Those Little Blessings

So, tell me, don't you think the week is simply zoomin' past?  I find it difficult to believe that's Thursday already.  As you get older, time passes faster than you'd like, especially if you're busy.  Then it's gone before you even know it.

My application to sign up for mail-in voting arrived yesterday.  I will go online and take care of it later this morning.  

I get to work this afternoon.  Only for 6 hours.  I like short shifts, especially when they start later in the day.  Morning means getting chores done at home.  Nothing really gets done if I get home from work after 7 PM.  If the dishes weren't put into the dishwasher earlier, that might happen.

The last few evenings I've been re-playing Fallout 4 on the PC.  This is my 3rd play through.  Part my decision to play this game again is that it's a great RPG, but another part is the series which is (as of right now) to premier on Amazon Prime later this year.  For years producers thought films were the only way to bring a game to the big screen, especially since we all have big screens in our homes now.  And the The Witcher happened, a very popular video game series premiered on Netflix.  Recently, The Last of Us premiered on HBOMax, and from what I've seen is also very popular.  This gives me hope for the Fallout series.  Next on my gaming list, after Fallout, is Atomic Heart.  This looks very interesting and arrives in3 weeks.

So, Kev McCarthy had a sit down with Biden yesterday about the debt ceiling.  He has been asked many times what the Republican plan is, especially since their tax break for the rich put the debt ceiling through the roof.  He always mumbles out some word salad that includes a number of adverbs, but no verbs, and adjectives that only modify the fact that he doesn't have a true subject.  For him, it's the process that's important.  He's hoping the end result of this process makes the administration look bad.  In a nutshell, that's what he wants, nothing else.

And now a bit about babies because it's important.  I suspect that one of the real reasons social conservatives are so anti-abortion is that they desperately want women to have babies, lots of babies.  They tell you babies are a blessing from God.  If that's true, they might want to ask themselves why both Hindus and Moslems are popping out babies like it's going out of style, while that isn't the case for Christians, especially American Christians.  Are Hindus more blessed than Evangelicals?  And you'll notice that I didn't even touch upon the subject that most of those babies aren't white.

 

State of Hate - Arizona

I am always amazed by the things which happen in Arizona.  Back in 2010 the state passed legislation which permitted law enforcement to stop any individual on the street (read Latino) and see if they were a legal citizen of the the United States.  Two years later the Supreme Court said about 3/4's of that legislation was unconstitutional.  Now the legislation has put a bill on Governor Jan Brewer's desk which is supposed to be about protecting an individual, business, corporation, etc and their religious beliefs.  What it actually says is that these individuals and groups can refuse to do business with gay people because it's against their religion.  What's next?  Arabs?  I mean there are a lot of people out there who really don't want to come within five miles of an Arab, so at some future date is the state legislation going to at Arabs to the list?  What about the Chinese?  There's a growing anti-Chinese sentiment in this country and, if you listen to what the Chinese government says, they are all atheist.  How can those deeply religious Arizona citizens even consider doing business with atheists!  Or what about the Hindi's?  I'm sure, if you ask a devout Hindu, he will tell you Shiva, the destroyer of worlds, has posted a target on Jan Brewer's ass.

The truth is this bill is not about religious freedom, it's about discriminating against gays, a minority group which is making great strides in getting equal civil rights.  They have always been a problem for the GOP and Arizona is a Republican state.  Marriage Equality bills as passing, slowly but surely, in state after state, and law suits are being filed as though paper were going to disappear off the face of the earth.  The Republicans in Arizona are merely trying to give some sort of protection to their base.  In doing so, however, they are legitimizing hate.

Right now this piece of legislation is sitting on Jan Brewer's desk, waiting for her perusal.  If the GOP is smart they'll send a little birdy to whisper in her ear "don't sign it, don't sign it."  You see, the Republicans want to win a presidential election and in order to do that they need to come across as more moderate, more friendly to all races, creeds and orientations. Did the 2010 law in Arizona hurt them?  I'd say most assuredly with the Latino vote.  Why would you vote for a party that hates you?  Thanks to the science of genetics it's estimated that 10% of all humans are either gay or lesbian.  That's a big voting block.  If they had the other 90% the Republicans wouldn't have to worry about it, but they don't.  They barely have 40%.  Woah!  And every time a state sends a message of hate that percentage drops.  Someone should tell this to the Republicans of Arizona who are sitting so smugly in their state of hate.

India Censors disenting voices

I read this morning in the New York Times that Penguin Books of India had caved to censorship.  Evidently an 84 year old Hindu Conservative, Dina Nath Batra, had filed a lawsuit against Penguin charging a book they had published in 2011 attacked Hinduism with its vulgarity, among other things. I only know a little bit about Hinduism and have never read the book so I don't know if it's an attack on the religion or not.  I do suspect, however, that in his 84 year old brain Batra's little, grey cells are as pleased as little pigs in shit at their ability to control what the country can read.  If you take a look at those countries who do censor and those who do not you'll see there is quite a difference.  Those that do tend to be either communistic or run by dictators, those that don't tend to be democracies.  I suspect that if Batra had his way he would take India down the road towards dictatorship.  A comment of his in the Chicago Tribune went something like this "we believe in freedom of speech to a certain extent."  That's not a good sign.  I searched through Google images for a picture of Mr. Batra in which he didn't look like a prick.  Couldn't find one.  Nope.  In every single one his visage defined dourness.

A prick by any other name would still be a prick

Here is where it turns into old fool stupidity.  The legal decision was scanned and posted on the Internet so anybody who is even slightly curious now knows that Penguin has 6 months to stop selling the book in India.  So, if you have any interest in reading it's hateful, vulgarities in their fullness you have until July to buy it legally, at that point it needs to be off of the shelves.  Hey, Mr. Batra, have you any idea how long it takes to scan a book into a computer?  I hope he understands that banned books tend to become popular.  People want to read the nasty stuff.  And, once it is no longer available for purchase, copies will get passed around.  It's a good thing Mr. Batra doesn't have any real political clout, other wise we might see police squads bursting into homes searching for illegal volumes. Censorship always fails. The only way to truly enforce censorship is militarily and I don't think the Indian government would want to go that far.  Of course, I don't think it would bother Mr. Batra one bit as long as they were following his beliefs.