Religious Abuse

I know many of you will not be happy with this. Many hold "Religion" as the "Sacred Cow" of conversations. Few, if any, want to cut into it. I don't blame you. The process requires real skill to open up closed minds, and is often messy.

Fortunately, I do not have those skills. But I do have some real observations that I feel fully qualified to speak on.

Disclosure: I practice Native Spiritual ways and I am a Pipe Carrier, which is like a Priest in most religions. I doubt that more than a handful of my readers will even know a thimbleful about this Spiritual Practice. I will tell you this: It is a Walking way of life, and I recruit no one. Most would not find it compatible, nor doable. One must be chosen to this path, not recruited.

Like so many, I was outright appalled by one Senator, standing up before the entire Senate and saying that "We must pray for one of them to not make it.." He calls himself a devout Christian. Yet he prays against the Good Will and Safety of a colleague.

To what end? To deny the passage of a bill that would provide Health Care to a sick and sorry nation, wherein more than 45K die every year for lack of access. Many more times that suffer permanent damage and financial ruin for the lack of access to adequate health care.

That so many who call themselves Christians work so diligently to deny a basic human right of decent care to their fellow citizens, is appalling. Worse, few if any, of their 'spiritual leaders' denounce this horrid, cruel, selfish behavior. Worse, many are promoting these same mindset.

Church Leaders, especially those most cult-like in C Street, are praying for not only Health Care to fail, leaving millions to die in the coming decades, but also praying for the President of The United States to die a horrible death and soon.

Yet, they are regarded with respect and considered "Men of God". Clearly, their God is the Corporate God and not the God of the People. Do these 'Men of God' think that Jesus would be pleased to see their work?

I question now, and here, if in fact they believe in Jesus or the God to which they pray. I question it because all their actions and the aim of their prayers is towards the undoing of the common good, and the death and demise of those who try to bring it to us.

If they really believed in God, or Jesus, they would be working towards that which provides the most healing, both physical and spiritual, in this nation. Not praying and moving towards all that denies us both.

I have a lot of Atheists in my stream on Twitter. They are much kinder, more compassionate towards their fellow man than are these high and might Right Wing Christian Cultists. They hold themselves personally accountable for their actions. They do not blame the Devil, nor do they seek forgiveness or Papal Indulgences for their actions.

What has it come to when Atheists have more care and compassion for their fellow man than do the Christians who claim to follow the teachings of Christ?

To be fair, I do have many good Christians in that stream as well. In my personal life I have good friends who are active in their churches, and genuine practitioners of various faiths: Muslim, Anglican, Sufi, Hindu, Shinto and Buddhists. There are even a Wiccan or two in there.

All are equally appalled at the behaviors emanating from the Christian Extremists. The lies and the fear mongering, the outright terrorizing of anyone that tries to speak truth to ignorance, has been one of the more shameful displays of our Citizens behaviors. Thanks to You Tube, everyone in every nation has had a chance to view how ignorant, loud, aggressive and just plain mean-spirited so many of our politicians and their tea bag constituents can be.

Thanks to the shoot-from-the-hip and don't think about it mentality of John McCain, Sarah Palin has been elevated to the International Stage as our national Freak Show goes on the road. She proudly displays her ignorance, her lies and her fear mongering, as the main features of her Strong Christian Faith.

Lies are so commonly used to try and rewrite history, or twist one man's words to make them something they were not. Outright lies are now considered useful common tools for the Right Wing. "Whatever it takes" seems to be the motto.

They care nothing for Nation. They care nothing for Truth. They care only for power. What God would they pray to?

Our nation, among the strongest in the world, considered a leader in the world, is demonstrating a zealous, religious extremism that is appalling to all who believe in God, and to those who do not.

It creates the appearance of Insanity, which creates mistrust about our ability to deal reasonably or fairly in world events. Other nations look at our nation and see religious leaders praying for the cruelest of deaths to afflict our president... hear our highest paid talk show hosts calling for him to fail and for everyone to do what they can to make him fail... and they allude to the need for violence... And they hear from Al Qaeda the same thing. Do they not wonder? Do we all not wonder whose side the Christian Extremists are on?

Can they not see that they are in lock step with the rantings of Osama Bin Laden and the others?

Or do they not care?

Our previous Vice Prez, Cheney, has been praying for another 9/11 attack. He does so, and so do many who follow him, so that our Nation will once again, be buckled by shock and grief, despair and his party can once again, step to the helm and steer us into oblivion, while the Religious Right prays and praises them.

There is madness out there. It is all around us. But we are more than they are. We have not forgotten who we are. There are more of us than there are of them. We can bring health and healing to this nation. They can grow tired of their failed lies and fear-mongering.

For Extremists, Religion is the mask that hides the darkest of deeds. It is the mask worn by those who seek refuge from their own behaviors.

For those of different faiths, who truly believe in their ways, compassion, generosity and healing are a walking way of life.

For those of Atheistic ways: Personal Accountability, compassion for others, and generosity are a walking way of life.

For those who condemn others who will not wear religion as a mask... I must tell you that the God you claim to believe, sees you. The mask will not protect you.

And for those who would condemn Atheists as "Godless" may I remind you, That is NOT your judgment to make.

It is up to each of us, for whatever we claim, to work on our own selves. It is not our job to condemn our brothers and sisters. It is not our job to recruit them.

No God, no "Powerful" God, would require our belief to exist. Nor would any Powerful God require us to fight one another. No God would require that we recruit anyone. Only the churches seeking power, require that.

It is our job to help one another. The one clear thing to all of us is that we are many in number, and there must be a reason for that. Obviously, we are not meant to do anything in this life, without one another being affected by it.

If you think you have found religion, and it requires that you abuse others, neglect others, tell lies.. if that is what you have found, you have my profound pity. For, all that you do, in the name of your God or your Religion is what you are held accountable for in this and any other world.

Take the Wheel Away From Crazy

Here is the theory on how insurance is supposed to work: We all pay money in to a pool. Since we don't all need care at the same time, the pool stays fairly constant. When we do need it, we need way more than we could afford without it. Insurance steps in and pays the bills from the pool.

That is how they have sold us insurance on everything from our cars to our pets to our lives and our health, for decades. We all pay in. Essentially, we are helping to pay for others when they need it, and others are paying for us when we need it.

The way insurance works now, is different. The insurance companies take our money, raise our rates at will. When we need the product, they make us fight them to get it. Even then, they will deny us access to the very thing we have been paying for all these years.

People are paying 10-25% or more, of their income, for 'health insurance'. Add to that premium, the deductibles, co-pays and the cost goes up substantially. People who are unemployed or lose their jobs can continue to access insurance at exorbitant rates. Anywhere from 80-120% or more, of their Unemployment Benefits check.

The laws governing and regulating business have been thrown out the window so that Insurance companies could grow bigger, play dirtier, give less and make higher profits.

The Public Option would change all that.

• We would not be denied Insurance.
• We would have substantially less cash outgo, and in some cases, have subsidies to pay for it.
• We would only have to worry about getting better, not about going bankrupt, dying and leaving our families with nothing but bills.
  
• We could rely on receiving good preventative care, and we could, if needed, get the best possible care for terminal diseases.
  
• It would cost employers a fraction of what it costs them now. that translates into more money into the consumer economy.
• Hospitals would be better, more efficiently run because they would have more predictable workloads. As it stands now, the ER fills up with everything from infected hangnails, heart attacks and deadly flu viruses. Being able to see a doctor by appointment for non-emergency events would free up our waiting rooms, and put less stress on our medical personnel and the facilities.
  
• Babies would be born healthier because their mothers could get prenatal care.
  
• Babies born with defects could be cared for without the family going bankrupt. There would be more babies born.
  

But the crazies are being whipped up to oppose all this. As if they have good health insurance now? They don't! They are at the whim of the Insurance companies and their 2,000 page lists of 'reasons' to deny coverage. Everything from teenage acne to a broken toe in childhood.

Single Payer would be a boon to every man, woman and child in the country. Every business, large and small, would benefit and make higher profits if they didn't have to offer such high cost benefits as "Health Insurance" with their ever increasing premiums.

The only business that would "Suffer" if you can call it that, are the Insurance Companies that have been allowed to run wild through our economy, with no rules, no leashes, and no conscience. They would have to 'settle' for profits in the hundreds of millions instead of the hundreds of billions.

Opening up Medicare, a system that is already in place and works well, would be the best possible of all worlds. It would bring more money into Medicare, improve the efficiency of Medicare and we would not need to establish yet a whole 'nother' bureaucracy to run Health Care.

What Grampa McCain and the other bought and paid for by the Insurance Companies, Politicians are saying to us, in their outright lies and misrepresentations is this:

"You are meat. You are not human. You live to serve the Insurance Companies profits. You are not entitled to good care at a reasonable cost. You are too stupid to know what is best for you and you will fight this until the Insurance Companies Win."

He knows that the 'cost cuts' to Medicare that are proposed are cutting the waste and abuse that exists in Medicare. Waste and abuse that is, much of it, profitable to the Insurance companies that sell "supplemental" insurance to seniors, and then take over their Medicare payments, and then charge extra for the very things that Medicare, by itself, would cover!

He, Grassley, and the rest of them KNOW this would be the very best thing for the economy, for our overall health, and it would cut the debt.

They are not arguing to improve this bill and make it better. They are trying to kill this bill so that they can continue to get funds from the big boys that done bought them already.

It is estimated that 40-45 thousand people a year, die for lack of Health Insurance. They have it, but it is taken away when they need it. Or, they can't afford the premiums.

What is not in the statistics is how many people go bankrupt every year because of medical costs. How many people have permanent damage or disabilities related to not being able to get treatable injuries or illnesses taken care of.

I am guessing that that number is much, much higher.

What we do know is this: The Insurance Companies give themselves billions in bonuses every year. Some of their board members get as much or more, than $1billion every year.

Who do you think is paying for that?

So, for those who say they don't want to pay for someone else's medical bills, I ask this: Do you have insurance now? If so, then when you get sick, someone else is paying for YOUR bills. If you are well, you are already paying for someone else's bills--- and those obscene bonuses.

If you don't have insurance and you are opposed to Public Option/Single Payer, then you are either wealthy enough to cover any medical expense that comes your way, or you are willing to suffer and die, or watch members of your family suffer and die, for lack of it. How far will your principles carry you?

One of the ways Societies are judged is in how they take care of their sick and their disabled.

Look around.

By even entertaining the obscene lies in opposition to major, substantial Health Care Reform, we are allowing the craziest, the stupidest and the most mean-spirited, to drive us over the financial cliff.

It is time to take the wheel away from crazy, and get us to a safer place.

Circus of the Absurd

It's not news. They call it news, but it is not news. It has not been "News" for a very long time.

I remember what News was. It was delivered by a serious journalist, with credentials, a resume of journalism, and an ability to seek out, investigate, and report the findings to the public. They were called "Reporters" at first. Later, they were called "Anchors". (The art of Fact Checking began to slip away as Reporters morphed into "News Readers" and Anchors into "Hosts"... like game shows.)

They did not render extreme points of view on a topic, subject or story. They did not seek out 'opinions', they hunted down facts like cats at a gopher hole, not afraid to wait, dig, gather and bring us the result. Getting it right was more important than getting it first.

They are all gone now. Not one network has any remnant of what News was. They still call it News. They still deliver it as if it is relevant, but it is not even informative. It is Fact Free, junk sourced, spliced together in a shallow grave of ethical standards, and it stinks.

But we keep tuning in. We keep thinking that we are watching, listening to "The News", delivered mostly by models who read scripted 'chatterful' blurbs, skimming only the surface of anything relevant, not wasting time on "in-depth", ignoring logical follow-up. The research in some cases, is nil. It is a circus of fabrications, strung together, regurgitated, and then presented as "the Issue" or "The Controversy".

To give this Fact Free fluff and stuff the air of importance, every show seems to cater to the WWE formula of absurdity to 'rivet' attention on the junk food being stuffed down our gullets. They impanel 'discussion groups', throw out statements that are premised on absurdities or outright falsehoods, and intercept any civility or decency with rudeness, greater falsehoods and encourage both sides to dig in on the most extreme angles. Directors shouting in their earpieces to "Raise it up a notch!" "Don't let him get away with that!"

The audience becomes witness to one car wreck after another, with nothing being resolved or discussed. We are left with the bad taste of being tricked, yet again, into watching a death match between extremes.

At the end of the show, we decide who "won" based on sound bytes, not on substance. We realize that we are ever more divided because, instead of coming to a reasoned conclusion on matters that affect us all, we have had inflicted on us, greater insult to our intelligence, our opinions, our sense of civility. They even ask us to "vote". Even those choices are extreme. But it gives some viewers a false sense of having a say in what is being said. Insanity in a mirror maze of illogical dialogue.

Worse, this media garbage goes out to the world. Other nations watch our behaviors, marvel at our ignorance, are stunned at how badly we treat one another. And we wonder why our allies have second thoughts about supporting us on issues and in events that are critical to our survival, progress or standing in the world?

We present ourselves as raving lunatics, or as people who take sport in taking one another down, with no consideration for what is true and what is just outright lies. Our sense of 'balance' has been skewed to only accept extreme opposites rather than factually reasoned studies, investigations, discourse. Middle ground is the abandoned territory, forgotten by Pilgrims who became distracted by the circus.

Meanwhile, we as a nation remain uninformed, or at best misinformed.

We as a nation cannot see ourselves resolving issues. We can't even envision speaking to one another to save our country. Shouting has become the weapon to silence those who would point out a better path. What treasures await for us to find them in the common ground of our best interests?

We look to media "News" to give us information, but they give us garbage. We give them our viewership and their masters rake in advertising dollars. It's not about us, it's not about Truth, it's not about Facts. It's about ratings.

As long as they get the ratings, as long as we keep showing up, tuning in, expecting it will be more substantial this time, as long as we keep turning on the TV, nothing will change.

CNN bills itself as News. They even have a handful of quality reporters. But they put their prime time programs into scripted rancor, divisive grudge matches and whipped with outright fictional statements, sourced through the most specious of outlets.

Lou Dobbs is gone. They allowed him an on air presence to spew his racist, fact-free "discussions" for too long. He signed off by ignoring his blatant abuse of the platform. He made it sound as if some great conspiracy was afoot to silence him as he toiled to bring us the most inflammatory of insanity, the Birther Conspiracy. He did his best to burn down the house that had kept him for too long. I suspect he took a dump in his dressing room, in case someone would miss his message of contempt.

He catered to and brought an audience to CNN that consisted of the most racist, least educated, most unstable viewers, who saw in him, a champion for their Trailer Trash mentality. CNN allowed this because it brought viewers, which increased their revenues.

They did not fire Lou Dobbs because they suddenly awakened to the fact that he was divisive, lying, fanning the flames of racism. They fired him because they fell to last place. People, in protest, or out of common sense, not only quit watching Dobbs' spot, they quit watching CNN -- period. It was a business decision, not a moral one.

Wolfe Blitzer has now taken over that vacated spot. His awkward attempts to keep stirring the insanity and the rancor and the prevent the discussions from becoming 'enlightening' or for either side to use quality researched facts to inform the public or defeat the extremist bullying, belies the true nature of what is, not just CNN, but all "News" programs these days: Circuses of the Absurd.

MSNBC and other networks employ the same tactics. They don't bill themselves as anything but commentary, but to keep with the extremist mentality, they put on blatant racists such as Pat Buchannan, just to make sure that the discourse doesn't stray too far from the fireworks that 'gets people's attention' and 'makes em mad' and of course, leaves us worse off, less informed, than before the panel discussion was inflicted on us.

An outraged viewership consumes more blindly, products sponsored. A thoughtful, contemplative audience is also less prone to impulse buying. Worse, they can, with awareness and facts, challenge many of the practices that make Corporate Sponsors, and Corporations that own media--- nervous. Ergo: outrage creates purchases; reasoned thinking creates potential opposition in the market place.

Both CNN and MSNBC throw us crumbs of quality. A show here or there, of merit and quality. They do that to tease us into knowing that they are capable of more and better, but that they won't give us more of the better.

If we want more, we have to wade and cut through swamps of scripted chatter, cage match panels of extremists pitted against one another based on the premises of questions or challenges based on the sleaziest fictional point/counterpoints. Come for the substance, leave because of the insanity. It's Lucy and the Football, over and over again.

It's not news anymore. It's "Opinion Wars".

We don't ever get to hear 'other educated points of view.' We have extremist propaganda hurled at us by those who don't care how much damage has been done to the facts, the psyche of the nation as a whole, or to our image to our own nation and other nations with whom we share this world. They care nothing for the damage done to the future, the children and grandchildren not yet born.

Gatekeepers

Being informed makes one more empowered and makes many, a force to be reckoned with. Being uninformed or misinformed creates a sense of fear, panic and an army of outraged willing to stampede in any direction pointed by incompetent regimes or administrations; unable to know both what is wrong nor how to fix it. It is the guarantee of Power used by every nation and by every Corporate Giant, to manipulate the population into a deeper and deeper enslavement.

It is to the benefit of oppressive governments and powerful corporations everywhere to combine their powers and essentially, be the Gatekeepers of information. Gatekeepers can block good, truthful, fact based information from getting out. Conversely, they can dispense erroneous data, manufacture and fabricate at will, to keep the population not only isolated from the rest of the world, but from listening to or trusting one another.

Communication is key to any organism functioning, thriving or withering and dying. By making people unable to communicate with one another, we effectively become disunited and less able to function cohesively in a time of crisis.

Weapon of Mass Distraction

Using only extreme points of view has only one purpose: Excitement. Like a dog fight. Nothing but blood in the ring at the end of the battle. We cheer for our dog to win. We forget that it's not supposed to be a dog fight. No one is supposed to "win". We are supposed to be informed. We are supposed to find common ground with one another and ways to overcome the damage inflicted on our nation over a generation of deregulation, melt down and allowing a Frat Boy mentality with a cowboy swagger, to steer us into needless wars.

We keep feeling that we are in this arena, and the beasts are released to savage our points of view, and we engage in battle mode and lose sight of the fact that we should not be trying to "win"--we should be, and we really need to be, as a nation, focused on how we can heal from the damages already inflicted.

Media should be an avenue by which we find our common ground, our healing. But it is not. It could be so much more, but it is not. Rather, for the sake of both ratings and keeping us disempowered, it is the greatest weapon in the Mass Distraction arsenal.

We, the greatest nation on earth, were stampeded by the most incompetent of administrations into being responsible for the slaughter innocents.

It has left us tangled in a destabilized region of the world, creating even more extremism, contemplating more soldiers in an endless war, or to withdraw and allow to happen, that which was set in motion when the war started, and then left to languish as more opportunities for destruction came into view. Do we embrace the inevitable? Or do we throw more blood and treasure into the hole of our creation?

Our extremist politicians failed to prevent us from being attacked. They use their bumbling in the Middle East, to scare us into fighting one another, in death matches of facts and fiction, hosted by media that scripts discussions to be either shouting matches between lunatics, or mindless chatter between airhead hosts.

We have become a Civil War mentality. Media is doing nothing to bring us to reason, nor to understanding or to coming together, and everything to divide us, for the sake of ratings.

People are less educated, and more misinformed in our nation than at any time in our history.

That leaves us vulnerable to exploitation on a level never before possible.

The media does not have our best interests at heart. I would dare say, they don't even have our best interests, as a nation, on their radar. Most are owned and controlled by corporations that frankly, make a whole lot more money if we don't wise up to what they are doing to make it worse.

Their greatest fear is that we, the greater thinking part of us, would come together and accomplish great things, and become a nation of free-thinking, tolerant people who do not judge or fear others based on skin color, religion, or choice of life partner. We would be unbreakable, unscareable, indivisible, if that were to happen. It would be harder to exploit us by group, ethnicity, economic strata. Government would work for US, and not for the corporate masters who demand we be enslaved, impoverished, ignorant and unhealthy.

Our Power

We need to remember that we have the power. Media may work to distract us, but it cannot work without us. Instead of being willing, helpless accomplices to our own detriment, we can demand from them, more and better. We can make it so that those who run the media, in order to survive as a corporate entity, can only do so if we are pleased with them adhering to a standard of civility, investigation, research, and quality of information.

They can work to earn us, or they can risk losing us.
Government will do what the people allow them to get away with; or they will do what the people deem is in our general best interests. They will be responsive to us if we stay informed and united.

Government and Corporations fear that we will become united. That would mean that our Tax dollars go to helping our people, not as payoffs to billionaires who belong to their clubs, and who made their fortunes by exploiting our resources and then polluting our air, putrefying our waters and poisoning our arable lands.

Corporations will have to behave in a responsible way. Welfare will be for citizens who need it, not for Corporations who give billion dollar bonuses to their executives. Money is a resource. We can become Gatekeepers of that resource if we become informed.

There is so much we can do if we become informed. To become informed, we are going to have to find a way to listen to one another. We can't do that if we engage our energies and our efforts to match the force of the willfully ignorant and those whose mission in this world is to keep us divided. We can step aside and let them fight the fog while we carry on, building and repairing.

They will destroy themselves if there is no common enemy for them to engage. They have already begun to cannibalize themselves as a natural part of their process. The more we engage them directly, the more we delay their inevitable demise as a force or even a movement.

By engaging on the level where their ignorance is being revealed, without directly engaging them as that ignorance, they lose status in their peer group. In fact, the group is forced to countenance their ideas as making them vulnerable or subject to ridicule. They cannot martyr themselves, nor can they be Champions. They become part of the mass of wrong thinking and cannot earn our individual attention. They have to seek our our words to know how we responded. We no longer deliver to their door. They have to work for it. Drain their energy.

Since the greater the ignorance, (and their endeavor is solely aimed at elevating Ignorance and Fear) the more fragile the ego, Ego will attempt to gain status. If it cannot gain status by direct person-to-person engagement and remains secondary to "Ideas" or "Ideals" , it will seek standing amongst its peers. The peers are also Ego seeking, and they will then battle amongst themselves.

Meanwhile, we have been hard at work, working towards what we know needs to be done in this Country, in order to heal, repair and rebuild. By the time the opposition runs out of steam and they will because they will have exhausted it fighting amongst themselves, we will be so far ahead of them, we won't even hear their whimpers. However, each time we elevate them to Person of Importance status by engaging them by name, rather than by flawed idealism and percussive jingoism, they become heroic or at least 'noticed' by their peers, even for that brief time.

Essentially, they seek us out to engage personally, not for sharing ideas, but rather, to be the name of the thorn in our side--big enough to bother us, disturb our calm and create a cage match, event to raise their profile among their peers. They need US to do that for them. We can choose to respond to the ideas, the words, without responding to the person directly, and without elevating that person, for that precious 15 min of fame.

If they want to engage, they will have to find a way to do it that is civil, respectful or they will find they are left out of the greater functioning system, and less able to have an effect/impact on how the future is shaped.

I'm on Twitter. @catawu . I find that I often fall into the sport of engaging in cage matches with extremists who troll social media for the sole purpose of creating a presence that bends the arc of information away from truth, away from progress, away from healing, towards fictional realms of fear and ignorance.

I do that because I am a scrappy person by nature. It's in my make up to be in-your-face against liars, racists and bullies. I get my buttons pushed because I allow my buttons to be pushed. I engage because I don't want to just leave that crap out there...

But I have been rethinking my approach lately. We have only so much energy and so much time. If I waste it in these worthless cage matches, or trying to inform and enlighten those whose intention is to create and support false doctrines, it leaves me with less energy and time to devote to real discussions with real people who are working to make it better. Fix and repair what is left of our nation. Pass Health Care so that I, my friends and millions I will never meet or know, will not be financially gutted before they die from lack of health care.

@Karoli had an excellent posting on her blog, Drums and Whistles, about disengaging from the bloodsport aspects of social media. http://www.drumsnwhistles.com/ "The Left Doth Protest Too Much" and it made real sense to me.

Another Tweeter, @cynthiaboaz has a more Ghandiesque approach to social media and engaging the attackers. She makes real sense in her approach.

I came to realize that we all have something really important to bring to the discussion. We all have different styles. We all have different ideas. What we have in common is a burning desire to overcome the tyranny of Corporate induced "Information Soup" that offers very little substance, consumes our attention, and detours us away from our common ground, and any attempt to reach it and help ourselves by helping one another.

We have different parts of the Big Picture. We all bring something. We have different styles and we can learn from one another.

Some of us will engage in cage matches, some of us will encourage boycotts of programs or hosts that are the most extreme, some of us will gently but firmly, mirror to the attacker, what they are doing.

What we need to do, each in our own way, is to support one another's efforts where we see the value, even if we are not using the same approach.

When we unite and stick together on the key points of issues that are important to us, corporations and our government, is forced to concede to us, that which is ours, has been ours all along: The Right to choose to not have inflicted upon us, propaganda, and manufactured divisiveness.

We can choose to not accept, either by ignorance or habit, that which they project into the media, to steer us into greater divisiveness. We can turn it off. We can turn off the "news" that is not news. We can turn off the impulse to engage when red meat is thrown into our territory. We can choose to ignore them completely. That will drain their strength, and they will turn in a direction where they think they can have an impact, or they will fade away.

We can offer them nothing. Not even our engaged opposition to their outrageous, inflammatory statements. We can spend that time and energy, working with those who are working to help us and to repair this nation.

I still have the urge to take a swing at them. It's in my make up. But I have been watching and learning from others, and you will find that I am disengaging from them more than I am engaging them. I will still pursue politicians and make them aware that I am aware. I might occasionally go after an asshat that has a public stream, where I can expose their lies and motives and hypocrisy.... but most of my time will be spent behind the scenes, working to support those who are doing the hard work, nose to the grindstone, and who could use a hand from time to time.

I will still enjoy my friends ravaging the ignorant inflammatory, with the ease and alacrity of swatting a fly. I will still support my friends whose steely courage in demanding answers, truth and responses, makes them superstars in my book.

I will do what I do best in the way that I do it better than most. I will be a helper, a supporter, and will add value where I have value to add. I will more actively seek out those who are doing the nuts and bolts constructive repairs and see where I can add to it and help out.

There will still be wars raging, attacks flying, and hysterical repertoire. I will still High Five my battle weary compatriots, and reach to uplift those who have been battered and bruised. There will still be anger, lies and stunning ignorance... but I will endeavor to ignore it and continue on with my work, knowing that my energies and time in this world are finite resources.

I think most of us like to go to the circus. It's entertaining. But few if any of us, really want to live there. We just need to wake up and realize that we can leave, anytime. And when the show is on rerun loops every 12 minutes, as many "News" networks are, we should just realize that it is not going to change, get any better, unless we leave and come back later--maybe. Maybe not come back at all.


*I mention CNN & MSNBC because they can do better. FOX has a stated goal of destroying our nation by destroying our President, by lying and grossly misrepresenting issues. Anyone that watches FOX is beyond my ability to reason or to understand.

Insurance as Oxymoron

Insurance doesn't mean you get what you pay for. There is no insurance in Insurance unless you own the Insurance Company.

Maybe Insurance Companies are in the wrong business?

Watching the way insurance companies conduct their business, and what they are doing now, makes me wonder about what the term "Insurance" has come to mean. With all the denials of legitimate claims, and of throwing people out of the plan if they get sick or injured, and the unregulated raising of premiums to astronomical rates, it would seem that the term "Insurance Company" means that only the Insurance Company will get any money.

They have declining enrollment and manage to increase their profits, and bonuses in what would seem to be a contrary logic.

We are a captive market. The insurance companies are unregulated. Any regulations we manage to get onto them, their lobbyists will buy back before dark tonight. They cannot be trusted. People suffer and die because of their tactics. Their profits are solely blood money.

Now they fight us by fear mongering, and their goal is to genuinely terrify people into opposing, literally, the one thing that can save us all. They are spending more than a million dollars a day to set us apart from our own best interests.

It's like a ship taking on water. People are frantically bailing to save us all, while others are attacking them, and others are jabbing more holes in the hull saying "water should be allowed to seek it's own level!" That somehow we are going against the very laws of nature by trying to get us all to a healthy and safe shore in the future.

The opposition is frantic, ignorant and in some cases, just plain crazy.

They claim that they cannot survive if Health Care passes. Bookstores survived libraries, FEDEX and UPS, etc, survive the Government run mail delivery services.

But Insurance companies, I believe, mean it when they say they cannot survive government health care. They have managed to carve out a majority of Medicare benefits for themselves in the guise of "Supplemental" insurance for seniors, which becomes HMO insurance and Seniors then have to fight tightwad corporate types for the basic care and medications they need, and pay more and more out of pocket expenses themselves. They choose between medication and food. Health care and rent. So much for the golden years.

With the new legislation, consumers would have a choice. There would no longer be the captive economy and the desperate families.

Insurance companies don't want you if you are sick, ever were sick, ever will become injured or sick. That cuts into their bottom line, their big bonuses. What is amazing about this whole riot of violence and racism which are being injected into the debate by astroturf pros working for the Insurance Companies, is that they don't want those whom they won't accept, to have ANY kind of insurance.

Why? Because they need to have examples out there, everyone knows a horror story of bankruptcy or death due to lack of care, they need to have that sword dangling over the heads of the fearful to keep them in the fold, paying the increasing premiums, escalating deductibles, and who can be and are, dumped without notice, when they might actually need or use INSURANCE.

Apparently, Insurance companies are in the "give us your money" business. They cannot efficiently, effectively nor even compassionately provide service or care to customers.

Maybe it is time for the Health Insurance Companies that cannot provide services, coverage and care, to get out of the Health Insurance business and go into something else. Something that gives them billions of dollars, is unregulated, and that people cannot opt out of, and only a select few can opt into.

Health insurance, so far, seems to be the only thing that gives them what they crave and what they expect.

Meanwhile, the government, with our money, can provide for us, decent health care, and our thoughts can turn to other things and our energies spent on other endeavors, once the fear of bankruptcy or death because of health care is removed from the table.

Once we no longer have to fear that our child will not get medical help when needed, or that we would have to choose between insurance and food, insurance and medication, insurance and rent---we might be able to start moving ahead in this world.

Once we get real health care reform, you can bet the Insurance companies will come bearing gifts. Offering low-cost alternatives, and a PR endeavor that will dazzle even those of us who think we know what to expect. Behind the scenes, their lobbyists will be buying our representatives in government. They will try to weedle their way into it the way they have into Medicare, and begin overcharging on the new one the way they have been the Medicare system (14% is the conservative estimate on the over-cost).

Big corporations get wealthy by taking the resources of our country for their own private profit: Oil, water, timber, minerals... and now our health, life and death, under threat of bankruptcy, or the loss of a loved on, is the biggest target for corporate takeover.

It is up to us to save ourselves, and our nation, from the corporate greed that has, on every level, gotten wealthy at our expense.

"If you have your health," so they say, "You have everything". Don't let them continue to take that from us. Time for us to become a healthier, stronger nation. A lot of work to be done.

Whimpering Dogs

Start on the Blue Dogs. You'll recognize them easily enough. They have control over the finance committees on this thing. Their leashes are firmly in the hands of Insurance Lobbyists. They have a big problem seeing the needs of the people over the big dollars given to them by the Insurance Lobbyists.

Blue Dogs would love to see you, your children, die before they would allow you to have access to affordable, reasonable, decent healthcare. How do I know? Because it is happening everyday. They know it, and they ignore it. They are getting their share of blood money.

Endless Sacrifice

Religion as Power

These are strange times indeed.

The world is both coming unglued as nations go to war with other nations and the wars within themselves.

Iran’s Theocracy is coming unhinged. The once revered and unquestioned Mullahs, who gained more and more power by playing on the religious fears of the people, while warping the doctrines of Mohammed, are now revealed as shallow, greedy, abusive, monsters whose only ambition is to have all power unto them, and to them only.

Politicians to them, are mere puppets, a show for the people, to make them believe they have any control over their lives, or a say in how their nation is governed. Women are treated as breeders, with no voice and no rights, subjected to horrors of abuse, rape and murder at the whim of the all powerful male dominated culture.

The Mullahs have been revealed in Iran as frauds and hypocrites. They go against the teachings of their holy books and violate every tenant to grab and hold power, and the illusions of piety, and they designate themselves as the Chosen, the Holy Men.

They lie, they cheat, they torture, rape, murder, their own people in their name for God. They perform desecrations and call themselves “holy”. They are revealed and the people are in revolt. They are seen through and the people, with non-violence, stand up to them and with courage and sacrifice, they stand up against what they know is wrong.

They have no weapons. They have only their lives. They defy what is evil and which has overpowered them for so long. Theirs is an endless sacrifice.

Meanwhile, corrupt nations support the corrupt Iranian leadership. China, Russia, North Korea, all who want the oil, applaud the barbaric and cheer on the heathens masquerading as holy men.

Iran claims to be the voice of Moslem People the world over. Yet, they ignore the fate of Uighurs, who are attacked for their Moslem faith in nations such as China.

Clearly, this is not about any God by any name other than Oil, Power, Money.

Parallel Politics

The Founding Fathers of the United States foresaw the downfall of our nation and what could prevent it. They set in place the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. They knew that for our nation to endure, we must have a clear separation between Church and State.

Religious Zealots, such as we have seen in Iran, are what brings down a system that relies all or in part, on the participation and agreement of Religious Leaders.

Political Power and Religious Power, if combined, rob the citizens of their freedoms to choose their religions, or to choose not to follow any religion. If we are required to follow any religious tenet as a qualification for to enjoy the full rights and privileges of citizenship, we start down a road that leads our nation and its politics, into the darkest corruptions of power.

Further, once Religion becomes the key, the driving force behind politics and the motives of politicians, a war within begins. Which religion? Which club do you have to belong to in order to participate in your own government? Will Catholics go to war with Lutherans? Will Baptists battle the Nazarenes? Will Christians make other religions ‘lesser religions’? And will they, like the Mullahs, battle it out amongst themselves, at our expense, for the most powerful seat in the land?

As religious demagogues worm their way into our political discussions, a place where they have no right to be, are we not inching our way towards a Theocratic Ruled Nation?

We have seen the rule of “Separation between Church and State” eroded more and more each election. We have seen our laws warped and twisted to accommodate the religious interests at the cost of our health, our economy and our sense of security.

We are told, and too many are conditioned, to just believe without question, follow without asking, the leadership of those who pretend to be men of Religion, but who are in fact, only men of Politics and Power.

Now, it is time for us all to take a good look at Iran, and how it got that way. How we, the USA, with all our Power, overthrew their democracy and installed the Shah, who used torture and abuses to control the people. We protected him, and he gave us all the oil we wanted.

It was only a matter of time before the people became intolerant and overthrew our puppet. They were lead by a powerful force, a religious zeal that made them unstoppable. In their desire to overthrow the corrupt, and to have their freedom of religion returned to them, they installed a powerful religious zealot, who oppressed them for reasons of his own. They went from a Democracy, to an Autocracy, to a Theocracy … and now they want Democracy. They want not just freedom, but equality.

Meanwhile, our nation, born as a Democracy, inches its way into a theocracy.

A book we all must read to understand how people are turning religion into power, and justifying crimes against Humanity, in the name of Power, and how our government is being subverted into a Theocracy, is “THE FAMILY” , by Jeff Sharlet.

It calls itself a Church, but it is a cult. They twist the meanings of right and wrong into something appalling. They justify every infidelity, every crime, even the rape of children as okay, because they consider themselves “chosen by God” and given “power” by God and therefore they can do no wrong, and nothing they do can be considered wrong.

It is quite possibly the most dangerous cult in our history. It targets all the seats of power, and seeks to control all the levers of power. Their ambition does not stop at our borders. They seek to conquer the world using our blood and treasure.

They extol the virtues of Hitler, Pol Pot, Suharto and every villain we have ever despised, as people who were "chosen for power by God" and that their tactics were masterful. They seek to emulate the most evil and their most vile ways. This is no 'Church' my friends. This is a cult blatantly seeking absolute power.

They seek to divide marriages, families and all that is loved in this world. They seek to displace the love of family, and of country, with the worship of their Leader and his words, regardless of how much they contradict scripture, common sense, or even what he himself has just said, shall be above question.

Anytime you are taught to obey without question, any mortal, you are following a madman. And yet, for the past 70 years, some very influential politicians have been doing just that. Their allegiance to their country falls far from oath to obey their leader, David Coe. Their marriage, their family, all without value in the eyes of their cult. No wonder so many who were climbing the ladder of power have fallen on the bonfires of infidelity. To them, they were doing no wrong. They could do no wrong. They were the Chosen.

They say they are building a kingdom so that Christ can return. Judging from what I have seen of their constructions, the last thing they would want to see is Christ walking around in the corruption and the destruction they have created.

I firmly believe that all religious cults, or any cult that prays on a religious belief, have at their mast, a non-believer, the biggest hypocrite of all. A true believer would know that force, intimidation and hypocrisy are wrong.

A true believer would know that committing crimes, infidelity, murder and wars are not pleasing to the God they pretend to worship.

But a hypocrite knows how to manipulate the undereducated, the weak-minded, the fearful, and make them an army. It is that army that they are building, within the marbled and gilded halls of our government, that will lead us all into the downfall the Founding Fathers warned us against.

They attempt to change history, creating a false beginning and purpose of our nation. They want to teach what they preach, and make fiction hold sway over the truth. They want to say that our nation was founded on Religious principals. It was not. Our nation was founded as a trading outpost for an empire that competed with other empires for the resources of the known world.

We fought to keep those resources as our own. We stole the lands and the resources from the Indians who had facilitated both our survival in this new land, and our success in the wars against other nations. We thanked them with broken treaties, abuses, and false history.

That fiction has weakened us. Now, to create a fiction that we were Chosen ones, and that we have done no wrong, leaves us only to follow those who call themselves “the Chosen”, and their warped hypocrisy, into a cauldron of our own destruction.

Read the book. I am. Learn what we must do to save our Democracy from those who would twist it into a Theocracy. Do it now, before we are dying in the streets, chased by thugs who have the power of our government telling them it is okay to shoot us down in the streets as we protest.

We can come together now, and overthrow the cult that is overthrowing our government, or we can wait and see how much we can stand to lose before we take to the streets in endless sacrifices.

Asking: What Would Charlie Do?

Divide and Conquer

It's all they know. Charlie Manson wanted absolute power. He was willing to murder or have others murder for him, complete random strangers, in order to, in his twisted mind, have a race war spark up and set Whites against Blacks. "Helter Skelter" was his mission.

He figured that the races would fight and tear each other down until both were so weak, that all he had to do was stroll in and take over what was left.

Opportunity Squandered

It seems that the GOP has taken a few pages from the Playbook of Charlie Manson. Their wingnut conspiracies, laughable at best, being touted on major network/cable media as if valid.

The GOP had an opportunity to distinguish itself as NOT the party of Bush-Cheney and all the hideous baggage that comes with that, but as hard-working, team spirited, ready to work with the new Administration to start fixing some major problems, and building our nation back up, better than before.

They could have been a part of that. But they chose instead to snarl, bite, sabotage, sulk and become the party of "NO". They offered a counter budget proposal that had no numbers in it. Just tax breaks for the very wealthy, and perhaps, a few pennies for you and I. A 14 page document (including cover and backing) with NO numbers! Waved on high, at a press conference, as their 'Alternative budget.'

Health Care, which would make our nation able to compete with all the other nations who presently have the advantage of National Health Care, is the target they are aiming at now. They have no alternative to offer. In fact, after touting they would have one, they then proudly proclaimed, they didn't have to offer one. They just want this one to fail.

More importantly, they want it to fail so they can bring down the most intelligent, articulate, visionary president of our lifetime. "It will be his Waterloo..." Senator Kane said in his teleconference with other Republicans.

As this battle for power plays out, people are losing their jobs, their homes, their insurance. People are dying. The GOP is willing to allow random people to die so that they can have this war between themselves and one man.

To add to the noise, is a constant bleating of wingnuts and their fear conspiracies. "Terrorist, Muslim, Angry Black Man..." which now devolves into the outright "Racist!" being screamed from the airwaves by some of the biggest racists ever to grab a microphone. Bad enough those rife buzzwords get repeated on other media, but worse still, the totally insane "Birthers" who now have a solid place in the CNN format in the form of Lou Dobbs.

Everything is designed to not only make us mistrust Obama and defeat any of the good work he tries to do, but moreover, to once again rip this nation apart; Black v White. Riots in the streets.

That, my friends, is where they want this to go.
Keeping us divided is how they can conquer us. They? Who they? They are those who, while we are busy calling each other names, throwing rocks at each other, lynching, and yelling... quietly access the Biggest Piggy Bank ever: Tax Dollars.

Tax dollars that go into the war machine. Halliburton, KBR, are the best known. Tax dollars that come from taking our resources, OURS, the oil, the minerals, the timber and the water... and not paying for it. Further, getting 'tax breaks' for taking it and making themselves wealthy. Getting Bonus money, such as when W just handed an extra $8Billion to the oil companies, at the same time they brought in, what was at that time, RECORD profits. ("Have to reward them for their good work so they can keep doin' it.") He did that with the stroke of a pen.

And before we even knew the economy was in trouble, he gave over $80 Billion to AIG, and billions more to other companies-- All major contributors to his campaign, with not a word to congress or anyone.

There is money to be made and money for the taking as long as we stay divided, and at war amongst ourselves. An endless war fueled by fear, lies, and mindless attacks.

Those clown cars keep coming because someone is filling them, and giving them momentum to crash into our line of sight. At the cost of our nation's security, the lives of real people, and the future itself, these wingnuts are being flung into view to distract us until we lose sight of the work to be done.

The next election is already being funded by Insurance companies who are paying $1 Million or more, per day, to defeat legislation that will do two things: Give access to healthcare to tens of millions of our own people and force, by the competition of a public option, Insurance companies to compete for our business and play fair.

The delay past the summer break is time for them to keep hammering on the airwaves how bad it is to have healthcare for everyone. More time to fill the air with lies about what the program is and can or will do. They stand to make hundreds of billions in profits if they can defeat this healthcare legislation. They can only defeat this legislation if they get us to defeat it for them by being distracted...or...

...if they can play the biggest distraction our country has ever known: RACE Wars.

That is why you have Birthers, and racist signs held by Teabaggers, racist emails being sent around by Republican hard core.

They want to defeat this, regardless of who or how many die. They need a race war to make it possible. They have, in effect, taken a page out of the playbook of the biggest crazy we have ever put in prison: Charles Manson.

Helter Skelter, Y'all

So, as they are sitting in their offices, and in their C Street refuge, rest assured, they are not trying to think of how to help their constituents; not trying to fix all or any of what is broken. They are brainstorming to to please their masters: The insurance companies, the oil companies, the war machines, and the Financial Hogs at the trough.

Somewhere, in a lonely isolated cell, sits a crazy man with a swastika carved into his forehead. His rage is still hot, and he knows he was ahead of his time. That were he free today, he would be the God of the GOP, and they would come to him for all their ideas... and he would see to it that people died, there was fear, there was terror, there was suspicion between the races.

Somewhere, in a GOP office, a Bluedog sits, confused as to whom he is supposed to serve. He is handed a playbook and told to go out and follow this script... And if there should come a time of doubt or crisis, they need only ask "WWCD?"

Playing the Crazy Card

Truth Hurts

Watching the GOP clown car crash and burn repeatedly has become a macabre event that repeats itself with ever more insane variations, daily, if not hourly.

Having nothing constructive to offer to government nor their constituencies, politicians on the Far Right went to the only deck of trump cards they had: "We are not like them. We have morals. God is on our side. Family Values. Tax breaks for the wealthy. Jesus Saved US."

They pointed to Clinton's peccadilloes as the 'shame of the nation!' and demanded his resignation. (I hear a rap beat in the background. Is that you, Michael Steele?) And it was true. Clinton's affair, was disgraceful. Not to our nation, but to himself and his marriage. They got over it. Republicans never did. That was their Clarion Call to arms.

Then came Bush. For some reason, the Right-to-Lifers fell for a man who distinguished himself by executing more prisoners than any other governor, ever. Even those who were innocent, were not allowed to get a new trial because the first one was good enough. They adored him.

So did their big bucks buddies. Every business he ever touched, he failed. His father's influence is all that ever saved him, financially. Arabs were happy to bail out Baby Bush, and gain influence in the US Government, and a friend in a CIA Chief, later VP, later President.
They loved him.

He took the nation from surplus into deep recession, all the while, cutting taxes for the wealthy, loosening the regulations that had kept the markets in balance and under control. He ignored the warnings from his own Security Advisers, (most notably, Richard Clark) and never read a Presidential Daily Briefing until after 9/11. He dismissed those who warned us of the greatest attack on our soil, ever--and the Right Wing gave him a bullhorn, a pile of smoking rubble to stand on, and called him a hero. Mission Accomplished.

The illusion was in full swing. Smoke, mirrors, even Condi Rice as an undulating assistant, kept us all from knowing the truth or daring to question, under the penalty of being called 'Traitor!', the wisdom of the White House and their League of distinguished radical idiots.

We went into wars we never would have had to enter, had the man just comprehended National Security in the first place. But the mantra was "He has kept us safe for 8 years!".

The truth is, he kept us terrified by his lies and his stupidity, for 8 years. Jesus, save us!

Having all the power was too much for the banner carriers of the Illusion to handle. Lies issued forth from the fountains of ignorance and arrogance at a rate that was hard to believe, much less sustain.

The truth started to leak out. There was the 'Wide Stance' of Larry Craig. Who pleaded guilty and then tried to plead not guilty. He said he would resign, then said he would never resign. One of the vocal critics of Clinton, himself caught in a most compromising and illegal sex scandal in a bathroom stall in a public venue.

Prior to him, Mark Foley, who should have been arrested for child molest, pursued young male pages. Not exactly the homophobic "Christian" values that are touted from the GOP on a steady basis.

Mark Foley was the exception, until "Wide Stance". Now, GOP had a problem. At least the Dems indiscretions were hetero. And the Dems never held themselves up as the Moral center of the Universe. GOP did, and does.

Now, the juggling act became a bit unwieldy. Gay, molesters, stalkers, conflicted with the hallowed image of the GOP. They could ignore the deaths, thousands and thousands of deaths, as long as women were being denied access to life saving abortions, they were happy. Life is a relative thing to the Right Wing. It only has value before first breath. After that, no value at all. Jesus Save us, all!

Still trying to present themselves and their party as the paragon of virtue, the GOP scrambled, badly, and rolled out the Palin Phenomenon. She was pretty. She could draw a crowd. She praised the shouts of of "Racist!" and "Kill HIM!" with "Bless you." Racists loved her. The rest of us saw through her rambling disconnected word trainwrecks and the election went to someone who was qualified, and history was made.

She blamed everyone else for her failures, ignore that the handprints at the scenes of the crimes were all hers. She bashed her own campaign ('I looked around and could not find one person to pray with..' indicating that the GOP were Godless?) and then whined when the campaign started bashing back. Her lies being exposed, and her alienating more people all the time, to her backwards thinking, is 'how you win elections', regardless of the fact that she has lost the election and has now quit the one job she had to finish, saying she's not a 'quitter'.

Saying one thing and doing another is exactly what the GOP has become. Only now, it shows. She IS the GOP, in a nutshell.

Senator John Ensign, R-Nevada, his tanned Marlboro Cowboy looks, expensive hairstyle, bleached smile, and wealthy family, was being groomed as a contender for 2012. He had the Good Looks the GOP was looking for. Style over substance. Smile baby, you are on.. oh dear, you had an affair? He dumped his Twitter account, made his announcement, and claimed to be the victim of an extortion plot by an unscrupulous lover and her family. (Jesus answered our prayahs! He's NOT Gay! We are saved, Martha! We are saved!)

It was about to get worse. But before it did, Governor Sanford, of South Carolina, became only the latest in the bizarre tumbles from Grace. He staged a disappearing act, on Father's Day, and we now know that he was not hiking the Appalachian trail on Naked Hiking Day, but rather indulging in the pleasure trail of Argentina. (We are saved again! He's not gay!)

Ensign was now back burner, bottom of the bird cage, so 'yesterday'. Wide Stance was tamed down to just a closeted old man who lies to his family. Foley was allowed to scamper off into oblivion.

But, almost as if there was a competition to see who could wear the Crazy Crown for the GOP, Palin jumped in to quit her job and do it because she was not a quitter. Her rambling reading of the GOP talking points scrabble board had question marks popping up like prairie dogs in the assembled media. Her answers only brought out more question marks. Mostly, she blamed the media. The next day, just to stay on the news cycle, elbowing out other contenders, she called another presser, to explain to the media why it was not her fault and why quitting is her way of succeeding. She did this wearing waders, sporting a brand new French Manicure (which is what we all do when we are going to gut fish for three days at fish camp) and with her hair and make up just perfect, (again, what we all do).

The crown secured, Ensign was almost irrelevent, Sanford's lovesick interviews were both comical and pathetic, Palin was the clear winner of the Loser of the Week title. But, apparently, she could not find anyone to pray with. She got blasted by those formerly in her camp, the ex boyfriend of her unmarried daughter, former campaign staffers, and former allies in her own party, in her own State of "Al LASK UH". Jesus Save Us!

And then, almost as if on cue, Ensign surfaces like a Salmon leaping for the bait, and here comes the letter, handwritten mind you, that is his dismissal of his mistress from his life. Bad enough that, but then it got worse. Turns out that another stalwart GOP Senator, Coburn, from Oklahoma, helped him draft it. Having your friends help you write a letter to someone you had sex with shows a lot of larger issues, flaws in the man, than anything up until this point.

Then it got worse. Turns out that after he wrote the letter, he restarted the affair. Some are painting him as a sexual predator, stalking his mistress, using his authority as her boss to engage her, repeatedly.

Then it got even worse. Turns out that Ensign, in trying to cover up this mess, had his Daddy come in and pay off the mistress! When a 51 yr. Old man, with great hair, rugged outdoor looks, bleached teeth, expensive suits, being groomed for 2012 has to have a buddy write his Dear Jane letter and his Daddy pay off his bimbo, what is left to hold up the facade?

And now, as I come to the conclusion of this piece, Palin is fishing for more excuses, her lies stinking up the place like dead fish; Ensign is sucking his thumb in a corner somewhere, being coddled by his mommy and daddy; Sanford is whimpering and pining for Argentina, trying to fall back in love with his wife; Larry Craig is secretly practicing his wide stance in public bathrooms in airports all over the nation; and Mark Foley is just graduating from his "Pray Away the Gay" classes. Heads are spinning trying to keep up with the Clown Car of GOP scandals.

The polished illusion has cracked, shattered and crumbled. Yet, hard core conservatives are continuing to mask their racism as "Teaparties", which are denying they are astroturfed, but which are clearly sponsored by the same people who sponsor the WWE mentality of FOX.

Lost in all of this is government. Hypocrites are entertaining. They can even bring down a party. But we end up with a competitive chaos that makes a lot of noise, spins wheels and deals, but at the end of the day, we still don't have Healthcare. We still have not repealed Don't Ask, Don't Tell. We still have not closed Gitmo. Banks and Credit Card Companies are still practicing Usary and killing the economy that feeds it.

The GOP has, by playing the Crazy Card, distracted us from all that we, as a nation, should be doing the work on to make this a better place for our children and the children yet to come.

At the end of the day, the work is not only not finished, it has really not even begun. We need to focus people. Focus on the work that needs to be done and those who should be doing it. The rest is just distraction.

It's loud, it's noisy. It's full of lies and it is full of hate and violence. But those are not minds we can change because they don't want to change. They only want to stop us from doing the work we must do to save ourselves.

They are the minority. They are the crazy, lying, batshit nutso minority. Their only power left is the power of distraction. Let's fool them by not being tricked into failing to pay attention.

We can choose to do the important work, or just to linger over the writhing, undulating hypocrisy that is the GOP. They are as fake as their sunbed tans, bleached teeth, eye lifts. We know that, now move on.

Asking The Wrong Questions- Healthcare

There is a concerted obstructionist policy coming from the GOP and some lame-brained dems who think that everything this country does for health care should be measured against "how it will pay for itself", as if our taxes are not for helping our people.

The Healthcare Companies, the ones who have doubled and quadrupled their profits every quarter, while denying legitimate claims, and denying access to those who need it, have lobbied congress heavier than at anytime past. There are 6 healthcare lobbyists per congressman in DC.

Aside from false ads that want us to think that government health care will destroy our system and put government between us and our doctors, they also want us to think that healthcare should be made to pay for itself.

Primarily, they want us to forget that it is the bean counters and clerks that are standing between us and our doctors, and who prevent us from getting treatments and who deny legitimate claims. People suffer and die from these practices as they exist today. People go bankrupt from these practices as they exist today. People lose their homes and commit suicide from these practices as they exist today.

Who would not want to change this? Who would not want a more fair and equitable system? Employers want it. It would cut their costs dramatically. People want it as it would mean we would be able to treat illnesses before they became more serious. People could make easier decisions regarding their pregnancies and the health of their children. More children with serious health issues would be allowed to live, because the costs would not bankrupt the parents, and so if the suffering of that child was not an issue, and that should please the Lifers because now their tax dollars can go to the care and keeping of those born with multiple traumatic defects.

Insurance companies don't want it. They don't want to have to compete for a fair price for their product. They don't want to have to be held to a standard of compassion and fairness that the government would be held to. They don't want people to feel like they have a choice. They just want the money to come to them.

Health Insurance companies COULD still make a very good profit if a public option was their direct competition. They just could not make the obscene profits while denying services to those who have already paid for them. That is their problem.

Now, for the latest Straw Man the opposition to the Public Option Health Care. "How is this going to pay for itself?"

It doesn't have to. This is what we do to take care of our own. This is what we do to protect the health and safety of our own. This is what we do to protect our economy. This is what we do to protect the public at large.

No one asks how the Military is going to pay for itself. No one asks how the war is going to pay for itself. We assume both of those are to protect us, and our way of life.

Health care is no different.

But if "Paying for itself" is a criteria in Congress, let us start asking that about a lot more: About the military, the wars, the health care that the Congress receives, about the office help and about their salaries, their junkets, and a whole slew of other "costly" issues.

Now, get on it.

Outrage

When they Do it To Our People

The horrific news of Lisa Ling and Euna Lee being abducted near the border of North Korea while doing a story about North Korea was chilling. Their months of imprisonment, without contact with their families, culminating in a secret trial wherein they were found guilty of crimes against the State and sentenced to 12 years hard labor, an outrage to all Americans.

North Korea is known for its abuses and neglect of its own citizens. Known for torture and abuses of prisoners and for its slave labor camps.

The reaction of so many in our country has run the gamut from outrage, grief to the almost comically stupid, and to an extreme where some are either ready to declare war on North Korea or the other extreme of making a joke of their capture and abuse by saying "Let them do Heroic Hard Labor". That last quote was from a self-involved politically feisty Twitterer I immediately quit following. I had originally thought her "all about me" style of commenting was a joke. Silly me, she is that narcissistic.

I was not sure if I should laugh or cry when I saw so many on Twitter turning to the celebrities on Twitter to 'do something'. When they were sending pleas to Ashton Kutcher and Oprah, I was momentarily taken to that scene in "Talladaga Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby" wherein Will Ferrel's character thinks he is on fire, strips out of his racing gear and runs out on the track screaming: "Help me Jesus! Help me Oprah! Save me Tom Cruise!..."

Here we are faced with two of our own, innocent of any wrongdoing, being abducted by a brutal regime, held in secret, abused and likely tortured, given a secret trial where no one is ever found innocent... and some are screaming for celebrities to use their super powers to save them? While others apparently so self-involved, can only declare they are not worth the time?

Clearly, in the US, we are a diverse community of opinions and beliefs. Clearly, anytime it is a horrible injustice done to one of our people by another nation, it rouses some of the strongest passions in us.

Overall, our opinion of North Korea is that they are barbaric and backwards. The cries for bombings to rescue our own are among the most extreme and illogical.

I am heartened, on the other hand, by those I see speaking up for 'tough' diplomacy and not violence. There are also voices out there that point out that it is NOT the North Korean people that are doing this, but rather, a corrupt, abusive government that places no value on any human life, including that of its own citizens, many of whom must endure constant abuse from police and military if they do not show strong enough praise for the miscreant Kim Jong Il.

Clearly, bombing that country would only kill the innocent in that country.

An overwhelming feeling of helplessness, however, prevails. That is where the greatest angers well up from. That is where the radicals in our midst fill the void.

Let us, while the feelings are still fresh upon us, look at how appalled we are about the treatment of these two women. Feel your heart beat a little faster do you? Grief and sadness get shoved aside for anger and venom? Probably. It does for me, too. Anytime we hear about a bully, be it a person or a government, we get angry. We lose respect for that person, that country. Especially when the detentions are illegal, trials are secret, and sentences are torture.

Now, with that fresh and raw on our psyche, let us step back for a minute and realize that those same exact feelings are what so many in other countries feel for the US these days.

Our abuses of prisoners, torture, deviant practices against them, have enraged other nations and the people in them. People who expected more and better from us, and got instead, the monsters of unlimited sadism.

Most of the prisoners in Guantanamo, Diego Garcia, Baghram, are NOT terrorists. Yes, there are a few high profile terrorists among them, and they have been identified before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were ever launched. But also, there are many who were wrongly rounded up, some identified as terrorists just so that a bounty could be gained without evidence or facts to support it. Some were turned in by rivals for territory, or jealousy among neighbors. Some were just rounded up because our troops were told to go and take males from their homes, regardless of age (one as young as 12 another as old as 90 who were rounded up as terrorists, without evidence or facts).

These people, regardless of innocence or crimes, but worse for those who are innocent, rounded up, tortured, given secret trials, and even when the judges under those extreme circumstances order their release, are held indefinitely because they have become a source of embarrassment for our nation at its worst behavior under the former Administration.

These people belong to families and communities in other nations. Those nations feel about us the way we feel about North Korea at this time. It is much easier for the radicals in the Middle East to now recruit young men and women, who are helpless against our government, our indifference, and whom they know are torturing their people. Radicals love that we have created for them, evidence that we are the monsters they say we are.

Being dismissive of their anger does nothing to make us safer in this world, nor even respected by other nations. Declaring the innocent to be guilty of terrorism makes us look too stupid to know the difference and too afraid to find out. We appear weak. We appear to resort to bullying and abusing other nations because we are afraid of everyone.

Fear was the theme for 8 years. It is still being sold in the more profoundly unenlightened puddles of conservatives who worship gibberish. It is what weakened us as a nation, both from within, and in the view of other nations. It is what made us vulnerable.

Nothing done in violence is ever done well. Yet, we acted in fear and violence, and lost our footing on the moral high ground. Still struggling to regain our standing, at home and abroad, we give far too much voice to the extremists in our own backyard. Far too much permission for them to speak on our behalf or act in ways that are horrifying to us all. Violence is used to recruit more who will act more violently. Violence is action without thought of consequences.

One of the consequences, aside from losing the respect of other nations, is our economic decline. That decline revealed yet another weakness in our system: Greed gave us economic feet of clay. We allowed the financial industry to demolish our economy, throw hard working people out of their homes, and tank our economy.

While we were being whipped into a frenzy of anger and hatred, fear and loathing at other nations, that which did us in came from within our own borders. They took advantage of our ignorance of their games and our distraction of fear and "today's terror alert level is Orange".. to rob us blind and leave us economically, stripped bare, and bleeding. They had been feeding off of us, and with 8 years of opportunity without oversight, our government too busy demanding we not question their activities, nor the activities of their friends, they deflated the economy into a recession near depression.

We appear, to other nations, to be run by bullies, ignore the suffering of our own people, neglect our children, and to illegally arrest, detain and torture whomever we please.

I am sickened by what has transpired in North Korea. I am also sickened by how much like North Korea, we have behaved towards our own people, and towards detainees illegally held in secret locations, their secret trials, torture and abuse.

I just hope that clearer heads and cooler temperaments view my country not by how our government has mistreated others, but as a nation filled with people who want and are working towards righting the wrongs. I hope they don't want to come over and bomb us because we are mistreating theirs.

I hope this is dealt with on a government to government level and that no one makes the egregious error of attacking the people of that monstrous government.

For that reason, because we need to regain our identity as a nation of decent people, we must close Guantanamo, and put a halt to all these "outsourced" secret prisons that do our dirty work, and those who make an industry of false imprisonment and torture must be put out of commission. We must free the innocent as we want our innocent to be freed.

We must lead by example in this world. Clearly, following the worst examples of despotic regimes, has rendered us more vulnerable on so many levels.

Clearly, being abusive to others has not made us stronger. It has not made us safer. It has only made our cries for Justice and fair play, hypocritical, and our outrage anemic.

Guest Post Re: "The Story of Stuff"

This came my way via email and I asked if I could post it on my blog. So, with permission, I offer you...

Response to Response to “The Story Of Stuff”

I was reading an article in the New York Times about Annie Leonard’s film “The Story of Stuff”. In the article it mentioned how her film was rejected by some places of education because the portrayal of corporations as fat suited men with dollar sign bearing top hats was anti-capitalist.

I have another view of corporations: corporations are entities. They have names, they have faces, through their employees and offices they have a body, they have a financial life, and death. They even have legal rights. The fat suited men, whether sporting dollar signs or pumps, are only puppets that can be replaced easily to ensure the optimum health of the corporation.

The ancient Greeks, the Egyptians, and other peoples throughout history created gods and goddesses who controlled their lives and many people spent their lives in service to these gods. We have created—not gods and goddesses—but nonetheless, beings without physical form whose lives are greater than those of our own.

Is this a problem? Many a Christian, Muslim, or Jewish would rightly object to the possibility that corporations could not possibly be anti-monotheistic. Well, don’t worry, that’s why we call them corporations not gods.

This analogy could be amusing aside from the fact that there is a real truth to it. Do we want to see this truth? Can we dare to envision a future without corporations, without being overwhelmed by fear, even for a few seconds? They do not help us to lead happy and healthy lives. They do not help us to be brave or free.

The problem is what they feed on. Corporations can only survive if they keep people consuming things at an increasing rate. When people stop buying, when people learn to meet their own needs, then corporations suffer. And their voices, through our media, tell us that for our own good, we need to need them. They tell us that we cannot stop spending, we cannot learn to take care of ourselves. That would be anti-capitalist. They treat capitalism as a religion, not as an economic structure.

What they feed on is human need, a need that can only flourish in a human attitude of inadequacy. Only when people are unhappy do we spend money as a way to find happiness. As a society we idolize those who can spend the most money. Our heroes: sports stars, actors and actresses & musicians are those who can spend the most money. Some people even become our heroes just by spending money. Our faith is in the corporate world, as religions worldwide fade in significance, they have become who we truly believe we need to accept into our lives.

Our entire cultural mythology is about corporations and the heroes and heroines who support them. This is not anti-capitalist, this is not even truly anti-corporation, there are many other conscious corporations and co-ops out there trying to fight back. This is about watching humanity as a whole and seeing patterns emerge. I too need money to live -- and money is made by corporations.

All systems live to perpetuate themselves, and every morning we choose to be part of the corporate system. Being conscious of the fact that we are making a choice is the first step to freedom.

Sincerely,
Acorn D.
Cortes Island, Canada.

Myth America

History Worship

We know very little about our Nation's early founders and leaders. We only know what we are taught in history class, which is very little. Today, we have a standard of morals that we hold or wish to hold, our political leaders accountable for, that in truth has nothing to do with their vision, insight or ability to lead our nation.

If we were to hold Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, or any of them to the light of what we think someone needs to be seen in today, they would not stand a chance. Our politics have devolved from the qualities of leadership that created this great nation, to the petty personal assassinations which allow us to be ruled by morons and oppressors.

I personally don't care about who is having or has had affairs. That is between them and their spouse. It has nothing to do with how our nation is led.

Clearly, we have gone awry when you look at the time consumed, the more than $1B spent on investigating and impeaching Clinton for a blow job. Compare that with the real crimes committed by his follow-up act, W. A man whose administration was among the most corrupt. A man who lied to the nation, who ignored intel warning of Al Qaeda, and who squandered our reputation and all the goodwill thereof, by creating wars of choice and choosing to torture.

Are we so distracted by sexual intrigue that we spend our time prying into private matters, yet so disinterested, as a nation, in corruption and fraud, that we choose only to 'look forward'? How do we appear to other nations?

Cheney and Rush are championed by the Right Wing as true patriots, even as they lie, even as they bash a decorated War Hero such as Colin Powell, and continue to try and spread baseless, mindless fear across the land, solely for the sake of "Party" over "Nation".

In keeping with the policy of writing history to suit the writer, the campaign from the Right Wing since the election has been, to create a myth. To create the myth that W kept the country safe, we must ignore that we were attacked on his watch, and that the subsequent anthrax attacks, leveled mostly at Federal Representatives and Journalists that opposed the Bush Administration, never happened.

We must, if we are to believe that myth, believe ourselves to be children who are best taken care of if we do not know and are never told the Truth.

The myth on Torture is running on two fronts: One, that it gained valuable intel, which is what 'kept us safe' and that 'Leading Democrats knew and approved' of the torture. The second part is just in case the American people don't buy the first part.

History War Ship

The Myth America campaign is blaring from the Corporations who are greatly invested and who have profited from the war machinery and the administration that allowed them to merge and take over Public Airwaves as if they were privately owned.

The profits from the media mouthpieces are not manifested in the bottom line of those media corporations. In fact, they are losing money. Rather, it is manifested in the many other investments, mostly in Resource Extraction and War Machinery Economics, that the profits are skyrocketing.

They can afford to take a loss on Limbaugh's contract, on Fox News, because the pay offs past and down the road, if they succeed, are unlimited.

Health Insurance is unregulated in this nation. The high cost of medical care is directly related to the obscene profits reaped by insurance industry power houses. Doctors are not making more money, and fewer people can afford care. Those who have insurance are now at the mercy of a clerk, not a doctor, who will, decline coverage, regardless.

They spend billions on lobbying and advertising to keep us from reforming health care.

Tax exemptions for the wealthiest 2%, which amounts to billions of dollars, at the expense of our nation's infrastructure, schools, health care, and defense. Bring on the mindless Tea Baggers.

Preventing laws that would limit, regulate or prevent Major Financial Corporations from predatory lending practices which have left so many homeless and their credit in ruins, pays big time to those who sponsor the Limbaughs and the FOX brand of misinformation and disinformation.

Keeping us divided as a nation, is how they keep their fortunes multiplying. They can afford billions to save themselves hundreds of billions in revenue.

What they can't afford is for people to start coming together. They can't afford for education to improve so that people learn how to think instead of being told how to think.

They need for us to believe that the use of Torture yielded information we needed. Anyone who has learned anything about torture and how it was designed and what it was used for, knows that torture was designed solely for the purposes of propaganda. To gain false confessions to use to bolster the idea that the government is 'protecting us'.

We, in this nation, are distracted so easily. Our media, which is losing it's toehold as the source of information, continues to feed us diatribes from both sides, with few programs ever talkign to us as adults.

We watch 'discussion panels' which devolve quickly into the WWE trash talk, or Jerry Springer Lite format.

I find this exhausting. I find this fruitless. I find the research on the issues and the source of my information to be more and more, the Internet.

Not everything on the net is true. But everything on the internet can be researched and validated or disproved. More and more of us are gathering, not at the watering holes of Fox, NBC, ABC or any of those, but rather at the running streams of Twitter, blogs and other Social Media sources.

While the extremes on either end will happily pound one another like cartoons with big hammers, those of us who want more indepth and substantial information bypass the stagnate and the turbid waters of the mudholes and move to the streams, and find what we need.

America is changing. There are some who don't see it. There are some who don't want to see it. For them, it is becoming more confusing and more traumatic as they try to retain intact, their image of Myth America.

For those of us who see it, know it and embrace it, we are in the streams and we are doing our part. Without myth, without MSM platforms, and without anything more than our name, we represent, and we do our part to keep the streams flowing.

The desperation on the part of the mythmakers is evident in their increasingly shrill, abusive and threatening rhetoric. They complain about the President putting mustard on a hamburger, and laugh at the joke of a soldier assassinating Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

As long as none of them is caught getting a blow job, their hard-core following will continue to think of them as "Patriots" and as 'saving' this country, which they in fact are tearing to pieces.

I look at the Limbaughs, the FOX panels as I would a magician's assistant. Only there to distract. What they cannot do with pretty costumes and graceful moves, they do with vile, obscene disinformation, as they try to rationalize their wrongs, absolve themselves of responsiblity for their wrongdoing, and to blame the Democrats.

America is changing. We want leaders who are accountable. We are tired of the spin cycle. We want this wheel to take us forward.