King Day

Oh… there you are. Been kind of scarce, haven’t you? According to my own private polls, you suddenly found there were things you wanted to do on the long weekend. In the garage, the basement, or the laundry room – someplace where there was no TV set – so, gee, you missed it. Or maybe you found you had to go to the Mall, or Whole Foods to pick up something you forgot to get last time. Or you got an urge to finish that book you’re in the middle of.

Let me guess why. You don’t have to listen if you don’t want to know. You’re embarrassed. You voted for him, but you almost hoped something else would happen. Something not-Republican. Maybe something extra-terrestrial. Something to stop the giant wave that is rolling over the country gobbling everything up. Gobbling up jobs, gobbling up the media, gobbling up the schools, the children, the children’s future… It’s been a while since you believed it’s George Bush’s fault. I mean even you could do a better job, right?

There was something about the sound of things that let you know it was going to be a royal event; you’ve got funny feelings about that. Didn’t we fight a war to get away from the King of England? Yeah. We don’t like kings, do we.

And you don’t know if you want to hear Obama. He’s been sounding mean lately, like an angry parent. He’s always yelling at someone else, but you wouldn’t like it if he started to talk to you like that. He’s mean.

You’ve started catching him in lies. Not little lies. Big lies. Like that Libya business – “What’s up with that?” (to quote one of my favorite Black men) Nah…don’t think about it. You’re probably just confused. So many different things were said. But you know… No, never mind. Who wants to know?

Your grandmother can’t get a new hip, and you were told it’s because of the new rules. She’s too old. The word Obamacare was mentioned.

You’re not into numbers, but you’ve heard that they cheat on the unemployment figures. They’ve gone down, because they only count people looking for work, and so many people have stopped looking. Maybe you.

A lot of you didn’t tune in. You didn’t turn him on. You dropped out.

Your ears and eyes are opening. The fog is beginning to lift. You don’t like what you see. Even if you want what he wants, you’re worried. Shouldn’t he have to play by the rules? Executive orders instead of laws smack of a different form of government than ours.

If you’re one of the people who didn’t manage to catch the show, there may be a reason: you’re waking up. Watch out. It’s going to hurt like hell.

The Gorey Details

Fat Albert’s done it again. Surprised the hell out of a hell of a lot of people, including the ones who worked for him at his television station. Some of them cried. Some of them sued.

Why? Maybe you haven’t heard. You don’t hear much. Fat Al sold his TV station to Al Jazeera.

That’s right.

For a second there, you got the horrors. Al Jazeera? Isn’t that Arab television? Aren’t they, sort of, our enemy? But no, no, then you remember. You’re multi-national. You’re global. You don’t have feelings like that.

And it’s true that Al Jazeera sometimes tells us more of the truth than our own besotted newsmen, who spend their time mooning over Obama. Never mind that. Al Jazeera is the propaganda arm of another government. 

The government Fat Al sold his station to is Qatar. Qatar used to be poor as dirt, until they discovered natural gas under their sand. They are now (per capita) the richest country in the world. Why shouldn’t they have a propaganda arm in America? A nice little TV station to unite the Arab community. Maybe because many of the Qatar royals are friends of Al Queda, and to introduce logic, which I know you don’t like, “A friend of Al Queda ain’t no friend of mine.”

The station was having troubles; principal among them was no audience. Even you didn’t watch it. But the price fetched was half a billion dollars. What did Qatar get for these big bucks? Why, they got Big Al himself. In case you don’t remember he was once the most popular man in America; he won the popular vote.

So here’s Gore and Jazeera - Al and Al – skirting the Foreign Agents Registration Act which requires that if you represent the interests of either friend or foe in a "political or quasi-political capacity" you’ve got to register and jump through all kinds of full-disclosure hoops. Do you think Big Al has done this? No, he just sold a TV station and is advising the new owners.

You know that natural gas I mentioned? All of a sudden we’re farting, er fracking, huge amounts of that mostly methane substance, out of our previously useless shale and into commercial use. The White House is considering whether or not to allow its liquefied form to be exported – slipped into the world’s energy mix.

Sounds good – money for us on top of the Holy Grail of energy independence. No more kissing OPEC ass. And a few strategic bonuses: freeing Europe from Russian gas gouging, allowing India to finally give their Iranian suppliers the finger, and other friends, like Japan, to end their energy crises.

Yes, liquefied natural gas, a new era of cheap clean energy. And right now the world's leading exporter of this product is, you guessed it, Qatar. If we enter the market they’ll still be in business, but at half the price, maybe less. Billions upon billions of lost revenue. Then Qatar won’t be rich, at least not as rich. 

 

Al Gore’s a great lobbyist. He’s got friends in high places. If it weren’t for W and the Supremes he’d have been the highest. Here is my gorey proposition. Look for Al Gore stepping up to keep the U-nited States of America from passing their gas in the world marketplace. Maybe even slow down all that fricking fracking for our own use.

One more connection: Last year’s Doha UN climate change conference. All about Al and his fraudulent polar bears. But what is Doha? Why Doha is the capital of Qatar. The plot is thicker than crude oil.

The Other White Meat

Ideology doesn’t matter anymore. We can’t afford ideology. They’re robbing us blind. We can all understand that. Was I right about The Boner? They’re in it together. We’ve been sold down the river. The Dems and Reps have united to form the two-faced Party of Greed. Not for their constituents, for them.

Congress has just passed two bills. One for Sandy-bucks and another, just hours after they’d marched us over the “fiscal cliff”, to reinstate most of the “Bush” tax cuts.

But what they didn’t tell you was what else these bills do. Just like they didn’t tell you all the things Obamacare does. Like tax your house when you sell it. And spend another five or ten billion dollars a year, beefing up the IRS to collect the new swag.

The two new bills have the now-standard blend of bribery and pork. You hear the word “pork”, but do you know what it means anymore? After the bill is written, the congressmen add their own pieces. This is feast time. They heap their plates with money for the lobbyists and the “special” people back home. Bringin’ home the bacon.

“Oh well, that’s the only way they can get money for the people who elected them.” Really? You mean they should have that money whether we want them to or not? I thought you were big on Democracy. Can’t we tell these bozos to have one bill for each item, so we can decide on its merits, rather than the company it keeps? Can’t we say “yes” if it sounds good and “no” if sounds bad? That’s simple enough.

Let’s say the add-ons are all good – they aren’t; some are downright objectionable. But even if they’re all good, so what? Wouldn’t it be good if you could have everything in the world you want? But you don’t have enough money, right? Neither does the United States.

We’re maxing out our national, our global and maybe our cosmic credit cards. When people stop lending us money (that is, set the price too high), we won’t be able to do anything, go anywhere, or maybe even eat, because the rest of the world will not give us food-stamps. Damned if our capitalist system of old didn’t make us just about the only country in the history of the world that could afford to help others.

You once lived in a rich country, but they’re pissing away your money.

Take the tax bill. Obama’s friends in Hollywood get tax write-offs for producing in the USA. Bigger ones if they do it in depressed neighborhoods. How much do you think those depressed neighborhoods get? The production companies bring everything. They don’t even buy their coffee locally.

And we need some “red-state” votes to pass the bill, so… let’s see… a chunk to help NASCAR maintain their tracks.

Track maintenance? Different tracks, but lots of money to the railroads for that very purpose. Have to keep those trains running smoothly from Washington up and down the East coast.

They are dozens and dozens of these. So many that it just about eats up all the money they’re getting from the main provision of the bill which is to “tax the millionaires”. There’s no deficit reduction here and they know it. That’s how come the big debt ceiling issue is next, and the cry for the trillion-dollar platinum coin.

The hurricane damage bill: A little red flag here. Plum Island, is getting some money. Did something go wrong there? Again? These are the people who brought us Lyme Disease; it escaped from their labs and showed up where their boat docked in Lyme, Connecticut. Maybe something bigger and better has been blown our way this time.

Lot’s of goodies in this bill too. There’s money for the old Harwood homestead. You want to pay for that? I was going to do it myself, but hey, if you’re also paying to restore Guantanamo, I’ll take mine, too, thank you. I wonder why they’re fixing up Guantonamo. Didn’t they say they were going to close it?

There’s some big money for Alaskan fisheries, the Manhattan VA hospital and the Kennedy Space Center (which we used to use to send shuttles to the space stations – Now we pay Russia for carfare.) This may be nice stuff but does it belong in the Hurricane Sandy Relief Bill?

If Washington paid every penny of the loss in New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut, the bill would be about $20 billion. Watch the news next week. It’s going to be something like $60 billion. That’s a lot of pork and they’ll smile and tell us how well they’re taking care of all those storm victims.

But don’t take my word for it. Go to one of those websites you’re afraid will poison you. You won’t find it on your websites. Your websites only tell you what your rulers want you to know. You have to find one of the voices they want to shut down. Of course, you could go right to the source and read the bills themselves. But they’re so long! And they’re packed with obscure language repealing and amending parts of other bills that you’d also have to read. That’s why even the congress who votes on these things doesn’t know what’s in them. So go to some sites that have culled the bills for you, to show you what’s happening to you. It would behoove you to pay them some attention. The ass you save may be your own.

The Elephant in the Room

The Grand Old Party. The party with a Boehner and no Balls. If you want to know how that can be… Dole gave them some of his Viagra.

Dole, the first of the current lot of unelectable nice guys. You gotta wonder where these people keep their brains. Here’s Clinton, a sex-satyr-rated wonder-child. Hey! Let’s run Viagra’s next spokesman against him… give some contrast.

We need a new party. Of course, we have a new party – take a deep breath now; don’t get mad… The Tea Party is the party out to save your ass from the man. But you don’t recognize it because you’ve been sold a bill of goods. Please, please, don’t leave me now… I just want to tell you a few simple truths. The Tea Party is not a bunch of racist madmen who want to take away your rights. They’re a bunch of very ordinary people who want to restore your rights. The problem is, you don’t know you’re losing your rights. You’ve heard of the Boston Tea Party? What’s the phrase that comes to mind? Right! Taxation without Representation.

That’s what the Tea Party is about. We’ve lost our representation. Sure, we have elections, but what are we electing? We’re electing people to a club dedicated to making the most of their opportunity. Their loyalty is to the club, and to their futures as bigger and bigger deals in their peer group, and that ain’t you, babe. Once they get there, a spell comes over them. They like the power they’re promised if they play along. They may even tell themselves they’re doing it for your good, but as they increase their power, it’s at your expense. They need two things – to use your money, and to regulate you so you don’t spoil everything.

We need people who will represent us. Most of us are not represented. Most of us do not want to apologize for America’s past service of winning wars against tyrants. Most of us don’t want Israel to be wiped out. Most of us don’t want to give up riding in cars, visiting our relatives, being able to afford good food, being warm, being cool… most of us don’t want to give up fossil fuels while other countries burn even ours. Most of us don’t want to lower our standard of living to the rest of the world’s, in the name of fairness.

Yet, we have no say. They’re wheeling and dealing up there not for all Americans, but to make the most of the crisis for themselves. The party in power, obviously, has the most to wield. It’s understandable that they use it. (Though these days they’re wielding power which was not delegated.) What is not understandable are the Republicans, who claim not to want any of the above, but who refuse, in spite of a mandate from their own party, to stop all of the above. They own the House. They can stop anything. They stop nothing.

We need a new party that is not already maligned. (The Tea Party, if you never heard this before, clean up after themselves at demonstrations. Instead of leaving a wrecked mess, they leave it better than when they came. Though accused of racist imagery and violence, the only evidence that was ever provided was a picture of man with a gun strapped around his waist. Oddly, the printed picture was cut off, and did not show his head. When the original surfaced, the lone gunman turned out to be BLACK. Ho,ho,ho. Just a couple of little facts I’ll bet you never heard.)

But please, come back. It doesn’t matter. Let’s forget about the past. Stop eating yourself up about George Bush. Let’s look at now. I’m not going to defend Republicans. They, too, want to take away liberty. They don’t want to end the drug war which is killing tens of thousands; some of their best and brightest think that it’s all right to force one human being to carry another around inside her for nine months, whether she wants to accommodate the kid or not… stuff like that.

Republicans are not, however, hard-hearted racists who want black children to die, as I have been told by one of my favorite anti-Republicans. Republicans want to take care of the truly needy and want everyone else to take care of themselves and be left alone by the government. Liberty, opportunity, and a safety net – not a government-managed herd of humans – fed and looked after, but with no individual rights. Anybody taking care of him or her self is one more person they won’t be asked to take care of. If this is what they want, they must leave the Republican party, because the Republican party bigwigs would rather share the Democrats’ power and build themselves up personally, than represent the people who elected them.

The third party has to offer space to those disenchanted with the current government. It cannot offend those looking for refuge by hanging out flags that say “Life” or “God”. They must leave those things to religion, and stop trying to force their religion on others. If God is so great, he doesn’t need their help.

And if we’re talking about Life, let’s talk whose, and of what quality. It is none of the federal government’s business. That’s what is meant by the term Limited Government. If you don’t like something, try persuasion instead off calling out the troops.

The third party has to be acceptable to the classic liberal. That is, to people who recognize the sanctity of the individual. That’s what liberalism used to be about. Recognizing another human being there beneath the different colors and customs. And the Golden Rule.

Think about that guys: would you like to be unemployed and on food stamps for the rest of your life because you’re easier to manage that way?

Let’s put both the Donkeys and the Elephants out to pasture and let’s us run the US.