Lilac Colored Glasses

Disclaimer: I know at least one person reading this is English and for the record, I have an English friend in real life, so please, I hope those two people (or any other sane English citizens) don’t take offense to what I’m about to say. It is, for the most part, aimed at British media, not individual people.

In case you weren’t aware, the European Union decided to have a president. The function of the EU president is pretty much that of mediator between heads of state in the EU. He should be a person who is adept in the art of compromise. The three front runners for this position were Holland’s Jan Balkenende, Belgium’s Herman Van Rompuy and… wait for it… The U.K.’s Tony Blair.

Yeah, that’s right, W.’s little lapdog. The guy who lied right along with the rest of the American right wing by saying that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and sent British soldiers to the desert to die in a war that was based on a lie.

I can’t honestly tell you much about Balkenende other than that he said he didn’t want the office of EU president but then quietly rallied for it. As far as Van Rompuy, this man is well known in Belgium as an intelligent, financially savvy, poetic politician who basically took up the mantle of prime minister in Belgium against his own wishes when Yves Leterme dropped the ball during the Fortis bank crisis last December. Tony Blair is… well, I imagine you all know Tony Blair. the sad thing is America portrays him as a good guy just because he was “on our side” when it came to sending troops to Iraq.

Half of our own country wasn’t “on our side” when it came to sending troops to Iraq. So Tony is about as good a guy as, um…W.
And anyone who knows me at all should know that to me that puts Tony somewhere above the Bubonic plague but just below a pus-encrusted pond scum sandwich.

Moving on…

The past few days the news here in Belgium started picking up something interesting.

The British media had started slinging mud at Van Rompuy, and Belgium in general. I believe the initial headline was: “Britain ruled by a Belgian? You must be joking.”

The media (including the BBC) went on to criticize Van Rompuy’s name, Belgian beer, roads and pretty much anything else they could come up with an excuse to criticize. Which Belgium found interesting because their take on the EU presidency was that it could be achance for England to become a closer part of the EU as a whole. You know…work together as an economic community…compromise and do the whole give and take thing (when it comes to the U.K.’s involvement in the EU they currently take what they like and give as little as possible). Apparently, in the meantime, England deluded themselves into believing that the president of the EU would be some sort of ruling force. So, like, what England? Where you trying to conquer Europe? Cause those glory days died back about the time that America kicked your sorry asses in the Revolutionary War.

Yeah, that’s right.

You’re offended by being “ruled” (ruled meaning, in reality, being mediated in any disagreements between yourselves and other countries in the EU) by a Belgian? But you weren’t offended by your Prime Minister shoving his nose up the ass of the leader of the country that bent you over and jammed your tea bags right back where they belonged? Wow. I mean. Seriously. And the best part is, the party that Blair was rubbing up on all that time? Right wing America? They’ll be the first ones to tell you how lame you are. They’ll be happy to remind you that you’d be part of the Third Reich right now if it wasn’t for the good ol’ boys coming in and cleaning up your European mess for you.

And you really think Blair would be a good neutral mediator? When the first thing his country did was try to run a smear campaign against the opposition? When his response to a war situation was to order troops into battle more than any other Prime Minister in British history? I’m sorry, but I’m just totally flabbergasted at the nerve of the British press. It amazes me that there is this expectation that England would be good at ruling anything.

England has been America’s bitch since September 1783. You’d think they’d've learned to lose gracefully by now.

As of this evening Herman Van Rompuy is the first President of the European Union.
I guess we’ll see how well England can handle being “ruled” by Belgium.

There are some phrases that you can never ever imagine yourself thinking ever in your entire life.

Today mine was “I hate it when the German dairy farmers have a protest.”

Never, ever in my most obscure musings would I have ever guessed that that very thought would be running through my head most of my way home from work.

First a bit of background:
Dairy farmers in Europe used to have a milk quota. To my understanding they were basically paid by Europe to not produce over a certain amount of milk. The point of this was to kill off third world country markets in the dairy sector. With new international free trade agreements, however, Europe could not maintain the old system and so it has become much more “dog eat dog (cow eat cow?)” in the land of European dairy farming. As it is now, dairy farmers have no quota and so they’ve been producing more milk expecting equal profits. However, the milk quota was keeping the market in check and therefore allowing all the farmers to stay in business. Without the quotas the farmers are effectively driving themselves out of business.

And they’re pissed.

They want the old system back, but Europe can’t cope with the old system in the context of the new trade laws.

So the farmers have been holding demonstrations every so often since the beginning of summer. At one point farmers filled some swimming pools with milk in protest both in Brussels and Wallonia (and apparently some Polish farmers filled a cloister pond and killed all the fish). Today they brought a ton of tractors and blocked off Schuman Square as well as the Schuman Metro Station, which, coincidentally, is the station I use to take the metro every day. The tractors were sort of interesting, but by the time I was headed home, it was starting to get rowdy. People were setting off cherry bombs in the middle of crowded areas. One went off about 5 feet from me while I was skirting the square to find another metro station. Apparently there was also a hay launcher and a manure machine aimed at the riot squad that was monitoring the situation and as we speak a veritable river of manure is floating down the street towards the royal palace. And while I used to sympathize with the farmers, what I saw today totally wiped that out.

I can understand having demonstrations to try to keep your livelihood going, but these people were endangering passers by with the explosions and hay and manure being launched across the square. Not only that, but they inconvenienced thousands of people who had to get places and who had nothing to do with their issue. And were they chanting or marching or doing anything mildly “protesterly” this whole time?
No. Not at all. They were actually having a giant cookout and smoking ribs and pouring milk all over the square. It might as well have been a farmer’s block party.

All the dairy farmers in Europe are proving is that they lack class and dignity and I can’t say I’ll feel very sorry for them if half of the dairy farms in Europe go under. At least then they won’t have any more access to truckloads of shit and the ability to shut down one of the main arteries of a major city in the world.

*reposted from Immoral Matriarch because, well, as usual I think Maria hits the nail soundly on the head. Hard. With a spiked hammer. Which is why I love reading her.

You’re All Political Hypocrites

It’s amazing to me really.

Conservatives: When Bush when in office, you stood up or had excuses for everything he did. You sat back and allowed that administration to fuck our entire country, it’s principles and it’s people up the ass without so much as a reach around. Our country is in the condition it is in not because of Obamas few MONTHS in office and I find it puzzling how you can blame him, or STILL blame Bill Clinton for it. Yes, let’s ignore the torture, and civil liberties taken, and the illegal war, and us completely disintegrating any status we had in the world and causing everyone to hate us. Lets concentrate on how Obama is a socialist and is going to put us in more debt and all this other shit. It’s like you believe that he and Michelle’s conversations at night are like this:

Michelle: What are you we gonna do tomorrow night, Barack?

Barack: Same thing we do everything night, Michi – try to take over the world!!

You have soooo much to say now, but didn’t have a fucking thing to say back when Bush and Cheney were stomping all over everything and everyone. Congratulations – you’ve proved that it’s not on behalf of your country that you’re upset. It’s on behalf of your politics, or is your paychecks? Yeah, that sounds about right. You don’t give a shit about what happens to the country, as long as your $$ isn’t affected.

You sit there with your Bill O’Reilly and your Glenn Beck and you listen to that shit and let it fill your mind with absolute crap. And you think it’s the truth because the rest of the media is sooo liberal and Fox News tells it like it is and that’s why everyone hates them. No, actually – we all hate Fox News because they are LIARS and they propagate lies and myths and exaggerations. You forget that the extravagant cost of living is not Obama’s fault – it’s Obama’s problem. You forget the sky rocketing food and gas and utility prices. You forget the colleges increasing their tuition. The banks increasing their fees. You forget about all the $$ being forced from the pockets of hard working Americans. That was allll Bush’s doing.

You come to town hall meetings and instead of attempting to have rational discussions, you throw out terms like Nazi and Socialism and brandish weapons and you say we’ve all lost the world already and Barack is an angry black man with an agenda to make this country pay reparations through taxes and giving up rights. As if that makes any sense.

My grandfather, a black man born and raised in the south, who survived the civil rights movement, Jim Crow, the days when a man could be lynched for looking at a white person the wrong way, who has never, ever accepted a dime from the government, ever – if you discount the Medicare he now receives but that he paid for himself with decades of hard work, self employment and paying his taxes faithfully – is laying in a hospital bed right now and has been for a week, just having had 8 hour surgery to remove a 6″ cancerous tumor and 1/2 his colon. A man who built a 5500 square foot house for his wife with his own hands without taking out any loans and had no mortgage for 20 years until he fell for some slick talk and decided to finance it and ended up with a $2500 per month bill on it every month BEFORE Obama was elected (remember that big housing crisis that’s still ongoing? Yeah, that was Bush’s fault and it’s still affecting people) because he had gotten so sick with his 2nd type of cancer that he could barely walk and the medical bills that were piling up, not covered by Blue Cross Blue Shield or Medicare. Even HE is not an angry black man. And he has a shit load more to be wanting reparations for than Obama. And he doesn’t. He just wants to be able to live out the rest of his life as comfortably as he can with both prostate and colon cancer, in the house my grandmother dreamed of one night without worrying about how they are going to pay for their own funerals.

There are serious issues with our country. But it’s not Obama that you should be angry with. It’s yourselves. YOU let it get here, twiddling your thumbs because your taxes weren’t really being affected much. Because a white republican was in charge of things. Because other than ruining the lives of millions in other places and quietly going against everything the Republican party itself stood for (ahem – LESS government does not equal Patriot Act), things were just fine by you. Now, your fear of having to assist your fellow man in surviving instead of just subsisting like many, many of them are has got you all by the balls and you want to ‘make your voices heard’. Congratulations – make it heard. Just be fucking honest about why you want it heard. YOU’RE SELFISH. And you watch too much Fox News.

You want to talk about personal responsibility, not relying on the government for anything, about hard work and The American Dream. Where was your personal responsibility when Bush was in office? Where was it when you almost let the dumbest broad on the entire planet and a man close to senility become severely responsible for the well being of our nation? Where was your personal responsibility talk when it was the legality of abortions that decided who you were going to vote for rather than the legality of the war that’s put us $3,000,000,000,000 in debt? Where was it then? Exactly.

Now I don’t doubt some of you legitimately disagree with things happening. I can appreciate that – really. I don’t really understand it completely, but I can appreciate it. Those of you that are not jumping on the bandwagon of hate and untruths? Kudos. Those of you who were just as vocal about how wrong Bush and Cheney were in their various acts against or country? Kudos. I have serious admiration for you. Thank for being an American and sticking up for what you believe, and not only when it’s when your party is not the one holding power.

Liberals: Dude – Obama is not going to save the world on his own. Everything he’s doing and not doing right now should be subject to just as much scrutiny as we subjected Bush to, if not more because of the condition that administration left our country in and how desperately it needs repair. We cannot sit back and feel that our role in producing change in this country was completed when we won the election. We need to be vigilant, we need to do more than sit back and say ‘fuck these selfish ass Republicans’, watch John Stewart make them all look like idiots, and watch Obama give 1/2 answers at press conferences and throw out his marvelous rhetoric beating, around the bush when asked a direct question and then saunter off with more swagger and style than any other man on the planet, as easy as all those things are to do.

We need to be looking at that Healthcare bill. We need to be looking at his lack of action in other areas such as gay rights, education, the ‘war’, we need to be asking questions to our fellow liberals and looking for answers – still constantly questioning the powers that be. We need to show concern instead of blind faith and pay attention to all the little bills that are being introduced or worked on while everyone’s in an uproar about the perceived-to-be larger issues. I don’t have blind faith in GOD – I’m damn sure not going to have it in a flesh and blood man – I’m going to be proactive, as we all should be.

We want to get all offended when Republicans and Conservatives have something negative about Obama or Nancy Pelosi or anyone else in government that doesn’t have (R) plastered behind their name to act like it’s our job to quiet all dissenting opinions when, if we actually took the time to listen to the sides of the people that do NOT partake the ridiculous lambasting of idiocy like I named above, we may be able to learn something, just like we claim that they could have learned from us during the Bush travesties if they hadn’t been so blinded and dismissing of us bleeding hearts.

We do not want to end up like the Republicans are now: completely discredited when the next Republican takes office, whether that be in 3, or 7, or 30 years. Complaining about things that new president is doing then when we sat on our asses and allowed our country to go in directions we didn’t want to when The White House was blue. I don’t at least. We all want the country to change, I’m sure. I do, at least.

And, just as an unnecessary disclaimer – if if doesn’t apply, I wasn’t talking to you. If you were offended by it, it applies, so I was. Also, this wasn’t proofread because I’m lazy and I don’t feel like rereading it. If you find any typos, ignore them. If they affect your understanding of what I’m trying to say in this tangent, let me know and I’ll try to clear it up.

Everyone deserves freedom and the right to their opinion. Everyone deserves the right to disagree with someone or something. Everyone deserves the right to be represented by what they democratically elect. Don’t sit in silence. Spread the word.

Prior to my tumble down the stairs, I was planning to come back to my blog with a little song I heard recently. It’s an easy going, simple little tune and while CB and I do get a chuckle over it’s schlageriness (made that one up myself), it’s been stuck in my head ever since I decided it’d be a good “end of hiatus” tune.

However, I thought it best to tell you about what happened Monday and I couldn’t see a good place to segue into a Dutch schlageresque song. It’s kind of hard to stay upbeat when you feel so beat up.  Much of my physical pain is subsiding (though my wrist is hurting more) and the longer I’m able to sit in one place, the more I’ve made the mistake of reading the news.

I usually avoid the news because it depresses me and considering the month I’ve had, I don’t need to be more depressed, but this week I found myself clicking around the headlines and reading about things like the Maori protest in Auckland, the court’s decision to uphold Prop.8, the GOP trying to find ways to deny the first ever Hispanic woman from a place in the Supreme Court, and Israel’s Knesset trying to pass a law to imprison anyone who denies Israel is a Jewish state.

What most of it boils down to is discrimination, for one reason or another and it really makes me feel sick to read the comments of the “Joe the Plumbers” out there who find any reason they can to put down those who are different than them. I can’t say I know much about council seats in New Zealand, but the disgusting amount of racism in the comments blew me away.  And I won’t even get started on Prop. 8 cause that’s just asking for trolls. But again, the comments I saw? I can’t understand how people justify some of their own heinous opinions. These people are minorities who protested peacefully for their rights to be represented as human beings and they were mocked for “pissing people off by wasting their time in traffic”.

Are you kidding me?

I doubt that the African Americans who no longer have to drink from separate water fountains feel as though the Million Man March was a waste of time.
I doubt that the women who vote on every election day think that the suffragettes were lazy or whiny for demanding to be treated as equals in society.

Point is, the world is really bumming me out today. So before I limp off to rest my rear (and back and arm and toes), I’m going to do my best to stay positive and upbeat, and in doing so, I’d like to offer you all a happy little song to be lodged in your heads (disclaimer: I never said the song is actually any good, but it is upbeat and chipper).

Heb je even voor mij (loose translation: do you have a minute for me) – Frans Bauer