Warning: music is appropriately modern, angry, and loud. Video can still be educational with the sound off.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
And who is my neighbor?
Look out your window, baby, there's a scene you'd like to catch
The band is playing "Dixie", a man got his hand outstretched
Could be the Führer
Could be the local priest
You know sometimes Satan, you know he comes as a man of peace.
-Bob Dylan-
The band is playing "Dixie", a man got his hand outstretched
Could be the Führer
Could be the local priest
You know sometimes Satan, you know he comes as a man of peace.
-Bob Dylan-
It hard not to think of the parable of the good Samaritan when you read about the anti-health care reform protesters in Columbus Ohio. Seems that Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy (D-OH) is still undecided and so competing groups showed up outside her office Tuesday last to express their opinions as loudly as possible.
A wrinkled, kneeling man holding a stick crawled up to a group opposing the effort with a sign saying he has "got Parkinson's" and needs help, say Raw Story's Will any of us be surprised at the reaction?
"If you're looking for a handout you're in the wrong end of town," one man yelled at him.
"Nothing for free over here, you have to work for everything you get."Something smells bad in Columbus and I don't think that stench is called Christian values.
Of course the health care reform under consideration isn't about handouts, it's that some people's greatest fear is that not only will someone get something he himself isn't getting, but that it might cost him some money. Insurance, by nature is about dividing risk amongst participants and so those who suffer losses will be covered while others pay a smaller amount. This seems to be fine with Republicans as long as some third party is skimming off 40% while keeping those at greatest risk out of the pool. This seems to them perversely to be Communism when individual risk is minimized by maximizing the pool and cost minimized by self administration by public ownership.
Is it a coincidence that people who don't seem to get this are the same people so mean spirited that they will mock someone with a terminal and debilitating disease and tell him to "work?" Is it that such people fear someone who could challenge their own self-pity that they must hate those really deserving of it? God knows who the Christians in Columbus are, but no one else seems to.
Even so, health care reform isn't about being a good Samaritan, it's about the most economical and efficient method of minimizing the burden on any individual participant by making us all participants, so whether there is a God who punishes nasty, malicious, selfish greedy bastards or some other principle of Nature that punishes the intellectually unfit and self defeating Conservative, it may be time to get out of Columbus and not look back.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Victory at last?
Newsweek insists that the mission is accomplished and democracy has succeeded in Ira
q -- just like Bush predicted. It good to know that Democracy consists of holding an election in an ethnically cleansed country where only a few dozen people are killed and while occupied by a foreign invader. How much more democratic must Venezuela be then, or Cuba or Iran? Bush predicted that? He also predicted mobile chemical weapons factories, Qaeda training camps, stores of WMD's and a nuclear weapons facility -- that it would all be on the cheap and take only a few weeks. I do hope there's a tongue deeply embedded in some editor's cheek.
And now Maliki is suggesting that election returns have been tampered with and there have been hundreds of accusations of fraud. But never mind, it's mission accomplished and Nixon wasn't a crook.
q -- just like Bush predicted. It good to know that Democracy consists of holding an election in an ethnically cleansed country where only a few dozen people are killed and while occupied by a foreign invader. How much more democratic must Venezuela be then, or Cuba or Iran? Bush predicted that? He also predicted mobile chemical weapons factories, Qaeda training camps, stores of WMD's and a nuclear weapons facility -- that it would all be on the cheap and take only a few weeks. I do hope there's a tongue deeply embedded in some editor's cheek.And now Maliki is suggesting that election returns have been tampered with and there have been hundreds of accusations of fraud. But never mind, it's mission accomplished and Nixon wasn't a crook.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Monday, March 15, 2010
The realm of possibility
I wonder if I could convince the IRS that I never was an American Citizen. Perhaps I could try the method that convinced the100 million or so of America's stupidest that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. After all my birth certificate looks no different from his, save for the name and State. Send for your certificate as you will have to do if you want a passport or to apply for Social Security benefits and see for yourself. Odds are it will look pretty much the same and not like the old handwritten things one used to get once upon a time when the coloreds knew their place or else.
And by "nailed down" testimony we mean a valid birth certificate, confirmed by the vital statistics department of any state -- just like the one Barack Obama has shown us and that Hawaii attests to, Says Virginia's new Attorney General.
Yes, I know, you don't have to be a genius to be an Attorney General in the State of Virginia and as AG Ken Cuccinelli proves, you don't have to be much smarter than what you'll find in the Richmond zoo -- and no I'm not talking about the keepers. If your head's way up "place B" you'll do fine. It's within the realm of possibility that Obama was born in Kenya, says he and I don't think he's referring to the realm of quantum physics wherein there is also a possibility that he will disappear and be reassembled on Alpha Centauri.
Why even consider the possibility, seeing that the State of Hawaii's official records and official record keepers and the Honolulu newspapers affirm he was born there: seeing as it's been checked and re-checked and confirmed? Because, as some would tell you "where there's smoke, there's fire" and as others would say: "people are saying." Of course where there's smoke, it could be a smokescreen and "people are saying" because they're desperately in denial that a black man could be President and because the media are feasting on that bit of carrion and won't give it up. All in all, the odds are about the same that young Cucchi and I were born in Nairobi as that the President was, and those odds are close enough to zero to be zero.
Of course the dapper young Cuchster was happy to add to the insanity by proposing that someone break a law that the President signed and then take it to court on the basis that the President isn't the President, but probably unbeknownst to him it's been tried, was thrown out of court and the attorney found in contempt. As I said you don't have to have anywhere near three digits in your IQ to rise to the top in Virginia. Put Gucci loafers and a swank suit on a blue-assed baboon and he'll do fine as long as he flings shit at the president of the United States.
"I mean, someone is going to have to come forward with nailed down testimony that he was born in place B, wherever that is. You know, the speculation is Kenya. And that doesn't seem beyond the realm of possibility."
And by "nailed down" testimony we mean a valid birth certificate, confirmed by the vital statistics department of any state -- just like the one Barack Obama has shown us and that Hawaii attests to, Says Virginia's new Attorney General.
Yes, I know, you don't have to be a genius to be an Attorney General in the State of Virginia and as AG Ken Cuccinelli proves, you don't have to be much smarter than what you'll find in the Richmond zoo -- and no I'm not talking about the keepers. If your head's way up "place B" you'll do fine. It's within the realm of possibility that Obama was born in Kenya, says he and I don't think he's referring to the realm of quantum physics wherein there is also a possibility that he will disappear and be reassembled on Alpha Centauri.
Why even consider the possibility, seeing that the State of Hawaii's official records and official record keepers and the Honolulu newspapers affirm he was born there: seeing as it's been checked and re-checked and confirmed? Because, as some would tell you "where there's smoke, there's fire" and as others would say: "people are saying." Of course where there's smoke, it could be a smokescreen and "people are saying" because they're desperately in denial that a black man could be President and because the media are feasting on that bit of carrion and won't give it up. All in all, the odds are about the same that young Cucchi and I were born in Nairobi as that the President was, and those odds are close enough to zero to be zero.
Of course the dapper young Cuchster was happy to add to the insanity by proposing that someone break a law that the President signed and then take it to court on the basis that the President isn't the President, but probably unbeknownst to him it's been tried, was thrown out of court and the attorney found in contempt. As I said you don't have to have anywhere near three digits in your IQ to rise to the top in Virginia. Put Gucci loafers and a swank suit on a blue-assed baboon and he'll do fine as long as he flings shit at the president of the United States.
The more we lie, the truer it gets
What happened never happened and the election that ousted the Republicans from office all around the country had nothing to do with public sentiment and even if it did, that sentiment did not include a desire for sweeping reform of health care in America. Or so says Sarah Palin, trying to emulate the rest of the Republican flim-flam artists and voodoo historians like Karl Rove and the dynamic Cheney Family Circus. True to American form, being the worst of them at this game, she may have the most followers.
Yes, although every reputable source including this one insists that there is nothing in any way suggestive of rationing or "death Panels" as she used to call it, in the House or Senate health care reform bills, she goes on as though there obviously are and as though nobody ever asked for reform in the first place and as though all we ever needed is protection for doctors against malpractice suits.
Palin reveals in her Facebook page, which after all is a fine place to self-publish things no reputable source will touch, that yes, America is wildly against reform and the "Democrat" cabal is forcing it all into one orifice or another against our collective will -- and of course there are death panels and rationing and all kinds of other evil things lurking in that huge document she hasn't got round to reading yet. It takes so long to sound out all those words, you know.
Please ask yourself: who will be left behind? And who will decide – what kind of panel will decide – who receives the health care that government will obviously have to ration?
Yes, although every reputable source including this one insists that there is nothing in any way suggestive of rationing or "death Panels" as she used to call it, in the House or Senate health care reform bills, she goes on as though there obviously are and as though nobody ever asked for reform in the first place and as though all we ever needed is protection for doctors against malpractice suits.
Palin reveals in her Facebook page, which after all is a fine place to self-publish things no reputable source will touch, that yes, America is wildly against reform and the "Democrat" cabal is forcing it all into one orifice or another against our collective will -- and of course there are death panels and rationing and all kinds of other evil things lurking in that huge document she hasn't got round to reading yet. It takes so long to sound out all those words, you know.
HEALTHCARE REFORM CRUNCH TIME
My local Congressional Representative is Suzanne Kosmas (D), who voted ‘no’ last time on the House healthcare reform bill. Her website lists 3 offices with a telephone number and fax line at each location. This morning, I called each office and spoke with a staffer and sent a letter to each fax line, making myself absolutely clear that this is the ONE VOTE that will determine whether or not I support Kosmas in November. Lets just say, I was very determined to make my voice heard ... and let her know that, if she disappoints me twice, I will do everything possible to insure her defeat in November.
Shock and Awe
"It's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself. The oil revenue of that country could bring between 50 and 100 billion dollars over the course of the next two or three years. We're dealing with a country that could really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."Maybe you heard Paul Wolfowitz's words to Congress on the Daily Show 5 years ago when George Bush decided to pawn him off on the World Bank and everyone was laughing at the ridiculous bastard and e-mailing the clip to their friends.
Maybe the video of Karl Rove saying that what happened never happened will make the same rounds. Rove has always been able to rely on the gullibility of strangers -- and of course their defective and selective memories. Whether we write such things off to psychotic partisanship or bald stupidity or plain old evil is anyone's call but here's Karl on Meet The Press Yesterday saying the Bush Administration didn't say what the Bush administration said and even though you were an enthusiastic patriot for believing it then, you're a liar for believing it now.
"Now the revisionist floodgates have opened with the simultaneous arrival of Karl Rove’s memoir and Keep America Safe, a new right-wing noise machine invented by Dick Cheney’s daughter Liz and the inevitable William Kristol. This gang’s rewriting of history knows few bounds."wrote Frank Rich the day before. He hadn't yet had the joy of hearing this latest jewel of denial.
Of course you know I'm not an optimist. I've won many bets by gambling that the American public will make the most ridiculously inappropriate choices in public policy and my money is on the prediction that before long the Bush administration will never have said the war will be over in weeks, that we will be greeted as liberators, that there will be almost no casualties, that reconstruction will be swift and cheap, that there were al Qaeda training camps, mobile chemical weapons factories, nuclear facilities only weeks away from making deliverable bombs and that "freedom" will burst out all over the Middle East and the silly Liberal losers who doubt it are flirting with treason for doubting it.
Truth having caught up with the men who murdered America, they're forced to retreat into an imaginary world where they never said what they said, or did what they did and where a minimalist government presided over 8 prosperous years of freedom and peace - just like the theory says. Too bad we can't lock the door behind them.
DUNCE SCOTUS
It seems the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has started her own Tea Party PAC, according to this report in the Los Angeles Times:
"I am an ordinary citizen from Omaha, Neb., who just may have the chance to preserve liberty along with you and other people like you," she said at a recent panel discussion with tea party leaders in Washington. Thomas went on to count herself among those energized into action by President Obama's "hard-left agenda."Read the rest of the story here.
But Thomas is no ordinary activist.
She is the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and she has launched a tea-party-linked group that could test the traditional notions of political impartiality for the court.
In January, Virginia Thomas created Liberty Central Inc., a nonprofit lobbying group whose website will organize activism around a set of conservative "core principles," she said.
The group plans to issue score cards for Congress members and be involved in the November election, although Thomas would not specify how. She said it would accept donations from various sources -- including corporations -- as allowed under campaign finance rules recently loosened by the Supreme Court.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Religious leaders speak out against Beck
Because they are fundamentalists, certain factions . . . oppose preaching a social gospel that attempts to make a relation between Biblical teachings and social problems. Thus they are often critical of the favored liberal social legislation of the National Council of Churches. . . .
The above paragraph is taken from a section about the John Birch Society in the book, The Far Right by Donald Janson, 1963.
Nearly 50 years later Glenn Beck's rants sound eerily identical to this right-wing extremist group. Goose-stepping along with the JBS, this fountain of lies and distortions "has suggested any church promoting 'social justice' or 'economic justice' was using code words for Nazism and communism."
I beg you look for the words social justice or economic justice on your church Web site," he said. "If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. ... Am I advising people to leave their church? Yes! If they're going to Jeremiah Wright's church, yes!
If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish," he said. "Go alert your bishop and tell them, 'Excuse me, are you down with this whole social justice thing?' If it's my church, I'm alerting the church authorities: 'Excuse me, what's this social justice thing?' And if they say, 'Yeah, we're all in on this social justice thing,' I am in the wrong place.
Later, Beck held up a picture of a swastika and one of a hammer and sickle, declaring again that "social justice" has the same philosophy as the Nazis and communists and that the phrase is a code word for both.
A small group of churches and religious leaders are speaking out against this poor excuse for a human being. Hopefully there will be a louder outcry as congregations gather to worship this weekend.
The strongest voice against Beck so far has been that of the Rev. Jim Wallis, CEO and president of Sojourners and an evangelical leader.
When Glenn Beck is asking Christians to leave their churches, the Catholic Church, the black churches, Hispanic, evangelical, to leave all our churches, I'm saying it's time for Christians to leave the Glenn Beck show," he said. "This offends Christians. This is salt, something at the heart of their faith. It's something many of us have spent our lives trying to do, to practice.
Urging a boycott of Fox and requesting an invitation to appear on Beck's show for a little friendly chit-chat, Wallis said, "What do you say about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., what do you say about Desmond Tutu, about Mother Teresa, what do you say to the reverends and rabbis who gave their lives to social justice because that is their faith?"
The Rev. Canon Peg Chemberlin, president of the National Council of Churches of Christ USA, commented:
It's very disturbing," she added. "He's speaking on behalf of his political views and trying to take out of the biblical text the things that are going to oppose his political views. This is primarily a political motivation. ... It's not that Christians haven't been Nazis and socialists, but we're not talking about political parties here. We're talking about 2,000-year-old gospel.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which he and his family are members, "suggested Beck's comments did not necessarily represent its position." In a kind of wet noodly way, the church issued a statement that read, "Public figures who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints represent their own views and do not speak for the church."
The above paragraph is taken from a section about the John Birch Society in the book, The Far Right by Donald Janson, 1963.
Nearly 50 years later Glenn Beck's rants sound eerily identical to this right-wing extremist group. Goose-stepping along with the JBS, this fountain of lies and distortions "has suggested any church promoting 'social justice' or 'economic justice' was using code words for Nazism and communism."
I beg you look for the words social justice or economic justice on your church Web site," he said. "If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. ... Am I advising people to leave their church? Yes! If they're going to Jeremiah Wright's church, yes!
If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish," he said. "Go alert your bishop and tell them, 'Excuse me, are you down with this whole social justice thing?' If it's my church, I'm alerting the church authorities: 'Excuse me, what's this social justice thing?' And if they say, 'Yeah, we're all in on this social justice thing,' I am in the wrong place.
Later, Beck held up a picture of a swastika and one of a hammer and sickle, declaring again that "social justice" has the same philosophy as the Nazis and communists and that the phrase is a code word for both.
A small group of churches and religious leaders are speaking out against this poor excuse for a human being. Hopefully there will be a louder outcry as congregations gather to worship this weekend.
The strongest voice against Beck so far has been that of the Rev. Jim Wallis, CEO and president of Sojourners and an evangelical leader.
When Glenn Beck is asking Christians to leave their churches, the Catholic Church, the black churches, Hispanic, evangelical, to leave all our churches, I'm saying it's time for Christians to leave the Glenn Beck show," he said. "This offends Christians. This is salt, something at the heart of their faith. It's something many of us have spent our lives trying to do, to practice.
Urging a boycott of Fox and requesting an invitation to appear on Beck's show for a little friendly chit-chat, Wallis said, "What do you say about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., what do you say about Desmond Tutu, about Mother Teresa, what do you say to the reverends and rabbis who gave their lives to social justice because that is their faith?"
The Rev. Canon Peg Chemberlin, president of the National Council of Churches of Christ USA, commented:
It's very disturbing," she added. "He's speaking on behalf of his political views and trying to take out of the biblical text the things that are going to oppose his political views. This is primarily a political motivation. ... It's not that Christians haven't been Nazis and socialists, but we're not talking about political parties here. We're talking about 2,000-year-old gospel.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which he and his family are members, "suggested Beck's comments did not necessarily represent its position." In a kind of wet noodly way, the church issued a statement that read, "Public figures who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints represent their own views and do not speak for the church."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)