Community Organized Television Is Coming....................................................Look Out!

Born At The Crest Of The Empire had a link to this post of how the television networks are jumping on the I-Participate bandwagon next week, with 60 television shows mentioning the program, or writing it into their scripts.
Which, since it's an Obama initiative, means once again the cries of "indoctrination" are rising from the right. Funny, I don't remember any complaints pre-Iraq war from these people about the propaganda foisted on the American people. But now, it's different, with that no Xmas celebrating secret Muslim in the White House.
But for me, the humor lies in the comment section over at Big Hollywood.
"I'd like to avoid this nonsense even if it means boycotting all TV for a week."-Oh, don't take such drastic measures. I'm sure Fox News isn't involved.
"I don't watch TV (except Fox news) anyway"-Ladies and gentlemen, the root of the whole problem.
"When coerced, it is not volunteerism, when service is involuntary or unpaid, it is slavery.
It is bad enough that the government is stealing our freedom, now they want us to help. "-Yes, we must do what the television tells us because we are all mindless zombies.
"Voluneerism is something that we should all be compelled to do because it is the Christian thing to do...it is expected of us. Certainly not because Pres. Opompous orders us to do it so it, like everything else, must reflect positively on him (because in Obamaland....EVERYTHING is about him!)."-Ladies and gentlemen, a true display of Christian love and understanding. Everything in America should be compelled to be about Jesus!
"I think someone should plan a counter campaign to turn off the tv during this period. Instead everyone should spend time with their families. I pledge to not watch tv during this period. I will instead enjoy the outdoors, spend time with family, or actually help another person without expecting payment in money or political credit."-As opposed to the rest of the year when you stay indoors, watch television ignore your family and don't do a thing without expecting financial enumeration for it.
It goes on and on, with people bemoaning their inability to watch television without being offended by someone actually asking them to be part of making a better society (oops, that's Socialism)and being indoctrinated into that whole community thing. In all this is a little less sinister than television participating in Nancy Reagan's Just Say No To (Some) Drugs program(which I'm sure they whole heartedly endorsed) back in the 1980's.
I know I will be watching very little of it, not because I hate Obama, but because television is a time thief, and 99% shit anyways. If you define yourself by what you watch on television, you are really nothing at all

2012

End Timers have been making a big deal lately about the Mayan Calendar which "predicts" the end of the world in 2012. While it may not signify the apocalypse, it's a fairly safe bet that the United States Empire will be gone by then, and not because voters will elect Sarah Palin as president.
What we'll begin to see very quickly is the wholesale looting of our country as the dollar loses reserve currency status. That means all those petrodollars the world bought from us to buy oil will be leaving the world's central banks and coming home to roost, drowning the banks we have left here in too much capital. This will spur a round of hyperinflation not dissimilar to what was seen at the end of the Weimar Republic. Foreclosures will increase, but this time it won't just be the lower classes suffering. Unemployment will increase as people scramble to take any job available.
So while the economy has been tanking, and the brokers have been looting, the corporate media lackeys in this country have been dutifully keeping the public distracted with protests against the wrong people, celebrity worship and too much sports coverage to notice that the ship is sinking.
Why is this happening? Because somewhere, someone decided that they didn't actually have to manufacture a product to make money, all they had to do was to convince the brainwashed masses into believing they needed a product bad enough that they'd mortgage their future to keep ahead of their neighbors. Fortunately for them, they had a Congress on their payroll that was only concerned with getting re-elected and so they would do anything they were asked to keep those campaign contributions rolling in. And why wouldn't you want to be a politician when you can work two and a half days a week, make $165,000 a year, and invest in wars you support. So now uniquely American products like the Hummer will be built in China.
And finally, when the American people wake up because their cable television has been disconnected, they'll take to the streets against the crooks who robbed them (the ones still in this country anyway) they'll find that the criminals will be protected by police who have evolved from Andy Taylor into something resembling Robocop. Good luck with that.

Living In Retarded Times

These are definitely interesting times we are living in right now. Despite continuing the war in Iraq, expanding the war in Afghanistan into Pakistan, and threatening Iran, President Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Then, following this announcement, Rush Limbaugh agrees with the Taliban (a move that would have him removed from the air at the height of the Bush administration), putting the alleged "patriot" on the side of the enemy in Afghanistan, what with al Qaeda pretty much removed from that country.
Code Pink, an anti-war organization, has announced it's rethinking it's anti Afghan war stance. I guess now war is acceptable, if it fits within your feminist agenda. But how feminist is it when you're sending men to women's rescue?
There is now a movement under way (by Republicant operatives, naturally) to Impeach Obama. Not for any high crimes or misdemeanors, mind you, but for "Obamaism", whatever the fuck that is.
I woke up one morning last week to find those that claim to be the most biggest patriots in this country cheering because the US lost a chance to host the Olympics. The jobs this would have created and revenue generated would go a long way towards helping lift the US out of the Second Great Depression we are in now.And make no mistake about it, we are in a Great Depression. And while jobs are being lost and people are struggling, these asswipes who pretend to be patriots are cheering, not so much for the failure of Obama's programs, but because Bush and eight years of Republicant policies so destroyed the economy that there's nothing that can be done to fix it. The middle class is slowly disappearing, worker's rights are slowly being lost, but rich white men are getting richer and whiter, all because stupid white men are getting stupider and stupider. And n one of this pettiness and bickering will restore us to the former flory that was once the greatest democracy on the planet.

Conservapedia Presents: The Ten Commandments-Revisited

In yesterday's post, there was a story about how Conservapedia was planning on deleting the "liberal" bias from the Bible. But why stop there? As you'll see, they seem to pick and choose which commandments to follow as well.

It's Not In The Bible Anymore

Does the Bible have a liberal bias? Of course it does, which is why the nice folks at Conservapedia have decided to delete the liberal bias from the Bible. No more of the love shit for them, now it's just going to be fire and brimstone and the wrath of God. That'll make for some exciting reading for them.
But why stop there? Why not make the Innkeeper a free market entrepreneur who was well within his rights to make those moochers Mary and Joseph sleep in the stable. Or portray Judas as having a keen business sense and as being loyal patriot for betraying Jesus for a few pieces of silver? There's a lot of Jewish people in the Bible,couldn't an anti-Semite just delete them all, and make Jesus a nice Christian boy who grew up worshipping himself?
It would appear that the wonderful Christians over at Conservapedia don't love Jesus as much as they hate "liberals", which I believe puts them squarely in violation of the whole "Thou Shalt Not Have Any Other Gods Besides Me" commandment. These twisted souls have shown how utterly useless their Bible is by changing the word of their God to fit their belief system, as opposed to changing their behavior to fit the word of their God. But, you would expect as much from the same people who changed the Constitution to allow torture, illegal wiretaps and indefinite incarcerations.

Who Runs This Country?

Or, better yet, who should run this country, seeing how were a republic and all? Lindsey Graham thinks that if we let the bloggers run the country than our best days are behind us. Uh, dude, our best days are behind us.
Who are these elusive bloggers I hear criticized by the people on the right while appearing on the news? Most blogs, big, small, and miniscule (like this one) are run by tax paying citizens who read and report the news that the corporate-owned media refuses to report, or buries while devoting more and more time and space to celebrity gossip or sports "news". Why would we, as a democracy, want the actual people deciding the future of the country. We have let the corporations run this country for too long now and we have rampant unemployment, a stagnant economy and two government sponsored quagmires on our hands. It's been great for the corporations, but bad for 99% of other people in this country.
But who does run this country? Who has been pushing for another war based on lies? The bloggers. or the people who "run" this country? Who is threatening to impose sanctions on Iran for obeying the NPT all the while violating the Symington amendment?
Most bloggers are people of conscience, and blog out of a sense of duty, or outrage at how far we have strayed. very few make a profit, if at all, and are not media darlings or part of the cultural elite. We are, however, citizens, and when the citizens no longer run this country than we have ceased to be the democracy we claim to fight for while dropping bombs on dark skinned people in democracy's name.

How To End The "Stealth Jihad"

I think I was vaguely aware of this but once again, to reiterate, the Muslims are taking over the country! They have one of their own, a secret Muslim fascist communist socialist, as president, and now they're taking over everything else. I know they took over a dollar store down the street, and possibly a corner gas station.
Do I sound paranoid? Probably, but not as paranoid as one Canyon Clowdus, a candidate for congress from Texas (of course! All the wing nuts with funny names are from Texas). Mr Clowdus feels we are experiencing a "creeping sharia" and a "stealth jihad" in this country, and so he wants to bar any more Muslim immigrants from entering this country. Sure, we can stop more from entering the country, but what to do to protect our country from being overrun by this whole "creeping sharia" thing?
What we need is a law, some sort of Constitutional amendment, that would provide for the prevention of establishing laws based on one's own personal beliefs. That would certainly halt the stealth jihad we as Americans are experiencing right now. Of course, that would mean that Mr. Clowdus wouldn't be able to put his God back in government either, but it's all a small price to pay to protect us from the creeping sharia we are experiencing now, wouldn't it? Besides, I don't believe there ever was a time when there was a "God" in our government.

A Tale Of Two Nuclear Programs

The Obama administration has been making much political hay played up for the propaganda push in the press for an attack against Iran because of the revelation that Iran has a secret nuclear facility. Not any more they don't. But Iran has already agreed to open the site up for inspection by the IAEA. It's sole purpose is not a nuclear weapons facility, but is another nuclear enrichment site for it's reactor at Bushehr.
President Obama has accused Iran of "breaking rules that all nations must follow". All nations?
No, there is one nation that has nuclear weapons and has refused calls for it to sign the NPT and open their nuclear sites up for inspection. This nation of moochers has attacked a US naval ship and yet still receives billions of dollars in aid from the US annually. That's enough to fund health care for every American citizen. Meanwhile, this nation commits war crimes and is violation of numerous UN resolutions, and yet still has the audacity to cal for war against the "mad" regime in Iran. (By US forces, of course.)
So why are we planning to attack one regime for obeying international law when another flaunts that very same law?
One word:oil.

One More Time And I'll Be Marching With The Teabaggers

When then-President Bush announced the Wall Street bailout, I was very much opposed to it. These "free-market" devotees should practice what they preach, and if the market couldn't support them, they deserved to go under.
When the automakers bailout came out, I had mixed feelings, being from Michigan where almost every other person (an exaggeration) is involved in the auto industry. But in the end, anyone with enough foresight could have seen this coming when many jobs in the auto industry were shipped to Mexico and Canada. (that whole NAFTA thing) The service industry jobs lauded to replace manufacturing don't pay enough for people to afford $25,000 cars.
Now, they want to bailout newspapers. This is too much.
On any day in the fair city of Grand Rapids, you can walk into your local supermarket, and see a representative of the Grand Rapids Press, standing at a lectern, ready to sign you up for delivery and hand you your free copy of the Press. There aren't many takers, as the copy given you is fresh out of coupons and is all content-if you can call wire service reports and local sports scores news. I don't know how good your local paper is, but here, in the heart of Conservia, it plain sucks.
On January 15, 2003, when protesters around the globe gathered to protest the US intentions on invading Iraq, the Press gave it a tiny square on the back of page one. In the meanwhile, the local Clear Channel gathering to "support our troops" got the full front page of the Metro section.Liberal media bias, no doubt.
I finally gave up on the Press when, after having been banned from submitting letters to the editorial page, I submitted one using a pseudonym in 2005. In the letter, I referenced the Downing Street Memo, or Minutes, as they are known in the UK. A damning piece of evidence that stated that "....the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy..." of invasion for Iraq. You know, the forged Yellowcake Uranium documents from Nigeria, the weather balloon station portrayed as a mobile chemical weapons lab, etc, etc. I received, later that day, a request from the editor of the paper of a link to this "memo", which should have been front page news, but, and this is something for you Teabaggers to keep in mind, dissent against the Bush regime was akin to treason, and exposing the lies they perpetrated was tantamount to sedition. Can't let the people know they're sending their children over there to die for a lie.
So now I can add this to the growing list of things my tax dollars going for that I oppose. The endless quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan, the upcoming excursions into Iran and Pakistan, bailouts for billionaires, and now propping up the propaganda. Fuck them all.

Republicans want To Kill Net Neutrality. I Wonder Why. (No, I Don't)

There is no blog topic more unglamorous than Net neutrality. But, it is an important one. Net Neutrality is the notion that a neutral broadband network is one that is free of restrictions on content, sites, or platforms, on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and on the modes of communication allowed, as well as one where communication is not unreasonably degraded by other communication streams. What it means, essentially, is that all users have equal access to the internet.
But there are some people who feel Net Neutrality is a bad thing. They don't like the Obama administration's recent ruling defending Net Neutrality because they feel it will lead to more "regulation". To these corporatists, regulation is a bad thing. Just ask the folks in California, who had to deal with rolling blackouts during their energy deregulation, or look at how the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act led to the deregulation of our banking system, and the ensuing problems that has created. The corporatists are defending the major corporations, who claim that telecoms have no intention of blocking content or degrading network performance, but if that is the case, why has GOP Senators , who want to add an amendment to a bill denying funding to the FCC for any initiative to uphold Net Neutrality.
What a surprise. The GOP, in recent weeks following the Teabagger protests, have tried to portray themselves as the party of the angry taxpayer, but instead, have shown that they are just as much in the pocket of the large corporations who want to restrict what information you can read on the internet as the Democrats who want to use your hard earned money for handouts to bankers who robbed us while no one was looking (regulating). I wouldn't be surprised at all if some spineless Democrats (a redundancy, I know) joined in, as it is close to an election year, and the corporate campaign contributions go a long way towards suppressing any opponent who might want to try to bring back a government for the people. And if the corporatists have their way, you wouldn't even be able to read about them on the 'Net.

Guilty Dinner Party Girls

How much is a dinner with Sarah Palin worth to you? Factoring in, of course, the cost of the trip to Alaska, would you pay $63,500, proceeds of which go to Ride 2 Recovery, an organization that helps our "wounded warriors" cope with losing a limb in a pointless war designed to line the pocket of Republican Party donors? Well, Cathy Maples of Huntsville, Ala did just that. Ms. Maples is a "big advocate" for Palin, and would love to see her as president. I guess Maples isn't counting on Ralin quitting when things get rough, like she did when she was governor of Alaska. (Notice the article refers to her as former Republican vice presidential candidate and not as the job quitting former governor of Alaska)
In these tough economic times, brought on in part by reckless government spending in a war against a country that posed no threat to the US, very few of us can make a one time payment of that much money, plus round trip air fare to dine with the Retardican Party's icon of dimwittedness, but not everyone is struggling in this economy.
So what does the unassuming Ms. Maples do for a living that affords her such a luxury when many Americans are taking to the street feeling the pinch of an oppressive government taxing them to death? Why, she's a defense contractor, one of the people who are still manufacturing something this country still exports, death and mayhem. I'm not sure how much she is raking in as the government exploits stupid people's paranoia, but it only seems fair that to those who sacrificed a limb to make sure Iraq's oil is denominated in petrodollars and UNOCAL can build a pipeline through Afghanistan, that the people who profited from it give a very little back. Oh, and so profiteers like Cathy Maples can still spend frivolously on meals with whacked out politicos like Sarah Palin. It's a small sacrifice to make so that so few can live so much better than the rest of us because of our socialized defense department.

Teabagger Smackdown

I'll admit I was a little bit confused about last weekend's Tea Party (Teabaggers) Protest in Washington DC last weekend. Just what are they protesting? Government spending? Where were they when the Bush administration was spending more money than any previous administration combined? Health Car Reform? Do they like the possibility of being denied by their carrier for pre-existing conditions? Do they care so little for fellow Americans that they'd like to have them die because they are unable to afford health care? Or is is taxes? Did they not notice while in DC that everything around them, every symbol of our country's (former) greatness was built and maintained using tax payer's money? Or is it because they didn't mind all this stuff when we had a white president?
It was last night, while the kids were watching WWE Smackdown (for the sole purpose of mocking it) that it hit me: Teabaggers are the political equivalent of wrestling fans. Ignorant people being cynically manipulated and exploited for their stupidity. They both carry signs that stretch the boundaries of their ability to write legibly and spell correctly. They both are angry when their "guy" loses a fight/election. These people are not the bottom of the gene pool, they're whatever is left after the gene pool has been drained and plowed over to make a subdivision of McMansions.
Like the wrestling fans who insist that it's all real and nothing is sripted, Teabaggers are blind to the obvious as well. As Bill Moyers points out:

"Something these marchers who came to Washington at Armey's urging could hardly be expected to know. For most of his adult life, their leader has benefited from just the kind of government tax-supported health care he's fighting to keep them from having too."

Only Vince McMahon can be more cynically exploitative.

Nancy Pelosi:Looking Out For Everyone Named Nancy Pelosi

One man's liberty is another man's slavery
In a previous post, I noted that sometimes in order to get the attention of our public servants, all one needs is a vagina. Well, what if the public servant in question already has a vagina, and has no use for another?
Another thing politicians like, and crave almost as much as vaginas is money. Lots and lots of money. Take your beloved Speaker of the House. No sooner had she taken the public option for health care reform off the table did she suddenly become the recipient of a fundraiser from a private health insurance lobbyist. How convenient.
I'll bet her grandchildren love visiting their grandmother because Pelosi has a reputation for taking things off the table. She took censure for Joe Wilson off the table. (Not the Joe Wilson who exposed the Bush administration's Iraqi yellowcake uranium lie, but the one who exposed himself to be a hypocritical exposer of lies, having sat silent through many congressional addresses by President Bush that were packed full of lies waiting for someone to point their finger at the president and say-"You lie!")And, when she first grabbed the gavel as Speaker of the House, immediately took impeachment off the table.
Now, to be fair, the event is open to anyone. Anyone who can cough up $2,400 per person ($5,000 if you represent a PAC). Yep, that's me and you and probably that homeless guy I pass everyday on the way home from work.
Now, I could come up with $2400, but having recently lost my health insurance coverage, that money is about equal to a month and a half of COBRA for me and my kids. So for me, and the other 45,999,997 people with out health insurance, we really have no option, which means democracy doesn't work for us. And ultimately, that means that democracy doesn't work under capitalism at all.

Just What Are You Trying To Say?

This must be a good time to be pharmacist, what with all those tightly wound right wing nuts living in a state of constant fear, I'm sure they need a myriad of prescriptions. There's the anxiety caused by socialized medicine, the fear of rising tax rates, sleepless nights caused by illegal immigration, and now the awful truth of Muslims moving in and taking over.
Well, thank goodness for the red, white and blue, that's how you can tell a super patriot from just an "American". Wearing the stars and stripes on everything means you really, really, really, really, love this country, even though you can't stand half the people living in it. I would really be interested in hearing their solution to the "Muslim" problem.
Another thing I don't understand is what exactly these protests are against, or what they hope to accomplish with them. As someone who stood against the war in Iraq before it began, let me tell you, protesting doesn't really accomplish anything, except maybe giving the corporate media an opportunity to make protests look ridiculous. So are they protesting the Wall Street bailouts? No, because they started with Bush, and none of these people were angry about it then. Are they protesting the out-of-control spending by our government? NO, because if they were really concerned they would have opposed the out of control spending by our government for the war in Iraq. So what are they against? Non-existent "death panels"?
No, simply put, these are people who haven't gotten over that so many "Americans" would betray the country and elect Barack Hussein Obama president because "He's running this country into the ground".
Where have these idiots been for the last eight years? Watching Fox News!

(Once again, picture poached from Born At The Crest Of The Empire Thanks Mike!)

They Get Laid, We Get Screwed

With millions of people with out health care, (including now, myself), or unable to afford it, do you ever wonder what it takes to get the attention of our politicians? Well, if you're CA State Assemblymen Mike Duvall, all you need is a vagina.
Duvall, a married Republican from Orange County, was caught on tape bragging about a graphic sexual encounter with a female lobbyist for energy company, Sempra Energy. Duvall is vice chair of the Committee on Utilities & Commerce. No word on whether or not their arrangement was quid pro quo, but their relationship was "the worst-kept secret in Sacramento". The revelation has caused Duvall to resign his position, but now has back pedaled and said that he was only involved in "inappropriate storytelling." way to man up, Mikey.
It need not be said that Duvall is a family values Republican, who opposes gay marriage, and is a hypocrite, any combination of the two is merely a redundancy. In my previous post, I mentioned an unnamed still-sitting Democratic congresswoman, videotaped in a same-sex tryst being blackmailed by a foreign government, so piggish behavior is not limited by gender and/or party. The only thing they have in common is they happen to be politicians and that leads me to my point.
For years, before my health insurance ran out, I was paying into a fund, and not using it, because I am somewhat healthy. Now that I no longer have this carrier, does that mean I get a refund? No, of course not. I just wonder if maybe that money, when not going to CEO bonuses or to bureaucrats trying to find a reason to deny other people's claims, was being paid to a lobbyist to fuck some fat-assed gray haired dickwad family values Republican hypocrite, who then graphically describes his encounter to anyone in earshot because that's the kind of uncouth lobbyistfucker he is, to oppose any health care reform at all. That seems to be the way our system works these days. Giant corporations take our hard earned money and buy politicians who enact laws that benefit these large corporations at our expense. And if you don't like it, move to Canada.
At least you'd have health insurance.

Stray Thoughts...........

......do the people who had a problem with Obama's speech to children today as some sort of indoctrination also oppose military recruiters at schools?
...have any of the Republican fear mongers ever read 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf'?
.....can we vote away health care for congress?
.......who is the unnamed, currently-serving, married Democratic Congresswoman said to have been video-taped in a Lesbian affair by Turkish agents for blackmail purposes according to testimony by Sibel Edmonds?
.......how many other congress members are also being blackmailed?
........why do people still listen to Sarah Palin?
.... is the right wing policy of yelling and over reaction sustainable into the next election cycle?
..... with all this yelling and screaming, have the Republicans put across any doable ideas as solutions to the problems facing America?
......why are all Right Wing Obama attacks, i.e., death panels, indoctrination speeches, based on obvious lies?


Just wondering.

Two Thoughts So Terrible They Could Cost You Your Career

So many times were told that America is a great country because of our liberties, one of which is our freedom of thought. We can think any idea to be true, no matter how insane it may be. We are able to think that President Obama, for instance, was born in Kenya, and his mother merely had his birth announcements placed in Hawaiian newspapers because she knew someday that he'd be elected president, where he could foist his radical secret Muslim socialist oligarchic agenda on an unsuspecting people. You can think President Obama's speech to school children will brainwash them to socialism, and hell, CNN will give you all the air time you want because these views are important, and worthy of being aired on national television.
You can believe a lot of things, and have the freedom to express your faith in anything, Elvis, Jesus, Mohammed, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or the ability of free markets to lift all boats, and that's okay. You can believe Sarah Palin is a maverick qualified to be president because she quit her job half way through her term, gays and lesbians being married will some how destroy your marriage, or that swine flu will be really, really bad this year because the fear mongering media keeps telling you it will.
No, there are two things that you can't think. One, is that Republicans are assholes. Let me see, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, John McCain, Michelle Bachman, Sean Hannity, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, John Sanford, stop me when I get to one that hasn't displayed assholish behavior on a regular basis.
The second terrible thought is that the previous administration allowed 9/11 to happen to further their agenda. Let me see, Dick Cheney, former CEO of Halliburton, who had to have his Halliburton stock pried from his cold, stiff, and half dead fingers allowing the worst terrorist attack on American soil to happen which benefited, uh, Halliburton, and people are shocked? The truth is that with the fall of communism at the start of the nineties, the defense contractors (like Halliburton) needed a justification for the half a trillion dollar annual defense budget of the United States. They needed a new perpetual enemy and a new Pearl Harbor. And, most importantly, they needed a way to keep the masses in fear so they could continue to loot the country for their own benefit without anybody paying too much attention. So excuse me for thinking that 9/11 was an inside job, and I'll excuse you for thinking that a bunch of cave dwellers half way across the globe had the intelligence and foresight to be able to penetrate our defense systems, force NORAD fighter jets to stand down, and fly over the most secure airspace on the planet with impunity. And in that same extent, perhaps we should look more into Van Jones' beliefs as well, since his beliefs are personal, and in no way interfere with his position as "Green Jobs" adviser to the Obama administration.

If You Only Get Upset When De Black Folk Do It, Then You Are Definitely A Racist

Our democracy is a farce, a charade put on to keep each side bickering with each other while those in Congress we elect to serve us rush out billion dollar bail outs for bankster cronies as millions of people are dying for better health care reform.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you one Dan Broun, an alarmist with in the Republican party, which, ever since Obama became president, alarmist and Republican has become a redundancy.
Rep. Broun, from Georgia, who came to prominence last year when he suggested the Army ban sales of controversial reading material such as Playboy, fears the Democrats are creating a totalitarian state. Funny, but that's what many on the left felt about the Bush administration. Broun cites Obama's call last year during his campaign for a a civilian national security force as the first step in the takeover of the government. However, when the Bush administration created the Civilian Defense Force two years ago, Broun must have been too busy researching his positions on adult themed publications he was looking to ban for sale to our troops to notice that, indeed, we were moving towards a totalitarian state. Nor did Broun make a fuss about Cheney using Blackwater Security as his own private security force.
Broun also cites a ban on gun ownership as one of the things Obama has to bring about the Democrats totalitarian state. Wait a minute! Do you mean we can't own guns? When did this happen? Broun didn't squeak when Homeland Security banned shampoo, perfume and bottled water on flights as potential weapons, perhaps he prefer that smelly people with dirty hair deserve to be thirsty, I don't know, but when the government can deny you these simple items, can totalitarianism be far behind?
Finally, Broun cited President Obama's control of the media as another step towards totalitarianism. This is, of course, the same "liberal" corporate media that in 2002 essentially became an arm of the Bush administration's propaganda campaign for an illegal invasion of a country that never posed a threat to this country at all, the same media that from September of 2001 to August 2005 never dared to speak, print or publish the slightest negativity about President Bush, now he thinks somehow Obama has control of it? Or, do the corporations that control our media also control the person in the Oval Office, be they Republican or Democrat?
I think that Rep. Broun had no problem with the US becoming a totalitarian state, as long as it was run by a rich white Republican good ol' boy from TexaConnecticut, but now that it's in the hands of an urbane, well spoken Nigrah from Chy-cago, well now it's time to pine tar up the Ol' Rugged Cross boys, we got us a sacred ritual to perform.

Big Brother Barry

Some people say, because of President Obama's tumbling approval ratings that he may well be a one-term president. But I wouldn't count on that. Why? Because the opposition is stupid. Not just plain stupid, not fucking stupid, no, they are borderline retarded. With my apologies to those retarded people, of course.
And just how retarded are these folks? Just enough to make Trig Palin seem more of an underacheiver than a Down's Syndrome afflicted child. It seems that some parents oppose a speech Obama intends on giving to students Tuesday. Why? Is it because it's full of cuss words and graphic depictions of sexual congress between two adult people? Is it because they fear Obama's ability to hypmotize people with his speech? Maybe.Is it because the message work hard and stay in school are too controversial for these folks? No, as I said before, they're beyond fucking stupid almost to the point of retardation. It's because they fear that said speech is part of Obama's indoctrination of their children into some sort of socialist Islamic oligarchy. Where would these people be without corporate media fearmongering?
Now, even though I voted for Barry, I certainly am no big fan of his. But I am still able to recognize retardation when I see it. Of course these kids are being indoctrinated, they're going to a public school for Christ's sake. If you don't want them indoctrinated in the corpocracy, homeschool the little bastards.

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.

Chick Fight In 2012?

With the Obama administration unable to follow through on any of it's promises, from reforming health care, to ending the war in Iraq (or Afghanistan), ending the torturous practices of the previous administration, and generally failing to deliver the hope of change that was the theme of it's campaign, is someone looking ahead to 2012? Of course, I mean Hillary Clinton, who is still keeping a small political team from her campaign staff. For someone who believes the elite win power by the will of God, who uses them for his purposes (and not by the will of the voters, who hope they'll keep their promises) to be so close to the top might be a temptation even such a spiritual person as Ms. Clinton can not resist.
And in this corner- Sarah Palin, able to garner support from 80% of the rich old white men at NewsMax in a 2012 presidential run. (I say old men because 80% of advertising is aimed at fat unhealthy seniors). She used her farewell speech as a foundation for her 2012 campaign. Who else dos the GOP have? Tim Pawlenty? "Bobby" Jindal? (I can see the base that refers to Barack Hussein Obama going for a guy whose first name is Piyush) George (or what ever his first name is)Huckabee? Mittens? Just read these pro-Palin comments and you can see what the base likes about her-she's good looking, especially lined up against a long-in-the-tooth hag like Clinton will be in three years.
Just face it. Even with a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, Barack Obama is not going to change anything. America is fucked up the way the corporocratic masters want it fucked up. So if politics can't serve the will of the people, the least it could do is offer us some entertainment.

Will Clinton Pull A Powell?

In 2002 it was much easier to sell a war. Our corporate controlled Congress co-mingled nicely with our corporate controlled media to sell us many reasons we needed to invade Iraq, from Saddam has a cheesy mustache to his feet stink really bad and he hogs all the covers at night. Throw that together with an American audience angered at the delay of the release of the new Spiderman movie while the Twin Towers were digitally erased, and you have a recipe for war.
But you have to give the Obama administration points for trying. On NBC's Beat The Drums today, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Iran's pursuit of nukes futile. What's really futile is the War Party's constant lies about Iran even after Director Of National Intelligence Dennis Blair's statement about Iran not re-starting it's nuclear weapons program. Perhaps the politically minded Clinton should remember what happened to Colin Powell after he lied to the UN about Saddam's non-existent nukes.
While Iran may possess defensive missiles, the only way that could endanger the television watchers is if Iran used them to take out Octomom before her reality show hits the air. So the media plays out the birther thing longer than it needs to be (started by a group of people who had no problem with a Bush administration full of people with dual citizenship and loyalty) it's important to remember who is the threat here and who only wishes to defend it's people from a fate similar to it's neighbors to the west.

We All Just Became Peasants

Our country is broken, and I don't just mean economically. We have a congress willing to spend $50 million, borrowed from our children's future on utter nonsense that benefits the agenda of a few evil rich men while millions go wanting for health care. But that's not even the root of the problem.
No, the problem is we have people so lock stepped with political parties so out of touch with reality that Nancy Pelosi can declare $350,000 the new middle class. This makes the president slightly upper middle class now, but he doesn't have to pay taxes on his free health care, (or his free security,his free lodging, or his free public transportation), but his plan wants you to consider your health insurance (if provided by your employer) as " taxable income".
But if $350K is the new middle class, is $175K lower middle class? That would explain why there has been so much credit default lately, somehow, while we were busting our asses, paying our bills, and providing for our families, we all became poor. Someone moved the goal line while we were still on our own 30 yard line.
But you can't blame Pelosi, or the rest of congress, for taking advantage of people stupid enough to keep voting against their own interests-that's capitalism.
As insane and out of touch as Pelosi's statement is, it is more in touch with the Republicans, who last year were ready to vote for a guy who thought $3 million was middle class. The reality is that as long as we keep playing the corpocracy's game of Democrats vs. Republicans, we will all remian what they want us to be: peasants.

Stating The Obvious

In the debate over health care reform, one question that has been asked time and time again is, where will the money for single payer health care from?
Taxes. that's right, Obama wants to raise your taxes. Good thing we voted for more taxes because with the economy is full-on depression mode, the one thing working people need to do is pay more taxes. How else could we fund such a massive government undertaking?
Ron Paul has an idea. If we end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and cut our defense budget in half, we'll have all the money we need for a health care program. Of course being a libertarian, (and a doctor), Ron Paul opposes nationalizing the health care industry, but "you don’t want to cut under these [economic] conditions medical care from poor people who have been dependent, or the elderly." That this makes sense is all the more likely that no one in congress will actually do anything about it.
Take Afghanistan. Please. (That is, if you can. No country has ever successfully been able to take that piece of real estate, and that vote-for-me-and-hope-for-change guy isn't going to have anymore success, no matter how many more troops he sends into that quagmire.) And what are we fighting for In Afghanistan? Liberty! The liberty to build a pipeline that only benefits big oil, essentially socializing the army for a select few (who then complain about having to pay taxes). The liberty to increase opium production so the police can have the liberty to arrest heroin addicts at home. The liberty to set civilian death records, liberating Afghanis from this mortal coil. Oh yeah, then there's that whole 9/11 thing, of which the Taleban, as with the people of Iraq, did not partake in at all, but being that America was founded on liberty, we can take all the liberties we want.
Of course, it's noted, that right after Paul made his pronouncement, the "liberal" media changed the subject. Can't have the truth slip out on the news shows, the sheeple might get angry.

Methinks Thou Doth Protest Too Stupidly

Wait a minute, wait a minute. So the US condemns a video of a soldier captured in Afghanistan? Why? Is he stacked up naked with other prisoners while a burqa wearing female points at his genitalia? Is he forced to stand naked while dogs snap at his body? Is he being forcibly sodomized by a guard? No? Than really what do we have to condemn?
Oh. I see. It's a violation of international law. While I feel for the soldier, and his family, for the understandably traumatic experience they are having to endure, the US lost it's right to complain about international law violations a long time ago. This is why anti-torture advocates have been so vociferous following the revelation of the US using "enhanced interrogation techniques". Because, someday, sooner or later, our soldiers, fighting in the global war for enduring hegemony, are bound to be captured by the enemy, and perhaps, they won't be forced to eat rice and bread, drink tea, and wear traditional grey, loose-fitting Afghan shalwar kameez clothing.
The US, under the Obama administration, had an opportunity to change the way that the US operates, but, as with much else with in our foreign policy, has opted to continue the same policies of the Bush administration. (So much for "change we can believe in). So the current administration, as with the previous, can blather on about how our troops are handled as if they really care. But the truth is, if they really cared, they would put an end to this policy before some other serviceperson is captured by a group that cares even less than we do about international law. Fortunately for us, the only other country that cares less than we do about international is Israel, and they are our ally.
Cross posted at American Insurgency

You Can Dish It Out, But You Can't Take It

It started innocuously enough.
I had posted a link to this on my Facebook page. I did it for two reasons. One, I was trying to let Fred know that it was indeed me putting in a friend request. (He rejected me anyway. Bastard.) The other reason was to counter my brother, who uses his page to post opinion pieces from the NY Times. (Get a blog!) But I forgot.
One of my friends is a conservative. Well, not a conservative, but a Limbaugh spouting parrot, as exampled by his comment:

Hope and Change, Yes we Can I was inspired, and it proved I'm not racist

Of course, I know that not to be true, having been a friend of his for sometime now. I didn't respond, because, really, there was nothing to respond to. A day later, he posted another comment:

Just giving ya a hard time, looks like a regular from Snug

(a place we used to work together)
Still, no response from me, as I felt no response was necessary. All in good fun, he tried to bait me, and was unsuccessful. In the meantime, another friend posted a comment:

Oh, yeah. I'm looking for the joke with a microscope, missing my sense of humor.

Still, no reason to respond. Then, for some reason, last night, the first friend posted two more comments:

wow, sorry, lets get back to dogging bush.

and

can't wait for the new taxes, we'll finally get all those evil rich people

Now, he's fully OT, and so, I felt the need to respond in the same spirit as my friend:

I had to go back and check, but yeah, I don't think I dogged Bush at all in that link. Nor do I believe I mentioned anything about taxing those evil rich people. I merely pointed out how conservatives sense of humor isn't very funny at all, just a little racist and/or macabre.
I mean, how stupid are conservatives? They don't want to spend any money to help those people who have no health insurance, but don't seem to have a problem socializing our defense department and spending billions of dollars in Iraq fighting a war against a country that posed no real threat to the US, had no links to al Qaeda, and wasn't involved in 9/11, all for the benefit of a few, dare I say it, evil rich people.
But that's okay. Just keep listening to Rush Limpballs and parroting his talking points, waving your flag and driving your gas sucking pig of a car. Maybe in 2012 you can vote
for Palin, and maybe she'll stick the job out this time.

That was this morning, and now I find that I have been deleted as his friend. Did I go over the line? I don't think so, I was merely responding to his taunts and baiting which were OT. We've always had a difference of opinion when it came to politics, but could agree on most everything else. While I did vote for Obama, I'm sure, being the astute political type he is, he would notice that there is no difference in foreign policy between Bush and Obama, which means we're both suckers for the corpocracy.
Or, maybe, I should just let it go.

If You Don't Want Be Called An Asshole..........Don't Act Like One

The British Parliament is considering passing a law to make it a criminal act to call Jews Nazis. Just because Israel walled up Palestinians in the equivalent of a ghetto and have been systematically eliminating them through military force and siege like behavior doesn't make them Nazis, it just means they learned from the Nazis. But, in the effort of fairness, and to not give one group extra rights over everyone else, perhaps it should be criminal to call some one an anti-Semite when they publish a piece are critical of anything short of the Jewish religion itself.
But why stop with just Zionists? Why not criminalize any comparison to the Nazis? The left would no longer be able to refer to the GOP as the "Reich Wing", and Limbaugh and all his mindless shittohead followers would be forbidden to use the term 'feminazi'. This might even elevate political discourse on the net and eliminate Godwin's Law.

The US Plans To Attack Another Nation That Had Nothing To Do With 9/11 In It's Continuation Of The Alleged War On Terror

Iran signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which guarantees it the right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. It also requires Iran to open up it's process to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which it has done, and fully co-operated with in it's performance of it's job. The IAEA has found that not one grain of the uranium Iran has enriched has been diverted to any other program. The US has also signed the same treaty, which requires that the US not interfere with any country developing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
So why has the G-8 set a deadline for Iran to accept negotiations over its nuclear ambitions or else face tougher sanctions? Is it because Iran is ruled by a bunch of thugs who murder foreign leaders? Oh wait, that's the United States. Has Iran threatened any body in the world with military action? Once again, that's the US which has shown that the Obama administration is no different than the Cheney/Bush regime when it comes to sending troops to die for big oil.
Now Israel has stepped into this as well, promising the international community to offer concessions on the formation of a Palestinian state as well as on its settlement policy and "issues" with Arab neighbors, in exchange for international backing for an Israeli operation in Iran.As a matter of fact two Israeli warships sailed through the Suez Canal within cruise-missile range of Iran earlier this week. Couple that with the Israeli Air Force joining the USAF in a training exercise, and you can almost hear the bombs falling on Tehran as Us media types report on the damage while computer generated flags wave in the background as stirring pseudo-patriotic music plays. Why watch Michael Jackson get burned when you can watch Iranian women, children and men get bombed?