Pardon me while I steal a Matt Damon line from that Billy bob Thornton atrocity "All the Pretty Horses." Great book, what Thornton did to it was just a shame.
But it IS fixin' to come a goodun'. The very very rich are rousing their armies of the stupid, which are in no short supply here in America, and our fearless leader is playing it safe. That way we get more bad shit and he can say, "Oh, well, I tried."
But he didn't, not really. Desperate times call for desperate measures. No I'm not studying Latin, it's just working out that way recently. Latin is a dead language, and the U.S. is a dead country perhaps that symmetry is what's bringing all this Latin into the blog.
Measures must be taken before the elections to, at least, attempt to forestall the takeover of at least one house of congress by the GOP. If that happens we're really in for it. The GOP has proven time and again they have no interest in helping the people and that they will block ANY effort to do so unless it's accompanied by a measure to help big business finish off the country. And right now it's being run by people whose interest is not with the people. It's with the ignorant,with those who think it's 1955 and only white christian hetero people are important.
Barack Obama, the guy who has ignored all the warning signs that this is going actually happen will be the guy who rightfully is to blame when we find ourselves unable to escape the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. There are no jobs to be had. I find that my hours at the grocery are going to be reduced and I doubt at my age with my lilly white skin that I'll even be able to secure a job at McDonald's to help make ends meet. So it's time to batten down the hatches. No bills beyond the basic necessities will get paid if the hours are reduced.
I am certain I am not alone in this dilemma. This type of action, though I find it deplorable is unavoidable. I don't live like a king, I don't spend a great deal, and now with my newfound inability to remain solvent I'm sure I'll see that there are many others in the same boat.
This maters not to Tea-Partiers. In fact I present for your perusal typical Tea-Partiers at last weekends Beckoning:
Please Gods forgive these ignorant fat white people because they truly know not what they're talking about. It's all fear and hate and "Why can't they go back where they came from..." It's pathetic that this is what the Beckoning was all about.
This is the embodiment of what's wrong with America, of what's about to happen come November. The tragedy is that they have no idea the problem is them.
Why was it necessary for the universe to play such a cruel joke on me? Why did it need to say haha in my face by showing me that the only person speaking publicly and saying things I agreed with in D.C. last weekend was Al?
It's like finding out that this guy is your secret admirer:
This all so goes right to the heart of what I've been saying for so long. That the populace is stupid. That they're kept stupid because that's the way our elected officials want them. That anyone capable of critical thinking does not serve their purpose and has no place in our culture.
A great deal was made this weekend that the "rally" wasn't political in nature. Except it was held in the nation's capitol, it was held on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's dream speech, future pillar of salt Sarah Palin was there telling the morons how much THEY'RE being screwed, and the only positions represented were those of white religious America.Oh and King's niece who thinks gay people marrying will make straight people extinct. Talk about solidifying my argument about the education system.
White Republican Christian Hetero America is pissed. Why?
Could it be because they don't play well with others? Could it be that they've got it all and don't want to share? Could it be that they percieve their monopoly in all the good stuff is in jeopardy and they're going to "take back America?" From who exactly?
Well first, people of color, Obama in the White house goes against everything these racists believe in. They'd literally cut of their noses to spite their faces to keep a black person out of the white house again. And they will.
If anyone in this country has been brainwashed it's these idiots. They vote against their own interests, which is to say that they vote to starve the government of funds it needs to function, to provide basic services, and to educate the people. They vote to provide tax breaks to the very businesses that are killing the small towns throughout America, they vote to benefit the businesses that are throwing everyone including them out in the streets in droves, and they continue to do so based on some misguided notion that religion will save the day.
They're creating this self-fulfilling prophecy. That by starving the government of the funds it needs to provide educational services and by having morons running what little education system we have, their religious leaders are rushing in to fill the void. It's the smart thing to do. Someone has to teach the people, they're simpletons and need guidance, and if the government isn't being allowed nor encouraged to teach them to be thinkers then why not carpe the opportunitis?
Because they're making this a third world country. They bitch about the deficit and stealing from our grandchildren and yet fail to take note how their actions will effect future generations. By weakening the country with this religious fervor they're doing more damage than all the credit card bills they can imagine.
Beck, Palin, and their ilk are the representatives of the ruination of the U.S.
Ken Mehlman, what a complete hypocrite. He masterminded the 2004 election, in which hating gay people was the central theme, and, I might add, won George Bush his second term. He took ALL KINDS of money for the fabulous job he did screwing us time and again. And now that he's done with politics on a big scale he wants us to embrace him and let bygones be bygones.
Fuck that.
I have no interest in joining hands and singing kumbaya with a guy who would do such heinous things to his own. (we didn't know for sure he was gay but he damn well did) There is no excuse for what he did, and there should be no forgiveness for someone who would actively work with anyone, to promote bigotry and hatred whether it's directed at us or anyone. But this guy did particularly damaging things to the very people he now wants to be forgiving of what he did.
I'm certain it's all a part of a larger plan for the Republican party to seem inclusive now that they see that the marriage debate is a loser. I mean really, Glenn Beck says it's not a big deal, Bill O'Reilly has shut up about it, and one after another key people are laying down their arms. So here's their big secret weapon, their token mo who they can parade out for all to see who'll come out and tell us all how inclusive and hate free the Republicans are.
I have said it before and I'll say it again, the republican party has not been against big government in about 30 years, and anyone who is any kind of a minority and votes republican is not paying any attention. We all embraced Capitalism a long time ago so develop some principles and stand up for yourself America. Read "What's the Matter with Kansas" if you have any questions, Tom Franks book will answer them all. That party is surviving by the notion that the good people of Kansas will vote against their own interests.
LOOK AT KANSAS!!!
The small towns are dying, because the very industry the populace embraces is killing them. Why no one sees that I cannot understand. The Conservative vote is almost exclusively based on a morality that the voters who embrace it would force us all to accept if it were up to them not what's best for us, nor what's best for the country, but governance of what happens in our bedrooms and in our heads.
This is of course denying the very obvious fact that they have dirty little thoughts of their own they can't face, and therefore have to repress.
It seems that they're finally just coming out in the open and being obvious with their hate instead of hiding it behind closed doors, a la suburbia.
Ken Mehlman is nothing more than a symptom of the malaise that grips this country and keeps us from becoming what is possible.
I refuse to embrace that or give tacit approval to his complicity.
Signals come from everywhere don't they? Blogactive, that abhorrent outing site was right all along about Ken Mehlman, and now he's out.
I've got my own little signals going and I do not like most of them. Last week I was informed by my immediate supervisor at the college that class wold begin that week and I had a class on Thursday. I said, "But I thought it was on Wednesday."
The response, "YOU HAVE A CLASS THIS THURSDAY."
I went, and no one else showed. Concerned, I sent them an email this monday informing them that semester had started and we'd meet this week. They came. LAST FUCKING NIGHT WHEN THE CLASS IS SCHEDULED!!!!!
Yes, it's my fault for not following up my concern about the bosses statement but when he uses his "I'm the boss and you will do this." voice, I'd prefer the fucker was correct.
So after explaining to not only the registrar AND the new Dean, to whom I got to look like a doofus thanks to my immediate supervisor, I received an email from a student DEMANDING an explanation.
Needles to say my response was not positive.
So as I said signals that things are winding down here are on the rise. Maybe it really IS time to move on.
And Ken Mehlman can go fuck himself and his new outness.
A city in the east is requiring blog owners to buy business licenses. They're like $300.
Innovative ways of taxing are the norm nowadays since the governments have discovered that they can't get money from us off payroll taxes they used to get because we don't have jobs that pay as much anymore, so they're going to get it from us another way even though we still have incomes 1/3 of what they were previously. They simply don't care they just want the money.
There's another government agency that operates that way and we aren't friends right now. I fear I have bad news coming today. I'll hate it.
Other than that the semester has started, the weather looks to be finally moderating, and I appear to be as poor as I always feared I would be.
Should we be concerned that THIS is part of an article in Men's Health this month?
Not that Men's Health is much of a magazine, but just the idea that they thought to publish this...yikes.
Lesson number one: Anger fantasies should involve mostly strangers or people you're no longer close to or you barely know. It's fine to have an anger fantasy about the cop who gave you a ticket or some dictator in a foreign land or some religious freak who killed a doctor and so on, but if your anger fantasies persistently focus on someone you know, say your wife or girlfriend, your boss, or a colleague, then you're perhaps taking the first steps to going postal and should seek professional help.
Lesson number two: Anger fantasies should feature specific strangers. If you're consistently angry at entire groups — say, Jews or Arabs or blacks or women or cops — then you have a problem. Lesson number three: At the end of an anger fantasy, you should feel better, not worse. The point is to release tension and deal with a perceived injustice over which you have no actual control. In an anger fantasy, you are your own Captain America. You punish a bad guy in your head because he's not being punished in reality, and better a fictitious punishment than no punishment at all. So feel good about that. Lesson number four: An anger fantasy should be strictly contained within your head. You don't want the anger churning inside your head to spill over onto the waitress who happens to interrupt you, or onto your mother who happens to call. An anger fantasy has no bearing on reality. You are doing in your head what you don't want to be doing in reality — and that's the point. So know what it is and keep it inside.
Other than that, go for it. Shout at, spit at, break with a bat, gouge out with a fork, hack at with a machete, dismember, set fire to, bury alive to your heart's content. I've been doing it for years. Yet you'd meet me and think, What a nice guy. So friendly and genuine. And I am a nice guy. I don't like guns, I've never swung a fist at anyone, I like Gandhi and Mandela as much as anyone, I'm a vegetarian, I'm a liberal. Hell, I'm even Canadian. Just don't rub me the wrong way. If you do, you'll meet me again in my fantasy — and you'll be sorry about that, motherf--ker. By Yann Martel
Are we all so angry that we fantasize about beating the shit out of each other? Have we become such a nation of assholes that we can't want to be nice to each other? Or have we gone out of our way to be violent, and filled with anger over the slightest provocation?
Am I saying that my guilt is sterling over the anger fantasy issue..alas, no. I've done it, and in fact do it every day. I agree that it's healthy and allows me to shake off that chance encounter with some ass whose character could only be improved by a beating.
So, though I do think it's a concern that we run into so much naked aggression on a regular basis that we need to resort to fantasies of violence to rid ourselves of toxic encounters, I think it's a good thing that we're inventive enough to come up with such a safe and effective relief valve for our aggression.
Something that should concern us far more are the headlines of the "fluff pieces" that in my experience tell the story of what's really becoming of the culture.
Headlines such as: Home ownership fading as a means to build wealth-
Cozy homes by the sea just snapped up-
Rare-car show draws fans with fat wallets-
These are indicators that wealth is moving farther away from the masses and as a result will widen the gap between the haves and have nots.
THAT should be a subject for concern.
Almost 30 years ago a friend sat me down, (I was 22, he was approximately my age today) and advised me to "be careful out there" in regard to sexual appetites. I recall his exact words to this day, "I've been reading strange things in the back of Time magazine about this GRID that seems to be getting worse, so don't get yourself in a situation you feel uncomfortable with. This is bad I think."
How right was he?
Things they change all the time, it's regrettable but necessary. The world people grow up in today is very different from the one I grew up in many years ago.
We're all looking for that comfort zone in which we can feel safe and secure, and barring that we look to reate a world in which we can take care of ourselves. Such is not always the case.
Personally I think I may have found the answer. It depends, in part on something coming to pass that's been mentioned to me as a possibility recently, but it could happen independently. It mostly depends on my willingness to let go, to stop being such a control freak and wait for just the right moment to act. To maybe just say "Hey, THIS is what I want at this point in my life and I'm gonna go get it." Sounds just like me doesn't it? lol
I'd drink that shit again if they'd make it with real sugar all the time! Very tasty, Don't feel as though I've just had my pancreas manhandled. Much nicer.
Well, in point of fact I have a determined employer at the college. I got a call the other day telling me the classes made.
Since last I'd looked they hadn't, I didn't spend the time last weekend to put together the syllabi and calendar etc.
Oops!
So yesterday morning i sat down and slapped all that together, And today i discover I'm not in the same classroom so there's no computer save my own laptop, which doesn't recognize the lcd projector in the room. Joy.
I have copies to make, computers to secure, and forms to fill out, places to be and miles to go before I sleep, added to which indignity I have to work at the grocery until just before I teach tonight.
Not to mention that fact that I'm beginning to get the idea that I woke up on the wrong side of the bed.
Fasten your seat belts it's gonna be a bumpy ride.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." -The Constitution of the United States
What, pray tell, could people possibly be thinking when they rail about not allowing a mosque near ground zero?
First of all Barack Obama needs to stay out of it, it's a matter of constitutionality and no one should be saying yes or no to it at all. I bet if Nazi's wanted to build a meeting hall near the Museum of Tolerance uptown, the Jews would stand up and say "Hey! it's ok, we don't agree with them and we'd rather not have them around, but this is America and they have the right to have their meeting hall anywhere they choose."
But not good old Christian America.
The disservice we're being done because our populace is undereducated is, well, I'd say it's immeasurable, but judging by the good work we're doing this past decade in dismantling the very freedoms the country was founded on is a pretty good measure. And I really shouldn't blame the churches for seizing the opportunities they have, after all if the government isn't going to assume it's rightful responsibility of educating it's populace someone has to fill the role and this is a perfect opportunity to spread their propaganda.
Sarah Palin, asks Obama "...Should they have the right to build it?" (See yesterdays post regarding integrity.) It's so typical of those who would inflame moral outrage that they wouldn't at least have the decency to state the case along with the facts. The mosque site is nowhere near the World Trade Center site. And this all begs the question "Why are these self-same people not outraged that World Trade Center is still just a hole in the ground a decade later?" What kind of a memorial is THAT to those who died that morning? Why are they not ashamed over that? What are they doing to see that their loved ones are memorialized properly and in a timely fashion with the return of the dam buildings which should have been rebuilt immediately after they were knocked down!
So, YES! Sarah you stupid bitch, they should have the right, this is the only place in the world with the built in right to do that and it MUST stay that way.. It's the very principle on which the entire country was founded! Why must this be repeated time and again? It's obvious you refuse to understand it. I'd like to see the reaction in Wasilla if someone tried to build a mosque. See, Olbermann can say it so much better than I.
In my personal experience, which is not inconsiderable, with Catholics they don't tend to lean toward probity.
Integrity is something everyone thinks they have, why I don't know. It
is not an innate characteristic. It's something one develops through a cogent and heartfelt analysis of one's actions or potential actions regarding their morality based on the facts of a situation, the effects those actions have on those around them and the perception they develop of you as a result.
It's about relating to oneself, about looking in the mirror and liking what you see.
It's not something, in my mind to be taken lightly. It's a signal of character, of maturity, and the willingness to stand up for what one believes is right no matter the consequences.
Whether one perceives integrity as as deliberate decision about how to live life, or if you perceive that one who possess integrity must live according to a moral certitude that precludes any form or tolerance of immorality as one perceives it, the people at the American Society for the Defense of Tradition do not fit the bill.
I'd pose the question " How can these people look in the mirror every morning?" yet I know from personal experience that this is not a quandary that troubles them. Catholics who will cheat to win, or at least look like they're winning don't really possess a moral compass, nor any grasp of what in means to be integritous.
In other words they're Catholic.
Cheating is nothing new in the church, and along with their ability to mourn their existence they manage to rationalize all of their indiscretions by not allowing that they're "only human" but that they're prone to sin, and therefore are in some irrational sense allowed to commit the heinous acts they're infamous for.
Does it sound like I have a true and profound hatred for the Catholic Church and it's inexhaustible tendency toward hypocrisy?
Good.
So along with this little diatribe I bring you an article to support it from Towleroad, which in fact inspired it, as an example of the Machiavellian behavior from the church that has had so much influence on cultural development for hundreds of years. I doubt I'll rest easy until they're eradicated, or at the very least rendered ineffectual in influencing matters of morality and culture.
If these are the good guys, how much trouble are we in?
So, remember the fashionable closet Catholics from the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property on NOM's penultimate stop in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania I posted about yesterday?
The group had a poll up on its website asking people what they thought about Judge Walker's decision to overturn Prop 8.
Overwhelmingly, people supported Judge Walker's decision, which, as you can probably guess, wasn't what they were expecting.
So, what did they do? Homogenius at DailyKos notes, they just changed the text on the questions around.
See, it's so easy to make it look like the whole world agrees with you. They don't.
Not that I've really been having a pity party recently I've just been discouraged over the way that events have been unfolding.
Though they're going to go they way they're going to go, I'd rather they went differently.
I'm torn too over direction. Do I take off for the southwest (not without a job) or do I stick with the bird I have in hand? (as it appears) For now I have to stick with the bird, my little gemini insecurities about money prevent me from throwing caution to the wind and taking off. I like my car too much to go back to playing the "I wonder what'll happen when I turn this key" game.
I have decided that I simply can't pick one profession and just do that from now on. Can't do it, don't care the consequences. I simply cannot do it.
I can't give up teaching and directing for pottery and I can't give up writing and/or riding for a sure paycheck. I won't do it.
I came up with an ideal combination in my head for all the current possibilities and it's pretty cool. Now to see how to make any version of it happen.
Texas was on AC360 and demonstrated itself to be what we all suspect it is. If y'all can sit through the whole thing you're made of better stuff than me:
Tai Chi isn't much help today. How does one ward off attacks from the universe?
The verdict appears to be in.
I'll be moving...soon.
And don't I wish I knew where.
I was counting on at least one of my classes making enrollment and that doesn't appear to have happened. So either the apartment or the car has to go. and since the car is a sticky wicket nowadays (i.e. if one relinquishes a car one is still responsible for the loan so that doesn't help, and if one doesn't have a car one can't get to the job that allows one to keep the apt so one is still screwed)
So the apt it is.
They'll have a fit, they'll want two months rent and they'll want this and that which they'll have to get in line to get. And it'll be a mess, and i'll hate it, and I bet I survive. Probably.
I love how cons couch their desire to spend the social security trust fund money (over 2 trillion) by saying social security is broken and needs to be gotten rid of.
(then we've got all this extra cash to spend!!!)
there is no shortage of idiots in this country that's for sure. Sadly any one of them can speak out and be heard..and listened to.
The spawn of Dan Quayle seems to have inherited his idiot genes.
Don't get me wrong there are thousands of Arizonians who will run not walk to the voting booth to promote his ridiculous no position position and get him out there to DC to "knock the hell out of the place." hehe
I'd love to be a fly on the wall to see just how embarrassing it is when he tries to get all up in somebodies business in DC and finds out how unimportant he really is.
But Arizona will be impressed.
November is gonna be a mess. We're not gonna wind up with any majority from either party, it'll be a block this block that hot mess, and the American Public will get bupkus as usual.
Until we get our next Conservative President in 2012 who tries to get rid of everything we accomplished this time, and succeeds pretty well.
Being a proud member of the Professional Left I have to say that Gibbs shot the Obama administration in the foot the other day when he went off about criticisms from us.
Why would we not criticize you for the things you said you'd do and have not done sir? You said you'd repeal DADT repeatedly, has that happened? This is only one example, there are hundreds of them. George Bush was more effective and he didn't have the majority Obama has.
This morning I ran across a blog I hadn't read in quite a while mostly because I have nothing in common with the author but today he asked about a bumper sticker he'd seen that features Obama and several communist leaders and labels Obama a socialist. Of course, as is common with such moronic notions Mao is on the sticker, and he wasn't a socialist, a distinction lost on such a one who would put a thing like that on their car anyway.
If I had a neighbor who'd do that I'd have one made that featured Al Capone, Bonnie and Clyde and George Bush. They'd never get the joke.
Glenn Beck now quotes Jefferson when referring to gay marriage. It seems he knows they've lost this one. "if it neither breaks my legs nor picks my pocket what difference is it to me?" he says. Quite the change of tune I'd say.
His previous position, which was of course voiced to anyone stupid enough to listen to any of the fearful shit he spouts was this:
"...marriage is different, according to Beck. Lowering his head with dramatic intensity, he said, “I believe this case is actually about going into churches and going in and attacking churches and saying you can't teach anything else. When you say marriage – civil unions is different – when you say marriage must be defined as this, well then you also have to go into the schools.”
I've been catching up on Entourage the past cople of days and the term douchebag is stuck in my head I can't think why I find it appropriate at this moment.
An no one knows what one is anymore. We need someone to stand up and say "Look, here's where you're going wrong on this gimme gimme gimme thing. And here's what you need to do to fix it. "
Of course, then we'd actually have to listen, and we'd have to probably be in such a bad fix that we'd have no choice but to listen before we would.
It's a shame really that the one person we currently have in a position to take the role is incapable. I don't think Obama is really uninterested in being a statesman, I think he doesn't have any idea how to go about it, nor does anyone around him.
It involves making the hard decisions and it involves saying what people need to hear not what they want to hear, and it involves surrounding yourself with people who believe that too. Like most politicians today he's surrounded by lackeys who will do whatever he wants or tell him what he wants to hear instead of saying, "Hey, dumbass! Stop being wishy-washy on same sex marriage and tell the people it's unconstitutional and since all they want to do is be bullies the courts will have to decide and let it go at that. Tell the people that whatever your predecessors did you've got the situation you've got and what it will take to fix it is more money, and taxes WILL go up. Tell the people that they MUST be educated and that they're gong to all pay for it one way or the other so we're going to throw open the doors of ALL institutions of higher learning and admit everyone and require that they really work hard for their knowledge, not just hand out diploma's and those that make it make it and those that don't will know why, they'll have no one to blame but themselves. Give everyone REAL equal opportunity and let the best person win. That's how you're going to save this country from itself, not by being the all season tire of the American Presidency, which is to say that you do everything, but not anything well."
That would be a friend. To both him and the country.
What do we have? We have the same old shit we always seem to get. Somone who tries to tinker with this and make a few people happy, and then tinker with this, and make a few more happy, and then stay the hell away from THAT and make more happy than not and always have most bitching about everything. That's our fault not his. He's just giving us what we think we want.
Because we don't want to be bothered, we don't want to work that hard for anything, and we certainly don't want to hear the truth. We want to be told that everything is fine and that nothing needs to change too much and that our lives will continue to go along the same as they've always been and we're just lazy assholes who will sit in place waiting for a miracle to save us from ourselves instead of standing up and getting busy doing for each other which would benefit not only others but ourselves as well.
I myself am sitting here paralyzed with fear over departing for parts unknown with no job, which it seems I may have to do within the month. The classes aren't making at work and the grocery will not cut it when it comes to paying the bills. The issue now is what to do to survive when I get there. I've got a house, I've got the car as long as I can pay for it or as long as I can hide it if it comes to that, and I can put most everything in storage and load the car and GO, but with what assurance that I have an income when I get there? I suppose I could just stop paying the bills and save what I can and hope for the best when I get there. But thing here are deteriorating faster than I wold like to see. So decisions may be made for me.
We've become a nation of people concerned only with ourselves.
Only interested in "What's in it for me?"
This must stop.
Ask Colorado Springs, now I'm not a particular fan of Colorado Springs, it's filled with Jesus Freaks (don't hate 'em, just wish they'd stop shoving their moral righteousness down my throat)and though I've been there many times I've never been enamored of the place even before the ungodly moved in.
But they are turning off their street lights.
They have to they can't afford them anymore.
And I'd be willing to bet that the dummies there will vote this fall for all the Republicans on the ticket because they oppose abortion, same-sex marriage, ENDA, the repeal of DADT and the like. Never once thinking about the fact that these Republicans want to make permanent the very tax cuts that are depriving them of the basic services that this country was literally built on.
We don't share. We don't want to give anyone else anything, we don't seem to have any concept that "Treat others as you would be treated." is a good thing. It's all divisiveness and hate, and the decline of a civilization that once stood proud together against the world.
We used to be a nation, and yes I know I'm an old guy lamenting the passing of what's familiar, that presented a unified front to the world. Now we travel the world openly distorting the truth, encouraging other nations to discriminate and even kill on the basis of religious disparity.
How can we once again become the nation we once purported to be? What will finally turn the tide toward outrage and allow the people to finally see that they've been hoodwinked?
Personally, I know I've got a relatively short 25-30 years left on this plane of existence, if I'm lucky. A time during which my relevance will be ever-decreasing, and that's ok. in my mind it means that I'll be freer to do the things that are important to me without interference, but ideas, ideas that matter, that promote the growth of people and the nation, that's all we can really leave behind and I'd like to see us, as a nation, embrace that notion.(you wanna make the hold hands and sing kumbaya joke go ahead)
We're not leaving behind much otherwise.
Take a look at what Paul Krugman said recently on the subject in the NYT.
Paul Krugman-NYT
The lights are going out all over America — literally. Colorado Springs has made headlines with its desperate attempt to save money by turning off a third of its streetlights, but similar things are either happening or being contemplated across the nation, from Philadelphia to Fresno.
Meanwhile, a country that once amazed the world with its visionary investments in transportation, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System, is now in the process of unpaving itself: in a number of states, local governments are breaking up roads they can no longer afford to maintain, and returning them to gravel.
And a nation that once prized education — that was among the first to provide basic schooling to all its children — is now cutting back. Teachers are being laid off; programs are being canceled; in Hawaii, the school year itself is being drastically shortened. And all signs point to even more cuts ahead.
We’re told that we have no choice, that basic government functions — essential services that have been provided for generations — are no longer affordable. And it’s true that state and local governments, hit hard by the recession, are cash-strapped. But they wouldn’t be quite as cash-strapped if their politicians were willing to consider at least some tax increases.
And the federal government, which can sell inflation-protected long-term bonds at an interest rate of only 1.04 percent, isn’t cash-strapped at all. It could and should be offering aid to local governments, to protect the future of our infrastructure and our children.
But Washington is providing only a trickle of help, and even that grudgingly. We must place priority on reducing the deficit, say Republicans and “centrist” Democrats. And then, virtually in the next breath, they declare that we must preserve tax cuts for the very affluent, at a budget cost of $700 billion over the next decade.
In effect, a large part of our political class is showing its priorities: given the choice between asking the richest 2 percent or so of Americans to go back to paying the tax rates they paid during the Clinton-era boom, or allowing the nation’s foundations to crumble — literally in the case of roads, figuratively in the case of education — they’re choosing the latter.
It’s a disastrous choice in both the short run and the long run.
In the short run, those state and local cutbacks are a major drag on the economy, perpetuating devastatingly high unemployment.
It’s crucial to keep state and local government in mind when you hear people ranting about runaway government spending under President Obama. Yes, the federal government is spending more, although not as much as you might think. But state and local governments are cutting back. And if you add them together, it turns out that the only big spending increases have been in safety-net programs like unemployment insurance, which have soared in cost thanks to the severity of the slump.
That is, for all the talk of a failed stimulus, if you look at government spending as a whole you see hardly any stimulus at all. And with federal spending now trailing off, while big state and local cutbacks continue, we’re going into reverse.
But isn’t keeping taxes for the affluent low also a form of stimulus? Not so you’d notice. When we save a schoolteacher’s job, that unambiguously aids employment; when we give millionaires more money instead, there’s a good chance that most of that money will just sit idle.
And what about the economy’s future? Everything we know about economic growth says that a well-educated population and high-quality infrastructure are crucial. Emerging nations are making huge efforts to upgrade their roads, their ports and their schools. Yet in America we’re going backward.
How did we get to this point? It’s the logical consequence of three decades of antigovernment rhetoric, rhetoric that has convinced many voters that a dollar collected in taxes is always a dollar wasted, that the public sector can’t do anything right.
The antigovernment campaign has always been phrased in terms of opposition to waste and fraud — to checks sent to welfare queens driving Cadillacs, to vast armies of bureaucrats uselessly pushing paper around. But those were myths, of course; there was never remotely as much waste and fraud as the right claimed. And now that the campaign has reached fruition, we’re seeing what was actually in the firing line: services that everyone except the very rich need, services that government must provide or nobody will, like lighted streets, drivable roads and decent schooling for the public as a whole.
So the end result of the long campaign against government is that we’ve taken a disastrously wrong turn. America is now on the unlit, unpaved road to nowhere.
Unlit unpaved roads, what does that image bring to mind? A third world country, not the leader of the free world. Is that to be our legacy?
Though it would be wonderful to say that I knew where things were headed. That I had a clue.
Alas, I don't. every single thing in my life is up in the air right now. Employment, (will my classes make?) living situation, (if not will I be able to afford both the apt and the car?) health, (when will I stop making myself sick over these things I can't control?) and L'Amour! (Am I being foolish to encourage someone I don't want to be with in the final analysis?)
See, up in the air. Juggling literally every single thing that I think is important to me.
Guidance wold be nice, someone to take me by the hand and say, "Ok, here's the first thing not to worry about, and now here's the second, and finally take a look at this. You cannot control any of this stuff and you simply have to wait and see what's gonna happen and then formulate your response. Stop worrying about it, and step back and let it go."
Hehe, that sounds so like me, (step back and let go ROFL)
Well, onto other matters.
Arnold and Jerry Brown want Vaughn Walker to lift his stay and let same-sex marriage resume in California. This is a good thing. But possibly too much of a good thing.
This ruing needs to wend its way through the courts. It needs to be the decision that the Supreme's are forced to rule on, and to be the litmus test for this civil rights issue. Anyone reading this document in it's entirety would see the how simply the courts could rule on its validity. It's an impeccable document. If they manage to stop it's progress through the court system, they'll win marriage rights in California, but it won't have the effect it should have, to rule once and for all on the constitutionality of marriage rights for all.
Ted Olsen, (on fox news of all places) makes an excellent analogy while talking with Chris Mathews yesterday:
"Well, would you like your right to free speech? Would you like Fox’s right to free press put up to a vote and say well, if five states approved it, let’s wait till the other 45 states do? These are fundamental constitutional rights. The Bill of Rights guarantees Fox News and you, Chris Wallace, the right to speak. It’s in the constitution. And the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the denial of our citizens of the equal rights to equal access to justice under the law, is a violation of our fundamental rights. Yes, it’s encouraging that many states are moving towards equality on the basis of sexual orientation, and I’m very, very pleased about that. … We can’t wait for the voters to decide that that immeasurable harm, that is unconstitutional, must be eliminated."
Well, actually we shouldn't have to wait for the voters to decide. We should not only decide the issue because of the unconstitutionality of the Proposition, but because of the flim-flam that was pulled to get people to vote for it in the first place. People should sue the supporters of the Proposition based on it's linguistic tactics to confuse the voters and get it passed when people who voted yes were actually voting no and didn't even know what they were doing.
Trust me , people are stupid and in California that goes double. They got taken in many cases, and those who exploited the language should be taken to task for it. In this country that means "It should cost them money." because that's the only thing we understand.
And another thing, Barack Obama, he of the easily berated economic policy, is not anti-business.
And here are a few things to support that statement: This White House has “vilified industries,” complains the Chamber of Commerce. America is burdened with “an anti-business president,” moans The Weekly Standard. Would that all presidents were this anti-business: according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve, corporate profits hit $1.37 trillion in the first quarter—an all-time high. Businesses are sitting on about $2 trillion in cash reserves. Business spending jumped 20 percent last quarter, and is up by 13 percent against 2009. The Obama administration has dropped taxes for small businesses and big ones alike. Maybe the president could be anti-me for a while. I could use the money. The reality is that America’s supposedly anti-business president has led an extremely pro-business recovery. The corporate community has recovered first, and best. The populist tone that conservative magazines and business groups decry is partly in reaction to this: as corporate America’s position is getting better and better, the recovery is looking shakier and shakier. Unemployment is high. Housing looks perilously close to a double dip. Job growth is weak. And corporate America, for all its profits, isn’t hiring. The 71,000 jobs the private sector added in July aren’t sufficient to keep up with population growth, much less cut into the ranks of the unemployed. Pundits have expended a lot of energy on this puzzle, but there’s actually no puzzle at all. A look at the history of financial crises shows that our slow, halting recovery is right on schedule, and the business community’s caution is predictable. In their book, This Time Is Different, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff look at every financial crisis over the last 800 years. It’s an exhaustive study, and its conclusions are depressing for a country that believes itself exceptional even in its suffering: we’re not special. If you look at unemployment, housing prices, government debt, and the stock market, Rogoff says, “the U.S. is just driving down the tracks of a typical post–WWII deep financial crisis.” In some areas, we’re even a bit ahead of the game: economic output usually drops by 9 percent. We held the drop to 4 percent. Even the unevenness of our recovery is predictable. “Housing and employment come back much slower than equity and [gross domestic product],” Reinhart says. GDP usually falls for two years and then recovers. Equity can move even faster, which helps explain corporate America’s rapid recovery. But employment tends to fall for five years, and sometimes it never quite recovers. And housing? That’s usually a six-year slide.
So business may be back, but its customers aren’t. That’s the Catch-22 of our recovery. Businesses will start hiring when the economy recovers. And the economy will start to recover when businesses start hiring. But that shouldn’t obscure what is, in fact, sort of good news (the frustrating stuff recoveries are made of): businesses can expand, they’re just waiting around to do so. “If you’re running a business, you can’t start hiring on speculation [that the economy is getting better],” says Joseph Kasputys, chairman of IHS Global Insight. “You have to wait until you see market signals that things are getting better. The smart businesses are looking for the early signs so they get the first advantage. They’re ready to move.” That’s a lot better than a world in which they don’t have the ability to move. So what can we do to speed things along? More government stimulus—either through direct spending or further tax cuts—could offer some quick help, but Senate Republicans won’t allow anything large enough to make much of an impact. The Federal Reserve could step into the breach, but so far it’s been reluctant to do so. The Republicans want to see the Bush tax cuts extended and Obama’s health-care and financial-regulation bills repealed, but none of that will make a big short-term difference.
"Businesses are sitting on about $2 trillion in cash reserves."
hmmm, Cbs news says in an article dated March 16, 2010:
(Credit: AP) The latest posting from the Treasury Department shows the National Debt has increased over $2 trillion since President Obama took office.
I have to wonder where that money went?
They go on to say: The debt now stands at $12.6 trillion. On the day Mr. Obama took office it was $10.6 trillion. President George W. Bush still holds the record for the most debt run up on his watch: $4.9 trillion.
And in George's defense for some reason it matters how long it takes to spend that much money they say:
But it took him over four years to rack up the first two trillion dollars in debt. It has taken Mr. Obama 421 days.
I once spent $4500 in a week, would it have been a different story if I'd spent it in a day? I could have, I'm just too cheap to part with money that quickly.
The point is the money's gone and in one instance, Barack Obama, of whom I'm not a particular fan, he's not really gotten as much done as he said he would, but the difference, in my opinion is that while Obama stands in front of the world and says, "Here's how were' going to spend this money and here's how much this will cost." George Bush would stand in front of the country waving his right hand in protestation, railing at those who didn't think he was doing the right thing, while his left hand was reaching in the cookie jar and giving out all our money to his friends and their friends and their friends. (yes I blame him for everything from Iraq to diaper rash, he's the anti-christ)
So, yes it's popular to blame the guy in office for our woes, and yes in some cases it's warranted, but the fact remains that Obama didn't buy a new car or a new helicopter, or spend our money on buying baubles for his friends and those he wished to ingratiate himself with. He spent it on us. George Bush conversely spent his 5 trillion on what he calls his base. Those, who msnbc this morning said actually run the economy who possess most of the wealth in this country...AND AREN'T SPENDING ANY OF IT!" At least not on hiring people.
These "let them eat cake." attitudes are what bring down cultures, and contribute to their ruin.
If you can afford health insurance no matter the cost I applaud you, because I can't. The car and the apartment account for 95% of my income, and if you've ever seen them you know I'm not exactly living like a king. BTW I work two jobs and would happily take on a third if it would mean that I could stop worrying about money for at least a little while.
So let's be grateful that even though not enough to really make a huge difference in our lives is being accomplished that we're not being taken to the cleaners every day for someone else to benefit from our tax dollars. Let's be grateful that the money is being spent on us and not Haliburton, or is that Xe...lol
It's difficult in this world to be gay. It shouldn't be difficult in this country to be gay though. We supposedly stand for so many great hings, but we don't we allow a few people to get those things and then give those very people the power to keep everyone else from getting them too. It's outrageous that Mexico, Norway, the UK, and other countries have acknowledged that people shouldn't be denied full civil rights simply because of who they love, and yet, America, that bastion of self-righteousness, still routinely practices hate and division as a rite.
And we don't even have the good sense to be ashamed.
I rarely read Joemygod these days, not so much because I don't like the blog, I do, but more because his demographic is not me, therefore I spend my time on other blogs.
But yesterday while looking for news of the Prop 8 decision I ran across a link and thought Joe would have the skinny. I was right and he had more as well.
He had a link to some conservative website where all the commenters have to do is sit around all day and hate.
Practice makes perfect.
Some of the venomous comments directed toward gay men and women were outrageous! I'd have been appalled if they didn't seem so ignorant of the very subject they were talking about.
Of course I had to wonder what the comments would have been like if they'd won. Neener Neener Neener would likely have been the refrain.
There were the usual rants about activist judges and in this case gay judges, but one thread that kept getting picked up was the one that said it was unconscionable that the courts were able to nullify the votes of 7 million Californians (no mention that they were duped) and that we live in a police state.
The religious argument got dragged in as well. No matter to these people that there's a separation of church and state, nor that the judge specifically states in the decision that the argument here is about civil marriage since the government gives religious organizations the nod to sanction civil marriage not institute it.
The reactions of politico's and celebrities have been predictable. Nice, but hands off until this is all over. I will say that Schwarzenegger was uncharacteristically encouraging toward the gays when he had an assistant twitter his response. He's out of favor with the GOP anyway (and most of the rest of us) so what the hell.
Writing all this I have to ask myself if I engage this behavior. If I hate these people back, or if , though I likely can't forgive them their ignorance, I simply pity their small mindedness and the lack of opportunity they've had to actually learn. Somewhere in their growth they've chosen the easy way out, the less enlightened way of thinking, the way, possibly, of their parents.
I can certainly identify with that notion, I too, was a devotee of the ignorant ideas of my father on race and society as a youth, but I had no other point of view to counter his. When the time came for me to start thinking for myself I realized how wrong the Prince of Darkness actually was, and that , likely due to the fact that I was gay and discriminated against all the time in the lilly white suburbia I was forced to endure as a child I might try to find it in myself to be a bit more understanding of the plight of others.
Straight White Christian people have hated and feared and lied and hid in the closet for centuries. To paraphrase Tom Robinson, "Naw, Suh. I feel right sorry for 'em."
Some of my best friends have been straight.
A few examples of the pitiful ignorance of "heteros", and my unfortunate personal experience with them:
I've lost the friendship of a hetero couple I knew since I was a teenager because of our divergent religious views. Since they no longer read this blog I have no compunction about outing him. He's gay, was always gay, and in fact broke up with his boyfriend to get married and live in the closet. The most outrageous travesty he's committed (among countless others) was to become a, um, well let's just say he's religious on a full time basis nowadays. Talk about living the lie.
I lost another hetero friend who I cared about because he was patronizing, and he didn't realize it.
I hadn't seen him in years and quite by accident, a few years ago when my lunchtime bike ride took me by his office I wondered if I'd ever run into him and I did. We went to dinner a few weeks later and caught up. When talk got around to relationships and gayness as it always did. He informed me that he and his wife attend a Christian church at which the pastor was committed to outreach to the gay community.
I was reminded why I quit seeing him. It sounded as though he felt we were these poor souls who were outcast and had to be saved by those, like him, who were more fortunate. His brother groped me once at a party at his house (twice actually) and he himself silently challenged me to flash him in our dressing room during a show we were in.
There were countless others, the young husband who wants to satisfy his curiosity. The guy who posed as a mentor in my youth, but whose actual intent was to "help me become straight."
and on and on ad nauseum.
The problem here is not that these people act on their own natural desires and/or curiosity, but that they assume that I/we as homosexuals in what is really their heterosexual world are in need of comfort, solace, and that we're destined to either wind up either crazy or dead as we do in movies unless they help us. AND they're horrified that we don't live in fear.
This morning as I was making coffee I thought, "What the hell am I gonna talk about on the blog today?"
Lo and behold THIS was the first thing on my facebook page. Several people, one of whom I know, commented on it, and though I agree with their points I agree with George too.
What we aren't realizing yet is that this country no longer exists. The country we're sold every day, the one with the American Dream in it and the one with the limitless possibilities and the one where we CAN actually have it all... gone.
The mistake I think George is making in his thesis is that he seems to think it's organized. That there is some giant conspiracy keeping America from existing. I don't believe there is. And I think that lack of organization is the problem and the savior as well.
He says, "...They don't give a fuck about you..at all, at all, AT ALL!" True that, but they also don't give a fuck about each other. They're not willing nor able really, to band together to get organized because if they did then the George Carlin's really couldn't exist and then the jig would really be up, we'd easily figure out that the game is rigged and that we're not gonna get ANYTHING.
Surely it's not escaped notice that a lot of parents are buying kids houses while they go to college or financing the down payment on the kid's first home, or housing the kid when they can't find a job. Why is that you ask? Is it possible that the previous generation had it better than we do? That they benefited from all those things the current "owners," to borrow a phrase, don't want us to have, and are the last of those who can help. They're a dying breed! Why? They're largely people who made their own money, not those who droned for corporations.
Look at my adoptive father. Married in November 1941. Two weeks later, Pearl Harbor. Talk about bad timing, in the Army before he was married 6 months. Got his GED after he returned. What did he get as a wedding present? Go ahead I dare you to guess?
A house.
Well, not actually a house, but a house with a mother-in-law bungalow in the back! So, two houses actually. What did his benefactor do for a living? He owned his own business, actually two of them.
Daddy Dearest sold the wedding present ten years later to relocate here where my adoptive mothers family lived. Gave up the offer of a partnership in what turned out to be an extremely successful marine business, and came here only to stumble into a well paying job with a good future at a company that got so successful they got eaten up by another company and as a result he was out of a job.
Then he really stepped in it, he got a job in the auto industry. And for the next 28 years he went there almost every day. And this GED recipient was making in 1972, what was considered really good money in 1985. See what I mean?
Oh and not only was his health care free, so was his wife's and his kids and there was no such thing as a deductible and prescriptions no matter what they were for were $3.00. In 1989 he had bypass surgery and massive life-threatening complications (his dr still introduces him as the sickest man he ever treated that lived) and was in hosptal for two months.
Never received ONE bill.
A couple of bits of bad luck though. First his wife forced him to adopt me, NOT what he wanted to do, which he's made clear these many years. And then just when he was less than three short years from being free of me forever, she dropped dead on him.
So here he is, 48, free and clear, the house is long since paid for, and the last kid has one foot out the door and he's left single.
So within 16 months he marries again, and what's the first thing they do?
They buy a house. Not just any house, they buy a brand new one in THE neighborhood. They paid cash.
So 12 years later he retires. What does he get? Well, she buys him a car (which was their thing, they bought each other cars) and then to this day he gets a check from that company, the one that DIDN'T participate in the bailout and therefore has thrived as a result. And he gets social security.
I should mention that his father was a drunken reprobate who insisted that everything in California, the grandparents house in the Palisades, the weekend house in Palm Springs, and all the money, (there was a bunch) is his when they die. And he spends it all. His fifth wife got all the property.
No worries, Daddy Dearest and his second wife amassed a pile of cash of their own through investments, and good fortune. (btw it was muni's the big bad government made them rich lol) And then she dies on him 30 years later.
Where is he now? This high school grad?
He's reaping the benefits of the ONLY generation to have been able to get over on the corporations in yet another IT neighborhood.
He sold the house he bought with wife #2 for four times he paid for it, and bought his own condo...cash.
Let it be said he is NOT a saver. He never saved a dime of his own money and his wives ran the household finances.
He reaps, daily, the benefits of a generation, the success of which we'll never see again...every single day. BTW I was in charge of the household finances when wife #2 died for a while until he could take it over after recovering from his grief, and it took me two months to figure out why the checking account was 11k off from the statement. He doesn't record the deposit of his social security checks so that way he saves $1400 a month cause he pretends it's not there. (arrgh!)
None of his children will ever have that no matter what they do. We can't afford what it would now cost us to accomplish any of that., because we drone for corporations, perhaps if we droned for ourselves we'd see the promised land?
I, of the four degrees, taught full time last semester for a month. How much did I make, you ask?
400 dollars less than I would have made as a cashier at the grocery. Which, as I lament daily is not enough to pay the bills. It actually cost me money to have that job for a month.
Am I owed a good job or a decent living, or a house because I'm educated, no. Is there possibility in this country for an educated person, no.
Why?
Because as George says, "they" don't want an educated populace. That's why and how corporate America and the GOP have captured the hearts and minds of honest hard working Americans because they spread the word that we're not one of them. We're "smarter" and we're better educated, so we're the liberal elite enemy. "God knows what they'll think up next time."
I particularly love the liberal elite press argument. The corporations OWN the press! And they can get people to listen to whatever they want to tell them if they only make them believe that what they're hearing from the other guy is a bunch of lies. And that appeals to us all, trust me. It's Madison Avenue at it's zenith I tell you. They convince everyone that they're regular BA degree earning folks like "you and me" and they don't want the educated snobs running their show. THAT'S why I can't find anyone who has a clue as to how to utilize my education. They don't want to.
"Stay stupid and we'll take care of you."
George is NOT making the argument that there is no possibility of making things better, and he's not saying that one cannot succeed, he's saying that the game is rigged. That if one expects to get a job and work every day and reap benefits from that work as they age, they're wrong because it costs those that provide it money, and not spending money on YOU is what it's all about. I think George is a living/ok, well, dead example that we CAN make it on our own, but it's those who expect help from "the man" that are asleep.
So is it organized? Hell no. Is the message the same so we can believe it because of it's consistency? Yes! Is that intentional, well yes and no. I don't believe it's a conspiracy because I believe it's actually what a lot of people do believe to be true. And as we all know, if you tell a lie often enough it becomes the truth.
Is entrepreneurship the answer? Is "If you can't beat 'em then join 'em." the answer?
