Taking back our meanings

"As far as I'm concerned nobody can be too liberal. Liberal means educated. Liberal means a tempered view. I do not accept the Republican view of the term liberal."

Marge Swien
Retiree who supported Howard Dean for president in 2004

Twisting the meanings of words is a way of miscasting, smearing, others. Are you a liberal? Well there's nothing wrong with it. Rush Limbaugh and other paid rightwing mouthpieces have tried to redefine words and make you, in the eyes of anyone who believes what Rush and those other fucking idiots say, into something that you're not. Simple playground name calling, society's oldest preoccupation.

What a huge, long list of words they use to try to shape what others feel and think. It's just lying.

It's nice to see people taking back their meanings.

The quote above comes from a story in the 6/30/06 AZ Daily Star regarding yesterday's visit by Howard Dean.

Physics factory teachers group takes Bio-bus to Syracuse

Now this is clean living. A group of science teachers from Tucson is driving their biodiesel powered bus across the nation to a meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers in Syracuse NY.

The group of teachers, who calls itself the the Physics Factory, drives the funky blue bus pictured above. They've taken the trouble not only to convert the thing to biodiesel, but have also turned the rolling monster into a mobile physics lab.

They will stop and fill the tank with grungy, used vegetable oil, starting at a potato chip factory in the Phoenix area. The bus gets 5-8 MPG, not much worse than you average, idiot-driven, no-educational-message-whatsoever-except-maybe-as-an-example-of
pure-stupidity Hummer!

Biodiesel is not too new, but it's gaining some attention. A friend has a story about an art-bus that went around the country on biodiesel, I believe the story made it to Boing Boing, I'll have to look it up and post the link as well talk to my friend about the story.

Read about biodiesel here. Apparently any diesel engine can be converted without being too costly, and the fuel is clean burning. Want to stop the horrendous damage to the planet?

Moderates leaving the Repuplican party

I've said it for a long time. The Republicans are so fucked up that even Republicans are starting to hate them. I've called them "true conservatives" and stuff like that. This article in the Guardian, which I stumbled across on Rawstory.com, calls them RINOS, or Republicans In Name Only.

In Kansas, a place you think of as being totally right wing, people are sick of the shit and going democrat. The article points out that squabbles about gay marraige, abortion, evolution, etc, are ideological issues and a lot more people, whether you're conservative or liberal, are concerned more about things like taxes, jobs and education.

Go figure. The so-called Neocons and their divide-and-conquer strategy are running out of gas.

Sitting in his headquarters, the new Democrat is sticking to his guns. Republicans in Kansas, he says, have let down their own people. 'They were fixated on ideological issues that really don't matter to people's everyday lives. What matters is improving schools and creating jobs,' he said. 'I got tired of the theological debate over whether Charles Darwin was right.'

...As the Democrats enjoy a resurgence, the Republicans are in disarray. Parkinson's defection encouraged other moderates to abandon a party controlled by right-wing religious zealots. In political terms they are called Rinos, or Republicans in Name Only. If enough Rinos desert, the strict ideologues in the party are likely to drift further right. 'A number of conservatives are actually pleased that the moderates are leaving the Republican party. That really could spell trouble,' Beatty said.

There is a long way to go. Larry Gates, chairman of the Kansas Democratic party, says his side is still vastly outgunned, but he is optimistic. 'The Republican party is just controlled by the neocons. They are not flexible. But in Kansas it is an issue like education that is foremost in people's minds,' he said. The Democrats bypass abortion and evolution to focus on jobs, schools and health. The Democrats' local slogan for 2006 sums up the mood: 'Hope in the Heartland.'

Egyptian blogger gets out of jail / "Believe it or Else"

Yes I read about on Boing Boing.

His name is Alaa. What, Ah-LAA? Yes, A-LAA.

"Al-AH." I've posted his picture here, I do not happen to have the link to his blog, I don't know what his blog was about.

Read about it here in the wondeful permalink from our wonderful friends at Boing Boing, who I love.

My point here is a dream I had where I met a man named Al-AH, in my kitchen sitting in the dark, with another gnarly looking biker dude. The guy was full of fresh energy and not at all mean or wierd.

I am not saying anything about religion here, your religion, my religion, or your or my lack thereof, or anyone else's, etc. I am saying, What If, all the fundamentalism and rules and repression, and sexism, and controlling, and guilt, ON BOTH SIDES of fundamentalism, both Christian and Muslim, what if all that is just a bunch of bullshit with a built in guilty verdict? For both sides. Invented. Bullshit. With a built in verbal argument to the effect of "you believe this or else."

What if.

My own dream, or my own website post to this effect, is here, on my site, posted about 2 years ago, not long after I had the dream where I met the character called "Al-LA" and shortly after coming across a group of skinny Tibetan monks blowing horns and burning tons of incense on the Univerity of Arizona mall, one sunny February day.

What is my point here?

And what if you live in a country where they get the cops, or private security companies, after you if you don't say what they want you to say? Old news in most parts of the world, a new thing here in the U.S.A. Here in the U.S.A, any constitutional rights we once had are certainly being trampled on by the Bush Administration. Take your pick.

6/6/06

Ay yai yai. Mwa HA HA HA... It's 6/6/06. Everybody's so trained to think it's evil. The hell. Anybody wants to cure evil around this place they can just look in that little dark corner of your own self and decide to do something good around here. There's an old W.C. Fields movie where he gets drunk and falls alseep and a goat crawls in bed with him. He wakes up in the morning with the goat staring at him, I believe they even have a closeup of the goat, and he mumbles "Good god I've got Beezlebub in my bed!"

Fixing the election in 2004

How did that moron get elected in 2004? He didn't. It was a fraud. Rolling Stone has a story rounding up a vast amount of evidence surrounding the issue.

The strange part is our willingness to believe that it couldn't happen.