Just Say No to Socialism

A day in the life of a Tea Partier/Teabagger:

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I watched this while eating breakfast of US Department of Agriculture inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time as regulated by the US Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory. I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads built by the local, state, and federal departments of transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve bank. On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to send via the US Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After work, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to a house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and fire marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all it's valuables thanks to the local police department.

I then log on to the internet which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration and post on freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right.

These people are uninformed and dangerous.

-stolen from the web somewhere...

Super funny

Erica Sigurdson is the woman who comments on the 'gaybashers' who fill the Davie Village streets in the summertime. "This is our neighborhood, this is how we live. We don't go to Surrey and read!"

...Erica Sigurdson, on being a Mom in Vancouver.

I don't have kids myself because I don't own enough yoga gear, that's the uniform for moms in this city - head-to-toe Lululemon - while buying organic baby food - because you have to have a free-range baby - and speaking sign language to their babies, all the while pushing their kids in strollers the size of Smart Cars. How fast are you running with a baby that you need mountain bike tires and brakes? Whenever I see a handbrake on a stroller, I lose my mind. Why do you need a handbrake? You get that you're pushing it - right? It doesn't even make sense. We all know what happens when we slam on the brakes. Let's say you're running around the Seawall with your baby and something dangerous happens and you try to stop by slamming on the brakes - you'd actually flip over the stroller, and the last thing you would see as you went down is your baby, flying into the Burrard Inlet signing "Help!".

Good Grief

After initial SHOCK wears off, comes:

denial
anger
bargaining
depression
acceptance

Where am I now? Probably wavering somewhere between depression and acceptance, depending on the day, my mood and what I'm doing.

I'm trying to end up with a positive outcome, that Murad left me in better condition than when he first met me. I'm trying to work through the grief ensuring that positive ends come from difficult, sad means. I really want to respect his life by ensuring that the lessons I got from the way he did things and what he believed are activated and pursued by integrating them into my life as part of who I am.

Everyone we meet comes into our lives for a reason and has some effect on us (and/or us on them). We are meant to integrate these effects into our behaviour, personality and discourse in order that we continue to work towards our ultimate being and understanding of who we are and what our purpose is.

Good Riddance!

Hummer, symbol of machismo, may be headed to graveyard
By Wayne Drash, CNN
March 3, 2010 1:03 p.m. EST

Atlanta, Georgia (CNN) -- Love it or hate it, the Hummer came to symbolize American might over the years -- tires the size of Texas, a chrome grill that looked primed to eat up wimpy cars in its path, and its drivers with egos to match their mammoth-mobiles.

But the iconic vehicle -- a symbol for macho men like Arnold Schwarzenegger and ridiculed worldwide by environmentalists -- is headed toward the auto graveyard.

General Motors last week announced the likely end of the Hummer after a deal with a Chinese automaker fell through. The news thrilled many who have protested the guzzler for years: Good riddance!

But for Hummer owners, the reaction remains mixed. Most mourn the impending death of their beloved behemoths but celebrate the fact that the Hummer won't be outsourced to China: Whose harebrained idea was that anyway?! Ain't no Hummer meant to be made in China!

Owners are hoping for a last-minute buyer to emerge before the Hummer joins the maligned Pinto in the scrapyard. GM has said it is trying to salvage the Hummer, setting May 1 as a deadline for other possible deals to be made.

Hasta la vista, Hummer A single sticky note, left on Russ Builta's 2005 Hummer, sums up the emotion stirred by the super-sized SUVs. "You are polluting our air and abusing our national resources," the unsigned note said. "And all because of greed and selfishness. You should be very ashamed of yourself."
Builta, who served in the Marine Corps, still gets mad: "It was not even on recycled paper!"

Builta installed a supercharger that gave his Hummer a whopping 600 horsepower. When he really mashed the pedal, it got 1 mile per gallon. "It would just move," he told CNN iReport.

After the HMMWV rolled off the AM General assembly line in Indiana on January 2, 1985, it represented a new breed of American military might and toughness.

In 1992, production of the civilian Hummer began, instantly creating a fraternity among owners of the SUV-on-growth hormone. They exchange photos of their trucks, chat over the Internet and plan for their next muddin' sessions.

They laugh at tree huggers who give them the finger as they cruise down the road.

"I hate to see it die," says iReporter Michael Tawdy of Tennessee, who owns a 2006 H3. "You can go anywhere you want."

It's my yin and yang.

The Hummer even shares its name with a sexual term. How many cars can stake that claim? And the vehicle became fodder for late-night comedians and Internet jokes.

"You might be driving a Hummer," says one joke on a Web site devoted to the vehicle, "if you can't reach far enough to slap the person sitting in the passenger seat."

The grass-roots social justice group CodePink created an anti-Hummer campaign during the height of the Bush administration, including a Top Ten Reasons Not To Buy A Hummer. At the top of the list: "The Gas Mileage Alone Will Kill You."

Billy Paniaha of North Carolina gets speechless when talking about his chrome-and-gray-mobile. "I love my Hummer," he told iReport.

In one photo, he's leaning against his mud-caked Hummer, which looks like it just wallowed in a pigpen. "Trust me, these tree huggers in their Priuses. ... If a Prius hits me, I won't get hurt. They will."

Raymond Winbush isn't your ordinary Hummer owner. A lover of his giant SUV, he also owns -- are you ready for this? -- a Toyota Prius.

"People think I'm kidding when I say I have both cars, but I do," said Winbush, an author and the director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University.

"If you combine my carbon footprint ... I don't feel real guilty about it."

A resident of Baltimore, Maryland, he uses the Hummer to get through the East Coast's brutal winters. During last month's storm, which left the region under a couple of feet of snow, he helped get doctors and nurses to and from a hospital, thanks to his Hummer.

When winter ends, his machismo-meter goes down. He grabs his man purse and hops into his Prius. "My son calls it the nerd-mobile," he said. "I've had more people razz me about the Prius than I have the Hummer."

"It's my yin and yang. I think they balance each other out."

Candi Angotti of Texas is just the opposite. She wouldn't be caught dead in a Prius.

The president of the Texas chapter of Club Hummer Offroad, she's been driving her solar-flare metallic orange Hummer for three years.

"I use it what it was built for -- off-roading and adventures -- and it has never let me down," she said. "I have met a great group of guys and girls, and we're like a big family."

The owners now have one more thing in common: They're sporting a likely collector's item. But Builta's the exception. He got rid of his Hummer. And he still misses it.