Yes, you too

Here’s the text of a mass e-mail I got a while back.  Not sure how I got on Michael Moore’s e-mail list, and I know right wingnuts have been trained to sniff at the sound or sight of his name.  You know, he’s that nasty fat guy, as if they haven’t got one of their own.

All that crap aside, I thought he made some good points here:

The Great Thing About the Health Care Law That Has Passed? It Will Save Republican Lives, Too (An Open Letter to Republicans from Michael Moore)

Monday, March 22nd, 2010 To My Fellow Citizens, the Republicans: Thanks to last night’s vote, that child of yours who has had asthma since birth will now be covered after suffering for her first nine years as an American child with a pre-existing condition. Thanks to last night’s vote, that 23-year-old of yours who will be hit one day by a drunk driver and spend six months recovering in the hospital will now not go bankrupt because you will be able to keep him on your insurance policy. Thanks to last night’s vote, after your cancer returns for the third time — racking up another $200,000 in costs to keep you alive — your insurance company will have to commit a criminal act if they even think of dropping you from their rolls.

Yes, my Republican friends, even though you have opposed this health care bill, we’ve made sure it is going to cover you, too, in your time of need. I know you’re upset right now. I know you probably think that if you did get wiped out by an illness, or thrown out of your home because of a medical bankruptcy, that you would somehow pull yourself up by your bootstraps and survive.

I know that’s a comforting story to tell yourself, and if John Wayne were still alive I’m sure he could make that into a movie for you. But the reality is that these health insurance companies have only one mission: To take as much money from you as they can — and then work like demons to deny you whatever coverage and help they can should you get sick. So, when you find yourself suddenly broadsided by a life-threatening illness someday, perhaps you’ll thank those pinko-socialist, Canadian-loving Democrats and independents for what they did Sunday evening. If it’s any consolation, the thieves who run the health insurance companies will still get to deny coverage to adults with pre-existing conditions for the next four years. They’ll also get to cap an individual’s annual health care reimbursements for the next four years. And if they break the pre-existing ban that was passed last night, they’ll only be fined $100 a day! And, the best part? The law will require all citizens who aren’t poor or old to write a check to a private insurance company. It’s truly a banner day for these corporations.

So don’t feel too bad. We’re a long way from universal health care. Over 15 million Americans will still be uncovered — and that means about 15,000 will still lose their lives each year because they won’t be able to afford to see a doctor or get an operation. But another 30,000 will live. I hope that’s ok with you. If you don’t mind, we’re now going to get busy trying to improve upon this bill so that all Americans are covered and so the grubby health insurance companies will be put out of business — because when it comes to helping the sick, no one should ever be allowed to ask the question, “How much money can we save by making this poor bastard suffer?” Please, my Republican friends, if you can, take a quiet moment away from your AM radio and cable news network this morning and be happy for your country. We’re doing better. And we’re doing it for you, too.

Yours,Michael MooreMMFlint@aol.com

The worst part about this for Republicans?  It’s all true.

That could be why they’re now making plans to take credit for parts of the bill.  After all, the part about enforced universal coverage was, in fact, their idea before they decided to forget about that.

No doubt they’ll soon be claiming they were behind it all the time.  At that moment the bloggers, such as yours truly, will trot out all the old quotes, including just about every other blather from Sarah Palin, to prove that they weren’t.  But it will not matter, because we are dealing with delusional people here.  It’s hard to tell what planet they’re on, let alone how to deal with them.

But anyway, it’s done and they are covered along with the rest of us.  Too bad there wasn’t a Republican exclusion clause.  But then again, maybe that’s a good thing.

Please. Don’t Drag Jesus Into This.

New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan apparently did a nice suck-up job yesterday at Mass, comparing Pope Benedict to Jesus.

Yes, I am mindful that to faithful Catholics, the Pope is the representative of Christ on Earth.  The Pope therefore must have a penis.  And because he is the head of what has become a large and soul-less corporation, he must also keep deep, dark secrets — you know, like sexual abuse of minors.

Looks like Pope Benedict is almost as good at that as he is at declaring his own flawlessness.  Clearly I missed something in my religious training if I don’t know why that is supposed to be admirable.

And now they are dragging poor Jesus into this…

My religious tradition looks upon Jesus as one of the great mystics and teachers, but we are mindful that he himself warned against worshipping him (Jesus) as a god.  He would likely be horrified at all of this king/prince/pauper/kingdom crap, and all the accompanying injustices that have been going on in his name for a couple of millennia — not to mention all the good ‘ol Muscle-Man SuperHero Jesus crap that’s currently going on in the U.S.

Like I said, poor Jesus.

And to the Catholic Church: you folks have no business comparing any among your number to Jesus or any other decent human being.

It’s official: I don’t get it

First look at the 10 Ways the New Healthcare Bill May Affect You:  article

Now tell me how that is related to Armageddon.

Then tell me how Sarah Palin is related to any of this.

Then tell me why anyone listens to her?

I guess now she’s rousing up the teabaggers, or what’s left of them, to be mad as hell and not take it anymore.  Again.  Why?  Because the healthcare bill passed (see article above).  I mean HORRORS!  You can’t be dropped, you can’t be denied, your kids can’t be excluded, your taxes won’t go up as a result of this unless you’re wealthy to start with…it goes on and on.  I mean it’s insurance industry reform. It means the insurance companies can’t beat up on us anymore (although I’m positive they’ll do everything they can to screw us over royally before the law goes fully into effect in 2014, quite like the banks did before the “credit card holder’s bill of rights” clamped down on a tiny fraction of their worst behavior).

One shudders to think about it.  Not the bill, the health insurance companies.

Anyway, rabble-rousing is common behavior for Palin (common being the operative word), but can you tell me why the teabaggers still listen to her when she took megabucks for spewing nonsense at their “convention,” then afterward said they were doomed and should join the Republican party?

Leave alone the fact that she’s not making one bleeping bit of sense about anything.

And what is she?  She’s no longer a politician, she has no ideas, she’s not a leader, she doesn’t understand the issues, she makes stuff up, her star is fading except with a distinct minority, and most people in this well-populated part of the country get a bad case of the eye-rolls when they hear about her.  So why are we still hearing about her?

It’s official folks: I don’t get it.

P.S. If you’re a teabagger and are taking umbrage at what I’ve just said, too bad.  Watch this (click on “this,” dearie), it’ll really give you something to get angry about.

Goofballs and Thingamabobs

The thought occurred this morning that the Republican Party as we knew it has ended.  It ended a long, long time ago — around the Watergate era, or rather the events leading up to Watergate.  That event was so traumatic to the Republican party that they have never recovered, and have become crazier and crazier to the point where we are at now: we have a political party comprised almost entirely of people who have lost contact with reality.

The past 48 hours, since the passage of healthcare reform, have offered up some prime examples, not the least of which is Fox News and Sarah Palin threatening Congressmen who voted for healthcare reform.  Threatening them.  Not only that, but some of their minions have taken to vandalism.  This isn’t just frightening, but barbaric.  This is not political discourse.  This is what happens when the lunatics run the asylum.  This is the party of goofballs and thingamabobs, running in terror from their own imaginary bogeymen while hurling knives in every which direction.

It’s no matter whom the knives hit, or even if nothing these creatures are so terrified of has happened or is likely to happen.  After all, the healthcare reform bill as it currently stands is little more than a collection of insurance industry reforms that are long overdue; there is no “socialism” to be seen anywhere.

So are we to believe we could have prevented this supposed apocalypse by allowing an out-of-control industry to continue draining our pockets of money in the name of free enterprise?  Were we to continue to trust our very health to an industry that was no longer worthy of trust?  There is no answer, nor is one needed; these critters are terrified and that’s all that matters.

What’s left of the real Republican party — and it isn’t much — realizes this, and they are frightened. What to do for these isolated intact souls is a good question, but when you get videos like this:

http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201003230020

it can be interpreted as nothing other than a cry for help.

It seems a pity to let these poor people suffer, but then again, they sigged the demons on themselves.

So when is the Fat Man leaving for Costa Rica?

The Fat Man promised (or, I guess, threatened) to move to Costa Rica if healthcare reform passed.  And it passed.  And he’s still here.

Hey, I mean he has to stand by his promises doesn’t he?  Like the great leader he believes he is?  For a change?  Please?

If he doesn’t leave, here’s a little ditty for him (with apologies to Russ Ballard and Three Dog Night):

Ain’t that what you said?
Ain’t that what you said?
Ain’t that what you said?
LIAR!  LIAR!  LIAR!

While we’re at it, let’s sing a rousing rendition of the same song for Sarah Palin — not only because she lied and continues to lie about healthcare reform, but because she lies about everything else as well.

Let’s not leave out their fans.  For anyone who faithfully believes these dolts, how about a chorus of “Send in the Clowns?”  Because it really is rich.

No, THIS is what change looks like

Does this mean the Fat man is really leaving for Costa Rica?  Eureka!

So how’s that hopey-changey thing working out for everyone but Sarah Palin and her bosses at Fox News?  Very well, because Congress passed the healthcare reform bill today at long last, after a lifetime of waiting, and after most of us have watched the lives of so many end needlessly, and so many others get driven deeply into financial ruin by medical bills.

But apparently 35 state legislatures are run by Fox News and haven’t gotten the word that our present healthcare system is at best dysfunctional.  Which is to say they are already inventing ways to stop reform, mostly involving lawsuits, but no doubt including civil war.  Reason?  Fear.  Period.  Well, all I can say is that the South’s reasons for the last civil war stunk even worse, but even that doesn’t excuse this behavior.

To those in other countries — and also in the U.S. — who are befuddled that the federal government is apparently riding so foul of the will of the states, all I can say is don’t confuse the will of the states with the will of the people (for those in doubt, I offer Illinois as a prime example).  Due to the peculiarities of the U.S. election system, many states are currently run by fringe groups and/or far right-wingnuts who would never pass muster to be elected to national office…although somehow, far too many of them have made it to Washington D.C. anyway.  Witness the George W. Bush years, and what happened to Bill Clinton just before that (not that he didn’t deserve some of it; but the fact is that if he did, so did Bush — and nothing at all happened to Bush).

And then there’s Texas.  A blogger recently published a plaintive post asking the question, “who died and left Texas in charge?”  It’s a question a lot of the rest of us have been asking for a long time.

Anyway, this political fictionalization amplifies fringe groups and gives them enough credibility that right-wing media whores such as Limbaugh, Beck and Palin are able to pretend that they, not the current slight majority of the politicians in Washington, speak for “the people.”  Well, they do.  They speak for their brainwashed minions.  But their brainwashed minions don’t include all of us.  In fact, most of us are not “theirs” at all.

But don’t expect too many of us to laugh too hard or too long at the end result of the veiled threats and dire predictions that Palin and Limbaugh in particular have been making in regard to healthcare reform.

I daresay the real freak show has just begun.  And to those 35 state legislatures that have been bought off by Fox News, the rest of the right-wing media whores, and insurance industry propaganda: enjoy your Stupid of the Day award, morons.  And while you’re at it, why don’t you come up with a viable alternative solution instead of one long whine wrapped up in lawsuits, huff-n-puff, and idiocy?

Note to the Chicago Sun Times: This is NOT News

Blagojevich dodges firing, but not ridicule on ‘Apprentice’ :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Gov. Blagojevich.

(Note to the gentle reader: this post is backdated because the one I made yesterday was actually about something important. This post’s subject, in contrast, is just irritating.)

Glenn Beck Slightly Overestimates Himself

All I can say is that it was bound to happen.  There’s a certain audience in this country that is just large and crazy enough that pretty much no matter what Glenn Beck whines about, whether real or imaginary (mostly imaginary), he can be certain they will nod their noggins in agreement.  I can often hear the marbles rattling all the way over here.

I could never sit through his show, but I’m now informed that a few less marbles are rattling today.   Why?  Because apparently Mr. Beck has advised avoiding certain Christian churches that speak in code — as if he himself doesn’t — using such really dangerous terms as “social justice.”  In Becktonian logic, which only Beck and the voices that speak to him alone truly understand, that translates into “socialism,” you know.  And so he must cry and rant and warn the country he so loves: stop going to church!

And I bet when he said this he thought (if he does think) that his followers would merrily skip after him down his new Crazy Street.  Right.  Small problem here: reality.

It’s hard to imagine reality getting in Glenn Beck’s way, but here’s some that does: delusional ego aside, Glenn Beck has nothing on Christianity.  Church is home to millions of Americans.  Beck offers nothing but tears as a refuge.

More seriously, the heart and soul of the former “teabagger” movement in the U.S. — the one that ended in a for-profit convention just a while back — is a certain form of Christianity.  The targets of this movement, who likely make up a large part of Beck’s audience, are right-wing Christians who will not stand for any attack on Christianity, even if it means that Beck thinks he can accuse them of “socialism.”  He has, (however accidentally), tapped on a knee and discovered the deepest reflex reaction: (some) Christians are now MAD at him!  Yes, HIM!  Glenn Beck!

Ah-HAH.  But let me temper this enthusiasm a bit.

A lot of bloggers and even some regular media commentators are now wondering out loud if Beck has finally gone too far.  I’ll wager he hasn’t, and quite like the Fat Man, can’t.  Further, what’s being missed here is that some of the Christians who are voicing the most outrage aren’t likely Beck fans to start with.  Those are mostly the ones who recognize that Jesus was rather a huge fan of things like “social justice.”  You know, those damn progressives.

Unlike the Fat Man, Beck does seem to suffer permanent consequences now and then (however, they never seem to stop him for long).  It’ll be interesting to see what the permanent consequences are in this case, if any.  I’ll be watching…but not too closely.  Why not?  Because I’m guessing that the sort of thing Beck said is only considered really, really bad if someone like Elton John or John Lennon says it.  So this is not the last of Glenn Beck.

P.S. — of course Beck has earned the Stupid of the Day Award anyway.

First fire all the teachers

I read an article the other day in which an employer who is famous for his happy employees let out his secret: he fires unhappy employees.  Period.

Wow.  That’s a good one if you like opening up Pandora’s boxes.  As it is, most employees in the U.S. can be fired at any time for any reason, or even no real reason at all.  Let’s add a minute of not smiling to that mix.  Paradise.  Yes, I know this employer wasn’t talking about extremes like that, but the fact is, given today’s environment and the committed stupidity of management in many companies, that’s the way it will be interpreted: Oh Goody!  Another Excuse!

And so it is with the current trend toward mass firing of teachers.  (Update: an actual teacher told me today that the firings are mostly being done by school districts to prove that they — the districts — are doing something about poor student performance so they can get federal money — there’s some sort of deadline involved — and once the deadline has passed and the money is received, most of these teachers will be rehired.  No matter.  This is just wrong, and because of it I will not retract this post.)

I deal with kids in my job, and I can’t imagine spending 8 hours a day in a room full of them — especially if the kids are unrelated to me.  I don’t think kids have ever been any better or worse.  I just don’t like them very much, and 9 times out of 10, if I don’t like the kid, I dislike the parent even more.  My hat’s off to teachers for that reason alone; they are not only dealing with the problem, but the cause.

Not that I love all teachers.  I remember two remarkable clowns from my own school years: my fifth-grade teacher — a callow fashion-model wannabe with decided mean-girl tendencies — and the idiot I had as an English teacher for a month or so at the beginning of my sophomore year of high school.  The fifth-grade teacher ruined my confidence to the extent that I was never again comfortable in school; the English teacher saw that I was withdrawn and decided I would be a great target for the school year.  Showing classing bully behavior, he was taken aback when I transferred out of his class, and became bitchy and even more sarcastic than he had been.  Gosh!  How dare I ruin his fun?   (It’s also possible that he was forced by superiors to explain his behavior toward me, and bullies tend to get rather nervous when that happens.)

I’ve heard about numerous other turkeys since then, so it isn’t just my perception; they do exist, and there are probably far more of them than there should be.  However, I doubt they exist in the mass numbers that the across-the-board firings indicate, and because of that, I doubt the firings will do any good; in fact, I know they won’t.  All we’re going to end up with is harried, bullied teachers who will harass and bully their students for a year before meeting the same fate as their predecessors.  For those of us who are office-politics survivors, the school world will sound just like home.

Our school systems are now in for a huge loss: that of a sense of permanence.  Our business world lost that decades ago, and like I said, we all know what good that has done.  In fact, education may be taking it on the chin for what the business world has done, because the fact is that U.S. businesses do not like to hire U.S. citizens.  That is to say that a kid can grow up to become a PhD and not be able to find a job.

That said, I have to add that this buffoonery is not entirely the fault of the business world that has embraced it.  It is the fault of the environment the business world, and now the schools that feed it, exist in.  This crap is tolerated.  Period.

Why is it tolerated?  Easy — U.S. society is basically anti-education and has been for most of its existence.  You may think that education only recently joined the list of bogeymen that the right-wingnuts are afraid of, but the fact is, they’ve been threatened by the “college boys” — even if they themselves are “college boys” — ever since the U.S. has had colleges.  The U.S. — which is supposed to be a building block for pioneers and visionaries — is actually loaded to the rafters with these whiny parasites who have low self-esteem and a mountainous victim complex.  Anyone who sings to that choir is richly rewarded even as he or she is widely discredited by those of us who are not whiny snorks (those I refer to as the true silent majority, who span the political spectrum from conservative to progressive).

There are a lot of model whiny snorks to point to, but Glenn Beck springs instantly to mind with the Fat Man and Sarah Palin not too far behind.  In fact, the three are almost in a tie.  If nothing else, they have proven that displaying limitless stupidity is good business.  It’s easy, it pays well, and it insulates you from having to get anything right.  In fact when done perfectly, it even seems to insulate you from planet Earth.

And so, here’s my prediction: the moment the highly educated Obama places his hands on education (which he already has done), the right wingnuts will start whining about things like “socialism,” “Obama worship,” “thought control,” and “totalitarianism.”  If only they knew what those terms meant.  But that’s the point: they don’t, and it doesn’t matter because it sounds bad, and they’re saying what a lot of people want to hear.

So yes, tackling the problem of education in the U.S. is a daunting task.  But it does not start with firing the teachers.  It may start with firing the parents, or even harder, trying to change some very basic and long-existing attitudes in this country.

That is the hard part.  Pink slips, in contrast, are too easy.

Gee. Women have boobs this season.

Even though I am well beyond the age where I actually care, once in a while I bitch about fashion.

Big fashion news in Europe this week is that a very few “fat” models were allowed on the runways.  By “fat” I mean they probably weighed 2/3rds of a normal woman’s weight (with most of the supposedly excess curve-age on these models likely being caused by the weight of plastic boobs).

Right now the reader is assuming that I’m a 2-ton Tessie with an almost visible chip on my shoulder and a very visible half-eaten box of chocolates in my hand.  No, I am not.  I am not and have never been fat.  Throughout most of my life, in fact, I’ve been somewhat underweight, and not through dieting.  Advancing age is modifying that, but only somewhat.

I was, at a younger age, a clothes horse.  Even the stupidest rag looked good on me because I was so skinny.  It wasn’t so for most of my friends, who are women with normal curves.

But after one passes 40, one wearies of the costume party — which is all fashion has been since the late 1960’s.

Not only have we had a parade of ugly Halloween costumes that only the truly very young could wear, since kids tend to be silly anyway — and silly on the young is interpreted as cute — but the ideal body for these icky clothes has been that of a prepubescent 11-year-old self-starvation case who is over 6 feet tall.

For many years this girl (if she existed) came in one or two colors, and she was actually in her mid to late teens, although there were a few furtive attempts to push the age limit even lower.  Some progress has brought the ethnic, racial, and age factors a tiny bit more in line with reality.  But only a tiny bit.  It’s one step forward, two steps back, just like the song says.  Every advance needs to be fought for, and then fought for again.

The advances in using models of more normal weight have been harder to come by, as has a viable excuse not to use them.  The French designers in particular seem to have a problem with the notion that most women have breasts and hips, and a sort of ultra-conservative politically-correct (after more than 40 years, what else can you call it?) fashion cult has built around pinning fabric on skeletons and sending them scowling down the runway.

The excuses are always the same, and they would be hilarious if they weren’t so potentially dangerous: “clothes don’t look good on curvy women,” “the public doesn’t want to see fat models,” etc.

How about trying this on for size: “we don’t know how to design clothes.”   Or this, “we lack any sort of creativity.”  Or even this: “we don’t like women’s bodies.”

I wager the last three are closer to the truth than anything the designers have actually claimed.

Anyway, this season curvy women are somewhat in style again.  But don’t take it for granted — a solid mesh of conservatism only gives way if plucked at repeatedly with a seam ripper.  This advance could pass away in the length of a runway walk, and take years to become the latest gimmick again.  Meantime the gap between actual women and the clothing being designed for them will continue to widen.

I suggest that clothes were never meant to be art, and that perhaps the acceptance of that fact is the beginning of a solution to the problem.  Modern art operates under the misapprehension that there is something new under the sun.  Clothes are just stuff you put on your body because in most places, you have to or else you’ll get arrested.

There are good-looking clothes and there are clothes that look silly.

Halloween only comes once a year.  So does Mardi Gras.

Most people, women included, are not over 6 feet tall, under the age of 20, and as thin as skeletons.

Curvy women and older women are not temporary trends.  They are reality.

Okay, designer, take it from there.  If you do, you’ll find yourself being as original as anyone in your trade can be.  If you don’t, we’ll be stuck with more of the same, only with an “older curvier woman” trend thrown in once every few years along with a slight, temporary increase in black and Asian models.

Enough, people.  It’s gotten old.