order viagraorder levitrawhy is Mitt Romney Running for President?

by jackie sheeler on August 8, 2012

I am not yet evolved enough as a human being to feel any sympathy for Mitt Romney, but the past couple months were among, if not The, most difficult in his life so far.

And I wonder: why is this man running for president? He is a multi-millionaire (or billionaire for all we know), a Bishop in his church. He, and his seemingly close-knit family, could live any life they choose, practically anywhere, pursuing causes they care about through the power conferred on them by their uncountable wealth. Romney would have to answer to no one. He would be treated with respect and not called out as a fool in headlines from California to Poland.

He’s traded Atlantis for a soapbox under a magnifying glass on a hostile corner and is constantly called on to do the one thing for which he exhibits no skill: have unscripted exchanges with people. Every speech, practically every public conversation, is clearly an ordeal for him — an obstacle to be overcome, not an opportunity to connect.

Does he simply want to serve his country? If so, in what way? He has no platform, and tunes his positions as best he can to suit the audience at hand. My concern with this is not so much that he flip-flops on issues as needed; the deeper question is why, without a hint of what in corpspeak would be called a Mission Statement, does he even want the job? What does he want to do and what does he imagine his days will be like, this man whose most remarkable talent is saying exactly the wrong thing in exactly the wrong way and (perhaps unwittingly) insulting most everyone he talks to, from NASCAR fans to heads of state. The POTUS spends most of his time in conference and negotiation with people who are quite good at conferencing and negotiating: a life that would likely be hell on earth for a personality like Mitt Romney’s.

So, apart from whether or not he would succeed as president, I am baffled as to why this individual, who can quite literally have anything he wants, is single-mindedly pursuing a situation that ensures four years of living hell followed by a lifetime of Secret Service details. I don’t believe he’s got some secret agenda, for two reasons: his inability to commit to any agenda at all and the selflessness required to sacrifice the quality of one’s life in the service of some larger cause. I do not see evidence of selflessness or altruism in either Romney’s history or his character.

More than a few of the candidate’s observable mannerisms appear on lists of Asperger’s or autism-spectrum symptoms. Could such a syndrome also result in someone choosing such a wildly unsuitable goal?

I don’t believe Romney wants to be president, he just wants to win this election. He doesn’t seem to be thinking (or speaking about) much beyond that.

His communication difficulties have become more pronounced as the pressure increases around secret tax returns in the wake of a humiliating international debut. He cannot be looking forward debating Obama; the very thought may be keep him up nights.

It wouldn’t shock me if Romney dropped out of the race.

buy viagra onlinebuy levitra onlineEric Stevenson (D-Bronx), please pay attention

by jackie sheeler on July 24, 2012

last week I didn’t know who this Bronx assemblyman was, but the idiotic conclusion (published by the idiots at the NY Post) that he reached after a 4-year old was buy cheap viagraorder levitrashot to death on a basketball court last weekend brought him to my attention.

formerly, Stevenson opposed NYC’s disastrous stop-and-frisk program, infamous for the legalized race-card it gives to every member of the NYPD while achieving little more than stuffing Riker’s ever more full of black and brown people unlucky enough to have two joints in a cigarette pack when some cop randomly tells them to assume the position.

after the shooting, Stevenson said he’d “obviously” have to rethink his opposition to stop-and-frisk and support it now.

why “obviously”? was this child the first innocent bystander to be killed in NYC? had stop-and-frisk been suspended, resulting in a surge of gun-related homicides? no,despite the a buy cheap cialisclass-action lawsuit against it, stop and frisk hasn’t stopped yet.

I strongly dislike this kind of knee-jerk grandstanding from politicians: if A happens, resort to soundbite B. don’t think it through and don’t expect that anyone else will.

and so a small-time first-term politician flip-flops on opposing stop-and-frisk because … he thinks it will prevent future homicides despite the fact that it didn’t prevent this one? it defies all logic. goes without saying there’s no follow-up question from the reporter, reporting at most mainstream media outlets being little more than stenography at this point.

this is how our government got as fucked up as it is: politicians make ludicrous statements that go on the record unquestioned. yes, this is a small example; stop-and-frisk will neither end nor continue because of this freshman rep’s position on the policy. but it’s harmful nevertheless, setting the stage for a career in soundbites on his behalf and a lifetime as sheep on ours.

while researching Rep. Stevenson I learned that last year he took home over $30k, more than one-third of his annual salary, in per-diem allowances for visits to Albany, where he seems to spend most of his time. the report, which came out in April, immediately resulted in calls for more oversight of the per-diems, which have so far been handled under an “honor system”. (i’ll spare you the rant about Albany + honor system = oxymoron.) maybe he’s out of touch with stop-and-frisk because he’s spending most of his time away from the people he is supposed to represent?

he was appointed to his seat and is likely to win re-election in the fall, with no credible candidate running against him. perhaps the hue and cry over his outrageous per-diems will give him the reality check he clearly needs.

he failed vote smart’s political courage test and voted against marriage equality as well as a bill to outlaw discrimination based on gender-identity. he also introduced an excellent bill recently: the credit history privacy bill, that would prevent employers from using credit checks in making hiring decisions.

he’s new, there’s hope. maybe he’ll come across this post and give his statements a bit more thought in the future.

 

 

pay attention: you may be stronger than you think

by jackie sheeler on July 23, 2012

I have zero interest in sports yet, like many of you, have read at least a few thousand words about Penn State this year.

when the story first broke, I had no idea who Saint Paterno was, knew nothing about the school or its football team. still, the nameless grad-student assistant who brought the story to his dad after witnessing rape in the locker room captured my attention.

I thought, why tell your father? why not just call 911? after learning more about the sports culture legacy/myth at that school I can understand why he didn’t.

yet…what if he HAD called the cops?

no one can answer that question today, but one thing is certain: even if the police agreed to hush the matter up for the sake of the rich and the famous (which I see as unlikely), they wouldn’t have done so without some serious enforcement actions taken on the university’s behalf. one way or another, the molestations would have stopped then.

I understand why that student, in the heady aroma of Penn State’s burning sports delirium, didn’t make the call. now, I bet he wishes he had.

a chance to do the right thing, the brave thing, doesn’t come in a package labeled Opportunity!–it arrives disguised as risk. when Stephanie Davies saved her friend’s life in Aurora, chances were she’d get shot as well. they were sitting ducks, right in the front row. stay and help Allie, or run and save herself, two seconds to make a decision. she stayed. they lived.

the next time you find yourself in a risky situation, think about it. see if it’s an opportunity in disguise.

you may be stronger than you think.

snapping in aurora

by jackie sheeler on July 22, 2012

a dozen people dead, another half-dozen possibly dying and more than 50 injured, for no fathomable reason.

we are all sad. those who lost family and friends at the Dark Knight midnight show in Aurora are devastated.

i’m not just sad: i’m angry. angry at the NRA and its reckless, relentless megamillion-dollar push to put more & more weapons into more & more hands. angry at the assholes who suggest that armed citizens in that theater could have prevented the bloodbath. very likely, considering Colorado’s lax-to-the-point-of-nonexistent gun control regulations, there WERE armed people there on Friday night and even one with sharpshooter-level skills likely could not have taken Holmes down. not in a smoke-and-gas-filled theater full of screaming, running, confused people, with the lights and sounds of the film flashing and flickering, the sound of actual gunfire blending with the cinematic gunfire blasting from the subwoofers.

i’m also angry about the way the bomb squad characterized defusing the tripwire bombs James Eagan Holmes left behind in his apartment as an effort to “protect valuable evidence”, rather than an effort to protect all the people living nearby. what kind of evidence could possibly be of any use in a case like this? there’s no doubt who did the shooting, and how he did it; the suspect is in custody and hundreds of witnesses survived. so what could they be looking for?

as usual, they are looking for the why, and why doesn’t exist in any universe inhabited by the sane. a top-notch, even genius-level, student with a spotless record suddenly snaps and goes into a modern version of the bell tower to successfully commit mass murder. what do we need to understand beyond the fact that this boy snapped?

sometimes, people just snap. from columbine to to  virginia tech to kandahar. and when they do, the criminal justice system goes ballistically forensic, producing massive (and very expensive) reports that run to hundreds of pages while failing to answer the simple question why.

digging through the computers, histories and underwear drawers of the perpetrators will never answer that question because nothing is learned by viewing a lunacy through the eyes of the lunatic. there’s often something, the “straw that broke the camel’s back”, heralded as The Reason but it is always wrong, because that one straw only matters in the context of all the straws that came before. those straws are common to us all: the escalating societal, cultural and environmental stresses of our brave new world.

  • the wars
  • the toxic oceans and rivers
  • the droughts, hurricanes, heat-waves and tornadoes
  • the increasing amount of poison (pesticides & antibiotics among them) in our food supply
  • the incessant onslaught of advertising
  • the 24/7 corporate workday, the succubus of a corporate blackberry stitched to the innards of those lucky enough to still have white-collar work
  • the ballooning ranks of the homeless,  hundreds of thousands of traumatized veterans among them
  • local police departments armed with everything from tasers to tanks operating like mercenaries with the approval of their corporate-bought mayors
  • the loss or fear of losing your home
  • a generation of students with no prospects saddled to trillions of dollars of debt
  • the heartbreaking buffoonery and mushrooming paternalism of our politicians and so-called leaders
  • fundamentalists shoving probes into a teenage uterus while they shout about jesus
  • radio frequencies, coal dust and cesium in the air
  • 40-year-old broken-down nuclear reactors in every other backyard, their operators exchanging campaign contributions for waivers

this is by no means a comprehensive list. but i can’t go on any longer. it’s too sad. too sad and too obvious.

and none of it is getting any better.

 

thank you joe biden

by jackie sheeler on May 9, 2012

yeah, after hemming & hawing & bullshitting for four years, joe biden paints obama into a corner by straight out saying he supports same-sex marriage, and BOOM obama “evolves” overnight.

while i’m glad he finally came out, couldn’t he at least have told the truth about his “evolution”? spared us all this bullshit about his daughters and his faith?

something like this would’ve (finally) showed us that obama actually had a pair:

I want to apologize to every GLBT American for the fact that I played politics with your rights, with your lives, during my first term as President of the United States. I know that some of you have been unable to see your loved ones on their deathbeds, or watched as your partner was deported, all because you weren’t legally considered family. I know that some of you have gone and continue to go without health insurance because of the institutionalized discrimination practiced against same-sex couples in this country. I have been in favor of same-sex marriage since my undergraduate days at Harvard. Yet, as your President, I allowed fear and politicking to silence my voice. But now, thanks to Vice President Biden, who so clearly and forthrightly spoke the truth as he knew it to be, I am compelled to say, clearly and unequivocally, that I agree with him on this and, further, that I always have. Yes, politics is the art of compromise, but there is a line between compromise and falsehood, and on the issue of same-sex marriage I have sadly, until now, placed myself on the wrong side of that line. It was disingenuous to tell you that my position was “evolving” when, in fact, my position was — in my heart and mind — already quite clear. I allowed myself to maneuver around this issue, to manipulate language and show only half my hand, in order not to alienate the most conservative voters before the next election. I see now that this strategy, if I can call it that, has done more harm than good: not only to me, though it has done me harm, but immeasurably more so to you, same-sex couples in this country who have only second-class citizenship. I could have done quite a bit in the last three years to remedy that, and I did not. For that, I do not expect to be forgiven. But my “penance”, if you will, for this is that now, for the rest of my time — whether months or years —  as your President, I will do everything in my power and the power of this office to make it right.

 

my amendment to the forced-sonogram mandate

by jackie sheeler on March 22, 2012

WHEREAS there is no medical benefit derived from forcing sonograms on women who have already decided to terminate their pregnancy; and

WHEREAS  legislation mandating such sonograms has been introduced by individuals with no medical experience or training; and

WHEREAS this legislation further requires that said unnecessary procedure may only be performed by doctors or certified sonographers, an unprecedented requirement that only applies to women seeking to terminate a pregnancy;

WHEREAS these requirements are grounded not in science but in politics, and serve no purpose other than restricting women’s reproductive choices; and

WHEREAS doctors are already organizing civil disobedience and repudiating this legislation; therefore

THE LEGISLATION IS HEREBY AMENDED AS FOLLOWS:

All state-mandated pre-abortion sonograms to which the patient explicitly objects must be performed by a member of the state legislature that voted in favor of this requirements. Such legislators are hereby required to take, on their own time and at their own expense, any training necessary to become certified sonographers. Any legislator failing to meet this requirement within one (1) year will forfeit their seat.

Furthermore, no limitations on speech shall be imposed on the patient receiving the sonogram. The representative performing the sonogram shall not be permitted to wear headphones, earplugs or any other device that would impede his ability to hear the patient clearly. Such patients have the right, without limitation, to videotape or otherwise record any and all aspects of the sonogram procedure while it is being performed and to use, share, publish, and promote such video in any and all available forums. 

 The Rape Wand

this is what these goddam right-wing control-freaks sound like to me.

 

questions for Carbonite’s CEO, david friend

by jackie sheeler on March 4, 2012

i’m not satisfied with the latest message from Carbonite.

buried in this sideshow-to-the-sideshow is something that i believe is critical to getting us — politicians, corporaticians and everyday citizens alike — back on track in the good-old but bad-new US of A: making public statements and public choices in accordance with your own true values, whether for better or worse, come hell or high water. people don’t need focus groups to tell them right from wrong; companies shouldn’t need them either.

the message from dave friend that i addressed at length in a post earlier today, has since been updated. giving credit where it’s due, the new information that Carbonite is, in fact, pulling its ads off of limbaugh was posted as an update above the earlier blog entry, which remained as it was. Carbonite gets honesty points for that: i fully expected that yesterday’s post would have been pulled, or overwritten, altogether.

however, this attack of transparency only serves to illustrate the larger, more insidious dishonesty in Carbonite’s handling of the RushMouth affair.

yesterday, it was

I too am offended and very concerned about his comments.

today it’s

No one with daughters the age of Sandra Fluke, and I have two, could possibly abide the insult and abuse heaped upon this courageous and well-intentioned young lady.

i’m sorry, but you just can’t get there from here. it’s not as if any actual news came out between blog #1 and blog #2; the same excremental rhetoric continued flushing from the potty of RushMouth, it’s reasonable to assume that dave friend had the same daughters this time yesterday that he has today.

so what changed? looks like the tipping point for Carbonite arrived after more than half of limbaugh’s advertisers publicly jumped ship, leaving only a handful stranded in the sinking business-as-usual boat that a RushMouth media buy has become.

only then did dave friend evolve from being “offended and concerned about” to “no one…could possibly abide” the insult and abuse directed at Sandra Fluke.

does that mean that advertiser trends mean more to him than his daughters? pretty unlikely. i have no reason to doubt that dave friend loves his children, no reason to think he’s anything other than a good parent to them. he looks and sounds like pretty nice guy, based on his record and statements made while he was an independent (and very successful) New England entrepreneur.

it more likely means that he wasn’t willing to take a public stand on this for fear of losing the few dollars Carbonite might realize by getting a few new customers from limbaugh’s audience (though anyone stupid enough to listen to that steaming pile of conservatism is likely also too stupid to back up their data) or incurring shareholder displeasure.

in other words, business before principles.

and why? ah, now we’re in the belly of the beast: Carbonite only went public last summer. now they’ve got shareholders to answer to, and every move must be dictated by that heartless master, shareholder value. also known as wall street.

i know what that means; i waded through its sewage in my corporate hip-boots for over thirty years. on wall street, money — and only money — talks. brand image impacts earnings, therefore brand image also equals money, therefore maximizing the brand image trumps any principles you may or may not have.

so, david friend, here are my questions to you: if Carbonite had not been, at this moment in time, a publicly traded company, would your initial response to the limbaugh backlash have been as mild? or, conversely, did Carbonite only bail out of that advertising relationship after it was pressured by shareholders to do so? even more conversely, was Carbonite perhaps prevented by its shareholders (in their board-of-directors disguise) from making the stronger statement, and pulling its ads, in the first place?

i look forward to hearing from you.

limbaugh, carbonite, fluke & god

by jackie sheeler on March 4, 2012

Carbonite advertises with Limbaugh, as i learned in the aftermath of this week’s GOP meltdown over Sandra Fluke’s attempt to educate the walking dead who have snatched the bodies (or at least the minds) of half the US Senate.

as a longtime customer, i left a brief message on Carbonite CEO Dave Friend’s voicemail (after getting his direct dial from the helpful souls on Reddit) inquiring whether or not that was the case. i left my phone number, though they’ve already got that, along with my email, in their customer database.

here is the formletter i received in reply:

We do not endorse political views or opinions of the companies, magazines, newspapers, TV stations or radio stations that we advertise on. We simply choose a range of programs designed to reach a broad range of people so they might hear about Carbonite. Dave Friend, Carbonite’s Founder and CEO wrote this on his blog here.

apparently, dave friend is SO fucking outraged about the way the student was treated that he is actually going to have a meeting with rush limbaugh! yep, called him and set it right up for next week.

as odious as the idea of sitting in the same room with a bag of gashole like limbaugh is to me, i somehow don’t think mr. “friend” shares my view. in fact, i think he’s a card-carrying woman-hating wingnut himself, seeing how easy it was for him to set up a one-on-one with his buddy Rush.

i’ve just instructed Carbonite to cancel my account. i did my own backups before and i’ll do my own backups again.

a word to my progressive friends: DO THE SAME. not just with Carbonite (though it’s a good place to start), but with ANY company that supports our increasingly distorted status quo.

the fuck-you masquerading as an apology that limbaugh released today is a sham and a lie, where he purposefully continues mis-stating the issue. even an authentic, heartfelt, reasoned and passionate apology would not have been enough, though clearly gives no thought to anything beyond the spin. that’s all he does is spin, that’s all most of congress does now is spin, sometimes it feels like spin is the only thing our politicans and mainstream pundits DO (besides collecting the money that pays for all that spin, of course).

i’m not subsidizing the goddam spin if i can help it. we complain that the democrats don’t fight, that they roll over too easily — and good god almighty they sure do. but what about US? you don’t like having a bought congress, a bought presidency, a corporate-sponsored life out of some goddam futuristic leave-it-to-beaver fantasy? THEN WALK THE TALK.

NO, RUSH LIMBAUGH, you can’t vilify a young american citizen from your bully pulpit, calling her names — calling her a PROSTITUTE, for god’s sake — for days. DAYS! and then say, oops, you all misunderstood, i’m just an entertainer and it was supposed to be funny ha ha. it wasn’t funny and wasn’t MEANT to be funny. there’s nothing funny about you, rush limbaugh, you are a walking, talking demonstration of exactly what has gone most wrong in this country.

NO, DAVE FRIEND, you cannot brush this off with the equivalent of “it’s just business” and bullshit talk about media buys. you either support the flaming hatred of oppression or you don’t. period. if anything is obvious in 2012, it’s the fact that there IS NO MIDDLE ROAD. not in this country. not any more.

A WORD TO SANDRA FLUKE: i apologize to you on behalf of our country. speaking truth in the House of Lies is not a walk in the park, and even though i’m pretty sure you knew that going in, nobody could have expected this much shit to hit the fan. you have handled it both honorably and adroitly; i salute your courage and equanimity under fire. america needs more people like you, and i hope the conservative freak-show to which you were subjected does not scare you away from taking a stand and speaking your mind in the future. i’ve tried to imagine how you might have felt when the eye of this shitstorm exploded into your life. one minute you’re simply a student doing a civic duty, the next minute you’re shoved to the center of the spotlight from hell with a choir of lunatics hooting and no emergency exit in sight. i don’t know what good, for you personally, will come of this; i only know that some manner of good will, a powerful good, will eventually, come.

just like i know what’s coming, sooner or later, for limbaugh and his ilk. i’m no christian, but you don’t have to be a christian to understand this:
god don’t like ugly.

 

 

there’s $500 in The New Back Alley…want it?

by jackie sheeler on February 26, 2012

Video Contest!

with my head exploding over right-wing idiocies such as the komen foundation defunding planned parenthood and the new rape-by-ultrasound-wand proposals floating through several anti-choice, anti-female red states, i wrote & recorded a song.

The New Back Alley needs a video as fierce and edgy as itself. i know that one of you has the chops to do it. so here’s the deal:

Prize: $500 cash.

Guidelines:

  • no restrictions on content or form
  • must have the rights to any footage or images that are used
  • original content preferred; Creative Commons content (with attribution) is also fine
  • feel free to incorporate text of all or some of the lyrics into the video if you like (kinetic typography rocks!) or feel free not to use the lyrics at all
  • include a brief caption at the beginning with the song title (The New Back Alley)
  • include a brief credits screen at the end — credit yourself for the video, of course, and credit the song as follows: “The New Back Alley / Jackie Sheeler & the Wordrock Project”
  • no entry fee, though it would rock if you made a small donation to Planned Parenthood

How To Enter:

  • upload your video to youtube
  • put these lines in the video description: “The New Back Alley, music by Jackie Sheeler & the Wordrock Project / http://www.reverbnation.com/jackiesheeler
  • put your youtube link in the comments below, and also add it to The New Back Alley page on Facebook (you’ll get an email to confirm your entry was received & met the guidelines)
  • deadline to enter is March 25th
  • winner will be notified by March 31st
  • winning video will be featured on this blog, on the Wordrock Project site, on several Facebook pages, and on my YouTube channel

What’s the Catch?

well, at least ten people have to enter the contest. with ten videos there’s sure to be one that feels right to me. that said, if only three people enter but i LOVE one of the videos, then they’ll win. whereas if only three people enter but none of those videos are working, then there’s no winner.

winning videographer grants me non-exclusive worldwide rights to use the video to promote the song and the pro-choice effort. and of course you’ll be credited for the video production.

questions? holler back! and let your camera-loving friends know about the contest!

good luck!

 

video of the day: I Vote for Energy

by jackie sheeler on January 10, 2012

gotta watch the whole thing (90 seconds). simply brilliant.

please forward WIDELY! let’s send it viral–

 

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