Which Politician Will Target Buy?

OK. This is a personal matter. I happen to shop at Target quite a lot. For the most part, they've got good merchandise at reasonable prices.

It's Target Online that I'm writing about. It's about getting shafted by a loophole that Target Online has taken advantage of numerous times. It's about receiving an enormous package so decrepit with an item you know is so damaged beyond your belief that you're afraid to open the package. It's about loosening regulations on quality control. It's about who will Target Online contribute campaign money to ease the regulations even more?

I know that this line of reasoning is stretching well beyond the six degrees of separation, but it's all possible. When corporations start throwing unlimited amounts of money at politicians, this situation may happen a million times to consumers all over the country.

I'm in the process of moving. It's stressful. Everyone knows what it's like to pack away things you know you'll be unpacking in a matter of days. We all wish we had magic powers to zap our belongings to the new place in an instant. Where is Samantha Stevens/Elizabeth Montgomery when you need her? (I wouldn't even mind a visit from Endora/Agnes Moorehead). I've paid particular attention to any new items that would be needed in the new place. I placed an online order with Target Online for a new writing desk. Below is what I received:

Now look at the packaging inside:


Notice Target.com's information stamped on the carton.
Finally, the condition of the "writing table":


Oh forget it, Vojir! Just return the table and quit whining over it. It's a cheap table.

But wait, there's more! Target fully expects me to box this thing up, pay for shipping, after which I will be reimbursed: sometime after the next full moon, I think. I checked with UPS: $200 to package and ship (ground) to Minneapolis. I told Target "NO WAY!" They said "NO WAY" will they take the thing back without it being boxed, then picked up (arrangements which I have to make) then reimbursed upon receipt. Period.

Will they add on the cost of my time, labor and interest accrued for the time they decide I will be reimbursed? Don't bet on it. I checked the site page for my writing table. There was one great review. However, upon further reading, I found out that THE EXACT SAME COMPLAINTS as mine were posted by about twenty customers for the same brand/line of furniture! Target has definitely been shipping this kind of stuff out for quite a while, hoping that the consumer would just go away exasperated.

Bear with me, I'm almost there making my point. There is something that retail operations must have: quality control. But what if there were no quality control? What if companies like Target could send out items like the one above with impunity? Yes, it's a sketchy "what if" but if corporations have no conscience...

BTW: Target is based in Minneapolis - home turf to Michele Bachmann. If they throw in some slivers of the True Cross with the campaign funds, they just might be able to get rid of their whole "quality control" staff which, BTW, seems to reside in India.

Now Coming To YOUR Church: Evangelism and Gay Porn

Pastor Martin Ssempe's new tactic to see all gays killed reached a new low when he showed gay pornographic slides in a Kampala church. He hoped to get more support for the "kill the gays" bill.

Pam's House Blend

The screening was attended by around 300 supporters crammed into an evangelical church in the Ugandan capital after plans for a 'million-man march' were thwarted by police. 'We had planned to have a million-man and -woman march in Kampala but unfortunately we were told that we could not march because of security concerns," Martin Ssempa told the crowd. 'The major argument homosexuals have is that what people do in the privacy of their bedrooms is nobody's business but do you know what they do in their bedrooms?,' the pastor asked. Ssempa then displayed a slide show of gay pornographic pictures. 'This one is eating another man's penis,' the pastor said, before going into even more graphic descriptions. 'Is this what Obama wants to bring to Africa?'

No, I don't think it is. He wants to bring something that Ssempa hasn't seen for years: civilization. I know that's harsh and some might say see the statement as racist, but just think how our own Christian Right is trying to drag us all (kicking and screaming) back to the Middle Ages. Christofascists see Africa as new meat: "there's redemption in them thar hills and we's gonna get us a whole passel of brand spankin' new converts. Yessiree!"

And people like Rick Warren are exporting homophobia as fast as possible. Of course, Warren has denounced the "kill the gays" bill, but only after a lot of pressure. And other high-ranking evangelicals are beginning to look like "Hitler's Pope," Pope Pius XII, who gave only a small, vague remonstration to Hitler and the Holocaust. For the Pope, it was a trade-off or rather, being on the side of the lesser of two evils: back Hitler, but not Stalin. And in the case of Uganda, gays, like Jews, are expendable. If killing gays en masse begets just one conversion, then so be it. It's like Rick Warren's motto: "Whatever it takes."

And yesterday's headlines concerning mass hysteria in Kenya will please a great many of the Christofascists.

365gay.com

The wave of anti-gay sentiment in Kenya continues to grow. The mob violence on Feb. 12 over the alleged wedding of two gay men has led to house-to-house searches for gays, attacks on gays in the street and the sacking of an AIDS clinic.

So now Martin's Seempa's homophobia (and by extension, Rick Warren's) has spread.

One of the questions I have for Pastor Ssempe: what video were your slides from? Was it "To The Last Man" by Raging Stallion? Was it the wonderful take-off on Tim LaHaye's novels called "Kiss My Left Behind?" Was it "Folsom Undercover?" Was it "The Bigger The Better?" The guys in those films didn't look gay at all. Or did you show something like "Castro Twinks Get It On." That one would have you marching in San Francisco like the angry villagers in Frankenstein. Wouldn't that be fun?

OK, so I'm flippant. Did you expect anything less? Some people deserve to be treated jovially but dismissively or they just don't get the point. OK, I'll cut out the flippancy because it's too be easy to dismiss Ssempa's mentality as one of a typical Central African tyrant whose problem-solving skills entail only jail sentences, torturde and executions. His reasoning is fed by the U.S. evangelical community which owns him. His leaders cannot accomplish anything without the sanction of people like Rick Warren and Franklin Graham. And so Ssempa targets Barack Obama.

Seempa never seems to realize that Uganda (and now Kenya) has to exist with more globalized societies. China realized it years ago. So did Russia. And if he and Musevene want to imitate capitalist democracies such as ours, he'll have to deal with certain ethical principals.

Theocracies are NOT democracies by any stretch of the imagination. But sacred cows like Ssempa would rather not have democracies standing in their way. Again, like his mentor's motto: "Whatever it takes."

Poor Uganda. Poor Kenya.

Poor Africa.

Good Housekeeping: Sweeping Away The Cobwebs Inside Ann Coulter's Brain

It almost is kind of effective to send out this drunken Irishman to respond to Dick Cheney. It's like sending out the White House dog. It's saying, 'We so don't respect you we're sending in Joe Biden.'

Several days ago, Ann Coulter hit a low point - and kept going lower. Talking about Joe Biden's hair plugs is one thing: it demonstrates that Coulter doesn't have enough on Biden to come up with a serious criticism. Using unfounded ethnic slurs, then saying that a grade F politician who doesn't know enough geography to answer simple(ton) questions is "twenty million times" more qualified than he is (politically) shows us that she attacks just for the sake of attacking. She thinks she's leading a group of villagers with torches, but she's only one of the mob with a rock in her hand asking "Who do I stone, who do I stone?"

It's time for the American public to forcibly retire Ann Coulter (you know she won't go away willingly). Her jibes for the sake of publicity have neither basis nor meaning. She loves the image of "muckraker" even though she cannot hold a candle to someone as intelligent as Nancy Mitford.

- “I love children, especially when they cry, for then someone takes them away”
- "Surely a King who loves pleasure is less dangerous than one who loves glory?”
- “'Always be civil to the girls, you never know who they may marry' is an aphorism which has saved many an English spinster from being treated like an Indian widow.”

Would that we could treat Ann Coulter like an Indian widow.

On Geraldo

Coulter: How about comparing Joe Biden with Sarah Palin? She's twenty million times more qualified than he is.

Rivera: How do you say that? A two-year governor against a long Senate career. Anyway --

Coulter: How long are we gonna pretend Biden is not just some drunken Irishman embarrassing Obama?

Here is a person whose livelihood is derived from insulting people. And let's admit it: people love to read/hear insulting people. Sometimes (as with Coulter, it seems) people know that pundits are trite and hackneyed liars, but don't care, as long as what they spew is about someone they're inclined to hate.

So, do we NEED Ann Coulter? No. Should we denounce her? No. She loves being the martyred Right. Can we "retire her"? I think so, but only if we're diligent about it. The fact that her book sales are on the wane is promising, but we need to do three things: a) keep holding her to account on everything she says, b) laugh at her and c) tell her she's boring.

Yes, we should fact check every word she says. Most of her "research" and "statistics" are based on questionable data. Whatever she says, mention her half-truths and lies every day in our blogs, videos and social websites. Yes, poke fun of her, not for her physical characteristics (like I sometimes do - I won't be a hypocrite - I'm evil that way and it's a whole lot of fun) poke fun at her bloviations, her reasoning, her half-assed logic. Get celebrities and comics to poke fun of her. Get Glen Beck to poke fun of her!

Yes, tell her she's boring. The loudest she screeches, the more she's apt to screw up and absolutely nothing will get a rise out of her as much as telling her that she's boring. And she is: people know HOW she's going to attack someone, WHO she's going to attack and WHEN she's going to attack someone. Her attacks are beginning to sound more like whining than polemics. And when any writer, pundit or otherwise, gets overexposed, stale, and laughed at, the reading public slowly (but surely) will back away and follow a new bloviator of bad journalism.

So, let's get to work and retire Ms. Coulter. And let's start by cleaning house.

I love to engage in repartee with people who are stupider than I am.

OK. We get the point. Ann Coulter steamrolls over the rudiments of grammar to get her point across to people. That point being: "No matter what I say, I'm smarter than you are."

Once they have fooled the voters and are safely in office, Republicans sometimes double-cross the voters. Democrats always do.

Sweeping generalizations such as these are tiresome and unoriginal. And by their inclusiveness, they are always wrong.

If we're so cruel to minorities, why do they keep coming here? Why aren't they sneaking across the Mexican border to make their way to the Taliban?

Probably because as badly as we treat minorities, they're treated worse somewhere else. And they may be more "family-oriented" than AC: sending money back home for the family to survive beats starving with the family.

Liberals become indignant when you question their patriotism, but simultaneously work overtime to give terrorists a cushion for the next attack and laugh at dumb Americans who love their country and hate the enemy

Everyone becomes indignant when you question their patriotism. Liberals get miffed because flag-wavers can't understand that you can be patriotic without painting yourself red, white and blue for a football game. And hypocrisy is always worth laughing at: "dumb Americans" love only that part of America that agrees with them and will hate who they are told to hate.

Taxes are like abortion, and not just because both are grotesque procedures supported by Democrats.

How wonderfully witty! Unfortunately, both faulty analogies have been used for years to demonize non-Coulterites.

While the form of treachery varies slightly from case to case, liberals always manage to take the position that most undermines American security.

Coulter hates anything with an open door ... or an open mind. Meanwhile, uber-conservatives manage to kill more people by engendering fear and racial profiling than any terrorist attack.

I thought gays just wanted to get married to one another and settle down in the suburbs so they could visit each other in the hospital.

Coulter's low blows can get lower, of course, but she keeps them at a level where she can safely say she doesn't "bash" homosexuals.

You would think there were "Straights Only" water fountains the way Democrats carry on so (as if any gay man would drink nonbottled water)

Stereotyping is a definitive modus operandi with Coulter. It's also easy when she doesn't know anything about the people she stereotypes.

The two videos below demonstrate how Ann Coulter is losing her relevance (her credibility went bye-bye a long time ago). The first by a man so young he couldn't possibly have had as much exposure to Coulter as the rest of us, showing what little exposure it takes for Ann Coulter to make people angry at her. The second is a clip with Joe Scarborough. His response is priceless.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!! FROM ME AND DOROTHY LAMOUR!

RANDOM THOUGHTS OF LOVE

Is That A Question - Or A Threat?

Originally uploaded by poe.

Giant Smurf Pixies and The Christofascist Perspective

AVATAR has an abhorrent New Age, pagan, anti-capitalist worldview that promotes goddess worship and the destruction of the human race.

- NOT Pat Robertson

I must have been sleeping ... for the last eight weeks. I saw the movie Avatar (in 3-D) last night and it hit me as to how the Christofascists would spin it into something totally evil. Then I went home, googled some themes and, surprise! Some right-wing bloggers and the pope had raled against it in December! I don't know how any bloviating about it could have slipped by me: I don't remember it in any of my rss feeds. How could I have missed it? The biggest blockbuster (with the biggest budget) coupled with the theme of genocide by capitalism didn't get the usual 700 Club treatment.

And four weeks into its run, Avatar is still packing movie houses. People are seeing it twice, three times and telling people how wonderfully entertaining it is! They've been hypnotized by the artistry, blown away by their own violent reaction of empathy to an indigenous humanoid species (who, when you come to think of it, look like giant smurf pixies) and rooted against capitalism and the military mindset as never before.

So why hasn't the Christian Right conducted a huge protest ala The DaVinci Code? Is Avatar still playing in Alabama?

I checked. It is. In about ten neighborhood cineplexes.

Think of “Avatar” as “Death Wish 5” for leftists. A simplistic, revisionist revenge fantasy where if you freakin’ hate the bad guys (America), you’re able to forgive the by-the-numbers predictability of it all and still get off watching them get what they got coming.

John Nolte Big Hollywood

If you love the philosophy and culture of the Na'vi too much, you will be led into evil rather than away from it.

David Outen, Movieguide

The movie’s most seditious act is to evoke the specter of September 11, only with the terms reversed…Cameron’s willingness to question the sacred trauma of 9/11 is audacious, and his ability to do so in a $300 million tentpole movie is nothing short of shocking. If Avatar has a claim to revolution, that is where it lies.

Sam Adams, AV Club

We have made a religion out of entertainment.
And an entertainment out of religion.

Sorry folks, but that's as profound as I can get. For me, it's the only solution possible to the conundrum of Avatar's popularity in spite of Christofascists telling people that it's anti-American and, by extension, anti-Christian. What many right-wingers don't seem to understand is that folks consider it anti-American to keep entertainment at bay from the American public. You can take away the right of Americans to free speech, free worship, and even representation in government, but never, never attempt to take away America's God-given right to be entertained.

Never.

And in the melee that we call the culture war, entertainment (and James Cameron's Avatar) has won this battle.

Obama's Courage Comes At The Last Minute: A Tale of TWO Speeches

When you're constantly under fire and you have an ounce of courage in you, that courage is bound to sneak out once in a while ... and in the most unlikely of places.

Google a transcript of President Obama's National Day of Prayer Speech and you might be confused: the transcript given out to USA Today is very different than the transcript given out AFTER the Breakfast. Read the PDF given over to USA Today and you'll find these very important words: "As Prepared for Delivery." The one actually given was different in many ways.

It was longer
It didn't mention Jesus
It mentioned God more often
It's key words were "God" "Faith" "Without" and "Civility"
It mentioned Uganda It mentioned other religions
It referenced gay marriage

One critic: [on the pronunciation of the word "corpsman"] Obama doesn't say one unscripted word. There is obviously no one on his staff who knows this word or its correct pronunciation.

To the contrary: depending on the time when they were written, these transcripts show us that more often than not, President Obama does NOT depend upon "teleprompters" (as Fox News would have us believe) and that he might make drastic changes and additions at the last minute, while knowing that those changes may rile some of the audience.

And some of the audience took umbrage with his inclusion of other faiths.

It's ironic, isn't it, that USA Today got the wrong transcript while Pam's House Blend got an accurate one. And who besides USA Today got the "As Prepared For Delivery" outline? Lest we think that someone was being dishonest, I think that it was a mistake. But a very, very lucky mistake: had the sacred cows attending the NDOPB read it, Obama might have had some very uncivil responses hurled at him accompanied by scrambled (if not rotten) eggs.

A "CHRISTIANS ONLY" AFFAIR!:

from Beyond Religion:

Anyone can attend the National Day of Prayer, but only Christians can lead said prayers. So the National Day of Prayer is really the National Day of Christian Led Prayers to the Christian God who, because he is Jewish, is excluded from leading prayers during His Own National Day of Prayer. This is what really pisses me off— if Jesus Himself came down from heaven and asked to lead a prayer at any of today’s National Day of Prayer events he would be denied.

So which words do you think riled the Christians Only crowd? There are some people seething about terms, words, and ideologies. An article for FOXNews.com (don't worry, I won't go there) was titled The President's Prayer Breakfast Catastrophe By S.E. Cupp (who, BTW, has a new book coming out in April with the title: “Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media’s Attack on Christianity,” pass it on). In it, Ms. Cupp derides the President for many things, but what gets her most:

The worst misstep of today’s speech? When the president said that “God’s grace” is expressed “by Americans of every faith, and no faith, uniting around a common purpose, a higher purpose.” Uh, no it isn't -- unless my definition of atheism is different than his. Most atheists insist that God’s grace most certainly is not expressed through them, and that there are no “higher” purposes. While we may all come together for “a purpose” – like relief work in Haiti, poverty, AIDS, or world hunger – no atheist I know would consider this God's work.

Ms. Cupp runneth over with equally strident derisions throughout the rest of her piece, but always manages to communicate her main theme: This Is A Christians-Only Event and Don't You Forget It! There were other segments of the speech that riled the attendees:

...we all share a recognition -- one as old as time -- that a willingness to believe, an openness to grace, a commitment to prayer can bring sustenance to our lives.

"Willingness" and "openness" smack of lefty commie-pinko socialism!

God's grace, and the compassion and decency of the American people is expressed through ... evangelicals at World Relief. By the American Jewish World Service. By Hindu temples, and mainline Protestants, Catholic Relief Services, African American churches, the United Sikhs. By Americans of every faith, and no faith, uniting around a common purpose, a higher purpose.

How DARE he be so inclusive! How DARE he mention atheists and pagans and the like! THIS IS A CHRISTIAN EVENT!!

We see that in many conservative pastors who are helping lead the way to fix our broken immigration system. It's not what would be expected from them, and yet they recognize, in those immigrant families, the face of God.

Is he insinuating that our pastors have no compassion for illegals?

Yes, there are crimes of conscience that call us to action. Yes, there are causes that move our hearts and offenses that stir our souls. But progress doesn't come when we demonize opponents. It's not born in righteous spite. Progress comes when we open our hearts, when we extend our hands, when we recognize our common humanity.

Progress also comes when we open our wallets due to taxing us to death! "Demonize" our opponents? But they ARE demons!

we've turned the faith-based initiative around to find common ground among people of all beliefs, allowing them to make an impact in a way that's civil and respectful of difference and focused on what matters most.

There he goes again! Putting us on the par with every other religion! A subtle dig against us!

We may disagree about gay marriage, but surely we can agree that it is unconscionable to target gays and lesbians for who they are -- whether it's here in the United States or, as Hillary mentioned, more extremely in odious laws that are being proposed most recently in Uganda.

It's disgusting the way he throws bones to our religious community, then turns around and panders to the homosexual agenda!

Let's end with the kind words of Ms Cupp:

But rest assured, his friends in the liberal press – indeed, the ultimate Tower of Babel – will hail this speech as they do all the rest, and insist it proves he is indeed, as unnamed officials say, “a prayerful man.”