Fools and Frauds

Is there fundamentally a difference between the mainstream media (left or right), the paparazzi and the scandal sheets with headlines such as "Woman gives birth to 20 pound alien gorilla,"? Maybe, but I don’t think so. For instance, look at the last several weeks before The Earthquake in Haiti. What has been one of the major stories obsessing our so-called free and unfettered press - why Tiger Woods and his penis, of course. We have followed, identified and cataloged his various mistresses, acquaintances and one night stands. We have speculated endlessly about the effect of his catastrophic infidelity on his extraordinarily important career in medicine? no - law? oh no - education? hell no - in golf. To say that we are a nation gone gaga over the trivial and prone to elevate mediocrity to the level of the legendary is to grossly underestimate our group psychosis. However, the Tiger Woods business during a fight for health care reform, an attempt to clean up Wall Street and to curb double digit unemployment, not to mention the need for some hard hitting commentary on the Democrat’s determination to toss Ted Kennedy’s seat to Republicans, is insipid and embarrassing.
The same geniuses that orchestrated the Tiger Wood’s fetish are now, in the wake of the Massachusetts’ defeat, determined to convince the American people that the Democrats are no longer in power in the Senate. This is ludicrous, lurid crap. The Democrats have 59 Senators and the Republicans 41. It is not higher math to figure out who has the majority.
Now, the only thing that has been harped on more than Tiger Woods’ penis is the Senatorial lunacy known as the Super Majority of 60 Votes. Each has been over exposed - no pun intended. The Democrats don’t need 60 votes to pass a bill. They need 60 votes to prevent a filibuster. The filibuster is basically a gimmick to wear out the other party. That is to say, the Republicans can stand up for five or six or eight days and read the phone book or The Complete Edgar Allen Poe or The Life and Times of Glenn Beck, if there is such a publication, anything to delay a vote. In the last year Mitch McConnell and his tribe of conservatives have used the filibuster like a pair of well worn running shoes to halt the Obama agenda. The filibuster was never designed to be used this way, and it needs to be terminated as a legislative option. It is a damn waste of time, and one of the reasons why nothing is ever done.
Extortionists like Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson used the threat of voting with the Republicans to filibuster in order to get what they wanted out of the White House during the Senate health care negotiations. With God in their mouth and blackmail on their minds Lieberman cost the American people the Medicare Expansion that would have covered millions of people 55 and over, while Nelson held A Woman’s Right to Choose for ransom until he was given a great deal of money for his state. Sickening! I don’t understand why Obama didn’t trot over to the Secretary of State’s Office, borrow Hillary Clinton’s balls, come back to the Senate and say the following: "You want to have a filibuster. Come on down. You can filibuster in one room, and I will explain the health care bill in the other. We will all be on CNN." Not even the Republicans can run off at the mouth forever. Sooner or later they need to shut up. Put them on T.V. wasting the taxpayers time and money and my guess will be sooner.

Why would members of the Senate go out of their way to destroy with a filibuster something such as health care reform that we need so badly? Because they are being paid to protect someone else’s interests.

I have said before that the media does the American people no good by ignoring the influence pedaling on Capitol Hill. Just today the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that a hundred years worth of laws and restrictions on corporate political contributions are to be set aside. Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority - Justices Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito - held basically that money is a form of free speech. In a country where money talks and everything else walks, that’s a good one, Mr. Justice. It is interesting to note that Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican Minority Leader, filed the opening law suit in the process that ended with today’s decision. If you have any doubt that your government is for sale, now more than ever, think again. If you think this serves you well, remember you don’t have enough money to matter.

I believe it is time for a third political party. I believe that it is time to tell the McConnells and the Obamas that most politicians of both parties are alike in our estimation. Their first priority is to promote themselves. Their second is to rub the tit that yields the money. They wouldn’t know the truth if it ran over them with a truck, and they are not to be trusted with the welfare of the Republic.
I believe it is time to boycott the arrogant, salacious, condescending mainstream media. There is plenty of good reading and watching online whether you are a liberal or a conservative, a Democrat or a Republican.
 
Above all, I believe that we can send a message to the nine wise men and women of the U.S. Supreme Court who serve for life and apparently have no interest in or fiduciary responsibility to the American people. We must show them that we will not allow money to run our government, because we won’t allow money to control our minds. Whenever there is a great deal of corporate cash on the table for a candidate or a cause, the game is rigged - this is a given. Until the elitists on the Supreme Court decide that only corporations can vote, we have the ultimate currency in the franchise. We sell it at our own risk.

The Big Lie

We have always had abortion on demand in this country. We do it in hospitals now instead of garages. De-legalize it or restrict access to it and we go back to the garage. That is the real choice in prochoice.

When I entered the hospital setting back in the late 60’s/early 70’s - long before many of the women who now take their reproductive rights for granted were fully formed ova - I had the appalling misfortune of watching a 13 year-old girl die from what a back alley abortionist had done to her immature womb. Her death was long and hard and cruel. Her parents kept asking, "Why didn’t she tell us?" "Why?" Perhaps it was the twin, cardinal virtues of the "good girl" back in the day, fear and shame. Perhaps it was a mistaken confidence that anyone who called themselves a doctor wouldn’t hurt you. Whatever it was it cost her life.

Today, decades after Roe v. Wade became established law, a handful of Conservative Democrats in the House and Senate along with their enablers in the leadership, Obama included, have decided to send women back to the alleys to exercise their reproductive options. The pathetic and sniveling excuses for health care reform legislation dribbling out of both chambers of Congress are fully informed with the idea of making a Woman’s Right to Choose irrelevant by drying up access to safe, therapeutic abortion. This tactic of supposedly enfranchising one group of people by disenfranchising another is called leverage in politics. It is called extortion in the real world. These narcissistic, self serving, seedy politicians - yes I include Obama - are engaged in misogyny of the most evil kind. Once again women are reminded that our minds and bodies are of secondary importance in the urine laced sandbox that is the affairs of men. We will follow the tenets of a bloody faith we may not accept and have children we can’t care for because the power grabbing of our politicians, including so-called feminists, Goddess help us all, is more important than the life and safety of generations of women.

Lest you take all the bible thumping and pre-born loving too seriously in a country that has been content to accept one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world and the denial of prenatal care to women having their second child on the grounds that pregnancy is a preexisting condition, all of this in the name of profit, let me tell you a little more about the bad old days before abortion was legal. If you think that the Obamas or Stupaks or Nelsons or Pelosis or Boxers or Reids, etc., are going to abide by the lousy laws they shove down the public’s throat - think again. We used to see the wealthy, the powerful, the well connected and the holier than thou slink into the hospital years ago. Their surgical procedure was listed as a DC. The procedure done was a DC with suction. Their diagnosis was recorded as abnormal uterine bleeding. The diagnosis in reality was a therapeutic abortion. The tissue removed was documented as uterine tissue. In reality the tissues evacuated were the productions of conception. We came to suspect that many of these people lied for a living and compulsively. They lied to constituents, themselves and probably to their god. One thing we knew for sure, they didn’t end up in alleys. This was elitism and class warfare of the most gruesome kind.

There is no doubt that there are many decent people who are prolife. Certainly, there are many committed prolife women. To them I respectfully say, abortions is an individual woman’s question. Her decision to terminate a pregnancy is between her, her Deity, her partner, and her doctor. This is not a societal concern. It is not a government issue, and above all it is not the province of any organized religion. A Pagan woman is not bound by the teachings of the Catholic Church. She has as much right to the protection of the Constitution and secular law as any other woman. Roe v Wade is the law of the land. Insisting that women be denied equal protection under the law because some religious coup d'état enjoys the ear of our legislators is obscene. The very idea of laws dictated by religious groups would have seemed insane to Thomas Jefferson, but then he didn’t lean on the Catholic Bishops to make laws in his time as Ben Nelson did during the debate over health care reform.

Obama promised us change. I had no idea that he intended to change the early 21st Century for the mid 20th Century with regard to women’s rights. Back then women routinely died because they couldn’t obtain a clinically safe abortion. I am afraid they will start dying again, and when they do the blood will be on Obama’s hands. After all he keeps telling us that the buck stops with him.

Health Care Reform the Great Hoax

If you have been following the Health Care Reform Debate recently you have witnessed one of the greatest sell-outs in the history of politics. Many people will tell you that politics is a dirty game. I think that it is a toilet inside of a cesspool surrounded by a nightmare. No one inside of the system escapes being soiled and no one outside escapes having their interests trashed.

I have followed presidential politics from Eisenhower to Obama, and I am absolutely astounded at the fact that the successor of FDR, JFK and LBJ lacks the balls to stand up to his own caucus. When faced with a bullying, strutting, self serving egotist such as Joe Lieberman the 44th President caves in like a tower made of wet tissue paper. Oh he is beautiful and smooth and smart; however, I am beginning to believe that all of the intestinal fortitude in the Progressive Democratic Party Leadership is sitting in the Secretary of State’s Office.

Following his magnificent collapse Obama seems to have sent his minions in the Senate out to the cameras to instruct the American people not to be greedy, take what we can get and that nothing has really been lost. Perhaps this is the most appalling thing of all - to bargain away any chance we had of real health care reform then to stand and tell us that we don’t see what we see, hear what we hear and know what we know. My mother used to say of people who engaged in this behavior, "The empty wagon rattles the loudest." Empty they are - of decency, compassion, honor and often brain power. They still have their even emptier slogans though. "Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good," code for the needs of the American People aren’t really the issue.

We began this Health Care nightmare with the idea of a single payer system. We are the only wealthy industrialized country in the world that doesn’t cover all of its citizens. Many of the countries that have the single payer model are not using a socialist foundation. It might behoove some of the empty wagons rattling in this country to acquaint themselves with the difference. Thanks to Senator Olympia Snowe - whom I don’t remember seeing on the presidential ticket despite Obama's need to placate her at every opportunity - and some other so called bi-partisan Republicans single payer was pushed into the cesspool as the public option emerged.

The public option was predicted to be a government run plan that the uninsured and others could buy into. It was to be not-for-profit and therefore cheaper to run. This would have offered competition to the private health care insurance providers and encouraged the lowering of costs. Once again for the benefit of the empty wagons rattling about government take over and socialized medicine, this is neither. The public option, as the word option implies, was a choice.

Down the toilet with single payer and with the help of Senator Max Baucus’ Finance Committee, into the cesspool with the public option as the Medicare buy in materialized. The buy in would allow people 55 and older to buy into Medicare. This is a group of people who are very difficult to insure. Onto the scene comes Joe Lieberman, the Senator from Aetna, to flush single payer down the toilet and push the Medicare buy in into the cesspool.

What is left? A windfall/bailout for the insurance companies shored up by individual mandates to carry insurance. Penalties to be exacted by the IRS. What becomes of the employer mandate? Will employers drop their employees from coverage secure in the knowledge that the individual must provide their own insurance?

Supposedly there are some consumer protections. However, the health care insurance industry has been dancing around consumer protection for years. Particularly, when they have, as they do now, someone to carry their water in the White House. This is a bit like forcing tax-payers to do business with organized crime.

The real sadness of this is that the President and the Democratic Senate had a chance to do something monumental and historic for the American People. Instead, like very brilliant surgeons with the opportunity to remove a heretofore inoperable tumor they decided that rather than using the best equipment, the finest medications and the most excellent technique they would bleed the patient because the man who owns the leech pool contributes to their campaign. Herein lies the rub, as the Bard said. We have the finest government money can buy. Most of our so called leaders of both parties and all descriptions spend a good deal of their time sporting Joan-Crawford-Hurt-Me-Pumps, strolling up and down K Street singing "Love/Influence for Sale" to passing lobbyists. There is a name for people who behave this way, and it isn’t Mr. President or Senator.

Finally, a word to the Tea Baggers and the Freedom Loving Patriots who have fought health care reform at the behest of corporate sponsors these many months. Aetna is tossing several hundred thousand people off their rolls soon to protect their profit base. Odds are that some of you will be in their number. Perhaps your corporate friends like Dick Armory will help cover any and all of your medical expenses in the weeks and months to come. Of course, we know that you won’t want to accept government subsides. Good luck with all of that.

Obama, Health Care and Other Political Scapegoats

I remember very clearly when George W. Bush was elected - or should I say appointed by Scalia - in 2000. The media, many liberals included, placed their soft little cheeks up against Bush’s rosy red bum and chattered about wanting to have a beer with him. They happily lowered the bar and watched their new leader stumble through the White House and the English language for about a year and a half. By then it was clear to even the dullest, working reporter that Bush was not only a fool, but a dangerous fool under the control of one of the most malignant ideologues in the history of American politics - Dick Cheney. Suffice it to say that the media was roundly ridiculed by the American people and even some within its own ranks for their starry eyed refusal to investigate thoroughly and report objectively on the Bush Administration’s embarrassing war in Iraq, blundering in Afghanistan, attempted extermination of the Middle Class, and incompetent management of the economy.

I have followed politics in this country for the better part of half a century, and these things I know:
The media seems never to admit its mistakes unless it stands to be sued, with the exception of a few truly remarkable journalists like Ms.Rachel Maddow on MSNBC.

The media never forgives or forgets. The media will get even, if not with the object of their vengeance then with a reasonable facsimile. Therefore, since they have absolutely no power to hold Bush accountable anymore they are hot after his successor - President Obama. Our 44th President has been over scrutinized, over criticized and over speculated about. Now at nine months in office he is expected to have fixed the economy, solved health care, solved the global warming problem, sent unemployment back into the low single digits, not to mention cleaning up Wall Street, Iraq and Afghanistan. Sometimes I wonder if some of the heads squawking at me from behind my TV screen are insane. Let’s face it, even George W. Bush, a virtuoso among the inept, couldn’t screw all these things up in only nine months.

There are a number of excuses for this behavior, but only one honest name for it - scapegoating. That is to say blaming one person for the failings, shortcomings or mess made by another. It isn’t just the media. Oh hell no, the Republicans have been doing it with increasing vehemence since Obama was elected. Those on the right are the people who followed and supported Bush, allowing him to spend the Conservative movement into near collapse. These are the people who didn’t argued with him or take issue with his policies until very late in his administration. They are dreadfully unhappy with the result of Bush’s years in the White House and would rather call Obama a Socialist then look at their own culpability.

In social psychology scapegoating is a hostile hallmark of dysfunctional group behavior. In politics it is business as usual. Still in all, the scapegoating isn’t the worst manifestation of disease-like behavior in our government. With the passage of the House’s Health Care Bill, H.R. 3962, we saw the trading of a few Democratic votes - many of which did not materialize - for the right to undermine a woman’s lawful exercise of her reproductive freedom. This was an act of extortion that suggested the psychopathology of sever narcissism.

It seems to me that there are with a few exceptions three kinds of people currently serving in government and using these and other pathological tactics to support their personal agendas. First, the whores peddling their influence up and down K Street. These are the people who routinely sell their constituents out for campaign contributions. Second, the religious zealots, career misogynists and parasitic capitalists who pick and choose the principles of the Bible, the Constitution, and the Free Market that support their bigotry, cruelty and greed. I am thinking specifically of the Democrats who promised to vote for H.R. 3962 if the Stupak antiabortion amendment was passed. After passage of the amendment many of them voted with the Republicans against reform. They are liars, and their voters should consider removing them from office on the grounds of trustworthiness, authenticity and commitment. Finally, there are the want-to-be lifers. Men and women who expect to be buried from the House or Senate and will do nothing that might interfere with that. They vacillate, procrastinate, and sit on their hands until the vote is safe. They are the most treacherous of all because they are fundamentally and deliberately inert.

Such mental and moral midgets are always casting about for scapegoats to shield them from the ramifications of their own narcissistic and duplicitous actions or inactions. Barak Obama is their goat of choice currently. However, ideas can also be used as scapegoats to cover up the real motives behind political action. For instance, this ridiculous Stupak amendment, steeped in Christianity, is being used to deny one group of people health care unless another is disenfranchised. Religion has always been used as a tool to exercise illegitimate control over the feminine mind and body. Women are entitled by law to abortion services and other forms of reproductive medicine.

Make no mistake about the fact that the purpose of Stupak is to stop health care reform not abortion. As the Democratic and Republican Right well know, the Hyde amendment passed on September 30, 1976, already prohibits the use of taxpayer dollars for abortion services. Cynically realizing that Pro-Choice will not be denied the legal options guaranteed under Roe v. Wade, the amendment’s proponents hope to force the left to vote down its own health care bill if Stupak is part of that bill. In other words, Stupak and his tribe are unwilling to say that they wish to deny the American people a sensible health care reform bill - for whatever reason - so they are making a scapegoat of a Woman’s Right to Choose and pounding the Bible to do it.

What a show some of our lawmakers put on, strutting about, talking out of both sides of their mouths, wrapped in the flag and proudly displaying many of the personality traits of a successful serial killer, to wit: over 18,000 people die every year without health care coverage in America; our infant mortality rate is one of the highest in the world - yes, a very successful serial killer indeed .

Contradictions

There are days when my mind reels with the contradictions around me. I want to scream that it can’t all be true at once. For instance, the following arguments cannot be supported side by side without admitting to the most grotesquely immoral of stipulations:

One cannot espouse a pro-life position, defending the rights of the unborn, while simultaneously supporting politicians and state governments that allow health care insurance companies to deny prenatal coverage to many women on the grounds that pregnancy is a preexisting condition.

Stipulation: Some unborn babies have no rights in the service of profit.

One cannot be identified as a freedom loving American demanding liberty while simultaneously denying fellow citizens the freedom of action and choice to protect their life.

Stipulation: My liberty is more important than your life - even if I don’t know what the hell I am talking about and believe that all kinds of things are in the Constitution that are not.

One is not a patriot who disrespects and threatens the Commander and Chief of the United States of America.

Stipulation: African Americans cannot be Commander and Chief of the United States of America.

Walking a righteous path requires more than mouthing political talking points and serially vomiting selective and/or misquoted passages from the Bible. Using the head for something other than a showcase for a vicious and destructive mouth is a place to start. Without very much effort a little thought might indicate that two diametrically opposed principles cannot cohabitate in the same truth. One must be a lie.

I have seen a lot of things in my sixty years. I saw a president cut down in the streets of Dallas. I saw a man walk on the moon. I saw human organs transplanted and the fall of Communism. I have seen the Internet, email and Twitter. I have also seen the truth twisted into lies and fall to ashes in the mouth of a self-serving and opportunistic political ideologue. I left the wilderness of youth behind me long ago, and am entering old age and the wisdom of the Goddess. With all I’ve seen and all I’ve learned, this I know. There is no power in the world, human or other, that can work the liar's alchemy backward.

There Are More Things In Heaven and Earth . . .

Liberal. 1. Having, expressing or following political views or policies that favor civil liberties, democratic reforms, and the use of government power to promote social progress. 2. Having, expressing or following views or policies that favor the freedom of the individual to act or express themselves in a manner of their own choosing. The American Heritage Dictionary, Second College Edition, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.

Edward M. Kennedy was a Liberal. He was not a Fascist or a Nazi. Those two philosophies are at the opposite end of the political continuum, to the right in point of fact. He was not a Marxist, a Socialist or a Communist. He was not a moderate or a conservative – he didn’t advocate the value of money or rigid social structures over people. Teddy was a humanist, an altruistic advocate of social justice. He loved this country because he realized that his and all liberal visions of social justice can best be realized here.

Over a period of nearly 50 years he promoted, penned and passed some of the most important human rights legislation in the history of our government or any other. From Civil Rights to Voting Rights, from Equal Pay for Equal Work to increasing the minimum wage and much more – Teddy was there. The man never worked a day in his life, outside of government, and yet he was the best friend the working man or woman ever knew. Certainly better than all the “real Americans” who would flush the unions down the drain without a second thought and consider a living wage a burden on business.

Senator Kennedy believed that everyone should have decent housing, food to eat, an education and health care. It is in keeping with the dark irony of his tragic family that he should die before seeing the work of his life completed. I am afraid that his vision of health care for everyone has followed him into the grave at Arlington. It will take ten Democrats to carry his mantel, and we don’t live in a world that cares about social justice anymore.

The elderly stand up in town hall meetings and screech about socialized medicine while collecting Medicare. Seems to me that they don’t give a damn whether or not their children or grandchildren have health care. Idiots wear guns to Presidential venues. What are we suppose to make out of that in a country that has assassinated four presidents, with thirteen near misses and a couple of questionable? Here’s what I make of it. Me-me-me-me-me is the Gregorian Chant of the infant soul. I hear it everywhere making it even more poignant that Teddy’s great voice is silent.

For people who don’t believe in reincarnation take a look around. There are people showing their ass daily, mostly on T.V., who could not possibly have gotten so stupid in one lifetime. I do believe in reincarnation. I hope Teddy comes back, although I can’t imagine why he would want to.

The rose above is a pristine white hybrid tea. Like all white roses this one suffers in the heat of summer. It burns and fades early. Yesterday morning as Senator Kennedy’s funeral began the rose opened and defied the blazing sun. Within several hours the rose unfolded in a cacophony of shades of pale and sweet rose scent. The name of the rose is John F. Kennedy.

Flower Comments

What in the Hell are They Fighting For?

I have been watching these town hall meetings closely. Between the bouts of nausea and anxiety I keep asking myself, "What in hell are these people fighting for?" Could it be the broken health care delivery system on the verge of implosion? Could it be the multimillion dollar profits of multimillion dollar corporations? Is the working class just a collection of stooges following the ultra rich blindly against their own interests in the name of the Constitution? Could it ultimately be that these angry, shouting mobs of ageing adolescents are stupid enough to believe in intellectual excrement like death panels and government spies in the exam room, and if so are they moronic enough to believe that I or any other medical professional would stand still for such things? What arrogance. What condescending presumption. What a total lack of respect for their fellow human beings. Is this the heart of Christian-Middle America - selfishly defining the world and their fellow citizens exclusively in terms of their vested interests, fears, neurosis and insecurities?

This is all so pathetic. I keep seeing people standing up and tearfully shouting out that they want their country back. Where exactly do they think it has gone? Could this be code for, "I want a white face like mine back in the Oval Office?" Is it possible that we are going to deprive millions of our supposedly beloved countrymen of health care because we haven’t come to grips with our bloody bigotry? There is a sorrow here deeper than any sorrow I ever observed in the psych ward; deeper than any sorrow I ever felt for an alcoholic who killed his family because he was too drunk to know what he was doing; deeper than the sorrow I felt in the OR watching a surgeon repair the tortured veins of an HIV positive, teenage addict. It is deeper because everyone knows that booze and junk lead to addiction. However, we treat hate - the greatest of all mind altering substance - as if it had no deleterious properties, no long term effects.

I see hate, and little else, in these town hall meetings full of rage and belligerence. Hate is addictive, and we are addicted. We hate our government, until a hurricane comes. Our politicians hate the government, but don’t mind sucking off the government tit for thirty or forty years. We hate our president. He is turning the economy around and has cut our taxes, but we hate him still. His face is black. He has a funny name, and certain fools say he was born in Kenya. I remember when certain jug-heads in the House attempted to change the law so Schwarzenegger could run for president. Of course, he is pasty white. We hate other countries. We have savaged Britain and Canada for the last six months because of a health care system they like and we know, "but slenderly," as Shakespeare said. We hate one another. The Sarah Palins, Glen Becks, Rush Limbachs and other unmedicated wack jobs keep this going with the right people and the wrong people; the good people and the evil people; the real Americans and the interlopers; God’s people and the devil’s. They have built a narrow world boarded by anger, hate and resentment with few options. Their followers living within those boarders even hate themselves it seems to me.

President Obama is the president of open boarders and expanded options and possibilities. He forgives his enemies and turns the other cheek. These are Christian virtues, I am told. I wouldn’t know. I am a Pagan and I leave forgiveness to the Goddess. She controls the laws of karma, and deeds return in increments of three. Turning the other cheek makes no sense to me. Never turning my back on the enemy does. I admire Obama, and I am terrified that while attempting to help this country he will be hurt. I am pretty certain that we aren’t worth it.