Loyalty without truth
is a trail to tyranny.
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a middle-aged George Washington
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Thursday, 22 June 2006 at 1h 38m 50s | Talk about way out there | This is what I found out today from Republican callers to a
radio
program I
listen to.
The Democratic party should be incorrectly referred to as the "Democrat"
party. The party itself was infiltrated by communists in the 60's and 70's and
now represents a anti-capitalistic, corporation hating bunch of whiners.
Communism means you want the government to do everything for you and involves
government meddling on social issues.
Islamo nazi fascists were taking over the world until George W. Bush bravely
stepped up to the plate and took the war to the home of the enemy. We are now
defeating the enemy everywhere.
The lies the government spewed about Iraq and Al Quaeda (and everything else)
are meant to help the citizens accept decisions that are made by people who
know more about the dangerous world we live in than we do.
I feel so vastly informed and educated now.
| Thursday, 8 June 2006 at 1h 34m 55s | I have been out to lunch | I apologize for the month long absence. Well, actually I'm more disappointed
than I am sorry. Gasp, so the 20 or so of you who might read this have been
expunged from responsibility.
I was overwhelmed by a lot of things, most of which I am not going to quantify -
- and baseball season allows me to have an escape. Believe me there have been
plenty of things to write (type) about. I have just not been up to the task
lately.
I will soon return. Y'all take it easy.
| Tuesday, 18 April 2006 at 4h 55m 33s | How to over-react | Some pyromaniac lights a match and suddenly everyone is
screaming "fire,fire,fire"
... the fire department is called, the military is put on alert, and the
ambulances are requested ...
Then everyone shows up to the scene to find that the match is now just a burnt
husk of a once sulphur-dipped stick.
Reminds me of those bugs that fly around the street lights, always flying into
the street light only to get zapped for some reason. I always wondered why
those bugs kept flying into the light to get zapped. I mean, didn't they see
their friends fly into the lamp and get zapped? Did they think it was some sort
of awesome hallucinatory drug that they were missing out on?
| Thursday, 13 April 2006 at 18h 31m 55s | The Katrina incompetence | I am sick and tired of people ignorantly trying to push the
falsehood
that
Mayor Ray Nagin and Governor Kathleen Blanco botched the Katrina disaster.
Nagin and Blanco did not fuck up on Katrina.
You can read my own archives on this starting with September of 2005.
The Bush administration and its incompetent appointed political hacks did.
Nagin and Blanco were at the conferences where everything was laid out both
vocally and in writing what was needed to do, but the administration failed on
every single count.
Blanco issued a formal declaration for a state of emergency 2 days before the
hurricane hit. So why did Chertoff wait until 2 days after (late Tuesday) to
formally involve the Federal government? And when Bush signed this document,
how come EVERY SINGLE PARISH NORTH AND SOUTH OF LAKE PONTCHATRAIN was not on
the document?
Chertoff and Michael Brown told Amtrak that they didn't need to evacuate people
via the trains. They turned away Greyhound buses and told Blanco and Nagin
that there was no need to use City Buses and School buses. That's right.
Blanco and Nagin were going to gather the buses but Michael Brown told them
don't bother because they were sending in greyhounds. What happened? Well, the
private firm that got the contract from FEMA to get the greyhounds decided to
sit around and wait, that way they didn't spend any money and could get the
most amount of profit from the FEMA contract.
FEMA did not contact the Red Cross or set up food and shelter stations. FEMA
turned away shipments of ice and water from Walmart. These are not the
responsibilities of the local government in a Federal disaster area. FEMA is
the central command center.
The US Navy had two ships offshore that waited 3 days doing nothing BECAUSE
THEY WERE NOT FORMALLY AUTHORIZED by the President. That's what the officer
himself said by the way.
FEMA officials did not bring in radio equipment and gave conflicting signals to
Ray Nagin and Kathleen Blanco about what was going on. At the conference calls
with Chertoff and Michael Brown (all this is on record by the way) they would
agree on what to do and set a timeline, but then not follow through or
completely change course without letting anyone know.
The federal government of cronies and incompetents are to blame. Period.
| Saturday, 8 April 2006 at 13h 17m 25s | Reality Check that Fantasy world | This is from my friend Chris:
Everything you think you own is borrowed from foreign countries, and they will
eventually come to collect, and when they do, your fancy job, fancy car, and
whatever else you hold dear will dissappear. cause you see, since the reagan
years, we have what is called a trade debt, a national debt, and personal debt.
when china and the other foreign countries we owe decide they will no longer
fund our debt, guess what, they will just come over and take what is rightfully
theirs. so prepare to become indentured servants and for your children to
become slaves cause that's what the reagan and bush administrations have
afforded you, and they've played you like a fiddle in the process. so enjoy
your "fantasy baseball" and your "fantasy world" in general cause when you get
old and your children are broke and begging in the streets, you will be too old
and senile to even know what's happening to you when they decide to pull the
plug on your ass to free up what little cash they can ge their hands on.
reality check yourselves.
| Sunday, 26 March 2006 at 20h 15m 32s | Student Loans | The student loan program is a subsidy to the banking industry.
what?
Yep,
it's true.
Let me explain.
You see, every student loan made is a "guaranteed student loan." That means
the government pays for the loan, in case you didn't know. The financial
institution arranges the loan, than sells the loan to the government, and
collects the receipts.
That essentially means that instead of just giving the money directly to the
students, the government makes the students fill out paperwork to get an 8 per
cent loan from a private bank. The private bank takes no risk because the
government is buying the loans. The profits from the loan go to the private
bank however.
So, you spend X dollars, get an X dollar refund, and then -- despite spending a
net zero dollars -- receive monthly checks from students repaying their student
loans.
Those students spend 10 to 15 years repaying their loans, enriching the banking
firms. Had the students been given the money outright, they would have had
more money to spend during those 10 to 15 years. Instead, this potential cash
gets alloted to the banking industry.
Investment in student education is important in any society, but to make that
investment in a way which enhances private interests while putting young people
in debt servitude isn't the most efficient method of investment in education.
It doesn't make sense to have wealth or lack thereof become the determinant of
a quality education. Rather then subsidizing the banking industry, investment
in the education of youth should be without strings attached.
The problem in the United States has been that education's historical
development was due to a combination of private and public efforts. The
importance of education is so paramount that the private sector will be able to
accrue a niche in the absence of a state educational system. The problem when
the private sector becomes the provider, however, is that education becomes
segregated
by wealth, thus fostering the neverending massive efforts to create forms of
public education during the last 150 years.
| Friday, 24 March 2006 at 2h 49m 58s | F**k**g idiots who think they have a clue | You know it amazes me how the self-appointed (self) right (eous) declares me
some sort of "liberal " or "Democratic" opposition, without knowing anything
about me, merely making those assumptions because they receive legitimate
intelligent criticism.
Uh, dumb-asses, Republican Teddy Roosevelt bolted his party because he thought
it was corrupted. Abraham Lincoln was deeply concerned about the infiltration
of financial shysters into the Republican party during the Civil War -- in fact
one of the suspected reasons for his assassination is that he intended to pull
the reigns in upon large corporatization of finance that he felt would
eventually take away the freedom of small businesses. And he would know, he
was railroad lawyer for nearly 20 years before he became a politician in the
1850's.
Dwight Eisenhower warned the nation of about the dangers of collusion between
defense contractors, the military, and large financial interests in his
fairwell speech in 1961. The current list of Republicans disgusted by the Bush
gangsters is growing.
Oh but I suppose that when you brain is constantly spoonfed by liars and
misinformation you wouldn't realize truth if it surrounded you like a plastic
bag.
"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and
over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda. "
-- George W. Bush, speaking off the cuff to a fake town meeting in 2005.
[SOURCE]
TRANSLATION: You see, we have to lie, because if we ever told the people the
truth of our real intentions, they would send us all to maximum security
prisons for a hundred years.
| Wednesday, 22 March 2006 at 2h 44m 19s | Right? Left? Ahkkk.... | The difference between the left and right is not what the self-proclaimed right
thinks.
The difference is that there is no left or right. Those words are used and
tossed about like they have meaning in and of themselves, but they are just
microscopic non-entities that negate anything meaningful that might come out of
anyone's mouth.
There are people who march in the parades sponsored by the governing elites,
who imbibe senselessly the propaganda monitored and paid for by those who mind
the interests of those who own the economic hierarchy. Such people are
innocently duped for various reasons, but nevertheless they still mouth the
words and images that find their way into their rationales, unable to combat
the disingenuious lies and fables that gather on their sense of pride.
Others see the gathering storm clouds on the economic horizon, loathing the
pitiful small-minded power-trips, pompous assertions, and foolish decisions
made by governing elites. These people react in many different ways, but
mostly with the idea of doing the right thing, and making the best decisions.
Now these ideas are common to almost everyone regardless of stripes, however
when you see through lies and understand the actual truth in the history of
events, you can be accused of some quite ridiculous meaningless things.
And damn, when you lie your way into making a huge mistake, and then blame your
critics for all the wrath which follows after the critics tried to warn you of
the wrath that did follow ... what can you say. You tried to crawl across the
interstate highway, and when you got run over by a truck, don't sit in the
hospital and blame those nay-sayers who told you long before that your gonna
get hit by a truck, especially when building a damn bridge across the highway
would have been a better idea. But stupid pride and vainglorious mentalities
will insist upon their perfumed stupidity while proclaiming superior
intellectual credentials -- even if they have to forge those credentials.
We are wasting time pounding on these things called left and right. As
corporate forms of aristocratic wealth gradually carve out the land, sending
jobs to countries that have virtual slave-labor, bankrupting the middle class,
and destroying this government "of, by, and for the people" -- there will only
be three types people soon enough : the super-rich, their high-paid servants,
and the poor.
| Saturday, 11 February 2006 at 21h 39m 35s | The insurance scam | Okay here's the reason relying on "personal savings accounts" for anything is
bad social policy.
A person who saves $100 a month for 20 years at 3% annual interest will have
only $32,830 if no withdrawals occur. If the average rate of inflation for 20
years is 2% (big low end assumption, the value of that $32,830 in today's terms
would be only $21,917.
Mind you this is meant to cover the medical expenses or retirement fund of the
elderly. The average catastrophic hospital visit is more than $30,000. Also, a
person who withdrew $800 a month from the built-up $32,830 account, could do so
for only 3.61 years before the account is exhausted.
Now a person who saves $200 a month over the same 20 year period, will have
$65,000. Still expecting citizens to have enough left over at the end of the
month to save is rather foolish expectation of the social system. The more
efficient system is to nationalize retirement and health care, and have every
single citizen pay a small amount into the system. The burdens of financing
retirement and health care should not be placed on the individual or the
company, because the costs are too unmanageable and the inevitable end result
is larger expenses than would be the case if the system was nationalized.
This idea is not "communistic." The financing comes from everyone, but no
goverment is owning the means of production. The government merely pays the
bills from the fund, and audits the costs. It is the same idea as a credit
union. If all citizens were in the same system, the payment and costs of these
two essential elements of society -- old age and health care -- would be more
efficiently managed and beneficial for businesses and individuals.
It's really that simple. The arguments to the contrary are either financed by
the insurance monolith, or they indicate an inflexibility when it comes to the
dualism between private and public economics. Private economics will not
always have the public interest in mind when the desire is to make a buck. The
assumption that it is in the best interest of private economics to provide
quality service has been shown to be a historically inadequate expectation.
Sometimes the people, in the form of public economics, have to take part in
their own best interest, because the private interests won't be able to see
beyond a short-term fixation with profit. Sometimes decisions have to be made
for society as a whole.
| Friday, 10 February 2006 at 1h 53m 41s | How the corruption of the law occurs | This is from the Tennessean [SOURCE]
WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert
engineered a backroom legislative maneuver to protect pharmaceutical companies
from lawsuits, say witnesses to the pre-Christmas power play.
The language was tucked into a Defense Department appropriations bill at the
last minute without the approval of members of a House-Senate conference
committee, say several witnesses, including a top Republican staff member
...
Trial lawyers and other groups condemn the law, saying it could make it nearly
impossible for people harmed by a vaccine to force the drug maker to pay for
their injuries
...
At issue is what happened Dec. 18 as Congress scrambled to finish its business
and head home for the Christmas holiday.
That day, a conference committee made up of 38 senators and House members met
several times to work out differences on the 2006 Defense Department
appropriations bill.
Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., the ranking minority House member on the conference
committee, said he asked Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, the conference chairman,
whether the vaccine liability language was in the massive bill or would be
placed in it.
Obey and four others at the meeting said Stevens told him no. Committee members
signed off on the bill and the conference broke up.
...
Keith Kennedy, who works for Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., as staff director
for the Senate Appropriations Committee, said at a seminar for reporters last
month that the language was inserted by Frist and Hastert, R-Ill., after the
conference committee ended its work.
"There should be no dispute. That was an absolute travesty," Kennedy said at a
videotaped Washington, D.C., forum sponsored by the Center on Congress at
Indiana University.
"It was added after the conference had concluded. It was added at the specific
direction of the speaker of the House and the majority leader of the Senate.
The conferees did not vote on it. It's a true travesty of the process."
After the conference committee broke up, a meeting was called in Hastert's
office, Kennedy said. Also at the meeting, according to a congressional
staffer, were Frist, Stevens and House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo.
"They (committee staff members) were given the language and then it was put in
the document," Kennedy said.
About 10 or 10:30 p.m., Democratic staff members were handed the language and
told it was now in the bill, Obey said.
He took to the House floor in a rage. He called Frist and Hastert "a couple of
musclemen in Congress who think they have a right to tell everybody else that
they have to do their bidding."
Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., also was critical of inserting the vaccine language
after the conference committee had adjourned.
"It sucks," he told Congress Daily that night.
Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., another member of the conference committee, was upset,
too, a staff member said, because he didn't have enough time to read the
language. The final bill was filed in the House at 11:54 p.m. and passed 308-
102 at 5:02 the next morning.
This is what these Rethuglican's do. They manipulate their power over the
legislative process to pull every dirty trick imaginable in order to placate
the corporations that finance their campaigns.
Just look at these corrupt faces of internal guilt:
Bill Frist
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Dennis Hastert
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GOTO THE NEXT 10 COLUMNS
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