Rants from RAVE

Welcome to Conservative America

2009-07-12T12:55:00.000-07:00

There are lots of stupid and disgusting things on the Internet. This is one of the worst ever.

I think it's interesting, though not the least bit unexpected, that it's a big story in Canada but no place to be found in our mainstream press. I doubt you'll see it on Fox "News" either.

The Hypocrisy Goes On...and On...and On...and On...

2009-06-25T18:28:00.000-07:00

So just 3 or 4 weeks ago we had the Republican senator from Nevada, John Ensign, getting caught with his family values pants down. And this week we have the Republican governor of South Carolina, who not only disappeared and lied about where he was, on his earlier trip to Argentina for the ongoing tryst, he violated U.S. government policy by meeting with the head honcho of Argentina.

So, all within the same time period, two fundamentalist Christian Republicans self-destructed.

But, as you would expect from the party that has brought hypocrisy to lofty heights never before attained even by Richard Nixon, they're working on forgiving these two lying cheats. That's right--in the case of the Nevada senator, the Republican lawmakers applauded when he confessed his sins and said he was sorry. And in South Carolina, lots of the fundamentalists are already talking about forgiveness there.

With Christian fundamentalists, and today's Neocon Republicans, it's not what you do that matters, only what you say. You can even commit murder, then become a "born again" Christian and guess what--you will go to heaven, not hell. Cool. What an out. The very first fundamentalist must have been a lawyer.

These people disgust me. Not because they sometimes think with their balls instead of their brains--hell, they're men. Men want sex. Men need sex. They do what they can to get it. Most men, however, are not lying cheats, having affairs while telling their wives they are on hiking trips. ("Brokeback Mountain," anyone?)

No, they disgust me because of their hypocrisy. If a senator or congressman has an affair, I could not care less...provided he doesn't make his mark bashing others who do the same thing, blathering about god and country and faith and family, and bashing gays and hookers and the French. If you're a Republican and you voted for Clinton's impeachment for getting lewinskied while you're doing the same thing yourself, then you deserve the same fate. If you kiss up to the right wing lunatics in the Republican party by promoting hatred of gays, when you hang out in airport men's rooms looking for a quickie, then you too deserve what you get.

It's not the sex--it's the hypocrisy. If a normal person cheats and gets caught, well that's a problem between the cheater and spouse and I don't care if I ever hear about it. In fact, it shouldn't be anybody's business outside the guy's own family. It shouldn't even be news because it's just trash news anyway. But if the guy is one of those disgusting holier-than-thou "family values" bastards, then he should be hung out to dry. Any Republican who says these creeps should be forgiven, that it's not a big deal, that people make mistakes, blahblahblah--they have zero credibility. Remember how they acted about Sarah Palin's teenage daughter's unwed pregnancy? "Oh, well, teenagers, you know, they make mistakes, I"m sure she'll be a fine mother...blahblahblah..."

Can you imagine their feigned limbaughesque outrage had a Democrat's teenage daughter got pregnant?

When will Americans get sick of all this hypocrisy? Probably never, not as long as we've got Fox "News" and not as long as almost 1/3 of them think they're hearing news when they listen to talk radio or watch the talking heads on TV. I'm not kidding--almost 1/3 of Americans say they think those venues are news. That statistic is in a new documentary called "Broadcast Blues." More about that later.

Recovering Religionists

2009-06-13T09:35:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting article that appeared in the Kansas City Star this morning. It's about a support group for people who have come out of the closet.

Not the same closet gays come out of, but one that can be equally destructive to a person's health and well being. Well, not equally destructive because people rarely get beat up or killed for saying they don't believe in the Christian God. Except in the case of the Christian terrorists who have killed doctors and bombed health care clinics.

What I find interesting about this support group is that there is a need for a support group. Only in America, right? Or in a fundamentalist Islamic country. The article said that 16% of Americans say they are not believers in a controlling supernatural force. That's a big increase. However, that's low when compared to European countries. I don't have any statistics at hand but have read in the recent past that even with the stronger influence of the Catholic Church in Europe, fewer people there are believers than here.

Declaring yourself to be a non-Christian can be difficult in the U.S. It can affect your job, and you will get obscene, anonymous phone calls, and depending on where you live, you may experience vandalism on your property. Most younger people who live in more progressive, urban areas of the U.S. probably are not aware of the strength of religious fundamentalism throughout the Bible Belt areas of the country. At the extreme, it can lead to terrorism and murder; on a milder level to social ostracism.

I think there is a human need to belong, and that's why organizations like this support group are in existence. There's even a humanist organization that has Sunday morning meetings in places that seem close to churches but without the dogma or beliefs. It's as if many non-believers are trying to say: Hey, we're just like you, we want a sense of community and we want to do good works...but we can't believe in things that seem weird to us.

There's one religious writer in KC, Vern Barnett, who writes a regular column for the newspaper about religious diversity. He founded the Interfaith Council, which urges respect for all beliefs. Barnett actually wrote a column treating non-belief with the same respect he gives to any set of beliefs. I haven't talked to him in awhile, but I think it's a safe bet he probably got lots of hate mail from the fundamentalists.

What is unfortunate about many brands of Christianity in the U.S. is the evangelical zeal they have. They want everybody to believe as they do. I'm not sure but I'm guessing they justify that by tracing it back to Jesus' time spent wandering around teaching his philosophy and his instructions to his followers to do the same--ie., spread the Word.

However, Buddha lived a longer life than Jesus supposedly lived, and he and his followers wandered around doing the same thing. And today you don't find Buddhists telling you you're going to hell if you don't believe what they believe. They're there and will be happy to tell you what they believe if you want to know. But they don't persecute you if you don't join them. It's a lot easier for me to respect a Buddhist than a fundamentalist Christian. I should add a disclaimer here: I'm talking about fundamentalist Christians, not normal people who try to follow the teachings of Jesus and have respect for all Americans, regardless of race, creed or color. Religion has enabled many people to do good works, but in the wrong hands it has enabled many people to do horrid, evil things. Our society would be better served with more skeptics of all faiths.

Kansas City Star Misrepresents Michael Moore Deliberately

2009-06-07T15:38:00.001-07:00

Here are a couple of paragraphs from an email Michael Moore has sent to his mailing list. If you'd like to read the whole statement, and I do recommend it, go to his website.

So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors. The company's body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with -- dare I say it -- joy. It is not the joy of revenge against a corporation that ruined my hometown and brought misery, divorce, alcoholism, homelessness, physical and mental debilitation, and drug addiction to the people I grew up with. Nor do I, obviously, claim any joy in knowing that 21,000 more GM workers will be told that they, too, are without a job.

But you and I and the rest of America now own a car company! I know, I know -- who on earth wants to run a car company? Who among us wants $50 billion of our tax dollars thrown down the rat hole of still trying to save GM? Let's be clear about this: The only way to save GM is to kill GM. Saving our precious industrial infrastructure, though, is another matter and must be a top priority. If we allow the shutting down and tearing down of our auto plants, we will sorely wish we still had them when we realize that those factories could have built the alternative energy systems we now desperately need. And when we realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail and bullet trains and cleaner buses, how will we do this if we've allowed our industrial capacity and its skilled workforce to disappear?

Thus, as GM is "reorganized" by the federal government and the bankruptcy court, here is the plan I am asking President Obama to implement for the good of the workers, the GM communities, and the nation as a whole. Twenty years ago when I made "Roger & Me," I tried to warn people about what was ahead for General Motors. Had the power structure and the punditocracy listened, maybe much of this could have been avoided. Based on my track record, I request an honest and sincere consideration of the following suggestions:

I think that's pretty self explanatory. But here's the part the Kansas City Star quoted in its business section Friday:

The company's body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with -- dare I say it -- joy.

The Star took it upon itself to editorialize against Michael Moore in what is supposed to be a news section of the paper. It was not on the editorial page. That sentence--out of context--makes it look as if Moore is celebrating the demise of General Motors, when nothing could be farther from the truth.

In my letter to the Star, which they have not run and probably won't, I pointed out that is the kind of "reporting" done by Fox "News." It's typical right wing Neocon Republican disinformation. In the past our local newspaper was staffed by professional journalists and something like that would never have been allowed. Today, it is just another corporate newspaper, doomed to failure as its out of town owners suck the lifeblood from it and readers abandon ship because it keeps getting worse in an attempt to save money and make bigger profits.

Christian Terrorism Close to Home

2009-05-31T17:10:00.000-07:00

Most people have probably heard by now about the murder of Dr. Tiller, the Wichita, KS, abortion doctor. The Christian terrorist suspect was captured in Merriam, a Kansas City suburb and not all that far from where I live.

Last time they killed a doctor, the fundamentalist organizations who put up doctors' addresses on line and riled up their membership into fits of hatred denied any involvement. We condemn violence, they said. Yeah, right, and I've got some nice oceanfront property just outside Wichita to sell you.

This time they've done exactly the same thing again. As expected.

President Obama rightfully condemned this latest hate crime. And that, naturally, will give the Limbaugh Republicans and Fox "News" more ammunition to use to rile up their followers into even more hatred against Democrats and the Constitution as written. I'm sure those same hate-mongering, fact-distorting organizations will also find absolutely no connection between this murder and the fundamentalist Christian groups who promote hatred and violence behind carefully crafted weaselwording.

The only difference I see between Christian terrorists and Islamic terrorists is that at least the Islamic ones admit what they do. That makes them equally evil, but less cowardly.

Why is it that all the patriarchal religious fundamentalists are so concerned with controlling women's bodies?

Life Without Newspapers

2009-05-31T08:12:00.000-07:00

This morning I got a taste of the future. I walked out the front door about 7 a.m. to the sounds of all sorts of birds chirping. It was a bright, sunny morning and the front yard was like a scene out of a Disney movie: young robins hopping around looking for worms, a couple of baby bluejays, a cardinal, the usual run of sparrows, all having a good time on our pesticide-free lawn; and two squirrels were chasing each other around the oak tree, going up and down, an awkward young rabbit who hadn't yet grown into his ears was munching on dandelion leaves (which is why I don't spray the dandelions--even though most all my neighbors are rather anal about their lawns, with not a weed in site, and perfectly mowed diagonal rows at least once, often twice a week). It was a peaceful, though trite, scene. Except for one thing.

The damn newspaper carrier failed do deliver my Sunday Kansas City Star.

During the week, I grab the paper, scan the headlines, and flip through the main section, stopping to quickly read what needs to be read. Then I check the editorial cartoon, Zippy and Non-Sequitur. On weekends I have the luxury of eating cereal at the table with coffee in a real cup, instead of driving to work eating a bagel and drinking coffee out of a thermal mug. On Sundays I spend even more time, luxuriating in the ability to read the entire paper slowly, going back sometimes to reread things or to a story I overlooked first time through.

This morning I was forced to drink my coffee at the computer desk, cereal-less, because if I put a bowl of cereal down on the desk the cat will jump up and splatter it all over the keyboard, or I will knock it off into the floor. The computer desk is not designed for eating and reading.

"No newspaper," you say, "what the heck, read the news on line."

Yeah, right. The barest of Yahoo headlines or the Kansas City Star's website? The Star's website sucks. You can find some of the stories there easily, but not everything. You can't just open a pdf that looks like the newspaper. What about the comics? I never have found those on the site. It takes forever to go through things on there, and who the hell wants to read a newspaper on a computer screen anyway?

After calling the automated complaint line and being reassured by a recorded voice that my paper would be delivered "as soon as possible," I got some more coffee and went to the NY Times site and began to read national news. Fine for awhile. But what had happened to our mayoral recall initiative? Again, the Star's website is so rotten it's not worth the effort for even a play story.

Fortunately, the carrier made good on the promise and I had a real newspaper in hand in a reasonable period of time and my Sunday morning was salvaged. Some would say at least on the Internet you don't have to worry about the paper not being delivered. Oh really? I think in the past 5 years this is only the second time we have not had the paper delivered. I don't recall the number of times the IP has been down, or so slow as to be unuseable, but it's been more than two.

As everything turns digital, newspapers will disappear. We'll get some facsimile of one on devices like Amazon's Kindle, or, no doubt, some very slick and expensive Apple product in the near future. It'll be more difficult to read than a full size real newspaper, or even a tabloid size one. And more importantly, only those who can afford devices or computer or Internet connections will now have access to "newspapers."

It may surprise my affluent middle class friends, but there are millions of people in this country who do not sit at computers all the time, who can't afford the luxury of high speed digital access. Newspaper subscriptions are still cheaper, and you can always find them laying around if you visit a coffee house or any typical breakfast cafe. A guy can find a newspaper for little or nothing. People read them and leave them.

Nobody's going to leave his Kindle laying around for the next person. And what if my wife and I both want to sit at the table and share the paper, as we always do on weekends? Do we have to buy two Kindles, or two computers?

I feel the same way about books. I read a book, my wife reads a book, and then we switch books. With a Kindle, we'd have to buy two.

But the real problem with dying newspapers is that if newspapers die, where are the web sites going to get the news? I guess eventually there will be groups of reporters who do investigative reporting and sell the stories to web sites, and there'll be professional qualifications to weed out the non-journalists...something very difficult to do on the web. Look at all the phony garbage out there now that passes for news on the web and on TV. Local investigative reporting, of course, will die. The long story in today's Star, when I finally got it, about how numerous deaths have been attributed to natural causes by cops and investigators, only to be found to be homicides when funeral home workers discovered bullet holes, smashed jaws, etc.--that type of reporting will be gone. As a result of the Star's bringing to light some mis-diagnosed murders, the cops are changing their procedures. Now every death outside a hospital will be investigated. Without the newspaper to shine the light on incompetency and bad practice, people have been, quite literally, getting away with murder.

Limbaugh: Fat, Ugly, Hateful...and Überwealthy

2009-05-20T17:47:00.000-07:00

Ever wonder how much these right wing blowhard talking heads make? A million a year? Ten million? Twenty? Thirty? Keep going. Here's a quick recap on how much the Fat Man makes spewing vitriolic inaccuracies and disinformation.

Like most everything Republican since the rise of "Reaganomics" and Newt Gingrich in the '80s, it's all about money. Big money. Big, big money.

If the Big Ugly Lying Fat Man makes that much money...think how much the giant disinformation corporations make off him? And how much they make from the even uglier Bill O'Reilley, and the nearly-as-fat Hannity. Probably not as much as they get off Rush, but certainly millions and millions of dollars.

Where does that money come from? People don't send in contributions. Nope, it comes from corporate advertising. So, KorporateAmerika is supporting divisiveness, hatred and all the lying, cheating and stealing that goes along with it. Keep the "enemy" divided...and conquer. Gingrich promoted that one, and he and all the other Neocon Limbaugh Republicans consider all of America the enemy, except for their small überwealthy minority.

Unfortunately, it's a minority that owns the corporate media and therefore has an influence for doing evil far beyond its numbers would indicate. It's a minority in this country, but a highly vocal one. And therefore a highly dangerous one. Look at the unholy mess wwe're in today in Iraq, Afghanistan, soon Pakistan, and in the economy and job loss and air pollution and carbon emissions...thanks to the Limbaugh Republican policies since 1980, and even more since 2000. Although, we shouldn't detract from the damage Nixon did to health care in the '70s. What he did to reward the insurance companies and drug companies back then has led directly to the mess we're in today in health care.

While both the Republicans' and the Democrats' neoliberal foreign policies (not to be confused with real liberalism, which doesn't exist today) have resulted in support of military dictatorships throughout Latin America and elsewhere, it is the Republican domestic policy that has done irreparable damage to America.

I think it all goes back to corporate control. While the Limbaugh Republicans don't even pretend to be on the side of the American people, the Democrats try but they too are corporate-controlled, just to a lesser extent. At least with the Democrats we have a little bit of a chance to influence policy by starting movements. A strong movement of the people can prevail, eventually. But with Republicans, there's no chance of a movement of the people. They are owned lock, stock, and mouthpiece by KorporateAmerika. And KorporateAmerika is willing to pay their spokesmen whatever it takes to keep them doing the divisive damage. Keep us divided and greed and insanity will prevail.

Which One Is the American Car?

2009-05-15T16:39:00.000-07:00

Let's talk about General Motors. The same points could be made about the other two biggies as well, I think.

Yesterday morning I heard a news story on the radio about how GM is going to be importing some cars from China, in addition to Mexico. And, no doubt, from other places where they do business. So, we the taxpayers are giving billions of dollars to GM in order to keep the company afloat.

And what does the company do? It gives jobs to Chinese workers. Not to pick on the Chinese--GM started exporting jobs way back in the '80s in order to suck up more profit to the upper echelons of the wealthy management and shareholders.

It's nothing new that they've been screwing over American working men and women for many years. "We have to do it to compete," they say.

Really?

After hearing about GM and China, I heard another news story later the same day. Volkswagen is going to build a new automobile factory in Tennessee. It will crank out mid-size sedans. VW is a bit late in hiring American workers. Toyota builds Camrys in Kentucky, Nissan builds trucks in Tennessee, Honda builds Accords in Ohio. And there are probably some other models made at those and other "foreign" factories.

So here's my question: If the bailout is supposed to create jobs...wouldn't our taxpayer money be better spent if we gave the money to Toyota, Honda, Nissan or Volkswagen? Not that I'm advocating giving away any more money, but you get the point.

All this money which was supposed to be for economic recovery is going to the wealthy. Saving General Motors when they lay off thousands of American workers in order to provide jobs for thousands of Chinese workers is doing just the opposite.

I fear that Obama is becoming a Republican. The New Deal created jobs for working men and women. It did not give money to the überwealthy corporations. Of course, Bush started the multibillion giveaway to the bankers, but Obama is continuing it.

Why not nationalize GM and Chrysler and convert their factories into building smaller, more rational vehicles? Fire everyone who makes over $200,000 and start over with designers, engineers and management. No executive should be allowed to make over $500,000, with no loopholes for bonuses. Bonuses would be paid throughout the company to all employees when profits are made, with everybody getting the same percentage of his salary as a bonus...only if earnings warrant a bonus. Tax the hell out of imports, whether they come from American companies or others. If a company like VW builds a factory in the U.S., give 'em the same tax breaks as American companies get, ie., no import taxes on their products. In other words, entice companies to hire American and build American.

Finally, here's the overriding question about this whole issue: How come Toyota, Nissan, Honda and now Volkswagen can build quality cars in America with American workers AND MAKE MONEY and General Motors and Chrysler and Ford can't? Hell, they can't even make money buying cheap Chinese labor. The Toyota Camry is one of the best cars built anywhere. It's great looking and even greater in performance and reliability. So is the Honda Accord, so is the Nissan pickup. These vehicles are BUILT BY AMERICAN WORKERS. IN AMERICAN FACTORIES. ON AMERICAN SOIL.

If American owned car companies can't do that, screw 'em. Let 'em fail and let the Japanese and Germans and eventually even the Italians expand in the U.S. and build more factories and hire more American factory workers. If the companies fail but the workers get jobs with other companies, what's the problem? Too many rich people out of work? Gimme a break.

Republicans, of course, like to blame the unions. Even though the labor is only a small percentage of the cost of a vehicle. It's not the unions. It's management. If you have good management, you don't need unions. Unions came about because of bad management. In the foreign owned American factories the workers make high wages and are treated decently. I don't think most are unionized, maybe some are. Most probably came from poorly managed American owned auto factories.

The problem is not the cost of labor in this country. If that were the problem...why is Volkswagen building a new factory here? Why are the Japanese factories turning out he best cars on the road?

Limbaugh Can't Take What He Dishes Out

2009-05-11T18:56:00.000-07:00

So...the Neocons, as expected, started their phony outrage campaign against Wanda Sykes. I bet they started it before she was even off stage. Probably they've delivered a few hundred thousand emails to newspapers, written blogs, and overall have continued to do what they do so well: Criticize others for doing exactly what they do.

If you're a Neocon Republican, synonymous with Limbaugh Republican, then the Fat Man can say or do anything he wants to and it's OK. But somebody criticizes him or makes a good joke, well they're scum. "9-11 is no laughing matter!" they proclaim loudly.

Oh really? Then how come we get all those rightwing jokes about 9-11 all the time? Naturally, their jokes are against Democrats, Muslims, and anybody who doesn't march to their discordant drummer.

It's typical Limbaugh Republican hypocrisy. Limbaugh can make comments considered traitorous by many, but nobody else can say anything against his beloved misfit president, or truly evil vice president.

These Limbaugh Republicans make me want to puke sometimes. On the other hand, let them keep it up, keep on doing the same thing. I think it already backfired on them in the last election and should do so again in the next one. If the damn Democrats don't self-destruct.

Cheney (Surprise, Surprise) Likes Limbaugh over Colin Powell

2009-05-10T16:51:00.001-07:00

This should come as no surprise to anybody. Failed Vice President and war criminal Dick Cheney says that Fat Blowhard Rush Limbaugh more accurately personifies the Republican Party than General Colin Powell.

That's what you'd expect from him. No real news there. It would be a big news story if he said he likes Colin Powell. Powell, of course, became instant persona non grata when he came out for Obama.

In today's Republican party, you don't break ranks. You don't violate your loyalty oath. Marching in lockstep to party dogma is the only acceptable thing to do. Nothing else is tolerated.

I'm sure it was a long and painful decision for Powell to do the right thing rather than the Republican thing knowing what would happen to him. Yet, he is only one for one now. Since I'm in a charitable mood, I'll say that he has redeemed himself for what he did in the Cheney/Bush buildup to the Iraq invasion. It's unfortunate that he did what he did then, but as a military man that's what you'd expect. He followed his orders. In his system of ethics practiced his entire military career, there was no other choice. He was Secretary of State, working for da man. I don't think he, at that time, considered himself very far from the military. The boss said do it, so he did it, as any good soldier would.

It is to his credit that he didn't do it again by supporting McCain. I would have voted for him for president, even as a Republican, a few years ago--but not after he did the U.N. speech. I knew that information he was presenting was not an accurate justification for war, and so did many other people. None in government who spoke up got listened to, however. I'm sure Powell lives with the guilt of those actions every day.

While I may consider him to have redeemed himself for that one mistake, I doubt that he did what he did in order to seek redemption. I think he's a patriotic American and professional soldier and always did what was right for his country, except in that one instance where he did what the commander in chief told him to do. No, he didn't support Obama in order to atone for his sin of the past. He did it because he knew Obama was infinitely more qualified to be president than McCain. Of course, I'm only speculating. Who knows what really went on in his mind. Hopefully he'll write a book someday and tell us. Since I'm speculating, I'll go even further and guess that when McCain picked Fundamentalist Christian Low I.Q. Sarah Palin to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, Powell thought about McCain's age and about a President Palin and said, "No way!"

I digress. The fact that Cheney likes Limbaugh better than Powell says all that needs to be said about the Republican party today. Can you imagine what Mr. Conservative Barry Goldwater would say about Cheney today if he were alive! Neither Goldwater nor Eisenhower could even get a seat on the back row of today's Republican party. They wouldn't be moved to the back of the bus--hell, they wouldn't even be allowed on the bus. I remember when people thought Goldwater was a right wing lunatic. But today, when the Neocons say "Goldwater Republican," that's an insult to someone they consider way too liberal. The Party of Lincoln died when they buried Eisenhower. The Party of Neocon Dysfunction and Racism began when Reagan announced his entry into the campaign from--guess where: Philadelphia, Mississippi. That choice of location was not a coincidence. Racism and hatred and divisiveness reached new heights with Gingrich's control, and corporate takeover became a nightmare in broad daylight with Cheney/Bush.

One bright spot here...with Cheney supporting Limbaugh over Colin Powell...that shows the Neocons' true colors to everyone. It can only hurt the Republicans in the next election. Americans are not nearly as stupid as they think.

More Limbaugh Republican Hate Mail

2009-05-09T08:30:00.000-07:00

I've copied an email article below that's being sent around by the right wing anti-immigrant types lately:

Shooting in Butte , Montana

Shotgun preteen vs. illegal alien Home Invaders: Butte, Montana November 5, 2008

Two illegal aliens, Ralphel Resindez, 23, and Enrico Garza, 26, probably believed they would easily overpower home-alone 11 year old Patricia Harrington after her father had left their two-story home. It see ms the two crooks never learned two things: theywere in Montana , and Patricia had been a clay shooting champion since she was nine.
.
Patricia was in her upstairs room when the two men broke through the front door of the house. She quickly ran to her father's room and grabbed his 12 gauge Mossberg 500 shotgun. Resindez was the first to get up to the second floor only to be the first to catch a near point blank blast of buckshot from the 11-year-old's knee crouch aim .. He suffered fatal wounds to his abdomen and genitals.

When Garza ran to the foot of the stairs, he took a blast to the left shoulder and staggered out into the street where he bled to death before medical help could arrive. It was found out later that Resindez was armed with a stolen 45 caliber handgun he took from another home invasion robbery. That victim, 50-year-old David Burien, was not so lucky. He died from stab wounds to the chest.

Ever wonder why good stuff never makes NBC, CBS, PBS, MSNBC, CNN, or ABC news........an 11 year old girl, properly trained, defended her home, and herself.....against two A-hole, illegal immigrants.......and she wins, she is still alive.

Now that is Gun Control !

Thought for the day: Calling an illegal alien an 'undocumented immigrant' is like calling a drug dealer an 'unlicensed pharmacist.'

Charming story, huh.

Naturally, it never happened. The Snopes.com explanation is here.

So far I'm scoring right at 100% in determining that all of this garbage that gets sent out in mass emailings is false. I can always spot them even before I check Snopes.com. There was one that had some truth, but it was so distorted that I considered it false by most anybody's standards.

I think that either the same person writes all this crap, or perhaps lots of people write it and then each one is edited by the same person. The writing style is always the same, and the format is too: A supposed news story, with lots of detail to make it look authentic (like the brand of shotgun), and then the conclusion which always supports the right wing Limbaugh Republican hate agenda.

If you ever read much about the old Soviet disinformation campaigns out of the Cold War era, you'll see the similarities in the right wing techniques. They find some incident that really happened or that could easily have happened, and then they build on that with detail after detail to promote something totally and completely different. For example, in the Snopes.com explanation, if you read far enough, you'll see that in the past there have been a couple of incidents wherein a kid managed to either shoot or scare off a burglar. The real life incident had no relation to any immigrant or gun control or anything else like that, but the expert propagandist heard about it and then concocted his disinformation story around it. Of course, there have been at least two "Home Alone" movies about a kid who fought back against the bad guys. Not illegal immigrants, of course, but that doesn't matter to the disinformation experts.

The Internet makes this kind of thing cheap and easy. In the past, they had to rely on printing and mailing, and that can get expensive. Now they have the Internet, as well as all the right wing talk shows on radio and TV, plus the right wing Christian broadcasts, also on radio and TV. These email campaigns can be very effective to reinforce the hatred, to keep the troops riled up.

Why do they do this? Why pick on some group of people to hate when there are so many problems we are facing as a nation? For the same reason Hitler picked the Jews to hate. Reread Orwell, both "1984" and "Animal Farm," as well as his essays, and you'll get the idea. If you have an outside group to hate, you can keep the masses in line, keep them following the doctrine. Look at how the fundamentalist Christians like to claim they are persecuted, just as in Roman times. By getting their members to believe they are persecuted, they drum up support, and, naturally, money.

Such persecution! It is impossible to be elected to national or state office in this country without proclaiming your Christianity. And that is something you see a lot in right wing rhetoric: they take what they do and flip it over and say that others are doing it to them. Fundamentalist Christians rally against all who are not true believers, but say the world is against them. Limbaugh Republicans hate Mexicans, so they say immigrants are stealing jobs and burglarizing houses. Republicans have destroyed the economy by overspending on their war yet like to say Democrats spend too much. It's classic Orwell. It will only get worse as real journalism breaks down.

Ah, the Right Wing Hypocrisy

2009-05-01T15:46:00.000-07:00

They will never quit, never slow down. All hey do is criticize. And, it's fine to criticize the other party but only if you use at least some semblance of logic. It is totally ridiculous to jump on another person who says or does exactly what you or your party said or did.

And yet, the Republicans do it continuously. Day and night, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, Fox "News" never lets up. The drumbeat of hypocrisy bangs on and on.

They've even managed to politicize swine flu. If you missed The Daily Show last night, you can watch Stewart's opening monologue online.

I've never heard of that Republican Ann Coulter wannabe, but for anybody to get on national TV (presumably Fox "News") and suggest that swine flu only happens in Democratic administrations is probably the stupidest thing any right winger could ever come up with. I don't think even Rush Limbaugh is that screwed up in the head.

Jon Stewart, of course, rips the bitch to shreds simply by stating the facts and by shining light on the hypocrisy. If the Democrats caused swine flu, he said, let's look at the Republicans, who are responsible for AIDS, SARS, Bird flu, and a host of other things he listed that happened during Republican administrations. And he set the record straight by noticing that it was in Jerry Ford's term that the last swine flu outbreak started. Facts, of course, have no influence with the Neocons.

But that's not what I wanted to rant about today. Well, it is related. By now everybody's heard all about Vice President Joe Biden's comment that he told his family not to fly on airplanes because they recycle the air and if somebody sneezes, it goes all over the plane.

This is true, of course, and it's why planes have HEPA filters, but who knows how effective they are. But that's not the point. The point here is that, naturally, the right wingers crucified Biden for stirring up panic, and on and on.

And yet, barely 24 hours later a spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control said that, yes, confined places and close contact can spread the virus. And shortly after than a spokesperson for the Ft. Worth, Texas, school system, which closed through next week, said children should not be in confined spaces and advised parents to keep them out of shopping malls, theaters, etc.

Not a single Republican that I've heard about has jumped up on Fox "News" and criticized the Ft. Worth school system for spreading panic.

As usual, if a Democrat says something, it's bad. A Republican says the same thing, it's OK. Not that the school people in Texas are necessarily Republican, but it is Texas and it is close to Dallas, so whatever they say is OK. After all, they're trying to protect families. So was Biden...but that doesn't count, right?

Torture

2009-04-28T18:35:00.000-07:00

This article says it all, much better than I ever could.

All I might add is that I recall a conversation I had with a Republican acquaintance back before the 2000 coup. He's not one of those Limbaugh Republicans, nor is he a fundamentalist Christian Republican. He's more the genetic kind you find all over this part of Kansas. He had a copy of "Atlas Shrugged" as a coffee table book.

At the time he was trying to make a rational case for G.W. Bush, and I said it would be a disaster for Bush to become president. "Why?" the Republican asked as if genuinely curious (he wasn't, he was just practicing his defense). "Because," I replied, "the world is too dangerous a place for somebody that stupid to be president."

Those are my exact words. I still remember the comment perfectly.

I was not quite accurate, though. Bush may be academically stupid, but he is sociopathically clever, and he did everything he wanted to do while in office. He managed to move more of the nation's wealth up to the upper 1%of the überwealthy than even Reagan in the '80s. That's success if you're a Neocon.

What I wish I had said at the time is this: "The world is too dangerous a place for somebody that evil to be president."

Bush liked to use the word "evil" when describing his enemies and nations he wanted to attack. Takes one to know one, I guess.

We are rid of him, but the bad things he and his cohorts did will resonate generations after my lifetime. It's possible the country will never recover what was lost.

Shallow Thoughts About Deep Things

2009-04-25T11:05:00.000-07:00

I was going to give this up. I'm tired of ranting. I'm sick of the corporate control of government. I'm trying to tune out the wackos on both sides of the political spectrum--the right wing fascist Neocon Republicans who want to destroy the country if necessary in order to regain control, and the liberal wannabes who think that being politically correct makes them rational. It's all disgusting, sickening, tiring and emotionally draining.

And few people read these rants anyway. The only rational discussions I ever have are with a legitimate Republican I know and with a couple of legitimate liberals I know. Nobody ever posts much of anything meaningful on here.

But after meeting an old friend from L.A. for breakfast this morning, I think I've decided to keep it up for awhile longer. After all, this web site costs me enough to feed 10 starving children in Bangladesh for a year.

The discussion wasn't about this blog, it was about other things. One of the things we talked about was how money and politics distort reality for so many people. Scientific research is driven by big drug company money--not for the purpose of developing basic science; instead, for the purpose of enriching the coffers. Politics drives health care policies. On the Neocon side, you've got total corporate control by Big Insurance and Big Pharm companies who want everything privatized and everybody to pay whatever Big Insurance and Big Pharm want to charge. On the moderate side (I won't say liberal because there is no liberal side) you've got near total corporate control by Big Insurance and Big Pharm companies who want almost everything privatized but enough left public to deceive people into thinking they're getting rational benefits.

The health care "debate" is driven by the very people who cause us to have a crappy system--the insurance industry and drug companies. The mainstream media gives almost no voice at all to the will of the people. In countless polls and surveys for years, Americans have said loudly and clearly they want a system like the other industrialized nations and even some third world countries have. And you've got small business people all over the country saying, "Why should business have to pay for health care?"

And yet, the media and the politicians ignore the people. Why? Simple: Big Insurance and Big Pharm big money.

What the Obama administration is doing is different from what the Republicans have been doing only in degree. Republicans want everybody to buy insurance. Democrats want those who can't buy insurance to have insurance. The end goal of both sides is the same: Insurance for everybody.

The overriding problem with health care in this country is not the lack of insurance.

The problem IS insurance.

You pay several thousand dollars a year for insurance. If you work for a decent size company, the company pays even more. And yet...you need a doctor, you're not covered. You are only PARTIALLY covered. A typical visit to a doctor can cost 50-75 bucks OVER WHAT THE INSURANCE WILL PAY, and then if you have to buy antibiotics, than can cost you $100-$200 OVER WHAT THE INSURANCE WILL PAY. If you have to have some serious surgery, even with "good" insurance, you can be bankrupted with what the insurance company doesn't pay.

If everybody in the U.S. gets health insurance, nothing will change except that the insurance companies will continue to make more money. They'll still deny payment for basic health care. Sure, they may pay some, but not very much. Average working people still will not be able to afford the kind of health care Canadians, French, Germans, British, the Dutch, even Indians, take for granted. Why? Because in those countries you pay taxes and a portion of your taxes goes for health care. You get sick, you go to the doc, you get your drugs, the government pays the bill from the taxes you've paid so the government can pay the bill.

Just like our socialized system we have in this country for a limited few: Government employees and the military. But better, because even at the V.A. you have to pay some. However, it is affordable and if you can't pay you still get treated.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot convicted criminals. In some states, Kansas, for example, a convicted criminal is guaranteed quality health care for as long as he's in prison. Not just any health care, but quality care.

Average, honest, working men and women in the state, however, are screwed if they don't make enough money.

The right wingers and mainstream press and right wing press (Fox "News," Wall Street Journal, etc.) like to bitch about "socialism." But socialism is OK in their book as long as the government is giving money to big corporations. Just not to individuals. And how about those western states, and Alaska, full of right wingers screaming about socialism? Without socialism, they wouldn't be able to exist. Alaska gets about one and a half as much money back from taxpayers as they pay in to the federal government. If that's not socialism, I don't know what is. And the state itself spreads the oil money around with direct payment to residents regularly. That's more socialistic than all the other industrialized nations combined. I know of no other country that distributes money like Alaska.

And yet...Alaska. Ah, Alaska. The hypocrisy is disgusting.

Anyway, I've just figured out why I should keep on writing these rants. It makes me feel better.

And, now that the Democrats are in, I can bitch about them as I do about Republicans. Sure, they're not as bad...but by not standing up for the people and against Big Insurance and Big Pharm and the Military Industrial Complex, as the last good Republican President Eisenhower so aptly named it, they are going against the will of the people just as if they were Republicans...only a little slower. As long as those entities control things, an apparently honest and intelligent man like Obama can do no more than slow the inexorable decline into total fascism. He can't stop it, only slow it down a little bit.

Without a free, independent and competent press, I don't believe democracy can survive for very long. Sure, we've had evil journalism in our past--the Hearst empire got us into the Spanish-American war just as irresponsibly as Fox "News" got us into Iraq. Actually, they were probably more responsible. Fox "News" simply served as the propaganda arm of the Bush administration. And then the rest of the media chimed right in. However, while the Hearst empire had plenty of power that was wielded just as irresponsibly as the Murdoch empire wields its power, in those days we had hundreds, probably thousands, of independent news outlets. Today we have total corporate control over all major media outlets. And I'm not talking about the talking heads, the right wing hate machine--I'm talking about news reporters. They don't seem to be doing serious news anymore, just rewriting handouts, as it were. They, for the most part, have abdicated their responsibility as journalists. Just as some scientists do whatever research gets the government grants, these "journalists" do whatever reporting their corporate masters tell them to do. That's what got us into Iraq--they did what they were told, and fact and rationality went out the window. The news media is just as responsible for the ongoing decline of our democratic society as the corporate fascists and right wing political hacks and moderate but equally hackish political hacks.

Civil War 3: Hypocrisy Vs. Patriotism

2009-03-01T08:40:00.000-08:00

When 9-11 happened, the minority Democrats all joined the Republicans, pulling together in a patriotic frenzy to do whatever the president wanted to do. Unfortunately, the Republican president chose to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9-11 and squandered our resources, the lives of thousands and all the worldwide goodwill that was out there for us and turned America into a nation loathed by most other nations.

But the point is, in a time of crisis the Democrats put patriotism above party loyalty. They united to do what was deemed necessary.

Today we have a crisis that over the long run will result in the devastation of more American lives than the evil attack by a band of religious wackos ever did. Millions of people have lost their jobs, their homes, their health care. There will be more broken families, more alcoholism, more robberies and murders. Many will die because of the economic crisis, in many different but definitely related ways. It is a crisis that threatens us much more than any radical Muslim.

So logic would have one believe that the Republicans would respond as the Democrats did after 9-11. One would think the Republicans would unite behind the president to do whatever is necessary for the good of the country.

Ha!

Fat chance.

Nope. The Republicans follow the lemminglike call of Rush Limbaugh and will do whatever they can to OPPOSE anything that is not tax cuts for giant international corporate conglomerates and the wealthy. Today's Republicans put patriotism on the back burner, while loyalty to their dogma moves ahead of everything else.

The Republicans claimed that anybody who disagreed with them when Bush did his dastardly deeds was unpatriotic. Well, I now claim that Republicans who disagree with Obama are unpatriotic and anti-American. In the case of 9-11 that claim was wrong because the invasion of Iraq was wrong. Nobody opposed going after the evil Taliban, and I hope all our military might will be trained against those bastards. But my claim of Republican disloyalty today is valid, I believe. They are obstructing economic recovery. Instead of trying to make the programs better, they want to destroy them, to destroy the Democrats, to drag us down deeper into a real depression...all so they can try to regain power. If they had a legitimate plan to do anything to promote recovery, I would say they are not unpatriotic. Hell, I disagree with lots of the plan, but it moves in the right direction and I'm not going to get everything I want out of what the administration does. I compromise. Not the Republicans. Their idea of compromise is that they get 100% their way and to hell with your way. That is unpatriotic and un-American.

There was a time when the Republican party was not unpatriotic. It was the party of Eisenhower, the party of Goldwater. Both of those fine men were conservative Republicans, but they were Americans first. They never put party loyalty above the interests of America. Yet in today's Republican party, Ike and Barry are persona non grata. America is not important to them, only their party and the power they lust after and can't seem to live without. All but three of them. Those three actually engaged in bipartisanship and worked to help craft the stimulus bill. Although I disagree with what they managed to get, I applaud their attempt at cooperation, rather than continued obstruction.

I live in Kansas and therefore have been a registered Republican before. You have to be if you want to have any meaningful vote in primary elections in this state. However, when Newt Gingrich started his scorched earth policy, I changed my registration. Even though I couldn't vote in the primaries against those religious fundamentalists who are so dangerous to education in Kansas, I didn't want my name associated any longer with such people as Gingrich, Limbaugh, Bush, and all the other Neocons who every day display their anti-American sentiments. I may criticize the failings of our country, but I am an American through-and-through and will always stand up for our democratic way of life and for real American values. I wish I could say the same thing for the Republicans in congress, but they are as unpatriotic as it gets in this country today. They fight against American values every day. It's too bad they know nothing about the history of their own party.

Civil War-2

2009-02-28T15:52:00.000-08:00

Check this out if you can stomach it.

Wha'd I say about a new Civil War? "Take the country back," and on and on. That's what it is for the Limbauesque Neocons. Us or them. There are two Americas. Theirs and ours. They don't want us and they don't want to be a part of a unified nation that builds upon traditional American values and freedoms for all. All they want is a facist right wing dictatorship, with the illusion of democracy.

The bastards.

The New Civil War

2009-02-28T13:27:00.001-08:00

I haven't been posting for awhile because it's just damn depressing. In fact, I think I may give this up soon. For awhile there I had hope. Obama tried very hard to bring the country together, even saying he didn't want to pursue war crimes against the war criminals or even hold any of the crooks in the Bush administration accountable. I didn't particularly like that, but, OK, forgiveness is a Christian virtue and he is a hard core Christian. I'll give him that one. It's the nice thing to do.

He even made concessions to Republicans in the first big economic recovery package, and those concessions made it weaker. I disagreed with that too. But I guess the three Republicans who had the guts to stand against the Neocons deserve something. So I gave him that one too.

However, the Neocon Republicans absolutely DO NOT want any form of bipartisanship at all. When Obama gave the three what they wanted, that was compromise. That was bipartisanship. Those three Republicans won some concessions for their side. What the hell is that if not bipartisanship? But the Neocons don't want that, and those three Republicans are about as welcome in their party today as a homeless man at a Republican fundraiser in Phoenix.

To the Neocons, bipartisanship means they get their way. It means nothing but tax cuts for the wealthy. It means further weakening government. It means all the disgusting, illegal and un=American things the Bush administration did to the country for the past eight years.

The mainstream media seems to support the Neocons. Every day they give more play to the right wing garbage than they do even to Obama's comments. Even NPR does that.

What I think is that we are in a new Civil War. A war of the überwealthy against the middle classes. A war of Neocon neofascist extremism against rational thought. A war of unregulated capitalism (and unregulated capitalism inevitably becomes fascism) against legitimate business done in the best interests of America. A war that, so far, stupidity is winning.

Let's face it, folks: There are no more real Republicans out there. By real Republicans, I mean legitimate conservatives. People like Eisenhower, like Goldwater. They were honest, intelligent men who put the good of the country against party dogma. Neither one would get to first base in today's right wing Republican party.To a Neocon, the phrase "Goldwater Republican" is an insult.

For me personally, all this is just too damn depressing. What good does it do to talk about it. I write letters to the newspaper and three or four a year get published, a mere drop in the inkwell to all the right wing comments that get published. Nobody reads this blog except people who agree with me, meaning those who do not pursue any dogma one way or another. What I think is that the Neocon Republicans have, in a single generation, managed to so polarize the American public that there is no turning back. For any Republican to look at the facts and admit in public that their policy of tax cuts for the wealthy ("supply side economics") is nothing more than voodoo economics and that history has proved that not only does the policy not work, it has caused incredible damage here and all over the world would be an admission that their most cherished beliefs are wrong-headed. People who are blinded by dogma never will do that. They will never admit to the facts. When given a fact, they try to say the provider of the fact is evil, that the fact is wrong, even when proved correct. These people are like religious zealots--reality simply does not matter. They are going to do what they are going to do, regardless of what the facts may be.

I don't like parts of Obama's stimulus package. But it is an attempt to help the situation, rather than just giving more money to the wealthy in the form of tax cuts--a policy that would only dig us deeper into the hole.

What Obama has done, is doing, is at least a step in the right direction. I would prefer complete nationalization of the big banks, instead of this partial thing. But, it's better than nothing and has a chance. Problem is--it's not enough. The failed Bush policies have drug the economy down so far that Obama has started out with the worst deficit in the history of the world and now has no choice but to make it even worse.

OK, smartass, people say to me, what would you do that's better? Me? I'm not an economist. All I had in college in that are was one macroeconomics course, wherein I learned that Keynsian economics worked historically while supply side economics did the opposite. But, even though I'm not an "expert," I have a solution. Unfortunately, it's too late because too much money has already been given away. Let's don't forget the $750 billion bucks Bush gave away with no controls at all before he left office. That's almost a trillion dollars. Another trillion or so from Obama. So, let's just round it to two trillion dollars that's being spent. (I'm ignoring the Iraq mess now and all it's cost, just talking about bailout money.)

Here's what I would have done if anybody had put me in charge:

Step 1: Figure out how many American taxpayers there are who make less than $100,000 a year each.

Step 2: Send a check for $100,000 to every American taxpayer who makes less than $100,000 a year each, with no taxes on that check.

Step 3: Sit back and watch the economic recovery happen overnight.

Time to Dump Republican Regressionism

2009-02-14T13:23:00.000-08:00

Recently I ranted about how the mainstream media goes out of its way to always spend more time on the Republican talking points put out by the party than on legitimate reporting, even when the news is about something the Democrats did. Same thing today, and again on NPR.

The lead story was about the stimulus package passing. Who did they interview? John McCain, of course. And all he did was claim that Democrats aren't bipartisan.

I still find it hard to believe that an editor would put something like that on the air uncontested, or without a legitimate rebuttal. Obama, in his (misguided, in my opinion) zeal to reach out to Republicans actually accepted a watered down version of the stimulus package that gave more tax cuts to the wealthy and 20% less to working men and women. Initially a working couple would get a $1,000 tax break. After compromising with Republicans, we now get 800 bucks. Thanks, Republicans.

The whole world knows that Obama compromised with the Republicans, even though they continued to march in lockstep to the demented drums of the Limbaugh crowd. All except for 3 in the Senate. Those are the ones he compromised with. Not a single one of the other Republicans would work with him.

And that's because their definition of compromise is: do it my way or else.

For the past 8 years the Republicans didn't compromise one single bit on one single thing. They got it all their way, 100%. Which, of course, is why the country is so totally screwed up today. The Republicans have proved over and over again that their "trickle down" theory only means that the wealth flows up and up and up.

They didn't compromise one bit while they were in power and they refuse to compromise one bit now. Once again, they would rather drag the country down into the depths of another Great Depression than let working Americans have any breaks. They are the party of big business, by big business and for big business and anybody who thinks differently is either retarded or living on an island with no radio, TV, newspapers or Internet.

I wish Obama would simply go directly to the American people. "We are trying to turn the economy around and the Republicans are trying to stop us. Vote them out." That's all he would have to do. It's time to quit playing nice and govern the way they did for so long, at least until things turn around so the damage they have done can start to get undone.

"Mainstream" (ie., right wing) Media Only Gets Worse

2009-02-09T17:35:00.000-08:00

When the Neocon Republicans had a majority and Bush the Second was in office, all the cable news shows and much of the "mainstream" media always had many, many more Republicans on the air as "experts" all the time. The ratio of Republicans to Democrats was always greater than two to one.

When this was pointed out by reputable journalists from Counterspin and other watchdog groups, their rationale was always that, well, hell, the Republicans are the majority so we give them the majority of the air time.

OK. Now the Democrats are the majority. Are they giving the Democrats the majority of air time?

Silly question. You already know the answer to that one: Of course not.

The ratio is still greater than 2:1, Republicans to Democrats. A recent survey reported by Counterspin this morning showed 51 Republicans to 24 Democrats. And on NPR, which used to be unbiased, now usually leads with the Republican talking points. Again today, for example, when their evening news story about the financial package getting the critical vote in the Senate appeared, their lead interview was with a Republican who, naturally, opposed it.

I'm been a journalist. I majored in journalism in college. I worked on three different newspapers while going to school and after I did my military time. I know what's legitimate reporting and what isn't. In the NPR story, the lead should not have been about Republican opposition. The lead was that the package passed. Then a legitimate news organization would have gone into a bit of detail about what we could expect next. Instead, every time there's a story about this, on any TV or radio station (except on Pacifica Network stations and maybe a few other small ones) it's always about Republican opposition.

So, when Republicans were in power, they got more coverage. When they're out of power, they get more coverage. Why? Because they control the media. Because the media is now owned only by gigantic corporations who promote the Republican party line. Because journalists don't have balls anymore. Except for Bill Moyers, Amy Goodman, Jack Cafferty and a small handful of others. Also, I think incompetence in journalism is more common than good old fashioned legitimate factual reporting. How many times, for instance, have you heard the phrase "huge recovery package" or "giant" "mammoth," and other adjectives that are always used, including by NPR, any time the thing is even mentioned.

But they never used those adjectives to talk about money the Republicans have spent on the Iraq war, about the money given to Halliburton and other sleazebag contractors with no oversight. Nope, inflated adjectives are only for Democratic proposals. When I worked on a newspaper, we had copy editors who cut crap like that out of a story unless it was called for legitimately. Apparently in journalism today you can write or say just about whatever you want, as long as it follows Republican talking points.

Rush the Ridiculous

2009-02-01T13:36:00.000-08:00

You would think that with the country heading toward Great Depression II that Republicans would know better than to continue their lockstep marching to the drumbeat fo the damned. But no, the Neocon Republicans would rather drag the entire nation down than break with their idiotic ideology.

An article in the news yesterday said even the Republican governors in most states, presumably not Alaska, were pleading with the Republicans in Congress to support the recovery package. Will they do it? Of course not. Rush Limbaugh, the de facto Republican-in-exile president, says not to. He has said he wants Obama to fail, wants to bring the country deeper into a depression.

I'm tired of Rush Limbaugh jokes. Sure, he's a fat drug-using blowhard who's become ultra-wealthy by spewing spurious hate and bigotry to the unsuspecting lower 20% of our society, profiteering off their ignorance. I don't think it's a laughing matter anymore, though almost every literate American has at one time or another laughed at him. Except for that core base of Neocon Republicans who thinks he speaks for their party. And, in fact he does speak for their party. I used to say that there are two Republican parties: The party of racism, hatred, bigotry, greed and Rush Limbaugh...and the party of conservative Republicans. However, there are no legitimately conservative Republicans any more. That went out the window with George W. Bush's presidency, where conservative principles were abandoned in favor of the worst deficit spending in history designed to transfer the wealth of a nation to the nether regions of the upper class.

Apparently, the only intelligent, patriotic Republicans left in the country are the Republican governors (with the exception of Alaska). They are close to the people in their respective states and know that unregulated capitalism has, as it always does, failed. We don't need new regulations. We simply need to reinstate the regulations that Bush and the Neocons dismantled. And we need first and foremost to pass the economic recovery package and do it the right way so it'll work. As long as the congressional Neocons follow lemmingly along after their fat master, their obstructionism can serve no other purpose than to help any economic recovery fail...and that is the publicly-stated goal for the Fat Man himself.

Limbaugh should be very, very glad he's in America. In many other countries he would be imprisoned for advocating treason.

Neocon Republican Obstructionism

2009-01-26T16:14:00.000-08:00

The House Republicans are standing in the way of economic recovery. As you would expect them to do. When Bush the Second took us into the greatest deficit in our history, that was OK. When Obama wants to spend money that will benefit working men and women, that's not OK with those people.

Today Caterpillar laid off 20,000 workers. Cat would be one of the companies that benefits tremendously with Obama's recovery package. So would hundreds of thousands of construction workers. Maybe, at long last, all those construction workers who listen to Limbaugh lies will finally figure out that they've been voting against their own interests all these years.

On the news this morning even Republican-loving Cokie Roberts was critical of the Republican obstructionists. She reported on one of them who made a statement that he was not "compromising," only "cooperating." "What," Cokie asked, "is wrong with compromising? That's what it's all about." Yet, this Republican had to play to his base. That base says you do not compromise with any Democrat, even though you believe in what he's doing. Right wing ideology über alles. No compromise, no cooperation. Take America down to the bunker with you and blow everybody away before the "enemy," the people, get there.

The Neocon Republicans are still playing to the dwindling audience that is their base. They would rather drag us down into Great Depression II than back off their ideology that's been proven wrong time and time again.

Every day that they delay things, the Neocons cause more people to lose their jobs, their homes, everything. But, when was the last time a Neocon Republican showed any patriotism to America? Their little flag lapel pins, their support-the-troops bumper stickers, their yellow ribbon magnets--that's not patriotism. That's nothing more than the superficial symbolism they've been taught to do to help with the gingrichian divisiveness that's been going on since Reagan's rule. A patriot is patriotic to America and Americans, not just to his own corruption and greed, not just to his base of misfits and religious fanatics.

I hope Obama doesn't take his spirit of unity too far. Give them a chance. He's done that. If they don't get on board, cast off and leave without them.

"Right to Life" Weirdness

2009-01-25T13:43:00.000-08:00

Obviously this story in the KC Star this morning is not typical of all fundamentalist "right-to-lifers," but it does bring up some interesting thoughts.

The obvious thought is the delusion that so many of those types of people seem to have that the "life" of a fertilized egg is somehow more important than a living human. This couple met at a "right-to-life" protest. They didn't kill their unborn baby, they just let it die after it was born. I'm glad they're being tried for murder and I hope their older child who's still alive gets placed with a kind and loving family.

The way I feel about abortion is simple: If you think it's wrong, don't do it. Better yet, don't get pregnant. Don't get somebody else pregnant. But if somebody else does it, keep your own damn religious beliefs to yourself. And CUT OUT THE HYPOCRISY!

The "right-to-lifers" are no different from the Neocons who make their mark spouting homophobia, and then get busted hustling gay hookers in public restrooms. Same thing. They pretend to only be concerned over the "sanctity of life," and yet they support killing, as long as the killing is done by a Republican administration, I guess. Attacking a country that did nothing to us with the resulting deaths, so far, approaching a million, is OK. But a woman having control over her own body is not OK.

Unless, of course, it's their own daughter. In which case abortion is OK, as long as you don't get caught. They even teach their teenagers the same kind of hypocrisy: stay a virgin until marriage (translated into teenspeak: oral and anal sex are OK, but no vaginal penetration).

Why do these "right-to-lifers" pick on that one issue? It's not because they believe in the sanctity of life, obviously. If they did, they wouldn't do the things they do. Is it because they want to control women's bodies? There is something to that, I think. All the theofascist type religions always want to subjugate women and control the sexual behavior of their followers. I wonder why that is. I can see why the Catholic Church does it the way they do--no birth control, reproduce little Catholics by the millions. It's obviously in their monetary interest to breed more. But the fundamentalists? Why do they get into that one?

Ahh well, I'll probably never know why. It doesn't matter. The disgusting hypocrisy is what really disgusts me. Their entire being is built on a big lie. It's all about power and control over others. I wonder why they don't all go someplace like Afghanistan and live with the Taliban. Same basic philosophy, just a different supernatural being.

Quit Listening to Limbaugh!

2009-01-24T19:13:00.000-08:00

My last rant was two days ago, on Thursday. I said time to stop the hate, turn off the hate radio and hate TV garbage and start acting like Americans.

And then yesterday, Friday, I read that President Obama said basically the same thing, more eloquently of course. He told Republicans "to stop listening to Rush Limbaugh."

I'm sure all the talking heads had a ball with that, taking it out of context, saying that Obama was for censorship, and all the usual ignorant BS they spew all the time any time a Democrat says anything at all.

Obama meant it the same way I did: Quit the divisiveness. Quit the hate. Quit the disinformation. Quit the lies. Quit the distortions. Quit the us/them crap. In other words, quit listening to Rush Limbaugh. And Hannity. And O'Reilley. And Ann Coulter. And Fox "News." And all the rest of the right wing hate machine and their distortions of reality as they promote their Republican-neofascist agenda.

Unfortunately, as I said recently, those people would rather drag the country down into a darker, deeper place than even the Great Depression than put aside their ideology for one second. Rational thought does not prevail among those people. They want it their way or no way. Their hypocrisy knows no bounds. Obama could keep the exact same misguided policies of the Bush administration and even escalate them...and the right wing hate machine would still trash him. In their world, if any Republican does anything whatsoever, even soliciting illicit homosexual sex in an airport men's room, then it's OK. Teenage pregnancy? Hey, they're just kids--it's OK. If you're a Republican from Alaska. If you're a Democrat, or black or Mexican or Asian, well you're going to hell, you godless heathen. If you say anything positive about gays, well, you're a slime liberal against Christian values--unless you're a Republican, in which case the "liberal media" is just picking on you because you're a Republican. If you're a Democratic sleazeball crook, you should go to jail. If you're a Republican sleazeball crook, it wasn't your fault, it was the system.

I have more respect for that evil sociopath Fred Phelps than I do for Rush Limbaugh, O'Reilley and the rest of those superhypocrites. Phelps hates gays and has devoted most of his adult life promoting hatred of gays. The Neocon Republicans hate gays and have devoted most of their adult lives promoting hatred of gays, but they lie about it and won't even take responsibility for what they do or say. At least Phelps takes credit for all the evil garbage he spouts. He's not a hypocrite. In fact, I think he is certifiably insane, and therefore not nearly so evil as the aforementioned Neocons. There is not a person in the Untied States, not a dope dealing heroin-shooting drug addled homeless wretch, not a Mafia godfather, not a corporate criminal, not a car thief nor a cattle rustler, not a bank robber or a wife beater, not anybody in this entire nation as despicable as those hate-spouting Neocon hypocrites.

Last Tuesday, as over two million people looked up and cheered as Bush's helicopter left for good, do you think perhaps they had an inkling of how the nation feels about them?

Probably not. Yet, having been raised with good old fashioned southern Christian values, I believe that they will get theirs one day.

It's Time To Tune Out the Hate Industry

2009-01-22T17:59:00.000-08:00

Most people probably remember back in the '90s, in the early days of the Clinton administration (but before the cigar, the blue dress and is-is was), when Hillary Clinton coined the phrase "vast right wing conspiracy" to describe the hate machine that was going after her.

I guess she's got the last laugh now.

But I don't want to talk about her right now. When she use that phrase, the vast right wing conspiracy really came down on her, and she became the one they loved to hate more than just about anybody, until Al Franken came along. Even the mainstream media joined in with critical "analysis" about whether there was a real right wing conspiracy or not.

Hillary, of course, was right. Except her use of the word "conspiracy" wasn't quite on target. Technically, she is correct--if you define a conspiracy as a group of people who get together to do mean, nasty things. However, in the generally accepted use of the word, it means a group getting together in secret to do mean nasty things while keeping the group's existence hidden as much as possible.

Here's an example of a conspiracy: Back about 15 years or so ago in Kansas City a group of half a dozen or maybe more überwealthy business people got together, in secret, and picked a person they thought should be mayor. They financed him and did all they could to see that he won. He didn't even come close to winning, because he was the type of person you would expect a group of sleazy KC business people to select as their boy in office. That was a conspiracy, albeit not a big one.

It's the use of the word "conspiracy" that caused so many people to make fun of Hillary in those days. The word just has too much connotative meaning to accept it as meaning a group of people who work together to do mean nasty things. Almost everybody thinks a conspiracy involves secrecy, secret meetings, clandestine operations.

The vast right wing conspiracy, in that regard, is not a conspiracy.

Nope, it's not a conspiracy. It is an industry.

It is a vast, multi-BILLION dollar industry.

There exists in this country a huge industry that rakes in billions of dollars doing nothing more than spewing hatred and causing divisiveness and controversy. That is their goal: To generate vast volumes of money by creating conflict among Americans.

Do you think saying it's a multi-billion dollar industry is extreme? Consider the Fox "News" empire, which now includes the Wall Street Journal. Consider Rush Limbaugh, who makes millions in personal salary and therefore brings in many, many millions more to his corporate masters. Ann Coulter. Sean Hannity. Bill O'Reilley. All bring in millions of dollars in personal wealth and millions and millions more to corporations. And for every mean, ugly and nasty Ann Coulter or fat lying rich slob Rush Limbaugh, there are hundreds more on a much smaller scale whose cash generating abilities add up to millions.

But there's more. The real money machines are the Republican fundamentalist Christian Nationalist megachurches. Folks, there is BIG money in hate. It is one of our big industries.

It's not a conspiracy. It's a huge industry. Dedicated to generating controversy. Dedicated solely to opposing any progressive idea any Democrat might come up with. Dedicated solely to supporting Republican fundamentalism and Christian Nationalism.

Why do they do this?

For money.

OK, I'm sure some of the pseudochristians believe the crap they claim to believe, that the earth was created 7,500 years ago, that people existed with dinosaurs (like Sarah Palin believes), that Jesus drove a Hummer.... Some believe that garbage, and they surely are dangerous. But for the most part, it's about BIG MONEY.

If that putrid porker Limbaugh thought he could make as much money doing the same thing on the other side of the fence, he'd hop over in a flash. Just like all the cable "news" talking heads.

It's a plain and simple and ugly truth: There is more money in spouting disinformation, hatred, racist garbage, more money in opposing progress, more money in trying to bring down the country instead of helping to build it up again. It's a multi-billion dollar industry.

That is why it's so loud. That is why you hear more, even today, of the right wing side than the moderate side. Even though a huge majority of Americans are and always have been "liberal," you hear the noise made by the mindless minority much louder. Because of the money. They have big money so they can make loud noise.

And they're not going to go away. They would rather see another Great Depression, because they have so much money it won't matter to them, than work with moderate Democrats to try to fix the mess the Republicans have made since 1980. They are mean, nasty people. They are not patriotic at all, regardless of the pseudopatriotism they spew, regardless of the yellow ribbons and phony flag pins. That's all cheap tawdry wrapping. They are not patriotic to America. They love only their own bottom lines. Their own wealth and the rabid accumulation of more of it.

Forget trying to make the true believer fundamentalist Christian acknowledge reality. That's a lost cause and not worth the effort. Forget trying to get Rupert Murdoch to cover the news accurately. That's an equally lost cause and won't happen. Forget thinking that southern racists voted for McCain because he's a war hero; they voted for him because Obama is African-American. Forget all that; it's a waste of time to stew over it.

Here's what we can, and must, do. First, we must keep after the new administration to keep it from sliding into the morass of corporate control. We won't be 100% successful in doing that, but if we push hard enough, we can keep it to the middle of the road. Hopefully.

Second, we must work to show the people who have been and are being duped by these forces of disinformation and perpetuators of hatred that there is another way. We need to show them that they have been taken for a long ride down into the abyss of abysmal deceit. They've been taken to the cleaners. They have been voting for the very people who have been working against them. I'm talking here about the regular hard working people in this country who drive pickup trucks, drink cheap beer and think it's manly to vote Republican. They are not stupid, they are merely ignorant of the facts because they have been lied to for so many years. They don't sit around and seek out many sources of information as many of us do. They don't have time to study, they didn't have the advantage of higher education. But they are Americans who are being taken advantage of and lied to by that vast empire of the wealthy hatemongers who take their money and laugh at them as they drive around in their hundred thousand dollar chauffeured German cars with their two thousand dollar hookers and 4 thousand dollar suits and thousand dollar shoes. This billion dollar industry of divisiveness is screwing working class Americans daily and most of them don't realize it.

When African-American slaves were working to throw off the chains of oppression, many of them made their way to Kansas, which was a free state. They brought some of the best teachers in the nation, and back in those days Kansas had some schools that were the envy of the country. Those African-Americans knew that they key to freedom was education. And it worked. It took many years and lots of blood but it worked.

The working class Americans who listen to hate radio daily and get their information from Fox "News" are slaves of the mind. Their minds are enslaved as surely as the bodies of our early African immigrants were enslaved. We must all work to help them break their chains of mental oppression. The problem is, many don't know how badly they're being duped. We all have to speak up loudly, clearly and without malice and rancor and with true information, rather than the disinformation and lies the hate industry uses daily in its never ending quest for even more wealth.

This Country Has A Leader

2009-01-20T09:36:00.000-08:00

In listening to President Barack Obama's inauguration speech, I remembered the line in Neil Young's song from three or four years ago, Lookin' for a Leader: "...this country needs a leader..."

Now, at long last, this country has a leader.

The work begins. It won't be easy. The lower 25% of dittoheads and anti-American corporate and religious fundamentalists will continue in their quest to bring democracy down and feed their own greed, corruption, hatred and ignorance. But, now we have a leader. We have hope once more that America can yet become America. That the voices of real Americans will prevail. That the shrill sounds of bigotry, intolerance and insanity will be overcome by rationality and compassion and intellect.

Now we have hope. And, I have to admit, a bit of optimism and confidence.

It feels good. It feels great!