BLOGuercio

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel really stepped in it this week, after it was discovered (six months later) that he called some liberal Democrats who wanted to run ads blasting moderate Democrats “f—— retarded.”

Oh, the uproar that ensued over that R-word. The F-word? Oh, that’s so yesterday’s indignation.

Was Emanuel really that far out of line? Given that Republicans spend 98 percent of their waking hours bashing Democrats (which leaves precious little time for tackling such picayune issues as the national debt or healthcare or unemployment), if Democrats decide to chime in and cannibalize their own, doesn’t the R-word pretty much sum it up?

Advocacy groups for the developmentally disabled objected to Emanuel’s outburst and Sarah Palin, who can spot a publicity opportunity faster than a moose through a rifle scope, immediately decried Emanuel’s “slur” on Facebook. (It takes all the self-control I can muster to keep the steering wheel of this column from veering off into the woods on that note.)

Emanuel, of course, apologized to the head of the Special Olympics, which has a campaign against usage of the R-word called Spread the Word to End the Word because it’s hurtful to the developmentally disabled.

Hmmm. On one hand, I don’t like slurs. But I’ve been known to throw the R-word around from time to time, because it’s a spectacularly descriptive word for someone who has done or said something grotesquely stupid. In fact, I’ve even used Emanuel’s exact quote on many an occasion. But “grotesquely stupid” and “developmentally disabled” are not interchangeable terms.

I can remember from my own childhood when the developmentally disabled were referred to as retarded simply as a matter of fact. It wasn’t derogatory. “Retarded” was just the word we used before we came up with “developmentally disabled.” Yet, I also remember playground meanies calling developmentally disabled classmates “Retard!” and taunting and tormenting them.

Thing is, the English language is fluid, and words evolve into different meanings over time. Gay doesn’t just mean happy anymore, lame doesn’t mean limping and sick doesn’t mean go to the doctor. While I appreciate what Spread the Word to End the Word is trying to communicate, might we just reconsider what the word “retard” has evolved into.

In my mind, retarderie is measured by an aptitude-performance ratio. The higher that ratio, the more the retarderie — like when you say or do something that’s vastly beneath your apparent intellectual ability. Like bashing members of your own party when that’s the only thing your opposition lives and breathes for. Yes, pretty f—— retarded, if you ask me. But that’s merely one tiny drop in a vast sea of f—— retarderie taking place every day. Two recent cases in point:

~ Fourth grader Patrick Timothy of New Dorp, New York, faced suspension last week for bringing to school a two-inch gun, which was an accessory for his LEGO policeman figure. Because the New York Department of Education decreed “all imitation weapons are prohibited because they are regarded as harmful to the school community,” school principal Evelyn Matroianni, “deemed the pinky-sized toy suspension-worthy.” It must be noted that the boy’s playmate had a LEGO figure with an ax. He was only chastised.

Now, a school principal surely has, at the minimum, a bachelor’s degree, and more than likely a master’s degree as well. It isn’t unreasonable to expect that Ms. Matroianni would have the intellectual capacity to recognize that a two-inch LEGO piece could hardly be construed as an imitation weapon and to also recognize that axes are weapons too (hello – ever hear of Lizzie Borden?) and if she really insists on going down that ridiculous anal-retentive path, both boys should be suspended. But she didn’t. Or wouldn’t. Evelyn Matroianni — Verdict: F—— retarded.

~  The Meniffee Union School District, located just south of Riverside, pulled all its Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionaries off the shelves because it contained “age-inappropriate” words: oral sex. Yet the words “rape,” “incest” and “infanticide” were happily within the grasp of babes for years without even a peep of protest. As I understand it, rape, incest and infanticide are somewhat more heinous than oral sex, and therefore more psychologically damaging to children. Furthermore, if school board members are educated enough to understand what “age-inappropriate” means, one might also conjecture that they’d recognize that a dictionary clearly labeled as “collegiate” might not be intended for elementary school students.

Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, commented, “I think common sense seems to be lacking in this school.” Which is a nice way of saying: “Menifee School Board — Verdict: F—— retarded.”

Now, if you asked a developmentally disabled person if a tiny LEGO gun is dangerous, s/he’d say, “No.” And if you asked her/him if a book that says it’s for college students is supposed to be given to a first grader, s/he’d say, “No.” That’s because developmentally disabled people aren’t stupid, let alone retarded. In fact, in these two instances, the developmentally disabled’s cognitive abilities shoot past an entire school board and a principal with an advanced college degree.

The developmentally disabled are capable of amazing accomplishments and overcome obstacles on a daily basis that’d make most of us cry and wee our panties. So, when someone calls a developmentally disabled person a retard, the appropriate response must therefore be, “Dude, you are f—— retarded.”

All that said… If “retarded” truly causes pain for the developmentally disabled, I’ll respect that. I won’t call the grotesquely stupid “retards” anymore. I’ll call them “arrwerds.” Because “sensitive” is my middle name.

Over the past week, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have shown that they’re more than just hug, sucking time dumps. Sure, we waste a lot of time tweeting what we had for breakfast and harvesting soybeans on Farmville, but in the midst of all this hanging around in cyberland, a couple very cool things transpired over the last week or so.

On Dec. 29, the “Move Your Money” campaign exploded across the internet via the Huffington Post. It has ignited and people are indeed withdrawing their money from the Big Banks and depositing it at locally owned community banks. Thousands of people are refusing to feed the machine that swallowed our economy any longer. Find out how to join them at www.moveyourmoney.info.

Next, there was a silly little game on Facebook that began as a secret joke amongst women - post your bra color as your status as a means to raise awareness about breast cancer. Some took offense, some thought it was ridiculous, but the fact is that a lot of women took note about whether their mammograms are current and did a self-exam because of this. The silly little game did exactly what it set out to do: Got women talking about breast cancer and taking responsibility for their own health.

Right now, money is pouring in for relief for the earthquake victims in Haiti largely through internet sites, and also because of the many people who posted that you can easily donate $10 to Haiti relief simply by texting the word Haiti to the number 90999. Over $1 million was raised in one day with this texting donation campaign. Two days later, the amount was over $5 million. Between Twitter, Facebook and cell phone texts, people all over the world were able to connect and work together, literally within seconds.

Besides the ease of receiving and sending information through social networking sites and cell phones, the Move Your Money and Haitian relief have something in common that made both of the efforts instantly successful: Simplicity. People read the stories and realized that no matter what their economic situation was, they were capable of simply withdrawing and redepositing their money. Anyone can do that. As for Haitian relief, most people can pitch in $10 (and Goddess bless the ones who can’t) and the fact that it could be done in seconds without using a credit card made altruism and generosity possible for nearly everyone.

I don’t know if this is what the Twitter, Facebook and cell-texting creators had in mind, but it’s fabulous. I love when serendipity happens.

A friend sent me this article by Arianna Huffington. It is inspired by a new movement to move your money out of the Big Banks and into small community banks. It is BRILLIANT!! Let me say that again… it is BRILLIANT!!!

Read the article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/move-your-money-a-new-yea_b_406022.html

Watch the video and find your community bank by your zip code: http://moveyourmoney.info/

There IS a way for average citizens to fight back! I am happy and proud to say that I have banked at our community bank, First Northern Bank of Dixon, exclusively for more than 20 years. I have nothing but positive things to say about banking at a small bank. You are valued as a customer and treated like a human being. I am already part of the solution! You can be too! MOVE YOUR MONEY!!!

This from the Morning Scoop newsletter from the Daily Beast…
GOP senators blocked funding for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan as a way to force the vote on healthcare past Christmas, which is the current Democrat goal to pass the (so-called) healthcare reform bill. Playing politics with soldiers’ safety. Disgusting. In fact, the entire healthcare reform debate is disgusting - nothing but a sham… a ball to kick back and forth between the sides to see who wins. I’m disgusted with the whole damn lot of them, Republicans and Liberals alike, and a special place in hell for Joe Lieberman, the king of shameless self-interest and self-preservation.

But this story is just downright stomach-turning:

3.GOP Blocks Funding Troops

In a tactical move designed to push a Senate vote on health-care legislation past Christmas, Republican lawmakers attempted to filibuster a major spending bill that funds the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The move, which came in the early hours of Friday morning, was ironic given that Republican lawmakers often accused Democratic lawmakers of jeopardizing troops by voting against funding the wars in previous years. “They are prepared to jeopardize funding for troops at war,” Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) told the Washington Post. “If Democrats did that, there would be cries of treason.” Hoping to quickly end the filibuster, Democrats secured the vote of antiwar liberal Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) in order to overcome the GOP’s obstructionist tactics.

It is the spooky season, and there are some really creepy characters out there to give you the heebie jeebies. They are the Super Breeders — the Dugger Clan (what is it… 26 and counting, and now the offspring are breeding too), Kate and Jon Plus 8 (or is it Kate and Jon Plus 8 Minus Jon now), and of course the Octomom. What do they all have in common? They are famous, celebrities all. With the exception of the Octomom, they’re breeding all the way to the bank, too. They have their own television series, for crying out loud (literally — there are babies involved), and even more mystifying - people are watching them!

The public appears to be fascinated with the super fertile. Or maybe it’s just that we’re force-fed the latest details of these fertility freaks because you can’t make it through a morning news program without it being sprinkled with this fluff. I resent that I know who Kate Gosselin is. I resent that I am aware of her odd little spiky hairdo, or that she isn’t wearing her wedding ring, or that her estranged hubby Jon is forcing her television show off the air as part of the divorce proceedings… I don’t want to know any of this, yet it is lodged in my subconscious and unpurge-able, much like the theme song to the Brady Bunch or the Alka Seltzer jingle. And why do I know about Kate Gosselin? Because in my efforts to find out about the latest ins and outs of the healthcare debate, or what the stock market is doing, or how high the unemployment rate is, I must endure entire “news” segments devoted to Kate and her brood.

Get them of my head! Make it stop! Make the Super Breeders go away, or at least stop rewarding them for behavior that any common alley cat is capable of. Give them all a lifetime supply of birth control pills, or a group price on tubal ligation. Give it to them for free! Just make them stop spraying babies like a Rainbird, for God’s sake!  It’s not merely disturbing, it’s irresponsible! It may seem cute and charming, but seriously - no parent can give that many children the quality attention children need. Plus, when the generations start to follow — grandchildren, great-grandchildren and on and on — these parents have left a much larger footprint on the planet that they are entitled to. But I suspect that people who just keep breeding and breeding and breeding, whether or not they can properly care for and support those children, and whether or not they are increasing their own carbon footprint by 8,000 percent couldn’t care less. It’s all about them, and having more babies… an addiction of sorts.

Wouldn’t it be a hoot if when God said “Go forth and multiply,” he was talking about math. Like most everything else in the Bible, maybe we got that wrong too.

Everything you need to know about what’s wrong with this country can be found in this video; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUPMjC9mq5Y  It is literally jaw dropping… the collection of raw ignorance combined with huge lungs and big mouths. I am myself dumbfounded and dumbstruck just watching it. Clearly, some children WERE left behind… way, way behind. How ironic that all these folks shouting USA! USA! USA! have little or no knowledge about American history or politics or current events?  They understand that they are angry. That’s about the sum total of it. That, and whatever pablum has been spoonfed to them by Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, et al. The sheer volume of ignorance is probably America’s biggest threat. And these guys over at Faux News are milking them all, playing them all like puppets…. all the way to the bank.   As I said… I don’t know whether to laugh, cry or throw up. Watch the video. You’ll surely feel the same. If you don’t, you probably think they should send all those Czars back to Russia.     

The YouTube clip that’s Number One with a bullet today is of Congressman Barney Frank, who was confronted by a constituent asking him why he supports the “Nazi” policies of the Obama Administration’s healthcare plan. Me, I would have responded, “Are you just fucking retarded?”   Frank was a little more eloquent: ”On what planet do you spend most of your time? You stand there with a picture of the President defaced to look like Hitler and compare the effort to increase healthcare to the Nazis… My answer to you is that it is a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated. Trying tho have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table — I have no interest in doing it.”

See the clip here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYlZiWK2Iy8

The debate over healthcare has the loonies creeping out of the woodwork like legions of deranged termites. Who knew our country was so infested?

In Arizona, some wingnut brought assault weapons to stand outside President Obama’s town hall meeting on healthcare. Why? Because he can! Nobody arrested him, because apparently this is all legal in Arizona. But what is he protesting against? Particularly in light of the fact that he wasn’t even arrested. Seems to me this is about as exciting as clapping with one hand.

Meanwhile, the other loonies are raving on about death squads and how Obama’s going to kill Grandma, and it’s the first step toward Socialism (even though 90 percent of these people screaming about Socialism probably couldn’t even define it), and I just have to wonder…. has the average IQ of the country officially fallen below room temperature?

Rachel Maddow had a segment on Aug. 18, reporting on a survey of television viewing habits. A whopping 59 percent of Republicans watch Fox “News” exclusively. As comedian Bill Engvall would say… “Here’s your sign.”Maddow also reported that 12 percent of Republicans polled don’t believe that Medicare is a government programs.

This seems a bit incredible, but I bet I know how this happened. The pollsters asked some of the below room temperature crowd the question, and they thunk to themselves, “That sounds like a trick question… I’m gonna say ‘no.’ You can fool me once, shame on you… You fool me, you can’t get fooled again.”

Here’s your sign. They should pass them out to all the looney tunes packing the town hall meetings to scream about Nazis and Socialism. And there’s always one in every crowd, all decked out in patriotic Red White and Blue, declaring loudly while choking back his or her tears, “I want my country back!” And the crowd goes wild, almost too wild to hear Mr./Mrs. America go on to rant about the President’s birth certificate.

All in all… you don’t really know whether to laugh, cry or throw up. Bottom line… If you think Obama’s a Nazi, and he’s going to kill your grandma, and you need to bring assault weapons to a town hall meeting, and you’re sure Obama is an illegal alien… Here’s your sign.

Now go back and watch Fox “News” so the rest of us don’t have to endure your babble.

While the mainstream media is having a field day flogging Governor Mark Sanford for his affair with an Argentine woman (when it takes a break from picking over Michael Jackson’s bones, that is), I have yet to see any inkling of understanding for Sanford’s midlife crisis. And clearly, it is a textbook midlife crisis.

Sanford has been accused of being the ultimate hypocrite, as one of the Right Wingers whose political careers is founded upon “Family Values,” but I don’t see it as hypocrisy. I see it as a man who, for the first time in his life, has come face to face with himself and is making some choices and changes.

I suspect Sanford has spend his whole life doing the “right” things. He is a Good Boy, who goes to church, shows up for work on time, made a wise choice for a spouse, had four lovely children, worked his way up to a prestigious and lucrative career and is the respected governor of South Carolina. Errr… “was.” He had everything that society says we need for fulfilling lives: money, family, faith, work, and probably a Golden Retriever too.

And inside, he was dying.

Funny thing about dying inside, it’s relatively painless, sort of a Lou Gehrig’s Disease of the soul, where you don’t really feel any pain as one by one, your feelings and dreams just pinch out and become lifeless. After awhile, this feels normal and you just hum along on auto pilot.

Trust me, I know from whence I speak.

Then one random day on the job, Sanford stumbled upon someone who understands him. Who “gets” him. Who makes him feel things he hasn’t felt in a very long time, or maybe ever. And suddenly he is jolted alive and colors are brighter and flowers more fragrant, and just thinking about that someone makes his blood tingle with the delicious bittersweet joy of being alive, and the ache to see that person just one more time, hear that voice, taste those lips… and more.

It’s passion. It’s connection. It’s symbiosis. It’s unity. It’s discovering a spiritual yin-yang perfect balance with another human soul that maybe, if you’re very lucky, happens in your life by chance. For most, it never happens at all. And they marry as best they can, stumble through life as best they can, trying to ignore that nagging feeling that keeps hinting that there is surely something better than this, more real than this. But they don’t know what or where “it” is. And so on they go, fumbling through the fog.

And then you die.

Sanford’s gushing admissions of finding his soulmate have been skewered and ridiculed by the talking heads on TV, likely because they themselves have no experience with finding one’s true soulmate. His statements may represent the first time in his whole life that he has been completely stark naked honest with himself, and now the public, damn the consequences. In fact, bring the consequences on, because if freed from the stiff and suffocating world he’s created for himself, cast out of office and home too, he can finally LIVE his life. Which is what life is for - living. And loving.

But what about the kids. Yes, they may be traumatized by the marital breakup. But is it any more traumatizing than living in a home where the parents co-habitate in icy resentment, choking down their feelings and pretending to love each other, and presenting this as an example of happy marriage to their children? Divorce doesn’t equal abandonment. Maybe their parents aren’t together, but maybe separately, their parents can find happiness and fulfillment and be better parents. Moreover, their children will learn, BEFORE they pick spouses of their own one day, that it’s better to wait and find your soulmate than to marry for convenience or appearance or perceived prosperity and propriety.

I have empathy for Sanford. I know what it is like to be reborn at midlife, to feel what has not been felt in decades, and to entertain the possibility that maybe, just maybe, the best is yet to be. And I know what it is to be greatful for having been given a second chance.

Sia Amma is planning a follow-up show at The Palms on Friday, Aug. 17. She will be showing the work she did on her last trip to Liberia, which was funded in part by her Feb. 2008 show at The Palms.

Check this out, it’s not just Winters:

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/07/09/concrete-cocks-terro.html

Personally, I think Winters has a much nicer collection of penises than the other towns. Ours put theirs to SHAME!