The other day, while waiting for sanity to return..

The events of last week to me were so shocking - up until now, we've not been faced with direct affront to the Constitution. Everything in my lawyer trained brain has been chipping away at edges. Last week, we had direct affront and direct assertion that "those rules don't apply to us."

I've changed how I respond to Neoconic conversation. Most of the time, I'd try to counter their assertions with gentle facts and my own logic. Now, I'm directly questioning their sources and logic (especially after some kind assistance from Guy in focusing my dissatisfaction.) "Where did you hear THAT? Who said it? Where did they get their facts?"

Why does this work? Because it's a valid form of argument and debate.

BROOKS: But, so you think "OK, get out." On the other hand, if we leave....we could see 250,000 Iraqis die -- you had the John Burns quotation earlier in the program. So are we willing to prevent 10,000 Iraqi deaths a month at the cost of 125 Americans?

WOODWARD: And the problem, though, is we don't know. People can say, "Oh, it's going to be a disaster." I mean, you've -- you cite numbers which are pulled out of the air -- "10,000 dying" -- I mean that's -- where does that come from?

BROOKS: Well, A, it comes from John Burns. Second, it comes from the national intelligence...

WOODWARD: Well, no, he doesn’t say 10,000.

BROOKS: Well, no, no, but it talks about genocide.

WOODWARD: Yeah.

BROOKS: So I just picked that 10,000 out of the air.

They just make this shit up. We're going to see how long these ideas hold up when scrutinized. It ought to last about as long as "welfare mothers driving Cadillacs" and "illegal immigrants swamping the emergency rooms for free health care" bullshit.

We were talking about the movie "Sicko" the other day, and how it was portraying our health care "system" as fundamentally broken. That group's resident neocon was carrying on about how the doctors would leave, how there weren't enough good doctors now because of malpractice lawsuits, how the Big Pharma wouldn't research new drugs if they couldn't make a profit blah, blah, blah.

If there's even a lingering question in your mind about those points, or if you're still convinced that medical treatment in another country is a danger to your health (as did the lawyer who recently violated a "no travel" order from the CDC and traveled on commercial air carriers with a particularly nasty strain of TB) then you should read this.

Someone was telling me the other day that a hospice worker in a large medical facility associated with the US Government was alarmed that they were treating ten patients terminal with Mad Cow disease, for which there is no cure. This worker asserted that the US Government was intent on that humans were catching Mad Cow in the US out of the awareness of the population, so that the dead cow industry (including steak houses, McDonald's, and the monolithic food production corporations) could continue to abuse illegal migrant workers and pump cheap beef into our food supply. I'm going to do some searching of media articles on Mad Cow infections in humans to see if there is anything going on about this.

Okay, so you can concede that the Neoconic social arguments may have flaws, but after all they're just SO GOOD for the economy. Are ya sure, bunky?

The huge deficits that were created by the government's choices and the tax cuts are bearing down upon us, and it was the CLINTON administration's financial goodness that provided them with the cushion to transfer all of this wealth to the wealthy. And, the policies of this government disincentivize the next governments to change anything.

Just so you're clear - YOU reading this are NOT one of the wealthy persons who received a penny's benefit from all of this "robust economy."

And, and just so you're REALLY clear, the "fix" for social security isn't to have privatization, it's to index the benefits age to life expectancy and to raise the SS tax. A smidge.

If you're thinking that the Bush tax cuts "trickled down" into the economy as did Reagan's, you're smoking that voodoo weed (with credit to G.H.W. Bush, who called Reagan's "trickle down" plan "voodoo economics during the 1980 Republican primaries. Or did you not remember that?) there is now data, numbers, proof that it's not that way.

When Bush took office, the Dow was at 13,851. Most of the increase has been because of the corporate tax rate cuts that, conservatively, have added 20% to ALL stock prices. If you deflate the Dow (which is not an indicator that the economy is generally healthy for normal people - it's an indicator that the economy for fund managers, stock brokers and the investor class is healthy) by that amount, the Dow WOULD be at 11,081 - or a mere 381 points higher than nearly seven years ago.

Now factor in inflation and you have ... ? Not a Goddamned thing. They have not advanced the economy by the SOLE MEASURE THAT THEY CAN POINT TO by squat.

Good job on that voting booth choice there. You keep that sort of thing up, and we're going to be an amusement park for foreign tourists. ALL TERROR, ALL THE TIME! WHOOT! Vote for the Fright wing! They'll protect us!

Bram had a dream about me the other night that I was killed in a car jacking. The next night, Brian had a dream about me that I was living in Cuba - because Cuba was such a great place to live. In his dream, Cuba's current environment hadn't changed an iota, but the rest of the world had fallen apart, so it was now a paradise.

If any single point in this blog made you sit up and think "oh my, well .. " and you're wondering why we're here politically, it's because THIS is all anyone is willing to talk about.



If you're more concerned about John Edward's haircut than you are about what they're doing with your tax money and your Constitution, then you deserve to live in a shithole that makes Cuba look like paradise. I'll send you a postcard.