How Many More Times Do I Have To Say It Again?

As my few remaining loyal readers may have noticed, I haven't been as avid about posting here as I have been in the past. While this is partly due to other outstanding obligations, the main reason is I've said it already. Several times.
How many more times do I have to post about the Republican Party being tools, as well as the tool of capitalistic oppression? They seem to revel in finding new ways to keep government out of business while simultaneously finding ways to pass laws aimed to harm the poor, minorities, or gays and lesbians. I've said it before, and while I find the lot of them to be distasteful, saying it again won't change them.
How many more times do I have to criticize the Democratic Party? Their misguided attempts to solve any problem are tempered with their liberal sense of all-inclusion made sure that health care reform didn't offend the insurance companies, making it a mandated pay out for them, and another tax that working families can't afford. Good work.
How many more times do I have to point out that the reason the economy is in the toilet is because our politicians and their corporate overlords thought it would be best to ship all our high paying manufacturing jobs outside of the country? You can pour as many billions of dollars down a sinkhole as you want, if they're not creating permanent full time positions, than the industries hurt by the down turn, housing and automobile manufacturing, will never recover because people are not going to commit to a thirty year mortgage or a three year car loan if they're only guaranteed employment for nine months. Do I have to say it again?
How many more times do I have to point out the futility of fighting a war against an idea? Terrorism is nothing more than a small group of people's response to a greater group of people's injustice against them. Endless and self-perpetuating, every unmanned drone the US sends into Pakistan that kills unarmed civilians, 'collateral damage' as we justified these acts of murder, creates more desperate people who are so determined they will gladly risk life and limb to strike back at us as hard as possible. Do I have to say it again?
I started this blog over five years ago because I didn't want the only opportunity for my children is to become cannon fodder for a privileged class that has no qualms with using lies and deception to send them off to kill and die. There were no WMD in Iraq. Do I have to say it again? There is now, and they belong to the US Army.
I don't plan on gong away. A number of good blogging friends have hung up their keyboards this year, but I intend on continuing to exercise my futility. No matter how many more times I have to say it. Again.

No, I Didn't Vote

That's right, I didn't vote. I refused to participate in the Corporate Idiocracy charade of the-lesser-of-two evils where either side argues about which side is better like a couple of High School students debating the merits of one mass produced beer over the other. I looked at both sides of the coin and decided that beyond the empty platitudes launched to entice me to spend my one vote on them, there wasn't really any difference.
Maybe I've been burned before. I remember voting Democratic in 2006, on the hope that they would bring about an end to the wars in the Middle East. Nope. Didn't happen. Maybe they'd hold the incumbent administration responsible for acts of malfeasance perpetrated by those at the highest level. Instead, almost immediately, impeachment was taken off the table.
In that time, despite their general incompetence at being able to accomplish anything beyond deciding the best way to repair our health care system was to tax my work-related health benefits as income. Huh? Leadership? No, just mindless water-treading, pretending to serve people like me while assuming the position for their corporate masters.
And speaking of being one of me (of which there is only), who do the Republicans think they're fooling. I'm not a soulless money grubbing thick-headed Islamophobe who thinks the world would be a better place if we enslaved everybody under the capitalist system. I do not drive my gas guzzling Sport Utility Behemoth to an energy inefficient McMansion in a gated community in the suburbs. I work a cruddy job for crappy pay and am happy about it because the alternative is giving my soul to a corporation that would gladly chop me off at the knees if it meant another thousand bucks in that year end bonus for the people at the top.
I don't care if some sport team from a college I never attended makes the play-offs, how cute Bristol Palin is on Dancing With The Stars, or the latest patented "outrageous" outfit worn by Lady Gaga to obscure the fact that her music is pedestrian and ordinary. Don't lump me in with you. Please.
So, I didn't vote, and looking at the latest returns, there wasn't one candidate I may possibly could have hoped to maybe win that lost by one vote. And before you tell me that if more people who didn't vote had gone out and made the effort, it could have changed the outcome, I say if more people would ween themselves from the Republican/Democratic Corporate Axis Of Evil, we could have one great country.
So you can go ahead and con yourself into thinking that you're "trying to make difference" by aiding and abetting the status quo, but the truth is as long as we keep enabling the Corporate Idiocracy, the longer we all will have to suffer.

Another Holiday Tradition: Lew's Annual Christmas Rant

I really hate this time of year. With the incessant hawking of every damned invention on the planet as "the perfect Christmas gift" to the non-stop blaring of awful Christmas music from every imaginable source, Christmas has because a time of major annoyance than a time of peace.
The most truly irritating is of course, the advertisers, of whom I'm sure would advertise their product as a sure cure for the war on terrorism, if they thought they could get away with it. Blissfully unaware of the growing stagflation, they hawk new cars and expensive jewelery as the way to "show your wife how much you really love her". Enough to pay thirty-nine percent for five years on a useless trinket destined to sit in a box for most of the rest of her life (oh, right, it's an investment, something she can pawn off in five years when she runs off to Florida with the pool boy, leaving with nothing but the debt and an awful taste in you mouth).
Then of course, there is the Christmas music. Every fresh crop of pop singers ensures us another string of new Christmas CDs, designed to cash in on the singer's popularity before all their recorded output ends up in the cut-out bin at a bargain book store. So they sing the same songs that 16,000 other singers have sung, just as sincerely and emotionally overwrought, where it will end up being about as memorable as Barry Manilow's version of Jingle Bells. Apparently no one can do anything original, like write a new Christmas song, but even if they did, most people wouldn't like it, as they fear the unknown, and tend to stick to familiar territory.
I had someone ask me what I wanted for Christmas this year, and I thought long and hard. I don't really want anything, but I do need a cheese grater, so I suggested that, and was given the dirtiest look I've managed to arouse from someone since my days as a dirty hippie at a punk rock show.
The one thing I do enjoy about the season, however, is being able to give my children presents. I don't get an opportunity the rest of the year, but the end of the year is when I get my annual attendance bonus, where the company I work for reimburses me for the sick days I did not take. It's supposed to come two weeks before Christmas, giving me ample opportunity to shop (which I loathe) and stash the loot away before Christmas. Well, once again this year, as it did last year, the company I work for screwed up and did not give me my bonus as they are contractually obligated to, so I had no money to get my kids gifts, except for the gift card my ex-mother-in-law sent me, which I was grateful to receive, but with prices the way they are these days, didn't go too far.
So today, I was a little down, a little depressed, and angry that management, who fucked up their responsibility, didn't step up to the plate (one of the corporate cliches they are fond of using)and deliver my bonus to me in a timely manner. I felt like Clark Griswold from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.
Then, a miracle happened. Cindy, a good customer of mine paid me a visit. She had told me that she had prayed the night before that she may be able to deliver a gift to someone who really needed it this year, and was directed by whomever to me and my two boys. My eyes began to tear up and my throat was choked close as I thanked her very much. Suddenly, the whole meaning of Christmas was shown to me, it's the joy of giving out of love, not from obligation, that is the real meaning of Christmas.