A Crook By Any Other Name

Corruption - duplicitous or fraudulent conduct by those in power, generally bribery. 

This is the standard definition of corruption.  However, in the modern political world we have modified this definition.  It isn't about lying or cheating or bribery anymore.  It is about to whom you lie, who you cheat or from whom you take a bribe.  Deceiving or defrauding the American people is no longer frowned on; indeed it is rewarded.  Taking bribes depends entirely upon the amount of the bribe.  That is to say that the legitimacy of the illicit pay-off is directly proportional to its size. 

This puts me in mind of a story that is told about Winston Churchill.  It seems that he was at a dinner party and overheard an aristocratic lady say that she would sleep with any man for a million pounds.  At which point Churchill asked if she would sleep with him for twenty.  Indignantly she demanded to know if he thought her to be a prostitute.  Mr. Churchill then informed her that her profession had already been established.  All that was at issue was price.

Washington D.C. is a giant brothel.  Our state houses are red light districts.  Our Democracy is in decline - the Republic is crumbling.  If you don't like it - Vote!  No excuses.  It is all we have left.

Jesus Saves, but Cash is God

Open letter to Chief Justice John Roberts - mailed today.  We have nothing to lose by talking back.  So do that. Talk back.

Chief Justice John Roberts

Supreme Court of the United States
1 First Street, NEWashington, DC 20543

Chief Justice Roberts:

In McCutcheon vs. Federal Election Commission you have reaffirmed that money is the equivalent of human speech in the political arena.  In Citizens United you proclaimed inorganic, for profit, limited liability – that is to say responsibility in this country – corporate entities to be the equal of flesh and blood human beings.  In between these two affronts to the sensibility of the average American you insinuated yourself into the private lives of women by even discussing an employer’s right to place personal religious beliefs above a woman’s legal right to control her own reproductive health with regard to her insurance coverage. 

During the hearing of the Hobby Lobby case you actually seemed to assert that contraception is abortion.  You are not a physician, and you simply don’t know what you are talking about.  Contraception is not a form of abortion, and indeed many women use it for reasons wholly unrelated to any type of birth control.  The only people who tend to think of contraception as abortive are people who base this supposition on their religious principles.  You will forgive me for not taking your commitment to any faith based code too seriously.  Since while you are more than happy to hide behind the Bible and the Gospels of Jesus Christ to disenfranchise women, you are also intent upon enabling and abetting modern day money lenders and Pharisees; thus, reestablishing the temple Christ destroyed.

As if all of this weren’t distasteful enough to most average citizens, the senior member of your four horsemen persists in making obnoxious comments in the press.  Apparently, Scalia doesn’t think that $3.5, 000, 000 is a lot of money.  It is difficult to tell if this man is trying to be amusing or simply insulting, but in a nation that balks at raising the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour one thing is sure.  His comment is obscene.  

I have no way of ending this letter that is even remotely sincere, so let me just make a suggestion.  It is clear to us out here in the real world that you have no interest in, concern for or accountability to the majority of Americans.  Therefore, owing to the fact that we pay the taxes that materially support your existence please spare us your religion, patriotism, deep erudition and commitment to the Constitution.  In future just say you are open for business and be done with it.

Barbara Carvallo
Address Appended

Laughing at the Devil

Charles Koch, puppet master of the Right and perhaps the Supreme Court, dusts off some of Ayn Rand's lingo like collectivism and tries to convince the world via the "Wall Street Journal" of his deep and abiding commitment to liberty and the common good.  Keep in mind that no tyrant ever came forward spewing proclamations of oppression.  They all talk about liberty in the beginning.

You will find many ironies in the following piece, not the least of which is a reference to Arthur Schopenhauer's alleged advocacy of personality assassination as adopted by Saul Alinsky.  Funny, I read Schopenhauer; didn't like him much, but don't remember any such thing.  At any rate, identifying Alinsky with Schopenhauer is a bit like identifying Gertrude Stein with the feminist philosophy of the Old Testament.  It is stupid at best and on its face.  Koch conveniently overlooks Karl Rove's pronounced ability to engage in personality destruction which he learned at the knee of his mentor Mr. Lee Atwater, and used successfully to put and keep G.W. Bush in office.  Lee was one of the most viscous personality assassins to ever step foot on the political stage. I understand he died of cancer, begging his God for forgiveness after decades of crapping on His image.

I am trying to adopt the Rachel Maddow strategy of laughing at these people rather than flying into a rage and clicking my BP up several dozen points.  So read it and laugh, but remember to know your enemy and make sure your friends know him too.

Charles Koch: I'm Fighting to Restore a Free Society

Get Thee Behind Me Billionaire

The very idea that one group or one man with a lot of money can bring elected officials of any party scurrying anywhere to kiss ass and placate is utterly offensive.  Sheldon Adelson has two major policy issues that he wants addressed and protected.  First, online gambling which could become one of his major competitors is to be abolished.  So much for the sacred cow of the Capitalist the bloody Free Market.  Second, by his lights anyone who does not support Israel in all she does and all she says is not fit to be president for billions of reasons, all of them his.  In other words, the needs, will and best interests of the American people are subordinate to the needs, will and best interests of the Israeli people.  I say this because no two countries enjoy complete and perpetual symbiosis.  Such an assertion is idiotic on its face.

It doesn't get any clearer.  These politicians, these acolytes worshiping prostrate at the feet of Mr. Adelson are on the take pure and simple.  They can be bought by anybody with the prices of a political hand job and a promise of unlimited campaign funds in the next presidential elections. 

Of course this kind of politician is like a baby bird - everyday is the first day of the world.  They have no history.  Thus, they have forgotten that Adelson and other bloated billionaires pissed hundreds of millions of dollars down the toilet in '12.  The American people turning out to vote will trump the money of a thousand billionaires.  Let us vote in November and put Adelson and his ilk back their box.

Republican Governors Vie for Adelson Support

Something Very Dangerous

When did Christianity become the fourth branch of our government?  When did it become okay to accuse others of persecution when they don’t accept the tenets of the Christian faith as the law and moral conscious of this land?  Who gave our elected public servants, not to mention what is laughingly referred to as our free press, the right to discredit and disregard through fear and self promotion all other spiritual paths and those of us who hold them dear and follow them closely?  Something very dangerous this way comes.  Something that if not opposed will lead to genuine persecution as it always has.

Religion or No Religion That is the Question

When truth cannot be told before the United States Supreme Court all is lost for justice and American jurisprudence.  The thesis propagated by the Religious Right that contraception is abortion is nonsense.  The IUD limits the motility of sperm.  Failing that, it inflames the uterine wall so that implantation isn’t possible. Hormonal birth control pills prevent ovulation, failing that they alter the composition of the uterine wall so that implantation isn’t possible.  The Plan B drugs, or morning after pills, prevent fertilization from occurring and are contraceptive not abortive.  RU486 is the abortion pill and works very differently than any of the above.  It is also not covered by the ACA (Affordable Care Act) and never was intended to be covered.   This is the science as near as I can ascertain it from The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.  I prefer to accept them as my authority rather than the Southern Baptist Church or a for profit organization that seems to me to want to undermine the ACA and promote insurance on the cheap.  That Donald B. Verrilli Jr., our Solicitor General, did not assert the science before the Supremes, but instead accepted on a good faith basis that Hobby Lobby truly believes that contraception is abortion is stunning.  We continue in this country to allow the knowledge and proven wisdom of the scientific community to be supplanted by the ideology and theology of the various politico-religious sects. 

Do I question the commitment of Hobby Lobby to their faith?  You’re damn right I do.  I reserve the right to question the faith of any organization that presumes to insinuate itself into the private lives of its female employees.  You had better be an impeccable Christian, living in the sure, certain and empirically provable knowledge of the rightness of your theology before you presume to worm your way into the legislative process in this country or set yourself up to judge and dispense a woman’s right to control her own reproductive functions on the basis of some bloody book of questionable historic merit and dubious authorship.   

It is a failing of the Democrats and this administration to be trapped in the political correctness that the Left accepted so long.  Thus, too few ever challenge these religious zealots on the application of their faith.  For instance, what do they plan to do about all the pregnant women who could possibly be in their employee, given that it is far more expensive to cover a pregnancy then it is to cover contraception?  Will Hobby Lobby pay their insurance, their maternity leave and keep their jobs open; or will this Christian corporation follow the lead of so many other corporations and discharge them, slithering out from under COBRA and leaving them with no income or insurance?  In other words, will Hobby Lobby follow the God of the Christians or the God of the Free Market when embryo comes to baby?

No one ever asks these questions, and no one ever will.  Certainly not on the Right leaning end of the Court ridden hard and put away wet by the likes of Chief Justice Roberts.  It will be interesting to see if Scalia that monstrous mountain of moralizing muck who once denied the Native American people the right to use peyote as an expression of religious freedom, extends to Hobby Lobby the right to sacrifice the reproductive rights of women in the name of theirs.  Finally, it will be doubly interesting to see if the United States Supreme Court confirms its utter uselessness, even dangerousness, to the American people and our Republic that it so unabashedly displayed in Citizens United.

Fighting the Good Fight

Justice is bound and determined to prove racial discrimination in new voter registration laws.  They are right of course, and that is the tip of the iceberg.  Women, the elderly, the disabled and students are all on the hit list – anyone who might be inclined to vote Democratic in fact.

I think there are two reasons for all of this.  First, the Right is working overtime to establish the illegitimacy of Mr. Obama's elections.  They couldn't beat him, so it is their hope to insinuate and cement a shadow of doubt about his right to be president.  Thus, they all stand like a choir, bellyaching in multipart harmony about voter fraud that does not exist.

Secondly, the Republican Party has gashed both of its wrists by allowing fanatics and extremists - first the Religious Right and then the Tea Party - to gain control of its primaries, state houses and governor's mansions.  They are hemorrhaging credibility and fear that they cannot stand as a national party in a fair election process.  Some of them are even admitting it now.  They are also right. 

The GOP relies on gerrymandered districts, and believes that they are hedging their bets by preventing those who don't share their ideology from getting to the polls unfettered.  This absolute belief, shared by the media, that gerrymandered districts are carved in stone flies in the face of changing demographics and the fact that pissed off women undoubtedly live in those districts. It is a fact that no one can accuse either the Republicans or the squawking heads on the radio or TV of having an overly firm grasp on reality.

The subtle effect of all these Republican machinations and the media’s insistence upon believing that what is today, will be tomorrow and always is to depress the impulse for Democrats and disenfranchised Independents to vote at all.  We have to actively work against this in writing and by word of mouth.  We must repeatedly remind people that the only way these lunatics can win is if we sit out the race.  

DOJ plans expansion of voting rights enforcement