What I’ve Noticed

Oh so true snippets of fundie culture.

The Princeton Guide to Ecology just went to the top of my wishlist.  Yes, even above the lovely shoes I posted earlier this week.

“Government-run” health care has problems, but it still works better than private insurance:

Compared with the employer-coverage group, people in the Medicare group report fewer problems obtaining medical care, less financial hardship due to medical bills, and higher overall satisfaction with their coverage.

Conservatives freaked out about Obama’s speech encouraging kids to work hard in school, calling the action “unprecedented.”  I guess they weren’t paying attention during similar speeches given by Reagan and George H. Bush.  (Though perhaps if they’d paid better attention in school they would have developed some critical thinking skills and we wouldn’t have to deal with their craziness.)  I think the response of the right in this situation is very telling – they disagree with Obama, so they won’t listen to anything he says.  This is why Republicans have blocked health care reform at every turn, why Republicans have become the party of “no.”  I’m reminded of a child being told something she doesn’t want to hear who covers her ears and yells.

There isn’t much justice in our justice system.  How many innocent people have we executed?

The myth of overspending:

Whether families are spending more than they should according to some moral notion—consuming too much of the world’s resources or buying things they could easily live without—is not the issue at hand. These data give us no clue about the right amount of spending. But they give us powerful evidence that excessive consumption is not why families are going broke. There is no evidence of any “epidemic” of overspending—certainly nothing that could explain a 255 percent increase in the foreclosure rate, a 430 percent increase in the bankruptcy rolls, and a 570 percent increase in credit-card debt. A growing number of families are in terrible financial trouble, but despite the accusations, their frivolity is not to blame.

A lot of people claim that being queer is wrong because it isn’t “natural.” Weird how different cultures consider different sexualities “natural.”

Ecological/environmental refugees are becoming much more common.

A corporate sponsor of the Tea Party Express, many of whose members believe that health care reform is “a secret plot to kill old people”, is paying millions of dollars for killing old people.

A ton of feathers – why micro-inequities suck.