IX II V

Lest we forget, it really is all about taking and no giving.Twenty nine years later and the only thing that's changed (other than the hair and dress styles) is that more people are either unemployed or overworked, for less pay of course, while the powers that be continue to rake in profits and bonuses based on the fruits of the their employees efforts.

The Republican meme is to demonize the unions and the masses eat it up, never realizing that it was the unions that made it possible to have a home, health care, send their kids to college, enjoy the occasional vacation and have a nice retirement.  You know something is really wrong when the owners and CEOs make 236 times what their employees do and then said employees bitch about how much union workers make and that it's okay for the people in the ivory towers live high on the hog.

BBB

The Buck Doesn't Stop With Him

I tried to leave this comment at the LA Times article on the Governator blaming California's Federal Representatives for not bringing more tax money back to the state so it can resolve its budget crisis.

What a crybaby!  Blaming others for problems he helped create and then expecting someone else to bail him out.  The hypocrisy boggles the mind.

For all the pissing and moaning about intrusive federal government what does this Republican governor do?  He begs the feds to bail him out or he will once again take from those who have given; the elderly who paid taxes most of their lives and are now incapable of working; the disabled, who don't have a snowball's chance of earning enough money to live; and children, who through no fault of their own need healthcare. 

He's a namby pamby excuse for a governor.  He governed the state into the ground as he  did his corporate master's bidding and now that the state has fallen into ruin, he wants a federal bailout and tries to blame the state misfortune on its federal representatives.  Now that's taking responsibility.  Not.

California has needed help for quite a while and now that his reign is ending, the governor is trying to deflect attention from his own inadequacies or he will leave a scorched earth behind.  In defiance of both the courts and the people.

The two thirds budget voting needs to be repealed or California will never recover.  The partisanship has prevented the legislature from doing its job of representing the people.

Somewhere, Gray Davis is sipping champagne and laughing his ass off.

California suffers from several problems, not all are the Governor's fault.  It used to be a liberal state with a great school system, but every year people from conservative states moved to California to pursue the dream and brought their politics with them.  They wanted the dream but didn't want to pay for it or for anyone else.  Taxes are lower but never low enough so more must be cut from the budget.   Firehouses, libraries and parks are closed, the schools are producing uneducated citizens, jobs have moved overseas for the tax breaks and the dream has disappeared for all but a lucky few.

In Cathleen Decker's article, she writes that in the early months of Schwarzenegger's first term that nobody could have foreseen the wreckage that was to come.  Why do people say that when it is patently not true?  I, and quite a few others, told anybody who would listen that changing governors was like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic minutes before it sank.

Before Arnold took office I had a successful practice and was considering adding another treatment room.  Two years later I didn't even have a roof over my head.  My small business wasn't big enough to stay afloat.  His policies ruined my practice, destroyed my dreams and left me with a mountain of debt.  Just like he did to California.

Like most politicians, his wealth grew while in office and it wasn't from royalties.  When I was a kid I used to wonder how someone could have more money at the end of their term than their salary would have provided.  Now I know.  Campaign contributions, PAC funds, vacations paid by someone else under the guise of business trips, etc.  Politics as usual.

I may have moved to Nevada, the land of philandering governor and senator, but I still care about California.  There are days when I miss it terribly.  This isn't one of them.

Lowering The Bar

What kind of creep do you have to be to break in to a family's home three days after they were killed in a car crash?  It's bad enough that the parents and two kids were broadsided by a drunk driver who ran a red light at seventy miles an hour as they were returning from a family vacation in Hawaii, but it takes a real lowlife to break into their home and steal their possessions and their car before their bodies have been buried.  Hopefully these morons will plead guilty because it's going to be difficult to find an impartial jury.

Protecting the institution of marriage by banning gays from being married is better than banning divorce, because it would be "impractical" according to the California Family Council. Two people of the same sex pledging their lives to one another is wrong but it's okay for people to get married in a drunken stupor and get divorced three days later.  On the other hand, some people try marriage (and divorce) three times before realizing that they are gay.  How is marriage protected when it can be undone at will?  Maybe the 47.9% of heterosexual marriages that end in divorce should have been prevented?

As if stealing from dead people wasn't bad enough, stealing $100,000 worth of toys and food from an agency that helps the poor is worse.  Scumbags.

I don't accept his apology either.  I'm not his wife or child and it isn't any of my business so I don't need an apology.  He deserves the apology for people intruding on his life.  Everyone is entitled to privacy, even if they are in the public spotlight.  It isn't like he's a Lohan, Hilton or Salahi who seeks fame for fame's sake or someone who sees an opportunity to grub for money.  And since it didn't happen on the golf course, why should it affect his career?  My senator was fooling around with his best friend's wife and he still has a job.

How can a female soldier die from being shot in the back of the head and it not be considered murder?  That is happened on a "secure" base in Iraq is even more mystifying and why is it taking the military so long to solve the case?  Don't they watch NCIS?

If it wasn't for mom's social security deposit, we would be unbanked also.  Three weeks after B of A raided my account for the California government and charged me $100 for the privilege in addition to $105 for not paying my bills, I have yet to receive notification or any official paperwork.  California isn't getting the disputed tax money and my bills aren't paid, but B of A made a couple of hundred dollars at everyone's expense.  I'd rather pay three dollars to Wal-Mart to cash a check and then run around town and pay my bills in cash.  I wonder if Arnold is going to have his bank account raided for his back taxes?  Somehow, I doubt it.

Speaking of the IRS, they are trying to auction off lands that belong to the Crow Creek Indian Reservation using the pretext of back taxes.  There must be undiscovered oil or gold.   Considering that the land originally belonged to them before they were hunted down and forced to exist on land that barely supports insects, this is some real chutzpah. 

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Tuesday Morning Rant

Has anybody considered the idea that if Democrats and Republicans had to vote in each others primaries instead of their own, that we might have better candidates to choose from?  Both sides could run their own candidates but then the voters could decide who they hated least in the primaries and the general elections could be reserved for who they liked more.  We might end up with politicians who appeal to the majority instead of the wingnuts.  As a plus, people might start thinking their vote really mattered.

Steve Doocy believes that the Stupak Amendment will "make it very clear that federal money will not be used to end a life."  I guess it's magic fairy dust that pays for executions.  Or that once a child is born, it isn't a life.

This is so wrong.  One of the commenters at CBS Political Hotsheet compared Palin to Jesus on the cross.  It's a good thing the Bible says he rose from the dead otherwise he would be spinning in his grave.  Like a nuclear powered top.

by 50BMS13 November 17, 2009 3:20 AM EST

This article is nonsense. SARAH PALIN WILL BE THE 45TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA! She is Beautiful, Bright, and has Braun. She FAR MORE QUALIFIED than Obama to run this country. As Lou Dobbs said today,"Obama is mis-managing the USA" All the hate I see posted here makes me think of what Jesus said when he was dying. Jesus said "Forgive them Father for they do not know what they are doing". A lot of posters here don't realize it now, but you will love Sarah Palin when she puts our great country back on track. She will know how to deal with Ahmadinejad and Kim Il Jong. She won't kiss muslim a** and "waiter bow" to foreign heads of state. She won't apologize for the American way to the world. You will all see this soon enough. Please keep an open mind my friends and don't listen to all the poison posts of hate people put up. She never lies. She knows lots of stuff. She can kill a moose, gut it, and cook it. She has been Mayor, Governor, and VP candidate. Great days are ahead of us. The future is bright!

On track to where?  Due to the great corporate policies of off-shoring jobs and manufacturing, we don't make anything here anymore and until we do, we are not going to recover.  I'm sorry, but the woman isn't qualified to be a dog catcher much less President of the United States.  I realize that Bush set the bar pretty low but politics isn't the limbo, it's more like the high jump.  The idea is to step over the bar, not under it.  At least it used to be.  Going Rogue or Going Rouge, it really doesn't matter.  She's had more fame and shame than she deserves and it's time for the country to find a different American Idiot.

As the country recovered from World War II, the unions prospered.  And when the unions prospered, everyone else did also.  Men made a wage that enabled them to pay for the roof over their families heads, put food on the table, take a vacation once in a while, save for retirement and put at least one of their children through college.  All without government help.

Medical care wasn't an issue if you had a job and most schools not only taught reading, writing and arithmetic, they also had chemistry and biology labs, sports, art, wood shop, choir, band classes, automotive shops, drama classes and field trips.  Quite a few people were happy.  My, how times have changed.

At the Division of Family and Children Services, Keasha Taylor, 36 and black, helped explain the system recently to a white mother. Ms. Taylor, who was there because her family had been evicted, told the mother, who was in line for food stamps, that a child with acute asthma might be eligible for Social Security.

“Right now, a lot of white people are in this situation,” Ms. Taylor said, recalling the conversation later. “We’re already used to poverty; they’re really not.”

In the eighties, corporations and politicians began accusing the unions of ruining the country.  They decimated whole towns by shipping work off to the other side of the world in order to avoid paying union wages and to increase corporate and shareholder profits.  They were extremely successful.  They no longer provide jobs here in America and Americans can no longer afford to buy their products.  Heck, they can't even afford to keep their homes.

Meanwhile, cities and towns lost their tax base, hospitals closed and schools became rundown and all but a few classes were eliminated.  This is now the fault of the SEIU (why is it that I specifically searched for news stories and the majority of the stories were from blogs?) and teacher's unions, with the reasoning being that the unions are thugs, they are protecting incompetent people and if the unions didn't exist everything would be better.  Taxes would go down, even thought they are much less than in the sixties, and everyone would have a job due to the trickle down effect. 

The only thing trickling down is brown, stinky and increasing.  There will be no pony and there will be no freedom.  During the last Depression, people were able to grow some of their food and barter for other necessities.  How can you barter when your neighbor has less than you do?  How is the next generation going to compete on the global stage when they don't have the tools they need to compete or the critical thinking to tell the difference?

Today's politicians are proud that they believe that evolution and climate change are a crock of bull, right up until they get a disease that can only be cured by more research or their waterfront property washes away, and don't mind eliminating funding for science and education as if the future is less important than a past that existed three hundred years ago.  Then they screech about the Taliban (not too fond of people committing crimes in their name) and how they must be stopped in order to preserve American freedoms.

What freedoms would those be?  Other than the right to bear arms and put people to death at will, not many spring to mind.  Freedom of speech only applies if you aren't disagreeing with the uber right's point of view.  Freedom of religion only applies if you're Christian.  And you had better be the right type of Christian.   It's hard to have freedom of the press when they bought and sold their own soul. The freedom to be secure in your own home or person hasn't existed in years.  Amendments Five through Eight only apply if you are rich and powerful and the Ninth and Tenth are only used when politicians can't get around the first eight.  The only one that hasn't been abridged in the last few years is the Third and they got around that in New Orleans by sending in Blackwater. 

How can we return to a time when America was great if we don't have anything to build on except hate and fear?  How is voting for any politician going to do anything except rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic?  The American people fell for empty hope and change promises last year and all they got was Bush not white.

Putting an idiot in office won't fix the problems we have as a nation.  Investing in our people will.  We need jobs and in order to have jobs we need to make something and make it well.  Americans need jobs that will pay their bills, not put money into executive pockets that are already so full that they don't have a concept of how the majority of Americans are suffering and have the balls to say that it's God's will.

Codswallop is more like it.

BBB

Eight Years On

The Second World War lasted six years and long before it was over the American people had built airplanes, ships, tanks, bombs, guns and bullets to support the troops.  No effort was spared.  Rationing of sugar, butter, meat, milk, gasoline and rubber were endured by the citizenry (rich and poor alike) so that the troops could have what they needed to ensure a successful outcome as well as spreading the pain equally among the populace.

It's been twenty years since we had a president with direct experience on the battlefield and it shows.   Once you've had to dodge a few bullets or your plane has been shot out of the air you tend to appreciate your equipment and hope that it is the best there is.  Unfortunately, the troops of today don't have that confidence and haven't for many years.

Eisenhower warned about the military complex in his farewell speech to the nation while also pointing out their responsibility to the country.  Somehow the military complex has grown without holding up its share of the bargain.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

When I was in basic training they ran us through a simulated firefight using tracer ammunition. Even though I knew I wasn't going to be harmed it was still a terrifying experience.

We were on a night march and bombs started going off and there was incoming "fire". We were supposed to return "fire" while trying to make it to a safe outpost. Things were going okay until about five minutes into the firefight when my M16 jammed.  It's amazing what you can do when you're scared.  I cleared my weapon while on the run and after firing a few more rounds, it jammed again.  Thirty five years later and the troops in Afghanistan are having the same problems with their weapons except this is not a training exercise.  The M4 jams under duress and during last year's battle at Wanat, during a critical time in the battle, many of their weapons were rendered unusable due to jamming under heavy use and nine US soldiers lost their lives.

As I've stated before, the longer you are at war the more the enemy learns about tactics and the more willing they are to employ them.  In 2006 the Taliban pinned down a group of Green Berets, they repeated it in Wanat and once again this past week.  The absolute least, and I mean least, we could do for our troops is provide them with weaponry that works when they need them.  Every time.  A rifle is meant to be fired, not used as a club and it shouldn't get so hot that you are unable to clear a jam.  If shuttle tiles can be built to withstand the heat of orbital reentry, weapons designed for war should be able to withstand sustained usage under the conditions they are supposedly manufactured for.

Eight years on and our troops are still going to war with inferior equipment.  Mullah Omar may have retreated eight years ago but he's back now with experience under his robes and willing to use it.  No one has ever successfully invaded Afghanistan and we aren't going to succeed using equipment that doesn't do its primary job.  That we haven't learned that painful lesson is the second error of historic proportions and sending in 40,000 more troops with shoddy equipment isn't going to change anything except our troops increasing body count.

BBB

Breathing While Black

Do I care that the police are offended by President Obama's assertion that the arrest of Henry Gates was stupid?  Not in the least.  Being caught on tape beating Rodney King didn't change their behavior, as a matter of fact, the police have escalated violence upon citizens of color.  They even shoot pets of mayors even though they don't have any proof that the mayor was involved in a crime.  And never apologize.

Considering that the police have gotten away with shooting so many whose only crime was breathing while black, they deserve to be called more than stupid.  From shooting an unarmed Amadou Diallo 41 times to fatally peppering Sean Bell with four of the 51 bullets fired by undercover officers into a vehicle where none of the suspects had weapons, the police have gotten away with murder time after time.  And they will probably get away with shooting a handcuffed Oscar Grant in the back because that's the way this country rolls.  If you're a black man you don't have the right to exist outside of prison and the police take every opportunity to ensure that as many black men as possible enjoy the hospitality of the the local prison.  Or preferably, the morgue.

Why should an old black man have to call a locksmith to get into his own house?  When melanin impaired people get locked out, they climb through windows or crawl in through the basement and nobody thinks that's odd. Do criminals normally bring chauffeurs when they break into homes? Mr. Gates has been a resident of Cambridge since 1991 and his neighbors don't recognize him?  Or are they so insulated that all black men look alike?

Has it occurred to anyone that after you reach the age of fifty, have received nearly fifty honorary degrees and are returning from China with a bad case of bronchitis to your home in an upscale neighborhood and the police arrive moment later, that maybe, just maybe you might feel like you are being singled out for no other reason than the color of your skin?

And now the poor little officer is thinking of suing.  Well, he and the rest of the police should get over it.  I have neither sympathy nor empathy for their feelings.  They taser pregnant women and people sleeping face down and naked on their own couch, they taser a deaf man wearing nothing but a towel in his own bathroom (after another false report) and claim that they were worried about their own safety, why should anyone have sympathy for them?  If they are that scared, maybe they should find a less stressful job.  Or quit using mass amounts of caffeine followed with the popular donut high, cut back on the steroids and take some stress management classes.

And for the record, at one time I wanted to be a cop.  My dad said they would never take me because I wasn't violent enough, he was right.

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Justice? I Don't Think That Word Means What You Think It Means

This absolutely takes the cake for judicial stupidity.  My blood pressure is so high I think I'm going to have a stroke.  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, what the hell is wrong with the state of Oklahoma?  Are the people in this state out of what little minds they have?  It's okay to shoot a perpetrator in the head, get another gun a few moments later and pump five more bullets into a motionless body but repeatedly raping a four year old girl and forcing her five year old brother to watch it is only worth one year in jail and he gets credit for nine months already served?  Are you effing kidding me?

She was raped, she was sodomized and she most certainly didn't ask for it, dress provocatively or use suggestive language to lure this pervert on.  As if that would ever be an excuse for rape under any circumstances.  The child advocate and her supervisor should lose their jobs due to gross incompetence since they obviously have not a clue as to what advocating for the defenseless means.  The prosecutor should be fired for stupidity and an inability to punish real criminals which just so happens to be his job and for not investigating the past history, and this guy definitely had a criminal history, of this cretin because perverts don't start at 64, they've been at it most of their lives.  And the judge, well he should be recalled.  If there ever was a time for an "activist" judge, this was it.  He could have used common sense and said no, this creep belongs in jail for twenty years no matter what kind of plea bargain was arranged and let the inmates take care of him, ala Jeffrey Dahmer.  Or maybe the trial should have taken place in Ohio, their prosecutors seem to have a handle on ensuring that creeps get appropriate sentences for raping a child.

So what if the perp gets labeled a sexual predator and has to pay a $1000 fine, is that going to make the rest of this girl's life any easier?  How about when she is an adult and realizes that what he did to her was determined to be worth a tiny slap on the wrist?  Now is the time for the Michelle Malkins, Laura Ingrahams, Nancy Graces and Ann Coulters of this world to get up and scream their tiny little heads off about the injustice that was committed here instead of the made up stuff that babbles brainlessly from their talking heads.

Oh yeah, and the state of Oklahoma should be boycotted, not a dime of tourist money should they get until this situation is rectified. Heck, the Interstate shouldn't even travel through it.

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When Did We Lose Our Ability To Empathize?

What the heck is wrong with people?  Are our math skills so poor that we can't do simple addition and subtraction?  For a supposedly Christian nation we sure are harsh on those who have the least.  A recent Gallup poll finds that even though the economy has tanked, that rental prices have risen as home prices have fallen, that food and medical costs have also risen high enough that families making $50K a year are visiting food banks to supplement their pantry and doing without medical insurance while hoping for the best and yet only 41% of Americans think that the poor are paying their far share of taxes and 16% believe that the poor pay too little.  If you want the poor to pay more taxes, you should let them earn more money.  As Warren Buffet pointed out a few years ago, his secretary and cleaning lady paid a higher tax rate than he did.  In other words, a larger proportion of their income.

In California the minimum wage is $8 an hour.  If your company hasn't forced you to take an unpaid vacation or cut your hours you will gross $320 per week, $1,387 per month and $16,640 per year. Sounds like a lot, doesn't it?  Back in the day, the rule was that you were to spend less than one third of your income on lodging so living by yourself is out of the question if you plan on eating.  Rents in Santa Clara for a one bedroom apartment hover between $950 and $1400 a month.  These numbers can be reduced if you are willing to live in a high crime area on the wrong side of town or live so far away from your job that it takes you an hour to get to work.  But what the heck, you're poor and don't deserve to live with the "better" members of society.

Federal and State taxes are taken out before you ever see your check, along with Medicare, State Disability and Social Security taxes, so that $1387 a month is really closer to $1000 which means you compromise and live in a house or apartment with several other people and rent will only cost you $550.  That doesn't include utilities or telephone, be it a land line or cell.  If you don't have a car there are no payments, repairs, registration or insurance to worry about but the bus pass for the bus that doesn't run on weekends or holidays that's a mile from your apartment on one end and a mile to the job on the other is $70 a month.

Now this job obviously doesn't have health insurance and if you are young and never been seriously ill, the premiums can be pretty low but heaven forbid you're over thirty because you are looking at premiums around $250 a month.  I hear tell that you are supposed to buy new clothes occasionally so you had better be a Wal-Mart shopper, but not too often.  No going to the dentist either and if you need glasses they had best be of the birth control variety.  Fortunately they happen to be in style now.

You really shouldn't have pets, hobbies, own a television now that everything is going digital and you can't afford cable or satellite, go to the movies, smoke cigarettes, or enjoy a beer or latte because that money is coming directly out of your food budget since you gross over $1100 a month you aren't eligible for food stamps.  And with the price for a decent loaf of bread coming in at over $3.50 you should be eating rice and beans.  It doesn't matter if you aren't getting proper nutrition and are gaining weight because all you can afford are simple carbohydrates, you're poor and that's all the world owes you.

Now what happens if you stupidly fall in love and get married?  That salary will not support two people but you will finally qualify for food stamps.  According to the traditional view of Christian marriage a man is supposed to support the wife and she is supposed to stay home and take care of the kids you can't afford.  Reliable birth control is out of the question and abortion is a no-no so you better not have sex either.

Unfortunately this recession is hitting all income levels and the ranks of the newly poor are swelling at the same time as all of the safety nets are being eliminated.  For those of us who are either not knowledgeable or have too much knowledge, poverty is our future.  It won't matter how much you have paid into the system over the years, your fellow Americans think you are a loser and abusing the system because they are positive you're lazy.  Not that the job that required a Master's degree when you took it was shipped overseas and the only thing left in your area is working at Wal-Mart and they won't hire you because you're over qualified.  Even though you had six months of savings that have run out and now can't pay your bills, it's all your fault now because you're poor.  You should have planned better and gotten an advanced education.  Oh wait, you did that and have the student loans to prove it.

What the heck is wrong with us that we must make ourselves feel better by demeaning those who can't fight back? The poor pay into the system in many ways (including the regressive sales tax) and then society determines that this isn't enough and that they aren't contributing as much as they should even though it's all they have.  And then have the audacity to say that the poor should work harder and pull themselves up by their bootstraps when all they have are flip-flops.  How messed up is that?

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Is Racism Dead In America?

Not if yesterday was any indication. I told my mom a story about two kids where the melanin impaired had stolen from the melanin enriched child. The melanin enriched child doesn't get a public apology for her privacy being invaded or that her money was stolen. All of the adults are to get one and the melanin impaired child must work off chores in her own home to repay the melanin enriched child. Mom, who is very melanin impaired, agreed with me and thought that it was poorly handled and sends the wrong signal to the girl whose money was stolen.

I pointed this out to my friend that this wasnt exactly fair and that the melanin enriched child who was the one who suffered the invasion of privacy was being shown that she didnt matter as an individual. And that's when my friend snapped my head off and said she was tired of hearing me talk about racism and that everything is racist to me. I was also told that since the melanin enriched child's other home was full of melanin enriched people that it wasn't like she was isolated or anything. Heaven forbid that it should have crossed someone's mind that when you are the only melanin enriched person in a room and that when harm is done to you that you should have to swallow it until surrounded by other melanin enriched people because it is more important that the other child learn a lesson than for you to get a public apology for being wronged. What a fucking crock of shit that was. Yes, I cussed.

If it had been the other way around, it would have been determined that the melanin enriched child would have had to make a public apology so that she would be so embarrassed that she wouldn't do it again. You know, to teach her a valuable lesson.

I have spent my life ignoring racism (and manage the first 18 years of my life without every uttering the word) but over the last few years I've noticed that people indulge in it much more often and in very subtle ways. Yes, all of the elders have psychology degrees of some type but none of them understands what it's like to be all alone in a room full of people that don't look like you and that you only see on a monthly basis. And pointing it out doesn't mean than I look for racist actions, it means that I with 52 years of experience living thourgh the same situations, know what it feels like inside and that maybe someone should have considered the victim's feelings. If a child of eight can be charged with murder then a child of nine should have to understand and publicly apologize for stealing from your friend and that you knew it was wrong and shouldn't be tolerated under any circumstances. Most kids learn not to take other people's toys by the time they hit kindergarten.

Then today I learned that the Supreme Court has determined that there has to be at least 51% of a minority in order to help elet minorities that reflect their point of view. So, all it takes is for a few brave souls to move into poor neighborhoods and all of a sudden...less minority candidates.

Thank goodness women make up 51% of the population or we would never get to vote and it certainly would make it harder for women to be elected to national office. Not that it's happened yet.

BBB

Well, Isn't That Special?

So far my student loan for my Master's in Chinese Medicine is $99,515 and I can't afford to either practice, set up an office or get any small business loans to help me out.  After four years of school that was located nowhere near where I was living before I realized that acupuncture worked and that I didn't have to go all the way to China to learn it, it's nice to know that the military thinks acupuncture is beneficial.

Ultimately, Niemtzow would like troops to learn acupuncture so they can treat each other while out on missions. For now, the Air Force program is limited to training physicians.

He says it's "remarkable" for the military, a "conservative institution," to incorporate acupuncture.

"The history of military medicine is rich in development," he said, "and a lot of people say that if the military is using it, then it must be good for the civilian world."

Nope, I can't practice my profession without a license but some doctor who thinks he's found a new technique in a medicine that is thousands of years old and is going to teach his version to troops who can do more damage with a little training of one minor form of acupuncture than the benefit is going to be worth.   Or as the saying goes, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

Why not get them battle armor that does the job correctly (Newsflash:  money doesn't help dead people) instead and leave the administering of acupuncture to people who have had more training in both theory and practice?

No wonder I'm depressed.

BBB

If Only I Had Learned To Drive A Forklift

Predicted by who?  The former crew without a clue or those that sucked up to them?  What part of a worldwide global economy didn't they understand?  For the last few years there has been a consistent tone in America and that spread to the rest of the world.

There has been a massive dichotomy between what we are told to achieve in order to get ahead and then there is the reality that we have worked our way in to a corner where our workforce has no work and few, if any, prospects in sight.  The little people (taxpayers) have known for years that gravity works on everything except money.  And once money stops flowing upstairs, the world grinds to a halt.

We were told that education would help stave off poverty, but now with student loans and no jobs to repay them, some of us are now poorer than we would have been is we hadn't tried to improve on what was already working.  Lately not a day goes by that it doesn't cross my mind that learning to drive a forklift in the Army woulld be of immensely more use to me now than being able to repair guidance control systems from thirty years ago.  My brother, a former Naval officer, uses his skills too.  Not.

Worst of all, now that we finally have experience, we have too much of it.  Throw in the Masters and we intimidate the crap out of people.  Now we are overqualified  and have the papers to prove it.  Just like millions of others who believed the American Dream. (current as of 11/08, before the numbers got really bad).

BBB

Religion, Threats, Stupidity And Sadness

I am not disputing that there is a a God or higher authority.  I hope and pray there is, because if we are the top of the food chain we are in a world of trouble.  What gets my knickers in a knot are people that think that the brains we were given (or developed) are to immediately switch off whenever there is a crisis and that God will handle it for us.  Jeepers creepers.  How arrogant do you have to be to believe that a being could create the universe and then spend their time listening for your piddling little problems.  Those problems might seem world changing to you, but not to the big guy, he's off building other universes.  Hopefully filled with beings that use all of the attributes given us to make our lives better.   God didn't mention guns or cars in the Bible but somehow people still manage to justify using them.  Medicine is the same way.  We were given brains to think our way out of problems, not pray that someone really busy would solve them.   Sort of like taste buds, more than for just oatmeal.

The Taliban are wasting no time trying to order the new President around.  I guess you can do than in a country that has never been successfully invaded.  We were so unsuccessful in Afghanistan that now the Taliban is forcing Pakistani bus drivers to remove music and entertainment devices from public buses or be blown up.  When the 1700 year old Buddhist statues were blown up, the world should have gotten a clue then, but no, the Taliban are no less religious fanatics than the Puritans were.  The only difference is that there isn't another world these fanatics can be sent to explore and get them out of our hair.

No shit!  This is a pet peeve of mine and one of the reasons I don't practice anymore.   Acupuncture is sort of like real estate.  Location, location, location.  But most important of all is an accurate diagnosis.  If migraines are caused by blood deficiency (pale lips, skin, conjunctiva, dull hair and nails, scanty or irregular periods) they are best treated by a combination of nutrition, herbs and acupuncture.  If they are caused by too much yang (always angry or frustrated, road rage, very heavy periods with clotting), you can stick the needle anywhere and there is going to be some type of relief because you have essentially let some of the steam out of the system.  If the migraines are aggravated before the period begins then it really helps if you regulate the menstrual cycle and work on the person's unhappiness factors.  If they hate their lives and won't admit it, then you can expect a recurrence at the first missed treatment.  It also helps if you know whether the migraine is liver, gallbladder or heart related but that is too technical and time consuming to sort people correctly for the studies.  Therefore, for most migraines and headaches acupuncture will work no matter where you stick the needle.  If you want to improve the quality of the person's life, you have to do a little more work.  Acupuncture is the least (Nutrition, herbs, exercise, environment, moxa, cupping, etc) of what is known as Chinese Medicine. Very few western experiments are ever going to prove its efficacy so quit treating it like it is the be all and end all of Chinese Medicine because the studies aren't designed correctly which makes the whole system suspect. Like arthroscopic surgery for arthritis of the knee.

Hanging by a thread, and a frozen one at that.


I would like to think that it wasn't going to let go in my lifetime, but something tells me it's history as of the summer.

BBB

For He Who Must Not Be Named

Voldemort, I do not care that you aren't speaking with me or your brother, I do care that you are not speaking with your mother.  I also realize that you probably don't know who Voldemort is, but I promise you that if you do not call your mother by the end of Christmas day, I will publish (and I write on several sites) every bit of personal detail that I know about you.  This will include things such as your real name, which unfortunately will let others know my name, all birth data and anything else that I can lay my hands on.  I will publish personal memories, I will publish your shoe size, I don't care.

I watch what is left of our mother and she is hurting.   She loves you very much.  You are her baby, but that is no reason for a man of 47 to act like one.  She rarely answers her phone anymore because she only takes personal calls.  You will have to speak loudly, something you do quite well when needed, and sometimes rephrase what you say so her brain has a chance to process it.  You will have to be patient, not one of your best qualities, but do your best.  I will not interfere unless she asks for help, sometimes she has difficulty finding the right words.  Please try and attain a total talking time of ten minutes, she deserves that much.

I'm not kidding around here.  You may not be Tom Riddle, but the day after Christmas quite a few people will know that you are ***** ******* and that you don't treat your mother with respect.  Or love.

And yes, I do know that you read my blog at least once, and sometimes twice, a week.

Merry Christmas!

Saturday Morning Observations

Last night I had the unfortunate experience of listening to someone claim that the reason the car makers are having financial difficulties is because they have been forced to go green and make hybrids for the last few years and that this is the reason that the whole economy is failing.  I did what any normal, rational person would do.  I picked up my drink and walked out.  You can't reason with stupidity and now that the election is over I really can't be bothered.

I said I wasn't going to vote for Obama but the California GOP pissed me off so badly that I went ahead and cast my vote for him.  It seems they were so desperate to throw mud that they filed a lawsuit about his using campaign money to visit his sick grandmother.  That wasn't quite as stupid as those who felt that he had his grandmother killed for the sympathy vote, but it was up there in the stupid zone.

Meanwhile over at Open Salon another one of the intellectually impaired wrote a post blaming liberals for causing a future nuclear terrorist attack by voting for Obama.  It is utterly fascinating how the mistakes of the last eight years are being blamed on someone who isn't in office yet.  Typical Republican behavior.  Blame everyone except themselves.

One of the things I've noticed since blogs have become so popular is that a good proportion of people do not know how to spell.  Not just typos, they happen to everyone, but words that have been in the news on a daily basis such as Barack.  It isn't spelled Barak unless you are talking about Ehud.  The word is initiative, not innitiave.  And for Pete's sake, the word is Republican, not Repug.  Shai Shai gets offended every time it is used.

In regards to the First Puppy, I recommend a pug.  The cuteness factor is enormous and they are the comedians of the dog world.  No matter how bad the day gets they can bring a smile to your face and they are tenacious enough to entertain you until you do.

It seems that Italy's Prime Minister Berlusconi has offended some people by calling Obama "tanned".  Being biracial myself, I am not the least offended by the remark.  For most of my life I have been telling people that my skin color doesn't bother me since it is the shade that all those blonds waste time in tanning beds risking skin cancer to acquire.  Not every observation about skin color is racist.  Now it's time to break another color barrier, as soon as we find an albino willing to run for office.

BBB

Past Lives

I have no idea what I did in a past life to deserve the treatment I'm receiving in this one, but it must have been pretty bad.  Every thing I do to try and improve mom's situation seems to make it worse.  Two weeks ago some readers suggested I put a PayPal donation button on the site to help mom and myself fight our unfair eviction.  Three people donated and I appreciated it so much.  Then, just like clockwork, when it was deposited into my checking account, poof! 

I had been trying to find jobs to work from home because mom can't be left alone for very long (I tried it over the weekend and it was a disaster) and signed up with a Mystery Shopping company known as ShadowShoppers.  I signed up for thirty days to try it out and this morning they dunned my account for $99 for a year of service that I don't want.  I had my preferences set so that I would be the one who determined if I was going to renew and they changed it to automatic renewal.  I decided that it wasn't worth my time to pay these people since I had been contacted by so many individual companies that didn't charge.  ShadowShopper changed my settings and took every dime out of my checking account.  As of midnight I will end up owing Bank of America a bounced check charge for something that I actually did buy instead of a service I don't want or need at this point. The worst part is I won't receive any money from the Mystery jobs until after the 15th of October.  Which will be way too late to help me.

I will have to cancel all the jobs I have scheduled (and one of them was worth quite a bit of money) because I don't have the gas to complete the assignment or the money to wait for the reimbursement.  Fortunately one of the assignments that I completed was a credit union and they asked me to open an account there.  So I did and the credit union gave me $25 for signing up, which is what I have to live on until either the state pays me or mom's Social Security comes in on the third of October.  I am in the process of transferring my banking to a place that wants to help me get ahead, not pay off someone else's bad mortgage.  B of A's site isn't even working today.

But that doesn't help me now.  I will be posting on all the work from home sites to let people know that ShadowShopper is one big scam.  They have had the same ten jobs available for the last month and are only in it to take the sign up fee. 

I'm tired of banging my head against a wall and am very tired of fighting a battle that I know I'm going to lose.  This has left me with no choice but to put mom in a home that will give her substandard care until she dies.  I feel awful that mom is going to be the one who pays for my mistakes.  I'm extremely frustrated and can literally see no way out.  I'm even out of dog food.

Then I notice that while I was fighting with the bank to get my money back, I see that my peewee brother checked my site this morning.  That's all he ever does. I need help and no matter how hard I try, mom and I are sliding further into the abyss.  This can't be what life is all about because if it is, I really don't see the point.

I'm so frustrated at this point that I'm pretty sure my picture is next to the definition.

Update: ShadowShopper says they refunded (still can't check Bank of America online) $60 and I am happy about that, but I really needed all the money. But something is better than nothing. Isn't it?

Bank Of America Sucks The Big Weenie

I cannot stand B of A. They may be my bank but they are trying to balance their bad mortgage loans on the backs of their poorest consumers. In addition to reordering how they do their debits, they have now instituted the practice of charging overdraft fees on pending items. Items that haven't been paid and may drop off for any reason, such as they aren't authorized. But that doesn't stop them from charging you a fee even if they haven't paid it.

My Netflix was due yesterday and I went to put money in the bank before the day was over. I'm living really close to the bone while I wait for the state to get its act together. This morning I check my balance and discovered three overdraft charges for items that weren't overdrawn, they were pending and the money was in the bank before they cleared. This is $105 that they won't give me back and has left me with the grand total of $35.82 until the third of September or the state sends me another check. Whichever comes first.  And even though there was enough money in my account, they didn't pay Netflix.  The last entertainment mom and I had is in the process of being canceled.

I have no gas in the car, very little food (why did Shadow have to dig up my peas and green beans?) in the fridge, (we won't even talk about the rent I can't pay) and absolutely no possibility of ever getting my finances in order because no matter what I do, Bank of America keeps instituting new fees and new ways to take my money, even when I have done nothing wrong. I guess you are supposed to keep a minimum of $1000 in the account to protect yourself from their thievery and that isn't the type of account I signed up for. If I had a $1000 I wouldn't be suffering as much and mom and I wouldn't be on the verge of being homeless.

Plus, they are paying .050% on savings, down from the 3% when I opened the account. Why keep money in a savings account that doesn't pay? Why keep money in this bank at all? Did you know that their Keep the Change scam takes the money out of your checking account at the end of the day but doesn't transfer it to your savings account for another 24 hours? They are using your money for a whole day to make money for the bank and calling it a savings plan. Yeah, for them.

The economy in the Bay Area is so bad that they didn't even have to turn on the metering lights on the Bay Bridge this morning. It isn't a holiday, but people have no jobs to go to. I can't find a job that lets me work from home so I can keep an eye on mom, who has taken to removing items of clothing in public and is rapidly forgetting how to walk or eat properly, but I can't afford to put her in a home and she is still too aware to be in a place that you go to die.

I'm tired, depressed, stressed and I hate Bank of America with a purple effing passion. I hope they go under and all their executives go to jail for fraud. As if that would happen with Bush and his cronies in power. I think I'll start using a check cashing service and keep my money in a mattress because the fees would actually be less.

Bank of America really sucks.  And I hate them.

I really hate them.

I Have Two Brothers

One is an Obamatron, the other is a self-centered effing douchebag.  The Obamatron asked me to send him some links regarding Obama's reversal on the Fourth Amendment and I'll deal with that right after this message to the most selfish, disrespecting flipping idiot I currently know.  Other than the current occupant of the White House.

Baby bro, your mother has been trying to call you for the last month, but it seems that you have disconnected the number you have had for over 15 years and left no forwarding number.    She has no way of contacting you and time is getting short.  Mom had another little stroke during our heat wave a few weeks ago and now has serious balance problems as well as the ongoing deterioration of her mental processes.  Some of this deterioration could be slowed if she had a little more contact from the baby of the family.  She's depressed, yet she always cheers up when she hears your voice.  Call collect if you need to.

K, do her and yourself a favor and pull your head out of your ass. It's dark and depressing in there and prevents you from seeing the light.   In less than a month you will be 47 years old and it's time to act like a grownup and accept responsiblity for your actions and quit blaming your dad, your brother, me and anyone else that doesn't worship at your feet and tremor at the glory of your voice.   As your older sister and the firstborn of the family, I have mollycoddled you your whole life because I felt that you were too emotionally fragile to hear the truth about yourself.  Your feelings no longer concern me and any respect or admiration I had for your talents has evaporated since all you do is talk and you have wasted ALL the advantages you have had since the day you were born.   And you had a lot of them.

While you obsess over slights, real and imagined, you never acknowledge the benefits of being the last child.  You always had new bikes, clothes and toys, and if you didn't like those, the parents would give you the ones that I or your brother had.  Which you would break immediately.  Other than kindergarten,  you were in the same school system until you graduated.  I attended six.    You were groomed from the age of twelve to be a computer programmer,  your brother was actively ignored by the system yet still has an MBA, and I was denied entry to automotive and science classes because my duty was to get married and have babies and that type of knowledge was something that wouldn't be needed.  Come talk with me sometime and we can trade instances of who got screwed and when.  I bet that any objective observer will agree that it was me who was disadvantaged and discarded  and that you need to spend some time reassessing your extremely distorted version of past events.

And by the way, the reason your father was gone so often was because the Air Force needed his skills to listen in on our enemies and he chose to go to Korea instead of Vietnam because he had a wife and three children and didn't want to die in a war that we weren't going to win.   He was right, but you are so wrapped up in feeling sorry for yourself that it probably never occurred to you that we always moved or dad was sent away on my birthday.   Specifically my second, sixth, eighth, twelfth, thirteenth and fifteenth.  After a little research I discovered it was the anniversary date of his graduating from basic training and that's when his orders were effective.   It wasn't his fault and I refuse to keep blaming him for something he had no control over.  And N, the reason dad went to Arizona the year before he retired was because I was in eleventh grade and refused to go a different high school.  I told him I was tired of trying to make new friends and that I would just drop out and he wouldn't be able to do anything about it.  Dad felt that even the restricted education I was getting was more important than forcing us to move to another state where we didn't know anyone.  So.  Get.  Over.  It.

On a lighter note, N, here are some people who have commented on Obama's arrogant dismissal of the evisceration of the Fourth Amendment.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

I've ranted on the subject, Glenn Greenwald wrote an excellent assessment, the Dark Wraith explained it from a historical perspective in plain language, that guy Kos who I won't link to, has vowed not to send another dime,  Talking Points Memo has an extremely useful timeline of Obama statemnents in the last year and I'm pretty sure the Google has more links than I want to read or list.  More than one paper believes that Obama has either made a move towards the center or that he was always there and the list could go on.  And on.

Cooking Deal Breakers

I have a few and they usually include phrases like one I found in In the Kitchen with Rosie. It was in one of those side boxes and it said "do not be intimidated by the price of the duck." I lived in Lompoc at the time and not only would the Vons have had to special order duck in general, the butcher had never heard of Muscovy duck. I've had it since, courtesy of Trader Joe's, but the biggest deal breaker for me is when I have to buy special ingredients that cost a lot of money and are only used in that recipe, by the tablespoon. At one time, I had fourteen different vinegars, which is more than a little excessive. Believe it or not, I had to go out and buy plain white vinegar because it was the only one I didn't have and I needed it for something.

Other deal breakers fall into the special equipment category. By the time I've assembled my mandoline I could have chopped most of the vegetables by using my trusty 10 inch chef's knife. Ever since I saw Wolfgang Puck peel a tiny vegetable with his 12 inch, I moved up from my 8 inch and have been quite very happy with the results. I also have a 6 1/2 inch Santoku that I use for slicing veggies and a paring knife that gets used about once a month. All by Wusthof, the classic version because it fits my hand better. The lovely Cuisinart sits in the corner gathering dust until the holidays when I tend to get fancier than usual. I rarely use the blender unless I'm making something cold, otherwise I use the stick. Much more convenient.

Since I rarely know what I'm hungry for until the day of, I'm not too good at marinating food 24 to 36 hours ahead. I like Sauerbraten and mom is German by birth so you would think I would make it more than once every ten years.

The question of how far is too far is often pondered in the test kitchens of Gourmet, which built its reputation on recipes that took all weekend and a small bank loan to produce.

That's the truth.

I only bake if I have to. It's not that it's too hard for me and it isn't that I don't suffer from wanting the trains to run on time, but it's too precise to do on a regular basis. I was really good in chemistry lab, but I prefer a freer hand when it comes to my taste buds and baking doesn't always allow for that. It probably helps that I don't have much of a sweet tooth.

Up until recently, I haven't had any food issues. Since shellfish seems to interfere with my breathing, I'm a little more careful about items with mixed ingredients. Most particularly, Asian food. They like to use dried shrimp in a lot of their bases. Before I developed this problem, one New Year's Eve I made a very fancy recipe involving lobster and a few other pricey ingredients ($200 worth, obviously back in the days when I was earning more than a living wage) and took one bite and discovered that I couldn't eat it. I hate chervil. With a freaking purple passion. Didn't know it at the time, but I figured it out when all I could think of was how to politely dispose of it in my napkin. I tried another and then had to give up. What a waste of time, energy and money. I thought I disliked mackerel, but I was able to try that four different ways before I gave up.

I don't like recipes that require you to make another recipe that's to be used in it. I do it occasionally, but I don't enjoy it. I hate cooking breakfast, it is the one meal that I prefer to either eat out or have someone make it for me. What a pain, everything has to be done at the same time or the quality deteriorates. I like both my eggs and my toast to be hot.

Excuse me while I go turn the lamb chops (my guest kicked in for dinner) that are marinating for a few hours before they hit the grill. Plus I need to go pick up some basmati, cashews, oyster sauce and a mango.

BBB

Sweetest Line Of The Morning

Not because of what he did but because now almost every news story can start in much the same way.

"Bush will lay the wreath at Arlington National Cemetary for the last time."

May there be more last times for Bush, he's caused enough of them for everybody else. 4082 families from the useless war in Iraq. So far. And how the heck can Americans remember their war dead if he keeps hiding them from public view? Bush only trots out the proper sentiment on holidays, the rest of the year he is too busy making sure that the survivors have no benefits when they get out, that they can't afford college or a home, and that they have no other choice but to stay in until they die.

Then while they are out doing their duty, Bush cuts food stamps for their families, closes hospitals near their homes, refuses to help with the foreclosures caused by severe decrease in income for the Reserves and the National Guard, and at the same time eviscerates the education system for young people in the hope that they will have no other choice but to be the next sacrificial victims veterans in the "war on terror".

Bush is a president that has ignored the will of the people; let a major U.S. city drown while he vacationed and that was after he let New York and Washington D.C., the supposed seat of our government, be attacked; regards the Constitution as "a piece of paper"; illegally spies on American citizens; flaunts his stupidity on a daily basis as he condones torture and asks people to go shopping instead of rebuilding our country's infrastructure and reclaiming our place in the world by fixing ourselves first before trying to remove a perceived splinter from countries who haven't asked for our "help". He's a colossal failure who continues to make things worse in an effort to leave behind a legacy without realizing he has already done so.

It's Memorial Day and the only person I want to be remembering is Osama bin Laden, swinging from a gallows pole.


He should have some company, like those who could be convicted of war crimes but will likely escape any earthly penance and continually wonder why history (if we have one) is so unkind to them.

So please, let's start as many stories about Bush as we can with for the last time.

BBB

How Much Lower Can We Go?

Are there any depths to which this current administration will not sink? I know it seems like a stupid question considering everything they've screwed up over the last seven years, but even this one boggles what little mind I have left. It seems that those who have served faithfully in this misbegotten war, are not eligible for the tax stimulus checks that the country really can't afford. Yes, I know people have conveniently ignored the fact that quite a few military families are forced to used food stamps to survive, but how anyone in their right mind would think that the troops don't deserve the maximum amount of the stimulus package totally baffles me.

Every morning I'm greeted with some stupid ass story about how the troops are being supported. But not by the government that sends them into harm's way time after time without adequate armor, decent food or water, poor housing when they get back and an atrocious medical system that punishes them for being injured on the field of battle. If they were in the Reserves or the National Guard, even though it's against the law, their jobs aren't waiting for them when they get back and due to the high rate of PTSD that everyone except the government recognizes, our military veterans can't find decent employment while they wait for the next time they are called up. Even if it's three years after their last tour.

What kind of country are we that we can obsess about flag pins and not worry about those who have been injured or killed supposedly defending this nation from terrorists from without while the terrorists from within destroy everything this country used to stand for?

Our troops passed fucked up without collecting $300 and the rest of us are on our way to cultural armageddon. The rich continue to get richer, the poor continue to get poorer and our troops continued to get screwed.

3Bs