When a man has so many houses...

I was sickened and disgusted watching John McCain on the news talk show this morning. He was all about blaming the so-called sequester on President Obama and spouting on about NO TAXES!!! No mention of the seniors who depend on Social Security, food stamps, government programs for heating, or other vital services being cut. No mention of health care needs being cut. No mention of all those people out of work with no money coming in.
A man who has more houses than he can count, should be a little more tactful about other people's needs. He used to have some credibility. It appears his bitterness about his resounding loss in 2008 has made  him more obtuse and stubborn.

Guns don't kill people?

Of course guns kill people. That's what they are made for. Who in the world is stupid enough to believe that guns don't kill people? The rest of the meme is that people kill people, which is supposed to lead us to assume that guns are harmless little toys and it's no use trying to restrict or regulate them.

Isn't it obvious that guns in the hands of people are really efficient killing machines? Isn't it obvious that crazy people can do a whole lot more damage, death, and destruction with guns than without them? What could Adam Lanza have done without his weapons in hand? I wonder how many war hawks in 2003 would have said that "nuclear weapons don't kill people, people kill people" before we invaded Iraq.

According to the NRA the way to solve the problem of crazy people with too many guns is make more guns available.
The NRA spokesmen are not crazy, appearances to the contrary. The NRA are lobbyists for the gun manufacturers. They want to sell more guns. That's how they get money and power.

The crazy people are the suckers who buy their bullshit. Studies show that simply repeating bullshit often enough to make it sound familiar will persuade many people that it is true. Even if it's patently crazy.

"THE WORLD ENDS THIS WEEK! GIVE ME ALL YOUR MONEY!"  Say it often enough and some poor fool will fork over his life savings.

Guns don't kill people! We need more guns to not kill people and protect us from people who are killing us with guns! Crazy talk. I can't believe how many of my friends believe that shit.

Dazed and confused

I wake up in the mornings in a state of shock. After all the grim news, all the finagling, the shenanegans, the vitriol and hysteria, the good guy won. I was braced for the worst and it didn't happen. So I allow myself a smile, a sigh of relief, and a ray of hope. There's no guarantee of course. The same dangers that beset us last month still threaten us today along with new dangers lining up to take their place. But the man in charge of dealing with them is the best of two choices. He still could screw up but at least his vision is clear and the America that Barack Obama describes is the America that I want to know.

Deja Vu all over again

I remember feeling like this in 2000. The tension and stress of the whole horrible experience when Bush's brother was stopping the vote counts in Florida. It seemed to last for ever. When President Bush was placed in office by the Supreme Court, I was devastated but believed in my naive way that somehow everything would turn out OK anyway. I actually believed that Dick Cheney would act to guide and moderate George's natural stupidity and bluster. Boy was that wrong. In 2004 I heard the news that Bush  was in position to continue screwing everything up.With the two wars well underway, what else could he do but trash the economy. Which he did. Now President Obama is on the way to cleaning up the disaster left behind by the last ideological Republican. Will he be able to continue or will everything go down the tubes AGAIN?

Well, DUH!!

One of those common sense ideas that are now backed up by the data. This study confirms what every human with a halfway functioning brain might have guessed, that when young fertile women have full access to birth control, abortion rates will drop. Those House Republican mouth-breathers Akin, and Broun might have a hard time understanding this however. After all, Obama supports free birth control, so it must be BAD!

The pornographers of hate

Rush Limbaugh gets to say anything he wants as an "entertainer". He spews the most vitriolic vile garbage and brings home buckets of money, millions and millions every year. How can he get so rich when he produces nothing of value? Just like any pornographer he stimulates and strokes the base instincts that lie beneath the civilized brain. Hate, like lust, is a powerful driving force. He and the other right-wing "entertainers" are no better than pornographers, and worse than most.

The other 1%

From Time magazine, November 21, 2011
Some 2.4 million men and women have fought in Iraq and/or Afghanistan since the wars began. This is almost exactly 1% of the population of the US  who areover 18 years old. Never before have we average Americans been so distanced from the reality of the wars. Not long ago, I was sitting in a meeting when a colleague said that the wars were over. He had no idea that our 1% are still killing and dying in a country  on the other side of the planet.
We need to bring back the draft. We should NOT maintain a standing army and expect to fight any wars with volunteers. The founding fathers were adamantly opposed to maintaining standing armies. It is too easy to go along with the war mongers when the only Americans who pay the price are our Pat Tillmans, or those impelled by poverty to fight. There is great incentive to create poverty, and great incentive to start wars of choice. We need to make sure everyone pays the cost of war, that blood shed on foreign soil comes from the children of politicians and billionaires, as well as children of roofers and housemaids.