Lower or Higher Standard of Living?

Shortly after I woke up I hopped onto YIM and checked my mail when I noticed one of the articles was entitled: "Unemployed seek protection against job bias". The article itself was talking about how many companies, when looking at applicants for a job opening, will automatically discard any one of them who is either unemployed or has been unemployed for longer than 6 months. This is not something that is unheard of for me, I've known for a while that this is fairly common practice and it seems to be so well known that President Obama has even included a provision in his jobs bill that would ban companies from excluding the unemployed when considering applications. But that is actually just background for the real thing I want to address in this post.

A while back I heard someone asking in confusion about the general attitudes of the common person during the Wisconsin protests; "Why" they asked, "is it that when they hear about union and government employees making X amount of money an hour and get Y days off and Z benefits that instead of demanding equal treatment by their own private sector employers they instead demand union and government employees to take cuts?"

It was a question that I couldn't answer. I puzzled over it for a long while and honestly, I could never find any answer that didn't sound like some variation of "Fuck the right wing." I didn't want another outlet for my contempt of most things conservative, I wanted a real damn answer. Eventually I gave up and put it out of my mind. Until today.

When reading the Associated Press article linked to above, I made the mistake of looking at the comments. I'd almost forgotten that YahooNews has become a bastion of right-wing knuckle draggers. As I was reading, quite a few of the comments were, surprisingly, agreeable. And then I found one from the user 1Spirit;

The point I am trying to make in my post is that we, the unemployed, are trying to hit a mercurial moving target in regards to jobs in our respective ares of expertise. Yes, we can
accept a jobs below our personal income requirements but, this only slows the ratcheting down of our standards of living. The probability of losing our homes, our marriages are only minimally diminished. Many, if not most of us, will still have thousands of dollars in student loans to pay for to which have no effective value. Collectively, this affects us all through the cascade effect.

This actually strikes me as quite a reasonable post. Why should we, the majority of America, have to sacrifice our standard of living so the richest fuckers out there can keep hoarding their cash? And why should we be excluded from employment because we can't find work in an economy where 65 year-old's are still working full time and unemployment is still hovering around 9%? And then I find some oh-so intelligent [/sarcasm] replies to this post.

Jim
Your standard of living? Are you kidding me. You are worried about the pride of losing your standard of living.Get out there and get a job and take care of your family. If they don't have a job in your area, move. You do what you have to to take care of your family you idiot. You lazy moron, get out there and go to work. Do anything you can. Businesses hire people that are willing to do what ever it takes. I delivered pizzas when I had to. My son told me the other day, Dad, you taught me a valuable lesson with that. The pride is in taking care of your family. You can't accept a job that is below your personal income requirements. You lazy sot. And your spouse buys that crap? I paid every dime of my son's tuition and housing because I worked second jobs. I had yard sales, I did what it took because that is who I am. You are part of what is wrong with this nation now, it does not meet your personal income requirements and ratchets down your standard of living. You moron. You voted for Obama didn't you.

Charles B
Took a job that pays less than 1/2 of what I was used to being paid.... it is a regular paycheck.

I then cut out completely ANY AND ALL entertainment expense. I no longer have steak for Dinner (maybe 1 X /month). There is about 50X of ground beef in the feezer, and some chicken breast.
Before I lost my job and took the new one, I hadn't had a hamburger at home in ayear.... Now it is on the table 3 of 5 nights, disguised as manwich or salsbury steak..... or tacos or what have you.

SO I stepped down on all of my standards of living to be able to SUPPORT MY FAMILY!

I have "NO" sympathy for any of you that will not take something less to delay to lowering of the standard of living. GROW UP..... HAVE PRIDE.... ANS SUPPORT YOURSELF. We went from a 4 BR 3BA home that had 4.5 acres of land to a 3 BR 2 BA home that looks like a shack.... and well... it protects us from the elements. BUT WE DID IT!

BTW; I have TWO DEGREES.... and I am working in a field that only mildly corresponds to one of them..... BUT I AM WORKING!!!!! Adapt and overcome- stop being a poor pitiful pearl that expects others to supply your life's needs. YOU ARE AN AMERICAN.... You have the opportunity to succeed and fail.... now that you have had the failure, pull up your pants get on your shoes, and get back up on that first rung and begin moving back up...... IT CAN BE DONE BY EVERYONE BUT THE ENTITLED!
Stop hating those who have made it (RIch)- Stop demanding that they pay more so that you can continue to work less....... GET UP AND REACH FOR IT.... expect many steps, expect to have to give things up, expect to have to struggle.... expect to wonder what is happening next week...... but above all do not allow the government to take away that freedom!

Kevin E
I gotta cut my standard of living! Oh noes! Really? Well here's a dose of reality for you, sometimes when times get rough you have to cut out things that aren't necessary so you make ends meet until you can afford the luxuries. That's the problem with Americans today, they can't make cuts themselves and survive without nanny government to look out for them.

Ilona
The good jobs are long gone sorry that is the reality right now, get off your high horse and work a crappy job like most everyone else does before they all disappear too. maybe good jobs will return maybe not, whining won't help

I read these and went off to get dinner started. As I was heading to the kitchen I has a eureka moment. People don't want to admit that they are being taken advantage of. To see others who are fairly well off but not in the top 5% of income earners seems to gall them. Another person who is doing fairly well off but by no means rich seems to be an insult to those who're pissed off at their crappy job but can't seem to grow the stones needed to demand better conditions.

This is the sort of thing I find to be not only really sad, but is also an insight into why people will actively vote against their own interests by, among other things, supporting union busting legislation.

Yummies

So, I found myself in possession of a huge sack of boneless skinless chicken breasts and a whole head full of cooking ideas. Today, I shall lighten the over-all tone of this blog by sharing one such idea.

After thawing out two chicken breasts...well...one, but the fucker's large enough that it looks like it ate one of the others so I cut it in half, I decided to marinate it. So, I looked in my pantry and decided to pull a marinade out of thin air and ended up mixing in a small bowl;

• Dry Sherry
• White Vinegar
• Sweet basil leaves
• Rosemary
• Minced garlic
• Italian seasoning
• A pinch of salt

Mix well and marinade in a medium sized ziplock bag or a large bowl.

No, I don't have measurements because I didn't measure. I just eyeballed it, but it's a cheap enough marinade that you can season to taste. The most expensive part is the Sherry. I'll update this later tonight with a result of how it turns out.

*ADDENDUM*

It turns out that it is a good recipe. If you do it right you'll get a sharp taste of Sherry that's complimented by the herbs. I had the chicken with potatoes au gratin and fresh green beans boiled and seasoned with chopped onion, minced garlic and a pat of butter. Boil the water for the green beans and add the garlic, butter and onion to it and let it boil for a while to let the flavors mix before adding the green beans, if you care to try it.

We Are the 99%

Yesterday I posted an entry in which I included accounts of people who are suffering for the greed of the rich and powerful. That website, entitled We Are the 99%, has many stories of people suffering from no economic security. But what shocks me is the number of people who say they're grateful for their minimum wage no benefit we-can-replace-you-at-the-drop-of-a-hat jobs. They call themselves the lucky ones.

I understand that people are desperate and will take anything if it means having maybe enough money to feed their kids and themselves and keep a roof over their heads, I want it to be known that I understand it. But what I can't understand is why anyone would be grateful to be taken advantage of? Long hours, low pay, no medical, and not enough pay to keep yourself fed and still keep your debt from growing seems to be the order of the day for these grateful people. Consider yourself lucky, yes, but don't feel grateful to be exploited, underpaid and overworked.

I guess I'm still just reeling over how bad things have gotten for people these days...though I shouldn't really be surprised. Things have been horrible for years now, but out of control poverty isn't dramatic enough to warrant media attention until it gets bad enough that people start marching in the streets, and even then it gets very little coverage.

I think my surprise rests mostly with how ignorant I've been of these things until now.

One Demand

One of the biggest questions about the Occupy Wall Street is; "What is their one demand?" It seems a lot of people *coughrepublicanscough* just can't understand why all these people are pissed off enough to get out and protest, much less protest without having a specific reason in mind. But it seems to be difficult for them to understand that you can protest injustice, even if you don't know exactly what that injustice is. Only, these protestors do know what injustice they're facing; greed.

We are living in an era where the vast majority of wealth in the USA is controlled by an insultingly small number of people. Over 95% of Americans are struggling to make ends meet, many aren't. People are going to college, coming out with crushing debt and finding out that if they're lucky enough to find a job it won't likely be much better than minimum wage. And gods help them if they have to use a credit card to buy anything. In many cases people are only able to pay the minimum, but often the monthly minimum is less than the fees and interest rates so even though they're paying, they're finding their owed balance growing. But while people are being bled dry of everything they own, the banks aren't exactly crying in their beer knowing that some poor (literally) sap out there will be paying them off for the rest of their lives.

How bad does it have to get when you have lawyers telling you to just stop paying credit card companies?

The way the fees are now imposed, "people would be better off if they stopped paying" once they get in over their heads, said T. Bentley Leonard, a North Carolina bankruptcy attorney . Once you stop paying, creditors write off the debt and sell it to a debt collector. "They may harass you, but your balance doesn't keep rising. That's the irony."

Now we have an influx of people getting out of college and can only buy food on credit and they're quickly finding out they're likely worse off than if they're just stuck with a high school education; by and large the only jobs out there are low-level minimum wage jobs which they can't get hired for because they're "overqualified" and it's hard to find work in their field because they don't have enough experience. They're caught in an endless cycle of You're-Fucked.

Now add insult to injury; the wealthiest people in the country are sitting on trillions of dollars and a rich republican congressmen is whining that he only has $400K ($400,000) a year left to live on after taxes and expenses. Cry me a motherfucking river, he's got it so hard, doesn't he?

Contrast that with 13 year old Allison who's parents can't afford for her to see a doctor after showing signs of Schizophrenia and whom has been hiding her need for sleeping pills and going without enough food because she knows just how poor her family is. No kid should ever have to face that kind of reality, much less before they've finished middle school.

This is supposed to be the greatest, richest country on earth so how can we allow our kids to go hungry and without medical care?

So what is the One Demand from Occupy Wall Street? They'll release lists of their demands, but whatever it is, it will be variations on the same thing; we want economic security.

I never believed in the American Dream, but it is still shocking to see that people are perusing it overseas. In a first world nation like America, nobody should ever have to work two jobs and still have to resort to prostitution to make ends meet. No one should ever have to work 80 and 90 hours a week just to pay for their own chemotherapy.

That is the One Demand; we want this injustice to stop. How can any government leader or millionaire look at themselves in the mirror and not be horrified by what they see when things are allowed to become this bad?

New Banner

Yes, it is simplistic, but I am very pleased with how it turned out. I also wanted to give thanks to Hades. Were it not for his messing about with the flaming letter "P", I wouldn't have been able to put this together nearly as well as I did.

In case you're wondering, the reason there is a flaming P.I. up there is not because I am a Private Investigator (I'm not). It is because "Progressively Irritated" was one of my final two choices for the title of my blog, which I ended up using as a web address. And yes, flames because I am that hot headed at times.

No Still Means No Even if The Person Saying It Has A Dick

I was linked to a story that was one of those times where the blatant double-standards risked blowing a vessel in my head. I want to point at the states of Florida and Michigan scream "FUCK YOU!" but I can't really pin the blame on just those state. I also have to fault most everyone who's commented on this story in the main article.

I'm looking at you; Men-can't-be-raped troglodytes.

The story I was linked to is about a young man now 23, who was raped when he was 17 by his then 18 year old girlfriend. That alone would be bad enough, but things seemed to take a turn for the truly bizarre.

On Jan. 6, 2006, when he was still 17 and she was 18, they had sex in the back seat of a car and made a baby she named Joshua.

A paternity test confirmed Kris was the father.

Kris was not present at Joshua's birth.

He did not contribute anything — not time, not money — to Joshua's care.

Jessica never asked Kris for help.

In March 2009, Kris got a letter from the state of Michigan. Jessica had moved there and gone on welfare and Michigan wanted Kris to start paying child support.

Kris hired a lawyer. He said he shouldn't have to pay child support because he never wanted the baby.

Jessica, he said, raped him.

Stop and try to picture this for a moment or three. You're going about your business, doing your best to put that time of your life behind you, wanting little more than to forget The Night when you find a piece of mail in the box addressed to you from the government of another state. They're wanting you to pay your attacker. Wow. Honestly, I can't imagine anything more surreal than that.

Well, no...there is something more, also from the same article.

Around the country there are plenty of cases of underage boys who got a woman pregnant and then tried to avoid paying child support. The 15-year-old in California who was seduced by the 34-year-old mom next door. The 13-year-old boy in Kansas who had sex with his 17-year-old baby­sitter. The 15-year-old boy in Florida who impregnated a 20-year-old.

It baffles me that the courts would actually order minors to pay child support. I'm sure the 13-year-old's school lunch money will pay for a few bottle of apple sauce.

But that aside, let's go back to the issue at hand. Let's reverse the genders, shall we? If this was a man who was fingered as the aggressor and it was a woman who was being coerced, would we even be debating whether or not it was even rape? No, of course not. But, you see, men suffer from a mind-boggling double-standard. See, because a male has Tab A to insert into Slot B, somehow that means that only we can insert Tab A into Slot B but never, ever can Slot B be wrapped around Tab A without Tab A's permission. That's just for guys in general, but what about this kid? While the public at large may dismiss his claims, surely his parents would support him or at least give him the benefit of the doubt...right?

In February 2006, Kris said, he and Jessica sat down on the soft brown couch in the living room of his parents' home in Brooksville.

They told his parents that Jessica was pregnant.

How did this happen? his mother asked. The doctor had told them to be careful. They had agreed to refrain from sex.

Kris, his mother and his father all say that at that moment, Jessica admitted that she forced Kris to have sex against his will.

"I made him," Connie Bucher recalls her saying.

Kris' dad, Steve Bucher, was initially skeptical, but he didn't say anything.

"How does a girl rape a guy? I just couldn't see that," he said in a recent interview.

Well...hmm...you know, that's a good point dad. Let's see...how could a woman rape a teenage male? I must be a freak of nature, but I could remember back then it would seem to come up on it's own. I mean, I didn't look at those old National Geographic pictures of the Honkin' Hooter Tribe of East Africa and think "Wow, look at those cans!" in fact, I wasn't ever really attracted by those pics but I'll be damned if pinky didn't pop up anyway for a look. Surely it must be a purely voluntary thing, right? Here's let's preform an experiment;

"ARISE, PENIS!"

...huh, nothing. Odd. Let's try something else.

"GO, GO, GADGET GIGGLE STICK!"

Well I'll be damned...nothing. Okay, one more.

"PENOR! I CHOOSE YOU!"

Well shit...maybe it's not voice activated. Maybe it's touch activated. Let's see, they call it a Belly Button, maybe if I press it I can trigger the Cock Up ability...surely that's the key. Hmm...no, nothing. Well, I kinda gotta pee now. Oh, wait, what's this?

Experts say it is physically possible for a man to be raped by a woman, or, put another way, to get an erection without wanting to have sex.

"Teenagers, in particular, often have an uncontrollable genital response," says Debby Herbenick, a research scientist in sexual health at Indiana University and author of Because It Feels Good.

"Many men, for example, recall getting erections when they felt scared, angry, or even nervous — like having to go up to the chalkboard to write out a math problem," she said. "And certainly seeing someone naked could lead them to get an erection."

Well, fuck me sideways. You mean a cock coming up isn't always within the man's ability to control? Why, shocking! Scandalous! Unheard of! That time I got hard looking at the tile in the bathroom wasn't because of some involuntary bodily function that just happened to strike when I was washing my hands, it was because that tile was trying to seduce me! It's nothing but a white hexagonal hussy, I tell you! Or, maybe, just maybe, guys get hard for no fucking reason, so it's not a stretch to see a guy can get it up when someone's pawing at his crotch, even if he doesn't really want to. Still want to debate it? Let's see the fucking definition of rape:

Rape
[reyp]   Origin
rape
1    [reyp] IPA noun, verb, raped, rap·ing.
noun
1. the unlawful compelling of a person through physical force or duress to have sexual intercourse.
2. any act of sexual intercourse that is forced upon a person.
3. statutory rape.
4. an act of plunder, violent seizure, or abuse; despoliation; violation: the rape of the countryside.
5. Archaic . the act of seizing and carrying off by force.
verb (used with object)
6. to force to have sexual intercourse.
7. to plunder (a place); despoil.
8. to seize, take, or carry off by force.
verb (used without object)
9. to commit rape.
Origin:
1250–1300; (v.) Middle English rapen < Anglo-French raper < Latin rapere to seize, carry off by force, plunder; (noun) Middle English < Anglo-French ra ( a ) p ( e ), derivative of raper

Okay, okay, so, why didn't he fight back? Well...

What happened in the weeks after the miscarriage, and specifically on the night of Jan. 6, 2006, is where the couple's stories begin to diverge. Kris told his version at a child support hearing in Brooksville in 2010. Jessica was not present.

Kris testified he wasn't ready to be a father. And the doctor told them Jessica would now be particularly fertile, so they decided to avoid sex.

On Jan. 6, 2006, Jessica and Kris fought and she broke up with him again. He was in love, he said, and he begged her not to leave him. So she invited him to her church youth group meeting that night.

Their friends drove, but the church was closed, so they headed to Hudson Beach in Pasco County. The other couple went for a walk.

Kris and Jessica sat in the back seat. He said he was looking out the window at the smooth water when she got on top of him and said: "You know you want me."

The passenger seat in front of him was tilted back at a 45-degree angle. She used one arm to pin him down, he said, the other to unzip his pants. At the time, he said, he was 5-foot-7 and 150 pounds and she was heavier.

"At any time do you make a statement to her about you will not have sexual intercourse with her?" asked his lawyer, Kerry O'Connor, at the hearing.

"I told her, 'No, I do not want this.' And that's when she said, 'It's going to happen.' "

"And did you specifically use the word 'no'? "

"Absolutely . . . several times."

He said he tried to push Jessica off. He said he tried to pull the door handle to open the car door. He said she slammed her hand over the lock. He said it was over pretty fast.

He got out of the car, sat on the tailgate with his head in his hands. Their friends returned and he said nothing. They dropped him at his house.

Okay, sure, but why didn't he go to the cops? Well...

Did you go to the police immediately? his lawyer asked.

"No, I did not," he responded. Kris said he called the Sheriff's Office a few weeks later and spoke to a deputy. The deputy seemed to doubt him but said he would follow up. He never did and neither did Kris.

"At this point, I was a senior in high school. I didn't want to lose respect amongst friends. I was in a respected position in JROTC. I didn't want to lose that. I didn't want any kind of unwanted attention drawn to me."

Now, I feel I must provide a little background as to the effects of rape on men. I could paraphrase an articlefrom the National Center for Victims of Crime, but for fear of botching it up, I'll simply quote it;

Male Rape
Victims' Response

It is not uncommon for a male rape victim to blame himself for the rape, believing that he in some way gave permission to the rapist (Brochman, 1991). Male rape victims suffer a similar fear that female rape victims face -- that people will believe the myth that they may have enjoyed being raped. Some men may believe they were not raped or that they gave consent because they became sexually aroused, had an erection, or ejaculated during the sexual assault. These are normal, involuntary physiological reactions. It does not mean that the victim wanted to be raped or sexually assaulted, or that the survivor enjoyed the traumatic experience. Sexual arousal does not necessarily mean there was consent.

According to Groth, some assailants may try to get their victim to ejaculate because for the rapist, it symbolizes their complete sexual control over their victim's body. Since ejaculation is not always within conscious control but rather an involuntary physiological reaction, rapists frequently succeed at getting their male victims to ejaculate. As Groth and Burgess have found in their research, this aspect of the attack is extremely stressful and confusing to the victim. In misidentifying ejaculation with orgasm, the victim may be bewildered by his physiological response during the sexual assault and, therefore, may be discouraged from reporting the assault for fear his sexuality may become suspect (Groth & Burgess, 1980).

Another major concern facing male rape victims is society's belief that men should be able to protect themselves and, therefore, it is somehow their fault that they were raped. The experience of a rape may affect gay and heterosexual men differently. Most rape counselors point out that gay men have difficulties in their sexual and emotional relationships with other men and think that the assault occurred because they are gay, whereas straight men often begin to question their sexual identity and are more disturbed by the sexual aspect of the assault than the violence involved (Brochman, 1991).

To say it simply, there are many factors as to why this wasn't investigated; not the least of which was being met with disbelief by the fucking authorities. There's also the very real feeling that he not only wouldn't be taken seriously by others (as was evidenced by the sheriff and his own fucking father) but the real chance of facing ridicule from his peers, a possible own engrained belief of his own in the old Men-Can't-Be-Raped bullshit among other things. To be honest, after all this, I find it amazing that not only could he move on, but have gotten married to a woman with two kids of her own. And he's trying to support them on about $21K a year.

And now he's being hit with an order from another state to pay child support to his attacker.

Wow.

Just...wow.

Fair Lessons

On the last day of the Oklahoma State Fair my father came into possession of some tickets for free admission. Neither of us were really enthusiastic about going, considering how much it seems to have gone down hill; it's become less and less a fair and more and more like going to a new car and portable building show. However, I did learn one interesting thing today and I think it's a lesson that says a lot about America in general.

If you can eat it, we'll fry it and put it on a stick.

Job 13:16

Why entitle this entry after a bible verse? Because the verse is apt for the topic I am about to post. It's a topic about hypocrites. Now, I'll admit readily to having hypocritical tendencies, but they're small (or so I hope) and limited mostly to opinions and philosophies. I want to talk about the kind of hypocrisy that impacts others.

I'm talking to you, American Family Association.

Before I get too far ahead of myself, allow me to give some back-story for the reason for this entry. The state of Mississippi is going to vote on an amendment to their state Bill of Rights that will redefine the term "person" to apply "from the moment of conception." The move was challenged by a citizen in court "because it failed to comply with the state's official ballot initiative process which forbids making modifications to the Bill of Rights." The court, in all it's infinite stupidity, refused to block the amendment so it'll go to a general vote.

So now I come to the main reason for this rant.

But anti-abortion groups such as the American Family Association and Pro-Life Mississippi welcomed the judge's decision.

"Today we rejoice and celebrate this hard-won victory, but tomorrow we roll up our sleeves and return to work," Stephen Crampton, the attorney for the proponents told the Associated Press. "Our opponents are discouraged, but not yet ultimately defeated. They will be back, spreading fear, confusion, and dire 'sky-is-falling' warnings about this simple Amendment, and we must be ready to rebut their baseless charges and set the record straight."

The AFA loves to scream "WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN?!" as though they actually give a shit about the kids. They say they do, but it's clear that they don't and you can see this most glaringly from their inaction. They go around, protesting abortion clinics and trying to strip women of their constitutional right to privacy and the decision about her own medical needs, and yet they have done nothing to stop the horror children face every day in the form of Christian "teen homes." A Teen Home, in this sense, is a place well-meaning but naive parents send their kids if they're having emotional issues with a promise from this place that they'll show the kids tough love and put them on the straight and narrow. What emotional issues? It can range from drug abuse and acting out to being gay.

I want to say they're well-meaning but naive because many of these places will say right on their website that if the kid says they're being abused to ignore them because they're lying. In case you didn't know, this is a flagrant case of Poisoning the Well. "Ignore your child, he'll lie to you to go home." I have to say naive, but if they're not naive, they're malicious. Why is this? Because the teen home will suggest or offer the services of "Teen Escort Services" and no, that's not the name of a brothel. A Teen Escort Service will come to your home at around three in the morning and take your child by force across state and national lines if need be to be delivered to this place, often times with no requirement that proof be shown the kid needs this sort of treatment. On the way they'll use whatever tactics they need to in order to keep the kid from getting help from the authorities, not limited to simple intimidation.

Here's an excerpt about one such escort service from one of these teens who's crime was being gay:

On May 10th of 2007 at around 2:30 in the morning two strangers barged into my bedroom. I started screaming and crying, as in my mind I was sure that these two strangers had broken into my house and were going to abduct me, rape me, kill me, or in some way harm me. They immediately told me that if I did not shut up that they would handcuff me. I was not being in any way violent or threatening. I was reacting in fear for my life by being vocal and hoping that someone would come to help. I had no idea what was going on. I stopped screaming, still in fear for my life. They started going through my closet digging out clothes as I was only in a night gown. They still had not explained what was going on. I asked, frightened, what the wanted from me, trying to see if I could in some way appease them and get them to leave. They then explained that they were going to take me to a school. It took me a second to understand what they meant by this, as this was an extremely bizarre way to introduce a child to a new school. It then occurred to me that this was what my mother had arranged for my brother several years ago when she had him shipped away to Cross Creek. The two strangers were from Teen Escort Service, a for-profit company that transports teenagers, usually by force, to WWASP (World Wide Association of Specialty Programs) facilities.

I was extremely upset and cried the entire trip, but I obeyed all of their orders. Even though I was being cooperative they said it was their policy to put a belt around the bust of the child and hold the belt so that there would be no chance of attempting to run. It was so humiliating to be led around like a fucking dog around the airport. It was also extremely uncomfortable to have this strange older male putting his hand so close to my breast. I never understood how any of this was legal but definitely knew that none of it was ethical. To this day I feel extremely angered, disturbed, and violated by this entire experience. In addition to this they “forgot” all of the psychiatric medication I had been on at my house. It’s not that I am for psychiatric meds, but it certainly did not feel healthy or normal to go from taking this medication regularly, to just not having it and stopping with out tapering off of it.

Any parent who would use this is, I honestly believe, either willfully stupid or maliciously evil. This young woman was sent to a place called "Cross Creek" which is, sadly, one of many abusive places teens get sent to.

Shortly after I left the program I was raped. I shared what happened with my mother, who then told me, like Cross Creek did, that it was my fault, I asked for it, and that I should have known it would happen. She then proceeded to share her own twisted version of the story with my Cross Creek therapist, who shared it with my group. I was mortified and my self-esteem was completely destroyed by this utter lack of confidentiality and complete betrayal of trust.

I still can't understand why these places are allowed to exist, but an article from another website has yet another horror story.

New Beginnings describes itself as a character-building facility for "troubled teens," and what Jeannie Marie heard in church that day was that this might be a place for her daughter to heal. While jogging earlier that year, the 17-year-old (whom I'll call Roxy) had been pulled into a vehicle and assaulted by a group of men. Since then, she had begun acting up at home, as well as sneaking out and drinking. Two weeks after seeing the girls in church, Jeannie Marie and her husband left Roxy in McNamara's care with the promise that she would receive counseling twice a week and stay at New Beginnings no longer than two months. "It sounded like a discipleship program," Jeannie Marie recalls. "A safe place where a daughter can go to have time alone to find God and her direction."

Instead, Roxy found herself on the receiving end of brutal punishments. A soft-spoken young woman, blonde and blue-eyed with a bright smile, Roxy confided to me that she found it easier to discuss her ordeal with a stranger than with the people closest to her. She told me how, in her first weeks at the academy's Missouri compound—a summer-camp setup in remote La Russell, population 145—she and other girls snuck letters to their parents between the pages of hymnals in a local church they attended, along with entreaties to congregants to mail them. When another girl snitched, Roxy said, McNamara locked some girls in makeshift isolation cells, tiled closets without furniture or windows. Roxy got "the redshirt treatment": For a solid week, 10 hours a day, she had to stand facing a wall, with breaks only for worship or twice-daily bathroom trips.

She was monitored day and night by two "buddies," girls who'd been there awhile and knew the drill. They accompanied her to the shower and toilet, and introduced her to a life of communal isolation and rigid discipline. Girls were not allowed to converse except from 6 to 9 p.m. each Friday. They were not allowed contact with their families during their first month, or with anyone else for six months. By that time, Roxy said, most girls are "broken," having been told that their families have abandoned them, and that the world outside is a sinful, dangerous place where girls who leave are murdered or raped.

The girls' behavior was micromanaged down to the number of squares of toilet paper each was allowed; potential infractions ranged from making eye contact with another girl to not finishing a meal. Roxy, who suffered from urinary tract infections and menstrual complications, told me she was frequently put on redshirt, sometimes dripping blood as she stood. She was also punished with cold showers, she said, and endless sets of calisthenics after meals.

To be completely fair to this story, the girl's mother seems to have been genuinely deceived. She went nuts trying to get in touch with her daughter and was only able to do so after two months. They finally pulled her out of that place shortly after the call.

When Jeannie Marie arrived at New Beginnings, she had a tense conversation with the school counselor, who insisted that Roxy wanted to stay. She extracted her daughter nonetheless. The school's effects on Roxy were striking, Jeannie Marie told me. When they stopped at a restaurant on the way home, she robotically asked for permission to speak or to use the bathroom. After months of punitive mealtimes, including five-minute "force feeding" sessions for girls on redshirt, she wolfed her food. Back in Maryland, she showed signs of an eating disorder, self-destructive behavior, and severe depression. "I was only there for three months," Roxy said, "but because we weren't allowed to keep track of time, it felt like six."

Desperate for a way out, she'd attempted suicide—many of the girls did, she added nonchalantly, if only for the chance to get taken to a hospital and beg for outside help. "They take away any feeling that you are capable of doing anything outside the home," she said. "You have this sense of total isolation: There's no way out of it, you're there for the rest of your life."

This was after just three months in that place. We don't treat criminals, prisoners of war, or even war criminals that badly. The article goes on to say about why these places are allowed to exist;

A week or so after the disastrous conference call, Jeannie Marie traveled to La Russell with a friend who'd heard about places like New Beginnings—sketchy teen homes drawn by Missouri's laissez-faire policy toward faith-based residential facilities. Authorities in the state are barred from inspecting the homes or even keeping track of them. (New Beginnings has operated under multiple names in Florida, Mississippi, and Texas.) "It's hard to understand it, but faith-based is just taboo for regulation," says Matthew Franck, an editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who authored an investigative series on the state's homes in the mid-2000s. "It took decades of work to get just the most minimal standards of regulation at faith-based child-care centers," he adds. "I just knew that when certain lobbyists would stand up to say, 'We have a concern about how this affects faith-based institutions,' the bill was immediately amended—it was a very Republican legislature—or it would immediately die. That's still true." (Missouri isn't alone. In April, Montana state Rep. Christy Clark, who campaigned on a "faith and family" platform, joined 11 other Republicans in scuttling a bill that would have regulated religious teen homes; a mother of three, she cast the homes' residents as unreliable witnesses who "struggle with truthfulness.")

These places are all over the USA and even in other nations.

And so what do those hypocrites, the AFA, want to do about it? Apparently not a god damn thing. They're rather silent on the matter. Oh, but they'll yell and scream about the person-hood of a clump of cells so small you need a microscope to see them. But as for these real, living, established thinking and feeling children? It seems George Carlin was right.

If you're pre-born, you're fine, if you're pre-schooled, you're fucked.

The AFA says they care about children, but they refuse to actually help children. Children who can think, who can reason, can feel, can be hurt emotionally, who can be broken so far they're ambivalent about committing suicide just to escape the torture. These people are hypocrites of the worst sort. They wrap themselves in hypocrisy and call it righteousness. At best, it seems they're likely to have forfeit their place in their heaven.

He also shall be my salvation: for an hypocrite shall not come before him. ~ Job 13:16

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. ~ Matthew 23:23-24

At worst, there is a special place in hell for people like them; those who have the ability to prevent suffering and yet turn a blind eye to those most in need.

Dear God, save us from your followers.

Burn Bright and Flicker Out

According to The Daily Beast by way of Yahoor News, it seems that the rage that has driven the Teabaggers so far is fizzling out. This alone is enough to make me laugh, and when all is said and done, I'm not surprised. On another forum I frequent, a member there by the name of Sandman made a very concise and, to my opinion, insightful post explaining why the Tea Party as it stands now will not last. Well written as it is, I want to call attention to the third reason he gives:

Reason 3: It is a political movement based on anger.

You can get a lot of stuff done in politics when you get people pissed off at something. What you can't do is maintain that long term. Political motivation by anger is a lot like shock comedy, you have to keep topping yourself in order to keep the momentum going. What all shock comedians eventually discover, and what the Tea Party will eventually discover, is that you can't keep escalating things forever. Eventually you will get to the point where you simply can't go any further without appearing genuinely insane even to the most hardened of your followers, and the momentum falls apart.

In order to keep the anger-momentum going, the Tea Party has been reduced to incitement, exaggeration, and bald-faced lies to keep people pissed. Everything from "death-panels" to Obama "not being born in the USA" to Obama is a "socialist" to the blatant lie that Americans are being taxed to death. None of it is true, but that doesn't matter. The Tea Party "leaders" don't even care if these things are true, that's not the point. The point is that these lies can be used to keep the rank-and-file Tea Party member frothing at the mouth with righteous fury.

The Tea Party is based on anger, and while this is effective in the short-term, is impossible to maintain in the long run.

Shortly after that, another member, gyeonghwa, was kind enough to share an article he found on the New York Times.

But in fact the Tea Party is increasingly swimming against the tide of public opinion: among most Americans, even before the furor over the debt limit, its brand was becoming toxic. To embrace the Tea Party carries great political risk for Republicans, but perhaps not for the reason you might think.

Polls show that disapproval of the Tea Party is climbing. In April 2010, a New York Times/CBS News survey found that 18 percent of Americans had an unfavorable opinion of it, 21 percent had a favorable opinion and 46 percent had not heard enough. Now, 14 months later, Tea Party supporters have slipped to 20 percent, while their opponents have more than doubled, to 40 percent. Of course, politicians of all stripes are not faring well among the public these days. But in data we have recently collected, the Tea Party ranks lower than any of the 23 other groups we asked about — lower than both Republicans and Democrats. It is even less popular than much maligned groups like “atheists” and “Muslims.” Interestingly, one group that approaches it in unpopularity is the Christian Right.

More and more I am seeing signs that the Teabaggers are ringing their own death knell. They're trying to go in a direction that the majority of Americans don't want, and a lot of the people who voted for them didn't realize. But what I fear right now is the damage they'll inflict before they finally flicker and die. Do I think they're malicious? Not intentionally. Do I think they're mentally unhinged? The evidence is getting more difficult to ignore.

Consider for a moment this article from the Southern Poverty Law Center:

A new Tea Party group in Florida is boldly going where no Tea Parties have gone before – space.

Tea Party in Space, an offshoot of the South Florida Tea Party, is, of all things, pushing to end the government’s supposed monopoly on space exploration.

“Our goal is nothing less than the expansion of American civilization into the solar system,” says the group’s platform. “We must return to traditional American free-market principles to expand permanently into space.”

Tea Party in Space is complaining that, as its founder Andrew Gasser said, “NASA is being forced to fund programs that are behind schedule and ridiculously over budget.” But that’s not all. Gasser sees a great ideological principle here: “It is socialism when you have the government coming down and saying, ‘this is what we want to build, and this is how we want you to build it.’”

According to Tea Party in Space logic, the Erie Canal, Hoover Dam, our national highway system, and Mount Rushmore are all just examples of unnecessary government socialism.

Of course, Tea Party in Space has a rock-solid standard bearer, proudly noted in its “Core Values”: “I am a child of Ronald Regan [sic], Ronaldus Magnus. ”

Houston, we have a problem.

As NASA recounted in its statement in honor of Reagan’s death in 2004, “President Reagan spoke … about how the shuttles were the modern day equivalent of the Yankee Clipper ships that opened new horizons for our young nation.” In his 1984 State of the Union Address, the statement continues, Reagan “announced plans for a permanent human presence in space with the construction of a space station, and he tasked NASA to including the international community to be part of a project designed for the benefit of everyone on Earth.”

But it seems the intellectual disconnect doesn't end at the Final Frontier. Teabagger and GOP favorite (and sane person's favorite chimp) Michelle Bachmann has shown us that there is an aspect of ignorant and malicious thinking when she made it a point to block anti-gay bullying legislation for public schools in her district. The result of that? Let Mother Jones tell you:

The first was TJ. Then came Samantha, Aaron, Nick, and Kevin. Over the past two years, a total of nine teenagers have committed suicide in a Minnesota school district represented by Rep. Michele Bachmann—the latest in May—and many more students have attempted to take their lives. State public health officials have labeled the area a "suicide contagion area" because of the unusually high death rate.

Some of the victims were gay, or perceived to be by their classmates, and many were reportedly bullied. And the anti-gay activists who are some of the congresswoman's closest allies stand accused of blocking an effective response to the crisis and fostering a climate of intolerance that allowed bullying to flourish. Bachmann, meanwhile, has been uncharacteristically silent on the tragic deaths that have roiled her district—including the high school that she attended.

Bachmann, who began her political career as an education activist, has described gay rights as an "earthquake issue," and she and her allies have made public schools the front lines of their fight against the "homosexual agenda." They have opposed efforts in the state to promote tolerance for gays and lesbians in the classroom, seeing such initiatives as a way of allowing gays to recruit impressionable youths into an unhealthy and un-Christian lifestyle.

Later on, we get this:

As civil rights groups have pushed the Minnesota school district to do more to increase tolerance of LGBT students, conservative religious groups fought to keep them away from public schools. After Samantha's suicide and several others, students in Anoka-Hennepin schools participated in the Day of Silence. The event, organized by the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network, encourages kids to remain silent for the day in recognition of the effect of anti-gay bullying and harassment. In response, religious activists took up the "Day of Truth" an event championed by the "ex-gay ministry" Exodus International that's usually held the day before the Day of Silence. Students who participated were encouraged to engage their classmates in discussions of homosexuality from a Christian perspective.

Fifteen-year-old Justin Aaberg appears to have been one of the targets of this initiative. One day last year Justin came home and told his mom, Tammy, that another student had told him he would to go to hell because he was gay. "That did something to his brain," she says. He hanged himself in his bedroom last summer. Only after his suicide did Tammy learn that the Parents Action League had reportedly worked with area churches to hand out T-shirts promoting the "Day of Truth" to students at his high school (which is also Bachmann's alma mater). The students were also instructed to "preach to the gay kids," Aaberg says. (No one from the Parents Action League responded to a request for comment.)

A favorite cry of these people has been "What about the children?!" Well, the children are killing themselves because they're not accepted for who they are and you're not just doing nothing to change that, you're obstructing efforts to reach out to these kids.

These are the sorts of things I am talking about. I have no doubt that the Teabaggers will die out, likely they'll fade into a distant memory as the Baby Boomers start dying off. But I am scared, very scared, of what they will do before then.

Fight for the Future or Watch NASCAR?

The following is a repost from an entry I made on the IrregularTimes guestbook.

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I'm quirky. I'm one of those rare and elusive creatures known to anthropologists as a Gun Toting Liberal (guntotus liberus).

Something I have wanted for years is to own an AR-15 rifle but I have never been in a financial position to acquire one of my own. Hopefully, I would be able to build one from one of the many kits available online. My financial position recently changed and I ordered a stripped AR-15 lower receiver online and then waited for the company to ship it to my local FFL dealer so I could fill out the forums and have my background checked and be all legal.

This was happening during the debt ceiling debate, during which I saw the Teabaggers on capitol hill basically taking America hostage and threatening to kill said hostage. As the days turned into weeks of this, I occasionally found myself thinking: "I better hurry up and build that AR-15 before these idiots destroy the economy and I have to end up shooting things for food."

Well, they didn't blow Uncle Sam's head off, thanks to Obama snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Not long ago, I put in an order for a full length AR-15 kit and am waiting for it to be shipped. Now, I've taken the time to look at these people, their actions, their mentality, their goals and I find myself thinking; "I better hurry up and build that AR-15 before these fuckers trigger the civil war they want so badly."

And then I remember Americans are too apathetic to actually take up arms, so I go look at what else is on TV.