Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

Archive for October 2013

The Daily F Bomb, Thursday 10/31/13

Interrogatories

Do you get trick-or-treaters where you live? If so, is your place a popular destination? What kind of candy do you hand out?

What is your favorite Halloween candy?

When did you last dress up for Halloween? What were you?

What is the coolest costume that ever showed up at your door (or your party?)

Do you ever attend your city’s Halloween parade (if they have one)?

The Twitter Emitter

President Obama speaks to that “cancelling your insurance” thing …

Surprise!! The media has found some people who paid less for inferior health insurance policies than they will pay for policies that actually cover their accidents and illnesses!!!

The media calls this a “shocking development” and evidence that the Affordable Care Act is a ginormous failure.

This guy (along with most thinking humans) has a different take on it.


Before the Affordable Care Act, the worst of these plans routinely dropped thousands of Americans every single year.  And on average, premiums for folks who stayed in their plans for more than a year shot up about 15 percent a year.  This wasn’t just bad for those folks who had these policies, it was bad for all of us — because, again, when tragedy strikes and folks can’t pay their medical bills, everybody else picks up the tab.

So anyone peddling the notion that insurers are cancelling people’s plan without mentioning that almost all the insurers are encouraging people to join better plans with the same carrier, and stronger benefits and stronger protections, while others will be able to get better plans with new carriers through the marketplace, and that many will get new help to pay for these better plans and make them actually cheaper — if you leave that stuff out, you’re being grossly misleading, to say the least.  (Applause.)  

Thursday Morning Herd Check-in

  Make sure you let your peeps

  know where to find you!  

   


    PLEASE Do Not Recommend the check-in diary

        Fierces on the Weather Critter Comment are obligatory welcome.

from the ‘who gives a shit?’ files: my feminist walkabout

in a nutshell, this is a narrative of what feminism has meant to me through the years and where I go to seek and express feminism in my life now.  to a good extent, my progressive / liberal politics have formed and expressed along similar lines.

feminism in my life, came from my mother along with a love of Count Basie and Dave Brubeck.  she was a lifelong registered Democrat and feminist.  growing up in the 60’s, with civil rights, feminism and my first exposure to concepts of treating people with fairness and equality, these things all became synonymous to me.  we lived in South Chicago, in a neighborhood that housed the steel mill there.  it was white as hell, mostly from Slavic, Irish & Polish ancestry.  other kids’ moms would be complaining about “the Mexicans” and “the blacks”, but my mother was an island of equality, dignity and rights.  she was friendly with those families but distinct in her regard of race and gender.

my father was a fairly sexist dude and in a very cheesy 60’s and 70’s manner.  he’d call a waitress ‘love’ and have this whole cheeseball aura.  it was pretty embarrassing.  he used to tell me that because I was his oldest child and a son, that when he left the house – I was in charge.  this was bullshit of course, because mom was in charge.  I never felt comfortable stepping into the “cheeseball dude” role, so I just let him say that shit without much of a response from me.  it made him happy, I suppose, plus I had zero chance in getting him to stop.  

Posted at SexGenderBody’s tumblr

The Daily F Bomb, Wednesday 10/30/13

Interrogatories

[channeling the HUAC]: Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party? Republican Party?

Not to get too personal, but do you still have all the parts you were born with? (circumcised males need not mention that)

Candy Corn: Food or flavored wax?

For Haunted Refrigerator Day, assuming yours was haunted, what would it be that haunted it?

The Twitter Emitter

Wednesday Watering Hole: Check In & Hangout for the Herd

Good morning, Moosekind.


  PLEASE Do Not Recommend the check-in diary! 

        Recs on the weather jar comment are still welcome.

The common Moose, Alces alces, unlike other members of the deer family, is a solitary animal that doesn’t form herds. Not so its rarer but nearest relative, Alces purplius, the Motley Moose. Though sometimes solitary, the Motley Moose herds in ever shifting groups at the local watering hole to exchange news and just pass the time.

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The stupid!!!! It burns!!!!!

I just can’t not write this diary, although I wish it didn’t have to be written. We all know how the adherents of reactionary politics get branded “anti-science” – deservedly so. Problem is, an anti-science trend among the left also exists. It’s less pervasive, but when one suddenly encounters it, it’s both quite dumbfounding (surprise factor) and damaging to discourse, credibility, and any underlying progressive cause involved. One recent example made me write this diary, and it wasn’t even particularly glaring.

More below.  

Attica unsealed


photo Atticaaftermath_zps1d14f090.jpg

A headline in an upstate New York newspaper threw me back 42 years, to a time I will never forget, and to a massacre I hope to never see repeated.

State attorney general seeks to unseal long-secret volumes on Attica prison tragedy

“The passage of time has made clear that – like the shootings at Kent State, the violent police attacks on civil rights demonstrators in the 1960s, the My Lai massacre and the Watergate scandal – Attica is more than just a profoundly tragic event; it is an historic event of significance to generations of Americans,” State Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman’s court papers argue in trying to end the permanent seal that courts ordered for the documents.

“Attica was a tragic event in the history of our state,” Schneiderman said in a statement provided to The Buffalo News. His office has asked the State Supreme Court in Wyoming County to release the remaining approximately 350 pages of a 1975 report that some families hope will bring at least more closure regarding the revolt’s death toll.

“It is important, both for families directly affected and for future generations, that these historical documents be made available so the public can have a better understanding of what happened and how we can prevent future tragedies,” the attorney general said.

The article concludes with:

In 1972, the New York State Special Commission on Attica wrote, “With the exception of Indian massacres in the late 19th century, the State Police assault, which ended the four-day prison uprising, was the bloodiest one-day encounter between Americans since the Civil War.”

The documentary, Criminal Injustice:Death and Politics at Attica, co-produced and directed by David Marshall, co-produced and written by Chris Christopher, tells parts of the story many people are still unaware of.

“Rockefeller pulled the trigger, Nixon Gave him the blessing”

The Daily F Bomb, Tuesday 10/28/13

Interrogatories

If you were invited to a really fancy dinner party, would you know which fork/knife/spoon/glass etc. to use, and when? If so, would you be able to engage in sparkling conversation at the same time?

What is the most recent book you finished. Was it good?

Where was your family (parents, grandparents…) during the Great Depression? How did they make ends meet?

Are you a fan of boxing? Have you ever boxed?

The Twitter Emitter

Suzanne Somers from that old show “Three’s Company” wrote an anti-Obamacare op-ed for the Wall Street Journal:

Tuesday Morning Herd Check-in

  Make sure you let your peeps

  know where to find you!  


    PLEASE Do Not Recommend the check-in diary!   

        Fierces on the Weather Critter Comment are obligatory welcome.

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