Made to Order

Seems like there is no party, administration or person you can depend on in our current political environment. Somehow our government, which of course is really just a surrogate for corporations, keeps screwing up. This is another sad example. Of course it's almost funny when explained by Jon Stewart.

Enjoy,

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

OK, that's all I've got to say about that.

RT

Blah, Blah, Blah

The nonsense that passes for political discourse in our country has both disappointed and disgusted me. Also we've just suffered the hottest August in history here in Phoenix.

So.... I offer this bit of creativity. If you miss the rain as badly as I do, just sit back and listen.



RT

Is 8 Enough?

So...... The Iowa Straw Poll for the Republicans has a winner. And the winner is....
Michele Bachmann, really, I'm not kidding. Seriously; the Iowans who participated preferred the queen of Wackyworld to any of the other candidates who were in the running.

Amongst those were a faux news contributor, a governor from the Midwest, a gospel singer and probably a couple of flat earthers, perhaps even a birther or two. All sought to out right wing the other making the whole thing imminently unwatchable and pretty ridiculous.

To make the point here a couple of videos from "The Daily Show" on the subject.






All this fun and then Rick Perry ( another Texas Governor) (cause we all know how good the last one did, right?) announces he's running. To make the whole event totally rad Sarah Palin, serial butcher of history and all things factual rides into town on her bus of BS.

My heart goes out to those in Ames.

RT

At Least Bill gets It !

I found this clip on Huffpost today and was mildly pleased to see that at least someone else besides me understands what's going on here. As usual Bill Maher picked a very controversial way to make his point, but I agree with that as well.

Perhaps you believe that 3 years and a few months is sufficient punishment for losing your baby. If you do then Bill thinks you're probably a middle class Republican voter as well.

Here's what he has to say.




Nuff said,

RT

Critical 4th of July

I am almost too damned cynical to be writing this post today. I've come to believe that the capture of our local, state and federal government by the monied interests (read financial oligarchy disguised as the republican party and various tea-party groups) is almost absolute. Yet I still find myself making the attempt to help wake up the American electorate.

So in that vein here's some contributions from others who feel as I do and something that you the reader can do if you wish to help out.

First a little snark to start off the process. This comes compliments of Crooks and Liars. To read the entire article you can go here. To paraphrase, it is a commentary on the corporatization of our country with new words for the pledge of allegiance.

I pledge allegiance
To the Bathtub
Of the United Slates of Norquist.
And to the Republicans,
For which it scams,
One Corporation,
Under Fraud
With Liberty & Tax Cuts for All....
corporate jet-owning billionaires.

The next offering is again from Crooks and Liars and is a fictional speech ( we really wish he had delivered this speech though) that should have been given by the president on the debt ceiling and the current debate, craziness and blackmail by the radical right to further impoverish and harm the majority of our citizens. You can read the whole speech here.
Let me just say that in the speech he lays the facts out and addresses what is really going on now.

Last is a real speech given by Bernie Sanders on the house floor. It is a letter to President Obama. This was brought to my attention on the blog Time Goes By, an elder blogging site dedicated to the issues affecting folks my age.



If after hearing Bernie's speech you would like to sign the letter yourself, you can do that here.

When I signed there was a little over a hundred thousand signatures. By my count there ought to be at least a hundred million people who should be on board with Bernie. We truly face another threat to our independence this Fourth of July. This threat is to our financial freedom. The proposals of the far right will mean a further decrease in the well being, happiness and live styles of countless millions of us, while helping to increase the already tremendous gap in wealth and power between the top 1% and the rest of us.

I wish you a happy fourth and hope you'll join in what may be the most important fight of your generation.

Peace,

RT

Congrats New York, But.......

I suppose that congratulations are in order for the gay and lesbian community in New York state this week. They can now be married and have all the advantages and disadvantages associated with the institution. One wonders if they fully thought out the downside of this event. Now they will find their way into divorce courts, child support cases, and the myriad of other legal potentialities in modern marriage. Good luck with that!

Now don't misunderstand me. I really don't care about gay marriage. I am more interested in the distraction it brings that helps keep truly political and economic issues buried in media BS. In my humble opinion it would have made more sense to make civil unions legal nationally, thereby affording them the same legal status as marriage, but without offending those who oppose gay marriage on religious grounds. If you're interested, the statistics tell us that single parent families, especially those of unwed mothers are far more deleterious to our society than homosexuality. Our current group of politicians won't let these facts get in the way of their posturing on family values. Many in our government continue to attempt to legislate morality often with disastrous results.

Anyway...... There is some irony in New York state showing this level of tolerance and progressiveness considering it is the same state that houses the majority of our financial crooks and swindlers. Too bad the legislature couldn't focus on that. The chief crime fighter in that state was Elliot Spitzer who fought Wall Street while attorney general, but managed to get caught in some adulterous behavior as Governor of the state. You don't here much out of the NY Attorney Generals office on prosecutions these days, do you?

The media outlets continue to focus on moral issues which arouse the fanatics on both the right and the left. While our focus is on these issues, the more critical and important political issues are left to the insiders to handle (or not) as they see fit. Indeed the right has managed to convert purely religious issues into political dialogue, forgetting or ignoring the separation of church and state so crucial to our constitution.

This has gone on for so long now that we take it as the norm. Few people object often or loudly enough to force reporting about the real and important issues that face our country.

What are those issues you ask?

Here are just a few issues on which I think we ought to focus.

• True progressive reform of our financial system, including the FED
• A national debate on our continuing global military intervention and the costs to our military, our economy and our national character
• An accurate assessment of our nations need for infrastructure growth and maintenance
  
• Reform of the individual and corporate tax system with emphasis on creating skilled jobs in the US and penalizing those who send work offshore, (also corporations who hide offshore to escape taxes)
• Creating a realistic national drug policy and ending the so called war on drugs, (it has had a similar effect to prohibition and created drug billionaires worse than Al Capone)
• Take the money out of our elections and rescind the Supreme Court's decision to give corporations unlimited access to our politicians with no individual responsibility for the corporate officers.

There are no doubt many more issues that could be brought to mind, but if the ones above were seriously addressed we would have a much better country for our middle class.

Fat Chance? Maybe, but I continue to hope.

RT

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