Motley Moose – Archive

Holy Jesus fuck!  What a douchebag.

“Jesus help me, I’m gonna tap that boy’s ass tonight!”

In this story from the AP, some Bishop in Mexico is choosing to blame sex education for causing priests to molest children.  The public education system in Mexico, in seeking to provide services that actually benefit the citizens of Mexico, choose to have a sex education system that uses facts about biology, reproduction, disease and prevention.  This of course is a direct challenge to the Roman Catholic Church, who seek to suck the money out of people while glorifying themselves as special messengers of an invisible being they refer to as “God”.

(Cross-posted at SexGenderBody)

(Image courtesy of Married to the Sea.

I was in the kitchen with our cis-gendered daughter of nine years age, a few weeks back.  She was eating her dinner and I was reading a post by Rabbit White.  Striking up a conversation, she asks me:

“Dad, I’ve been meaning to ask you – What’s a ‘slut’?”

Now, there’s an ice breaker.

(Cross-posted at SexGenderBody.)

Self-sacrifice in war is no more noble than self-sacrifice in peace.   When a soldier dies in combat we honor that person for giving his or her only life so that others may live.   It may be so that other soldiers can live or it may be in defense of one’s country.   We honor those who give their lives in the horror of murder that is War.

Not all of us will wear the uniform and answer the call to fight for our country.   I did and I live on while some that I know do so, no longer.

Duty.   Honor.   Sacrifice.   Country.   Patriotism.

These words are not the province and reward of only soldiers.  They are the birthright and cornerstone of citizenship.

(Cross-posted at The National Gadfly.)

What is money?

Money is imaginary to begin with.  It consists of something (credit, paper, gold, a number in a computer, etc.) chosen by a society to represent measured units of value for people to exchange goods & services.  It is not only a straight replacement for goods & services, but money itself is a commodity.  The particulars of how money works makes for good reading.

Money is in one sense, the confidence we have in this society of ours; in our ability to work together, exist together, live together for the betterment of us as individuals and as a group.

Money is trust.   Money is a membership in society.   Money is a varying measurement on how we feel we are doing as a group.   How this plan of working together is going.  Money is a report card and an assertion that we all believe in ourselves as a society.

(Posted at The National Gadfly.)

I like choice.  I believe in choice.  I think about choice as the exercise of one’s own mind and as fulfillment of any rights granted by a society.

My personal experience of rights is that they do not exist outside of the agreements that combine to create and define a society.  I won’t venture into the unprovable belief that rights are given by god.  For this conversation, I am talking about the rights granted by the social contract(s) we agree to follow as a group for the benefit if the group and by extension – ourselves.  In that context, rights are an agreement to what we can and cannot do, as individuals or groups within the society at-large.

As individuals, we demonstrate the reasons for our rights.  In fact, so many conversations demand that we prove why we have rights.  The rights of the privileged exist and everyone else is seemingly forced to fight for theirs – one painful step at a time.

(Cross-posted at SexGenderBody.)

I had a conversation with someone today.  It’s my usual holiday conversation about the existence of Christ.  As a gratefully recovering Catholic and now proud atheist, I did my usual dance of trying to be considerate and polite and changing the subject.  As is often the case, my friend continued on undeterred with great curiosity about how I cannot believe in any god and what that might mean.  I obliged by quickly employing the word delusional and said that I see no difference between one fairy tale and another.  Predictably, we finished up pretty quickly after that.

(Cross-posted at The National Gadfly.)

This week, a 10 year old boy in Arkansas, named Will Phillips began a sit-down campaign protesting the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.  He noted that the term “liberty and justice for all” excludes LGBTQI people in this country and therefore refuses to participate in stating that it exists.

(Posted at SexGenderBody)

BURBANK: Information is beginning to emerge from the inside the The Walt Disney Company, that the entertainment and media giant is preparing to announce a national health plan for everyone in the U.S.

CEO Robert “Bob” Iger has scheduled a press conference for this Thursday,two hours before President Barack Obama‘s address to the joint chambers of Congress.  With rumors swirling of The White House taking up a draft of its own health care plan, this move is clearly designed to beat the President to the punch and gain the initiative.

(Cross-posted at The National Gadfly.

No, not him.

Not him, either.

This ass-hat is the one I’m talking about.!

Today, on the steps of the Minnesota State Capitol, US Senator Al Franken held a press conference to declare his intention to seek a second term as Minnesota’s junior Senator.  Sen. Franken spent his entire first term in a lengthy court battle with The Party of “No”.  With his wife Fran at his side, he addressed a large crowd of press, supporters and curious onlookers who seemed surprised to learn that Minnesota actually has two US Senators.

(Cross-posted at The National Gadfly)