Philosophy, politics, and religion from behind the bar.

Question about Billy Graham's body lying in state in the Capitol... My answer: It doesn't matter a bit. It's what we do, as a nation. We lie about our history. We lie about who we are. And we DEFINITELY lie about what we stand for. Having that Christo-fascist "honored" in the halls of the least honorable among us is as American as it gets.

There is a conspiracy of people from the socialist left in America to destroy the country and steal democracy from us, probably led and funded by George Soros. So says Fox News, Sheldon Adelson, the Koch brothers, the Mellon and Scaife Families, The Petroleum Institute, The Heritage Foundation, The NRA (guns), The NRA (Restaurants), The Chambers of Commerce (National, state, and local), 90% of your Christian churches, all television preachers, ALEC, AEI, AIPAC, CPAC, the US military, the cops, the police, the CIA, the FBI, all the banking lobbies and associations, the pharmaceutical cartels, the GOP, most of the Democratic Party, your crazy Uncle Cletus, the KKK, tabloid journals, white nationalists, all corporate boards, and a host of others. Repeatedly, loudly, and constantly. Pay your taxes, go to work, cash your meager checks, don't complain, salute the flag, and praise Jebuz, or you might be one of them.... https://www.facebook.com/newsbroke/videos/18239346217496...

                    "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns".    The premise has it exactly backwards.The only reason outlaws HAVE guns is because they are legal and easily accessible. Guns don't fall out of some "bad guys" gun heaven. They are legally manufactured, legally put on the market.   "Bad guys" (however you decide to subjectively define them) acquire them by several methods. They may get them legally, passing all background checks, and by all definitions even intend to be the "good guy" until they have an accident, or snap, or find that a nefarious use for them turns out to be something they think might be advantageous at the time.   They can buy them through legal loopholes, bypassing checks.   They may purchase them illegally.    They may steal them from "good guys". We're hearing more and more stories of people breaking into houses specifically to steal guns. Anything the...

Alex McDowell Truth has no economic value. Like · Reply · 2 · 18 mins · Edited Manage Amanda Bee it has to us, dont support their economy dont buy their crap Like · Reply · 1 · 16 mins Remove Alex McDowell You're a part of an economy you had no choice in joining. One way or another. Like it or not. Like · Reply · 2 · 15 mins Manage Patricia Jay Thompson Yes, but we do have choice to support that which is not contaminated...organic food from organic farmers, for example! We vote with our money. Like · Reply · 1 · 11 mins Remove Alex McDowell Good luck with that. In the face of the huge global economy, your purchase of a dozen organic apples is going to do wonders... Like · Reply · 1 · 9 mins Manage Amanda Bee of course it makes a difference - a huge difference because its a very different vibration when you clea...

    Most TV pundits have it close, but not spot on, on the issue of NFL players kneeling for the National Anthem. For the players, it is not just a free speech issue. It's not their First Amendment right to be "allowed" to do it. It is their historical responsibility to do it.     My hope would be that, after Trump's blatantly racist comments on the matter, the habit catches on like wildfire across the players on all the teams today.And all the players in every sport, professional, or other. This is their moment to stand up and do what's right.    But, more of an impact would be if the fans would refuse to stand for the anthem. It's time to show some solidarity here.

 We wandered out onto the little plaza around Rua de August in Lisbon on an unusually cooler and breezier late morning and watched one of the local street artists, a woman in white, white flowing dress, white wide brimmed flouncy hat, visible skin painted in all white, sitting on a small stool trying to keep it all together while leaning against a store front. Her purse was tucked under her dress and stool, meant to be hidden under her long dress which blew with the wind.   I watched her struggle as we walked slowly past, and she stood up to move away from the storefront to a spot more in the center and head of the pedestrian street, gathering up her purse and stool and holding her hat and dress hem as she scurried over to her new roost. The wind did not relent. We went on our way while she continued to try to put purse beneath skirt, and hold everything down for the show.  I got the idea that she was one of those "human statues" that moved slowly to greet the passersb...

whttps://ww.facebookrewin.com/BlockBg/ https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008656361041 http://www.livingstondaily.com/story/news/local/community/howell/2017/08/16/200-gather-howell-support-trump-wake-criticism/572060001/ From Wikipedia on the city of Howell, Michigan: Reputation For many decades, Howell has had the reputation of being associated with the Ku Klux Klan due to White Supremacist leader and Michigan Grand Dragon Robert E. Miles, who held KKK gatherings on his farm, located 12 miles north of the city with a Howell address.[12] Miles died in 1992. However, these gatherings, including the burning of crosses, continued.[13] The reputation has persisted into the 2000s, with events such as a public auction of KKK items scheduled for Martin Luther King Jr's birthday in 2005,[14] the 2010 suspension of a teacher who removed students for wearing a confederate flag and making anti-gay slurs,[15] and the high school basketball team's racist tweets towa...

So. Trump fumbled his first attempt at addressing the violence in Charlottesville because, in his heart, he's a racist. He tries to redeem himself by reading a script on Monday, and we rightly scream "Too little, too late!" And three CEO's on some Presidential Commission resign out of disgust for his obvious bigotry and pandering to NAZIs. Are we supposed to pat these CEOs on the back for standing up? If Trump's act ("act" being the operative word here) of contrition Monday was "too little, too late", why were these people anywhere near involved with this administration in the first place? Who did they think they were dealing with? Fuck these guys. https://www.wsj.com/articles/merck-ceo-quits-trump-advisory-council-after-charlottesville-violence-1502717371

While the Dems keep talking about "compromise" and the "middle road" and "moderation", what they've been doing is conceding almost every point. This is how we got, not "trickle down", but huge gushing upward, a vacuum of wealth going to the top, all by design. While the top democratic leaders bow to Goldman Sacks for direction and directors. We're not looking at a party in disarray because of a dirty hippy fringe. We're looking at a party that is cooperating in grand larceny. A party that no longer can give a message that anyone gives a damn about.  Deregulation of the banking system came under BOTH parties' watches, supported with gusto from both sides. Working out great for the bankers. For the rest us? Meh. A Canadian would know better. http://crooksandliars.com/.../daily-show-you-cant-ram... The Daily Show: You Can't Jam Banking Regulation Down A Country's Throat The Daily Show's John Oliver and Jason Jones t...

Kathy Griffin  apologized and was fired for her "joke" photo , amid a torrent of anger from people that were  ostensibly on her side (other than her bad taste in this particular matter) . Fine. Done and done. The question is where is the apology or the criticism from the other side for their thousands (literally, thousands) of similar or worse attacks by the rank and file including right wing celebs, and even elected officials? Then our "pussy grabbing", racist, birther-in-chief trots out his crying son (who he stashes in another city and has already admitted that he has little to do with) and we're supposed to suddenly feel sympathy for him? Where was the sympathy for Sasha and Malia for 8 years of their father being accused of being an illegal POTUS, hung in effigy, treated with a total lack of respect by elected officials, blatantly, and in public, and having to listen to their father daily being called the "N" word. Not to mention the REAL an...

We are nothing but consuming units for a death cult of moneyed interests. And they will use every trick in the book to make sure we are not paying attention. Like playing on our emotions to make us think recycling is going to be the answer to our waste problems, by making  a cute little plastic bottle have dreams of seeing the ocean as a recycled bench (also playing on our innate credulity about the after-life). Anthropomorphizing a plastic bottle in the commercial isn't about recycling. It's about the plastic industry telling us it's okay to consume more plastics. Ironic that they would use a bench, looking at the sea, since that's where all of the plastic waste ends up. Just because they sell us billions of tons of worthless plasticized crap every year, it's not their fault that we don't recycle . Probably the most offensive ad on TV. https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=how+much+of+our+plastic+is+recycled%3F&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs...

I'm tired of hearing about the VP's or Anne Coulter's, or any fascist from the "alt-right", or some religious bigot's "free speech" rights being threatened by protesters. Their free speech is not the one under attack Since Reagan and the religious right, and long before, we have heard EVERYTHING they could possibly have to  say. They have owned the airwaves, the megaphones, the money, the soap-boxes, the pulpits, the political power, and the zeitgeist for so long that the left barely has any influence at all. The "left", in fact, isn't even "left" anymore. . Any time those fascists and corporatists can be shouted out of hearing, or scared away by protesters, is an example of free speech being practiced in it's finest glory.  The apoplexy is misplaced.

I'm sorry. I got caught up in another one of these arguments online with people who have no idea... As most of us do, I felt compelled to vent. You have no idea what these people do to give you the level of service they are able. They are your conduit so you don't have to do two or more hours of prep/sidework, deal with angry cooks, work in conditions that are often not safe, hot, and on their feet for up to (and often more) than ten hours a day. As quickly as they can, and with a smile. In extremely close quarters with a group of equally stressed and abused people. All while almost always working for an egomaniac or sadist who is robbing their pay and expecting them to break the rules of physics 9 or ten million times a shift. No job protections, no arbitration, nothing. All for a federally mandated minimum wage of $2.13. Some states and localities offer more. Many do not. ALWAYS below the "real" minimum. Why do we do it? Some of us love the work, the...

Is the current GOP the NAZI party of our time? How would we know before it's too late? Most of Germany didn't know in the 1930's. Or rationalized what was happening around them. Or blinded themselves to it. "These NAZI's have some rough rhetoric, but look at the good they're doing. The nasty parts? I don't think they really mean it. They'll distance themselves from the uglier parts of their supporters. Don't believe the rumors, the nay-sayers, the negative people. We're making progress! We're bringing glory back to the Homeland!" Really. How would we know? Once it becomes our new "normal", how would we know what we have become? A seed planted by William F. Buckley and Barry Goldwater, sprouted as Ronald Reagan, and coming to flower today. We never had a chance.

What is the value of our fossil fuel subsidies? Adding in all that we allow them to take. All we allow them to use. All we let them to get away with? What is the value of a stream? A harbor? The Gulf of Mexico? An ocean? The air? The climate? I would think we would start somewhere around one hundred trillion dollars, just start , conservatively. Just to make a few billion for a very few people, and give us the illusion that it's progress. And by what right? Commerce. Commerce trumping everything else. Tax breaks and government contracts? They're not even a speck on the tip of the pile. This is robbery on an unprecedented level. And it's all "legal", when we also subsidized their rights to write the laws. Ultimately, we have given the oil, gas, and coal industries our future, and how we are going to live it. Imagine the value of that.

The Mafia are/were amateurs. Cheap street punks. We got to watch how it's done by the professionals yesterday. Donald Trump was unpolitic, undiplomatic, and his usual shoot-from-the-ass-before-thinking self when he took on the drug industry. Was he wrong? In strategy, style, and within the dictates of his own party, yes. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe part of the plan. Probably not. Just a serendipitous patsy falling into line. But the response was pure "Mega-"Cosa Nostra. The industry stock as a group, in unison, in moments, fell precipitously. Probably over one hundred BILLION dollars in stock value disappeared in the blink of an eye. Sell orders went out to all the brokerage houses, and the stock fell that much, that quickly, BUT NO MORE.... Not only did the Pharma industry send a message, a threat, a million times more powerful than any fish wrapped in newspaper, but they (and their "soldiers" on Wall Street) got to raid every retirement account i...

I'm going to say this once. You can reply, if you want. Here, or in person. But I'm not going to engage in the argument. I may not even read the responses here. (Not sure.) I know where you stand, almost entirely, and as much as you will deny it, I understand your argument. I just reject it. Entirely. I'm going to piss off a lot of friends. Even close ones. But so be it. Here goes. I voted for Jill Stein. I did not affect the results by doing so. The math proves us out on that. I got the most vicious attacks and vitriol from the Hillary camp for this. Mostly, pro-Bernie people that switched their allegiance for perceived pragmatic purposes. They blame us. Here's where it gets ugly. I'm not angry for your choice. But I do switch the blame to you. Huh??!!!! It is our contention (the %10 of Bernie people that refused to go along) that Hillary was not and never was an acceptable candidate. Worse, that the people that switched to her were too forgiving of...

Okay. We've shuffled the cards tonight. It's a whole different card game.  Here's how it should all go down. Sunday's debate should be delayed for a few days to work out the details. It should be the three remaining realistic candidates, Hillary Clinton, Jill Stein, and Gary Johnson. None of this one hour bullshit. Take 5 hours, six, ten, whatever it takes. No holds barred. They stand up there and answer questions until ALL parties are satisfied that they have all the answers they need. The candidates, the moderators, the audience, and the American public at large. Fact checking done throughout in real time. (Pause the fucking thing until we're happy that all the bullshit has been weeded out.) I don't care if the town drunk from bum-fuck Arkansas has a problem. Let him ask. Get it all out. Then, we do it again. Four or five times in the next month. Meantime, let the GOP have their own series of debates to sort out who they REALLY want to embarrass them...

5TH FLOOR LAST NIGHT! Closing the doors after tonight. Come on down to say goodbye. $1.00 any draft beer until the kegs run out. $12.00 all you can eat buffet. Other drink specials TBA. Current drafts available: Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale Resin IPA Labatt Blue Stella Artois PBR Miller Lite Downtown Youngstown. 201 E. Commerce St. 330.744.9556 Free Parking in private lot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qx6_0Do0qGQ

Got a pro-Hillary thing in the mail today that listed all the horrible things Trump has been saying about women. No doubt, they're atrocious. They sound very much like the derogatory things Hillary supporters have been saying to us that supported Bernie, and now support Stein. Meet the new boss...