jsbowden: (Eclipse)
jsbowden ([personal profile] jsbowden) wrote2006-03-23 09:27 am

Weekend Update with Nobody Special

So, it's Spring, if you believe the calendar. Where's the weather that DOESN'T SUCK? It snowed Tuesday night into early Wednesday. No accumulation, but that's not the point.

And now for something completely different...

Just out of curiousity, when did stupidity become a virtue? I'd love to know, so I can go back to that point in time and kill the people responsible. Stupidity was always something we accepted as inevitable and dealt with (and ridiculed mercilessly), but it was never looked upon as something to be valued. This was good and proper (or at least as good and proper as one could hope for). Ignorance is now a goal, and stupidity is lauded.

It's totally awesome that the Republican party leadership in Congress is, in essence, calling Russ Feingold a traitor for calling out Bush on breaking the law and violating our most basic civil rights. They're also really pissed at him for trying to derail renewal of the PATRIOT act. I love the name. Orwell would be proud. It really just totally reinforces my view of humanity in general. When they invade your house because you know and interact with someone of the wrong ethnicity, religion, nationality, etc., I don't want to fucking hear about it. You ASKED for this shit. You all deserve the slavery you're signing yourselves up for. Do me a favor though and leave me the fuck out of it.

Governor Henry gave a little speech on this topic a couple hundred years ago now. There's a bit out of that speech that is one of the most famous in US History, and yet, while just about every American over the age of 12 can finish the phrase "Give me liberty or give me..." none of them ever actually THINK about what those words mean. Yes boys and girls, we really did found this nation on the idea that being free is more important than being safe. It wasn't perfect, and the founders knew it. There were many arguments over the issue of slavery from before the Continental Congress right on up to the US Civil War (and beyond, just ask Jim Crow), but they did the best they could in the environment they found themselves in. Life is risk. Get over it.

And that bullshit argument about the basic rights us citizens are supposedly 'granted' (so much for inalienable, eh?) by The Constitution only applying to us? Let me remind everyone that The Constitution recognizes, not grants, various rights, according the the underlying political theory of the men who wrote it. That same Governor I referenced above who gave a little speech? He refused to allow VA to pass the vote on the Constitution until the Bill of Rights was drawn up. He had enough vision to know where things would end up even then. In our little Declaration to the original George III, we note that ALL men are accorded these rights. We seem to have forgotten that somewhere along the way.

I weep for the future. Unfortunately, the future is now.

[identity profile] locumtenens.livejournal.com 2006-03-23 09:49 am (UTC)(link)
It's 56 degrees and sunny here. I have all of our doors open to air out the house, right now.

I live to be helpful.

[identity profile] turnberryknkn.livejournal.com 2006-03-23 02:11 pm (UTC)(link)
And just imagine what it's going to be like once things *really* start going bad.

I mean, just to pick one example, we're still not inspecting the cargo containers, and we still don't know where all that RMX and HDX at Al Qaa Qaa went...

[identity profile] corruptedjasper.livejournal.com 2006-03-23 02:56 pm (UTC)(link)
I weep for the future. Unfortunately, the future is now.

We ain't seen nothing yet, I'm afraid.

[identity profile] jrolsma.livejournal.com 2006-03-23 08:41 pm (UTC)(link)
I weep for the future of this country. As a woman with a young daughter, I worry every day about the discrimination I see getting worse and worse. The more they let the nutjobs from the evangical right influence them, the less freedom I see for myself and my daughter. That crap in South Dakota is only the beginning.

I'm starting my plan for emigration now.

[identity profile] mdevnich.livejournal.com 2006-03-24 01:30 am (UTC)(link)
Can I get an AMEN. I had a conversation with a colleague the other day where he was incredulous about what timid chickens we Americans are (not his exact words, he was, of course, very polite and roundabout).