Subject:

[mamajoan]

No one replied to my entry from yesterday about how good my day was. I guess it goes to show that people only care about you when you have a bad day. ;)

I am really getting irritated with people trying to spread this "Not One Damn Dime Day" thing around. If you haven't seen it, the idea is that if we all refuse to buy anything on one day -- this Thursday, I believe it is -- it'll send a message to Dubya and Congress about how unhappy we are about the war. Um? Can someone please explain to me how that works? OK, so instead of going into my little mom-n-pop store to buy a carton of milk, I stay home and pour water on my cereal. And Dubya gets the message, how? Let's follow the train of thought. I stay home. So does everyone else. The mom-n-pop store remains open all day -- paying for electricity, heat, rent, employees' salaries -- but takes in no money. And this sends a message to Congress ... how, exactly?

I could rant on at length, but instead I'll just point you to the Snopes debunking of this thing:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/not1dime.asp
If anyone tries to rope you into this stupid thing, please point them to that link.
And if I see this idiocy on my flist or in my inbox one more time I'm really going to explode on someone.

In cheerier news, it's really fucking cold outside. A whopping eight degrees Fahrenheit last I checked. ;) No, really, that IS cheerier! Much though I hate cold weather, I'm actually kind of relieved, because this winter had been so mild it was starting to freak me out. I was getting that "waiting for the shoe to drop" feeling in a serious way. On the whole, I'd rather have a cold snap than a huge pile o' snow any day. (Not that this cold snap rules out a huge pile o' snow, alas.)

The main problem with the cold is trying to figure out how to make Isaac keep his mittens on. We have two pairs and neither will stay on his hands more than a minute. He just doesn't grasp this whole leaving the mittens on so hands don't get cold concept. This could become an issue.

Comments

[tiggrrl.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that link, I've been feeling like a bad liberal because I wasn't sure of the logic of participating in that, and now I have some backup to use if I'm given any grief.

[flick.livejournal.com]

Pah! Who cares about a *good* day?

Give us the angst!

[g]

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

Bahahaha, I knew it all along. Foul-weather friends, the lot of ya!

I would have posted this much sooner but I was busy reading your icon. :)

[hawkeye7.livejournal.com]

Kewl icon!

[sydb42.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Most people in my church are politically liberal, and Not One Damn Dime day has been advertised on our chatlist recently, right down to a locally owned restaurant offering free food for lunch and dinner, taking donations only, all of which go to a Tsunami relief fund. While that's all well and good, the logic beyond this protest (and others like it) escapes me, and snopes said it way better than I ever could. I just posted the link to my church's chat list.

[xochiquetzl]

Isn't that "not one dime" thing, you know, like, old and stuff? I mean, weren't we exhorted to do that last year?

Or maybe I didn't pay attention on the grounds that I thought it was teh stoopid.

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

Well, every year they have a "Buy Nothing Day" on the day after Thanksgiving, where the point is to protest against the rampant consumerism of our culture. Which I actually think is a valid idea, except that I think it was dumb of them to schedule it for Black Friday.

But this is separate from that, and I don't recall seeing anything about it last year, but I might have just missed it....

[xochiquetzl]

Huh. I could have sworn that we discussed "Not One Dime" day as a war protest on ACIDIC last year. Or maybe year before last. The effectiveness of it as a protest was part of the discussion.

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

Wow, I have no memory of that whatsoever. But that doesn't mean it didn't happen.... ;)

[victoriacatlady.livejournal.com]

I have some memory of it. I couldn't give you a date, however, not even as valid as "last year." Wait. Last year or year before last, yes, I think I could manage to be that specific. ;-)

How about Not a Damn Dime to Red Companies day?

[techn0goddess.livejournal.com]

I agree with you, boycotting your local convenience store or restaurant isn't going to accomplish anything. But if no liberals bought anything from Amazon, or bought a car, or shopped at Home Depot for a single day, those companies would notice the loss of business.

Of course, people at those companies probably haven't been getting the Not a Damn Dime e-mails in their inboxes, so they'd probably be baffled. "Sales were down 50%? What the hell? There can't have been that many people watching the inauguration all day."

BTW, it's about 25F in Washington, DC, and it's snowing like crazy. I know what you mean about waiting for the winter shoe to drop. I think I just heard a clunk.

[maggiesox.livejournal.com]

My GOD THANK YOU.

I'm getting increasingly tired of the (excuse me while I stereotype) College aged libs demanding that we castigate Nader some more and...not...spend...any...money? I mean, how am I supposed to get to work?

And wasn't I supposed to skip spending money on Black Friday or something?

I give up.