Two Months Later

I've finally been scheduled for surgery.  May 27th at 9 am.  The long delay had nothing to do with the VA and everything to do with the doctor's office and his monster of an office manager.

The VA wanted to do the surgery in house but after hearing my situation, the head of the VA in Reno agreed to let me see the oncologist in town.  Neither of my brothers has contacted me, they're probably too afraid I might ask them to help me with mom while I recover.  Which is why Dr. Brilliant (yes that really is his name) agreed that a week in San Francisco and a six week recovery time probably wasn't the best way to treat my cancer and take care of mother.  It was agreed that I was under enough stress as it was.

Throughout this whole ordeal the VA has been extremely supportive and has operated in the manner of what's best for me.  That all came to a screeching stop once I moved out of the system and into the world of private insurance.  Then it became all about the bottom line and not what was best for me.

The referral from the VA specified that it would reimburse at Medicare rates.  This wasn't good enough for the bubble headed bleach blond with way too much makeup on and clothes that were at least one size too small.  From the moment I started dealing with her she treated me as if I was a developmentally delayed two year old with hearing problems. 

She refused to schedule my seeing the doctor until she had personally spoken with the entity responsible for paying the clinic.  She finally scheduled my appointment...for three weeks later.  I finally see the doctor and he wants to use the da Vinci robot as the recovery time is one day in hospital and three to four weeks at home.  I was so jazzed.  Until I left the conference room and had to deal with the pit bull masquerading as the office manager.

She told me flat out that she wouldn't schedule the surgery until the exact codes had been approved and that I was to have the VA call her, but not for the next few days because one of the office staff wasn't coming in and she didn't have time to deal with my case until Friday or the next week.  I was stunned speechless.  Never, never would I have ever told one of my patients that I couldn't deal with their problem because it was more important that I answer the phone.  Nor would I have made an ill patient responsible for finding the correct fee billing person and setting up a conference call.  And I had a one woman office.

I went back to the VA and talked with the doctor whose timely intervention had caught my cancer.  It turns out she has had dealings with the *itch and had been yelled at also.  The woman definitely has a reputation for being obnoxious and is known throughout Reno as being difficult to deal with.

Everything has been taken care of and I'm hoping that the two month delay has not allowed the cancer to progress from Stage 1 to Stage 2.  The differences between the VA and private practice are striking.  One is interested in taking care of the patient, the other is interested in taking care of its wallet.  After the surgery I plan on filing a complaint with the doctor and suggesting that the office manager should take classes in empathy and how to deal with patients under stress.  Or maybe she should take her skills and attitude to a job more suited to her disposition...such as a debt collection agency.

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And The Rock Cried Out

I've never hidden the fact that Babylon 5 was my favorite science fiction show.  Actually it's my favorite show. Period. I've been a Trekker since I saw The Man Trap on Armed Forces Radio and Television.  Or Afarts as we called it.

Star Trek provided me with a vision of the future that told me I could be anyone I wanted to, that eventually everyone would be equal.  And from my point of view that meant men and women could both be captains or they could be navigators or they could whatever they wanted.  I had to take this on faith because female captains were pretty rare on TOS.  I believe that the first one was Klingon, the rest were women Kirk tried, and many times succeeded, in bedding.  It wasn't until TNG that we learned there had been a female captain of the Enterprise, who dies trying to right a blip in time and her helmsman ends up saving the timeline.  But still, I just knew there would be a time when men and women were equal, unfortunately it isn't likely to be in my lifetime.

Enough about Trek, on to a more realistic version of the future:  Babylon 5.  Way back in the mid-nineties another vision of space appeared on television and Battlestar Galactica should thank its luck stars.  B5 had aliens who didn't always get along with one another and women were considered the exact equal of men and could protect themselves. The special effects were fantastic when you remember that this was a television show that saved them for when they were needed, not as plot filler. B5 had politics galore and most importantly, it showed how easy it was to turn a liberal civilization into a totalitarian society.  For two years the hints were simple and sprinkled on the wind before coming to fruition. B5 was the last, best hope for victory.

While Gene Roddenberry created and produced a great show (thank you Lucille Ball), most of the episodes were pretty much fluff except for The Famous Kiss and The City on the Edge of Forever.  The stories tended towards being lighthearted and playful while touching on a few important themes.  J. Michael Straczynski's Babylon 5 was nothing like that.  Most of the episodes were completely serious interjected with moments (and people thought he would always be Flounder) of humor.  The story arc from first episode to the last was incredibly consistent and from today's perspective, way too prescient.  Take out the space ships and the aliens and you pretty much have the present we live in and the future we're headed for.

At the end of the first season, the President of Earth was killed under what the viewers knew were suspicious circumstance, but looked like a tragic accident to others.  A Narn outpost had been destroyed and the Centauri were solidifying their alliance with the Shadows.  Then things got worse.

The Earth Alliance under President Cheney Clark rounded up people who didn't agree with his decisions, bombed civilians deliberately to get their leaders to surrender, forced television stations off the air until he could get his own mouthpieces to recite the company line while he declared war on former colonies of Earth and B5. In the end Clark was willing to destroy the Earth as his last act before killing himself instead of being captured.

B5 didn't portray humans as the best of the universe, other cultures and characters always had something to offer (such as the (one moment of perfect beauty) and embracing the differences made all of the characters stronger for it,  Even if it took acts of evil to realize their redemption.  Or, as in the video below, revenge. And how sweet it was.
Marva Hicks can certainly belt one out, can't she?  The episode was about different faiths coming aboard the station to have a conference and the music was perfect for the scene and for the moral of the story.  Here is a version of just the lyrics and music.Unlike most shows, B5 credits were always worthy of watching, you never knew what you were going to hear.For those who say that those who participated at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo and black sites we don't know about were just doing their jobs and also believe that waterboarding and other forms of torture are okay, there will come a day (hopefully) where somebody, somewhere will stand up and fight for what is right instead of blindly following orders, especially the ones they have qualms about.Otherwise, it really is too late for the pebbles to vote.

That is all.

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Friday Afternoon Rants

The FDA is still trying to intimidate doctors into not prescribing strong pain medication for their patients by having drugmakers create risk management plans.  Since I'm allergic to all of the drugs mentioned in the article I won't be affected, but many people who are in chronic pain will.  I know what it's like to be in constant pain with no relief in sight and it isn't pretty.  Too bad the FDA wasn't interfering when Rush Limbaugh was scoring oxycontin with his secretary's help.  It might have saved him a few brain cells and then he wouldn't run around making stupid statements like the poor have no right to health care because they can't afford it.

We don't want them either.

I was thinking the same thing.  It was okay for them to sleep with a married man, accept his gifts and travel on his dime but now they want money to keep quiet.  Prostitutes have more class.

Oreo.  He certainly made sure bankers can afford to live on their segregated estates while the help live under the bridge.

Aetna only made a 7% profit this year so they are going to raise their rates and eliminate about 600,000 people from their health insurance plans.  What will it take for teabaggers to wake up and realize that the only death panels are located in insurance companies and while teabaggers are purportedly worrying about single payer health care killing grandma that corporations have been robbing the taxpayers blind? Or as commenter Chernynkaya so artfully put it:

I am so s!ck of hearing from the Right how we liberals are always looking for a government “handout.” Here’s what the government has the money to do for CORPORATIONS:
-- subsidies and other direct grants;

-- tax breaks, reductions, deductions, exclusions, write-offs, exemptions, credits, loopholes, shelters, and rebates even for profitable companies;

-- letting corporations be headquartered off-shore and pay no federal income taxes;

-- large government contracts of every imaginable kind; some on a cost-plus basis with every incentive to cheat and get more;

-- discounted user fees or subsidized use of public resources (land, water, airwaves,e­¬tc.);

-- free government-funded R & D;

-- every program from the Department of Commerce, Agriculture and others underwrites it; the FDA for Big Pharma; the FCC for media and telecommunications firms; the FAA for the airlines, the Treasury and Fed for Wall Street;

-- individual tax breaks for the rich; billions offshored to tax havens; allowing corporate fraud and abuse

-- privatizing more - schools, highways, bridges, airports, prisons, public lands, utilities, parts of the military, mercenaries, and thus far a failed attempt to privatise the most important program for seniors and the disabled - Social Security;

But nothing for the basic right of LIFE (unless you haven’t yet had the nerve to be born).

Let the good times roll.

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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.

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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.

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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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The Fourth Estate Continues To Fail

There isn't a doubt in my mind that the national press are incompetent at best and bordering on treasonous at worst.  An independent Fourth Estate they most definitely are not.  For the last fifteen years they have persisted in reporting one side of the story, the GOP side, no matter what the circumstances and no matter what the story.  Fair, balanced and objective no longer seem to be the operating requirements for "journalists".  In depth reporting has gone the way of the dinosaur and bloggers have had to take up the slack.

The press, along with what passes for Congress for that matter, breathlessly reports in glowing terms or jumps to do the bidding of anything that the GOP wants.  Virtually without exception and definitely without question.  There have been a few that haven't followed the party line but it's more like throwing a few slices of bread to the masses and then they "see the light" and fall back into line.

I've watched in amazement and with quite a bit of disgust as they hang on to every word that anyone named Cheney utters, determined to anoint them as the second coming of the GOP.  Torture? Not a problem for anyone except what they term the liberal left or foreigners that don't know what they are talking about because they didn't suffer through 9/11 and therefore don't know anything about the effects of terrorism.  Heaven forbid that they should accurately report what torture is or that it is against the law in the United States and around the world and that it doesn't make us safer but it does make us less trusted.

If the press had done their job objectively before the 2000 election the outcome would have been much different.  If they had done their job after 9/11 the United States would not have been hoodwinked into invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 (I'm sorry but I can't use 9/11 twenty five times in one article), had no weapons of mass destruction and wasn't a threat to the United States.  But they didn't and as a result hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children either died or are suffering miserably.  And that includes citizens and taxpayers of the United States.

If the press were doing their job objectively today, Cheney and his family would not receive the exposure they are getting and it most certainly wouldn't be as positive.  Last week there were not dueling speeches between the President and a former Vice President, there was a Presidential speech (that I didn't bother listening to because it wasn't necessary) and a rant from an angry, fearful coward who knows he broke the law and doesn't want to go to jail.  But not to the press, not even remotely.  Cheney is being held up as the man who has our national security interests at heart and Obama doesn't.

When I was a young girl in the sixties, the New York Times was the paper of record and in the seventies the Washington Post was the leader in exposing the Watergate scandal.  Today neither one can be depended upon for objective reporting and then they wonder why newspapers are folding for lack of readership.  They can blame it on Craigslist or Twitter but the truth of the matter is that the press doesn't do their job of reporting the news, they are too busy trying to make the news into something that pleases their masters.   Which amounts to inane babble that informs no one and prevents the truth from being revealed.

The press spends their time carrying water for people who only care about themselves and their so-called legacy and refuse to see that they are repeating the mistakes that got us into the Iraq debacle in the first place.  Once again while the US is preoccupied with straw men, North Korea is not only rattling it's saber, it's testing nuclear weapons and threatening its neighbors.  And the press?  They are concerned with how wonderful Cheney is and why the Obama administration relies on background briefings instead of giving them every name, rank and serial number of their sources.  As if the Bush administration was as open as possible.  Is Jennifer Loven serious?  I don't remember any complaints when Bush and Cheney quoted unnamed sources stating that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or when Jeff Gannon was masquerading as a reporter.  If I was President Obama I would start calling on the smaller news outlets exclusively and ignore the hypocritical Cheney ass kissers such as the AP, NY Times and the Washington Post.  And that isn't arrogance, it's common sense since the press is going to make up the story they want anyway.  Just like they have done for the last fifteen years.

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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?

BBB

Disrespecting The Troops

As if sending the men and women of our Armed Forces, Reserves and National Guard to fight a war under false pretenses wasn't disrespectful enough.  As if sending those same troops to fight without the proper armor, intel or decent working equipment and then telling them that you go to war with what you have when you had been planning to go to war all along wasn't disrespectful enough.  As if hiding the troops who have fallen fighting this war and sneaking their bodies back in the dark of night wasn't disrespectful enough.  As if forcing the wounded to recover in hospitals that were falling down around their ears wasn't disrespectful enough.  As if the veterans weren't homeless and joblesss after returning from active duty wasn't disrespectful enough.  As if all the lies about the friendly fire deaths wasn't disrespectful enough.  As if the troops being forced to live and work in 90,000 substandard and dangerous facilities in Iraq wasn't disrespectful enough.

As if all of those weren't disrespectful enough, Salon has confirmed (with audio for the doubting Thomases of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders) what those of us who really support the troops have suspected for some time.  That the previous administration regarded injured troops as pieces of equipment that should be thrown away unmended as often as possible.  If this soldier hadn't carried a tape recorder because of his PTSD and traumatic brain injury induced CRS (can't remember shit) disease we might still be waiting for the truth to come out.  Again.

But what Sgt. X wants to tell a reporter about is one doctor's appointment at Fort Carson that his wife did not witness. When she couldn't accompany him to an appointment with psychologist Douglas McNinch last June, Sgt. X tucked a recording device into his pocket and set it on voice-activation so it would capture what the doctor said. Sgt. X had no idea that the little machine in his pocket was about to capture recorded evidence of something wounded soldiers and their advocates have long suspected -- that the military does not want Iraq veterans to be diagnosed with PTSD, a condition that obligates the military to provide expensive, intensive long-term care, including the possibility of lifetime disability payments. And, as Salon will explore in a second article Thursday, after the Army became aware of the tape, the Senate Armed Services Committee declined to investigate its implications, despite prodding from a senator who is not on the committee. The Army then conducted its own internal investigation -- and cleared itself of any wrongdoing.

snip

McNinch added that he also received pressure not to properly diagnose traumatic brain injury, Sgt. X's other medical problem. "When I got there I was told I was overdiagnosing brain injuries and now everybody is finding out that, yes, there are brain injuries," he recalled. McNinch said he argued, "'What are we going to do about treatment?' And they said, 'Oh, we are just counting people. We don't plan on treating them.'" McNinch replied, "'You are bringing a generation of brain-damaged individuals back here. You have got to get a game plan together for this public health crisis.'"

When McNinch learned he would be quoted in a Salon article, he cut off further questions. He also said he would deny the interview took place. Salon, however, had recorded the conversation.

Hmm, they must have learned that trick from all the wiretapping stories.

As a taxpayer I am concerned that my dollars aren't good enough for the troops but are good enough to bailout highly paid and incompetent banking and insurance executives.  As a veteran my heart is breaking that those who served faithfully under trying circumstances are being discarded as if they were trash.  As an American I am flabbergasted that the troops are being treated this way after the Walter Reed scandal.  As a human being I am disappointed by the inhumanity of it all.

Our troops and veterans deserve the best that we can give them, no matter what the cost.  After all, isn't that what we ask of them?

BBB

Infotainment Instead Of News

Well isn't that just awful, the pundits have lost patience with the President.  As if I care what the pundits think.  I remember when they were relatively good (This Week with David Brinkley, Tony Brown's Journal and the good versions of Meet the Press and Face the Nation) and confined to their place voicing opinion, not making it.  I lost all respect for them during the Clinton affair.  They perpetrated and encouraged a witch hunt against a sitting President whose only results were to expose private marital discord to public ridicule and to ensure that when the bumbling idiot that is George W. Bush took over and ran this country into the ground that they could say that the country was tired and that all talk of impeachment was off the table and we must support the President otherwise we were automatically guilty of treason. One must not criticize the President.  Unless he isn't the President that the wingnuts wanted, then all bets are off.

And people wonder why today's youth are so confused and who could blame them?  On the one hand they were taught that it is okay to try to impeach a President for lying about having sex outside his marriage (like that hasn't been done before!) but it isn't okay to impeach a President for lying about nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, allowing an American city to drown on worldwide television, spying on innocent Americans without any oversight from the court system, considered the Constitution as an old piece of paper, destroyed the military and then cut benefits to veterans, gave the orders that caused the deaths of innocent civilians in two countries, let the Grand High Poobah of the Taliban live free after the most traumatic incident this country had seen in a decade (funny how the FBI could find Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols within days but the military and the CIA can't find a 6'5" man on dialysis in a country where we've been for eight years) and I'm supposed to think that pundits opinions are the word from on high?  Oh my, I'm just quaking in my boots.  And what the heck is wrong with a little patience?  Bush got eight years to screw up this country while the press was complicitly quiet and because Obama hasn't fixed everything that the press has just noticed is broken in the last four months while only being in office for two of them, he doesn't know what he's doing?

Maybe the President is combative because the press asks stupid questions.  Repeatedly.  Substance is no longer the press' forte.  If half as much time was spent on researching what the public needs to know as the news spends on letting us know about the lives, loves and tweets of today's entertainment crowd maybe the President and I could take them seriously. 

Our country is in deep doodoo and avoiding the issues is what the press does best and they are at the top of their game.  Unfortunately these guys are so clueless that it probably hasn't occurred to them that if they reported the news in an objective manner that maybe so many papers wouldn't be going out of business for lack of readership.

As Anna Z pointed out so eloquently, why is it that nothing can be done about the AIG bonuses but the government has rules and regulations in place to deal with the last dime of a Medicaid patient because it is considered government money and must be repaid by any means possible?  The rich can commit crimes and escape punishment on a consistent basis but the poor must be stripped of everything, including their dignity.

Not that the press notices these things, that would be too much like doing their jobs and they would rather be voicing their opinions instead of reporting the news.  Bloviating is their specialty which is why they think everybody else does it too.

BBB

Four Years And Eleven Days Ago

I wrote my first post and here it is.

My first blog. Prior to this moment I have ventured into the online literary world twice. These were very brief posts on Dkos after the recent "National" election.

My interests are varied, but I have a few favorites that occupy a good percentage of my thinking time. Depending on my mood I can focus on politics (the stuff that gets glossed over on the national infotainment that describes itself as news), things that fall into the geek category (science, electronics, etc.), cooking/nutrition (from recipes to the latest health news) and anything else that strikes my fancy.

I am an Acupuncturist by trade, a borderline geek by nature and a home cook by intention. Almost any problem can be solved or defused by food. Whether you are hunting/gathering (shopping), prepping, cooking , presenting, eating or digesting, your mind should be focused on what you are doing. The above activities can be creative and relaxing with the reward being you get to eat the results. Digesting usually makes most people calm and sleepy. Thanksgiving springs to mind. National eating holiday.

People usually know how to drink water, come in out of the rain, find sexual companionship, but cooking intimidates the most adventurous person. As Lao Tzu is reported to have said, "The journey of a 1000 miles begins with one step". So I just might write about the wonders of the dark leafy greens that Americans avoid with such creativity while embracing the statins and colonoscopy in their stead.

I had hoped there would be more Wil Wheaton on CSI last night. Oh well, there are two other CSI's. The way they have been recycling plot twists, he could easily get a better gig. Maybe one where we can see his face. They used a fingernail clipping as the key piece of evidence on LV and NY in the same week! He's better than a clipping. Maybe he could have a recurring role?

A few days later I wrote this one.

People are looking outside California for places to live. Number one reason is a better quality of life. Not for their kids, but for themselves. They want houses they can place a king size bed and furniture in the same bedroom. They don't want to look into their neighbors kitchen, living room or backyard. They really don't want their neighbors to have the ability to do it either. They want to be able to afford something else besides their house. Traffic, taxes, politics, watching what they work for count for nothing.

In the last week two different households decided to check out our neighbor to the immediate north. For right now that means Oregon, but both of them are capable of relocating outside the US. A woman who shares my birthday is moving to Arizona, she bought over the w/e and is now checking into her pension plan, plans to be gone in a year. As soon as her new house is completed. Arizona? I would rather go somewhere a little more green.

My only hope to get out of this state is to accidentally get roped into marriage or have there be national recognition of the CA Acupuncture license and I can move to another state. Zip, zilch, nada, a snowball's chance in the nether regions springs to mind for both those options. Since I no longer take insurance, staying here isn't required. Just a compatible scope of practice.

Someplace green with old trees and very little traffic would be great. A really good grocery store would rock. Of course, it is a little difficult to make money when you are isolated. Hmmm, will have to think on that.

Well, I didn't get roped and there isn't national recognition of the CA Acupuncture license but I'm finally moving.  And with the most exquisite timing in the world, a reader named G. who reads me via the Feedburner Flare (thank you!) sent me this encouraging message.

Regarding your acupuncture license being good only in California - Reno is right on the border of California and Nevada, so you should be able to work in California while living in Nevada.  You should be able to find people interested in your services around Lake Tahoe.  I think you should give it a try!  I wish you all the luck in your journey.

Thank you so much for your wishes and for your fresh idea.  I like it except for a couple of things.  One, I would probably still have to pay CA taxes while receiving only the benefit of not having wasted the last fourteen years, which now that I've written it sounds pretty stupid and two, I would need special dispensation from the Board while I try and get all the CEU's I'm behind on and aren't in the budget.  I will check on that tomorrow.  I haven't been able to leave mom alone but the complex we are supposedly moving to has quite a few senior citizens and maybe I'll be able to find someone to watch her while I'm gone all day.  However you look at it, it's an idea worth trying.  Once again, thank you.

It wasn't until August that the blogging fire really took hold.  I was picking up speed, having finally recovered from the previous election disappointments and then there was Katrina.  From before the storm hit to the inhumane treatment during and after, I went on a tear.  I ranted and railed about how it wasn't all incompetence, that it was deliberate and time marched on while the victims were forgotten.

The rest of the year was occupied by Harriet Miers, various blog redesigns, plenty of jokes, posts about the troops getting screwed, the most popular post I ever wrote, how the Democrats couldn't roll over and play dead any more than they already were, and ended the year with the attempted bullying of John Ashcroft by Andy Card and Alberto Gonzales.

It's sad seeing how much I've changed and the world hasn't.  I don't do as many jokes or find as many feel good stories and while evil still rules it no longer looks like a certain ex VP (I love how they use his trademark snarl to show contempt and arrogance on Lie To Me). The little people still pay the price and get blamed for it not only being so high but that without any outside positive changes in their lives they still haven't achieved the American Dream that is shown nonstop on television so it's really their fault and they aren't worthy of any help. Government is still clueless as to what the taxpayers really need and some Republicans are willing to punish their constituents for a future principle (running for national office) while those same constituents and their children are suffering right this moment.

For the last six months my personal drama has ruled my life and my posting, hopefully I'm making a change for the better.  Like a good Netflix queue, I hope that the drama becomes an adventure comedy and I can return to my original goals.  A mixture of politics, humor, cooking, science, space, and whatever else tickles my fancy at the moment.

BBB

Revisiting The Myth

Social Security is not an "entitlement" program.  Over the course of their working lives people have had millions of dollars taken out of their paychecks and put into a program as insurance for when they got older or became infirm.  Using the word entitlement implies that nobody contributed anything and that they are sponging off the government, which isn't true.  Why is it that the people who have money are so determined to see the teachers, mechanics and bank tellers who served them over the years spend the end of their lives in poverty?  If I hadn't been willing to give up my own life, my mom would be on the street, lonely and forgotten through no fault of her own.  Which is where I will be if this stupidity continues.

I'm 52 and don't have time to make up hundreds of thousands of dollars so I can retire.  By the time mom is gone we will be so deep into this depression that I, along with a good majority of other innocent people, will not be able to survive in the economic conditions of the future.  So much for that Masters and owning my own business.

Social Security is NOT the problem. It isn't even out of money, no matter what the people who don't need to worry about their retirement babble.

We are staring at unfunded liabilities for Medicare and Social Security in the tens of trillions of dollars. Where's that money going to come from? We have to either raise taxes or cut benefits. There are no other options.

Yes, there are. For too long the elite have used the bounty of this country for themselves and it is long past time to share the wealth. We are rapidly becoming a third world country, run by people who have no concept of what it is to struggle to survive. As the economic downturn continues and small businesses start to fall by the wayside along with corporations who gave obscene amounts of money to the people at the top while taking everything from the people on the bottom, the pain will be felt by everyone who isn't at the top.

Food, gas and medicine are out of the price range of a growing section of society. They can't cut back any more as there is nothing left to cut. The poor can't walk to the grocery store because grocery stores aren't located in the poor sections of town. The poor can't take public transportation because it is being slashed in a futile effort to balance budgets that will continue to run a deficit as more people become unemployed and can't contribute to the tax base. The poor can't afford the highly overpriced medicines or the preventative doctor visits to keep them healthy. The poor, as a group, can't do anything to change their situation because they have nothing to change it with. Their children will continue to swell the ranks of the poor because education in their areas has been virtually eliminated and besides they have to scrounge for food. The poor can't get abortions, birth control is nonexistent and the fundamentalists want to keep it that way. That way they can complain about the poor being irresponsible and having too many babies. And prison is not a replacement for a healthy and happy childhood.

The Republican party and the fools who support them are determined to return this country to the days of indentured servitude. They trot out trite statements such as pull yourself up by your bootstraps when not only do the people not have straps, they don't even have boots. If you are born poor or lower middle class the odds are that you will stay that way. The outer fringes of society will be your world and unless the elite who are really the ones enjoying the benefits of entitlement, get off their high horses and walk among the commoners we will end up having a caste system that is more entrenched than India's.

Or a revolution.

BBB

Don't Know What To Do

I guess I could file a missing person's report with the police but I'm really hoping to avoid that. Mom must have dialed Keith's number at least five times on Christmas and New Year's and listened to the recording that said that number was no longer in service. How can someone be so cruel to their own mother? Especially a mother who never beat him (no matter how many times he deserved it), gave him her last dime to buy candy from the ice cream truck, and is willing to forgive him anything.

Keith, is this really what you want? To lose your mother and not find out for days, weeks or years because you let your pride get in the way? You won't know where she is buried or if I had her cremated because I couldn't afford anything else so you can pay your last respects. Which is kind of funny since you haven't paid her any respect at all in so many years that I've forgotten what it was you did.

How do you live with yourself? I've always thought you were the fragile one in the family and usually try to avoid hurting your feelings because I thought you might hurt yourself. Every day that goes by without your communicating with her makes me care less and less.

Please grow up before it's too late.

Dear Keith

Dudder, dudder, ding!(Old family joke.)  Time's up!

Keith Edwin R****** was born on 8/1/1961 in a USAF hospital at Evreux Air Force Base in France.  He is the youngest of three children and the most irresponsible, which I suppose go hand in hand if you believe in that birth order thing. He has two sons (I hear one of them made it into an Ivy League school) that the rest of the family has no idea where they are or what they are doing. Just like their father.

They show as little respect for their grandmother as their father does for his mother. Somehow, this is not surprising. This is not a black thing, this is a spoiled brat who for the last few years hasn't had the world go his way. I have not one iota of sympathy since my whole life has been like that and I still manage to respect my mother and I try to do the right thing.

Nineteen years ago, Keith decided that he was going to show my father who was boss. He didn't talk to him for a year until I interfered (is that my role?) and got them to talk on the phone. I used the excuse that his father could drop dead at any moment and he was wasting time that could never be recovered. They finally talked and seven months later our father dropped dead of a heart attack at 60.

So once again, here I go. You don't owe your mother money (actually you do but we are willing to forgive that debt) so quit treating her like a creditor. Give her a call using the instructions I wrote earlier or even more personal stuff will be revealed, because unlike you I have nothing left to lose.

Remember when you were three and kissed Karen in the baby pool? I know other assorted details of your life that you would prefer to forget so you had best get to calling your mom before it's too late.

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!

Quit Treating Us Like We're Stupid

Today's arrogant putz award goes to Amanda Ripley.  Ms. Ripley has written an article in Time about the failed bailout of Wall Street that is so condescending that it clearly reveals the disdain that those who have, feel for those who don't.  The title wasn't too bad, but by the end of the first paragraph you know whose side she's on.  And it isn't the American people.  She thinks we are too stupid to comprehend how the economy is failing.

The American people have known that the economy was in jeopardy for more than a year.  It's only the politicians, pundits, and the rich who haven't noticed and are waking up to the reality that the bottom is about to fall out of the bucket.  Ever since hunger was revised to be known as food insecurity the economy has been failing and changing the name of the bail out to something else won't fool us.  We are not unaware that the economy is in trouble, otherwise we wouldn't be deciding between buying food for the family or gas for the car.

Ms. Ripley's plan to convince the American people that they are being rained on instead of being pissed on is laughable from the beginning.

Find a face: Human beings are not moved by numbers or by vague predictions of certain doom. They are moved by stories. "It's simple," says Mileti. "You get one family in America. You go to their house. And you paint a picture of what their life is like one year from now. You describe a kid who can't go to college, the house that can't be sold, the inability of anyone to use a credit card. They need to get a camera crew and go to Omaha and find a family."

Hello?  That's been happening for years to the underclasses and only now is it is hitting what is left of middle America.  For the last four years some of us have been ranting, raving and writing about the inequalities between what the President has told us and the reality of our daily lives.

Be Specific: People need to know what will happen if they do nothing — or if they do something.
snip
"People don't perceive risk," says Mileti. "People actually perceive that they are safe." To override that bias, you have to talk to people in a language their brains understand.

We understand quite well, which is why people actually got off their butts and complained 100 to 1 to their Congressmen. We know that the economy is crashing and we don't want those who benefited from it on the way up, benefit again on the way down.

It is time for everyone to quit blowing smoke up our asses and treat us like the good taxpaying Americans we are. We are not children, we are not mentally challenged and we are not the enemy. You are going to have to accept the fact that we no longer trust anything the government or the press has to say. You brought it on yourself and it isn't our job to bail you out.

Can you understand that?

BBB

Dear Mr. Bush

Shut up already.   Obviously very few people care what you think. You and your cronies have looted two countries in eight years, engineered a worldwide money crisis and don't deserve to be bailed out because you overestimated the time that your Ponzi schemes would last before crashing.  It just so happens that it is the little man, the guy on the street not the Wall Street "geniuses", that deserves a bailout.    Forcing the taxpayers to rescue people who were gambling with other people's money is as fiscally foolish as it is to keep paying CEOs big bonuses while the workers on the bottom get pink slips.

Americans are tired of being taken for granted.  We are tired of being mistaken for stupid.  We are tired of being pissed on and told that it's raining.  And we are most certainly tired of looking for a pony in a pile of bullsh*t.

"Our economy is depending on decisive action from the government," Bush said. "The sooner we address the problem, the sooner we can get back on the path of growth and job creation. This is what elected leaders owe the American people, and I am confident that we'll deliver."

The only jobs you have created were overseas or pay so low that the average American can no longer afford to live in his own home.  You let a whole American city drown, destroyed the hopes, dreams and lives of thousands of people both here and abroad and now the chickens have come home to roost.

In your arrogance you have forgotten that it is the House's responsibility to propose financial bills.  Not the Treasury Secretary, not the head of the Federal Reserve and most certainly not you.  For you to speak of your disappointment that your cronies didn't get more taxpayer money to play with doesn't bother me at all.  What did you expect?  That people who were running for reelection would go against their constituents wishes one more time?  Like true politicians they don't want to give up their way of life and hearing from the people that they are supposed to represent that if Wall Street was bailed out that they would have to find a new line of work, well you saw the results.  They may be stupid and greedy but they aren't so stupid and greedy that they don't recognize the anger of the people in their districts.

You helped to create this situation and just like every company you have ever run, we're going bankrupt.  A few years ago it was made difficult (and impossible for some) for individuals to declare bankruptcy and now the taxpayer is supposed to save the companies who stabbed them in the wallet?  I don't think so.  The only bailout the American people want at this point is for Main Street, not Wall Street.  If only I really believed you were going away for good in a few months, but you are like a bad penny.

Which is what you have left the American people.

Big Brass Blog

A Spoonful Of Sugar

Is supposed to help the medicine go down and the medicine must be pretty bad if the Democratic convention is any indication. 

I used to read about 182 feeds a day (can we say info junkie?) and geek that I am, I've been tracking my Google Reader Trends and can honestly say that in the past few weeks I've gone from a 100% reader completion rate down to less than 70%.  Which seems to reflect my attitude about the hype that most around the blogosphere lives for.  The same old stories, told over and over again.  Ad nauseum.  The only Olympics I watched were when I was at someone else's house and Michael Phelps was on for the few minutes I was there.  The same will probably hold true for the Demolympics and the Repubolympics the following week.  Almost like the Truman show except the buck never stops being passed around.    Though the pictures of our Commander in Chief trying to raise the roof or having to be helped from his seat by several men were pretty entertaining.

Fortunately the Dark Wraith (Ron Paul had the same reasoning of why Republicans should have voted for Kerry in 2004 and wasn't afraid to say so) published Ted Kennedy's speech (courtesy of YouTube) over at the Big Brass Blog so I didn't have to suffer through the constant inane twitter of the Dan Rather, Chet Huntley, Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley wannabes.  If today's"newsmen" had the talent of their predecessors, half their gravitas and any ability to research their own sources of information instead of reading a daily transcript handed to them from whichever contact person is in charge, we wouldn't be in the mess we are now.  Seriously, since when did an Obama child swinging the gavel and making the press corps laugh, become news?  Trust me, it's nowhere near the equivalent of JFK Jr saluting his father's casket as it went past.  Not even close.  And you can't make it so.

I tried to read the transcript of Michelle Obama's speech but found the reaction to be overhyped as well.  Letter perfect?   In whose language?  The Obamas are not the Second Coming and if the people who consistently ignored all the signs, portents, Katrina, extremely conservative Supreme Court judges, Executive Orders, an inept Attorney General, a politicized Justice Department, the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act until it was too late are now excited because they smell some sort of change in the air, they should check their diapers.  Because they are full of it.

Our country is in deep doodoo and instead of pointing out how, where, when, what, and why, we get...the promise of change.  No concrete plan, no pointing out the perpetrators of the country's downfall so people can see why there is going to be a difference between a Republican and a Democrat administration other than a somewhat historic black candidate.   Because there isn't one.  The Democrats enabled Bush and his crew without a clue and can't afford to point it out.  The Republicans won't miss that opportunity to point out the obvious next week.  Nope, instead we got a touchy feely opening, we are just like you speech.  I'm surprised she didn't say I feel your pain.

Obama has been so busy backpedaling, reversing promises he made to the progressives who helped him to get where he is, that he can't be trusted.  I don't believe a word he says, not that I ever really believe politicians.  For Obama, his FISA vote was an excellent example of him looking toward the future and making sure that there would be that much more power to grab than it was about standing up for the Fourth Amendment and what this country used to stand for.  There is not one guarantee other than his word that changes with the Republican wind, that we won't end up with more conservative judges and the elimination of the little that's left of the Bill of Rights.

Shirley Chisholm must be turning in her grave.

BBB

From Sea To Shining Sea

After almost three and a half years of blogging, these last few days I have been finding it difficult to care.  I've always had varied interests, but since 2004 they have been limited to politics, cooking and a few other assorted hobbies, but mainly politics.

Through the years, many of the blogs I enjoyed reading caught Ted Barlow disease and disappeared.  The latest were Mixter's Mix and Ponzo (I guess I'm not an invited reader).  I doubt if I'll quit, but my energy is low and readers are few.  I am a first-born and will always have an opinion about everything (just ask me!), but I'm tired of being irritated and disappointed in my country and my government.  That isn't going to change because I stop writing about it constantly, but the world needs more positivity and right now the only thing I'm positive about is that we are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

In the last four years it has become sadly apparent to me that most Americans are of the sit and wait variety.  They are willing to sit and wait, hoping that things will change for the better and are content to focus on their own lives and the lives of troubled stars, pregnant stars and "reality" shows that have nothing to do with real life.  Anything but paying attention to how the country has changed around them.

What really brought it home to me was this season of Jeopardy!  One of the things I noticed about the contestants was that they knew stuff about movies and obscure musical groups and very little about the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Revolutionary War or how and why this country was founded, but they could name some specialized mammal that I, nor anyone I know, has ever heard of.  Now, that's depressing.

The election isn't going to change things by much since our freedoms have been whittled down to almost nothing and there wasn't a peep from the general populace during the process and I don't expect a majority will demand them back.  Using the excuse that it won't get worse is just sad.  Our media hasn't done its job and the people haven't asked it to, people are too busy pretending that life is a reality show and everyone will get a do-over.  And besides, it won't affect them, it only affects the bad people.  Until it's too late and their homes and jobs are gone.

When I was a little girl and we were stationed on Air Force bases throughout the world, unlike today we had no choice about radio or televisions stations.  It was Armed Forces Radio and Television Service and the government spin on world happenings, or it was learn a new language.   No such thing as cable or the internet.   I'll never forget going to see the original Batman movie and having Burt Ward's voice blow us out of the seats.  We had been watching the tv show on a Puerto Rican station (because tv didn't start until the news came on at five and went off again at ten) and Robin had a boy's voice, so the change was pretty noticeable.  AFRTS eventually showed Star Trek a year behind the States and we were really surprised to see that black girl on the bridge.  But I digress.

I loved going to the movies, except for one thing.  The Star Spangled Banner was played before every movie and it was required that you stand and put your hand over your heart.  I hated it.  When we got back to the States and moved to California we still had to recite the Pledge of Allegiance every morning at the beginning of classes.  I hated that also.  Only seniors were allowed to not stand and recite and when I became one, my butt never left the chair.  Not once did I feel guilty or unpatriotic.  Otherwise I wouldn't have joined the Army two days after graduating high school.

Why did I hate doing those things so much?  Well first of all, they forced us to do it.  Since it was by rote and not intention, it was just like reciting the ABCs and had less impact.  Ask anybody you know to recite the Pledge or the Anthem slowly and sound out the words and you'll realize that 98% of the people have not a clue as to what they are saying.  If, and it's a big one, they can do it without the singsong repetition.  It's amazing how many words aren't correct.

Secondly, America The Beautiful should be our anthem not some old Enlgish drinking song.  We really do have a purple majesty, they are called the Rockies and they don't try to usurp power for themselves or their cronies.

I want my country back even though I know that it's impossible.  The one from the late sixties and seventies that had hope, that just knew things were going to get better and wasn't afraid to stand up and demand that justice be served to those who deserved it.  Not even a President was immune.  Not the country that currently exists in its place and demands that someone who lied about taking steroids be forced to spend years in jail while one who outed a CIA spy has his sentence commuted and people are begging for him to be pardoned.   My how the priorities have changed.

And not in a good way.

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