XFX: The Water Thief

I just downloaded and added this book to my Must Read Next list.

The Water ThiefCHARLES THATCHER is a private citizen, which is to say that he’s the private property of the Ackerman Brothers Securities Corporation. He’s got problems: the cost of air is going up, his wife wants to sell herself to another corporation, and his colleagues are always trying to get him tossed into the lye vats.

But when he discovers a woman stealing rainwater, he sees his chance to move up in the world, maybe even become an executive. He reports her, spinning a picture, not just of a thief, but of a seditionist and revolutionary, someone who believes in that long-dead institution called “government.”

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This way to Gehenna

It bothers me that we have politicized women’s health. This applies to both sides of the political debate even though it is clear which side is bringing up the subject. It is amazing that in this very contentious political environment there is no shortage of well-aged white men expressing their demands to control women’s health, contraception, and abortion, but only the crickets respond when concerns for gun control are considered.

Life is sacred, so they say, therefore politicians being on the side of open access to deadly weapons are guilty of complicity in the taking of life. Many politicians want to de-fund Planned Parenthood (evil incarnate?) yet they don’t want to do anything to control the NRA or the vast numbers of weapons in this country … weapons that kill. Who are the murderers in this context?

What makes it even more difficult to accept is that the analogy is flipped:  Planned Parenthood receives government money whereas the NRA gives the government, or at least some members of the government, money in the form of bribes. Imagine how government would progress if somehow it wasn’t centered on greed and corruption.

I know it’s a cliché but I truly believe that it is unconstitutional to pass laws that affect only one group of people in this country (women) without having equivalent legislation controlling similar features of another group of people (men). The government must be balanced and if contraception is going to be banned, then so too should all erection drugs. Furthermore, the more outlandish attempts to define conception (life) as beginning even before intercourse demands that all male masturbation be considered murder …murder with thousands of counts.

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