Only A Pawn In Their Game

“If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.”Sen. Jim De Mint (R) SC

This is what the health care debate in this country is about. With 47 million uninsured people in this country, the GOP is willing to let them twist in the wind to prove that they still haven't gotten over losing the last election. Their solution to the problem? "Don't get sick" says the man able to afford the doctor shop to fill his OxyContin addiction, or find a doctor willing to put his name on your Viagra prescription. There's the core of compassionate conservatism-protecting unborn babies, until they get born, contract a disease, then you're on your fucking own buddy, I've got a sport utility behemoth to keep filled with gas and an energy inefficient McMansion to heat.
The truth is we have the finest health care system in the world, if you can afford it, but if you can't, oh well, the government has more important things to spend theiryour money on, like paying money to build bombs to drop on countries, then paying to rebuild the countries they dropped bombs on. They can rush to the aid of incompetently run banks, giving them billions of dollars and bailouts, but the won't help the homeless, the unemployed, or those whose lives are about to be destroyed by a looming health care issue.
As an example of how screwed the system is: the company I have been working for the last years at was recently sold. The new owners are bringing in a different insurance carrier. Having been lucky (or healthy) enough to not see a doctor for the last three years, do you think I would get a rebate from the old carrier, since I never used them these last few years? Worse than that, a number of people who work for us are older than me, and have had a number of health issues. Their information is being passed along to the new carrier. How many of them will have to worry about claims being rejected because of pre-existing conditions?
The truth is, a lot of things in this country are already socialized: our defense, our police, and our fire departments. We do this because they make society better as a whole. Yet you'll never hear anybody complaining about having to pay money for those people who are careless with inflammable materials, or have too much stuff tempting criminals to rob them. But when it comes to health and well being of our own fellow Americans, suddenly patriotism goes out the window, and you're on your own now buddy.
Our politicians (who, need I remind you, have their health care taken care of for life) are playing a game. One side, too pussified and invertebrate to do what's right, are holding out for a bipartisan approach. And the other side just wants to stick it to the guy who stuck it to their mavericks (remember them? The one maverick who was going to reach across the aisle, and the other one who couldn't stick out her job? How are they workin' out for ya?) to prove a point. And in the middle, suffering while they play, are millions of Americans, who are nothing but pawns to the political elite.

Religion Is The Work Of The Devil

Face it, Americans keep getting stupider every day. Many different reasons are given for the source of this problem: teacher's unions, Fox News, "reality" television, global warming climate change, or too much emphasis on sports. However, the true culprit for the stupidefication of America is religion.
Consider this: Florida students were sent home from school for wearing tee shirts emblazoned with the message Islam is of the Devil. There's true Christianazi tolerance for ya. The shirts were produced by a local church called the Dove World Outreach Center. The pastor, Terry Jones (no, not that one) says that the "message is more important than education".
Well, it certainly can't be Jesus' message, because Islam was founded well after the death of Jesus, so then whose message is it? My guess would be with one Pastor Jones, who for whatever reason, decided that children need to be indoctrinated to his vile and contemptible ideas more than they need to learn how to spell, add, read or identify Palestine on a world map (It's right there, underneath Israel). It's easy to understand why Pastor Jones feels his message is more important than learnin'- once people learn they become able to think for themselves and therefore become less likely to toss their hard earned change into the Dove World Outreach Center collection plate, making it all the more impossible for Pastor Jones to reach out to more of the world and shake them down for their hard earned bread so he may live like a king and spread his hate to all the gullible television watchers too fat from constant snacking to get their fat asses of the couch and attend a real church where, maybe, just maybe, fear and hatred won't be used to shakedown stupid, fat and ugly people who pray to an invisible man in the sky.
But who is really doing the Devil's work here? Pastor Jones message spreads hate which leads to fear. Soon, it becomes acceptable for us to drop bombs on people just because they are of a different religion, which plays in to the hands of the military security complex, who use this as an excuse to continue to drop tax payer funded bombs on more innocent people to clear the way for Big Oil to commandeer all that luscious black gold underneath their feet.
America has become stupider because it's main religion has been taken over by fear-mongers who want to further their message of intolerance against not only other religions, but gays, medical workers, scientists, teachers, and anyone else who doesn't see the world through their myopic telescope. And since they do all this hate in the name of God, the fact that these people haven't been strciken down is all the proof I need that no God does exist.

She's Baa-a-a-ack!(Actually, She Never Went Away. You Did)

President Obama has a surprise waiting for him as he starts his summer vacation in Martha's Vineyard (who knew he owned property there?) and it's not gun toting astroturfers. It's Cindy Sheehan. Seems she's still upset that even after riding the antiwar sentiment to power, Barack and the rest of the Democratic party have now turned there attention to not solving America's health care crisis, as opposed to not solving it's financial crisis, among other crises facing the administration these days.
Moreover, Obama is continuing the Bush administration policy of rendition of "terrorism" suspects, or heck, anybody it damn well pleases.
So even though the war in Iraq has been proven to be based on lies, and deception, the Democratic party still thinks we should still be fighting it. Good for them. And after exploiting the antiwar vote, they feel it's more important to not do anything about ending these shams, lest chickenhawks label them surrender monkeys.
It's interesting that the antiwar movement barely received the coverage the anti-health care reform crowd is getting these days, and it wasn't until Ms. Sheehan began her vigil outside George W Bush's Crawford ranch that the media paid any attention to the movement. Because, with the arrival of Cindy, a grieving mother who wanted answers as to why her son had to die, that the corporate media could put a face on the movement that war shills could use to paint it as "looney". But I doubt if any of the astroturfers will demonstrate the tenacity of Ms. Sheehan, her pain and anguish are real, as opposed to what amounts to actors hired by the health industry lobby to disrupt serious debate about reforming our seriously fucked up health care system. And I'm sure health care reform will be a lost and distant memory before we see any end to the wars of choice we are fighting in the Middle east.

The Garage Sale Police Do Exist

I rarely buy anything new.
It's not just the outrageous mark-up I don't like to pay, it's also the feeling that with technology, I kind of get the feeling I'm being scammed. And I enjoy going to garage sales. Not only can you find good items incredibly cheap, but, having dealt somewhat in the antique business when I was younger, I know what is of value, and give it to my ex to sell on eBay.
I've had three separate record collections in my life. the first, I started when I was still a teen, and grew to about two hundred albums, until I sold or traded most of them for pot, because I no longer had a turntable to play them on. The second came after the advent of compact discs, when I was able to buy a decent stereo at a garage sale for a mere ten dollars. With everybody in a rush to replace many albums they already had with the new format, I was able to pick up many great albums for as little as twenty-five cents. Soon that collection grew to close to a thousand records. Following my divorce, and several moves after that, I pared my collection down again to the essentials: Ramones and Butthole Surfers.
Now, I've started my third, mostly because he kids and I like collecting records, and the challenge of finding them is becoming greater, what with vinyl prices rising due to increased demand. It was at the start of the summer, while at a garage sale which had listed albums for sale, that the concept of garage sale police came up. I had filed through someone's record collection, clearly sitting in a box in their driveway and marked for sale. After sifting through them and distributing them fairly between my two sons, who had their own money and were willing to buy them, the person in charge of the sale took an album my eldest had intended to buy (McCartney Paul McCartney's first solo effort, on Apple, and very desirable) and told him "I'm sorry, I'm not selling that one". Wil was crushed, and became sad that the one album he wanted, that was listed in the ad as for sale, wasn't going home with him. Me, feeling angry, as I backed in to their garbage can by the curb, suggested, "Maybe there needs to be a garage sale police".
We've been buying a lot of CDs lately as well, as people are already dumping that format for the MP3, much easier to manage and carry around, so CDs are going cheaply as well. You can trace the history of formats, from music, to gaming systems, to movies at garage sales. VHS tapes, which used to command higher prices in the secondary market, have been discarded in favor of DVDs, which themselves are on the way out in the advent of HD Blu-Ray technology. So while many people continue to buy the same product in each new format as it comes out, I'm down here going through what most people would discard, because, guess what, the formats still work, and I'm not going to invest a lot of money in a format that will be obsolete while I'm still using it. It's the main reason I don't have a cell phone-why invest over a hundred dollars to be the first one to have the new phone when in six months you won't be able to resell it for twenty dollars?
I was junking last week after work, when I stopped by a sale being run by a twenty something couple. Not much I was interested in, until I came across a VHS copy of Weird Al's UHF, which is my son Nelson's favorite entertainers. I brought it home, and when the boys came over that weekend, we put it in the VCR (yes, I still have one, as well as several DVD players which seem more disposable) only to find someone had taped over the movie with a special on skateboarding that must have been on one of the myriad of television channels available to those brain dead enough to actually sit around and watch a show about skateboarding. Once again, Nelson's big score became worthless, and he turned to me and stated, "You know dad, there needs to be a garage sale police."
Well, now there is a garage sale police. As part of a campaign called Resale Roundup, the federal government is cracking down on the secondhand sales of dangerous and defective products. Maybe someday, we can get them to crack down on unscrupulous sellers as well. It's a dream anyway.

A Nation of Rubes Deserves No Better

During the Bush administration, there was a general feeling that "terror" levels were being manipulated to benefit the president and his party. As it turns out, we were right. I conclude that these manipulations are in fact evidence there is no "terror" threat at all, just part of the propaganda.
At least the Republicans got it right. In President Obama's attempt to gain support for his escalation in Afghanistan, he has first told us the war against the Taliban secures America . Then, backtracking, he tells us al Qaeda did 9/11. No wonder that the majority of Americans oppose the Afghan war, Obama went off message. By now we all know that if it isn't about the UNOCAL pipeline, it's about the lucrative opium trade. I guess Agi was right: the Democrats have no running game.
In spite of the fact that a majority of American support health care reform, the Democrats having a filibuster-proof majority, a 40-seat advantage in the House, and a president who was once really popular, those town hall protesters shown to be fake, Obama still can't get it together and "reform" health care. That's why his approval rating is slipping, while being good at speechifying, Obama seems unable to stick to a lie or accomplish anything he was elected to do. Which is not a good thing when you preside over a nation of rubes.

Pesticide On Astroturf

(Picture poached from here)
After I posted this, one thing about this picture stuck with me. No, it wasn't that is an obvious photoshop, rather, it's the young girl standing just to the left of the guy in the middle. Her sign reads:

Oh Im Sorry We Thought Reading The Bill Was Ur Job

Beyond the fact that she appears to be too young to be at the rally on her own, and beyond the fact that she is too stupid to even know how to spell "your" (which, if you've ever read a comment in any forum by anybody opposing "Obamacare, seems to be a common trait), is the fact that these people are protesting a bill they haven't even fucking read. How do they know it's bad if they haven't read it?
You can't tell me that these people are acting independently to protest something they haven't read. It's clear that they have been misinformed by someone, and are acting on that misinformation.

PT Barnum Was Right

Organizers held a fortieth anniversary concert of the original Woodstock concert this weekend. It was a chance for aging boomers to dress like hippies, wear peace symbols and love beads, and take part in something they totally missed out on the first time around. And thereby, missing the whole point of what made the original experience so iconic.
It was anarchy.
It was mud, brown acid, and skinny dipping. It was the explosion of a youth culture facing being shipped to an early death fighting an unwinnable war in southeast Asia for reasons never fully understood.
Now it's all about reliving memories of something they never took part in, flashing the peace sign, and tailgating in the parking lot, with, I'm sure, lots of bottles of chardonnay passed around the parking lot. That's right, it was like a fucking sporting event. Organized, and calm, it belies and betrays the spirit of the original.
A lot of the original acts that played at the original returned to play this one. Big Brother and the Holding Company returned, for instance, missing, of course, the iconic lead singer that made them a festival attraction in the first place. Canned Heat played as well, sans founding members Bob "the Bear" Hite and Alan Wilson, both of whom are now dead.
The whole purpose of the concert seems to have been promoters and musicians loosely tied to the original stars exploiting hippie poseurs looking to have a memory of something they wished they could have been at and now are desperately seeking ways to connect to so they can say, I wasn't at the original , but I was at the fortieth anniversary.
So they didn't get to see the Who, or Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young, Crosby Stills and Nash, or Creedence Clearwater Revival, but they did get to sit in lawn chairs and cheer along with Country Joe McDonald. They still think that by voting for Obama, they are "hip" and "with-it", even though Obama has shown his reluctance for the "peace" the original concert was set up to exploit and promote. And such is the definition of pathetic.

The Hypocrisy Never Ends

Back when George W Bush was our president, every public event was stage managed down to who received invitations, down to who got let in through the door, and who was allowed to address Bush. It happened for eight years, and for eight years, Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, and rafts of other "conservative" commentators said nary a peep. So, no problem, right?
Now, there's a problem.
Sure, if the story's true, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, that 11 year old Julia Hall was used as a "kiddie human shield",where's Malkin's gripe? Bush used to fill his events with supporters,hand out flags and signs without a peep from Ms. Malkin. The precedent has been set, and by complaining about it now, and not then, you show how stupid the American political system has become. Everything the opposition does is wrong, even if it's the same fucking thing your side is doing. And how can Obama continue to claim to be an agent of change if he keeps on using the Bush playbook?

Death Panels In Full Effect

Exhibiting all the qualities that make a perfect candidate for the corpocracy, like our previous three presidents, infallible to the faithful, irksome and irritating to the opposition, Sarah Palin claimed President Obama's new health plan includes "death panels". Instead of calling her a crazy bitch, or a silly cunt, defending Palin's statements is Newt Gingrich, not because he wants to hit that, she's much too vintage for a guy who likes to trade in on a newer model every decade or so, but because he's likely angling for a Cheney-like position as her VP when she wins the GOP nomination.
You could say that Republicans have raised fear mongering to an art form. Give them any sensible issue (gay marriage, health care, black president, etc) and they'll manufacture a big lie to scare the bejeezus out of voters too dumb and too lazy to get off their asses and actually read anything, much less a proposal that may determine their future.It doesn't matter how many websites Obama sets up , these are people who only use the internet to forward Christianazi talking points and email racist jokes to each other.
Gingrich says he doesn't think "that the government is to be trusted ... You are asking us to trust turning power over to the government....when there are clearly people in American who believe in ......selective standards."
Like Newt Gingrich. He has a problem with death panels putting elderly people to death because keeping them alive is a costly nuisance, but doesn't have a problem putting brown skinned people to death because their living on the ground above a wealth of natural resources important to keeping the white man in charge is a nuisance. Almost everyday, in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now even Pakistan, the US military is killing people to ensure that oil keeps flowing like dollars into the coffers of Gingrich's many think tanks. And Gingrich raises his concerns not a whit, because it isn't about doing the right thing to him, it's about doing the Right Wing thing, which ensures he'll never have to worry about getting a real job, or, as a former member of Congress, he'll never have to worry about being denied health insurance.

Paging Donald Segretti.......

original photo poached from mike votes

Anybody who knows their history, should know that the Republican party has a legacy stretching back at least as far as Richard Nixon and Donald Segretti of disrupting political opponents rallies . And so when I read that some of the same protesters seen at these town hall meetings , were also seen at the now infamous Brooks Brothers Riot of 2000, I was not surprised. This is the party, after all, of of the infamous right wing dirty trick squad. The same people who forged a letter attributed to Edmund Muskie, forged documents purporting to show Saddam Hussein was trying to buy yellow cake uranium from Niger, and forged a Kenyan birth certificate purporting to show Barack Obama was born in that African nation wouldn't have a problem twisting reality to show that the people disrupting these meetings are not paid shills working for the health care industry.
While many will defend the right of free speech at these rallies, it is interesting to note that not one of the same people voicing their support for those disrupting town hall meetings ever spoke up against the Bush administration free speech zones. And now, the same people who said antiwar protesters should be tried as enemies of the state for speaking out against the president during a time of war are defending these new protests against the president. And the last time I checked, we were still at war. Fucking hypocrites.

Crazy, Not Stupid

Ya gotta love those nutty crazy Birthers. Even after evidence has been produced, they still claim that they would have seen it by now. Well, maybe Nascar was running that day, or something shiny rolled across their front yards, maybe they had too many beers, or they were busy getting tea bagged somewhere, or maybe they just can't fucking read, but there it is- a certificate of live birth.
My problem with the Birthers is the fact that now they're being lumped in with the 9/11 truth movement, which unlike the Birthers, is based on a quest for truth from a government that did a shoddy job investigating the attacks in the first place.
For instance, Sibel Edmonds. Among her most recent claims is the fact that Osama Bin Laden was a US proxy until 9/11. Moreover, he met with the CIA at the American hospital in Dubai in July 0f 2001. (Bin Laden also denied involvement in the terrorist attacks.
While there are many different theories floating around 9/11 (including ludicrous ones like there were no planes flown into the Twin Towers or the Pentagon on that day)there are just as many differing theories of why the towers were the only steel framed buildings to ever collapse due to fire, such as weak bolts were used to connect the beams, thermal expansion, or mysterious " magnetic forces". A judge even threw out a case claiming WTC collapsed due to faulty construction and improperly placed diesel tanks. And none of these explain the evidence of thermite at Ground Zero.
The Birthers will not go away, even after the necessary documentation has been provided. The 9/11 truth movement will not go away. The government spent twenty times as much money investigating Bill Clinton's sex life than it did 9/11. And while Ken Starr had unlimited avenues to investigate in his inquisition, the 9/11 commission was limited as to where and what it could actually investigate. Since these alleged terrorist attacks have been used as the basis for military excursions into countries that had nothing to do with them, doesn't it seem prudent that we should investigate some of the claims and evidence offered up by the 9/11 Truth Movement? Just don't lump us together with the Birthers. We may be crazy and paranoid, they, on the other hand, are just plain dumb.