Archive for February 10, 2012
Remember When Catholic Bishops Were Thought of as Pedophiles?
This would be my Tweet of the Day, and I mean it in all seriousness: Notice how the media treated Catholic Bishops like saints this week?
Rick Berman, Millionaire Lobbyist, Gives We the People The Finger
Rick Berman gives us all a big freakin’ finger:
Big-time lobbyist Rick Berman creates nonprofit front groups to push corporate interests. Now he’s in an anti-union ad pretending to be an auto mechanic.
(Via.)
This is how brazen the corporatocracy is getting. They’re buying elections and they don’t care if we know it because we can’t do anything about it. They have the money and we don’t. Period. We’re on the outside looking in. Welcome to Campaign 2012!
(With special thanks to the activist Republican judges on the Supreme Court who brought us Citizens United.)
Love You Eric
I’m thinking of my brother Eric today.
Eric was a wildlife biologist, a recycling and save-the-environment freak, a guy who bicycled everywhere. He made his own set of bicycle tire chains so he could ride in the snow. He rode from Colorado to California and back.
He loved the Canyonlands in Utah.
He was a sweet, kind, sensitive soul. (Look at those eyes.) He never missed an opportunity to protest war or injustice. One of his biggest pet peeves was the amount of Our Tax Dollars we give to the Pentagon.
Eric suffered from depression from his mid-teens until the day of his death at age 32. He struggled to live. He gave it all he could.
On February 7, 1988 Eric drove into the mountains above Boulder and stuck a hose into the exhaust pipe of his car. We didn’t find him until two awful days later. His funeral was on February 14.
Love you Eric.
P.S. I know you thought the world was screwed up then. You should see it now. BIG hug.
Obama to Propose Cutting Corporate Taxes
OMG. Is this Obama talking or is this Obama under the influence of Citizens United talking?
(Reuters) – President Barack Obama, who has angered businesses with his plans to close corporate tax loopholes, is expected to call for cutting the top 35 percent corporate tax rate as early as this month, according to two sources close to the administration.
The president is likely to propose a rate close to an average of peer nations, the sources said.
Good thing it’s Friday. This is the kind of news that makes me want to take my head off and set it down for a while.
Wonderful Day at the Food Bank
Regular visitors to this site know that I spend a good part of the day on Friday volunteering at my local food bank.
Two weeks ago (we were closed last Friday due to a huge snow storm) the shelves were literally almost bare. We’d gone through the thousands of pounds of food donations we got in November and December, when everyone’s heart grows a few sizes and people think of the needy. We were experiencing the post-holiday dregs. I mean, we were out of things like spaghetti sauce and green beans and kidney beans for God’s sake…things I’d never seen us go without in the three years I’ve been there.
Today it was like Christmas all over again. A local elementary school had held a food drive and we were loaded with all kinds of pastas and spaghetti sauces and soups and baking supplies. Today, we brought in another 1,400 pounds of food from yet another school’s food drive and our clients were able to pick from such “unusual” items as salad dressing and tartar sauce — real treats for them.
Now we’re brimming with canned vegetables and canned fruit and rice dishes and a huge organic food section. Oh, and coffee! We have coffee!
It’s heartbreaking taking people through the food bank when we’re down to the bare bones. They are down to the bare bones in their lives already so when a day like today rolls around, it’s magic when a young mom squeal at the sight of penne pasta instead of spaghetti. Or a 70-ish grandma sighs and smiles at a bottle of soy sauce or, as I said, tartar sauce or A-1 sauce. Total luxuries in their world.
So, it was a good day.
