Political Psychic

Daily Rants about Politics

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime; give a man religion and he will die praying for a fish.

Back when I was in junior college, I took a business law class (I was originally a business major at the time, before I switched to liberal arts).  Our class was reviewing a case in our textbook that provided some clear-cut examples of particular laws on the books at the time.

The case was about a man who was walking on the beach one day and happened to spot a man who happened to be drowning, and would’ve certainly lost his life if the man who witnessed his calls for help had gone unheard.  Other people in the area who saw the drowning man stood by feeling helpless about how to help him.

In his testimony, he explained that his reasons for going in were done not to save his life – but to collect a reward from the drowning man for saving his life.  He made sure that after he had jumped in to save him, he paraded himself – in front of the media and to anyone passing by – as the **hero** to everyone who was present, so that there would be absolutely no mistake whatsoever that **he** was the one who did the heroic deed.

Soon after the tragedy had passed, the “hero” contacted the saved drowning victim to claim his reward.  Aghast, the victim was horrified and offended to find that the man who had saved his life was not at all happy about the fact that he could claim himself a hero.  He wanted financial compensation and demanded that he receive a financial reward for it.

The “hero” soon saw that his claims for reward were not going to be rewarded and decided to sue the victim, claiming that he was entitled to financial compensation for his good deeds.

Needless to say, I was deeply sickened by the greed and insensitivity of the man who sought his “reward”.

I think of that story often when I see what our health insurance companies are doing to families and victims of, as Glenn Beck puts it, the “world’s greatest healthcare system”.  How laughable, if it weren’t so painful to watch.

People are being pulled off of respirators, kicked out off hospital beds, and being forced to put up and shut up if they cannot meet their extremely high deductible rates.  God forbid you have a pre-existing condition, like hemorroids or acne, to disqualify you for receiving life-saving cancer surgery.

It’s simply ridiculous and outright offensive.

Every industrialized (and third-world) country on this planet has a healthcare system that is designed to make sure you don’t get treated like a liability or sack of you-know-what before you see a doctor.

If you break your leg while visiting in England, Canada, Germany or France, you are rushed to a hospital, seen immediately by a doctor, cared for like a human being worthy of respect and healthcare, and NEVER given a bill for the care you received.

In our country, that would be labeled as “free healthcare for illegal immigrants”.

Ugh…

Oh, and that guy in the story – the “hero” – he lost his case.  The court was so offended by his demands for a reward that they threw the case out.

We need to do the same to our current profit-before-people healtcare system.

Why are Republicans so hopping mad about trying 9/11 suspects???

Why aren’t they happy that these guys will finally be put on trial for their crimes??

They keep saying that it will be the United States that will be the real “victim” – that it will be put on trial – that Bush & Cheney – and his administration – will be the real culprits that will be put on trial.

Let me see – if you’re not guilty of a crime, then you shouldn’t be worried, right? Just like the rationale for spying on millions of Americans – You shouldn’t really care if you’re not talking to Al Quaeda, right? Privacy-Shmivacy, you’re supposed to care more about catching terrorists, blah blah blah.

Personally, I honestly don’t think Obama will allow anything that the U.S. did wrong to be put “on trial”. If Obama really, REALLY cared about the rule of law, Bush and Cheney – and his whole g-d administration of cronies, would have been thrown in jail a VERY LONG TIME AGO.

Obama is really probably doing this to re-build our standing among the world’s nations of law-abiders. He is trying to prove that:

- We don’t torture prisoners
- We put people on trial before we lock them away in a prison
- We follow the rule of law
- We value human rights

That’s all. He’s not interested in what we bleeding-heart liberals want. He’s apparently much more interested in what the rest of world wants.

It’s not that that’s a bad thing. It’s just that it’s not enough.

The last decade under Republicans has been nothing less than a g-d living nightmare for me.

It wasn’t enough that every racist, facist idiot had their right to OPENLY HATE with full-blown protection of the pResident and his cronies. It wasn’t enough that they made sure that every law protecting minorities and the oppressed was over-turned, annulled or repealed (not to mention the Magna Carta, the protection for those with disabilities, your miranda rights, etc etc). It was the very fact that the last administration pushed to make it “cool” to be a scary, hateful, vindictive, violent, sexist, law-breaking, intolerant buffoon – who could also wrap himself in a flag and call himself “a patriot”.

That’s what it has been like for the past decade – and it still isn’t changing.

By ignoring the real criminals from the prior administration, you are looking the other way, while trying instead to make yourself look like a champion of “fighting terrorists” by going forward with a much-needed public trial for the 9/11 crimes against us.

I sincerely doubt there will be any way we will see the real victims of 9/11 allowed to speak out about how the crimes against them were politicized to go to war with two nations and to shred our nation’s sacred Constitutional rights by passing the Patriot Act.

We need to make sure that we don’t just push for a real trial for 9/ll terrorists – but that we put the REAL terrorists behind bars, too.

This is a link for a website Rachel Maddow’s regular guest, Kent Jones, talked about recently:  an online site where billionaires can sell off their wares for cash, much like eBay…or a pawnshop for those who need to “liquidate” in a hurry.

http://billionairexchange.com/

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7499

An incredible article by Frank Schaeffer on Bradblog about why he’s not a liberal:  “because he’s a conservative”

The blog piece is mind-blowing.

A snippet:

I grew up in a fundamentalist missionary family that in the 1970s and 80s morphed into my father’s activity as one of the founders of the Religious Right. We would hobnob with Republican leaders from Ronald Reagan to Gerald Ford and the Bush family, Jack Kemp and many others. One day it dawned on me that the far right of the Republican Party — in other words its base — actually hates America.

Go read it as soon as you can.

I was just listening to Ed Schultz and heard him say that he had spoken to several key people on the Hill yesterday… He said not one single person has been able to explain why Obama wants to wait until 2013 to let Health Reform go into effect. Except one explanation that seemed to ring true: Republicans are hoping that if they get control back of the House and/or Senate, or White House, that they will reverse this bill in a heart beat.

This makes perfect sense.

Basically, Obama is a Clinton-Republican. Not a true Democrat – but a Lieberman Democrat. Someone in the White House who is basically trying their darndest to help the Right Wing get everything they’ve been wanting for the last 100 years.

Clinton basically handed the rightwing their wettest and wildest dreams with NAFTA legislation, de-regulation of the media industry by allowing giant corporations to take over them, and also by allowing the energy, banking and Wall Street boys to become as de-regulated as they were before the great depression.

Bush pushed for it and definitely made it all happen. But it was also Clinton who basically caved to Republicans in the House who were pushing for all of the massive de-regulation.

The left wasn’t pushing back hard enough, and basically fell back on their promises to protect and deliver on Campaign Finance Reform, Global Energy / Green Energy / Kyoto Protocol changes and reforms. Al Gore would’ve helped insure those changes went into place. But instead, as soon as Bush came into office, he dismantled every single progressive and green environmental legislation in place, rolling back more than 50-years of progress. Bush also pushed hard for voting de-regulation with the “Help America Vote Act” – which was basically the “Help Count Less Votes Act” – designed to make sure every single vote that was tallied on a faulty Diebold machine was protected – and any voter with dark skin was called into question, and given fewer working voting machines in their precinct, thus guaranteeing 8-12 hour waits in long lines.

I’m feeling extremely frustrated this morning…

Check out this video clip, which is a bit hard to follow at times.  The guy is clearly a nutjob.  And I could do without the snakeoil pitch in the first 30-seconds.  And maybe without the racially-offensive reference to “Barack Hussein Obama” in the middle of the clip.

But other than that, the rest of the video is pure gold.  I felt like I needed a cigarette after I was finished watching it.

Mika, If you are reading this — and chances are pretty good you’re not…

My message to you – for all to read – is this:

Please practice what you preach.  If you don’t want to sugar-coat the truth to your family, don’t sugar-coat the truth on Morning Joe, either.

What you went through with regard to telling your daughters about your dismissal was heartbreaking.  In my opinion, there was nothing wrong with “sugarcoating” the truth when you told them about all the positive sides about getting fired.  You were absolutely right to tell them that it would be a good thing in the end.  It wasn’t your fault that your daughter had a nervous breakdown at school because of it.  It simply taught you that your daughters are far more insightful than you realized. I’m glad you decided to choose a more “direct approach” when dealing with breaking bad news to your daughters.  But I’d really like it if you used the same approach when dealing with the men on your show “Morning Joe”.  Maybe you could start by using a more “direct approach” with your show’s host, Joe Scarborough.

If it were up to me, I think you should dump hot Starbucks coffee on his fat lap every time he belittles the women on his show.  For crying out loud, Mika, he treats you like his friggin’ maid!  He talks down to you, belittles you, talks over you – and every single one of the women who visit his show.

The first time I noticed you on the show was when I was watching the 2008 DNC Primary Convention.  You were serving coffee to all your guests as if you were the show’s hired hostess.  You kept getting up to get people drinks, clear their placemats, etc.  Seriously, is this how you see yourself?  Do you play “mommy” to the men on Morning Joe??  I was soon surprised to learn that you were the CO-HOST of the show – and not simply a techie or stagehand who happened to enjoy facetime in front of the camera.

I think you are doing the wrong thing by saying one thing, and doing another.

You are treated poorly by the men on your show because you are, quite frankly, extremely passive when it comes down to men sugar-coating the truth to you.

Men like Joe Scarborough love to make women feel meaningless and insignificant.  Don’t kow-tow to them.  Don’t let them treat you like your words, feelings, and views are nothing more than “female hormones on overdrive”.  Men like Joe love to treat working women like they’re overpaid housewives or mommies-for-hire.  So, please, stop acting like one on the show.

Seriously, you need to throw some scalding hot coffee on Joe and his buddies the next time they tell you that you’re over-reacting about rape, abuse, and hostile-workplace behaviour.

You’d be far more of an inspiration to me – and to your daughters.

Link to the story I’m referring to:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mika-brzezinski/getting-fired-and-how-it_b_342298.html

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