No Comment

I do not think that this needs a lot of comment:

Tea Party

So there was a tea party here in town yesterday. I didn't know about it, there were no signs or really any information that I saw before the event. I would like to have gone, but I did have a thing I had to be at in the afternoon. So perhaps even if I have known about it I couldn't have been there.

There were a series of photos in the local paper. I would guess there were probably a couple of hundred people from the photos. Interestingly enough the only signs that looked professional were anti-health care signs. I guess that it is probably wrong to just look at the pictures and guess the socio-economic back ground of the attendees, but what the hell.

Poor people opposed to good medical care for poor people. How strange. As Mencken said: "No one ever went broke underestimating the American public." People who have the information can explain that health care in countries like Canada, England (oh heck, the rest of the civilized world) is cheaper than in the U.S. by a long shot.

Then the people like those at the tea party tell you that it is rationed in those countries. They completely ignore the fact that it is rationed here. People with money get good health care and the rest of us get the scraps from the rich man's table. When this is pointed out the response is to simply deny it. These other countries cannot have health care as good as us because we are, well we are just the best, don't you know. Even though we all know people (if it isn't us) who have been denied health care because we don't have the money for it. Or we've denied ourselves health care because we decided that we need to spend our money on say food or rent rather than medication.

People generally get good emergency care, because hospitals can't turn people away, but then the follow up can really suck if you don't have money. Yet the fear of any change is so great. It seems that the less one has the more one is afraid to change it or to try for something new.

Read 'em If Ya Got 'em

So we're starting a new book with www.dailylit.com : short stories for the summer. We will see how it goes, since I appear unable to do anything anyone tells me to do. How did I pass law school? Damned ifI know.

New York Times

Is it possible that I've been mislead by the New York Times?

OK One More Thing and Then to Work

What I see the Blue Dogs and conservative Democrats doing generally is committing a kind of ritual suicide that would make the Japanese aristocrats proud.

Here's what could well happen: They will manage to prevent any real change. Conditions will get worse under democrats. People in general will start to look around and ask themselves why should we vote for these assholes again. Republicans will be voted in with the social conservatives with real power this time. America will make (if I may mix my historical metaphors) Italy of the 20s look progressive.

Now if only being right would pay the bills.

Last Post

I've been thinking about the last post of mine. Was I unfair, too quick do you think?.........
Na.

Would you guess that like the boy who cried wolf or the stopped clock these war mongers would have to be right at some point? Not really. Wolves are relatively simple predators that eat whatever. And let's face it the stopped clock isn't really "right" ever, it just coincidentally seems to reflect the time two times a day.

These people and by "these people" I mean the ones who have come to power under Bush really want to go to war again. They really want to maintain a large military presence in the middle of the Middle East, for ever. They will use the WMD excuse every time and they will hope that we will all (to mix my fairy tale metaphors) run around like Chicken Little when ever they let us in on their belief that the sky is indeed falling once again.

Incidentally, I'm still waiting for that judge to pay on our bet about the WMD in Iraq. I'm prepared to make a similar bet about Iran.

Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and suggest, just mildly and with the most deferential attitude that this is a complete lie and total bullshit. In a most respectful manner of course.

They lie without consequence; they ruin people for sport.

OK, maybe debtors prison is a little over the top, still maybe not?

They lie without consequence; they ruin people for sport (sort of Vince Foster). You might add they ruin whole nations for sport. I suppose you might even add the entire world. I'm speaking about repubicans and conservatives.

I am thinking about the information that republicans are on TV 2 to 1 attacking the bail out and calling for lowering taxes again (still?). Fighting against those things that will really put people to work. Still people seem to be too stupid to figure out that these our rulers are not totally accurate (or even rational), after years of being lied to by right wing assholes on TV the general public still listens to them even though almost everything they have said has turned out wrong. How consistently wrong do you have to be for how long in this country to be kicked out of the public discourse? (I guess that is a rhetorical question.) I suspect always (wrong) and forever (wrong).

Liberals/progressives need to be able to get the information out there into almost every home to counter this stuff, but I am feel hopeless. We seem to be unable to do that.

Let me just add this for a WTF moment from someone who gets paid good money to be continuously wrong. No not just wrong, but pointless.

We are in the biggest hole we've been in in 75 years and we seem to be able to do nothing even remotely rational to get out. Those with the power seem to have a nearly infinite ability to ignore the past or distort it to make it fit into their little preconceived ideological pigeon holes.

Maybe I'm ranting a little since I've discovered that in the Courts I work the employees hours/wages are being cut this week. Believe me this isn't just a high minded empathy with those worse off. I also means that the appointments monies are being cut. That means yours truly is gonna get his cut too.

I also have been reading Eric Rauchway's The Great Depression & The New Deal, A Very Short Introduction. The first couple of chapters "The world in debt" and "The Hoover Years" sound a little too much like where we are right now. I really think I'm too old for this.

Oh Woe Is Me

OK, maybe I am putting on a bit much.

After rereading some of my posts I'm starting to feel a little like Jeremiah or perhaps Cassandra. Take your pick. Although I am far from the only one. Still it does kind of get old.

What you may well ask, gets old?

Watching the same people who have been wrong about everything politically over the past forty years continue to be wrong in the same way and continue to control the levers of power and make the same mistakes they have made before. Or new people controlling these same levers of power making the same mistakes the old people made. And let's face it, the mistakes are pretty obvious right about now, but the answers are all the same, and are all as wrong as they ever were.

I know the cliche about being crazy (same, same, different result, etc.).

Or perhaps it merely draws into question the general level of intelligence of the electorate. I was told by a sitting magistrate that FDR caused the great depression to last longer because he spent too much money on stimulus programs. Then in the same breath he said that what got us out of the depression was World War II. A war that resulted in a massive amount of deficient spending. How can an otherwise intelligent man hold that we cannot spend our way out of a depression and yet immediately say that we spent ourselves out of the depression through military spending?

So maybe we are fucked. I guess not being listened to didn't stop either Jeremiah or Cassandra. Of course, neither of them ended well.

Ok I Got A Big Zero

That's right once again I have abolutely nothing, a complete Zero, as the outside world has intruded on me.