Luna del'Corvo

I have been reeling in the wake of the constant barrage of insanity from the White House, as I am sure most of us have. I remain convinced, now more than ever, that the Christo-fascists want to create a neo-feudal society, and everything being done now seems to indicate that is not hyperbole.

Forcing farmers out of business while Vance's firm enables wealthy oligarchs here and abroad to buy up that land for pennies on the dollar, while he has deported the large part of the workers who work that land. How will these 'investors' see a return on their new 'manor farms?' By getting peasant serfs to work them, of course. And where will they get a massive workforce who will accept such conditions? All the veterans, low-income workers, unemployed, and the other poor, hungry, and vulnerable whose protections, safety, and education he has been gutting.

When there is nowhere else to go, no other place to work, no other way to eat, those of us who survive that long will be the new peasant class. It's funny, I just taught the Three Orders of Medieval society: Those who fight, those who pray, and those who work. Those who fight are the monied aristocrats, owners of the land, the wealth, and the power. The notion that they actually fight is now obsolete, of course, but they will, as the gluttonous nobles did, lord over their little kingdoms with all the smug superiority of a fat, 9th C duke.

Those who pray, the clergy, the Joel Otseens and the Pat Hagees of this new feudalism will also hold land, wealth, and power. If the excesses of the medieval clerical class in the Middle Ages have shown us nothing else, it is that 'men of god' like to eat fine food and sleep in silk sheets just as much as any noble. Those who are the luminaries of the new Christian Nationalist Regime will stand at ease beside the oligarchs whose rule they endorse.

And those who work. All the rest of us. I have said many times that the wealth inequality in the US today is most closely mirrored by that of the feudal Middle Ages, before the 12th C Renaissance recreated the lost 'skilled, craftsman, or middle class. That inequality has been growing, and under the new regime being crafted before our dumbfounded eyes, it will continue to grow. With healthcare made inaccessible, birth control a distant memory, food insecurity the reality of life for the vast majority of Americans, and education reduced to the bare minimum needed to ensure compliance with basic directives, the new peasant class will be created. Call them proles, serfs, or whatever pseudo-patriotic and paternalistic moniker the oligarchs will craft, a peasant is still a peasant.

If you think this all sounds a bit too much like some tawdry Russian novel, well, I think the recent White House debacle makes clear why that is. Russia has always struggled with democracy, and even at those rare moments when some regime or other had the chance to elevate the peasant class, they have demurred (sometimes in fear for their lives, yes, but still.) If Russia has readily absorbed American Evangelical misogyny and bigotry (as evidenced by their oppression of LGBTQ folks, and the recent decriminalization of wife beating for example), then the US, or a certain red-hatted segment of it, has just as readily embraced the oppressive totalitarianism that would sacrifice its own wellbeing and that of everyone around them in the name of being able to shit on someone they hate more than the ruling class whose favor nd approval they crave.

The time to resist is now, but it is, I think, a window that will close far sooner than most of us think. The damage is being done now, there is no 'waiting it out for four years.' Barring extraordinary upheaval or some meaningful pushback, I genuinely think this reshaping of the American experiment will be fait accomplis by the time spring turns to summer. I know that Godwin's Law exists, as does its corollary, but it would be wise to recall that it took Hitler less than two months to dismantle German democracy. While the true effects of that may not have been evident until a year or two later, the core work was done in only 53 days. Fifty-three days, or one month and three-quarters, or seven weeks; however you phrase it, it is a mind-numbingly short time. 53 days. We are on day 45.

Where indeed? It's been a ride, I can say that much. I'll try to keep this short, but in as much as it's supposed to be a journal, I suppose I should at least fill in the gaps a bit, no?

And if you're new here (Hiya, if so!) consider this something of an introduction.

( Read the tale here )

I'm realizing that this journal has become a series of 'hey, I'm back and gonna try again!' So, I'll forgive you for any skepticism if I say, well, yeah. After years of more or less living on LJ, LJ got squirrelly, DW was pricy (compared to my lifetime permanent, Cadillac, all the perks (aka icons) membership at LJ, and FB became a thing.

FB has become increasingly toxic, and while I have so many people and communities there which I cherish, the insane influx of sponsored, forced, 'recommended,' and otherwise unwanted BS has been getting more and more annoying. I spend more time blocking unwanted accounts than I do reading the people I love. And now, AI.

I have my own run-ins with AI, which I will describe in another post, but I am becoming convinced that AI and the inevitable dumbing down of the population that comes with it pose an even more salient threat to humanity than fascism, climate change and nuclear war combined. If nothing else, it will be the complete loss of any kind of objective reality that will allow these other threats to reign unchallenged.

So when FB has made AI inescapable, even as the AI itself admits that it is programmed to prioritize 'engagement over accuracy,' I think it may be time to do as others have done and just bow out of FB entirely. I left Twitter ages ago, but FB is a two-decade record of my life and experiences. It's hard to let that go. It's also the only point of contact I have with some people I really don't want to lose track of. I'm not quite there, but I think it's becoming inevitable.

I'm on BlueSky, and looking at Mastadon, and of course, I've been here for ages, even when I haven't 'been here.' We shall see. I think it is time for me, personally, to return to recording more of what I see happening in the world anyway.

I am, at best, a peripheral comics fan. I more or less know the 'verses, and I like the characters (admittedly more via the films and fan-created media than the comics themselves), but I am by no means a core fan. But seriously? 'Hydra Captain America,' and comic shop employees wearing Hydra t-shirts? Seriously? In THIS political environment, in the era of Trump, Bannon, and Richard Spencer; THIS is what you think is a good idea?????? Oh, fuck no!

For those of you not familiar with this controversy, there is a summary (from this article) ( below the cut: )

In case anyone is getting distracted by the Russian spy drama, North Korea, Bill O'Reilly being fired from Fox News, etc. the following bills have been introduced to Congress:

1. HR 861 Terminate the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
2. HR 610 Vouchers for Public Education
3. HR 899 Terminate the U.S. Department of Education
4. HJR 69 Repeal Rule Protecting Wildlife
5. HR 370 Repeal Affordable Care Act
6. HR 354 Defund Planned Parenthood
7. HR 785 National Right To Work (this one ends unions)
8. HR 83 Mobilizing Against Sanctuary Cities Bill
9. HR 147 Criminalizing Abortion (“Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act”)
10. HR 808 Sanctions against Iran

Please copy/paste and share widely. Call your House Representative and ask them to not only vote "NO"...but to speak up for our rights, health & safety, and our beautiful country.

If your senators and reps aren't saved in your phone yet, text your zip code to 520-200-2223. You'll get a text back with everyone's contact info. It gives you Federal and State.

PASS IT ON (copy and paste to share since you can't share from form this page)

Someone posted this as 'pushback' to the fear, anger, and bewilderment many people are feeling in the wake of Trump’s election and subsequent (so far) disastrous presidency. I felt the need to reply.
( Cut for length and dodgy formatting (doh!). )

...you're like that ex who always finds a new way to disappoint....

I have been trying to get back here, again, as I have before, and have actually had a little success. Right in time for the new "Service Agreement." Where to begin? There are, of course, the censorship implications. And then there is the idiocy of making me sign an agreement that LJ itself declares is non-binding, but my consent to it (required to use the site), implies agreement to the version I can't read because it's in fucking Russian? Really? THat's taking Orwellian to a whole new level....

So, despite my what? 15 year-history here, I am am trying to actually commit to the transition for Dreamwidth. This really grind my gears since my account here has been a permanent one for...oh, a decade or so, and DW will end up costing me a pretty penny that I *really* can't exactly afford right now. And, my whole getting back here has a lot to do with those of you who are still here, and there seems to be a dearth of anyone I know on DW, or at least that I can find.

MY plan is to begin using DW full-time, while still reading and commenting here. Eventually, I will probably turn off commenting and essentially set this whole thing to private. I don't know if I can *quite* bring myself to delete it, though the new Soviet Overlords may take care of that for me - I've never been subtle about my liberal views, after all.

I will keep up here, but please, look for me on DW (link below) if you too have made or are contemplating the move there. Peace, all!

Look for me on my mirror journal, LunaDelCorvo on DreamWidth. If you are on DW too, tell me at this post so I can add you there!

I've been trying to get back to LJ lately (with mixed success; I doubt I'll ever use it or DW as much as I did 'back in the day'), but now it seems it has become a bit of a Russian police state. Lovely. So I suppose I will keep my liberal, democratic socialist, Tantrump-hating commentary here instead. Now the question is - do I delete that journal, or leave it? It sucks b/c I have a permanent account, and this one costs. Like I need another expense these days. Grrrrr.

But OK, then, here I am. :)

P.S. We need new moods! I need 'rebellious' and 'defiant,' just for starters....

P.P.S. Anyone know of any friending things? Anyone out there at all, come to think of it?

I wondered recently if I was being hyperbolic to suggest that we are seeing the death of American Democracy. It's a harder question than one might think. Certainly, one's first instinct is to dismiss it as overly dramatic pearl-clutching. After all, don't we see enough of the 'chicken Little' theatrics from the evangelical loonies who sweat gay marriage will bring doom raining down from the offended heavens? Seriously!

Then again, look at where we are, and the trends that promise to become the 'new normal:' suppression of the press, the disconnect from reality, the major shifts in policies both domestic and foreign - there is much about which to be concerned.

I think, at the very least, much of the progressive work we have done will be reversed. Women, minorities, immigrants, non-Christians—in short anyone who is not a Christian white straight male—is going to find much of their social power and equity eroded if not erased. That, together with the wide-reaching implications of repealing the ACA and gutting support for the most vulnerable in society will, I suspect, have a deeply destructive effect on the economy. Healthcare prices will skyrocket while the industry itself shrinks (both of which will follow fewer people using any formal healthcare at all), and the effects of poor health and shrinking healthcare access will bleed over into rising unemployment, homelessness, and poverty. Add in sinking wages, deeper penetration of 'right to work' laws which simply hamper unions and enable corporate abuse of workers, and the spending power of the poor & middle classes will vanish. We are looking at a deep, deep crash, and in incredible era of human suffering.

Meanwhile, our ideologue in chief presses an ever more aggressive, blame-filled, and fascist agenda. The 'middle ground' between the sides simply no longer exists. We keep hearing the urging to 'reach out,' to 'bridge the divide.' Where? How? Reach out to what middle ground? Women are people who deserve full equality and autonomy; or they don't. LGBTQ persons deserve the basic civil right to marry the person of their choosing and receive the same protections and considerations as every other person; or they don't. People of color, Muslims, immigrants, and non-Christians are people who deserve respect, full civil rights, and full equality; or not. Health care is a right; or it isn't. Climate change is a thing; or it's not. Either a democratic society has an obligation to put our resources to work protecting the most vulnerable and ensuring that every person has the basic necessities for a life of human dignity and meaning; or it does not, and screw them; if they are poor they are lazy and dissolute and they deserve what they get. There's not really a '...but...' in there anywhere. Women are not going back into the kitchen, gays are not going back into the closet, climate temperatures are not going back down because we say they never went up, and measles is not going to go away if we treat it with garlic and coconut oil. How do you compromise on such things?

I seriously think we have run out of middle ground. There are two narratives at play in American culture, and they are completely, totally, existentially irreconcilable. One is based in facts, in the imperative to guard the rights and well being of ALL human beings, and in the presupposition that all must share in the opportunity to build a meaningful life. The other is based on self-aggrandizing extremism, hate of what is different, and a disconnect from reality. And it is the latter that is currently winning. We are a 'post-factual' culture. We get on our smart phones on the internet and deny science and reality. We accept doublespeak, and blame others for the failures we create with out fear and bigotry and xenophobia. And that narrative is becoming the dominant one, within which there is no place for diversity; of race, gender, orientation, faith, creed, or opinion. We call that fascism. Is it really excessive to suggest we are seeing the end of American democracy?

Anyone who’s read me for any time at all likely knows that I have little patience for either anti-science superstitious hysteria, or ‘one-world’ government, Illuminati conspiracy hysteria. In this category of intellectually offensive and ridiculous nonsense I include things like creationism, anti-vaccers, aromatherapy, micro-chipping, the Bilderburg conspiracy, chem-trails, black helicopters, and so on.

That said, there have been plenty of times that a new technology hailed as the greatest thing ever, the wave of the future, FDA-approved, and perfectly safe has been anything but. Cigarettes, DDT, lead paint, RBGH, and frakking come easily to mind; there are plenty of others. These things, once ‘scientifically verified’ as safe and beneficial, have since been proven otherwise. And certainly, early protests against these things were critiqued as being anti-science, conspiracy hysteria.

So clearly not everything government and/or industry tells us is safe actually is safe. Mistakes are made. It then becomes something of a minefield to navigate the fine line between unreasoning hysteria and recognizing and revealing a genuine threat. Enter the GMO.

One the one hand, progressive and pro-reason icons like Dawkins and ScienceBlogs roundly condemn GMO opponents as little better than anti-vaccers. Even the DailyKos published an article entitled “GMO Truthers need to be kicked out of the Progressive movement.” The article offers both a strident condemnation of GMO-related “anti-science,” and a short list of refuted claims. And there is certainly a lot of hysteria about GMOs that does mirror the anti-vaccer rhetoric, including claims that GMOs cause autism, or all the studies in favor are industry funded, to name only two.

On the other hand, a lot of profit relies on this technology, and not just in terms of food production for the starving of the world (though there are other, arguably better solutions that involve changing our entire culture of food, but that is a related, but different topic; next post perhaps). But to what degree IS it reasonable and rational to hold corporate stakes as determinative in assessing the relative safety of a food technology? And while the mere fact that other nations have enacted partial or full bans on GMOs is not a testament to their safety in and of itself, consideration of which nations have done so gives one pause. Of the 26 (as of late 2013, almost double the 14 in 2012), many are progressive nations whose overall approaches to issues like sustainability, health, and the environment are admirable: Germany, France, Australia, Japan. These are not nations known for their hysterical, superstitious tendencies (like the US). And while the main consensus is that GMO foods do not produce nutritional harms, there are significant questions about environmental impact, both of the crops themselves, the impact they may have on insect populations, and even more significantly, the impact of the chemicals and pesticides these crops are so often engineered to withstand. Round-up ready crops mean Round-up will be used, in abundance. We know that both herbicides and insecticides can have serious negative consequences. There are also questions about adaptability, seeding, and loss of native species (both crops and the ‘weeds’ that such crops are designed to resist). While some of that may technically be a licensing and patent issue, it is nevertheless inextricably tied up with the question of GMOs as healthy for not just our bodes directly, but our environment, our economy, and our world. So perhaps a GMO tomato won’t hurt me. But what happens if one company ends up owning the vast majority of crops? Corporate monopoly is, I think it is safe to claim, never a benefit to anyone but the corporation.

Mind you, you will not see anything in this post about ‘meddling with nature,’ or anything of that sort. This is not, from the tomato’s perspective, an ethical issue. However, it might be an ethical issue an far larger scales. So perhaps the claim that eating a ‘conventional’ cucumber will give you cancer IS hysteria. But I am not convinced that the question of the safety of GMOs is as simple as that. I think it’s a far more nuanced issue, with much farther reaching implications and questions. And on that level I take some exception to the notion that raising those questions puts me in the same camp as the anti-vaccers and chem-trail believers (or Oprah, for that matter!)

What are your thoughts? Is this an issue for you, and if so, on which side? Why? For those outside the US; how is this issue perceived and debated in your milieu?

This is sort of out of nowhere, but it's actually a long comment I left in response to a poll by "templeghosts" over on LJ. I ended up spending a bit of time on it and thought I'd share. I'm also curious as to your thoughts on this generally.

- I think everyone should go to college, if for no other reason than (here in the US, at least) elementary education has become astonishingly dumbed down. My son has been lucky enough to get into some of the best schools in our area (largely because of where we live; he is still in the public system), but the education he has received throughout has been rudimentary and shallow. As a professor, I also see freshman every year, and their lack of basic reading, writing, and thinking skills together with their overall lack of cultural literacy is appalling. The "basic education" one used to get by the end of high school now requires college. Someone mentioned an MA now being considered the benchmark that a BA used to be? Given the dearth of actual education students receive by the end of high school, that makes perfect sense.

- I also think that there should be some kind of mandatory waiting period BEFORE going to college. Nobody knows themselves well enough at 18 to decide the course of their own lives, and they often don't have a clue about how the world works. Make them go live on their own for a while, travel, practice being a self-sufficient proto-adult, THEN college.

- I do think tuition should be if not free, then affordable. The ways in which universities bilk students for ever more money makes me see red, especially in light of the cash cow that is college sports. Too often, the "academic side" of a university never sees a penny of that sports cash.

- I also think that NO degree program should be without foundational humanities/gen ed content. Yes, pre-med students DO need philosophy, pre-laws do need art, business majors (maybe more than anyone) need history. Maybe Plato and Napoleon have no direct bearing on performing surgery or negotiating a corporate merger, but I don't want to trust my body or my economy to myopic 'vocationally trained' automatons that have never heard of Plato or Napoleon...(or cracked a work of literature, or studied a painting in context). The same goes for basic science, literature, composition, logic, etc. The lack of education in these broad, general, culturally foundational areas is why we have politicians who have no clue what evolution is, or how climate change works, or how women get pregnant.

- No, I have not 'pushed' my son towards college. With two professors as parents, both of whom have completed at least one degree in his lifetime, I think it's inevitable; he sees, first hand, that education is its own reward, and already observes the disastrous lack of education in our public figures. He's also painfully aware of how little actual education he's getting (and he's even in the advanced program, which I note not to brag, but to point to the lamentable state of education at large), and is often frustrated by it.

"Look: The modern national Republican party is a hot mess, a simmering pot of angry reactionaries driven by selfishness and willful ignorance, whose guiding star is not governance but power, and whose policies and practices are tuned to build an oligarchy, not nurture a democracy. Its economic policies are charitably described as nonsense and its social policies are vicious; for a party which parades its association with Jesus around like a fetish, it is notably lacking in the simple compassion of the Christ. There is so little I find good or useful in the current national GOP, intellectually, philosophically or politically, that I genuinely look on it with despair and wonder when or if the grown-ups are ever going to come back to it. Before anyone leaps up to say that the modern Democratic Party has problems of its own, know that I do not disagree. But if your practical choices for governance of the country are between the marginally competent and the actively malicious, you go with the marginally competent.( more here, if you want to read the whole thing )

I didn't write the above, but I wholeheartedly agree with it. It is much like Bill Maher's astute assessment: "There is a big difference between a disappointing friend and a deadly enemy. Of course the Democrats are disappointing. That's what makes them Democrats. If they were any more frustrating they'd be your relatives. But in this country they are all that stands between you and darkest night. You know why their symbol is the letter 'D'? Because it's a grade that means good enough, but just barely. You know why the Republican symbol is 'R'? Because it's the noise a pirate makes when he robs you and feeds you to a shark."

Don't love Obama? Fine. But DO NOT stay home on Nov. 6th" - do not hand us over to the actively malicious GOP because Obama isn't quite as wonderful as you'd hoped in 2008. Welcome to real life - few things are as wonderful as we hope. Jobs, grocery stores, cars, vacations, you name it - life is a constant balance between expectation and disappointment. But you can't sit out life, you have to make choices, find the best alternatives and work with them. You can't sit out the political process* because it isn't all you want it to be either. Do we need to drastically overhaul the electoral system? Hell yes! Should we outgrow the two-party hegemony? Long overdue! But does that excuse each and every person from the responsibility of participating in the system in the meantime? Hell no!

Go vote, and vote Obama!

(* and like it or not, at this point, a third party vote might as well be staying home. Do I like this? No. Is it the reality? Yes. Imagine if all the 3rd party votes in 2000 had gone to Gore.... It sucks, yes, but [once again, welcome to real life], a 3rd party vote might as well be gift-wrapped for the GOP.)

I still, despite my resolve, have not been posting as much. For one thing, I don't really have much to add to the political discourse these days. I mean, really, the satire pretty much writes itself these days. And I have gotten a little burned out on it. One can only keep up the incredulity and outrage for so long. Call if outrage fatigue, if you will. Sadly, I think this is one reason the whackos get away with as much as they do. They spring something outrageous, everyone goes apeshit, so they wait out the uproar and then do it anyway.

Classes are going pretty well. It's funny how I have the same exact class as last fall, still with 1st semester incoming freshman, and it's a whole different dynamic. They talk! It's pretty wonderful, really. It's also funny how little different juniors are from freshman, which is somewhat less wonderful. Reading the first round of essays by my 300s was, I must confess, a bit of a let-down.

Then there's my own classes. Feels weird being a student again. Of course the fact that I am really in no sense in tune with this discipline doesn't help. Comm tends to lead the pack in trying to emulate hard science, which is a methodology I don't speak. I mean, I get it, and when it comes to things like global warming, reproductive legislation (how wrong is it that this is even a term?) evolution, etc., I'm all in favor of it. I'm just not convinced statistics, focus groups, and data tabulation have much use in studying Dante, ya know?....

Alas, just as I get typing a real entry, the alarm reminds me it's off to class..... Cheers, all!

A lot of people whose opinions I respect are actually quite furious that the PPACA/Affordable Care Act/Obamacare was upheld. Their chief complaint seems to be the objection to only one thing: that the government requires individual citizens to purchase a product form a corporation, and can penalize that citizen for failure to do so.

This is also accompanied by the concern that there are no minimum standards for that product, and no protections from things like price-gouging, and corporate abuse of a 'captive market.'

Well, no, not really. There ARE standards and protections, as well as expetions and subsidies for low income Americans. There are also provisions that make employer-provided care easier for small companies to offer, and which make basic care co-pay-free and therefore far more accessible. Here's what it REALLY does:

1. Guaranteed issue and partial community rating will require insurers to offer the same premium to all applicants of the same age and geographical location without regard to most pre-existing conditions (excluding tobacco use). This means that while all Americans are required to purchase coverage, they cannot be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions. This is HUGE.
2. A shared responsibility requirement, commonly called an individual mandate, requires that all persons not covered by an employer sponsored health plan, Medicaid, Medicare or other public insurance programs, purchase and comply with an approved private insurance policy or pay a penalty, unless the applicable individual is a member of a recognized religious sect exempted by the Internal Revenue Service, or waived in cases of financial hardship. Insurers must be approved, and exemptions will exist for those in financial distress.
3. Medicaid eligibility is expanded to include all individuals and families with incomes up to 133% of the poverty level along with a simplified CHIP enrollment process. This expanded eligibility means that many who can't afford coverage, even under the ACA, will still be covered.
4. Health insurance exchanges will commence operation in each state, offering a marketplace where individuals and small businesses can compare policies and premiums, and buy insurance (with a government subsidy if eligible). Again, there will be assistance with coverage, and active steps toward fostering actual market competition to offer better services.
5. Low income persons and families above the Medicaid level and up to 400% of the federal poverty level will receive federal subsidies[27] on a sliding scale if they choose to purchase insurance via an exchange (persons at 150% of the poverty level would be subsidized such that their premium cost would be of 2% of income or $50 a month for a family of 4). Can we really argue that $50 for a family of four is abusive, especially when set against the grim realities of the millions of uninsured who have no coverage at all?
6. Minimum standards for health insurance policies are to be established and annual and lifetime coverage caps will be banned. Minimum standards, there they are. These standars mean that no, companies will not be able to offer pointless 'compliance only' policies that do not actually provide for health care. (I wish auto insurance had the same standards!)
7. Firms employing 50 or more people but not offering health insurance will also pay a shared responsibility requirement if the government has had to subsidize an employee's health care. This will help more people get coverage through employers, reducing the number forced to purchase health coverage privately.
8. Very small businesses will be able to get subsidies if they purchase insurance through an exchange. As above.
9. Co-payments, co-insurance, and deductibles are to be eliminated for select health care insurance benefits considered to be part of an "essential benefits package" for Level A or Level B preventive care. It's a no brainer that basic preventive care is essential to cutting costs of lifelong health care AND improving overall health and quality of life; this will make that basic care much more easily accessible to those who need it most.
10. Changes are enacted that allow a restructuring of Medicare reimbursement from "fee-for-service" to "bundled payments."
11. Additional support is provided for medical research and the National Institutes of Health.

I do understand the concerns about government forcing private citizens to purchase a product, but I think that to argue that this is the first step towards any corporation or industry being able to obtain similar positioning is a massive slippery slope. The ACA is NOT the first step towards 'government mandated' purchase of sneakers, cigarettes, or anything else.

(No, the icon has no relevance except *pretty!*)

From ZDnet:

PayPal’s new aggressive campaign wants to stop independent e-book publishers that use its service from including certain kinds of erotic content in their catalogs.

On Saturday February 18, PayPal began threatening indie book publishers and distributors with immediate deactivation of the businesses' accounts if they did not remove books containing certain sexual themes - namely, specific sexual fantasies that PayPal does not approve of.

PayPal told indie e-book publishers and retailers - such as AllRomance, Smashwords, Excessica and Bookstrand - that if they didn't remove the offending literature from their catalogs within a few days of notification, PayPal would close their accounts....

Read the article HERE.

Whatever your stand on erotica, porn, whatever, the fact remains that this kind of manipulation of markets is absolutely unacceptable, and if not stopped here will establish precedent for similar draconian limits in the future. PayPal operates like a bank. Just like your bank honoring your check, or your Visa card company, they process transactions between merchants and buyers. Imagine if your bank told you they would no longer process payments at certain retailers? Or if they said 'Sorry, we won't handle payments for this type of item.' You may not like porn, or sex toys, or rainbow kitten calendars, but as long as they are legal items, it doesn't mean it's OK for a financial institution to tell you you cannot spend your money on them, or retailers that they can't sell them.

Now I realize that this may sound like the classic slippery slope. However, this is how the Right has operated for decades. Find some out of the way place and try Move X. If it isn't stopped, try it somewhere else. Pretty soon you have legal precedent. The Right is all about incremental warfare. Look at the abortion battle - they gave up on forward assault on Roe a long time ago. Instead, they have found hundreds of ways to come at it sideways, from parental consent to the width of clinic hallways. Having observed this for so long, I think it is not at all unreasonable to ask, if this move by PayPal flies, what's to say it will only be erotica that payment processors are allowed to censor?

What would stop them from deciding they won't process payments for booksellers who sell 'subversive' literature? Why stop at books? Is it really so hard to imagine big banks, in cooperation with GOP insanity (of which we've seen plenty recently), deciding not to process credit card transactions to Planned Parenthood? Or payments for contraception? Or any of a zillion other things they may decide they don't like?

I don't know as I write this if there are petitions or actions pending on this, but if there are, I'll add them here. If there aren't, I'll start them. meanwhile, I encourage everyone who uses PayPal to contact them now, and tell them censorship is never acceptable.

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ETA: There is some indication (unproven as yet) that this is being instigated BY credit card companies, and PP is the first big processor to be feeling pressure towards censorship from above. In which case, damn I hate being right....

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ETA 2: Some good links for more info and petitions are below:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/7/stop-internet-censorship/
http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-censorship-2

What Can You Do To Avoid Monsanto's New, Deadlier Neurotoxic Sweetener? Very Little

Read about Monsanto's new aspertame replacement: 'neotame.' It's sweeter, deadlier, and has no labeling requirements at all. None. It can show up in meat (and maybe milk?) as it's fed to cattle, it can show up in both conventional and organic products. About the only place it will never show up is on a label. Bon appetit!

A very funny, witty, and spot on post from Daily Kos.

If there is one thing America is still very, very good at, it is moralizing about sex. Long after the manufacturing jobs have all left America, and after we have drilled out the last drop of oil, and after we've abandoned Arizona to either climate change or some new mutant form of racist old people, we'll still have at least two major industries. The first is the fast food industry, which will never die. The second is the omnipresent industry of deciding who should have sex, when they are allowed to have it, and how much they should be punished for it.

So this was a good week in America. We were able to have lots and lots of conversations about Our Great Defining Issue, the only one that really seems to motivate us anymore. No jobs? Yeah, Congress might get around to that someday. Economy sucks? Meh. Hey, I think we're still at war, right? I think? Hmm, hard to tell. But start talking about penises and vaginas, and everyone in political discourse immediately wants in on that. That's right in our wheelhouse. We're good at moralizing about other people having sex.

Read the rest here at Daily Kos.

1. GOProud - a GLBT group that says right on its home page that any of the GOP candidates are an improvement. Have you listened to a single word any of these yokels has said? Can't you get it through your heads that THEY HATE YOU! They want to limit you, enshrine the right to bully and mistreat you, marginalize if not criminalize you, blame you for the ills of the world present and past, and brainwash you by any means possible into being 'normal' e.g. straight. So tell me again why you support the GOP?

2. Anti-abortion activists that are also against contraception and sex ed. Do these people even know HOW pregnancies happen? It's a little like trying to prevent automotive fatalities by outlawing seat belts and driver's ed.

3. Low-income adults with no education railing against education, and in favor of kids leaving school at the first low-wage, menial job that comes along. Can you think of a better way to return to the days of a peasant class? Let's reinstitute the practice of apprenticeships too, and send our 10-year-olds to learn trades. (Oh, wait, Gingrich already proposed that.) Universal education is what brought us out of the 'dark ages,' and now you are not only rejecting it, you are fighting for the right to be ignorant?

4. The hue and cry over the abused sensitivities of Catholic institutions being forced to provide birth control as part of employee health insurance. But the majority of Catholics favor this. The only demographic that opposes offering birth control is evangelicals, who are apparently outraged over the mistreatment of Catholics who don't seem to feel mistreated. Many of these are doubtless the same evangelicals who think the Pope is the antiChrist, and the RC is the Whore of Babylon.....

I know none of this is new, and it's not the whole of it (or even, sadly, the worst of it) by a long shot. But tell me, when did we as a society, go completely batshit crazy?

Originally posted by cantarina1 at post

(The list is not mine, it comes to you courtesy of ThinkProgress.org; the original article is HERE.)

( Read the whole list here )Now, I don't really think Santorum is going to be the nominee. (Then again, taken individually, I'm not sure I can actually see any of them as an actual presidential candidate, but one of them must be. I just think this one is a little more outrageous than most.) However, I think that his near-miss in Iowa is informative on many levels. In 2008, Huckabee won Iowa, and look where that got him. Nevertheless, now, as then, I think that as non-predictive as these early caucuses may be, they bear noting, in that they tell us something about where the discussion ranges, about whether or not there are actual people who will go so far as to say "I think this is the best man to be the President of the United States."

Regardless of whether Santorum is as current in two month's time as Huckabee was in his turn after Iowa, he got this far. So did Ron Paul, come to mention it (whole post on that another time). I have tried to refrain from primary commentary (it's hardly been needed - all this lot needs is microphones, and the satire writes itself!), but I have been watching all of the GOP hopefuls and what they have been saying in the primaries (because we will, of course hear a totally different tune from whoever ends up the actual candidate. It's good to have notes to look back on to see what they've said to their own...)

What are your thoughts on Iowa, the primary at large, and the upcoming Nov 2012 election?

This is wonderful. Really. Read it!

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/02/1021032/-An-indecent-proposal

Let's talk about society for a moment. We hear this panicked cry of "Oh noes! It's Socialism!" all too often lately, and I think there is a very deep misunderstanding working in this. There is a quote (that I find sensible, admirable and entirely on point) from Elizabeth Warren that is getting both praise and outrage (including some of the typically neanderthal violence we have come to expect from the Tea Party types). Here it is:

"There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there — good for you!

But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that maurauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea — God bless. Keep a big hunk of it.

But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."
-Eizabeth Warren, Sep 2011

One of the big sticking points here is the term "social contract." Now, first of all, let's just take a moment and recall that "social" is not an evil word. It simply refers to things that pertain to a society. I think, generally speaking, we would all agree that society is a good thing. It is far more advantageous for humans to live in social groups than it is for each of us to live entirely unaffiliated with our fellow humans.

When we choose to live together instead of singly, we find that we receive all sorts of benefits, but that we must also surrender certain freedoms we might have retained had we remained solo operators. For example, we surrender the freedom to kill anyone who crosses our path, to go any place and take anything that strikes our fancy. It is the existence of society that makes these 'murder' or 'stealing.' Were we not in a social group, we would call this 'defending' or 'foraging' or something. But this is a primitive example. So let's consider the social group as we live in it.

The benefits we enjoy from society are legion, once we consider them. And the more advanced our technology, the greater the benefits we get from society. After all, I doubt many of us could develop and manufacture a computer, a refrigerator, a car, even a flashlight entirely on our own. There is a reason humans did not begin to develop technology until we developed social structures.

Today, we have roads, schools, parks, cities, libraries; all kind of things that are considered 'public.' These things cost resources, and require that we surrender the freedom to say they are ours alone, to destroy them, and so on. But we also have the ability to interact, to share skills, to trade. We don't have to grow our own food, make our own clothes, housing, furniture, etc. We don't have to defend ourselves from every single other human that wants similar things. However, these trades also depend on limitations, and on things which we consider public. Take the very idea of money, for example. It takes a society for money to have any meaning. We don't lug a cow to the mall in order to trade for a pair of jeans. But without a socially shared understanding of money, scraps of paper are just scraps of paper. Further, without society, how would money be produced, to say nothing of valued?

Laws are social; we give up the freedom to drive on whichever side of the road we like in order that all of us may drive safely. Language is social; we must agree that certain words have certain meanings - I must give up the freedom to insist that this thing with four wheels is called a 'glub' and call it a car in order that I can communicate effectively. Everyone depends on these socially agreed-upon conventions. That I was not personally consulted as to which side of the road *I* want to drive on, or what word *I* want to use does not free me from the necessity of abiding by what has been decided upon, and frankly, to whine about it smacks of a petty sort of entitlement.

This exchange of some freedoms for the benefits of living in a society IS an agreement, it is a contract, and it requires all participants to honor the rules, to do their part. It is not explicit, but it is understood. We obey laws because we understand that if no one obeys laws, there is chaos; social order fails. This is the 'social contract.' It is the implicit agreement by which we all understand that the roads are for everyone, that money has value, that things we want must be paid for not simply taken. All of these things limit our freedom, it is true, but who really wants to live a sole entity, defend your own home, make your own food, pave your own roads, make your own clothes, and so on?

Furthermore, I submit that one of the benefits we enjoy from living in a social group, is support of our fellow humans. If we lived in a 'dog-eat-dog, everyone for himself' setting, we would have no reason to care about the fate of others. In fact, we would possibly seek to remove others, as every other presents a threat. However, in a society, we are all better served when the group is stronger. There is no advantage, and in fact, considerable disadvantage in eliminating members. And there is, of course, the ethical question of human suffering; free from the ever-present need for pure self-preservation by our membership in a society, we no longer need measure the good of the other against our own survival. The group is served by looking after all its members.

So Warren's point goes to the very foundational idea of a society. All those things which are 'public,' but which we nevertheless utilize, cost money. While it is true that what money we earn is earned by our labor, it is also the case that no one labors alone. We are employed by others, we employ others. We are able to spend our day working to earn money because we do not have to spend our day growing our food. This is because we live in a social group. The ability to pursue what work we choose is itself one of the benefits of the social contract. The value of the money we earn is a benefit of the social contract.

It is absolutely the case then, that those who benefit more, by using more of the resources of society, have an obligation to put a proportionally greater amount back into the society. Is it solely up to them? Of course not! But surely the manufacturer whose distribution logs millions of miles on the nation's roads in furtherance of his business ought to make a larger contribution to the upkeep of those roads than the person who logs perhaps a thousand miles in the same time period. It's not about anyone doing more than their share, it is about making everyone DO their share. Benefit some, put some back. Benefit a lot, put a lot back. It's not complicated, it's not sinister, it's not some radical notion. It's just the way societies, or at least successful ones, work.

So what are we to make of those who react to Warren's statement by urging violence? (As did the conservative blogger who wrote "When I hear the word 'contract' I reach for my revolver think of two unique definitions — formally, a legally binding mutual agreement made between two or more parties, or idiomatically, an attempt to hire an assassin to kill one or more of your enemies.")

We must conclude that either they simply don't understand the way societies work, or else they are simply anti-social. I am certain this blogger uses the roads in his community, I am certain he uses money, buys food grown by someone else, calls the police if he is threatened in his home. Certainly he is happy to make use of perhaps the greatest manifestation of the social contract ever - the internet. So he (like the rest of us) clearly partakes of the benefits of living in society. I think, however, that he does so in ignorance. Or perhaps he thinks all the benefits he enjoys from his social milieu are owed him for some reason, and that he, or certain others are not obligated to contribute according to how they benefit.

In any case, my suggestion to him then, if he is really so repulsed by the idea of social living as a reciprocal arrangement, is that he take his revolver, and he go away. He is welcome to leave society, to defend his own land, grow his own food, make his own clothes, and so on. If he really wants to defy the social contract he can devise his own linguistic system, his own laws, his own money (though he will have no one with whom to use it, having rejected the notion of the social contract). He will have a hard time getting on the internet, but I don't think society will suffer for his absence.

This article at DailyKos presents a sobering view of what America has, in art at least, become. The reality of life in the face of spiraling medical costs, insurance costs, unemployment, disenfranchisement of voters, renewed oppression of women and other minorities is a brutal one. That so much validity is given to the notion that assistance to those who need it is somehow evil, and that the notion that the government should exist to take care of all its people is considered corrupt and craven makes of us, all of us, a cold and brutal nation. The most obvious recent example is Ron Paul's dodge of the question of whether an individual without insurance who falls ill should be allowed to die.

To his credit, Paul did not say a sick person should be left to die, if they showed up at the hospital unable to pay. That was left to the audience. I am sure the audience, too, had seen the same jars on the same countertops time and time again, but on them it made no impact. I am sure a good portion of them attended church on Sunday, and perhaps heard a plea for a sick member of the congregation that had stopped attending church suddenly, and there may have been talk about transplants or rehabilitation or family, and perhaps they gave $10 and felt a sense of satisfaction in it, and a clean conscience.

We are not socialists, here in America. We are not like all the first world countries in Europe or Asia that believe caring for citizens in need is the duty of a government and its people, and not just a whim to be met sporadically according to our moods. We are religious, and our religion dictates that we will help only who we want, when we want, and the others can either die or be reduced to lifelong poverty. That will still grand us a clean conscience, it seems: We can show up for church on Sunday, then go to a political debate during the week and shout for the poor and the sick die already, rather than pay a penny to save them.

That is what I find so cold in Ron Paul, and in the other freedom-lovers that share the stage with him, and especially in those members of America that they so feverishly wish to cater to. They can see that their solution does not work: The evidence is in every town, every day, but it still does not matter to them. They will poke their fingers out at you, and lecture on how churches or friends or neighbors will take care of it all; if you note that churches and friends and neighbors have never, ever been able to take care of it all, they will scoff, and mutter something about freedom; if you press them on what freedom means in such a context you will, eventually, come back around to the darkest response, which is let them die.

It is cold, and dark, and miserable, and mean, and tribal, and cruel.

It never ceases to amaze me, the emotions that we will wrap up in a flag and call patriotic if it suits us. A large swath of America is made up of very cruel people, people who value their own self-indulgence over the welfare of their neighbors, and they seem uniformly to be the most pompous in their exhortations of both patriotism and godliness. They are here to defend the nation from monsters who would parcel out a modicum of support to all citizens, and not just ones they personally know of or approve of: If they help their fellow man, they want to see the person grovel for it a bit, and helping an anonymous soul is deemed not just a pointless exercise but an insult to their very freedom.

Let them die does not make a very good slogan for a bumper sticker, and so even true believers tend to shade it a bit. But even in the boldest, cruelest state, it will be applauded.

More disturbing than Paul's dodge, however, was the affirmative roar of the crowd. It was disturbing enough when the mob cheered Perry's nonchalance when asked about the number of executions in his state, and his cavalier denial of any concern over the innocence of any of those executed. Similar tirades seem to draw the same bloodthirsty furor out of audiences no matter the topic. Muslims, gays, liberals, atheists, socialists, people of color, even those 'horrid, lazy, dissolute unemployed' seem to be equally subject to the condemnation of the mob.

"Christian leaders" blaze the trails of hate and oppression. Pat Robertson advises a man to divorce his wife with Alzheimer's, because she is "all intents and purposes, already dead." Oklahoma legislator, Sally Kern, a known religious right affiliate, calls gays worse than terrorists. Massachusetts State Rep. Ryan Fattman believes that rape and abuse survivors ought to be afraid to report their assault, assuming they are undocumented. Teens are bullied to the point of depression and suicide, and the Christian right opposes measures to combat such harassment. When women are raped it's their own faults because they go out at night dressed like sluts. Black people breed too much. Kick out the Muslims, kill the gays, let the poor ask for handouts from their church or die. Gabrielle Giffords. Dr. Tillman.

The uniting characteristic of America today is blame, vilification and retribution. America loves to hate, we seem to feed on it these days. Hate drives more passion, more action, more political force than does anything else, save perhaps fear, and really, how far apart are they? How long before the rallies calling for the wrath of God to smote the unrighteous, the protests harassing those who seek reproductive freedom, the vilification of gays - how long before we recognize these as the "Two Minutes Hate" of our time?

THanks again to Talk2Action, a really good article that clarifies a lot of the 'media muddle' that the recent discussion of dominionism and the New Apostolic Reformation has stirred around the airwaves. Fairly short, but detailed and readable. Definitely worth a look.

| Inside the Christian Right Dominionist Movement That's Undermining Democracy

Paranoia and the Progressive Press: A Response to WaPo’s Religion Columnist's Article "Beware False Prophets who Fear Evangelicals"

This is an excellent article that deftly refutes the Washington Post's OpEd column accusing the "liberal media"* of paranoia and scare tactics in their reporting on the extreme religious views of candidates like Bachmann and Perry. However, the author also puts the realities of dominionism in today's political arena in perspective: as a real entity, with significant support, that needs to be taken seriously by meeia and voters on both left and right. Give it a read!

(*One of these days I'm going to have to make a "right wing commentary drinking game" based on every assertion that the media is liberally-slanted! [If only!])