Just last night I saw Republican ads regarding a Democrat trying to unseat the R-incumbant senator.  It was demeaning.  I turned ot my husband and said,  “Now, I know who to vote for.”  (The Democrat targeted in the ads of course).

And don’t they make futballs outta dem?  No.  At one time the outside of footballs were covered with pig bladders, hence the name pigskin.  But for a long time they have been made of cow leather.  Pigskin is still used however in shoes, belts, handbags, and saddles, and maybe on some governor’s furniture.  Then I heard those who have the art of sleight of hand can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, especially if it is the right hand and raised up to heaven before the voodoo is committed.

Thank you wildflower, you made my pig day.  I still have a few good pig words up my sleeve:

“Nobody creates a fad. It just happens. People love going along with the idea of a beautiful pig. It’s like a conspiracy.”

Aren’t we demonstrating what culture wars are all about?

Re: Shenonymous

I must say the additional “E” is very pragmatic, Shenonymous. I should have thought of it. And as long as you’re stretching the dollar to feed our Nation’s children, you may also want to consider checking with those taxidermy folks – there are lots of listings in Alaska’s yellow pages, particularly around Wasilla.  I understand their former mayor and Alaska’s current governor just loves to put things like this on her sofas, chairs, and tanning beds.

Bipolar2 writes:

•  “It should be obvious that pro-birth is not pro-life. In fact this sick ideology is pro-mass-death: creating disease, poverty, and ignorance worldwide by fostering overpopulation, damning safe non-reproductive sex, and blocking responsible medical research.”

It *IS* obvious bipolar2, and has been written here many times before. (you just happened to add a copyright to it). The pro-NATALISM is new to me though, (I’ve been calling it pro-embryo and pro-fetus; yours sounds better, more professional, and covers it quite well.) Now one would think that pro-embryo and pro-fetus would also mean pro-woman, since neither embryos nor fetuses could otherwise exist. (just check-in with the roughly 37,000 women who suffer still-births and miscarriages each year). But, it doesn’t mean that at all of course, since even the pro-natalism doesn’t apply equally to all segments of the population. As I’ve mentioned multiple times, the infant mortality rate in populations of color (specifically in the rural south) are off the charts. So obviously, the ‘pro-lifers’ are very selective about WHICH lives they’re ‘pro’.

Leefeller sheds light on why these religious whackos are in fact ‘mass-pro-death’. (that’s another new one for me, but it fits)…

•  “…Well it does provide more children to go to war, so they can kill and die in war, very clever. ..”

It IS clever..diabolically so, but clever none-the-less.

well, rev mark schlee, why so cryptic? can’t you just tell us now?

Newsweek report:

“When you combine McCain’s individual war chest with his party’s bankroll, it turns out the Republican nominee has about $90 million currently burning a hole in his pocket, while Obama and the DNC weigh in at a relatively paltry $47 million, or half as much.

And even though McCain has agreed to an $84.1 spending limit by accepting public funds—a decision he likes to portray as a principled stand against the corrupting influence of money on politics—at least double that sum will be dropped on his behalf before Election Day thanks to loopholes in the law that allow outside groups to effectively skirt such limits with largely unregulated “soft money” contributions.”

McCAIN:  TAKING TAXPAYERS MONEY TO ADD TO THE CORRUPTION HE SAYS HE OPPOSES!!!

I’ll chime in about pro-life Pailin.  Yes it is pro-natalism.
IT TAKES HIGHER CORTICAL FUNCTION TO KEEP FROM GETTING PREGNANT.  IT TAKES THE PRIMITIVE BRAIN TO ACT IMPULSIVELY AND PROCREATE.
Who am I to judge each person’s circumstances? 
Then why isn’t Pailin pro-life for wild life?  She’s perfectly willing to promote life being taken away from wolves, polar bears and moose.  It’s not about survival needs.
I read that her extended family gets the pleasure of raising her children so she may pursue her ambitions.  Is that being responsible for the life you created?  Just hatch them, and let someone else have the responsibility of rearing them?  It works for her though…or so it seems.

Hello Ms. Shenonymous:

You’re right, in a fair world mother-baby pairs would face equal perils. But, in the words of the old hymn:
The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate.
[God] made them, high or lowly, and ordered their estate.

Disparity is God’s will—your social class (estate) comes from on high. Rich or poor, you belong where you are. Don’t fight it. It’s sad that babies born to the poor suffer from disease and death more frequently. But, don’t raise your hand against God.

So much for human notions of fairness.

Now, this comfortable doctrine (for the rich) got a nice pseudo-scientific makeover after Darwin. Even today justification of pro-natalism still appeals to social darwinism (really, created by Herbert Spencer). The rich are simply more fit than the poor—they’re smarter or stronger—so they survive. You can’t fight Nature. Why that would be unnatural.

New cover; same old story—2,000 years of male domination in the West and Middle East.

On your other point—how many ads for Viagra/Cialis erection enhancers are we forced to hear in just one day? Where are ads for birth control pills? Nowhere. Where are ads for condoms? Very rare. The imbalance between reproductive inducers and reproductive reducers should raise questions.

But it doesn’t. There’s money in them thar condom ads. What’s wrong with business here in leaving a market under-exploited? There are powerful religious forces against any curb on birth. They are equally powerful forces against women’s rights in general. The issue is control—social control.

obama got the word and is suing michigan. however, all the zany fun times have begun. for example, in florida, a letter sent out said, hey voter, are you still there? well, some weren’t, lots of poor people move around… voilà new list. enough to swing an election? one this close: sure. just add the 7% liars.

if you are challenged, you have to fill out a provisional and we all know what that means. actually, i never really did find out what it means. do you get a notification if your vote later passes scrutiny? i remember some film (hacking democracy?) where lists of provisional ballots were found in the trash.

voter id laws passed here and there? yup, some people never got that “non-driver’s” license.

I love it, I love it, I love it wildflower, you are a gentlewoman and a punster after my own heart!  I big big nod to you.  (I know I’m assuming you are a woman, but you could be a very perceptive man, unlikely)

Let’s see here.  I love your four choices but could I please make a fifth?  Or at least drink a fifth, as it might just be necessary.  (You should’ve known)

E.  Don’t bother Farmer Biden, he has better things to do.  Use the pistol that has to be carried in the redneck boonies for self-protection, and shoot the pig, then take it home to make bacon, ham, and sausage to feed the kids that naturally have canine teeth for meat eating, that haven’t had any meat for months because the economy has left them with very little money and having had to move out of their overly mortgaged house into guvamint housing.

Hey, maybe somebody else has a better idea or likes ABCorD.  We might just have a new game afoot here.  Again, I love it.  Levity not gravity, my motto!  I choose E as I am not a vegetarian.  Yippieee

bipolar2, please help me out.  Two things:  Don’t you think pro-natalism (aka now being called pro-life) that holds as a doctrine the “laws” of nature will then cull weak from strong” should then force all women and their newborns, healthy or not, from rape, incest, and all wanted births, out into the woods upon delivery and let them survive or not as nature culls, or do they discriminate?

Also since reproduction of humans depends on the male penis, doesn’t that give a clue as to why insane population growth continues?  Ah, copulation rhymes with population.  Need anything more be said?

moineau – Can’t you just see a huge poster splattered all over Michigan that tells the blacks what is going on?  Hand bills stuck on windshields, a stack of them in every black church, you know the drill, getting the word out.  Unless of course you think Michigan will go Obama anyway.

Re: Shenonymous

Slaughterhouse McCain’s pig escaped from its pigpen.  The pig ran madly through the streets until it came to Farmer Biden’s farm.  A passerby spotted McCain’s pig and saw that it was routing through Biden’s cornfield.  Knowing Farmer Biden donated the corn to poor people throughout the land, the passerby telephoned McCain to alert him that his pig was routing up Biden cornfield, but Slaughterhouse McCain suddenly claimed the pig didn’t belong to him.

What should the passerby do next, Shenonymous?

A. Just ignore the dirty pig incident and walk away?
B. Help Farmer Biden get the pig out of the cornfield; then, wish him luck?
C. Offer to help Farmer Biden establish a law to keeps pigs out of cornfields?
D. Help Farmer Biden through the dirty pig crisis; then, work to establish a law to make pig owners like Slaughterhouse McCain responsible for their pigs?

on thursday, DEMOCRACY NOW! had an excellent program on the election and impact of race.

1) Lost Homes, Lost Votes: Are Republicans Trying to Block Foreclosed Homeowners from Voting in Michigan? over half of subprime loans, 51%, went to african-americans.)

2) Historic 2008 Election Could See Unprecedented Attempts to Bar African American Voters (florida revisited, etc)

besides the multiple forms of caging above, one terrible fact, and we saw shades of this in the primary in new hampshire, ohio and michigan: 7% of white people will tell you that they are going to vote for the candidate of color. they go into the voting booth and vote for the white candidate. and when come out, they tell you they voted for the candidate of color. go figure.

with all of this going on, and the underlying racism that persists tenaciously in this country (and throughout europe as well, everywhere for that matter), obama supporters must get the vote out this year or have the “new hampshire” surprise repeated in the general election. GO, OBAMA. NO MCCAIN. NO PALIN!

http://www.democracynow.org/shows/2008/9/18

Pro-life ranters are *not* pro-life. They are pro-BIRTH. A dogma once called pro-natalism. It’s an androcentric, completely misogynistic, demand that no impediment whatsoever on *births* be permitted by law.

No chemical contraception, the pill, spermacides. No barriers to conception, IUD, condoms. No abortions, not even in cases of rape, incest. Pro-natalism is the sexual theory of Ms. Palin, myriad other fundies, and the RC church.

What happens to mother and child after birth is irrelevant since the “laws” of nature will then cull weak from strong. For example, Palin cut Alaska’s state assistance for children with disabilities. That’s perfectly consistent with pro-natalist sexual theory.

The real issue is not frequency of birth, but quality of life.

As Marvin Harris made very clear in “Cannibals and Kings”: reproduction will always overtake food production, leading to vast overpopulation, de-facto slavery, degraded environments, and marginal living conditions. Technological intensification of food production makes for only short-term solutions.

But, technological innovation in birth control should already make ancient fears of Doomsday disappear. Why has insane population growth continued, especially in America the wasteful, which added 100 million people in 37 years.

It should be obvious that pro-birth is not pro-life. In fact this sick ideology is pro-mass-death: creating disease, poverty, and ignorance worldwide by fostering overpopulation, damning safe non-reproductive sex, and blocking responsible medical research.

bipolar2 © 2008

The Corsi book, “The Obama Nation” depicts Obama as a man who is corrupt, enraged, anti-American, drug-dealing, anti-Israel, pseudo-Christian radical leftist, black-militant, plagerist, and a liar, trained as a Muslim and mentored by a menagerie of Marxists, Communists, crypto-communists and terrorists.

And, he’s even fathered two black kids.  Obama should be occupying a cell at Gitmo, not running for president. 

Does this kind of stuff take?  Unfortunately, because this country has fallen victim to kind of a public neuroses, it does.  Hell, if anyone needs proof of neuroses, a lot of us actually believes that the last 8 years has been perfectly normal.

i saw two ads from the right yesterday. one was from a group of “veterans”, with the voice of petraeus harking up the surge and contrasted with obama saying twice “i think in eight weeks we’ll get a message that the surge has failed.”

the second was some hysterical man in the middle of the road on a bridge, raving about how his taxes were going to go up and how the government was going to take half his pay check again, as people begin to gather around him concerned. finally he throws himself off the bridge but has a bungy cord tied around him. those republican risktakers!

here come the 501(c)3 swiftboaters. watch out!

Oh I forgot to leave my pig thought for the day!  Sorry… here it is

“A pig today, will be a pig tomorrow and will remain as such…get used to the idea but don’t copy its manners.”

The human mind is a moldable thing.  It is at first and usually easily persuaded this way or that.  But once an opinion is formed, it will be defended and its adopted ideas grasped as if their owner’s very life depends on them. 

The more evolved mind is open to different possibilities and will evaluate the new information to formulate new and otherwise opinions.  Ones that are more reasonable.  This is a small tribe of mankind and only they will be the saviors of the world.  If it is savable.

The psychology of politics understand this perfectly.  All the issues spoken about so far on this forum is a testimony to what exactly is understood.  Indoctrination is the most powerful tool in the hands of the manipulators…on either side of the argument.  And the conflict is deadly.  Perhaps that is the way the world saves itself?

Sorry, that should be;
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26803840

Look for more ads from McCain with a not so subtle appeal to racial predjudice:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/268038401

Oh, come on people; when will you start to think for yourselves and stop being jerked around by every soundbite that comes at you?  Jeez, I give up, get a grip!

Let’s see a Faith based war is okay, killing millions in the name of searching for weapons of distraction is okay, oil is a little side note maybe, money has nothing to do with it.  War of choice is acceptable if you wave the flag, death and torture are choices acceptable just wave the flag.  Killing the living is acceptable choice, wave the flag.

Faith requires Women to conceive children, because life is sacred does not matter if children live in squalor or filth on the street, (The rest of the world, Brazil, Africa etc )  they must conceive more children, because the same people who want to force women to conceive children   do not believe in birth control?  Well it does provide more children to go to war, so they can kill and die in war, very clever. 

Conclusion, war is good, death in war is good, but birth control is bad, and women must live their lives like nuns with purity and virtue decided by others,  they must have children they do not want.  No excuses.

Life and choice is the best divisive tool used to support division, gay rights and illegals are in the bottom of the tool bag for now,  waiting with wings like angles to be used when needed,  blind faith is real and allows people to be manipulated like puppets, choreographed, a beautiful dance death, around the fingers of the powerful and elite.

The problem is not in the messages in of themselves. The problem is that the highest court of the land has equated Free Speech to Money.. This is blatantly a kinship to advertising equating to big money interests.
If money [advertising] were taken out of the campaigns, with their cutesy sound-bites, we would have more honest campaigning and and more open public meetings where candidates would have to meet and listen to their constituents. No place for Madison and K street executives to run the show from afar.

@ nrobi;

So why are you still a member?

I am a member of the Knights of Columbus, but do not adhere to the tenets of the organization, that include listening to people the likes of which would take us back to the dark ages when all men and women were thought of as chattel and only the elite had any education.
The Knights have become a much politicized organization and it seems that they are on a one track mind that works only with the Far Right Wing of the Republican Party. In recent months they have had speak to them Di’nesh D’Souza, a most prominent Republican, he ranks among the most rabid and fanatical of the Right Wing Conservatives and would no doubt stop all communication and overtures to the moderate side of the Republican Party if he could.
I, am firmly against this illegal and immoral war, undeclared of course, and seek the removal of all troops from Afghanistan and Iraq. This is the only solution that will make the troubles of America go away, for then we will be able to spend the countless billions of dollars that are now going to fight against a way of life and not a nation. In America we need a total rebuilding of our infrastructure, our schools are in disarray, our very lives are at stake because of the inept and illegal way in which this country has been run for the last eight years.
Should John McCain, win this election, I would seriously consider leaving this country for the freedom of Canada or another country that has on its face a moral and legal code that enjoins the military and president from declaring illegal and immoral wars.

I liked the pro-Obama ad by the evangelist minister. I bet this is something younger evangelicals will listen to.

GWB only offered Hall the postiton to give our district to ass clown Mike Turner. He lost a bid for mayor—now the GOP finanaces him to a tune of at least $1 million, every time hi seat comes up. This district is so gerrymandered, it would be laughable, if it werent sad.

It is largely an urban district; then, it snakes down to include some new McMansions in a very conservative area.

Jane Mitakides is running against him, but they say she is a “poor campaigner”.

And where were these Knights of Columbus when Bush declared an unjust war in Iraq. Surely, they knew the Catholic Pope declared the invasion to be unjust?  Did they send President Bush a letter?  Did they send McCain a letter?  No, apparently not.  .  . Guess the Knights of Columbus are just ordinary cherry pickers:

“The Vatican doesn’t preach pacifism, but it does expect nations to observe the principles of just war that were developed by doctors of the Church and partially incorporated into international law.

Before one nation goes to war with another, it must have a clear and legitimate cause. Absent the threat of imminent attack, it must first seek to resolve the conflict in a way that avoids bloodshed. America took great pains to observe just war principles in Afghanistan and then inexplicably threw them out some state department window in Iraq.

The Pope and his predecessor warned against this. John Paul II sent Cardinal Pio Laghi as an emissary to the White House who explained that the US invasion of Iraq would be “illegal” and “unjust”. Benedict XVI, then head of the teaching office of the Church, said that the “concept of a ‘preventive war’ does not appear in the Catechism of the Catholic Church”, with good reason. . .

. . . Senator John McCain championed an unjust war in Iraq during his first run for president, was its biggest cheerleader in Congress, sings songs about bombing other countries and has adopted a belligerent posture toward much of the rest of the world. More unjust wars would be almost guaranteed on his watch.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/20/uselections2008.catholicism

What else has McCain got to go on? On every issue there is he’s either made a fool of himself or stuck to failed Bush policies.  Or both.

So all he’s got left is scare-tactics, masquerading as “Values ads”.