The Republican Religious Party is Winning Control…

…Of Women’s Bodies.  The Republican War on Women is alive and well

The Republican Religious Party is winning the war to gain control of women’s bodies, and therefore their reproductive lives.  I am thankful that my daughters are grown now and do not plan any more children.  I am terribly sorry that my 4 years old granddaughter will now have the state control her choices as a reproducing female in America.  Evil religion is behind all this.

• ARIZONA now has the earliest surgical abortion ban  in the nation at 20 weeks, and the earliest medical abortion ban at 7 weeks.   Arizona sucks; it is controlled by a Republican religious junta.
• ALABAMA wants to make it nearly impossible to receive RU-486.  All women move awayquickly…the state of Alabama does not have your best interest at heart
• GEORGIA’S horrendous “women as livestock” bill forces women to carry non-viable fetuses to term.  Women as Livestock…aka women are not allowed to control their own bodies.  Horrendous doesn’t even begin to describe the evilness of this law.  The South Sucks
• TENNESSEE is criminalizing harm to embryos.  Just try drinking a glass of wine, or walking into a smoke filled room there.
• TEXAS women are forced to look at the image of their most likely “trans-vaginal” ultrasound and listen to the fetal heartbeat.  This is actually State Rape…you will not be allowed to opt out of this travesty.  Thank your local Republican politicians for this.  Another failed state.
• MISSISSIPPI will become the first abortion-clinic-free state in July. (Just picture the license plate slogan!)  Everyone with any sense will leave this failed state soon.  Mississippi stands at the bottom of all indicators of a happy place to live
• SOUTH CAROLINA seeks to eliminate abortions in the case of rape from their health plans.  Also planned is to eliminate abortion in case of Incest…this is the grossest form of state control ever.
• WISCONSIN Planned Parenthood clinics have halted all medical abortions.  Quick leave the state.  Republican Religious Party governor Scott Walker is being recalled for being a asshats.

America is rapidly approaching being a State controlled fascist country…and it is the Republican Religious Party and their doublespeak tactics that is leading us there.  They and their church buddies are Evil.

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Cactus Flowers Are Blooming

The Hedgehog Cactus are blooming

In the next week or so I’ll be out in the desert around here with camera in hand

In the next few days I think the Prickly Pears cacti will be blooming
The ones in my front yard have about a thousand  pods ready to bloom

The neighbors did already
Sony A300 with Minolta 50mm f2.8 Macro

Monument Fire in Arizona

The Monument fire in Southern Arizona just keeps getting bigger.  Some homes have already burned out.  At this time the fire is 17 % contained.

Monument fire, Sierra Vista, AZ...June 15, 2011

Funny helicopter....great firefighter

The giant helicopter shown left can carry hundreds and hundreds of gallons of a red slurry to help damp the fire…really funny/ugly looking, but a tremendous help to the firefighters.

 

 

 

 

 

The fire has covered about 10,000 acres at this time and many hundreds of people have been forced to evacuate their homes and go to shelters and await news of whether their homes survived.  This Monument fire  is one of three presently burning in Arizona; one is about 185,000 acres and is about 60% contained, the other is a giant one at close to 480,000 acres and is 29% contained.  Firefighters in Arizona are definitely earning their pay this year…well, actually they earn it all the time. 🙂  They are brave people who contribute tremendously to society and they deserve our respect.

Monument fire, Sierra Vista, AZ June 15, 2011

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Little hard to breath at times, if you have lung problems you don’t want to be here.

Sierra Vista is about 75 miles South / slightly East of Tucson; a nice little town that is also home to Fort Huachuca, which is home of the U.S. Army Intelligence Center and the U.S. Army Network Enterprise Technology Command (NETCOM)/9th Army Signal Command.
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UPDATE 6-19-2011  Fire is now about 27,000 acres and roughly 27% contained.  Many buildings have burned and many people still cannot go home.
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Republican Version of Health Care?

Well Arizona Republicans are unveiling their version of a health care plan to us poor citizens.
Rep. Kate Brophy McGee, R-Phoenix, said that SB 1593 eliminates existing laws which require that companies that want to sell their insurance to Arizona residents be licensed and regulated by the state Department of Insurance. They say the increased competition will provide more opportunities for Arizonans to get the coverage they want at a price they can afford.  I’m sure nothing could go wrong there. 😦

Ms. Kate Brophy McGee said that is good news for those who don’t want or need that kind of coverage and the costs entailed. Conversely, those who want coverage for specific conditions can shop for a policy which includes that.  The bad news is of course that unregulated non-licensed companies will be free to do whatever they want and run their business in a shady manner and the poor insured people will be screwed many times over…again.  Part of the Republican agenda is to unregulate most all businesses.

Also to be considered is that the legislation wipes out more than two dozen mandates for what conditions must be covered for policies issued in Arizona. These range from chiropractic care and breast reconstruction to even how much time a woman would be allowed to remain in the hospital following child birth.  And let’s not forget that unregulated private insurers would be free to dis-allow anything they want. It would be much worse than the present day system where you often have to get a lawyer to make them pay up for many illnesses.

The Republicans are destroying the middle class in America and the above is just one more way they are f*cking over us.  We Democrats are helping to put these clowns in office…we have to get off our duffs and vote in ALL elections.  Set up rides for older voters, do the neighborhood walk door-to-door, volunteer to help your party.  Lets make the coming elections a shutout for Republicans.

Remember, in the 2012 presidential elections the Republicans will probably front a evangelical fundamentalist religious candidate such as Romney or Huckabee…we really don’t want 4 or 8 years with a religious fundamentalist leader again…George Bush was bad enough and he was an idiot.  Romney and Huckabee are very smart and they DO have an agenda they will not speak of.
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If Pregnant Don’t Go To A Catholic Hospital

“Would you ask someone else to die for your religious beliefs? A new proposal moving through Congress makes clear that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops apparently expects everyone to die for theirs. The same members of Congress who last week attempted to dial back the definition of rape to the nineteenth century now propose another change to federal law that is just as shocking: in a move long sought by the political arm of the Catholic clergy, hospitals would be permitted to refuse to treat women with life-threatening emergencies.”  Nancy Northup/HuffPo

If your pregnant and are having problems with your pregnancy, do not, under any circumstances, go to a Catholic hospital.  If you are the husband of a pregnant woman having problems, do not take her to a Catholic hospital.

And:

Last week Sierra Vista Hospital, in rural Southeast Arizona, abandoned its affiliation with the Catholic Carondelet Health Systems. One year into a 2-year trial period, reality apparently hit home. The hospital board could no longer ignore daily picketing by concerned citizens, growing discontent of physicians barred from delivering high quality medical care and mounting evidence that strict doctrinal enforcement undermines a community’s trust in its medical provider.
Barbara Coombs/HuffPo

It needs to be said again; if pregnant and having problems with that pregnancy…do not, under any circumstances, check into a Catholic hospital.  They dispense their medical care by reference to the Catholic Dogma…and the mother is a very second class person in case of problems.  Just like in the Church, the woman doesn’t count.

Remember, to the Catholics it’s Church dogma over Science and womanhood.
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End of the Monsoon Season

Gathering Monsoon clouds over the mountains.
Our Monsoon season ended here this past week and we are finally getting some cooler, dryer atmosphere again. Pretty good one this past year;  it lasted a few weeks longer than usual.  Monsoon is pretty important to Southern Arizona as we depend on it filling up our ground water reservoirs for another year, and cooling off those 100 degree plus days of our summer.

We returned from a conference at the Mayo clinic in Scottsdale, AZ not long ago and  thoroughly enjoyed it.  The weather was great and there was finally a (very small) hint of fall in the air .  Phoenix and the surrounding cities of Scottsdale, Mesa, Tempe, Peoria, and whatever other burgs there are snuggling up against it makes a humongous metropolitan area now.  It has grown like  Los Angeles did in its early years…city after city incorporating and blending in with the surrounding cities. Writer Edward Abbey has called it “the blob that is eating Arizona,”  Population of the whole area is said to be close to 5 million now; and it is the fifth largest city in the US, and the second fastest-growing Metro area in the US…..Glad I don’t live there.

Weather I’m waiting for.
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Science, Religion definitely don’t mix

Random ramblings and thoughts on history and Christianity.

Why would God allow the Jewish people to be enslaved by the Egyptians?

Why wouldn’t God just change the heart of the Pharaoh, instead of killing all those humans and animals in the time of Moses?

Why did the Jews have to fight to take the ‘promised land?’

Didn’t Jesus know he would be resurrected to sit at the side of God; that he was the son of God, or maybe God himself, if you believe in a triune God.

Radiocarbon dates of less than 10,000 years are very accurate. lots of times can be checked and calibrated against historical records.

30,000?? BC The last Neanderthals die.

25,000 to 20,000BC Someone..is painting murals on cavewalls in France, and making beautiful spear points (Solutrean) that resemble points in later North American (Clovis) points.

10,000 to 5000 BC Humans arrive in Patagonia, South America.

9000 to 6000 BC Paleoindians in Utah using atlatl.

8000 BC Maybe earlier…farming in Asia.

8000 BC Rock carving in Murujuga, Australia.

8000 BC Mammoth kill in Naco, Arizona. Found in 1953, It had 8 Clovis points embedded. Slightly North of Naco, 9 more Mammoths and 13 associated Clovis points..dated to 9000 BC.

7000? BC Milk River Valley, Alberta, Canada. Blackfeet and Shoshone natives carving petroglyph’s.

7000 to 3200 BC Residents of the city of Mehrgarrh, near Indus valley, were farming, smelting metal, herding domesticated animals, flint knapping, tanning and making pottery.

6000 to 5500 BC Farming spread around the ‘fertile crescent.’ of the Middle East.

5000 BC the first farming culture of Central, and parts of, Northern Europe.

4100 to 4000 BC The Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve. No humans elsewhere on earth. Europe, North, Central, or South America, Asia, India, China, Mongolia, Australia, South Pacific Islands… …Empty… according to the Bible

2750 BC The Epic of Gilgamesh. Babylon alone had probably ten thousand people.

2550 to 2500? BC Pyramid of Khufu/Cheops, Other pyramids were soon being built in Egypt. Large population there. Egypt had a different language than Babylon.

2500? BC The Sphinx built.

2500 to 2000 BC Stonehenge being built in England: Population of England probably in the tens of thousands. Large prehistoric city, probably associated to the henge, found in modern times, a mile from Stonehenge.

2250 BC The Flood…8 humans left on the whole planet earth.

2250 to ??? the answersingenesis people think there was another ice age after the flood and the Neanderthals were spawned after that???

2250 BC Egyptian history continues unbroken, as does most of the world. No mention in hieroglyphs of all life destroying flood. Bronze age happening..no signs of interruption.

2125 BC Tower of Babel…probably tens of thousands of people in Babylon alone.

1750 BC Peak of Minoan civilization in Crete.

1515 BC Moses out of Egypt. Approximate population of Egypt probably 2-2½ million. Moses took about 1 million Jews with him…There goes the tax base.

1500 BC And earlier, Mexico was growing maize/corn and messing with corn genetics..and making Tacos? Yum!..Well not making tacos I guess.