SavageDem

"I don't belong to an organized political party – I'm a Democrat." – Will Rogers

Author: SavageDem

  • Go Undercover at Gay-to-Straight “Conversion” Camp

    This is a fascinating bit of investigative journalism. Writer Ted Cox masquerades as gay to see what goes on at a gay “conversion” camp. He finds – as any sane person might expect – that it’s a farce, as there is nothing to be “cured.” It infuriates me that these sick bastards feed on obviously troubled people who have been made to feel as if there is something wrong with them.

    An excerpt:

    It was the first night of “Journey into Manhood,” a 48-hour weekend retreat designed to help gay men become straight. In that room, about fifty men — some thirty “Journeyers” and fifteen staff members — sat on the carpeted floor of a ranch lodge two hours outside of Phoenix, Arizona. Most of the men, except for a few of the staff members, struggled to overcome their attraction to other men.

    Sometime during all that holding and touching and singing, while I was cradled in the Motorcycle position, I felt it: the unmistakable bulge pressing through his tight jeans. It was the first time in my life I had a felt another man’s erection.

    Full article here

  • A Funny: Democrats and Republicans

    A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat on a lake below. She shouted to him, “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”

    The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, “You’re in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above ground elevation of 2,346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.

    The woman rolled her eyes and said, “You must be an Obama Democrat.”

    “I am,” replied the man. “How did you know?”

    “Well,” answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is technically correct. But I have no idea what to do with your information, and I’m still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help to me.”

    The man smiled and responded, “You must be a Republican.”

    “I am,” replied the balloonist. “How did you know?”

    “Well,” said the man, “you don’t know where you are or where you are going. You’ve risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You’re in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but somehow, now it’s my fault.”

  • Jihad Against Designers of Spare-Tire Storage Mechanisms!

    It’s a good thing I’m a pacifist. Or mostly. If not, I might be crafting a horrible death for the Dodge engineers responsible for designing the spare-tire storage mechanism for my van.

    I left work a week ago with about an hour to spare before the evening’s next activity. As I backed my van from the stall at my company’s parking garage, something felt amiss; it didn’t turn correctly. I drove about a hundred feet with the sinking realization that I had a flat tire. About 10°F, dark (dimly lit garage), an ice/dirt/salt mixture encrusted on the pavement, and wearing my dress clothes. Oh, and my spousal unit had moved the ever-present blanket out of the van into her car.

    Now, I have no anxiety about changing a tire. My anxiety is purely related to the difficulty in removing the spare tire from its storage location! You see, I’ve had this happen before; in fact, just about six months ago. So I knew what was coming. The spare tire is stowed underneath the chassis, and is winched up against the bottom of the van by means of a cable mechanism with a metal ‘T’ at the bottom. The idea is simple: open trunk of van, pop off plastic cover, use jack handle to turn ratchet counter-clockwise to lower cable, and spare tire is lowered to ground. BUT IT DOESN’T WORK!

    It’s pretty obvious that the underside of a vehicle is going to get dirty. Really dirty. Like mud-encrusted, oil-splattered, rusty, salt-caked, nasty-dirty. And that doesn’t work so well with metal parts. The upshot of this is that the $*&!{`%)# mechanism to lower the tire doesn’t. Oh, sure, the cable comes down nicely. But the tire remains wedged against the bottom of the van.

    I shook it. Hammered on it. Raised and lowered the cable multiple times. Drove forward and backward a few feet before slamming brakes to shake the thing. Jumped up and down on rear bumper. Cursed a blue streak that must have terrified all the lucky bastards leaving work without flat tires. Jammed the jack handle in and wrenched the sumbitch ’til the blood roared in my ears. Grabbed the tire and jerked it like a Leopard seal on a penguin. Pounded the hell out of the mechanism with the jack handle. Lather, rinse, repeat.

    After 45 minutes of unrelenting effort – all of this whilst precariously perching on two gloves to try and avoid completely ruining my clothes – I made one final all-out assault. I completely unspooled the cable until a long length was lying on the ground. I then grabbed the end and proceeded to yank the bejesus out of it, fore and aft, back and forth, left and right, up and down, until – voila! – the spare dropped to the ground. From then on, it only took 15 minutes (a few of which were wasted by undoing and then redoing lug nuts after not being sure whether or not wheel cover went over spare) to loosen lug nuts, jack ‘er up, remove flat – which had a nail hilted squarely in the center – put on spare, thread lug nuts, lower jack, tighten lug nuts, stow flat and tools, and hit the road. Only to get home just in time to change clothes and head out to my son’s hockey game.

    So, a warning: if you are, are responsible for, know, or even used to live next to the engineer that designed the spare tire storage for the 2001 Dodge Grand Caravan, look out: I cannot be held responsible for my actions. I’m sure a court will see it my way.

  • Mark Buesgens and Tim Pawlenty Vote to Doom Poorest Minnesotans

    Savage Pacer Letter to Editor for 2010-02-27

    I’m embarrassed that Mark Buesgens is our state representative. Embarrassed and saddened. By obstructing legislation, he is signing a death warrant for some of our most vulnerable Minnesotans. The MN State Legislature recently overwhelmingly passed 125-9 a bipartisan bill to extend General Assistance Medical Care (GAMC) for over another year. One of the nine legislators to vote against this bill was Mark Buesgens. GAMC provides medical and mental health care for 35,000 of the poorest and most needy in our state. Governor Pawlenty vetoed this bill to the consternation of Democrats and Republicans alike. His response was that the affected people can go onto Minnesota Care, a state-run health plan. Unfortunately, this is NOT an option, as Minnesota Care requires premium payments that the people on GAMC cannot afford! For many of the people currently on GAMC, the $203 per month that they receive is the only way they can afford medications and treatments for severe medical conditions like diabetes and heart disease. Taking this away will doom a number of these most vulnerable to early death.

    We, as a caring and moral community, must not let this happen. It’s vitally important that we let our legislators – specifically Mark Buesgens – know that Minnesotans take care of our fellow citizens, and demand that they override Pawlenty’s veto to continue GAMC. To turn our backs on the most impoverished people in our state would be criminal.

  • Words of Wisdom

    I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.

    — John Stuart Mill

  • The Things You Learn as an Election Judge

    I took the oath and put on my “Election Judge” sticker for the third time last week. ‘Twas quite a departure from a year ago: as opposed to the nearly 2,100 voters passing through my precinct then, we had merely 85 (including five absentee ballots!) yesterday. The only offices on the ballot were city council and school board, but still…a disappointing turn-out.

    Sitting at the polling place for 141/2 hours did, however, give me an opportunity to converse quite a bit with my fellow election judges. What an eye-opener! I found out many things:

    • Health care is just fine in the U.S. – if you can afford it – so we should stop trying to make it so “socialist.” Especially because there was this one person from Poland who said that their universal health care was OK most of the time, but he knew a woman who died from breast cancer because she had to wait a month for a mammogram.
    • ACORN has been changing elections with their wicked ways.
    • The “Big Bang” theory is ridiculous. God created the Universe.
    • If you fill a write-in vote with a nonexistent candidate then your entire ballot should be discarded.
    • The Internet is funded entirely by pornography.
    • The United States is a Christian nation, blessed specifically by God in the Bible.
    • People in the U.S. don’t care about life any more because of the millions and millions of babies we kill every year with abortions.

    Needless to say, I live in a very Conservative, Catholic, mostly-Right RepublicanT city. Savage, MN, if you must know. Not many Democratic candidates get votes here; even Barack only got 41% vs. McCain’s 57% last year. I should be inured to it. But the hopeless romantic in me keeps expecting people to wise up.

    Now granted, I was by far the youngest election judge; let’s just say that MTV started the year I graduated high school. We had one judge who was perhaps in her mid-50s – and was the only other Democrat in the room – one who just retired, and the other three were age 79 or older. But the old adage about age bringing wisdom certainly didn’t seem to apply.

    Although we also found several pleasant, non-political things to talk about throughout the day, it seemed – to this Progressive – that often their goal was to affirm the wackiest of the wacky right-wing memes in order to cause me maximum irritation. If so, they succeeded, but I kept my turmoil internal. For the most part.

    Recognizing the futility of trying to combat a (long) lifetime of religious and closet-racist dogma, I silently gritted my teeth and went to my happy place whilst the senior simpletons spluttered senselessly. Only once did I emerge from my self-imposed conversational exile, and that was when the rabble started bemoaning how the minions of ACORN had destroyed the validity of our elections. After I had set the record straight – no conspiracy, a few bad eggs, ACORN itself reported the wrongdoing, evildoers apprehended, no fraudulent votes ever cast, procedures changed, etc., etc. – there was a quiet response of, “Oh, really?” and the subject was dropped. One tiny bit of recompense for my suffering.

    It still stuns me when I come face to face with this, this…willful ignorance. I don’t know everything, nor do I play an actor who does on TV. But I do endeavor to read a bit, listen a bit, stay open-minded, explore the issues, and – call it naive – expect that people act in the best interests of others. Crazy, right?

  • ACORNs of Wisdom from Alan Grayson

    Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) is rapidly becoming my new political hero. And no, not just because he’s really making the media rounds lately (although that is how I came to learn of him several weeks ago). It’s because he looks to be the real deal: a guy who says and does the right things because he truly believes them, not just because it’s politically expedient to do so. In fact, he’s taken a huge risk in doing and saying the things he has over the last few weeks!

    Yesterday Grayson took on the attempted GOP railroading of ACORN. Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) tried to introduce more legislation to deny future funding to ACORN. There’s a small problem with that: writing legislation that punishes a specific entity when there has been no guilt established by any court is illegal. Doing so – the illegal thing – is called a “Bill of Attainder,” and it happens to be specifically prohibited by this little thing we like to call, “The Constitution.” Perhaps you’ve heard of it. And since Republicants often like to refer to it, mayhaps they should adhere to it.

    Watch Grayson in action schooling Broun on how our system of government works. Fantastic stuff!

    For backstory on what’s going on in the video – besides a severe butt-whipping – check out this excellent explanation by Glenn Greenwald.

    Bonus footage: Alan Grayson on The Ed Show talking about the effectiveness of confronting the Republicants.

  • There’s a Rep for that!

    Need Insane Fundie Republican Congress members? There’s a Rep for that!

    Check out the great video (playing off the iPhone campaign).

  • The Governor Who Wasn’t There

    Minnesotans continue to confound me with whom they elect. For a supposedly “liberal” state, we come across looking like the rednecks of the North. It’s been apparent from the beginning that Li’l Timmy Pawlenty was more interested in his own ambition than in actually governing, but he has sunk to new lows in recent months.

    Pawlenty is the newer incarnation of Norm “The Chameleon” Coleman. He is apt to change his stance daily depending on the political winds. He would trade parties, gender, sexual orientation (just not publicly), countries, or sex-for-favors to get elected. He has no principles, other than his infamous (and idiotic) “I will not raise taxes” stance. Evidently the idea that taxes are necessary for things like education, bridge repair, and the health and well-being of our citizenry is just too complicated a concept for him (and the wool-pulled-over-eyes constituency that flabbergastingly put him in office).

    Pawlenty hasn’t even been seen in MN for the past several months, as he works on the not-so-secret Timmy in 2012 campaign instead of trying to solve the:

    • public education crisis
    • budget crisis
    • health care crisis
    • various and sundry other crises

    in the state that he supposedly governs. He exemplifies the “Party of No,” as the only time he shows up is to veto any meaningful legislation. It is hard to imagine a worse governor. Oh, wait: I forgot about Mark Sanford. And Sarah Palin. I guess I can imagine a worse one…but not much.

  • More Lies from John Kline

    (following is an editorial from the Savage Pacer of 2009-08-29)

    It troubles me that John Kline is given the bully pulpit of “Guest Commentator” to spread neocon propaganda. His continual rants against the Obama administration’s policies distort truth and ignore fact. His commentary of last week is no exception.

    The first part of his screed states that “…through the end of 2007, we saw job growth for a record 52 consecutive months.” This is true, but what Kline fails to mention is that this was the slowest rate of job growth in the last 75 years! He also doesn’t point out that 3.1 million manufacturing jobs were lost during the same time, bringing the number of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. to its lowest total since 1950! He also conveniently forgets to look at the root causes of current levels of unemployment: a recession brought on by deregulation of the financial industry initiated by Reagan in 1982. It has become obvious that unregulated “free market” economics don’t work, yet Bush I and II continued to push them, along with “free trade” policies that have resulted in our current crisis.

    Kline continues his attack on the truth by inaccurately characterizing the Employee Free Choice Act. Contrary to Kline’s statement, this Act actually adds an option for workers to join unions. If John Kline is concerned about jobs and wages, he should support unions, as union workers earn more than non-union workers. But the Republican Party attacks the right of American workers to unionize, and fought against an increase in the minimum wage.

    I find it amusing that Kline rails against the state of the economy and the efforts to fix it, but fails to address how we got into this mess! This crisis was in the making going back to the Reagan administration, so to complain about a fix not working in President Obama’s first six months is ridiculous! It’s also interesting that Kline criticizes the $787 billion allocated for the Stimulus Package, but says nothing about the $700 billion that Bush gave to the financial industry; $700 billion handed out to the richest of the rich, with no controls, no oversight, and which has mostly disappeared into places that no one can – or will – account for. That’s over $2000 out of the pocket of every man, woman, and child in the U.S. going to the very people that caused the recession.

    Finally, I must address the issue of universal health care. The United States spends more on health care than any nation in the world, but our health care system ranks 37th out of 191 countries. We have over 45 million people without health care in this country. Our health care industries (and executives!) make obscene amounts of money, yet costs go up and coverage goes down every year. Not having universal health care costs us more, as those in need use the most expensive services – emergency room – for their health care. They also don’t use preventive services, and thus end up costing more in treating illnesses that could have been prevented. A majority of Americans want universal health care, and we are the only industrialized nation in the world without it! The fact that the richest, most advanced country in the world doesn’t have universal health care is unbelievable.

    I hope that John Kline will begin to serve by making himself available to his constituents and by working to serve the interests of all the people, including those too poor to afford health insurance.