Health Care and Our Country

Ok so its been a week now and the Republicans had us believing that the country as we know it was coming to an end. Personally I have not noticed any changes. I have not been rounded up by the government and my house has not been taken away by the government. (Although if they did, it probably would be doing me the favor) Its interesting that even G.W. Bush mentioned that the hard line Republican stance may have gone too far. Didn't John McCain campaign in 2008 with the slogan of country first? Now that health care has passed he has stated that he is done for the year. He will block any legislation put forward by Democrats. And this helps our country how? This piece of shit's slogan should have been John McCain first, country second. Its also interesting that this is basically the health care plan he campaigned on against Obama. Anyone who believes that this is socialism is flat out wrong. Instead it gives the free market insurance company rapists thirty million new customers. Do you think its any coincidence that their stock prices are at an all time high. I was against this plan for just that reason. The right way to do it was Medicare Part E. The E stands for everyone. This way the insurance company scums who have been raping us for years would be put out of their misery. The federal government would then realize the same profits as the private insurance companies currently do. And to those of you that say the government can't run anything right, just ask any member of congress what they think of their plan. I would rather take my chances on the government, than an insurance company who declares a newborn with a cleft pallet not eligible because of a pre-existing condition.

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss II

Obama vs. Bush, lets see where do I begin? While campaigning during the financial crisis he promised and voted for, that if we the taxpayers give Wall street 12.8 billion dollars, credit markets would flow again. Bush enacted it and Obama voted for it. Instead the FDIC admitted last week that the credit markets have reduced lending at the sharpest rate since 1942. Obama said he would filibuster passage of the FISA Act which retroactively legalized wiretapping our phones without warrants. Instead he voted for it and Bush passed it. He told us he would close Guantanamo. Bush opened it and Obama continues to keep it open. He said he would pull out of Iraq. Bush started it and Obama still has over a hundred thousand troops there. In addition to the troops in Iraq, our tax dollars also pay over a hundred thousand contractors working there. He said he would only pass health care with a public option. Instead we got John McCains health care plan from his presidential campaign, which was similar to Bob Doles health reform plan from twenty years ago, but is now filled with bloat and waste that will not give the insurance companies competition but will fill their pockets even more. He has done nothing for "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", "Employee Free Choice Act" or "Wall Street Reform". It's amazing that he is following in the footsteps of Bush and the Republicans are against him. How is it that they supported all of these policies while Bush was running things but now that a Democrat is in charge they fight him every step of the way. This country is on a course that is a dangerous one at best. At worst think of the fall of the Roman Empire. Over the last thirty years we have seen the biggest transfer of wealth to the richest one percent of this country, all courtesy of the federal government. Both Republicans and Democrats are to blame. Republicans through unfunded tax cuts and Democrats through ridiculous trade policies favoring third world countries such as India and China. Remember the game of Monopoly? That is what's happening in this country and it happened in Venezuela and that's why Hugo Chavez is in power now. Ninety five percent of the people who live in that country are poor, but their lives are all getting better because of the transfer of wealth from the five percent of the people who are wealthy to the other ninety five who are poor. Some say that is communism and so do I. But lets recall what is happening in our country. Our tax dollars go to farm subsidies for large commercial farms who produce the high fructose corn syrup that goes into everything we eat, which makes us fat diabetics so that our tax subsidies to the drug companies can develop pills so they can sell us ever more expensive pills that don't cure us, instead just treat us. We have tax subsidies to the largest oil companies in the world who have had record profits while we pay three to four dollars a gallon for gas. I never could figure that one out. We give tax subsidies to other energy companies as well. One of the definitions of communism is income redistribution and our government does that every day only they call it tax credits to make it sound nice. You may recall a few weeks ago a despondent man flew his light plane into an IRS building in Austin Texas. Here is a quote from his suicide note. "Why is it that a hand full of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of GM executives, for scores of years) and when its time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours? Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from their corpses and the victims they cripple, and this countries leaders don't see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies. Yet the political Representatives (thieves, liars, and self serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year and debate the state of the terrible health care problem. It's clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don't get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in". I think this says a lot about what's going on in this country. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

The Liars

Let's talk about Republican hypocrisy. Some how the Republicans who have used reconciliation for their own agenda are crying foul now that the Democrats want to use it themselves to pass health care. Some Republicans are saying that health care is too big to pass through reconciliation, yet they voted for the Bush tax cuts through reconciliation. Which according to the Congressional Budget Office added 2.5 trillion to the federal debt. Lamar Alexander (R Tennessee) is one of the most outspoken opponents of using reconciliation yet when Bush was in office he voted for the Bush tax cuts in 2003 and 2005, the tax increase prevention act of 2005, and the college cost reduction act in 2007. John McCain wants new senate rules so that reconciliation cannot be used to break a filibuster for entitlement programs such as medicare, medicaid, and social security yet his own record of voting yes for changes in these programs using reconciliation is a complete reversal of what he is preaching, now that Republicans are not in power. Even Senator Orrin Hatch (R Utah) in a recent op ed column in the Washington Post denounces the use of reconciliation, saying that jamming through health care, against the will of the people would wreak havoc on our system of checks and balances and damage the prospects of bipartisanship. Funny though if you look at his own record, he was part of reconciliation 13 times out of the 21 times it has been used. In his own words "to jam" through the Republican agenda when they did not have enough votes to stop a filibuster. He goes on to say that the only time the Republicans used reconciliation was when there was significant bi partisan support. Interesting because the 2003 Bush tax cuts that have wreaked havoc on our deficit was passed through reconciliation, with Sen. Hatch voting yes and a total vote of 50-50. Vice President Cheney had to break the tie (the one time he actually did his job). I guess this is what Sen. Hatches' definition of bipartisanship is. Sen. Hatch is an outright liar, plain and simple. Another thing that is talked about a lot is the federal deficit. Its interesting that during eight years of Bush/Cheney, all you heard from them was when they were pushing the tax cuts, is that deficits don't matter. Why all of a sudden, when the Democrats are now in power, do deficits matter? The idiots at Fox News convey the message that we are in this mess because of Obama. It's sure ironic that when Bush came into office he had a surplus in the budget but when he left there was over a 1.5 trillion dollar deficit. How is that Obama's fault?

Torture and the Czars

On the news last night some of John Yoo's so called legal opinions for the Bush administration were starting to come out. I would first like to thank Dick Cheney for pushing to have the so called torture memos brought out into the open. These memos will just show how close this country was to having a dictator for a president. We will finally get to see just what types of lunatics we were dealing with in the Bush administration. Anyway, John Yoo was one of the attorneys that Bush relied upon to write legal opinions so that he could justify doing whatever the hell he wanted to do, to fit his twisted agenda. John Yoo could be heard talking about getting information by bringing in a prisoners child and stomping on the child's testicles in front of his father. That father in my humble opinion will say anything the people interrogating him want to hear just to save his son any agony and any father would do the same. It gets better. He then says that the President had the right to order a village of civilians to be exterminated. This is sick and the worst part is that President Cheney and Vice President Bush (that was not a typo) agreed to it. This coming from two draft dodgers of the Viet Nam war. The question is what kind of people would consider such acts. I thought this was the USA. I thought we were above that. Maybe I am just a simple person, but I do know that the terrorists have achieved some of their goals by turning our leaders into raging lunatics with delusional paranoia to even think of stuff like that. There are better ways to protect our country. Oh and the czars that we have in our government. One of my neighbors who considers himself a conservative but was behind Bush 100 percent, even though William Buckley the father of modern conservatism said that Bush was anything but conservative, keeps forwarding me emails. I have asked him to research for himself some of the things he sends but he just keeps drinking the Kool Aid and has no opinion of his own. Anyways the latest is about all the czars in the Obama administration. Some one needs to tell him that it was Bush, who increased the size of government more then any president in history. When Clinton left office he had only 7 czars. His predecessor George H.W. Bush had only 2. But along came his son G.W. Bush and he increased it to 35 czars. My friend you need to start screening the email sent to you by doing a little fact checking before forwarding it to me. I know your conservative but being conservative does not mean following the party lines because our government including both Republicans and Democrats are anything but conservative, and the Democrats don't claim to be.

The Economy and Taxes

My wife and I just returned from a weeks vacation that was bones basic for food and lodging due to our reduced income. Not asking you to feel sorry because we do realize that we are lucky to be in our homes and not behind in bills and are fortunate enough to get away. Anyway we spent Super Bowl weekend in Vegas to become the Godparents of our nephew Anthony Michael and after to watch the Super Bowl. From there we flew all night to Negril Jamaica for four days of thawing out my bones. One thing I noticed in both places is how down the tourism is. The economy sucks and the people in tourist areas are really feeling it. For example we paid 72 dollars a night for a hotel right on Negril Beach. This is the middle of high season and the room should be going for much higher than that. The picture of me shows just how dead the beach is. So lets examine where we are now. The Republicans just had their national convention in Hawaii, which is ironic due to the fact that every time Obama goes there for vacation, he is blasted for being out of touch with mainstream America by going to such an exotic locale, by the same Republican pundits who were at the convention. This leads me to the so called Bush tax cuts which would supposedly trickle down to create jobs. If that's the case then why is unemployment so high? The Republicans on Fox News would have you think that all the problems started after Obama took office. Make no mistake about it because the facts are this. Our country is in debt due to massive government spending under Bush and continued spending by Obama. Bush presided over the largest increase in government in history by starting two wars, Medicare Part D, and No Child Left Behind just to name a few. All unfunded. All while giving tax breaks to millions of Americans. And Obama is following the same path. But you and most people have been tricked into thinking that you got the tax breaks. Not true. The fact is that the richest 1 percent is who got the pie and the other 99 percent of the people in this country have to share the crumbs. Bush claimed that 92 million taxpayers would on average get a savings of 1083 dollars a year when his cuts were fully implemented in 2010. The key word is average. In reality most Americans are getting around 220 dollars per year, while the people who make over a million dollars a year are receiving around 90 thousand dollars a year in tax cuts. How many people make a million a year? Put in simpler terms if Bill Gates who is worth around forty billion dollars walks into a bar where there are three other workers who each have a net worth of lets say a hundred thousand dollars, that means the average net worth of the four people in the bar is around ten billion dollars each. A true statistic, but not an accurate statistic. What is worse is all this talk about the socialized programs that Obama is proposing coming out of Republicans mouths. The Bush tax cuts gave big business so much money back, that between 2001 and 2003 there were 82 companies that that had profits totalling over a hundred billion dollars yet paid no federal tax at all. Zero. And to make matters worse, on April 15th these same companies were given tax rebate checks totalling 12.6 billion dollars. And people think its the spending that is leading this country into a bankruptcy. Wake up people. This country is in debt because of tax cuts to the richest one percent. So the next time you here a Republican spouting about income redistribution, by citing a person in need, getting money from the government while paying nothing into it must realize that's what is happening with big business also. We are subsidizing big business. Only instead of creating jobs, they have shipped them overseas.

Obama, What a Putz

So I am watching the news tonight and I am listening to a story about how they are not airlifting any more Haitian earthquake victims who are critical patients to hospitals in the U.S. You see when the hospitals that the initial victims were taken to started to realize the cost of treating the victims, they asked for assistance from the federal government. The Obama administration then put a halt to any more Haitians being brought to this country for treatment. So let me get this straight. The Obama administration just gave a billion dollar contract to XE Services LLC, whom you may know as Blackwater. The company had to change its name because of the publicity surrounding the February 2005 unjust shooting of civilians in Baghdad. And seeing as our defense budget is larger than the rest of the worlds combined, you mean to tell me that this country can't pony up some money for the critically injured people of Haiti. That's a move a former Republican President would pull. The democrats are supposed to be the compassionate anti war party, so just what the fuck is this president thinking? What a Putz!

Sarah Palin

Been awhile, been busy, holidays and all. The fact is, its hard to keep writing unless you get the urge and I have the urge. Anyways Sarah Palin has a new book and a new job. I guess the idiots over at Fox News hired her so it would make Glenn Beck smart. So for someone who is so against taxes lets look at her record in Alaska. Her greatest accomplishment as Mayor of Wasilla was a 15 million dollar hockey arena. Lots of money for a town with an annual budget of 20 million. But it gets better as she OKs a bond issue for the project before the land had been secured. This lead to a protracted legal battle that ultimately cost the towns taxpayers to pay six times the original price for the property and the city had to in the end, seize the property using eminent domain. To pay for this she raised Wasillas sales tax by 25%. As governor she presided over a state that is first in federal spending per resident, though the citizens of Alaska are eighteenth in income taxes paid to the federal government. Who makes up the difference? We do, everyone outside of Alaska pays each of their citizens over 8500 dollars per year per to be spent their. It gets even better. Alaska has the highest state taxes per capita of all fifty states. So when you are watching her on Fox News and she starts spouting some bullshit about taxes and big government remember what you have read here. These are facts not soundbites from a brain dead hick that has no clue that there is a North Korea and a South Korea but that's a whole other story.