Saturday, May 28, 2011

Outrageous Hypocrisy & Picking the Low Fruit this Memorial Day

I received a couple of Patriotic e-mails from a friend of mine this memorial day weekend and it got me to to thinking about Patriotism, Nationalism and the way they are currently practiced here in the Good Ole USA.

The current crop of congressman in the majority party profess extreme patriotism, yet are simultaneously attempting to further impoverish the very people they publicly venerate.

First, here's a not so subtle video concerning Congressman Ryan's budget proposal and the privatizing of Medicare.



While extreme in its content, the video does illustrate the two points made in the title. First, the current attempt to privatize medicare, if successful, will most definitely hurt seniors' life expectancy and ability to get adequate medical care. Secondly, the elderly and poor are the low hanging fruit for Republicans and Democrats alike these days.

The Hypocrisy of course is that the so called patriots will end up hurting millions of us who actually fought and served in the military. I sometimes use my VFW pin as a tie tack or wear in on my lapel when attending formal dress events. On a cruise ship someone asked me about the pin and I replied it was very inexpensive, "All you had to do was sign up for military service and go somewhere where people were trying to kill you."

To all those wanna be warriors in our congress and senate (intentionally lower case) on this memorial day; I invite you to Kiss My Ass. Real patriotism means taking care of those that fought for you, not betraying them to the moneyed interests that get you elected each term.

The last president to serve overseas during wartime was George Bush senior. Before him Reagan sat out conflict in the reserves stateside during WWII, similar to young Georgie Bush who flew in the Texas Air National Guard during Vietnam, never leaving the states. Of course our current president has no military service either and continues two wars in the middle east and occasional forays like Libya.

Too often those that have no idea of what war is really like end up having too large a say in the USA going to war. Just witness our latest conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. These long and fruitless endeavors have helped bankrupt the country both financially and morally.

A chart and study available here show that the two things most likely to sink our economy in the coming years are the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Bush tax cuts. Funny how that study never gets mentioned in congress by either party.

The effects of the recession on our elderly and most vulnerable citizens are manifested in many ways not spoken about in congress or the media.

From a study by AARP and with thanks to Ronni Bennett at "Time Goes By" here are a few of the sad statics for seniors after the recession. Oh, you can see all of them here.

  • 24.7% of those surveyed have already exhausted their savings
  • 12.4% lost their health insurance
  • 49.5% put off medical or dental care due to finances

I hope our future leaders will have less selective memory and more true patriotism than the current gang. Though, I'll admit I am not too hopeful.

Regardless of the cretins now in power, I hope you take a minute this weekend to remember those that fought and died for our country, even if they might roll over in their graves at the current mess we've made of our heritage.

Hope you have a great weekend,

RT

Sunday, May 15, 2011

News and othe stuff

Well, by now we've all had a chance to digest the demise of Bin Laden. It is certainly good news that the mass murderer is gone. One can only wonder why it took the supposedly most powerful nation on earth a full ten years to find and kill him. It would seem that good intelligence work and highly trained special operatives proved much more successful than launching 2 unnecessary foreign wars and wasting countless lives and billions of dollars in fruitless nation building.

While the military industrial complex and the financiers of their efforts have prospered the rest of our country and the world have not fared so well. Millions still remain unemployed, the economy remains fragile with looming commodity price increases. (The speculation on oil and the rising price of gold are sure signs of a lack of faith in the US dollar and its economy)

Meanwhile our republican congress wants to balance the budget on the backs of the poor, elderly and mostly powerless majority of our citizens. How these dimwits can ignore the inequity of tax breaks to wealthy individuals and even wealthier corporations at the same time they strive to literally limit the life span and life style of the middle and lowers classes is beyond belief. Only in this country is greed and avarice considered an asset and not a vice.

Perhaps the money grubbers can be stopped, but it does not look good at this point.

On a more personal note, our family is experiencing some good news for a change. Vicki is going back to work after her last test showed no signs of her cancer. We will be getting an update on her MRI from this last week as well, and hope it will also show no signs of cancer.

Of course we had to go car shopping for her and we managed to find something she liked that we could afford, so that's great news as well. We'll be picking up her wheels the first part of next week and the following Monday she reports to work at her new job. She'll be traveling the 101 from Chandler to Tempe so we got her a more modern and bigger vehicle than our 08 Honda civic.

Also, we attended a friends graduation a couple of weeks ago at the Cardinals stadium in Glendale. It was our first and perhaps our last visit to the place. We don't go to games and don't have any other friends or relatives going to the University of Phoenix.

Both of us are looking forward to a better 2011 than 2010.

That's all the time I have today, it's time to throw some ribs on the grill.

Keep smiling,

RT