We discovered this week, to our shock & dismay, that there are a significant number of liberals in America with money. Who knew?
We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives.
The events of this week appear to have thoroughly pissed-off an alarmingly-large number of you people. have been deeply unsettling for our supporters, partners and friends and all of us at Susan G. Komen. We have been distressed that we weren’t able to snatch the carpet right out from under an organization that supports a woman’s right to choose what happens inside her own body at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood. They were not.
Our original desire was to demonstrate more than financial support for the conservative politicians we work tirelessly to get elected fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations targeted by the GOP for religious inquisition under investigation. We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what will apparently prevent us having to reorganize as a 527 is right and fair.
Our only goal for our granting process is to support women and families in the fight against breast cancer. Amending our criteria will ensure that politics has a less visible no place in our grant process. We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and pray for our country to elect a raving, orally-frothed theocrat to the White House in 2012, so we can justify deep-sixing that commie rat-bastard death clinic’s funding for FY 2013 preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.
It is our hope and we believe it is time for everyone involved to pause, slow down and not change their decision to cut us a check reflect on how grants can most effectively and directly be administered without controversies that hurt the cause of women. We urge everyone who has participated in this conversation across the country over the last few days to help us move past this issue. We do not want our mission marred or affected by liberal politics, but we’re gonna have to swallow the pill this time politics - anyone’s politics.
Starting this afternoon, we will have calls with our network and key supporters to keep from getting doubly-smacked by our anti-abortion supporters refocus our attention on our mission and get back to doing our work. We ask for the public’s forgetting in 10 months, like they usually do, what this bru-ha-ha was all about and get back to the business of cutting us checks understanding and patience as we gather our Komen affiliates from around the country to determine how to move forward in the best interests of the women and people we serve.
We extend our deepest thanks for the outpouring of support from people who believe women should be forced by government fiat to carry & nurture even fetuses conceived by rape & incest we have received from so many in the past few days and we sincerely hope that these changes will help us get back the more than half a million in donations that were re-directed to Planned Parenthood be welcomed by those who have expressed their concern.
Shakesbear.
*Side Note: There is an old adage that states, ‘When it comes to putting breakfast on your plate in the morning, the chicken was dedicated; the pig was committed.’
Kenneth: College students need to be heard, and not simply given a plan to reduce the interest on their loans. We cannot simultaneously proclaim a desire to prepare our children for the jobs of the future and expose them to spiraling cost barriers to the education we proclaim we want them to have. It has long been known that a college degree is the pathway to higher income potential; when much - or in some cases all - of that income potential is spent paying the debt that put the student through college in the first place, it becomes income potential for the banks servicing the loans, not for the student. Worse, most of the deeply-indebted students we are turning out today attended state-funded schools; they are simply not funded enough to prevent exposing their enrollees to exorbitant tuition costs. Politicians may, in the meantime, speak of a desire for our children to be educated, they may say they wish that our children could be prepared for the jobs of the future. But, let no politician insult the American voters by speaking of a commitment to our childrens’ futures unless they are truly committed. Education for students who have both desire and academic qualification should not come with a price barrier. When all who want to go to college and are prepared to attend a university CAN attend a university, THEN our elected officials may stand before us and proclaim their commitment to our childrens’ furtures.
7 hours ago · Like · 2 people
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Wendy: My daughter is a sophmore in high school and already worried that her dreams will be crushed. She is taking an Allied Health program in high school and will graduate with an Assistant Nursing Degree- she told me that she can always fall back on that if she gets out of college and can’t find a job. She’s already way smarter than I ever was after graduating college. Maybe these high school programs are the way to go. My son will be doing a Marketing and Engineering programming when he goes to High School. Who needs college?
6 hours ago · Like
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Kenneth: Who needs college? I say any child who has worked hard in school, kept their grades up, learned their material and has prepared themselves to go to college. These children are the very future - the lifeblood - of our nation. They are also starting out their adult lives by indebting themselves tens (in some cases hundreds) of thousands of dollars by pursuing a goal that they have worked hard for. And they are largely spending this money to attend state-funded institutions of higher learning. I can hear the objections already. We do not need, at a time when we are trillions in debt, to go piling more on. I ask, how much would it cost to fully-fund our government-run universities? A billion dollars? Ten Billion? One hundred billion? A trillion? Tell me that, and then we can get into a discussion about what this country HAS been prepared to spend billions & trillions of dollars on, and we can have a discussion about commitments to our childrens’ - and our nation’s - future.
6 hours ago · Like · 1 person
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Laurie: These KIds parents should have explained LIFE to them before they let them go to UNDERGRAD school to the tune of $150,000. The price of a house that costs a life time of service to pay off. I sent both my kids to school and payed my mortgage. What about those who took financial planning seriously??????Should we have to pay for those who didn’t????Should we all get a free ride in life?????wtf.
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Clark: Anyone who believes that one group/category gets a “free ride” is truely devoid of any understanding of the socioeconomics of life in America. Though it may appear to be true, looks can be deceiving especially when what we see and what we hear and, thus, what we say is being manipulated by those in positions of authority and power. Free riders are not the problem… the manipulators are.
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Clark: @Kenneth… well thought out and well said. Yes education is important… and for more reasons than just preparing one for a career. I am sure you have noticed as I have that well educated often stand in opposition to the BS coming from folks in positions of power and authority. I the people in positions of power and authority—especially the elected officials in Washington—truely had the interest of American citizen ahead of their own personal wants, needs, and desires… we would have, as you imply, fully funded education all the way through college like they do in countries whose socioeconomic system practices or embraces socialist philosophies. (Note: for those of you who really do know what socialism is I am sure you just nodded in agreement; for those of you who don’t you probably just went Boooo!… what a perfect example of the merits of higher education).
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Wendy: Kenneth, you’re missing my point. Sorry that I wasn’t clear. Of course both of my kids will go to college and and that is why I am on them constantly to get all A’s, volunteer, etc.. because they need to get scholarships. My son scored 100% on his MCAS- by not accident. In Mass, a child can go to a state school for free if having high MCAs scores. All I am saying is that my kids are way more educated than I ever was even with a college degree and kids need to be focused on a certain degree, if we’re going to pay for it.
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Tina: The idea that a free market rewards the hard working and if you are not thriving it is because you’re lazy is baloney. Many people out there don’t even want to be rich - they merely a fair exchange of value for a honest days work! The system rewards those who overly inflate their value to society (wall street) and have convinced the world they are worth the money they make! The “market” can regulate itself theory fails to recognize that without restrains, it becomes a dog eat dog world out there. Right now our system rewards those who are most clever at exploiting systems and fails to punish those whose exploitation is actually criminal, whose exploitation is harming the welfare of society as a whole. This is because our government is in collusion with the exploitation. I hope the Senator will dig deeper into the student loan lending crises! AS we have a huge sector of our society in crises due to exploitation built on dreams of a better future…
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Kenneth: @Laurie: A ‘free ride in life’ is giving someone money in lieu of contributing to society through work. An education determines what a person is going to contribute to society through their work. It is logically-inconsistent to draw an artificial line between where a child’s education should be free, and when it should begin to come with a price tag, especially one as hefty as college is, today. At what point should that line be drawn? Is it okay to ask parents to pay tuition to put their children through high school? Middle school? Why do we offer public options for our children to attend taxpayer-subsidized forms of those schools? We should be committed to ensuring that social mobility in this country is the product of hard work and achievement, not the ability of a child’s parents to purchase their way into it. Yes, financial planning should be taken seriously, upon entry into the workforce; the home and mortgage that you speak of is going to require sound financial discipline from our children. Our children already rely upon a byzantine network of grants, scholarships and endowments to attend college, many of which are already funded by taxpayers. Let’s cut out the middleman and just put our kids though school. What level of life a person achieves in this country should be determined though hard work, commitment and excellence, not their parent’s incomes. To say otherwise is to deem that a child born poor should remain so. Ensuring that our children have access to the tools they need to achieve their potential is not a ‘free ride’ in life; it is an investment.
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Kenneth: @Clark: The definition of ‘socialist’ has been so horribly mangled by the political right in this country that it has ceased to have meaning. Let’s turn to the dictionary to actually establish some meaning:
so·cial·ism [soh-shuh-liz-uhm] Show IPA
noun
1.
a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.
Public education is NOT socialism, unless you subscribe to the viewpoint that education is an industry. If that is your view, then your stance is logically that we get the government out of *any* subsidization of education. Period. If mom & dad live paycheck-to-paycheck (Read: 50% of our population), then little Timmy & Suzy, no matter what their level of intelligence, work ethic or commitment, get to make it in this world on what knowledge they can absorb through osmosis. They do not get to go to Kindergarten, much less a state university.
If, on the other hand, you feel that it is essential to a competent workforce for us to provide our children access to an education, then you feel it to be a public service, not an industry. This is NOT (please, I cannot emphasize this strongly enough; NOT socialism). Government, if it exists at all, exists to provide a menu of services to its citizenship. Otherwise, I wish you happiness in your life as an anarchist. Just not in the USA; we are not an anarchy.
The term ‘socialism’ has been force-fed through a pretzel-making machine by the right in this country, because it then becomes a handy way to discredit ideas through the application of a label rather than arguing an idea on merit. If you buy into this intellectually-bankrupt - and patently dishonest - redefinition of a term like socialism, then you are simply ceding the ground on which the battle is fought. Sun Tsu teaches us that is a great way to get creamed in battle. Us committing, as a nation, to the education of our children is NOT socialism.
There was an essay titled “Date A Girl Who Reads” that was making the rounds on FaceBook earlier in the year. I have seen it posted that it was a response to this Charles Warnke piece, and vice-versa. Not sure which was a response to which. I simply recall a friend of mine re-posting the first essay, and feeling it deserved a response, which I promptly pounded out & dispatched back to my friend.
This may be digging out some stale material, but I still think it’s worth dropping into here:
Be A Guy Who Reads.
Be a guy who reads. You already spend little enough on clothes; your beer budget can withstand a marginal hit in the service of harnessing a modicum of the brain cells you plan to kill on Saturday.
Be a guy who understands that your masculinity isn’t compromised by your command of vocabulary; it is enabled. Realize that Ernest Hemmingway was one of the manliest men an Axe commercial could never devise. And whether you end up liking his penchant for making endangered species a little more endangered, one at a time, all in the name of his living room decor, that he was a man who harnessed a vocabulary of a might and with a skill that dwarfs most who came before, or since. His was a life which makes the Dos Eqis man look a little…erm…’short bus.’
Be a guy who, upon reciting the famous Santayana quote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” understands that prudence, if not intellectual consistency dictates that you ensure you are not among those Santayana was referring to. Being a fan of ‘The History Channel’ does not count. Read Aristotle & Thucydides & Herodotus, and understand that Jefferson did not invent democracy from scratch. Read Marx and Engels and realize, first, what a ‘commie’ is before you call a person one. Secondly, be aware that their assumptions about Communism were not all founded upon consistent awareness of human nature, but some of their criticisms of capitalism merit a few hours of contemplation on your part. You will grow as an individual, as a thoughtful human being and, no, you will not lose testosterone count in the process.
Your study of history will reward your inner caveman with a bounty of reading on war. There is no shortage of books about men doing the one thing that men who read more books might have avoided in the first place. The Iliad, by Homer, was good enough to be made into a Brad Pitt movie. Try it, you’ll like it. Follow that up with Sun Tsu, Stephen Crane, Sir Walter Scott and Shakespeare – yes, Shakespeare – you’ve heard people recite “One more, unto the breach” a million times in your life, whether you realize it or not; time to find out where that line originated.
Be a guy who understands history and art and, most importantly, literature. The guys on your weekend football league team may not fully appreciate your knowledge that the author of ‘Sherlock Holmes’ played as an amateur goalkeeper. Neither will that hinder your game-winning touchdown pass. Be a guy who reads.
And then, yes. Do consider dating a girl who reads.
Because now you won’t piss her off.
Late adopter. Yeah, I know. I may be the last person on Earth - about a day behind Barack Obama - to kick off a Tumblr page. I’ve seen the site. I’ve followed some people on here, but already have a blog over on Blogger. It’s a more ‘structured’ blog, and one I neglect far too much, both due to a dearth of time to spend on content creation, and because I frequently feel I’ve painted myself into too tight a thematic corner over there. This is a spot for me to write when I don’t feel like writing what I’m supposed to be writing. It will be random. I expect it will probably be a fairly even mix of my worst and best work.
Sit down. Get comfy. Read. And judge kindly.
I do not know what had me tooling through the poetry section on here last night. I do not regard myself as a poet, but do think of myself as an avid reader. I felt inspired enough to put this onto my page, though. I hope that someone somewhere likes it:
Stop.
Enough.
Why do you do this to yourself?
There isn’t enough,
Scotch in this bottle,
Or the next,
To make me stop thinking of her.
Of the table,
The curl of smoke,
The dirty martinis,
The inevitable first date
Question, casually-asked,
“So, what are you looking for?”
The girl who loves me back.
Knowing here, tonight,
Gazing into the bottom of this glass,
That is utterly impotent,
To make me forget,
that she,
Was everything I’ve ever wanted,
Just not the only thing I’ve ever wanted.
I hear reason, seated across the room saying,
Stop.
Enough.
Why do you do this to yourself?
Go write a novel, build an empire,
Start a movement, enrich peoples’ lives.
Anything but this.
Betrayal.
I will endure fights until four in the morning,
Angry texts, The pain of infidelities,
Gaping chasms across my heart.
Tis but a flesh wound.
You’re out there.
I cannot give up on you now.
And in the morning I shall whisper my penance,
Into the vapors rising from my coffee cup,
And when my day is done,
I shall unseat reason from its gilded throne,
and say. “I’ve got a full tank of gas and forty bucks in my wallet,
Tomorrow’s payday,
Let’s get out of here. Go do something.”
And I shall look for you.
For the feel of cool grass beneath us,
As we count the stars on a summer night.
For the sound of laughter from the living room,
As I pour us fresh glasses of wine.
For a goodbye.
Never spoken.
Qui craint le danger,
ne doit pas aller en mer.
I am a man,
who cannot say,
Stop.
Enough.
Why do we do this to ourselves?
Cardio, Baby Jesus!
Just. Fucking. Awesome. :D
tumblrbot asked: WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST HUMAN MEMORY?
Well, I’m glad that tumblrbot was specific, in asking for ‘human memories.’ I know not to provide any from when I was a ferret… Seriously, my first human memory was of watching the first moon landing on the television.
Formula 409 is a multi-billion-dollar flagship product for the Clorox Corporation. It was invented in 1957 by a man named Morris Rouff. It is named Formula 409 because the first 408 formulas were failures. Great things are achieved by people who don’t know when to give up.