Screencap of censored cover:

Here is a larger version of the uncensored cover (click on the image to view the full sized cover):

I understand that some people don’t agree with breastfeeding a child who is three years old or more but to censor a photo that wasn’t obscene is ridiculous. There was no nudity shown.

Women’s breasts aren’t automatically obscene so adding the pixelization actually is being judgmental by saying that “yes, this is not appropriate” without allowing for the viewer or reader to decide.

My guess is that people who get the vapors over public breastfeeding are the same ones who are upset by gay people. They have some hidden kink about breastfeeding and seeing images or seeing it in public tends to crank them up.

Breastfeeding is a natural behavior and should be celebrated and encouraged – not hidden by censorship.

Related posts:

1. “SHOCKING” Why I still hate celebrity gossip shows
2. Tom Brokaw on the Charlie Rose Show
3. Spending time off the net – Part 2

It’s six months before the 2012 Presidential election here in the US. Six months of droning pundits, rallies, and millions of dollars spent on advertising. For me it is all a waste of time and effort. I’m ready to vote now – the person to vote for is obvious because I sure don’t want to go back to the dark days of President George W Bush economic policies.

If you listen to the mainstream media you would think that 2001-2008 didn’t happen. That was the eight years we had President George W Bush in office. Remember the 2008 election when President Obama won. If Bush’s policies had been so great then why did Obama win by such a large margin. He got 10 million more votes than John McCain in one of the largest turn outs in decades.

In case you do have some memory loss here is what it was like during the Bush administration:

In breathtaking disregard for the most basic rules of fiscal propriety, the administration continued to cut taxes even as it undertook expensive new spending programs and embarked on a financially ruinous “war of choice” in Iraq. A budget surplus of 2.4 percent of gross domestic product (G.D.P.), which greeted Bush as he took office, turned into a deficit of 3.6 percent in the space of four years. The United States had not experienced a turnaround of this magnitude since the global crisis of World War II.

Agricultural subsidies were doubled between 2002 and 2005. Tax expenditures—the vast system of subsidies and preferences hidden in the tax code—increased more than a quarter. Tax breaks for the president’s friends in the oil-and-gas industry increased by billions and billions of dollars. Yes, in the five years after 9/11, defense expenditures did increase (by some 70 percent), though much of the growth wasn’t helping to fight the War on Terror at all, but was being lost or outsourced in failed missions in Iraq. Meanwhile, other funds continued to be spent on the usual high-tech gimcrackery—weapons that don’t work, for enemies we don’t have. In a nutshell, money was being spent everyplace except where it was needed. During these past seven years the percentage of G.D.P. spent on research and development outside defense and health has fallen. Little has been done about our decaying infrastructure—be it levees in New Orleans or bridges in Minneapolis. Coping with most of the damage will fall to the next occupant of the White House.

Although it railed against entitlement programs for the needy, the administration enacted the largest increase in entitlements in four decades—the poorly designed Medicare prescription-drug benefit, intended as both an election-season bribe and a sop to the pharmaceutical industry. As internal documents later revealed, the true cost of the measure was hidden from Congress. Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical companies received special favors. To access the new benefits, elderly patients couldn’t opt to buy cheaper medications from Canada or other countries. The law also prohibited the U.S. government, the largest single buyer of prescription drugs, from negotiating with drug manufacturers to keep costs down. As a result, American consumers pay far more for medications than people elsewhere in the developed world.

The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush

But that was President Bush right not Mitt Romney – the all but official GOP candidate for the 2012 election.

Well:

Romney’s economic plan is a repeat of Bush’s MBA economic mastery that gave over $4 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthy and deregulated the financial sector paving the way for the economic crash heard round the world. Willard promises to give $6.5 to $6.7 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations and repeal the Democrat’s financial reform law so Wall Street and corporate banks can repeat the practices that created the Great Recession. Romney asked the President, “Where are the jobs,” and said the President’s “policies have failed.” Willard claims the economy would be creating 500,000 jobs each month if his policies of heaping more tax breaks on the wealthy and giving the financial sector free-rein were implemented and besides being absurd, it is an insult to Americans to assert that returning to Bush’s economic policies would have any different effect now, than they did four years ago. Romney also said “undoing the damage you’ve done will be a daunting challenge” and that “I’ve learned a thing or two about how government policies can kill private investment and stifle job creation and I have a plan to get government out of the way.” Here’s Willard’s problem; Americans have lived through his plan for eight long years, and using his self-professed business acumen will not produce different results than the last MBA president.

Romney is the Second More Disastrous Coming of George W. Bush

Not to mention that Mitt Romney was against the bail out of the auto industry and the stimulus that stopped us from going into a depression.

The only people who want to “return” to those dark days of the Bush administration are wealthy people, CEOs, oil barons, and white men.

The rest of us – the 99% – want to give President Obama another term. We have to re-elect him or the rest of us will see a regression in our economic and social lives. We also need to elect members of Congress who will support all of us and not just the people with the money.

Who do you want to run the country? “We the people” or the check books of Wall Street?

I’ve made my choice. I’m ready to vote now.

Related posts:

1. Mitt Romney lies about his support of the health care mandate
2. Why I can’t vote for President George W. Bush
3. Why The Dispatch endorsement of Bush is a vote for Kerry

Now, more than ever, America needs a Day of Reason.

With the religious right’s influence in Congress, and with the threat to our Judiciary looming large, there has never been as important a moment in which to affirm our commitment to the Constitutional separation of religion and government, and to celebrate Reason as the guiding principle of our secular democracy.

During the past year we have witnessed the intrusion of religious ideology into all spheres of our government, with such assaults on the wall separating church and state as:

Faith-based initiatives in federal agencies that give preferential treatment to religious organizations which proselytize and employ discriminatory hiring practices;
Restrictions on important scientific research on the basis of religious objections;
Attempts to introduce biblical creationism and its alter-ego “Intelligent Design” into our public school science curricula;
The appointment of judges who willingly place their religious beliefs above our laws;
Battles over the display of the Ten Commandments and other overtly religious icons in schools and on courthouses;
Religiously motivated restrictions on access to reproductive services and information;

As in previous years, this year’s National Day of Reason is scheduled to coincide with the Congressionally-mandated and federally-supported National Day of Prayer on Thursday, May 5, 2011. We invite all who value the separation of religion and government to join us in commemorating the Day of Reason, and in building awareness for this important cause.

Why National Day of Reason?

Rep. Pete Stark – only openly atheist member of Congress

Rep. Pete Stark (D – CA), the only openly atheist member of Congress, issued a proclamation Recognizing the National Day of Reason on the House floor on April 27th:

The National Day of Reason celebrates the application of reason and the positive impact it has had on humanity. It is also an opportunity to reaffirm the Constitutional separation of religion and government.

. . .

Our nation faces many problems—bringing our troops home from Afghanistan, creating jobs, educating our children, and protecting our safety net from irresponsible cuts. We will solve these issues through the application of reason. We must also protect women’s reproductive choices, the integrity of scientific research, and our public education system from those who would hide behind religious dogma to undermine them.

FLOOR STATEMENT: Recognizing the National Day of Reason

There is a need to back off the intrusion of religion into government. For example, in Ohio, the GOP controlled legislature passed 5 different anti-abortion laws since 2011 while state and local governments have had to make severe cuts to services and education.

The priorities of the religious conservatives are out of balance.

The National Day of Reason in 2013 is on May 2nd.

Related posts:

1. National Atheist Party Is Too Thin For A Political Party
2. The reason for the season
3. Did NY same sex marriage proponents give away the farm with religious exemptions?

The Haymarket meeting and bombing, the subsequent riot, arrests, trial, and executions, and related events of the period form one of the most remarkable episodes in the history of Chicago, the United States, and of working people everywhere. On the evening of May 4, 1886, a few thousand people assembled in the Haymarket area at the intersection of Randolph and Desplaines Streets, across the South Branch of the Chicago River about eight blocks west of City Hall. The purpose of the rally was to protest the killing of two workers the previous day by the police when they broke up an angry confrontation between locked-out union members and their replacements at the McCormick reaper factory on the city’s Southwest Side. This confrontation was one of many outbreaks of violence at the time due to labor and class tensions. Central among labor’s demands was the eight-hour workday.

As the protest meeting in the Haymarket was nearing a close, about 180 police marched from the nearby Desplaines Street station to the makeshift speakers’ stand. Immediately after a police commander ordered the rally to disperse, someone threw a dynamite bomb into the ranks of the officers. One officer was killed almost instantly, and six more would die in the next few days and weeks of wounds either caused by the bomb or sustained in the riot that followed. Acting with overwhelming public support, the police arrested dozens of political radicals. In the trial that followed, eight anarchists were found guilty of murder. After appeals to the Illinois and United States Supreme Courts failed, four of the defendants were executed on November 11, 1887. One day before the hangings, another defendant committed suicide. Illinois Governor Richard Oglesby commuted the capital sentence of two other defendants to life in prison. The jury had sentenced the eighth defendant to fifteen years at hard labor.

Scholars have long considered the Haymarket trial one of the most notorious miscarriages of law in American history. At this time of cultural crisis, the defendants were convicted by a prejudiced judge and jury because of their political views, rather than on the basis of solid evidence that linked them to the bombing. Although most middle-class Americans and even many working people at the time cheered this action and praised the police as defenders of public order, the executions transformed the anarchists into martyrs of labor in this country and throughout the world. The cultural memory of Haymarket has echoed ever since through many other events.

The Dramas of Haymarket

Starting with the United Mine Workers in 1898 there was a steady move to an 8 hour work day that was finally given to all workers by federal law in 1937 as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

So if you think about complaining the weekend is too short or you’re watching the clock so you can leave after your 8 hour shift, find a Union member and thank them for their historic support of the worker.

Related posts:

1. Question: How many union protestors in Wisconsin & Ohio voted for the people wanting to take away their rights?
2. Misinformation Is Rampant In Anti-Union Camp
3. Walker Remorse – Union people who voted GOP have second thoughts

If you agree with Jesse Kelly, the Republican nominee in Arizona’s 8th congressional district, that access to health care should be treated like being allowed to drive a car or own a cell phone then we are in some serious trouble in this country. Health care should be a right and not subject to the whims and bias of people who live in a bubble of their own existence.

VOTER: Do you think that health care is a right or a privilege?

KELLY: My belief system is this. The health care for anybody but especially for our nation. The highest quality and lowest cost can only be delivered without the government. What I believe is that all things we drive, we do, health care, anything, is a privilege to some extent. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, those are inalienable rights endowed by your creator. If you’re claiming a right, if you’re going to say anything’s a right, if you’ re going to say you have a right to a cell phone, then who has the responsibility to pay for it? That’s what I believe.

VOTER: So you’ d put health care as a privilege then?

KELLY: Absolutely, absolutely. I believe that all things we have are. But they’re privileges you earn.

GOP Nominee Running For Gabby Giffords’ Seat Says Health Care Is A ‘Privilege You Earn,’ Not A Right

I didn’t know that access to health care was the same as driving a car or having a cell phone. The thing is if I have no health care then I’m DEAD. If I have no car or cell phone then it is just an inconvenience – it won’t kill me.

The founders and many people who have come after have stated that “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” are unalienable rights. How does one ignore the fact that access to health care fits in all three of those rights.

Jesse Kelly isn’t qualified to hold office since it doesn’t seem he is human.

Related posts:

1. Health care reform passed – This is just the start
2. Don’t believe the Republican view on health care reform
3. Health Care Reform meeting in DC one long infomercial

On Tuesday the local news had a story about a mother who found out a photo of her young daughter, that had been posted on a reality television show website, showed up on a adult website. She called law enforcement and was told the posting and the disgusting message with it was not illegal. I probably would have more sympathy for the mother but the reality show she and her daughter was on was “Toddlers & Tiaras.” The story and the mother’s reaction is full of irony.

A mother said Tuesday that law enforcement officials told her that an unidentified man posted a picture of her daughter on an adult Web site.

Lori Mathews said that a man posted online that he performed a sex act while looking a the picture of her 9-year-old daughter, Alaska Mathews, 10TV’s Tanisha Mallett reported.

The picture of Alaska Mathews, who was featured on the TLC network show “Toddlers & Tiaras,” was lifted from the show’s Web site.

“It’s gross and it is sick and it’s about a child,” Mathews said.

Mathews said that law enforcement officials told her that what the man posted on the adult Web site was not illegal.

Mathews said that she wanted to change that, Mallett reported.

“If there isn’t a law about it, there needs to be one,” Mathews said.

Mother Says Man Performed Sex Act While Looking At Picture Of Her 9-Year-Old Daughter (there is news video of the story at the link)

Setting aside the rather misleading headline of the story, I just thought the whole situation was full of irony.

A mother who uses her daughter’s sexuality to win child pageants draws a line at someone using her daughter’s sexuality for their own ends?

Don’t get me wrong I’m NOT blaming the mother for the actions of the sicko who posted the message, but I think it’s absurd that the mother doesn’t see the irony in her outrage. I think exploiting children’s sexuality for any reason is wrong.

Personally, I think that child pageants, like those shown on “Toddlers & Tiaras” is child abuse.

I was also troubled the mother wants to make what happened illegal. The picture posted wasn’t sexual although the message was, but why should that be illegal if nothing physical happened. There is already plenty of laws to protect children from being exploited – although child pageants are exempt.

Related posts:

1. Some irony on immigration
2. David Letterman has been on game shows before
3. The Ultimate Guide to the Political Talk Shows