Dave Sim's blogandmail #186 (March 16th, 2007)

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Fourteen Impossible Things to Believe Before Breakfast That Make You a Good Feminist

1. A mother who works a full-time job and delegates to strangers the raising of her children eight hours a day, five days a week does just as good a job as a mother who hand-rears her children full time.

2. It makes great sense for the government to pay 10 to 15,000 dollars a year to fund a daycare space for a child so its mother - who pays perhaps 2,000 dollars in taxes - can be a contributing member of society.

3. A woman's doctor has more of a valid claim to participate in the decision to abort a fetus than does the father of that fetus.

4. So long as a woman makes a decision after consulting with her doctor, she is incapable of making an unethical choice.

5. A car with two steering wheels, two gas pedals and two brakes drives more efficiently than a car with one steering wheel, one gas pedal and one brake which is why marriage should always be an equal partnership.

6. It is absolutely necessary for women to be allowed to join or participate fully in any gathering place for men, just as it is absolutely necessary that there be women only environments from which men are excluded.

7. Because it involves taking jobs away from men and giving them to women, affirmative action makes for a fairer and more just society.

8. It is important to have lower physical standards for women firepersons and women policepersons so that, one day, half of all firepersons and policepersons will be women, thus more effectively protecting the safety of the public.

9. Affirmative action at colleges and universities needs to be maintained now that more women than men are being enrolled, in order to keep from giving men an unfair advantage academically.

10. Having ensured that there is no environment for men where women don't belong (see no.6) it is important to have zero tolerance of any expression or action which any woman might regard as sexist to ensure greater freedom for everyone.

11. Only in a society which maintains a level of 95% of alimony and child support being paid by men to women can men and women be considered as equals.

12. An airline stewardess who earned $20,000 a year at the time that she married a baseball player earning $6 million a year is entitled, in the event of a divorce, to $3 million for each year of the marriage and probably more.

13. A man's opinions on how to rear and/or raise a child are invalid because he is not the child's mother. However, his financial obligation is greater because no woman gets pregnant by herself.

14. Disagreeing with any of these statements makes you anti-woman and/or a misogynist.

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Psst. Quiet. We're talking about…

HEY KEEP IT DOWN – THE WALLS HAVE EARS Y'KNOW

TURN OFF YOUR BOLD FACE…

"Operation Northwoods"


Ray Earles sent me a bunch of this stuff a while back and pretty much my bottom-line comment to him was "I just don't think this is possible." Both the Operation Northwoods conspiracy theories and the idea that the government of the United States and the political structure of the United States is that corrupt or that the individuals who hold high office have that much…extreme latitude…to do what you're accusing them of. Government, compared to the corporate sector is a very low-paying profession relative to the amount of time and energy it requires and the amount of oversight and checks and balances within which you have to function. It's also an enormous population of people. The idea that you could plan 9-11 as an inside job and have no one catch wind of it and blow the whistle…That was the same conclusion I came to with the Kennedy assassination. I think it's just a fundamentally Adversarial (as in God's Adversary) view of reality that is taking hold to a degree but which is founded in very base human instincts and a completely jaundiced and wholly if not complete inaccurate overview. For Americans – or Westerners of any kind -- to think that Americans who have chosen to sacrifice more lucrative private sector jobs to serve in Government in a Gold Fish Bowl Existence where the odds are very good that you will end up with your personal reputation in tatters after putting in 15- and 16-hour days, seven days a week for years on end would do that just to line their own pockets and that they would knowingly plot the deaths of other Americans…


All I can say is that it strikes me as an Infernal View of Reality. The net effect is to lend aid and comfort to Extremist Muslims and to reinforce that their worst opinions of the infidels are accurate and to divide the Western house that should be showing a united front in the War on Terror. I'm not talking about suppressing any of these views or websites and I don't think the White House is either. It just seems to me an unfortunate downside of democracy that so many of us have that low – and you can't get much lower than Infernal – an opinion of others of us. I can fundamentally disagree with Bill Clinton, but I would never in my wildest dreams imagine accusing him of plotting to kill American citizens for his personal aggrandisement. The thought is inconceivable to me as a civilized human being. As I think it is inconceivable to virtually every Republican.


In that sense, I do think it is a Left vs. Right thing. For some reason, Leftists seem to entertain a large constituency of people who really do think that people who don't share their political views or who are at the opposite end of the political spectrum are capable of mind-boggling human atrocities and that they commit them on a regular basis and use all of the resources of government to cover up those atrocities – meaning that virtually everyone in elected office is complicitous and duplicitous in those atrocities. As a civilized human being, you try to maintain a level of decorum in the face of these sorts of…(I'll be charitable here)…intellectual excesses, but if you're wondering why the Democrats are losing the political mainstream of the U.S. I think you don't have to go too much further to see why. If your Tent is Big enough to accommodate people who believe Americans plot to kill innocent Americans, then your Big Tent is Too Big, in my view.


I wrote on the Cerebus Yahoo! Board that I was curious as to your views on the Saddam Hussein execution, as I viewed the invasion and execution, in light of the above, as a mob hit. Below is a snippet from my comments:


What bothers me about all of this isn't the death penalty, or the fact that Saddam Hussein probably deserved a death sentence [PROBABLY?! – Dave] but rather, in my opinion, the whole thing comes across more as a Mafia hit.


In the 1980s, top officials in the Reagan administration saw Saddam as a useful surrogate. After Rumsfeld's visit to Baghdad in 1983, U.S. intelligence began supplying the Iraqi dictator with satellite photos showing Iranian deployments, tanks and other military hardware and bacteria cultures to make biological weapons, including anthrax. The United States backed Saddam's armies with military intelligence, economic aid and covert supplies of munitions. http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/09.18A.neswk.us.iraq.htm


I'm really curious what Dave's view is on this. Especially given the "We Got Him" photo and all.


Given the current government of Iraq was essentially created by the United States and its coalition allies, I saw the Saddam trial as them just rubbing his nose in it.


If it was a UN trial, that would be a different story…[if it was a UN trial Saddam would die of old age like Milosevic did before it was halfway through – Dave]


This brings us to the crux of the problem I have with death penalties. While I certainly think there are evil people in the word deserving of death (Saddam Hussein being a good candidate) ["WHEW" – Dave], I have little faith in human institutions making morally correct "life or death" judgements.


In regards to my earlier "mob hit" comments (which is the big problem I have with this particular execution), the way I see it is this: It is a fact Saddam was being used as an asset by the Reaganites against Iran (Bush I was Vice-President at the time). Then in recent years he became a liability, so they whacked him. We've seen that story over and over again on the Sopranos. Only this story is on a global scale.


"In your face!" "Don't mess with Texas!" Et al.


My problem with the current politics in general continues with Corporate welfare, our fiat economic system, and especially the World Bank, Secret societies such as the Yale Skull & Bones Society and its offshoot Bohemian Grove (where they, among other things, practice the pagan Cremation of Care ritual). Add to that the current trend of selling out the country, thus gradually lowering us towards third world status, the effect is chilling.


I was debating whether I should send you some additional information regarding the above and, in the end, decided not to. Though I decided I would send you some additional information regarding the Twin Towers and NORAD (which I see as the smoking gun in the 9-11 conspiracy) and as a bonus, a little article on Hillary Clinton. Take them for what they are, and while these internet printouts are not the extent of my research, they do nicely sum up my major views or objections to the official White House story. I am guessing that others have most likely already send you this information, or at the very least, that you are not at all interested in reading it. However, since all my research keeps sending me back to these points, and the Administration has not addressed these points sufficiently to the public, they have been included here.


I'd like to challenge you on the 9-11 and Gulf War issues, because that's one of the few, if not only, areas where I outright disagree with your thinking.


And hey, if your thinking is right, then I'd like to be convinced!


And if my thinking is right, well, then maybe I can convince you.

(of course, probably not in this letter…)


So that is my thinking on politics.


Go ahead and rip into it.

Tomorrow: Ripping into it but in as kind and gentle a way as possible

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REPLIES POSTED ON THE CEREBUS YAHOO! GROUP
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