How to Win an Election in 18 Easy Steps (Republican Edition):

1. Start by choosing candidates who have failed to win over 50% of the elections they've participated in... even within their own party.
2. Make sure that your candidate's income is so extravagant and secretive that it will be seen as a symbol of their "down home, just like you" personality.
3. Buy the voting machines.
4. Eliminate voting for people who may or may not be "eligible" to vote in our nation's "exclusive democracy".
5. Back up your wishy-washy candidate of last resort with a vice candidate who is best known for a legislative failure regarding the budget.
6. Ignore the media. Tell everyone that all media is against your candidates from the outset and nothing they read from any source will ever be truly true.
7. Make sure that women, gays, blacks, hispanics, religions or other minorities are alienated within the ranks of your party to the greatest degree possible.
8. Promise to stay focused on the economy when America has a bad economy. If that economy should happen to improve on any level, switch focus to "Muslim Terrorists" because that's a perennial winner for our side.
9. Switch your official campaign slogan as often as possible to keep everybody guessing.
10. Kiss up to the Queen of England because she just loves it when people imply that she shares their racist point of view.
11. Ignore the polls - polls are never accurate unless 100% of the respondents are from states whose names begin with the letter K.
12. Have your candidate deny his own religion and make sure that even the only minority to which he is a member is ultimately thrown under the bus in the end.
13. Defend your candidate with an army of has-been celebrities, strippers, porn stars, vegas casino tycoons and racist "reality TV" personalities.
14. Interrupt women at every opportunity and give them the "3rd Wife" treatment.
15. Assume that every veteran and every member of the armed forces is automatically on your side. After all, they take a pledge to uphold the Republican Party, don't they?
16. Do everything your father would be ashamed of you for.
17. Rely most heavily on Fox News as your "think tank" du jour and try not to think about the idea that they will only be successful in the media marketplace if your opponent retains his office and they have a "boogeyman" to sell.
18. When all else fails, which is known to happen as long as there is a black democratic President at the helm of your campaign, rig the machines... This will be easy since you bought the machines in step 3.

~ written by known communist and gay muslim sympathizer, Jarrett Terrill for FloridaSqueezed.com

Good Chicken Without All The Controversy!

I've been watching youtube videos and reading tweets from Chrisitian people all over America who are weighing in on the Chick-Fil-A controversy.

Some people, like Sarah Palin, have chosen to back the restaurant and even give them a bunch of free advertising because they donate to anti-gay groups.  Palin is trying to counteract an LGBT boycott against the business which charges that people should not support a business that donates to anti-gay causes.   Of course, the response from Chick-Fil-A supporters is predictable yet nonsensical:  "It's not that we hate gays, it's that we support marriage."

If you support marriage, make it available to more people and then don't get a divorce.  That's my opinion!

Now - having said that... There are many Christian Americans who are caught between a rock and a hard place right now... They love fried chicken, they love to support Christian family-owned businesses but they don't want to contribute to any controversy or feel like they're interfering with anyone's civil rights...

I have a solution for these folks...  It's called Lee's Famous Recipe Chicken and it satisfies all of the above and THEN some.
Here's all your questions, answered:

Is it a big corporate chain or is it a small business?
It is a corporation, and yes, they have more than a couple locations.  However, they are a smaller business than Chick-Fil-A and are likely to appreciate your business a lot more.

Who owns or runs Lee's Famous Recipe and what sort of things to do they care about?
Their name is the Stillwell family and the charity called Never Say Never is very dear to them.  They aim to help people who are disabled participate in athletics (NSNF facebook page).

Do they donate to anti-gay or pro-gay causes?
None that I am aware of...

Are their employees happy on the job?
Yes - their employees seem to think their workplace treats them fairly and the owners are VERY much involved with the day-to-day business of Lee's Famous Recipe.

I strongly advocate that if you MUST eat fried chicken, you want it to taste good, and you don't want to contribute to any controversy - go with Lee's Famous Recipe if there is one near you...  They have locations in Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Virginia Tennessee, Alabama and South Carolina.

Do you know of an American Family-Owned Business that deserves a little bit of attention?  Please tell us about them in the comments section!  FloridaSqueezed loves to support small businesses who make and sell their products in the United States!

Mark Pryor (D-AK) and Ben Nelson (D-NE) are the worst. Here's who they REALLY work for:

Two Democratic Senators On Thursday joined their Republican colleagues (as they always do) to defeat the single aspect of Obama's "Jobs Plan" that would have benefitted out-of-work Americans like Police, Emergency First Responders and Teachers.

Notorious "Blue Dog" Democrats Mark Pryor (Arkansas) and Ben Nelson (Nebraska) are infamous for sabotaging the President at key moments in his 1st term but this time they may have gone too far. The aspect of the Jobs Bill that the two Senators voted against cloture on would have opened up debate on the Senate floor as to the possibility of a relatively small tax directed at millionaires to pay for the job spur.

Americans when polled, overwhelmingly support a tax on the rich and corporations to help our nation's fiscal situation.

It should be noted that Pryor and Nelson voted, essentially, not to even discuss Obama's plan and every Republican agreed with them.

These two Senators have only their campaign donors at heart and stand steadfast against American prosperity and the creation of jobs in the USA.

Contributions to Senator Ben Nelson's Campaign came primarily from the Banking and Insurance industries during the last election cycle. Berkshire Hathaway, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Amgen, Citigroup, Monsanto, Bank of America and the Carlysle Group were some of Ben Nelson's biggest campaign contributors.


The bulk of Senator Mark Pryor's campaign contributions come from Murphy Oil (a petroleum and gas lobbying group), Experian Consumer Credit/Banking, Merill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Wal-Mart Stores, Time-Warner communications, Comcast cable/internet providers and sadly... the American Federation of Teachers (whom he has gravely harmed with this vote).

The Supreme Court Ruling on Contributions is Outrageous

This opinion by Jarrett Terrill appeared in the The Florida Agenda newspaper on February 4, 2010.

On January 21, The Supreme Court of the United States did something unthinkable. (Well, at least the 5 who had been appointed by one of the Bush's did...) They overturned campaign finance laws in a decision known as "Citizens United V. Federal Elections Commission".

When a Supreme Court decision is reached, it sets a precedent, which becomes "the law" as we know it. The plaintiffs in this case, Citizens United, were a rag-tag group of Republican propaganda artists who wanted to make a negative documentary about Hillary Clinton and play it on TV before the primary election in 2008. They said the US Government had denied them their "freedom of speech" by not allowing their corporation to fund their smear film without forming a political action committee, known as a PAC.

PACs are necessary to fund campaign ads because they ensure that only those members of a corporation who wish to donate will do so and that the general funds of a corporation or publicly traded company are not used against the wishes of the stockholders, employees or union members. Citizens United wanted to fund the film and its broadcast out of pocket, ignoring maximum donations allowed to a political campaign.

Here's what's wrong with the way the Supreme Court handled this case:

Citizens United was not even trying to overturn campaign finance laws, they were only trying to claim that the laws did not apply to their propaganda film which they were referring to as a "documentary" instead of a campaign ad. This means that the conservative members of the Supreme Court used the case of Citizens United as a catalyst to legislate campaign financing from the bench, which is not in the enumerated powers of the judicial branch of government.

Secondly, the ruling and opinions of the conservative justices who blatantly thumbed their noses at the Constitution did not even match up with the subject at hand. For instance, Clarence Thomas gave a lengthy opinion in which was arguing for the rights of anti-gay marriage petitioners to to sheild their names from public record in order to avoid social outcasting and retribution. The transparency of state legislative initiatives has nothing to do with campaign finance laws at all, and Clarence Thomas clearly has no business sitting on the Supreme Court of the USA if he is unable to tell the difference.

Thirdly, the case is not a "freedom of speech" issue, as the conservative justices claim. The First Amendment only applies to citizens of the United States; corporations are not people. By allowing a corporation the right of unlimited campaign financing and not placing the limits of maximum allowed donations on the corporation, the Supremes are trying to ensure that Blackwater, Halliburton, Wal-Mart and MSNBC can stock all 3 branches of Government with their own appointees because independently funded persons cannot afford to compete in terms of campaign spending.

But at last, the most disturbing and glaringly obvious problem with this new law that the Supreme Court has audaciously written from the Bench is that it allows foreigners to have more influence over the candidates who run for office in America than her own citizens do. Because the largest, wealthiest corporations are multi-national conglomerates, the Supreme Court is trying to ensure that China, India, Iran and Saudi Arabia all get a vote in our government.

This Supreme Court decision goes against the very concept of Democracy, against the Constitution and obliterates any chances of an elected official being a voice for anyone except the corporation which hired them.

The Seven False Gods of the Right Wing

7. Nationalism - Throughout history, Nationalism has usually been the driving motivator for war, fascism and all sorts of other reactionary misdeeds. Nationalism is a hyper-idealized view of one's country in which the nationalist ascribes their own sense of morality to the foundation of the entire nation. Usually dressing itself as ordinary patriotism, Nationalism is far more feverish and irrational than simply being a fan of the government. It is the result of mass propaganda, fear and an erasure of the lines that usually separate business, media, religion and government.

6. Charity - It has been said that Republicans give more to "charity" than Democrats do and I'm inclined to believe it. In fact, our charitable donation system in America seems specifically designed for the purpose of justifying that statement. The fact is, things get much worse when you indiscriminately throw money at your television screen. Religious charitable funds are some of the biggest and most unregulated industries in the world and many of them do as much harm as good. Mormon adoptions of underprivileged children from over seas are largely a justified version of human trafficking< and just recently, CBN (the Christian Broadcasting Network) told their donors that Haiti had caused its own earthquake destruction by signing a pact with the Devil. The network drew in millions of dollars in one week and much of that funding will go toward furthering their own presence and infrastructure in the small, underprivileged nation. Very little (if any) of the donations will actually help the people of Haiti.

5. Racialism - Racialism is the thought process that skirts around racism and disguises itself as harmless observation of racial differences. The most important thing to understand about racialism is that even when the racialist appears to be only pointing out racism in others, they are obsessed with it. Their first instinct is always to discuss race. Their hypersensitivity and bizarre misunderstandings generally give them away as outright racists in the end. A classic example of this was when a young John McCain campaigner named Ashley Todd cooked up false accusations about a ficticious black male Obama campaign worker who supposedly assaulted her by cutting a letter "B" into her face. The story was immediately picked up by Fox News and celebrated within Republican ranks as a sure-fire win for McCain in the 2008 election. The idea was that voters would react in a racist manner by associating Miss Todd's "attacker" with the skin tone and gender of Barack Obama. So while Miss Todd could simply indicate that the man who "savagely" attacked her was black, that unto itself would not be perceived as racist... except for the fact that she made it all up.

4. Public Opinion - Republicans and Conservatives are married to the idea that a majority of Americans agree with them. They love to indicate polls and percentages of "true Americans" who think exactly as they do. Truthfully, the general public can manipulated to believe just about anything. Certain people in the media have developed an intimate understanding of how propaganda can be used to create the illusion that mob rule is the law in America. The most glaring example of this is CNN's Nancy Grace. Nancy Grace runs a gossip show on CNN where she focuses on muders, rapes and abductions. She leads her viewers down a path of mob rule in which they feel as though they can investigate these matters from the comfort of their living rooms. The problem with Nancy Grace's style of entertainment is that her viewers rarely suspect that her show is simply entertainment. Nancy Grace fans feel as though they are actually doing the work of judge, jury and executioner and they hand down a guilty verdict every single time. The result of an actual trial matters very little to these people. It is the court of public opinion that they aim to try cases in. It's basically a mass-media form of public flogging and shunning without a trial, evidence or proof. Guilty until proven innocent, every single time.

3. Oil - One of the most shocking revelations of the 2008 election season was when video was leaked on to YouTube of Alaska's then-governor leading her hometown in prayer for a gas pipeline. To many right-wingers, there was nothing wrong with this scene and it all seemed quite normal to them. They even chanted "drill baby drill" as a campaign slogan of sorts. What resulted was a shockwave in the larger community of educated persons - the sudden realization that Republicans had created a new religion in which God & Oil had been merged into one holy concept. This also includes, of course, Global Warming Denialism and a celebration of private ownership over natural resources. Incidentally, that brings us to the 2nd False God of the Right Wing...

2. The Corporation - What can be said for a situation where Republican traders at an energy company laugh at elderly Bush voters and say they can go fuck themselves because their electricity has inexplicably gone out but the company got what it wanted? Well, this is exactly the situation shown with shocking clarity in the documentary calledEnron: The Smartest Guys in The Room. Republicans used to openly argue for what's called "deregulation" - a process of removing government restraints and safety nets on corporations. These days, they disguise deregulation as Independent Regulation which is not really regulation at all. To put it in simpler terms - they appoint the fox to guard the henhouse. Another interesting Republican tool is to disguise large multi-national conglomerates in terms that sound less severe, making the public think that they are protecting "small businesses" and somehow deregulating in favor of Ma & Pa shops in the American countryside. Nothing could be further from the truth.

1. Sexual Purity - This is the number 1 false God of the Right Wing because it is the most powerful. Everywhere you go in America, you are met with people who confuse virginity with innocence and religion with heterosexism. But there are contradictions to be found in this view of reality. For instance, Salt Lake City Utah, the epicenter of Mormonism, is the capitol of online pornography consumerism in the United States. Furthermore, those who protest sexual impurity the loudest are invariably caught with their pants down at any given moment. Two of the most devastating examples can be found in the cases of Ted Haggard (the disgraced President of the National Association of Evangelicals) and Carrie Prejean (the disgraced leader of the "opposite marriage" movement). But the real reason that Sexual Purity is number 1 on the list is because the consequences of worshiping this false god are the most deadly. In recent news, the Republic of Uganda has decided to implement the death penalty for persons who are charged with what they call "aggravated homosexuality" and prison sentences for anyone who refuses to testify against the behavior.

As a Buddhist myself, I cannot tell you which God to follow. I have no desire to influence your religious or spiritual life other than to indicate what I know does NOT work. The Seven False Gods of the Right Wing have shown themselves to be nothing more than snake oil and should be viewed with heightened skepticism in America. Namaste.

Where Not To Work

Can I just take a moment to say that no matter how broke I am, I will NEVER work for Wal-Mart?

Here's a few of the reasons that I will never shop at or apply for a job at Wal-Mart:

1. Wal-mart security beat a woman to death in China for allegedly stealing merchandise. After ignoring pleas to stop from the woman's family (for 2 hours!) the woman was dead and the reciept for her purchase was found in her pocket. No trial or arrests have been made in connection with the murder.

2. A Wal-mart in Michigan, being too cheap to pay for employees to scan merchandise has taken to making customers scan their own merchandise. Recently, a gay couple who were using a faulty scanner, were accused of stealing a package of Bic lighters. Once the matter was proven to be a fault of the self-scanner and not theft, the couple was still arrested and their adopted special-needs children were locked in a back room at Wal-mart with abusive employees.

3. Despite Wal-Mart security's ability to kill women and abuse gay men's children, they still can't prevent their customers from being raped in the parking lot at their stores in Florida or keep teenagers from shooting people in front of their families in Texas.

4. Wal-Mart does everything just short of waterboarding their employees who try to organize a union. They take their employees into management-run interrogation rooms where they are not allowed to have witnesses from their own employment level and threaten their lives, jobs and families.

5. Former Wal-Mart Spies say that the company has the ability to read the private emails of their employees who are on Gmail or Hotmail. They routinely dress their spies as local "liberal types" and infiltrate unions, city council meetings and anti-walmart activist groups.

6. Wal-Mart customers are internationally known as the most obese, mentally handicapped and classless people in the world.
7. Her affiliation with Wal-Mart is, to this day, a big gaping scar on Sec. Hillary Clinton's resume: