Oil Things Must Pass

I went to the beach last weekend and stepped in a pile of asphalt that had been floating in Santa Monica Bay and had washed ashore after being dumped by a tanker at the oil refineries south of LAX. It made me mad. Oil companies get away with everything, including soiling my shoes.

Last week, the CEOs of the big five oil companies testified before Congress about why they needed their welfare checks while making record money from gambling. Because of Wall Street oil speculators, the price of a barrel of oil is driven up (in some estimates) $44 a barrel to about $100 a barrel.

Speculation has nothing to do with the hands on exploration and production of oil, nor does it have to do with supply and demand. Speculation should be made illegal or heavily regulated. Obama needs to rein in these speculators. He promised in June 2008 that he would do so. Do you think he will now?

Right. On to the next paragraph.

I believe big oil’s Gang of Five should pay for all wars fought in the Middle East. It is as obvious that Libya is not about human rights as it was that Iraq was not about WMD.

I also believe that in wars fought for oil by governments on behalf of oil corporations, the corporations should not only pay for the wars like a business expense, but they and their proxy governments should be liable for damages just like in business, but not like in oil spills. These are blood spills, so they would not be able to be passed on to the taxpayer, consumer and next generation American like BP is doing in the Gulf. Talk about your entitlements!

This means that killing innocent children in their profiteering wars would cost them monetarily in amounts much greater than the 1-2% taxpayer welfare they so hate to lose. One oil executive threatened to move their operation out of the US. I say “Go ahead! Leave! And don’t let your rig hit you in the ass on the way out!”

Necessity is the mother of invention and if America needs to invent a better way to do everything without oil and gas we will.

In fact, is it not a good idea to start a boycott of one of the big five to send a message and scare the hell out of the other four? Of course it is.

And hey, what about the sequel to Who Killed the Electric Car called Revenge of the Electric Car? Try to see it if you can. We need to change the world we live in. Maybe this is a way.

The Mandarin Candidate

Given that all the Republican candidates are head cases, the only viable Republican seems to be John Huntsman. However….

Yeah, if my beliefs are correct it could be interesting.

Huntsman knows he won’t get the nomination in 2012. But he’s putting his name out there because he knows the Republican-Tea Party self-destruction and the deconstruction of America won’t be tolerated much past 2014 which, by then, the Republican-Tea Party cabal will have brought America to the brink of armed insurrection on a multiple statewide level. That’s right, unemployed gun carrying yahoos firing at the Florida statehouse and governor’s residence (among a few other red states) recalls with extreme prejudice.

If Obama is a shoo-in for re-election because of the Bin Laden killing and other things—and Huntsman knows it—he’s positioning himself to be the best-qualified Republican to run against Hillary in 2016—again, after the coming Republican collapse.

Huntsman went to Wall Street for fundraising, to DC for strategy, and to South Carolina for the Gong Show. Perhaps we can derive from his attempt at a candidacy that the political winds are blowing from a different direction.

Or, perhaps we can derive that Huntsman is just another egotistical politician with delusions of grandeur and the usual maniacal desire for power.

Or, Huntsman is a brainwashed tool of the Chinese—the Mandarin Candidate—come to cart off of America the last of what the Republicans and the corporations have already given them.

Or, perhaps the Koch Brothers are trying a different political strategy—that Huntsman will run as a charming and smart independent to draw votes away from Obama like Perot did in ’92 for Bush 1 and President Richard John Santorum will be sworn in on January 20, 2013.

Obama sin laden

Yes, this title, a silly play on words, is intentional.

On Saturday afternoon I was angry at the news that three of Qaddafi’s grandchildren under the age of 12 were killed in a missile attack which also reportedly killed Qaddafi’s son. Then came disagreement in the some parts of the blogos-fear (clever, aren’t I?) whether he was or was not the evil, older son. A cursory view just now of some liberal websites to verify, clarify and research for this writing has become frustrating because the news of Osama’s killing is everywhere in a multitude of aspects and angles serving its purpose as collective conscious and unconscious distraction.

The death of these kids was the result of a NATO strike. But don’t we own NATO? Should we, the superior “Christian valued nation”, firstly, not go to war, and secondly, not kill children? Now here’s the infuriating question: for oil???!!!

The possibility/probability (your choice) that these kids (and many others around the world in many different wars and military and “police” actions we’ve fought) died for oil is on par with being godless…unless our god is oil and/or geopolitical control.

There are human rights abuses in many places around the world and there have been human rights abuses in Libya for a long time. Suddenly the US is involved? Suddenly NATO is passing resolutions and sending missiles?

Oil.

And each and every child killed in a war for oil (or Halliburton or the US Chamber of Commerce or Walmart), the loss of their lives are, each and every one, an unconscionable sin that Obama is quickly becoming laden with.

For oil.

The old adage is fight fire with fire. But sometimes that strategy cannot and should not apply. How can you fight human rights abuses with human rights abuses? And if a NATO missile killing children doesn’t violate these kids’ human rights I don’t know what does.

Oil.

Have I said it enough?

Oil?

Barack Hussein Oilbama.

What a silly word play.

Happy April Fool's

At the meeting pictured above exactly one year ago today, Obama reportedly said to Qaddafi: "In one year I'm going to bomb your country--just kidding, April Fool's!!!"

Lately, I've been having a desire to return to the blog I left so abruptly nearly a year and a half ago. Some things in my life, like the death of my father, to whom a Father's Day tribute launched this endeavor, have changed. Some things have not changed so much.

There is nothing special about this particular post except to reintroduce me to the process. Happy April Fool's Day, everybody.

Chenemy Combatant

How long is it going to be before Dick and Liz get on Fox or Strapon-opoulos and complain that Obama is to blame for Major Hasan shooting American servicemen at Fort Hood, or complain that Obama secretly and personally encouraged Major Hasan to shoot those servicemen, or complain that Obama secretly shot those servicemen posing as Major Hasan.

Given the nature of these conspiracies, which have not yet been offered by Dick and Liz, I have a conspiracy of my own.

What if Dick used his contacts at the CIA to turn Hasan into a MK-Ultra killer just to be able to try to convince the American people that we are not safe with Obama—the same vaudeville act he and his daughter have been doing for months now, not realizing that vaudeville died long ago.

Or, what if Dick and George developed Hasan into an MK-Ultra killer way back in 2007 and his programming leapt to the “kill stage”?

Michigan Republican Pete Hoekstra, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee yesterday revealed that our intelligence community had been monitoring the emails between Hasan and Yemeni imam and Al Qaeda Tupperware party organizer, Anwar al Awlaki. He reportedly has also launched an investigation.

This comes as a surprise to the Pentagon, which was never told about the monitoring of Hasan. Hoekstra claims the Obama administration is purposefully withholding information on Hasan.

What a fucking opportunist! He is also running for the governorship of Michigan and wants to use these scare tactics to get elected, assuring Michiganers that he is hard on terrorists so he’ll definitely be able to protect the Great Lakes State from Canadians.

Like Hoekstra, Cheney is also running…to stay out of jail for torture and other crimes against humanity, and is using scare tactics—therefore, terrorism—to scare Americans into protecting him from being forced to wear the orange jumpsuit.

Hurry up, Spain!!

The photo above is not only the product of wishful thinking, it is also a tool of visualization for all you people who can bend reality in accordance to their will based on the images they focus their incredible concentrative mental powers on with candles, crystals and psilocybin.

The Astro Turfer

Like the Silver Surfer, Marvel Comics has introduced its new comic book character, the Astro Turfer, seen here with a hangover after a night on the town hall meeting.

While the Silver Surfer roams the galaxy looking for planets for Galactus to consume, the Astro Turfer roams the U.S. looking for health care discussions to obliterate with screaming and shouting.

The Silver Surfer’s work stems from his profession, an astronomer, and his identity is known as Norrin Radd, while the Astro Turfer’s work stems from his role as someone against health care for all.

And while no one knows the Astro Turfer’s identity, many suspect him to be either Joe Lieberman or Barack Obama.

Baa Baa Barack Sheep

There is no blog today. Have a good weekend and remember: one of those sheep up there may be Obama waiting for Marine One to land and for health care reform to be finished.

Keeping Eyes on the Prize

According to MSNBC Obama was not a factor in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races. In fact, to extrapolate on that assessment, Obama doesn’t seem to be a factor in much of anything these days—certainly not health care reform.

However, Palin, Beck, Limbaugh and Armey may have been a factor in the very telling election in New York State’s 23rd district. Their candidate, Doug Hoffman, looking like someone arrested on “Dateline: To Catch a Predator” conceded, handing a victory to a Democrat in that district for the first time since the Civil War.

The strange thing about all the brouhaha raised by conservatives in getting Hoffman into the New York 23 race is that district gets absorbed by surrounding Democratic districts in a redistricting based on the 2010 census.

I can’t wait to hear how Beck, Limbaugh and Palin spin the Hoffman loss. Gingrich ought to have a bit of fun with this. Let’s keep the civil war going.

For Democrat losses, Chris Christie is said to be a moderate, a fiscal conservative but not a social conservative, so the Tea Baggers will not make any real headway there until they put tremendous pressure on him and he caves to Birther demands, if that happens.

Bob O’Donnell effectively refused Palin and her brand of conservatism and won anyway over a weak Democrat. However, she will probably take credit for his victory.

Jon Corzine was apparently an unappealing incumbent. His approval was at 39%. There is speculation that his connection to Goldman Sachs may have contributed to his downfall in addition to other issues. The voters are tired of Wall Street.

Bloomberg got a run for his money, literally, by someone without much political power or billionaire bank account. Bloomberg is also another incumbent and is associated with Wall Street.

Bloomberg and Corzine are connected to Wall Street. This does not bode well for Obama in 2010 if he does not get the economy going by then or does not punish Wall Street more harshly than Geithner and the boys have so far.

While the losses of Corzine and Deeds do not necessarily presage the future of the Democratic Party, they do presage the future of similar Democrat candidates—those weak Democrats like Harry Reid, Blanche Lincoln and others who refuse to be tough.

Reid wants to wait until next year on health care. Obama’s response will probably be, “Well, if you say so.”

Some believe this is a bad idea. I entertain the possibility that they want to move Republican refusal to participate in an historic piece of bad bill legislation that the vast majority of Americans want, despite all that poser Tea Bagger nonsense in July and August, as close to the primaries as possible.

A year ago tonight the great Anarchist of Ann Arbor and I discussed our beliefs that the first party to split, thereby creating a third party, would be the Republicans. We may be seeing that materialize right before our eyes. The Tea Baggers will be so incensed by Hoffman’s loss in New York that they will come back in greater numbers and intensity in 2010.

But the Democrats beginning to split between progressive and conservative may become the speculative talk of 2012 if not sooner.

A possible Democrat strategy for 2010—or simply my delusion—is the Democrats may be hoping the conservative wing of the Republican Party will defeat a sufficient number of Republicans in 2010 primaries so that Democrats gain the Republican seat easily in the general election a year from now.

I do not know what the issue for the 2010 general will be right now that will separate the Democrats from the Tea Bagger/Birthers. Certainly health care reform should be decided in favor of the insurance companies by then. There is still time.

And maybe that strategy applies to conservative Democrats as well. Goodbye Lincoln, Bayh and those in the House too numerous to mention. The delusion disclaimer is still in effect.

One thing I believe this election says loud and clear is: Democrats get off your asses, get some guts and do the right things before 2010.

Obama, this means you too.

The Wrong Things

How is it that in a country of 300 million-plus, in a representative democracy of 535 Senators and Representatives, that one man can “kill” something that benefits, well, according to an AP story over the weekend, a whopping two percent of our population.

Well, everybody’s talking about Joe Lieberman exercising his option in the Senate to filibuster this extremely weak health care reform bill that will benefit almost no one which progressives have promised to bend over and vote for just to be loyal democrats.

And Obama talks about how hard change is. While he made small and medium advances on his agenda, his legacy will most likely be judged (by me) on health care reform, Afghanistan, Iraq and the economy. How many times have I and others tried to get him out of the White House and involved in the health care reform process.

But he didn’t and now Lieberman may wreck all that change Obama promised way back when. Didn’t Obama reach out to Lieberman earlier this year and convince democratic leadership to give ol’ Joe some important committee chairmanship, like Homeland Security?

I never graduated Harvard and I’ve never been elected president, but even I knew bi-partisanship was bullshit. Sure, change is hard—especially if you keep fucking it up from the beginning.

Right now I’m watching “The Right Stuff”, the 1983 Phillip Kaufman film based on the 1979 book by Tom Wolfe. And while the film may have taken some artistic license and emphasized the pilot over the scientists and the politicians who made it happen, the fact is without the pilots’ expertise, how different would the space program have been. Armstrong’s piloting of the LEM on the moon with only a few seconds of fuel is a perfect example.

A couple of months ago while watching “Serpico” I wrote that we needed a Frank Serpico in Congress to clean it up and get rid of the corruption.

Now I’m writing that we need a new generation of politicians with, you guessed it, the right stuff.

These new politicians would hold with pride, dignity and integrity, the weighty meaning and solemn responsibility of the office which they would hold. They would be leather jacket-wearing, gum chewing, whiskey drinking courageous hotshots who would push the boundaries, just as Yeager broke the sound barrier, of creating and enacting legislation that helps the people, just like all the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts who also did what no one did before them.

American space exploration since Kennedy’s call to action drew qualified and fearless men and women to the mission.

But when Obama called for Change, no one—not even Obama himself—seems to have heeded that call. With Kennedy’s announcement about the moon shot, we made it to the moon many times. But in this analogy, with Obama’s call for health care reform, we exploded just above the launch tower.

Until we can get some politicians with the right stuff, it may suffice if Obama would simply put Joe Lieberman on the moon.

Senators or Cynictors?

I get angry when I watch the news about health care reform, then I become fatigued by the anger. Unh…I, I…need to go lie down….

I am tired of all this legalized corruption and legalized bribery that enables Senators Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh, among many others, to sabotage health care for Americans who need it because of campaign contributions from the health insurance industry.

I for one think we should call our Congresspoersons and tell then we sincerely believe their adult male of large mammal feces.

What a great photo above, eh. While Jesse Helms took pride in being called “Senator No!”, I think Ben Nelson may take offense at being called “Senator Nose”.

Okay, my apologies—wait, what?—oh, another one:

I don’t know which Ben Nelson is less capable of—health care reform or hair care reform? I mean, is that a really bad toupé or are his hair weaves made of wool?

Badaboom!

But seriously, Obama worked hard to get Lieberman the Chairmanship of Homeland Security. Was this Obama’s attempt to show forgiveness and induce his prized bi-partisanship? Did Rahm make him do it? I don’t get Obama anymore. Is there a Quija board in the White House?

Salon writer Glenn Greenwald was on Rachel Maddow last night (FF to 5:30) and revealed that Bayh’s wife sits on the board of Wellpoint and they own nearly a million dollars of Wellpoint stock and, consequently, Bayh may vote to filibuster for reasons of “fiscal responsibility”.

Obama wanted bi-partisanship but he got Bayh-partisanship. Obama promised transparency, but the only thing completely visible are these guys’ true motives in denying reform.

Bayh and Lieberman should be investigated not only by the Senate Ethics Committee but by the FBI.

The American people (are you listening, progressives—I mean, reading?) need to remember what these Senators have done with their elected responsibility and vote them out. They are corrupt, they do not care about people and they are a cancer.

I will say it louder.

They are a cancer in the body of America!

We need health reform just to cure us of them.

Voting. That’s the real public option.

Single payer!

Single payer!

Single payer!

Single payer!

The Fox and the Henhouse

Much is being made about Obama’s Henhouse taking on the Fox. Suspicion and doubt is easier than the patience of waiting to see how a game plays out. Presently, Obama is taking on the radical right and pointing out what fakes Fox is.

However, one way of looking at this is it creates the illusion that Obama is the good ol’ liberal we knew we elected and secretly he using this Fox attack as a distraction as we get to the crucial time when he, the health insurance industry and participating Democrats drown the public option like nine year olds pouring water on an ant hill. Obama says he “prefers” a public option but won’t demand it. Yet, most everyone I trust says quite correctly that without a public option it is not real reform.

Either Obama is playing a very sophisticated strategy in pursuit of the promises he made last year or he is slowly selling us out.

As the Kinks sang, “Paranoia will destroy ya”, however there are possible realities we must consider just to understand the terrain of the whole battle field.

His ratings dropped fifteen points in the polls recently on health care at the same time the polls attest that most Americans want a public option more than they want bipartisanship.

I think the Obama Henhouse has sniffed the air and smelled the change in the direction the wind is blowing, which means they know Americans are tired of his delaying delivering on his promises. They are afraid the American people are soon to be as vocal about a public option as gays are for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Obama gets close to the issues in which he made impassioned campaign promises about and then all he does is make a speech.

He’s made a speech about DADT, he’s made speeches about health care reform, especially in admiring the not necessary to be admired Olympia Snowe vote, and on and on.

Sometimes I get the feeling he’s stalling for time until the Supreme Court rules that corporations are people too and he’s given the signal by his overlords to declare martial law, force us all into corporate labor camps, work co-ops and employment pools while being forced to buy their health insurance or imprisoned, forced to buy their products or fired and forced to fight in their wars to take oil, uranium and water, and nuke Iran, Russia and make an uneasy peace with China.

That’s the new America for the new American Century.

What’s the difference between a neo-con and a paranoiac? Paranoiacs don’t get political appointments, they only get elected.

Obama and Fox has repercussions. As Craig Crawford said on Olbermann tonight, it only makes Fox bigger. It means they will mobilize the conservative vote in 2010 and take House and Senate seats away from Democrats.

Another way of looking at that is: by turning up the heat on Fox, and with mid-terms at stake, it may serve to further divide the Republican Party so that the far right breaks off and neither trusts the other and they cannot get their act together to mount any sort of solid opposition to Democrats.

But, if Obama was truly interested in skewering Fox for its bias, why doesn’t he next go after CNN for its bias as well, or for it simply being ridiculous in covering certain issues.

Obama changing how the major media in this country performs its democratic function and inform our citizenry would be something I could believe in.

I’m waiting for him to tell us we just couldn’t get a public option and blame it on Fox’s influence on the Teabaggers and the Teabaggers’ influence on Congress—which we all know is a lie.

The Baron and the Terror-Industrial-Cheney Complex

As I write this, I am watching the audio commentary of Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeown on the DVD, “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen”, the 1989 Gilliam film, a wonderfully surreal film that uses its surrealism to hide a very serious message.

If any of you watched Countdown tonight and last night then you may be way ahead of me.

I bought Munchausen on Tuesday and was watching it while writing the Liz Cheney post that appeared on Wednesday, the day Gilliam asked Olbermann the question about the Colin Powell comment about the terror-industrial complex in the September 2007 GQ Magazine article.

The actual “terror-industrial complex” quote is in the last three sentences of Powell’s answer to the question, “So do you think we’re getting too hunkered down and scared?” on page 2.

“But come on, this is not a threat to our survival! The only thing that can really destroy us is us. We shouldn't do it to ourselves, and we shouldn't use fear for political purposes—scaring people to death so they will vote for you, or scaring people to death so that we create a terror-industrial complex.”

As you all know (the only reason for this paragraph is this advert for “Why We Fight”), the terror-industrial complex line is an update of Eisenhower’s military industrial complex line.

So now we have another nail to put into the political coffin of the Cheneys. Fear for political purposes is exactly what the Cheneys are doing, in addition to trying to revive the phony national security issue from 2004 which almost gave Bush/Cheney/Cheney the vote, but it didn’t so they had to resort to dirty tricks in Ohio.

Cheney’s connection to Halliburton should be proof enough as to what his and her motives are. Politics is so filled with phony issues to leverage power. The problem is the mainstream media will not accuse or question the Cheneys about using fear for political gain or about their obvious motives for claiming Obama will not keep us safe from terrorists.

After all, the real purpose of Keep Halliburton Rich—I mean, Keep America Safe, is not to scare us terroristically but to scare Obama politically and remind him to make sure the war profiteers’ gluttony and greed are continually satiated with tax dollars that could be used to give us all free health care—fully paid by our tax dollars for our entire lifetimes rather than be given to the terror-industrial complex.

As many of you know, Eisenhower’s complete line was going to be “military-industrial-congressional complex” but he decided to omit the congressional reference at the last minute, or thereabouts.

The pertinent part of Eisenhower’s quote is:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

Here we are nearly 50 years later with Obama doing nothing on his campaign promise to end no-bid Federal contracts over $25,000 and breaking his campaign promise about tougher rules against revolving door lobbying in his administration.

Maybe Liz and Dick are doing Obama a favor, making his job easier in helping the system of war mongering maintain the pace it achieved during the last eight years.

Cheney (take your pick) is the Right Ordinary Horatio Jackson in Munchausen—killing the truth (as personified by Munchausen) and lying by telling the story to the city of the enemy Turk being just outside the gates to maintain control.

As Gilliam puts it in the commentary at the end of the film when Munchausen forces them to open the gates to reveal no threat, “And we open the door, and has it all been a dream, has it all been an illusion? Were we ever under threat? Are there terrorists in the world, we ask ourselves, or is it just an illusion to maintain power?”

Obviously we have terrorists in our world, but how much of what Cheney is doing simply to use fear to feed the terror-industrial complex? We may never know.

Don’t Read This Blog

A potpourri of disjointed thoughts about some of today’s political realities:

Mr. T. Party "Sucka!" I was giving the Tea Party guy Allen Olson the benefit of the doubt until he answered Chris Matthews question about who he’d like to see replace Lindsay Graham as Senator in South Carolina and he said, “Sarah Palin”. And I heard her name in my head a whole second before he said it.

I’m human. Even I get tired of being angry at the Tear Partiers and the Birthers and the Deathers because they’re so stupid. I want to understand and accept them as humans with concerns and needs and loved ones to protect the best way they know and feel.

But since I cannot control my emotions because I’m a passionate (read: angry) liberal (actually I’m not a liberal, I prefer to be called a “liber-real”). I’m a leftist with a coherent grasp on reality and the state of the world and my enemies’ place in it—just kidding—but I cannot accept the idea of Sarah Palin as anything other than a cartoonish Halloween costume and mask (glasses not included) or a talk show host on Fox.

A Real Deather! Rick Perry may have killed an innocent man. Perry always reminded me of a good-looking, dumb jock kind of guy. And, he did the jock kind of thing by pulling the plug on the innocent father. Perry probably had two thoughts going simultaneously—his re-election and at least the father would finally be with his dead daughters in Heaven.

This is precisely why I have been against the death penalty since I was young and growing up in a death penalty state—because of the very real possibility of convicting and killing the wrong person. You see, the arts and culture can affect the masses. That thinking is what “To Kill a Mockingbird” did to me.

Drop kicked! Black team players and the businessmen involved with the St. Louis Rams have rejected Rush Limbaugh’s desire to participate in the team as an owner. To paraphrase Malcolm X, “The ‘I hope he fails’ have come home to roost”.

A great capper in all this would be to take Limbaugh’s football-shaped head and kicking a field goal with it.

Goddama Obamma! Yesterday Mr. Change thanked Olympia Snowe for her vote when the Democrats didn’t need it and for her political courage. Let’s hope that means he has become sufficiently inspired by her to find some of his own.

For those salivating uncontrollably and feeling unfulfilled by the above mention of Mr. T, I have taken pity on the fools!

Kids Are People Too!

“Kids Are People Too!” was a news/variety TV program for teens that ran on ABC from 1978 to 1982. The program grew out of another TV program called “Wonderama” for pre-teens and children that ran for 20 years and was hosted for about ten of them by Bob McAllister, who hosted KAPT for about a year and was fired by ABC due to creative differences.

Corporate wanted something different than creative.

Now, the Supreme Court is poised to decide if corporations are people too. I find the whole thing absurd and see a possible overturn of election finance law as a dark day for America.

Let’s hope some organization files another suit and can prevent the overturn in the event the Supreme Court guts what the Founders intended as the First Amendment in the form of freedom of expression.

While not all corporations are bad and because of capitalism we enjoy a high standard of living, there is enough greed in corporate America and enough unresolved bad in capitalism to require improvement.

Corporate greed is the Achilles Heel of the American corporatism as evidenced by the taxpayer bailout last year. While they seek to dominate us through the class system and their wealth to manipulate everything but the Chinese, they need We the People in ways they do not want to admit.

And they are afraid of We the People, otherwise the health insurance and pharmaceutical corporations would not have funded the tea baggers, birthers, deathers and other nutters to sway the argument back in July and August.

Even Obama is afraid of We the People, otherwise he would not have violated his campaign promise of transparency and prohibited We the People access to his visitor log.

If Sotomayor votes in favor of overturning previous decisions that upheld Tillman, then we will have another example of Obama going the other way.

At that time, I become angry.

Until then, just to whet all our appetites for Change We Can’t Deceive In, here is a post-screening question and answer session with Michael Moore for his new film, “Capitalism: A Love Story”.

Max Redroom

In 1980, the great director Stanley Kubrick committed to film his version of the Stephen King novel, “The Shining”. In the film as in the book, there is a scene where the son Danny writes “REDRUM” on the wall in lipstick so that when it is viewed in the mirror by his mother Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and she sees “murder”.

Max Headroom was a fictional character that was pure artificial intelligence and had a TV show in the 80s.

Max Baucus is the United States Senator from Montana and Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee who, yesterday, revealed his health care bill.

Put them all together and you get a guy named Max who was on TV today and many times in the past, whose intelligence seems as artificial as Styrofoam who has murdered his own Senate health care bill, his reputation in Congress and possibly, and hopefully, his chances of getting re-elected in Montana.

One of my favorite comments from Deep Throat, Hal Holbrook’s character in the movie “All the President’s Men”, is appropriate here: “These guys just aren’t that bright and things got a little out of hand.”

These are a few of Baucus’s comments, “It is balanced, a common sense bill that can pass the Senate,” and “It is time to act. This is our moment in history.”

Now you see why I compared Baucus’s brain to Styrofoam.

Baucus has received more money from the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries than almost any other Senator. No one expected him to deliver anything substantial on health care reform. But he thinks we believe he did.

All these guys do is lie anyway. Even Olympia Stone reportedly described the legislation he created as “watered down”.

All that time wasted in pursuit of bi-partisanship

This makes Obama that much more frustrating. I knew Baucus was ridiculous way back when. Could Obama not have exercised some leadership in July, for God’s fuck’s sake?

Could Obama not have written the health care bill he wanted back in February or March or April and told the Senate and House to make it work by September?

As I offered in a previous post, perhaps Obama was allowing the Teabaggers (and even Blue Dogs connected to the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries) to run their course and then he would take control. I’m paraphrasing my own theory—it had more to do with poker and being Captain Kirk.

Hang on. Am I talking about the same Obama who was brown nosing Wall Street Tuesday, basically asking them to regulate themselves or he’s going to hold his breath?

If Obama can call Kanye West a “jackass”, you know what he thinks about Baucus, Grassley, Palin, Enzi and the rest.

Well, today everyone balked at Baucus. Why? Because Baucus bogged us down and Baucus mocked us.

Yes, the plays on his name are important.

Repetitive ridicule is a superiority tactic most apparent in the principles of school yard/locker room bullying from my youth. I know it well because I was subjected to it mercilessly and failed in turn at it miserably.

We all need superiority over these assholes. I am tired of my government behaving the way it does—and that’s before the corporations take over everything after the Supreme Court rules in favor of Citizens United and makes multi-nationals people too!

HEAVY AGONIZED SIGH

Two Oh One Oh

It’s been a rough couple of months for progressives—and Americans—surrounding all this health care reform traveling vaudeville show.

Nothing is certain as yet, but many believe Obama pulled the rabbit out of the hat. I did not get to see the speech because I was picking up a friend at the airport.

However, I saw snippets of it and listened to some guests on the Marxist Socialist Nazi Bolshevik Communist network (MSNBC) and they believe Obama “hit one out of the park” and brought a “game changer”.

The four year conversion time table may complicate my strategy of making America a more progressive country, but we have time.

I said a couple of weeks ago that Republicans could lose even more seats in the House and the Senate in 2010 if the Democratic Party and the progressives in it play it right.

By 2012, progressive Democrats could win even more so that the Blue Dogs are significantly marginalized just in time for the asteroid to wipe us all out because the Mayans said so.

The working, middle and lower classes of America want and need help and not just because of Bush’s economic meltdown. Average Americans have a deep need to know that their government cares more about them.

Senator Tom Coburn’s belief that people should not turn to their government for help is, I believe, classism. If corporations can turn to their government for help, and Republicans agree with that, they are classists and corporatists and hypocrites.

Taxpayers pay taxes. They deserve more for their tax dollar than to have 50 cents of every one of those dollars to be given to the military for contractors and weapons manufacturers who have no oversight or accountability. That is never mentioned by the Coburns and his ilk—I mean, like.

This is their Achilles Heel. Republicans don’t really care about the American people despite the right-wing Christian and abortion and flag-waving brainwashing. This needs to be explained to the American voter provided the Supreme Court doesn’t rule in favor of Citizens United and our elections can be bought and sold by corporate America.

They can also lose from a true Christian point of view because their lack of compassion for the uninsured in favor of insurance companies is certainly un-Christian. If Christ was anything, he was progressive. Lying and scaring old people is not something Christ would approve of. Really make the old Midwesterner Bible Belters understand this and watch what happens.

Someone with guts and balls needs to exploit the Repub’s and Blue Dogs’ lies about health care reform at their town halls and defeat them in the next available election. But that requires a very good opposing candidate.

If health care reform succeeds, all the Birthers in Congress could be forced out of office because of the high poll numbers Obama could well have because of a rebounding economy and the initial successes of health care reform.

I would caution progressives not to get greedy. The goal is to win centrist and slightly-conservative Americans with health care. Americans want to know that people care about them and do not care more about illegal aliens, etc. The Republicans are going to exploit immigration. Progressives should not make the mistake of stepping into the trap.

The goal is to build a better America. That cannot be done by piling on everything all at once. Some issues must be left for another time. If you convince Americans you are for them, they will help you be for others next time.

Certain Congressional races should be targeted, but not all. Perhaps Grassley is vulnerable—and easily defeated—because of his speeches about “death panels”, obstructionism in his “Gang of Six” seat and flip flopping on “death panels” by blaming it on Sarah Palin.

Obama needs to help forcefully. With the anticipated success of health care reform by 2010, Bill Clinton also needs to campaign. His ability to gloat because of the health care victory could be extremely valuable and key to Congressional victories in many, many races.

I personally am slightly more conservative than the average progressive on some issues. But we need to take this country in another direction and swimming to the other shore after the shipwreck we all survived since 2000 is the only real way to recover. We need to get as far away from conservatism and corporatism as possible then we can slide back down when progressives begin fucking everything up in another 10-20 years.

This is a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Grassley, Coburn, Vitter and the others need to be made understand that fact in no uncertain terms.

And if they do not agree, they need to hear the same phrase I remember hearing conservatives say to liberals and leftists when I was a kid, and that was: “This is America, love it or leave it!”

On to Single Payer!

Labor Day, All My Troubles Seemed So Far Away

According to that well of socialist indoctrination, the Wikipedia, the form of the celebration for Labor Day since its inception in America in 1882 after being borrowed from Canada, involved a parade for labor and trade organizations, followed by a festival for the workers and their families.

Originally, the AFL (American Federation of Labor)—back then not yet joined with the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations)—decided that the Sunday preceding Labor Day should be called Labor Sunday to nourish the spiritual aspects of the labor movement.

So, how ironic that Obama is giving his speech to a joint session of Congress a mere two days after Labor Day on historic legislation regarding health care reform for those who have fallen through the cracks that organized labor sought to protect.

It seems that everything everyone in the Obama camp has been saying up to now, including Obama himself; has been telegraphing that he has abandoned the public option in favor of a bill in which all Americans are legally obligated to get health coverage from an insurance company just like car insurance.

This means the next time you get pulled over by a cop and he asks for registration and insurance it may mean registration with a health insurance carrier and proof that a current policy is in force so that if you are in an accident there will be proof that when taken to the emergency room, your emergency health care expenses will not be paid for by those who’ve been bearing the burden up to now.

I prefer to wait until Obama speaks before getting nasty about it.

I have been rewriting this screenplay on honor killing. That’s an even more depressing subject than health care reform. And it is almost as complex.

Honor killing is illegal in Islam. It is against Islam to kill someone without trial. Honor killing takes place only in cultures in which men have absolute control over a woman’s sexuality usually in communities where that is used to judge a family’s “honor”.

We’ve had honor killings in this country. But mostly we’ve just had violence against women in the west.

I am also writing a book about how honor killing began and the birth of honor killings shares the same history as Christianity and Judaism. Perhaps after that history becomes familiar, male domination through all things social, political and religious throughout the world may begin to be resolved and hideous things like acid attacks against teenage girls like those that are common in Afghanistan may become as ancient history.

Even if Obama doesn’t say what we want about public option health care reform, our lives haven’t been put in jeopardy or taken for innocently talking to a stranger and we haven’t had to go to a hospital because acid was thrown in our faces for a variety of insane reasons.

A Few Days Lite

That’s me in the East Village back in 1985. Glorious days.

I wasn’t happy with what I had written yesterday about Dick Cheney, so I didn’t post it and didn’t post anything in its place. Snarky is no substitute for satire.

I left the Haudenosaunee post hoping more people would read it. I believe it is a valuable piece of American history—especially for the Birthers, Deathers, Gunnutters, Seceders and whites who hate a black president for reasons of skin color as opposed to the frustration and disappointment others feel about Obama.

I am hoping the announcements made today that the Attorney General is required by law to investigate torture could lead to Cheney going away for awhile (until Obama offers a presidential pardon) for torture.

I doubt Obama will make mention of anything significant next week when he addresses Congress about health care. Hope I’m wrong. Perhaps he’ll beg the Republicans to make another attempt to negotiate. Unless he’s playing very high-stakes poker, I don’t understand him and don’t want to try right now. To me, Obama is like an African-American, accentless Schwarzenegger.

Speaking of Schwarzenegger, he must have been someone Teddy Kennedy rolled his eyes about many times at family functions in Hyannisport when Schwarzenegger tried to talk politics. So far Obama is disappointing, but I hope Schwarzenegger is disappearing.

This post serves as fair notice that the next few posts will be light on substance because I need to cram between now and Tuesday to finish a screenplay about honor killing, a very serious subject throughout much of the Muslim world.

As I explained a couple of years ago to that close personal friend of mine who’s a recording artist up the beach, I believe one aspect of the war on terror is for we and the Muslim world to encounter each other as friends and get to know each other and discuss our realities with each other. A better shared future depends on it. This is my way of carrying that forward. A more in-depth book about the bigger issue will follow.

I’m happy about the fifth season SNL DVD release on December 1st. I will buy it its first day out just as I have with the first four season releases.

All the fires and smoke hanging in the air here in Los Angeles and the high temperatures have been a bit debilitating and exhausting.

Happy Labor Day if I don’t post between now and then.

The Prejudice Opposing Health Care Reform

One day this will all be history. And I hope this generation and the ones that follow will see the important lessons to be learned. One of the most important of which is how strong is the grip by American corporations on our country and our politicians.

In theory, I suppose, American corporations are not a bad thing. But when you factor in greed, and when greed is piggybacked on war profits, oh boy…! All hell breaks loose.

Every political era has its defining moments and its defining issues. It is no different now than it was in the 60s when I was a kid. With Ted Kennedy’s death, Obama on the ropes (hopefully doing a rope-a-dope), the Democrats being weak and spineless and the Republicans also on the ropes but screaming as if vocal intimidation instead of hard hitting punches will win the match, health care reform and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the defining issues of today.

The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a defining moment in America because it helped lead to the correction of a centuries-old travesty in America, meaning slavery and discrimination against the descendents of slaves.

The possible passage of health care reform is similar to the passage of the Civil Rights Act in at least one respect which has to do with prejudice. In the case of health care reform that prejudice is based on class.

Perhaps because we are so focused on white/black and white/Hispanic racism, we have totally ignored and, therefore, not become educated about, nor had a national conversation about class prejudice. It seems that classism and class prejudice was discussed much more a century ago and through the Depression.

But that all seemed to be swept away by the American victory in WWII and to be crushed by the anti-Communist witch hunt of the McCarthy era in the early 1950s and replaced by the growing Civil Rights Movement in the mid-50s through to today with the election of America’s first African-American president and the appointment of our first Latina Supreme Court Justice.

Insurance industry CEOs and their corporate capo regimes are like the Jim Crow bigots of the Old South. They are the lords of the health care power structure just as some Whites in the Old South were the lords of that power structure.

Possible passage of a bill requiring all Americans to carry insurance so that insurance companies make money of the now uninsured 46 million means they control every aspect of health care in America just as the lords in the Jim Crow South controlled nearly all aspects of life for blacks back then.

Insurance industry CEOs view people with disdain and contempt because they know they need us just as the Old South Whites—especially the slave masters—viewed blacks with contempt and hatred and violence because they knew they needed them for as one of the primary pillars of their agrarian economy.

Just as the white power structure in America determined which blacks they approved of, the insurance industry power structure does the same with who gets an operation, who gets an operation denied and who gets coverage period.

Those in Congress now are like those Dixiecrats back in the 60s who tried to maintain their status quo on segregation until the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Jr., LBJ and others forced the Civil Rights Act through Congress.

The insurance and health industries and their Congressional minions want to maintain the status quo and put the prejudiced power structure and its profits over providing the human right of adequate health care for the People. “The People” in America has always represented a class of people which is usually the heart and soul of America—the poor and working class and small business owners.

One cannot have such a profound lack of compassion for something as fundamental to compassion itself as quality and affordable health care unless they already have a prejudice, a disdain and contempt for “the People”.

Those opposed to the principles of equality during the Civil Rights Movement often resorted to convoluted logic and confused doubletalk when trying to explain why segregation was good and how white superiority was “God’s will”.

We hear this same convoluted logic and confused doubletalk today from Republicans and Democrats opposed to health care reform on unspoken class grounds.

Others simply won’t even participate in the discussion. There are Congresspersons, Democrat and Republican, who won’t even read the bills and won’t vote for health care reform anyway.

Just as they called Martin Luther King, Jr. a “communist” because that was how their simplistic minds processed the concept of equality, they view health care reform as “socialism” because it benefits “We the People” and that is how their simplistic minds view equality.

There are those in the intelligentsia of the insurance industry power structure who use these buzzwords to inflame the situation. The ultimate irony is these racists are accusing Obama of being Hitler without making a coherent argument because they simply cannot due to a complete and total lack of logic inherent in its premise.
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The vocal, violent mob mentality of the Old South’s power structure is very similar to what we see in the town hallers, the tea baggers and those “proud to be right wing terrorists” like that guy at the recent town hall in Reading, California.

The use of terrorism was how the Old South kept control over blacks, largely through the KKK and other vigilante means. The use of the town halls is how an insurance industry prejudiced against working class is keeping control over “the People”.

Between the two political parties, the Democrats were supposed to be for the people. Democrats like Ted Kennedy were, but many are not. Just as there were blacks known as Uncle Toms back in the day who sided with the white power structure that oppressed them and other blacks, many Democrats are traitors to the causes of the People because they are not of the same class.

Obviously Ted Kennedy was also not of the working class but was instructed from a very early age to help those less fortunate and that to whom much is given much is expected. That is compassion. But now they are trying to say that Kennedy was a “centrist” and not a liberal.

Just like some Whites in the Old South, Republicans and conservative Democrats believe that only they should be in power. They, like the Old South, believe it is God’s Will that they lead our country the way they see fit and the rest of us should shut up and be happy.

Now that we have a black president, can we now engage in some amount of discussion of classism in America without detracting from the worthy and ongoing national discussion of racism in America?

I still believe this moment in history gives us a profound opportunity to change America and make this country live up to its ideals that we so loudly profess to the rest of the world.

The forces that oppose health care reform in this country do so out of a deep, deep prejudice against the poor and working class in America. It is that simple and that discussion needs to be had on a national level so that we may out those bigots before they can poison our country any further.

Beyond Teddy Kennedy

I remember watching JFK’s funeral on TV when I was six years old and crying and not really understanding why I was crying. I don’t really remember hearing the news of RFK’s assassination but I have always taken pride that he was in my hometown the week before.

Tuesday night when I was writing yesterday’s blog, the news of Ted Kennedy’s death came across. But I knew I did not really know enough about his life and career to write a respectable and respectful piece, and that I would leave it to others.

The one thought I had Tuesday night was on a theme I have touched upon a few times, which is that there are certain people in the world who you feel are pillars of strength to guard you from bad things and you almost take them for granted. Ted Kennedy has always been one of those for me. One did not have to pay as much attention because Kennedy was there to do it for us.

There has been much made today of Ted Kennedy’s greatness as a Senator. I don’t doubt that. I think what contributed to our thoughts of Kennedy’s greatness was his special place in our national family as the only surviving brother of JFK and RFK.

We as Americans will never get over the assassinations of John and Bobby. It will simply fade from our collective national consciousness as those who have any memories of them fade into the night.

Who will replace Kennedy in what he wanted to accomplish? I had hoped Kennedy would have lived long enough to make the difference in the current health care reform debate that seems to have been hijacked away from the passionate, eloquence of Kennedy by the thuggish, screaming of the town hallers.

Kennedy’s death should be a wake up call to those with progressive ideals and the skills, intellect and talent to carry them through.

This means you, Mr. President.

Perhaps your attempt at bipartisanship is learned from Ted Kennedy’s modus operandi within the Senate. Well, I believe times have changed and a different strategy is obviously needed. I don’t believe saying you promised Kennedy and just naming the health care reform bill after him is enough to get Republicans and errant Democrats on board. Many of these people seem to have lost their souls long ago.

This means you, Mr. Hatch—Moonie alumni.

There are progressives waiting to be led if you are so inclined to lead, Mr. President. We need toughness and rapid response to shifting sands caused by insurance and pharmaceutical industry con men. If we see you are waiting too long we are prepared to go it alone.

One of Reagan’s famous quotes was, “Government isn’t the solution to our problems government is the problem.” Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn said Tuesday that government was not the solution. Obviously what they want is to de-regulate corporations and to corporatize America in education, health care and Social Security, among others.

We don’t want America to become corporatized. With Kennedy gone, we must now do it ourselves, trust no one and take no prisoners.

Good luck on Saturday, Mr. President. We will all be watching for more than just a eulogy. You have a lot of rising to the occasion to do.

What would America be like if JFK and RFK had lived with Teddy in the Senate? Maybe Oliver Stone needs a new film?

All that’s left in the immediate is for Glenn Beck to make some insensitive comments about Kennedy’s death and lose even more sponsors.