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?

Conservatives Are Funny People, It's Just That You're Not In On The Joke

Oh, those poor misunderstood conservatives. It's not that they're not funny, it's just that nobody "gets" their sense of humor, with the exception, of course, of other conservatives.
Take the wonderfully open minded folks at the Free Republic. Please. When some comments there made comments about Malia Obama looking like a "street whore", it was a joke made out of fear that soon, their daughters, like President Obama's, will be forced to dress like a common street trollop instead of the high-class hookers they want them to dress like. And asking them to apologize for it would be liking David Letterman to apologize for any inappropriate jokes he may have made about Sarah Palin's daughter. Except people actually watch David Letterman. I don't know anybody who would admit to visiting the Free Republic, except to catch updates on the homosexualagenda.
Even funnier is Pat Buchanan, dear old Uncle Pat to some people, which is why I don't understand why no one got his joke about how Todd Palin "ought to take Levi down to the creek and hold his head underwater until the thrashing stops.” Such wit and wordplay going on there! Levi, is of course, Levi Johnston, father to Todd Palin's bastard grandchild, and he made the mistake of actually speaking his mind, which is not funny in conservative circles. And Buchanan, former speechwriter for President Nixon, was probably recalling the good-old-days when political opponents were taken down to the Tidal Basin and drowned on a regular basis.
But by far, the funniest conservative is pro-assassination analyst Wayne Simmons who stated that Dick Cheney would never break the law. Sure, he may commit treason, get drunk and shoot his hunting partner in the face, fabricate intelligence to lead the US into an illegal war, lie about connections between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, and run a top secret assassination squad out of his office, but he would never break the law.
So the next time you hear a conservative reel off a really tasteless statement, just remember, it's just a joke. And don't expect them to apologize for your obvious lack of a sense of humor.
(Cross posted at American Insurgency)