Hello, Goodbye and my Doucheville Representatives

Howdy out there in blogger land. I think I'm done with Midwest Blues, at least for awhile. I'm tired, tired, tired of always being angry. The anger and divisiveness will certainly go on with or without me.

Besides, I've started a new blog that I'd love for you to bookmark and tell your friends about. It's called Children's Entertainment Hell, where I'll be talking about the television shows, DVDs and books that you can enjoy with your children. Because I figure if we have to ingest this stuff with our kids, we might as well not want to gouge out our own eyes while doing it. There's no potty language or anything. But I'm still a smartass.

I thought I'd close out Midwest Blues by noting that Kansas Senators Pat Roberts and Sam Brownback BOTH voted against a bill put forth by Minnesota senator Al Franken that would deny work for government contractors who don't allow their employees to sue if they are raped by a coworker.

This was all spurred because a female employee of Haliburton was gang raped by coworkers in Iraq, who then locked her in a shipping container to keep her from telling. When she finally got back to the States and tried to sue Haliburton, it was found that she had previously signed a contract that denied her the right to sue the company.

Apparently Sam and Pat think it's unfair for women to take advantage of companies in the legal arena. Asshats.

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Re-rethinking Afghanistan

Am I the only progressive in America who thinks the U.S. should be in Afghanistan?

I think it’s a huge mistake for progressives to put so much pressure on President Obama to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan. Iraq? Fine. Let’s get the hell out of Iraq. To me, though, Afghanistan is clearly a different story.

Let’s take a short trip back in time, shall we?

Way back in 1996 the religious cult known as the Taliban took over much of the government of Afghanistan. This religious cult then forced its extreme religious ideas on much of the country, forcing women to leave their jobs, and cover themselves from head to toe with the piece of clothing known as the burqua. Women became prisoners in their own homes and were not allowed to leave unless accompanied by a close male relative. Women were, and have been, tortured, killed and intimidated under the rule of the Taliban.

These are all things that America stands against. The three things America hates more than anything else are communism, dictatorship and religion enmeshed with government, especially when that religion isn’t Christianity. So you’d think that Afghanistan would be a prime target for U.S. intervention. But we didn’t intervene in Afghanistan, because A) we figured it was none of our business and B) we tend to only intervene in other countries' businesses when we have economic incentive to do so.

On September 11, 2001, it became our business when the Taliban attacked the U.S. and killed more than 3,000 U.S. citizens.

We sent troops in to find the leader of the Taliban, Osama Bin Laden, and bring him to justice. We failed to do so. We ousted the Taliban, but only temporarily. Today, Taliban forces threaten to take over Afghanistan yet again.

Have U.S. forces done everything correctly in Afghanistan? Of course not. Have we killed innocent civilians there? Absolutely. Have we bombed the country into oblivion, as has happened to that country so many times in its history? You betcha.

Do we owe it to the Afghanistan people to proceed more carefully, remove the Taliban from that country once and for all and restore the country to the Afghani people? I believe we do owe that to the Afghan people.

And we’d have the troops and the money to do so if we hadn’t been fucking around in Iraq for the last six years.

I’d love to hear from other progressives—and conservatives, for that matter—on this subject.

Missouri Sucks

Wow. It looks like our neighbors to the east are sniffing airplane glue again.

Congressman Alan Grayson is my Other New Hero

Finally. A Democrat with balls.

When asked to apologize to Republicans, Grayson replied that he would apologize to all the dead people who didn't have health coverage.

Wheee!

Janeane Garofalo is My Hero

Racism. Still Ugly. Still Effed up.

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How classy is this guy? He’s never going to publicly acknowledge that there is a group of Americans who not only disagree with his politics, but are becoming so unhinged—mostly because of the complete and total bullshit being spun by their “leaders”—that they can no longer hide their bigotry, if they ever tried to hide it at all.

Ever since Jimmy Carter dared to say, Hey! If you all hadn’t noticed, some of this criticism of the president has become nothing more than an excuse for bigots to come knuckle-dragging out of their caves, and it needs to stop. … It’s like a floodgate has been opened. It’s like a whole bunch-a people were thinking it, but were afraid to say it out loud. (Conservatives are right on one point: Progressives can be such pussies.)

Of course, the hard right is circling its wagons, denying everything, just like they always do. Here’s the thing, though, folks, being a white lady, sometimes I’m in the room when these assholes say the racist things they do. Out in public, though, they’ll deny until they die.

Let’s analyze some of their recent claims denying racism on the right, shall we?

Any criticism of this president is being characterized by the left as racism.

Wrong. Though I know it might make some people on the hard right’s heads explode, if they’d care to mosey on over to some of the progressive publications and websites, they’d find that progressives are criticizing their president as well. Genuine criticism of the president’s policies is fine. That’s what America is all about. But there’s more than that going on here.

President Obama hates white people. (Glen Beck said, and I quote, that Obama has a “deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”)

What a fucking stupid thing to say. Like every other black person in this country, Obama has to deal with white people. That’s just a given. He has white people in his family, for god’s sake. People he loves. And does every black person carry at least a tiny bit of annoyance toward some white people in this country? Probably. So what? Christ, can you blame them? Black people have learned to be so patient with us white folk. And in return, we can be such ass holes.

All presidents are criticized. What’s happening to Obama is nothing different than any other president.

Wrong. Sure, all presidents are criticized, sometimes mercilessly. But according to this news story from the Canadian Press, this past summer Barack Obama “reportedly had more (death threats) leveled against him than any commander-in-chief in history.” The article continues: A new book, "In The President's Secret Service," says Obama receives as many as 30 death threats a day, 400 percent more than those made against his predecessor, George W. Bush.

Well, liberals voted for Barack Obama only because he’s black, and so that’s racism.

Wrong. People voted for Barack Obama because he’s articulate, smart, younger than dead, and charismatic. He was like the anti-Bush. The antidote to Bush. After the previous administration, this country needed Barack Obama.

People are carrying guns to Town Hall Meetings because they’re fearful of losing their rights and their guns, not because they’re violent.

Okay, whatever. When Clinton was president and tried to reform health care, nobody started packing heat. Nobody started waving guns around. Nobody. This is about intimidation. For some Americans, a black president and now a Hispanic Supreme Court Justice has become nothing more than a thin excuse to pull the old white hoods out of dusty trunks.