively. SO I GUESS IT'S NEW TO ME.
A half hour of google/archive digging revealed only this single "response" to the issue, which as usual has consisted so far of stupid fucking goth kids snooting about on the subject of how they're too good to sink to the level of political disagreement but would TOTALLY HAVE SOMETHING PROFOUND TO SAY IF THEY COULD BE BOTHERED TO WASTE THEIR TIME DOING SO
p.s. it pains me deeply that Diana Wynne Jones is mentioned in this thread also :(
*the latter was originally derived from a play on "cyberpunk" in the Gibsonian sense, and had nothing to do with punk rock in any form! This is exactly like what happened with "goth" and "gothic" in the mid-80s, except even more retarded because I don't remember anyone other than Billy Idol prancing around calling themselves "cyberpunks" and proclaiming how revolutionary they were because of it without actually giving a shit about any of the cultural changes it was metaphorically referencing!
current music: Pigface - Asphole | Powered by Last.fm
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| Wednesday, August 26th, 2009
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10:13 pm - tilting @ my favorite windmill
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such bullshit
"The web is growing out of its adolescence," my ass. Is cultural maturity equivalent to the institutionalization of power relationships both temporal and financial in nature? Fuck that. Removing the messiness from Internet culture degrades the very source of its vital energy.
I'm bitching more about the author's implicit attitude that corporate power is somehow less violent or unacceptable than constant intellectual strife more than wikipedia's not-all-THAT-draconian-even-if-deeply-disappointing-given-the-site's-raison-d'etre proposal to institute a waiting period between new user registration and the ability to edit articles, in case that wasn't clear. The tension between the authoritarian and anti-authoritarian tendencies in Natural Internet Culture has existed since the days of the sysop, and must never be allowed to resolve itself! Those who impose restrictions and those who hack their way around them toward accessibility are the very core of the self-contained memetic ecosystem that has arisen here, and the purest examples of function following form [I like to see them as microcosmic representatives of the Internet's dual nature as a military project designed in the service of information remaining accessible and communication possible in times of extreme RL duress - but still a military project, so "democratic" only in the most heartless, objective sense, just as nature] Natural fucking culture, in other words. Can't these fucking yuppie scum stick to colonizing RL with their weak-ass non-values? ARRGHHH.
DON'T POISON THE JUNGLE YOU FOOLS - MUTATION IS OUR ONLY HOPE
current music: Theatre of Hate - Rebel Without a Brain | Powered by Last.fm
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| Monday, August 24th, 2009
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4:59 pm - produce fail
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I felt a little better about my shitty tomatoes after
*seeing a lot of other equally shitty tomatoes all up and down 6th street
*attending a party and seeing equally shitty tomatoes growing outside, despite a nice trellis and blah blah blah.
I guess this is just a bad year for tomatoes. Sun has been intense enough to burn poisonously in the humid air, but not warm enough to make vegetables really thrive. Rain has come in cold hail-y bursts at all the wrong times. Amazingly shitty weather. Glad it's not just me. I guess this explains why food is so expensive, too...
current music: The Comsat Angels - Total War | Powered by Last.fm
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| Saturday, August 22nd, 2009
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1:36 pm - public health debate 2
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House Majority Douchebag Steny Hoyer has gone on record as saying yeah whatever a public option is optional. Commentators whose opinions I normally respect have started to cave, too, talking about the necessity of "compromise" and blarrrrgghhh. It's beginning to look a lot like HillaryCare... again.
Listen, guys. This is a huge part of why I wouldn't have voted for Hillary Clinton, this legal requirement that every American gives their money to an insurance company. It sets a dangerous fucking precedent, and also makes no goddamned sense at all. I mean, are people really more comfortable with the State mandating a redistribution of ~*THEIR MONEY*~ to private corporations of its choosing than they are with being forced to leave it in public hands? What I really like about this proposal is that if there's a really especially intolerable bunch of insurance company executives, I get to vote them out every four years. Oh wait... no... no, that's the "public option."
I don't know, guys, I'm a little worried about the totalitarian manner in which my city has a fire department that's publically-funded. Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to just make individuals purchase "fire coverage" from privately-held fire-extinguishing companies? Of course, you could just get BASIC fire coverage, or for a small additional fee you could upgrade to our Full Coverage plan where we'll come and put out fires that look like they might have been due to arson or natural disasters too. Of course, things will get a little more expensive because we'll need to employ a legion of people to handle our extremely complex claims process and an annual pricing scale that can accomodate factors such as structures built in locations with pre-existing fire succeptibility, the fluidity of fire succeptibility due to local weather, etc. etc. so we know how much to charge everyone.
Seriously. Who gives a shit about bankrupting an "industry" that produces absolutely nothing? The boring administrative communique stuff is EXACTLY WHAT BUREAUCRACY IS FOR, and the rest is just basically exploitation.
I'll call and yell at my senator about this. Unfortunately, financial services/real estate/insurance motherfuckers pretty much own the Senate, so who gives a shit what I have to say about it? Oh well.
current music: Sparks - Amateur Hour | Powered by Last.fm
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| Friday, August 21st, 2009
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1:24 pm - fun with linguistic preconceptions
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Someone walked past my house's side window. I came to the front door, and a languid girl in her early twenties, with dark skin and eyes, and her Very Very White "mother" [direct quotation; not necessarily to be read as derision-quotes] were rather timidly rounding my porch and approaching the front door. I opened the door and greeted them, which yielded a brief, awkward pause. Assuming my apartment was being shown unbeknownst to me or something, I said "can I help you?" Girl 1 replied that she and her mother were part of "a volunteer organization" and mentioned something about "sharing [something or other] from the Bible" and went into this pre-scripted litany about "many people wonder why how there could be a God who allows some of the things that are happening today," etc.
Oh boy. I've been feeling a little ill, and was really not in a state of wakefulness sufficient to support the wonderful argument I'd like to have with these poor people. Counter-evangelism fail. So... how to get rid of them...?
"Well," I said, "I feel pretty secure in my beliefs, honestly." <----ENTIRELY TRUE
"Oh, well, thank you for your time," said the girl, and, after a slow and halfhearted attempt at beating me to "have a nice day" from White Mother, they were off.
current music: Emperor - Ensorcelled by Khaos | Powered by Last.fm
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| Friday, August 14th, 2009
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2:11 pm - senior care public debacle
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32403916/ns/politics-capitol_hill/
As inarticulate as a figure like Sarah Palin is, I don't think it's that she or Rush Limbaugh can't read, or something. I think the idea of end-of-life care that includes the option of living wills is simply unpalatable to the BAWWWW TERRI SCHIAVO crowd. I don't think the issue was ever what Terri Schiavo might have wanted; I think it was that to the Far Right, Life* is Always Preferable to Death, Period, and individual suffering needs to shut the fuck up and stop undermining the purity of those values.
*Of course, in a pragmatic sense, "Life" excludes the life of anyone who happens to live in a place with which we are at war, which now potentially means pretty much anyone, anywhere, thanks to the whole slippery semantic transition in recent political discourse between war between nations or other constructs to "war" on concepts as both metaphor and excuse for the persecution of individuals based upon their espousing of or association with ideas. Is it really that hard to See What [They] Did There?
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Monday, August 10th, 2009
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2:42 pm - SRS LATIN SCHOLAR WILL SCHOOL YOU, FURTIVE LYRIC TRANSLATION QUERANT
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giddy
