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Obama, Health Care Reform and the Non-47 Million August 23, 2009

Posted by voolavex in Politics.
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Obama is my president.  He was my choice as a candidate and I am happy he is in the White House.  I am sick of the minute by minute negative commentary on his progress in 8 months as the president.  But what is even more alarming is the dedicated and vocal GOP opposition that appears to think telling lies is far more important  than the running of this country and the welfare of all  its citizens.  Suddenly we find ourselves rolled over by the calculated lies and misinformation being spewed by the GOP and their right of normal adherents.  During the horrifying eight years of George W. Bush and his evil twin Dick Cheney, no one made a peep.  Democrats tried but they were denied voice by Homeland Security rules; rendition, being a traitor, selling out this country, doubting (doubting was as bad as traiting) and daring to accuse the GOP of exactly what it was doing and what could and has been proven.  The incumbents of that era grew very fat and happy.  They became drunk with the sense of entitlement and power they could wield like a club and like it or not we put up with it.  Now that they are not in charge, they have returned to what they do best – obfuscation of truth.  Their champions are Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter and Glenn Beck.  Pop culture demagogues of questionable character who present as absolute truth , lies they want to spread.  Their platform – the over the top strict construction of the Constitution and out of context “intelligence” that isn’t anything but crap.
 
Does it irk people that Mr. Obama (and family) are the very thing they fear?  Not just his racial background, but his education, attitude and willingness to hash out policy by going directly to the people.    Is he doing a great job – not every time – but he isn’t being allowed much latitude in his actions.  Hysterical citizens at Town Hall meetings ready to riot over “death panels” is not quite my idea of civilized  exchanges of opinion and ideas.  This country is bankrupt.  Financially and morally.  The Objectivists dragged that unsound “ism” right straight to Wall Street and suddenly Wall Street has a “road closed” sign.  Too many laws were broken and hidden and no one gave out tickets until it was far too late. 
 
Health care reform?  Oh no you can’t.  A suddenly vociferous section of the population doesn’t care if 47 million of their fellow citizens stay healthy or die.  They are bloodsucking leeches who want YOU to pay for their insurance.  Pay for it yourself – they say.  I would bet they would stop that screed in about two seconds if they lost theirs.  They fail to see that the 47 million paid for many things they didn’t like – war for example.  Gay people paid for things they weren’t even allowed to have.  Black people have been paying since the first boat hit Virginia.  Suddenly the sanctimonious right is on the warpath.  And they are working overtime to undermine and derail the current administration with lies and half truths and it’s time the rest of us spoke up and did something before they get another term in the White House.  If you think it can’t happen – Al Gore will tell you it does.
 
Let Barack Obama and his cabinet do their jobs– get out of your comfort zone and if you have to stoop to the GOP level – then get close to the ground and do it.  Their media personalities quit office, pop pills and sell snake oil.  One of our media spokesmen is a senator now.  A wise Latina sits on the bench with a busload of self-righteous hypocrites.  Buenvenidos Justice Sotomayor.  Their moguls steal bonuses from their stockholders.  Two of our CEO’s have won the Nobel Peace Prize. 
 
I don’t have to walk you through this minefield.  Don’t get smug or complacent because we won the election.  The GOP is still snarling at the door of the Oval Office.
When you hear a rumor go to Factcheck.org or Snopes.  When something sounds made up – make sure it is or isn’t before you spread it and other people get sick.  There are Republicans who are decent and smart and responsible – but they are very, very well-mannered and subdued.  They are being drowned out by their wing nut political partners.  They need to be louder but we need to be louder still.

We Must Not Close Gitmo November 14, 2008

Posted by voolavex in Politics & Religion, Uncategorized.
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According to his prepared testimony before the House Oversight Committee, Greenspan lamented that “those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder’s equity (myself especially) are in a state of shocked disbelief.”  
Alan Greenspan – former disciple of Ayn Rand and former Chairman of the Fed
 
 
Why must we waste a perfectly lovely detention facility right in the luxurious Caribbean.  Of course it should be emptied of foreign detainees who are there without representation or any other right to which they may be entitled (we might ask John Cain about being detained for 5 years without a lawyer).  It seems these presumed terrorists (and I don’t doubt there are some there) are protected under several international acts that are reserved for presumed war criminals.  We have overlooked these pacts for 6+ years despite being signatories of each one.   We have created trumped up “acts” and rules to justify every sort of torture and deprivation imaginable.  The same stuff we condemned loudly for decades when others did it.  Apparently knocking down the WTC relieves us of every single law and rule in the book when it comes to enemy combatants.  The George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld Law of Double Standards.  It is my belief every person detained in that camp be channeled to a legally authorized facility with counsel available and allowed real justice to be meted out to each person based on facts and due process.
 
But we have this fabulous, large, working prison camp on balmy Guantanamo Bay – escape proof – like the Rock – and ready to go.  Let’s not be hasty.  Right here in this very country we have many yet to be indicted (but readily) indictable white collar crooks from our own terror locations right in New York, Washington and other large cities.  These are referred to as CEO’s, Board Chairmans, Bankers, Mortgage lender and Hedge Funders.  And of course political mischief makers.  In fact they are all basically crooks. I might start filling the place with the people who destroyed Valerie Plame’s career.   Next on my list would be the chairman of the Fed. The lovable and much respected Alan Greenspan who naively believed (because Ayn Rand said so?) that given a free reign – financial institutions would regulate themselves – no problem.  If that were actually true then it would be the very first time in the history of the universe – since the Big Bang – such a thing ever happened.  Even toddlers know that the king was in his counting house counting all his money.  It makes me chuckle when I think of the gasps and moans folks let out whenever the Mafia is mentioned.  All the bad things they do and how they rob and cheat and lie.  Right.  Even the mob has regulation – it may be harsh – but someone takes charge.  Recently Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute for {Get Rich and Run with the Money – oops} – Individual Rights said that Atlas Shrugged had foreseen it all.  That the government was at fault – oh crap – you read it:

Washington, D.C. –“Despite overwhelming evidence that government policies caused the current financial crisis, Congress is blaming businessmen,” said Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. “What’s worse, the capitalists who have been shackled with unprecedented regulatory burdens are unable to defend themselves morally. Though the events are different, this pattern of abuse and submission is straight out of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

“The cycle starts with government intervening into the economy and imposing regulations and controls on business. This distorts the free market, leading to economic dislocations. When the problems caused by these distortions inevitably follow, everyone blames the free market and its greedy capitalists. The proposed solution? More government controls. Over the years, conservative critics of creeping government have repeatedly exposed this illogic but have always been helpless to explain why the cycle keeps repeating, decade after decade.

“The pattern keeps recurring because businessmen are willing to take the blame. From capitalism’s inception, its defenders have been morally disarmed by the widespread view that self-interest is morally suspect, and disinterested service to others is a moral ideal. So each new spate of controls has been grudgingly accepted as a fair price to pay for society’s toleration of the selfish pursuit of profit.

“Atlas Shrugged depicted a society in economic collapse due to this recurring cycle, and today’s parallels are obvious. Government manipulation of money, credit, and lending standards over several decades caused the mess we’re in. Now, the offered solution is more of the poison that sickened the economy–more bailouts, more cheap money, more government-guaranteed loans, and above all, more regulations.

“This chronic cycle will not end until businessmen accept that their production of profit is neither immoral nor amoral–it is the capstone of moral virtue. Once they shrug off the role of scapegoat, businessmen can demand with moral certitude that government punish fraud and enforce contracts but refrain from interfering with voluntary trades among consenting adults.

“When America’s markets are finally free of all coercion–in other words, when laissez-faire is achieved–financial crises such as the one we’re experiencing will never happen again.”

Basing the current crisis on this rationale is not going to produce many guilty pleas in Federal Courts.  But there will be trials and there will be verdicts and yes, Virginia, people will go to jail.

Why not turn the ugly history of Gitmo into a place that houses the people that did this to our nation – not  alleged enemy combatants – but greedy, cheating, lying men and women who should know what it’s like to lose your home, your family, your income, your future, your sanity as you fill their bottomless pit of greed.  Let them live in a little bitty cell – like the family car  has become an itty bitty cell for the unemployed, disenfranchised, hopeless and homeless taxpayers of this country.  I would suggest a dress code – jumpsuits of khaki and oxford blue.  And cheap tacky slip-ons.  Nutritious food with no flavor and no variety.  No wine.  No bottled water.  Minimal health care ( just like everyone else’s) and no Ayn Rand tomes.  Let them know that Atlas has indeed shrugged and it has all landed on them.  Envision these detainees in the tropical splendor of Cuba’s southeastern shores hunting endlessly for John Galt as they try to jump start the engine of the world perpetually in motion but only in their direction.

Guantanamo Prison Camp is too symbolic and too perfect to  be closed and made into a museum – who would actually visit it owing to its location and the situation in Cuba?  But as a slammer.  It’s just perfect.  Please share your thoughts on this idea. 

And, if you are fans, supporters or believers in Ayn Rand and her Objectivism – you are welcome to comment – but I am personally not interested in her philosophy.  I have read her books and taken in her website and considered her views.  She is not my cup of tea.  I will read your comments but I will not post screeds, rants, apologies or propaganda on her ideas.  Sorry – but I did it once before and I found it distasteful.

America: Going Out of Business July 9, 2008

Posted by voolavex in war.
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According to Wikipedia among the conditions separating a recession from a depression is the length of time it lasts. I refer you to Wikipedia for this macroeconomic mumbo-jumbo because it all sounds like obfuscation (as opposed to stagflation) to me. Having said that I can now believe in my heart that anyone reading this has gone straight to Wiki to figure out the situation personally.

Have you ever read Alan Greenspan’s favorite author? Ayn Rand tells a good story – but she clearly was a right wing nut when it came to money and how you get it and who is entitled to it. She was a consummate corporate shill from the jump and cleverly coined the term objectivism for her personal credo. I think her choice of words was brilliant. Who doesn’t want to be “objective”? It’s the highest form of accolade – juries are advised to be objective in the dispensing of equal justice. But read the philosophy she invented and you will ask yourself “Who is John Galt” and why do we want to find him anyway? He was a greedy bastard. Ayn basically, sort of thought, in a way, that it was every man for himself, get as much money as possible and for God’s sake don’t give any thought to anyone who doesn’t or can’t do the same because they don’t really count. It could be summed up by saying the rich get and stay rich and the poor don’t exist and therefore deserve nothing at all. Read Atlas Shrugged and tell me you don’t see terrifying parallels. Except hers was a work of fiction.

With this in mind, I do believe The United States of America is going out of business. If I thought the current resident of the White House could actually read, I would suspect he read Atlas Shrugged and loved it. Let’s assume Greenspan gave him the Cliff Notes. Shall I blame our current administration for putting personal gain before the welfare of the country? Shall I call the current administration a sackful of greedy bastards who sold the populace down the river without a paddle, a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of? Shall I name the river “The Shitz”. At this point, the question is moot. We are engaged in an economic maelstrom that has spun so far out of control we need no longer curse the Decider because he doesn’t give a Texas damn. Never did.

Gas is almost $5 dollars a gallon – something to do with back room politics and oil profiteering, I suppose. There is no offset in wages to make this an equitable situation. Since the damn country loves it some oil, I suspect this is a long term condition.

We got the Bejesus bombed out of NYC 7 years ago. The space left behind is still out of business. The perpetrator eludes capture (if in fact he is even alive anymore – they do great stuff with holograms at Disney). Over 3,000 people died in that ugly event and it was hideous. Apparently the best and smartest way to thump our chest to send a message is to: send Americans into a country that was not implicated in the 9/11 attacks, run a religious, civil war that does not concern us and in the process, rack up 4,000 US souls as a way of showing somebody (not sure who) that we know how to fight a war and someone better pay attention. How many of you actually feared Saddam Hussein? Nightmare afraid?  Do you sigh with relief every day that he is gone for good – hanged by the neck until dead. This feel good charade costs $5K a minute to buy into everyday. The lost American lives in Iraq exceed the loss of lives on 9/11 and so instead of limiting our losses we doubled them and we show no sign of stopping. Makes me think of Vietnam. I don’t like to think of that illegal war either.

There are fewer and fewer jobs available in this country because we send all our ideas and business to China. I spend more time trying to find a product NOT made in China than an Orthodox Jewish housewife does hunting for the OU. If I recall a while back Red China was not a country we found very democratic. Tiananmen Square showed us how it goes in China if you speak out and it is an image that will not fade from my psyche anytime soon. Since damn near everything China stands for politically is the antithesis of our Constitution I have yet to figure out why we owe them so much money and why we send our specs over for the creation of cheap, crappy products made by oppressed workers. Think about really pricey shoes and bags – anything over $500. You only have to research where they are made to find out that some high ticket designer has gone to the East and paid very little to charge very much for “factory made in China shoes” and other items. The old silk purse out of a sow’s ear – but it is actually happening. Gets my goat. Plus they poison us now and then by being just as greedy as the rest of the consumer driven world.. Killer pet food, deathly children’s meds and that old standby – lead paint. God knows what else that we don’t know about.

Retirement has become the next season of Survivor for all of us over 55. Health care – get ready to die in despair. Big Pharma – yummy – let’s suck as much as we can from the poor health consumer and get rich. My hat is off to the Gay community for making HIV/AIDS a political issue and finding a way to treat people with the virus no matter what their financial situation. But it took work and still does. It happened because that community and others with AIDS in their demographic refused to take no for an answer. When we discovered it wasn’t a “gay” disease – the infrastructure was already in place for the health care. Pension plans – soon to be missing from your future. Employer paid medical benefits – in no time flat you will get a cheap first aid kit, made (of course) in China and they will still take it out of your paycheck every month. And that will be healthcare. This country – conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are equal and entitled to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, in eight sickening years has effectively sold out the population and in the current climate – it won’t be the New Deal that will fix it. We have run out of New Deals. There are no deals left. We have no GDP – we have 70 year olds working to put Ensure on the table; we have “American” companies leaving the work force unemployed because it’s cheaper to do it overseas. And yet we are still urged to buy, rent, upgrade and improve our condition by going shopping. Who thought this up?

The housing crisis – who got that ball rolling? And how could anyone be suckered so completely by a scheme that didn’t make a lick of sense and still doesn’t. It is very difficult to find any employment without a fixed address – living in a car parked in someone’s driveway is not considered a fixed address. Empty, ugly McMansions glut the market and sit, unoccupied, while families are being raised in homeless shelters.

The economists may not consider it a depression, but I am depressed. And sad and ashamed of what has been done right before our eyes. We have been hijacked by the government in power and no one seems as angry as they did when our last Chief of State got some from an intern. I just do not get it. I am angry and I am still very depressed.

 

www.Wikipedia.org – check out recession and Ayn Rand and obfuscation

http://usliberals.about.com/od/homelandsecurit1/a/IraqNumbers.htm

 

 

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