Category Archives: ethics and morals

She’s just a whore…

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…she probably deserved it…we can’t be arresting our star football players…/snark (be sure to click on the Prinniefied.com link–good coverage of the case there.

More here.  

It’s unbelievable that the dude in the video was saying that it should go through the courts…um, yeah, that’s kinda what they’re protesting about–that it wasn’t being forcefully dealt with because of the town’s football worship….

…and attitudes towards women in general and rape specifically…

You know, the arguments are as old as the hills:  the victim brought it on by herself by drinking/partying/wearing skimpy clothes, and on.  What other crime would they ever make that kind of accusation? Rape is the only crime where the victim has to prove they didn’t want the crime to happen.

Case in point (from the NY Times article):

He said that online photographs and posts could ultimately be “a gift” for his client’s case because the girl, before that night in August, had posted provocative comments and photographs on her Twitter page over time. He added that those online posts demonstrated that she was sexually active and showed that she was “clearly engaged in at-risk behavior.”

So….because she was sexually active and wearing skimpy clothes…God, this gets soooo old.…she couldn’t possibly have been raped, because everybody knows that sluts don’t get raped.  They *always* want it and if they don’t put out, well, then one just has to take it. /said with cynicism and dripping sarcasm.

Also telling is the statement “..some people deserve to be peed on…”  In other words, she’s not a human being— she’s an object to be peed on.

The coaching staff’s statement that she “made it up” to cover for her bad behavior is so out of line, but not surprising, given the mindset.  And the coach himself, well, what can one say to “you’ll get yours!” ??

Sadly, the mindset is not just in Steubenville or the U.S. or India, but all over the world. such as this group in Australia.

More blame the victim here.

More here on the politics of rape… note the conservative viewpoint to deny that rapes occur.  As this article illustrates, even women  attack other women about whether they were raped or not.  I seriously wonder if Katie Roiphe wasn’t raped and is in serious denial?

Let My People Go…

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Okay, I went and looked up the story that I referenced earlier on the zoo animals, except it was an Orangutan named Fu Manchu at the Omaha, Nebraska zoo that made the great escape.  (with apologies to Orangutans everywhere. Haha.)  It’s just sooo compelling that I had to come back and share it.

I tried to find it on the National Geographic Kids website, but alas, it was not there.

Story here:

Fu lived at the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, Nebraska.  And he used his skills, for one purpose–to escape!  “It was a game to him,” says zoo director Lee Simmons.  “He never went anywhere.  But he’d let everybody else out and we’d have orangs all over the zoo.
“

The first time he did it, head keeper Jerry Stones blamed his staff for leaving a door unlocked.  By the third time, Stones threatened to fire someone.

Luckily, before he did, Stones caught Fu in the act.  Like a burglar breaking into a house, Fu was slipping a piece of wire under the latch and unhooking it!

Stones confiscated the wire.  And he ordered his staff never to let the orangutans go outside without first checking their yard for trash such as sires.  The keeper thought he had the problem solved.

But two weeks later, Stones noticed something metallic between Fu’s lips.  He told the ape to open his mouth, stuck in his finger, and guess what he found?  It was a piece of wire—bent at both ends to fit around Fu’s gums.  “All the work we were doing, searching and tearing things apart, wasn’t doing any good,” says Stones.  “Fu had made his own key.  And he was hiding it in his mouth!”

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I have nothing to add–except that it’s pretty sad that some will think this is a cute story instead of a sad one that illustrates we have a ways to go in treating animals compassionately.

I feel the same way about the marine worlds.  And yes, I used to go to them, as well.  I now look at the pictures I have of the dolphins’ magnificent jumps with guilt and sadness. A pretty blunt article here.   I have read of dolphins purposely drowning themselves in captivity.

Let’s not forget the tragedy associated with Tillikum, one of the whales that killed his Indiana native trainer.

 

Most Admired?

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Seriously?

Gallup has the “Most Admired” poll out here:  http://www.gallup.com/poll/145394/Barack-Obama-Hillary-Clinton-2010-Admired.aspx

I kept looking for the numbers, but didn’t find them until the very bottom of the story–they only asked 1,000 adults. I think I heard there were 60 million people in the U.S. now–they could only find  a thousand people to ask?

And if you look at the margin of error at 4 + or – percentage points…it’s laughable.  Anything more than 2% plus or minus is a flawed poll–it’s considered biased and invalid.

Judging from the other women chosen, with two exceptions, the poll is definitely skewed with those of the conservative views.

Things not to admire:

Whitewater.

The link to Chinese censorship. 

More stuff on Bill with his support of the war in Iraq. Oh, wait…he didn’t support the war in Iraq? /snark

And Hillary’s support of the war in Iraq…

And the stuff I brought up in my post here.

And then there’s the self-righteous, fundamentalist connection–here and here.

And personally, I know someone who knows Hillary Clinton.  I can’t go into details, but it’s sufficient to say that her behavior in at least one incident was more of that of a teenage girl and her boyfriend than an adult woman in relation to her husband.   I expect maturity and self-respect and dignity out of my leaders…I guess I’m funny that way.

 

 

The caged ones…

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I have to say that I used to take my kids to the zoo when they were young, thinking that it would introduce them to animals that they wouldn’t normally see in order to appreciate them.

As I have “morphed”, I’ve taken a different view of zoos–I began to question that thinking.  Applying the “Do Unto Others…” thinking, I realized that I had to think of how terrible I would feel being taken out of my natural habitat and caged…for people to gawk at you (and even torment you, as some have)…

With that in mind, I stopped going to zoos, although I love animals and would love to see them, I can’t justify being a part of their imprisonment.

I can say that I didn’t understand why the animal activists of the 70s were releasing animals from zoos and from test labs, but I do now.  I don’t condone it because of the disaster that it brought:  the animals were set free, but they were quickly killed in traffic, etc.

Another story to drive this point home —

I used to subscribe to National Geographic for Kids for my kids to read.  In one of the editions, they wrote of a gorilla who was so smart that he unlocked his own cage…repeatedly.

I couldn’t find a link on their page, but I looked on the web and found this:   http://1037litefm.cbslocal.com/2012/08/02/monkey-tells-zoo-visitor-how-to-unlock-his-cage/

If that doesn’t tell us to stop putting them in cages, I don’t know what does….

PR Watch

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(I’m sooo far behind, I think I’m ahead…)

Trying to play catch up–here are some highlights of issues sent out by Center for Media and Democracy–

I love that he is holding Whole Foods accountable for the food they are saying is organic….but not quite telling all of the possible ingredients (heavy metals and other contaminants)…

The “Don’t ask, don’t tell” I-see-no-evil, I-hear-no-evil is pretty standard.  They aren’t counting on folks like Mario asking questions, either.  The more people ask questions, the harder it is to come up with evasive answers.

Like I’ve said before, know where your food is from–buy locally if at all possible, because the gossip is at least one other national organic food store is selling conventionally grown (using chemical fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides) food is being marketed as organic.

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Addressing the gun violence issue.  Like in my previous post, you can use other weapons for violence instead of guns–it’s the acceptance of violence in our society (and others) that encourages this.  It’s so much easier to throw a rock than to try to reason with someone and to compromise and to recognize one’s own responsibility towards making peace.  A gun is a  quick way to end whatever problem there is…

And the argument that everyone carrying a gun would stop violence…oy vey…

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ALEC member Scott nominated to fill Demint vacancy.

IRS audit for ALEC?  The question becomes “are you a charity if you have a political action committee and go from state to state trying to heavily influence legislation?”

Michigan and ALEC’s right to work law.   This is part of the religious right’s assault on fairness, which I’m finding out in the book Holy Terror.  (I’m slowly getting through it, a better report later.)

 

…and then there’s violence without a gun…

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The human body can be used as a weapon, as well.  How effing vicious does a rape have to be to put a woman into intensive care?  And what about that bus driver?? He had to have known what was going on.

And the way this story is written makes it sound like only in India is rape a stigma…yeah, well, I’ve got news for ya, it’s a stigma *everywhere*…right here in the U.S., we have republicans who say if a woman is raped, she can’t become pregnant...or if she is a Native American woman, a non-native man can rape her without fear of punishment.

Or how about the town I grew up in–where teenage boys tied a mentally challenged woman to a tree and raped her…one of my former friends actually blamed her, saying that she “let them”.  How the hell can you defend yourself if you’re tied to a tree? Or not in command of all your mental faculties?

So we come back to the acceptance of violence in our society.  “Boys will be boys” and all that crap…

Genetic tests on Lanza?

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Oh.My.God.

I am just stunned.  Eugenics, anyone??

Nothing in this article about him having amalgams or mercury exposure or diet (if he is gluten intolerant, leading to schizophrenia).

No…we can’t have scientists looking at stuff like that, because that’s too simple an answer and the ways to fix it make us uncomfortable.   It means we have to give up some things that pollute our environment and we have to make more of an effort to understand the diet and immune system and how they affect our brains.

I mean, really, “science” has taught us that amalgams are safe, right??

…and “science” has brought us pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers, and genetically modified organisms.

So, yeah, scientists with biases and prejudices should *absolutely* assign a value to a gene and making sweeping generalizations with those biases. /snark

More here. Be sure to note the Americans funding this garbage.

Laws?

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I’ve had to take a break from it–the combination of the effects of the migraine and the children being shot was getting to me.

I kept seeing the faces of the children I used to teach.  I always looked forward to the days that I got to teach the 1st grade–they were so eager to learn and had so much to learn that every day was an adventure to them.  I had to stop listening to the news for a day to balance.

My son and I were talking about it-and the laws that have already been in place did not stop what happened.  The guns were legally owned.  Even though guns were not allowed in school and the school was secure as it could be, the tragedy still happened.

I’m not trying to dash all hope that there are solutions.  Laws only go so far.

It’s so much easier in a culture that does not value peace to take the easy way out.

 

No way…

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…that 90% of the Democrats endorse and support Hillary Clinton for president in 2016. (Of all the times to forget my earphones–so I can’t watch this, but I have heard parts of it.)

She actually thinks Henry Kissinger, Tony Blair and Benjamin Netanyahu are upstanding people that speak well of her integrity and leadership skills?

Kissinger quotes that are alarming:

“Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”

“Intelligence is not all that important in the exercise of power, and is often, in point of fact, useless.”

“Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.”

In other words, power turns him on–ego, ego, ego.  Intelligence is not needed when you’re trying to bomb the hell out of another country–you only need bigger bombs than they have.  And lastly, starving people will do wonders at gaining their compliance to do things they would not normally do.  And he who has the gold makes the rules….

Tony Blair and his compliance with invading Iraq.

And, of course, we know of Netanyahu’s connections to Romney and his exaggerating the Iran threat….for twenty years…

Clinton is a war hawk who would love to push that fabled “red button” at the slightest provocation….or none at all.

One of the employees bought a converter for our TV in the main room for the residents, so I get whatever our antenna picks up.  I watched ABC This Week on Sunday morning and was stunned at Carville’s statement that 90% of Dems have already decided that Clinton will be the nominee.

First of all, how dare you make such an assumption of what the voters are thinking??  I am so sick and tired of politicians and pundits using the phrase “the American people believe/want/need…” when they can only speak for themselves.

…and from where this writer sits, I’d vote for Romney before I’d vote for another Clinton in the White House.  I’m sick of Bushes and Clintons in the White House.  We can thank Clinton for NAFTA, and Bush II for No Child Left a Mind, and for getting us into two wars on false claims of weapons of mass destruction…between all of them, they’ve done a bang up job of ruining this country.  And let’s not leave out the Godfather of it all, Ronald Reagan.  I’m ashamed to say that I voted for him the first four years, but thankfully, not the second four…

Chemtrails and asthma and globs of gelatin…

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They had stopped spraying so much of the chemtrails here.  At least, during the day…but then for two weeks, you couldn’t see the sunrise…there was a solid “cloud” blanket over the sky.  I also noticed that I was having a more difficult time breathing.  I passed it off to all the cigarette smoke I’m exposed to in the building, or the deodorants they use in cleaning, or paint fumes…but then another resident complained to me that she was also having trouble breathing.  It’s a more serious event for her because she has severe asthma.  I’ve also noticed that I am really tired after jogging in the morning, instead of feeling the “runner’s high”, I feel wiped out–and if the skies are clear?  I feel that runner’s high and energized.  The conclusion points towards them spraying at night…

Now, it could be all of the above…but consider this:  my car’s protective coat, which was intact before I moved here, began peeling away this past year, only one year after moving here.  I went out to it the other day, and saw this horrible “alligator” patch about twelve inches in diameter.  I was driving in town, so my speed wasn’t that fast, when the protective film just started flying off in bits–some of sticking in the windshield wiper.  Another resident’s car, which is also massively peeling, had the same phenomenon–pieces of protective film lay on the ground near the car.  It’s important to note that this happened the same time mine happened. And this car was not as old as mine, so you can take the age factor out.

I searched “chemtrails and asthma” and found this at natural news.  This link is particularly good, with a physician explaining how devastating they are.

This link is also good–be sure to look at the video of the gelatinous material falling over Oakville Washington.

Human white blood cells….?? And a bacteria that makes its home in the human digestive tract…holy crap…tell me that isn’t causing digestive distress and issues with the gut? And one can’t argue against the pets dying–a red flag that something is terribly wrong.  Where are the samples?

I found this after searching “chemtrails and meteorologists”.  Since it’s so long, I can’t watch it entirely, but he is a meteorologist that is debunking chemtrails as non-existent.  He said that most meteorologists are either stupid or know of them and going along with it.  I know the local weather kid actually pointed at a chemtrails photo recently, saying they were cirrus clouds.  He named them in a meteorological term that I can’t remember.  I was just stunned.