Political Psychic

Daily Rants about Politics

bumper sticker

I just saw this bumper sticker about an hour ago and I had to do a double take. I couldn’t believe how idiotic it sounded.

Does the right wing seriously believe health care is MORE expensive under the European/Single Payer system??

There’s a reason why every single person is covered under their system – even foreigners, tourists, and the like. Because everyone pays into the system, via taxes.

It’s not free – but it sure isn’t more expensive than our system, which will wipe you out within a matter of weeks or months, the moment you start receiving your bills. And that’s if you’re lucky enough to avoid getting canceled by your carrier.

I wonder what their bumper stickers would say if we didn’t have VA Medical Care, Social Security or Unemployment Insurance?

Someone just called into the Ed Schultz radio show a minute ago with that idea – and I was blown away with how much it would mean to U.S. based workers. It would be a party that is about pushing for fair wages, protected labor rights, health care, and all about rebuilding the middle class. The Democratic Party sold out to corporations, along with the Republican Party. Both parties allowed workers to be steamrolled by corporations.

With the passage of the unlawful gift given to corporations to fund any pro-corporate candidate they want (which will further drive down wages, jobs and living standards), the left will need to push unions to fight fire with fire. They have been deemed the same right as corporations to fund candidates with unlimited amounts of cash. We need to be doing some serious push-back in our country – against the powers that be.

Pushing back is exactly what the Fox News created, corporate-owned astro-turfers over at the Tea Party have been doing – and have made fools of themselves by showing off their racist, hatred, pro-violent agenda. They are nothing less than offensive – and the corporate-owned media has given them nothing less than the royal carpet treatment in showing off their disdain for health care and public services.

It’s time to fight back by creating a third part on the left. It’s not enough to have the Green Party today. It needs to be about more than the environment right now. It needs to be about protecting the middle class – and rebuilding it. Rebuilding the middle class will rebuild our country. Trickle-down economics destroyed the middle class, by exporting jobs and rewarding the rich by taking away from the poor. The Reaganomics proponents have argued that helping the rich helps the poor – by allowing money to flow downward. The truth, as has been proven over the past 40-years, is that it doesn’t flow downward – it flows sideways – by flowing to other countries, bleeding jobs and the economy dry of its once wealthy middle class.

The truth is, that’s exactly what the neocons WANT – to see very few with an excessive amount of capital. In other words, they want to see a return to a monarch-like class system – where you are literally born into wealth, and only those with the proper bloodlines (i.e. white), can have a chance at fighting for what might be left to gain from.

We are well on our way to becoming such a nation. And the Republicans are only interested in “playing the system” in order to make wealth happen – instead of “playing by the rules” (which they deem is “only for pussies”). There needs to be a stronger fight for the middle class. The Democrats are too disconnected, even though their intentions are still more honorable than those on the right. It’s simply not enough.

So, let me get this straight. It’s not the fact that there are no jobs out there. It’s that I’m somehow not motivated enough because I’m being coddled and spoiled with my incredibly generous unemployment benefits package. Unemployment benefits only pay about 20-50% of what you were making in your last job – which is barely enough to cover rent or mortgage payments, alone. And of course, there’s the cost of gas and food. I am somehow living high on the hog? Even when I’m collecting unemployment benefits??? So they’re saying I’m a “welfare queen” now??

Wow.

I used to make a couple of grand per paycheck. Now it’s 200 a week. Oooooh, ya got me there….I’m sooo livin’ it up on my big fat weekly check!!

I can always…ALWAYS…count on Republicans to come up with the biggest doozies to offend the thinking-class in this country.

Another favorite past talking point was “if you help the homeless and the poor, you’re helping to keep pan handlers, drug dealers and scam artists in business – they’ll never learn how to make a living on their own”. As if being homeless and poor wasn’t bad enough – you have to worry about being labeled a “scam artist” when you ask for help.

And, I especially love hearing them say “I don’t want my tax dollars going toward some bum who is gonna buy drugs with my money”.

So they’re totally fine with paying for wars based on lies and massive fraud and abuse by military contractors.  But helping the poor?  That just makes their blood boil with rage.

I really hate saying this, but…Republicans have ice water running in their veins. That’s all there is to it.  How can these people be so g-damned mean and evil when they are asked to help others? And then they are so blissfully happy when they are told about people across the globe dying from our bombs and military strikes?  Especially when it was all based on lies?  Why on earth is that sooo okay with them??

They talk about post-9/11 moments as if they were golden and beautiful. The only thing honestly beautiful that I can remember about it, which only lasted a month or so, was how everyone was united as a nation and as a global entity. Color and gender, nationality and language, race, stature, class, etc – none of that mattered. Everyone had their flags flying.

However, during that time – and ever since then – it’s been nothing but a paranoid freaky fear festival among Republicans — and we have all suffered ever since. It’s all about keeping people divided – and making sure no one trusts “the other” among us.

Republicans don’t love “unity” when it comes down to who we are as a nation or global force — they only love it when people are united against “the other”. When people are pitted against eachother, treated as if they must view eachother with suspicion and fear, it brings out the worst in all of us.

Republicans don’t want us united – they want us divided. Their motto really is “divide and conquer” – not “united we fall”.

So, going back to my original point…

Instead of helping eachother out, it’s all about fearing the poor, the foreigner, the unfamiliar cultures and lifestyles.

Being unemployed sucks. But I guess that’s not what they want to believe or try to understand. They want to view 10-20% of the country as “the other” – and still call themselves “compassionate conservatives” at the same time.

Oh, and one more thing…

If you’re wondering about why conservatives are all for giving tons of money to foreign countries. They’re not doing it out of love or compassion. They are doing for the exact same reasons a loan shark would do it: to kick you down when you can’t pay it back. Republicans and crisis are like insurance agents turned ambulance chasers. They want you to call them the hero – but you realize they are the bad guy when they demand 30% interest on that 90-day million dollar loan. Read “Confessions of an Econonmic Hitman” if you don’t believe this.  If you’d like to read excerpts of the book, read it here.  Here’s a Wikipedia summary on it.

Oh, and one more thing.  The most frightening thing to a Republican is an educated public.  This is why they’re rather have a bunch of uneducated goons filled with hate fighting their battles, instead of a civilized and educated public that will more than likely vote for a Democrat instead of a Republican.  If you haven’t heard yet, Kansas City just voted to shut down half their schools due to budget issues.  Instead of trying to cut corners on waste, they shut the schools down instead.  That should help them create more impoverished, uneducated goons to fight their battles.

Ugh…

I still love Obama…but I feel like he’s like one of those parents that lets their kid(s) terrorize others, running through the aisles at Wal Mart and Target, pulling merchandise off the shelves, etc, while the parent pretends not to know what’s going on – and is actually too frightened to punish these monsters for their bad behavior. Someone who is literally so afraid of being called a poor leader, that they in turn become exactly what they’re afraid of.  The bad behavior continues, while the frightened parent continues to offer candies and bribes to make the little monster shut the hell up.

The Republicans scream and yell the most dishonest, offensive, and outrageous statements, repeating them ad nauseum, even going as far as calling the mainstream media “liberal” whenever it tries to correct them on their lies. (The media is in fact right wing and extremely corporate-owned, which is why their lies constantly go unchallenged). Obama and the Democrats seem to simply ignore these screaming imbeciles as if they were nothing more than white noise, while the rest of us in the real world have to put up with the result of their lies. The results usually turn up in casual conversation with neighbors and friends repeating the lies as if it were doctrine.

Obama needs to take the Republicans in the back room and let the beatings begin.  There is absolutely NO excuse for allowing such unforgivable behavior from the right wing to continue.

On a side note…

The Dems need to cull the herd in their own party and start demanding real progressive action.

The Blue Dogs keep putting up with the lies from the right… and then they won’t take action until the damage has been done and corrective actions become laughably ineffective.

I don’t mean to be so rough on my beloved Dems.

Afterall, the Dems don’t have the power of a mainstream media to support their statements. The Republicans scrubbed all of the FCC regulations which once required news media organizations to actually tell the truth. Clinton helped the Republicans when he allowed giant media conglomerates to take over smaller media outlets – thus creating the stronghold that Fox News has today. We went from having tons and tons of independent media news outlets – like newspapers, radio stations, etc that were privately owned – to media outlets that are all owned by less than a handful of different organizations — ABC, NBC, Fox, etc. In the end, you end up with a vacuum where facts go to die – and info-tainment is the norm.

But back to my point… The Dems need to grow a set and help Obama find a spine…because you certainly can’t expect anything good to come from a screaming eight year old monster child Republican.

CEO’s are treated like rock-stars. Today, your power as a CEO for a giant corporation is almost limitless. And if you run for office, you’re given even more unlimited power over every American life. You’re not just an executive in charge of millions of employees – You’re an executive with almost limitless amounts of power. And if you hate the whole notion of paying taxes or obeying the law – well then, government life just got a whole lot sweeter.

Back during the mafia’s glory days of Capone and such, large cities like New York, Chicago, and even Los Angeles, were completely at the mercy of what mob bosses wanted from them. If you tried to stand up to them, you were “taken out” – with a strong message to others who might try to do the same. It was back during the roaring 20′s, right up until the Great Depression.

Big Oil, Big Pharma and Health Care, have strangled every branch of government by taking away it’s power to govern or go after them. A government that is extremely neutered like ours insures that mafia-ish corporations can operate with as much illegal behavior as possible. They can literally do whatever they want to whoever they want. I really should include “Big Media”, also. It’s a fourth branch of government and it’s all owned by large corporations – foreign and domestic.

And quite literally, they can charge whatever they want – like unreasonably high gas prices, health insurance premiums, sky high prices for life-saving drugs and medication, etc.

They can control what is said about them – they can remove people who talk too much. In the old days, you were simply killed or thrown into the ocean or river. These days, it’s a little more subtle, yet effective. Corporations can retaliate against whistle-blowers and force people to stay-silent about problems and corruption. With this kind of guaranteed government-assisted protection, they can lie and steal from anyone they want. And, again, it’s all done under the protection of our own government.

Think this sounds crazy?

Recently, Al Franken tried to push through legislation to make it legal for an employee who had been raped by it’s employer to sue in federal court. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? I mean, any normal person should be able to go to the feds and talk about illegal behavior by their bosses, right? So you shouldn’t need to get special permission to sue your boss for rape, right? Well, actually, no. Most of the time, you have to agree to have it done in arbitration – i.e. a hired judge. More than likely, a judge that has a nice long record of siding with your bosses. The kind of judge that wants to put away whiney, greedy employees with an axe to grind. Oh, and if your boss is KBR/Halliburton – and you want to speak out against them for criminal behavior, they can pretty much retaliate against you any way they want. Even if it means you getting raped by them.

How do these guys do it? How do these guys literally get away with so much crime???

Well, it’s no secret. For starters, they don’t want any – ANY – kind of regulation over them (i.e. police over their them), regardless of their criminal history. We even let them have giant billion dollar government contracts, regardless of their personal connections to anyone in office.

It’s actually kind of funny…or ironic…when you think about it.

They like to say that the big, bad scary government is trying invade the marketplace and that we should simply leave them alone. But instead, it’s actually the opposite that is happening. It’s the corporations who are invading government – and all they have to do is yell “rape”…or rather “socialism” and every one shuts up to protect them.

In the old days, people were thrown out of office if they were caught providing special favors, like contracts to businesses. It was like a political bribe or special favors and promises. Today, they’re all considered legal, in many ways. Large donations, fundraisers, no-bid contracts, etc. We even let them write legislation – actual laws – that will give them all the power and protection they seek.

And it’s all done without any complaints from the public. Well, actually, there would be lots of complaints – or actual riots and angry protests, complete with burning cars and broken glass.

But it’s really hard to get mad about any of that when the mainstream media – also owned by huge corporations – won’t tell you about any of it.

And we are basically stuck with a corporatocracy.

A corporatocracy or corpocracy is a form of government where corporations, conglomerates or government entities with private components, control the direction and governance of a country. This is sometimes considered to be a form of fascism.

And that’s how you end up with today’s mafia running (and ruining) your life.

It was a great speech. Nothing really new.

What I liked.

• He promised to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” this year. But I’m still upset about not doing it sooner. There were urgent requests – All of them noteworthy – By high-ranking military men who were wrongly outed. They wanted him to do something right away – To take a stand against what was happening to them. He did nothing to stop it. He could’ve written an executive order to repeal the old – But instead insisted Congress to take action. Then, when someone in the House came up with strongly worded legislation to do exactly that, the White House blocked his efforts. I mean, what kind of White House does that?

The old Bush White House did that kind of thing. And instead of change, we’re getting the same old thing. Obama has tons of leftovers from Bush, and a few new kinds of Karl Rove’s of his own – Like Rham Emmanuel, Tim Geitner, and Paul Bernanke. This certainly helps me understand why Obama isn’t threatening the prior administration with prosecutions for war crimes, illegal wire-tapping, etc, etc, etc. He’s also keeping a lot of the same illegal executive orders Bush put into place.

Anyway, I’m just glad something is being done now about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.

• I also liked the fact that he confronted the Supreme Court about their disastrous ruling that will flood our elections with unlimited amounts of foreign corporate money. Putting lawmakers’ seats for sale is NOT democracy. I guess former Illinois governo r only needed to wait a year if wanted to legally sell a Senate seat, because NOW, it’s f*cking golden.

What I didn’t like was:

• Obama’s repeated promise to work with Republicans. Seriously. Has our president become some kind of abused spouse who refuses to leave the wife-beating drunkard who keeps promising that he won’t hit her anymore??
  It’s so embarrassing.

• His promise to push for more off-shore drilling and nuclear power. What the heck happened to Green Energy Jobs and Legislation????!!!! Exactly how will helping corrupt oil and nuclear energy companies help the
  environment??? It was just more embarrassing concessions to the very people who put us in the situation we are still stuck in – a broke country with a shameful history of massive environmental pollution.

I have mixed feelings about the high-speed rail project. While I’m very glad we are going to build something that will push us forward in so many ways for years to come, I don’t understand why we couldn’t put this same
money into fixing more highways and bridges. Public investment in infrastructure is an extremely effective way to create more jobs and push the country forward. I guess I’m just a little jealous, maybe, that it will
not be happening in our neck of the woods. I really hope something more can be done for the rest of the country, and not just the south, where Republicans will simply treat you like cr*p for helping them out.

• For example: In Portland, highways are a mess. Especially the bridges. I feel quite sure that we will have a nightmarish bridge collapse in the not-so-distant future. I wish I were kidding, but you only need to drive underneath a few – especially the extremely large bridges that cross over the Willamette or the Columbia Gorge. The one that connects into Portland is especially dismal-looking – and it’s the tallest one – a double-decker bridge with a constant stream of traffic on it. Portland could use quite a big boost of help from a federally funded highway project. It would provide tons of jobs to construction workers, a reliable source of income for the city and surrounding areas, and it would restore and beautify a very old city that is badly in need of help. It would – most importantly – make these bridges safe again. And I’m not even talking about the bridges in Washington state, which could also use a hand – but not half as badly as the ones in Oregon. It rains almost every day of the year here, and the harsh weather makes it even tougher on our heavily traveled infrastructure.

Anyway. those are my two cents.

Thanks.

Obama – and the voters – thought McCain’s idea of an across-the-board spending freeze was a disastrous idea. Just like Bush’s tax cuts, which only benefited the wealthiest, while hurting the middle class and the poor. It was akin to a business giving mega-huge rebates to 1% of it’s biggest customers, while jacking up prices for 99% of the remainder of it’s clients. Domestic spending cuts means 99% of Americans will suffer with slashed government programs and services – while making sure the top 1% (in this case, the Pentagon and wasteful, corrupt, criminal and crony defense contractors) all get the green light to continue sucking off the taxpayers.

Oh, but wait, they’re “keeping America safe” – so I shouldn’t be so critical of them, should I?

Never mind the fact that no one has been fired for the lousy job they’ve been doing at keeping airlines safe, terrorists out, or allowing sleaze-ball fame-hungry reality-show-wannabe’s from getting into the White House.

It’s insane.

Republicans love tax cuts and spending freezes because they simply have no idea how to run a government. It’s like running a business but hating customers, hating employees, hating bills, and hating hard work. But gosh darn it, ya just love handling cold, hard cash. So you continue to run a business, even when you’re bad at it. That’s what Republicans are. Greedy, corrupt business men who hate playing by the rules, but love it when they’ve got a scam that gets them rich fast and keeps them from getting caught.

And – to top it all off – they have complete ownership of 99% of all media outlets – which means that they can fire anyone who tries to report on their corruption. And, they can trash talk Democrats who try to investigate them – and praise weak Dems who collapse like a wet suit when bad ideas can be spun into good-sounding ones (Lieberman comes to mind right away).

Obama, please don’t manage the government like a Republican when you promised to change the way Washington would be run. You promised accountability and transparency. But instead of going after illegal behavior or incompetence, you think it’s simply enough if you simply say, “I made a mistake” or “I take full responsibility”. This isn’t accountability – this is protection for those who didn’t do their job. You’re supposed to fire people – not lie for them. If it were me who failed to do my job at work, I certainly wouldn’t expect someone else to cover me. I’d expect to be talked to about it – and I certainly wouldn’t want my boss to say he is holding himself accountable when he didn’t even hold me accountable to begin with.

Under the new proposed bill, the insurance companies will be given everything they’ve been asking for – and they will get it all because they pumped millions of dollars a day in negative campaigning against “Government-Run Health Care”.

Insurance companies will be on steroids, dumping more and more people for no reason at all – Charging more and more money every year for premiums and deductibles, providing less and less coverage.

And now that the Supreme Court has passed a law saying corporations are protected in saying whatever they want, just like people, they can run more commercials to fight reform.

Obama made a HUGE mistake trying to make nice with everyone. He made a huge mistake assuming Democrats would be happy with “any kind” of “health care reform”.

Make no mistake about this, though: We Dems are not going to vote Republican just because of this – But we certainly won’t be voting for the Blue Dog Dem incumbents. The legislature needs to grow a backbone and stop worrying about trying to please Republicans in the House and Senate.

Government-Run Healthcare means you won’t get dropped, you won’t lose your coverage, and you won’t lose your house. Obama simply needs to write an executive order demanding “Medicare for All” and simply put us on a Single Payer system – Where every man, woman and child is covered by insurance. The same way every other country on the face of the planet is.

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.

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.