Pagans and Fat Shaming

A Wiccan BNP and Blogger named Peter Dybing went there (A Pagan Taboo, Obesity), complete with masking it as "concern" for the health of his fellow pagans, including crocodile tears for those who were *gasp* fat when they died, but then proceeded to say 'Do you know?' and quote some sketchy statistics that have only marginal peer review, starting with the phony "Obesity is the #2 cause of preventable death in the United States". First, obesity isn't the cause of death - it's often the side effect of the real killers - heart disease, stroke, hormonal imbalance due to excess medication and contaminated food supplies, etc. Second, it's a fancy way of saying "All you fatties gonna die!!1!!"

I saw red. The comments were even worse, in their own way, as he dug his hole deeper. Sneering at people who were heavy and had to walk with canes - never think ing that the reason they are heavy is *because* they have to use a cane.

The greatest causes of weight gain in our society are stress, sedentary occupations, prepared food loaded with HFCS and medication side effects. Not one of those things involves sloth or not caring about your weight health.

The skinny say "Oh, eat less, exercise, join a gym", not caring that gym memberships are often hundreds of dollars a month, outside the reach of many of the vanishing middle class, and not friendly to the disabled, for the most part. (I'm not going to take some bouncy, able-bodied, never been fat, youth seriously when they talk about aerobic excercise.)

Paganism was one of the few places where fat shaming was taboo. Now this athletic, jocky BNP wants to go there. OK, lets talk about fat, which is what your couching of it in the medical perjorative "obese" means.

I'll even raise your grief points by one:

I had a roommate who died while obese. She didn't die of fat. She died of medical neglect. They kept pushing off all her problems with "exercise, eat less, lose weight, it'll fix your problems." She ate significantly less than I do, but was mobility impaired, severely depressed, had been on a whole raft of medications for misdiagnosed conditions that screwed up her metabolism, had chronic migraines, and had severe food and drug allergies. She died of a heart condition that had been presenting primarily as migraine, just a "drug seeking hypochondriac woman" type thing. She finally got a bit of medical attention when she had a severe heart attack in a different doctor's office. The fat didn't kill her, the doctors that assumed for at least ten or more years that the fat was the root of her problem, and that her not magically losing the weight absolved them of looking any deeper, were what killed her. She was 39.

So, yes, fat shaming, and fat blaming, kills people.

Then there are the self-righteous vegans - you know the ones - that join orgs like PETA and actually care more for food animals than people. They of course jump on the fat shaming bandwagon, even though I have known some pretty fat veggies. I read an interesting article on how many people who get sucked in this cult are severely malnourished, and eventually have to go back to eating meat, including many of the leading veggie book authors. Unfortunately, the western biosystem has to have some meat, fish and eggs type proteins. Even the "Eastern" diets have a small amount from food contaminants like insects. But don't confuse an evangelical vegan with the facts - they believe.

Are there unhealthy pagans? Well, yes, since most pagans abjure money making occupations and thus can't afford the more expensive organic, non-GMO, non-soy, non-HFCS food. I know my food bill went up when I started buying healthier alternatives because the regular stuff was making me sick. Still some of the most expensive food in the grocery store are packaged meals marketed to the weight concious: "lean cuisine, healthy choice", etc.

Now you know part of why I call it a racket: The ones who sell you the food are in league with the people who make money off of the diet and exercise business. It's like a drug dealer who owns a rehab clinic.

Now, you might ask, what does all this have to do with paganism?

Well, the implication is that if you can't control your weight, or have *gasp* disordered eating or other psychological issues arising from fatness, you don't "know yourself" and thus can't be a good, proper, together or whole magician. If you can't "control your fatness health", you can't "control your magic". That's bullshit, but the skinnies and able bodied believe it - it helps them assure themselves that they are "Doing It Right™". Would they say the same "self control" BS to a person who had PTSD from rape or war? Do they think that fat shaming and the relentless pushing of diets can't cause PTSD?

You see, knowing yourself and self control are not the same as conformity to the norm, and denial of your past and what has shaped you. Everyone has to pick their battles, even fat folks. The struggle for true self knowldege is lifelong, you don't have all your shit together for once and for all. So you chose - what things that I don't like about my self and life do I want to work on first?

Do I chose the thing that prevents me from conforming to an external standard of beauty and "fitness", or do I work on things that are more important, like fears and emotions, that make living in my own skin uncomfortable without society's help? The fat thing is waaaay far down on my list, because it's an externally driven conformist push, and I chose to resist being pressured to conform like that. I don't want to be just like everyone else. If I did, I'd go be a Baptist again.

So what do you think fat shaming does with me, or many other pagans? Does it make us conform to your wishes? Do you manage to convert us to the cult of the thin, or of the vegan? Not by your false "concerns" and handwringing recitation of dubious statistics. I have to fight against my baser instincts not to grab a fatty, greasy bacon cheeseburger and a bag of candy whenever I have to deal with that type of people, and enjoy it in front of them. (I do fight it, because the fat levels in that food trigger my IBS.)

But that's my quirk. The fact is, fat shaming is not useful, or constructive. citing dire "statistics" from diet industry studies is no more going to make us "see the light" than quoting the Christian Bible at us will make us Christian. So kindly take your diet evangelism, and stick it where the sun doesn't shine, please.

Or, better yet, eat it yourself.

Oh, Brother!

Here, PantheaCon 2012: Politics and the controversy over women’s rituals Gus DiZerega mansplains away Z Budapests hate speach, and then further down in the comments refuses to use "cis-" - he uses "trans-women" and "women" because he feels that tras-women aren't "real women", and therefore abnormal:

I very deliberately did not use “cis.” I will continue not using “cis.” There is nothing impolite in saying “trans-woman” and “woman” if there are differences. I explained that in my judgment there are. People have considerable latitude in what they call themselves but, for me, they have a lot less in what they call others. Maybe someday if the term catches on I’ll go with “cis,” but I see no value in the term and so will not use it.

He is full of shit on the "nothing impolite" part - it's very impolite, but I guess it's good to know who is a bigot and who is not.

From a person responding to Gus:

“hvars þú böl kannt
kveðu þat bölvi at
ok gefat þínum fjándum frið”
(“when you come upon misdeeds
speak out about those misdeeds,
and give your enemies no peace.”) Havamal 127

To remain silent in the face of this kind of bigotry and knee-jerk trans-bashing in the pagan community, along with the side of sexist and misogyny that accompanies it, is impossible for me.

The comments to Gus's post are at best fawning, and many are rage-inducing pseudo-feminist claptrap. The same old "trans-women are really men invading wombyn's spaaaace" gets trotted out, along with one twit claiming that "cis-men" isn't used, because cis- and trans- are just used to "oppress" real women, blah, blah. More horse-shit, because cis-{male,man,men} and trans-{maile,man,men} are terms in use.

Seriously, I couldn't read through more than half of the comments, my eyes were too busy rolling back into my head so much.

So, it's proved that several of the BNPs out there are bigots, sexist, and engage in all the stuff the Right Wing Christians do. They either bleat "can't we all just get aloooong" and stand up for nothing, compromising their souls away, or they are banging the drums of sexism and bigotry against anyone they don't consider "normal". So much like high school shit.

I'm glad I'm solitary, these people disgust me.

PantheaCon 2012 and Bigotry

Note: I swear and am angry in this post. If you can't deal with that, go somewhere else. I don't want your craven tone arguments.

I'll reiterate something here that I've said elsewhere: Riddle me this - Why do statements and stances that we would immediately howl in outrage about and repudiate if they came from the religious right suddenly become “understandable”, “negotiable”, or “trivial” as I have seen more than one leader espouse? Why do we need to be soothing over stances within the community that we would reject out of hand if they came from outside? If you don’t believe me, put some of Z’s remarks over Ann Coulter’s or Rush Limbaugh’s byline and see how you feel about them. (Z being Z Budapest.)

Those in the Asatru community have dealt with this sort of thing for years - when somewhat folkish ("european ancestry") becomes raving white supremacist or racist. Guess who doesn't try to put on rituals "for whites only" at public pagan gatherings? It doesn't get far, no matter how polite of a shine they try to put on it.

People to take a real good look at all of the crap that we “tolerate” in our community that we’d never put up with from outside – not just the TG issue. We turn a blind eye to sexual abuse in the name of some "all acts of love and pleasure are her rituals" blitherings and excuses. Yet the same people will think nothing of condemning catholic priests for the same shit.

It used to be a real big problem with cultural appropriation all over the place - most of that has died down, now that people are aware of what that means to the originating culture.

But the language of appeasement flourishes, both within the community and without:

• "Oh, you should listen to what Lady FluffyBunny has to say, she puiblished a booook, it's just as valid or more so, as what you've worked years to understand and/or discover."
• "Oh, you need to take into account that they have a bad background, hard life, rough childhood, blah, blah, and forgive them for crapping in your face, they didn't really mean it."
• "Oh, it's just they really believe it's murder, they don't really mean to control your life and body to stop what they believe is wrong, you have to understand where they're coming from, it isn't about you and the fact that being pregnant can kill you."
• "Oh, they're just concerned for your soul, they aren't trying to force you into anything, they have a right to preach at you everwhere you go."

All of this is bullshit.

Let's get into brass tacks: I don't have to stand by, meekly mouthing platitudes about understanding and conciliation when another person or group is trying to fuck with my life, or fuck over my friends. I don't have to meekly submit to some mealy mouthed pagan tone argument when people are taking a dump on my people, and/or acting like bullies. The "just ignore them" and "try to understaaaaand them" crap doesn't work with bullies.

One person prattled on about how the "genetic women only" thing was "we just get to define who our peers are". When I heard this, at the Pagans in Media panel, my gut reaction was "Well, bitch, you're not one of mine. I don't consider bigots to be peers." The next was "Sounds like 'whites only' lunch counters based on 'freedom of association'". It's a good thing that I have regained the governor on my mouth, as it was not my panel so it wasn't mine to get into that fight. That panel, BTW, softpedaled around the whole thing in a very craven manner. The only person who had really solid stuff to say was Margot Adler.

I admit, I spent the majority of the con in the vendor room, working. I consider the appeasers and bullies to be yet more reason why I don't seek to be anything other than solitary any more: I have no patience for the level of idiotic and fluffified drama that the community can throw.

We are supposed to be enlightened - but this whole shit, and this year and last year's response is anything but. Shame on PCon for even accepting the panel. It's like they were fishing for controversy and drama so they could get more publicity.

There are some things that doesn't belong at gatherings and conferences: Skyclad rituals with strangers in public areas (nudist retreats don't count), and rituals whose big thing is exclusion of a minority are a couple of them. Rituals involving full on sex is another.

I wonder how Z and the con organizers would feel if an African Diasporic tradition had a "non-whites only" ritual to celebrate their lives as a persecuted minority, blah, blah, free of the prevailing white culture. It's perfectly reasonable under the ideal of "it's ok to exclude people if you're polite about it", right?

One disgusting piece of claptrap on the "transwomen aren't women" side is this tripe:

Coyle's shallow reaction to Z's movement created only hatred and division. It was not helpful to those who should be developing their own spiritual tradition as Z did with women. It was a bully tactic to shame women and demand they sacrifice their own interests to the interest of the "more oppressed". It is a Mother Teresa theology rejected long ago by feminists. It was an ever so politically correct defense of the patriarchal (male) right to determine what women can and cannot do in their own interests. This is what your highly regarded "response" was all about in reality.

What a crock of pure, steaming horseshit. This clown ignores one very real fact: transwomen are not men, are not agents of "the patriarchy", nor are they obliged to develop "their own spiritual tradition" and leave the pure, holy, uterus worshipping ciswomen in their little walled garden. This is not feminism, this is just pseudo-feminists mimicking the patriarchy exclusions on a more vulnerable group. Transwomen are women - not men with boobs, not wannabe-women with penises. (The person whose blog this steaming comment was left in just replied with stuff like "I appreciate your expression of your view." Hello, Neville Chamberlain.

Most of these idiots don't even consider what a trans-woman goes through and risks, at the hands of the "patriarchy" that they get lumped in with by these Dianic wannabes:

• Humiliation if they can't pass
• Death if the guy they meet finds out that they "aren't 'really' a woman"
• Giving up male privilege, and all that our society bundles with it.
• A second puberty with all of the angst that goes with it
• Workplace discrimination and bullying
• Rejection by the major religions for going against "God's will"
• ... and the list goes on

Now these Dianics want to add "Rejection by feminists and other women" into the mix too. Disgusting. What's next? Separate lunch counters, maybe a yellow triangle so the Dianics and guys on the prowl can know who's "really" born a genetic woman?

Let's face it, all the noise about "civil discourse" with people who are blatant bigots makes me want to throw things.

You don't appease bullies just because they hide behind your religion, or feminism, and use the language of those standing up to oppression to excuse their own oppressing and bigotry.

You call them on their bullshit, in no uncertain terms.

As another person said, in their private blog about another subject: "This culture of allowing both sides to be heard because I'm not fair otherwise? Is fucking bullshit. Some sides of the story ARE WRONG AND SHOULD SIT THE FUCK DOWN AND SHUT THE FUCK UP, GROWN FOLK IS TALKING. "

Supply Side Wreckonomics

When the suppliers are the favored party in the economic transaction, even to the point of benefiting from individual taxpayer largess (by not having to pay their fair share of the cost for the infrastructure within which they do business), they end up controlling the economic playing field. When they do, the power in the system flow to the heirarchial heads of those fictitious persons called corporations. Sole proprietorships are unable to compete in such a scenario, because the barriers to entry are actually *raised* by the existing corporations - minimum orders, availability and prohibitive cost of insurance, and other market pressures.

Soon this ends up with a few giant, vertically integrated conglomerates deciding what and how much to produce where, and how much they will sell it for. The fact that these corporations now also decide the prevailing wages for everyone (hint: as low as possible) they will soon produce things that can only be afforded by a few, unless bought on credit from the central company bank. The amount of choice and customization will go down (you can have any color of computer you like, as long as it's white) and this will be touted by the corporate propaganda mills as a fashion statement.

Sounds like communism with a veneer of market doublespeak to me. Manufacturing already takes place in low wage gulags, and if the wages rise it gets moved to somewhere that the wages are lower and the conditions are harsher. Supply side cheerleaders within our government want to do away with the minimum wage and make child labor legal again (to "stop discrimination against the young", but they want to pay them lower "trainee" wages.) Sounds like 1920s sweatshops bullshit to me. The pee party want to bring it all back in the name of libertarianism.

So we are in the middle of stupid tax-cutting on the rich, government job cutting on the middle class, and creating lots and lots more poor with cutting off unemployment benefits, reducing food aid, and cutting medical assistance. The last, I guess, they hope will solve the problem of the poor once and for all - they'll just die and not mess up their spreadsheet world any more.

They want a total buyer's market on labor, a seller's market on goods, and the profits all flowing to the vaunted, elite few who "worked hard for it" - read that as being born rich into the right family with the right schools and the right connections. The "self made man" is a myth

What's worse, is they want all this on the backs of the taxpayers of America - the people who built the schools that trained their idea people, the people who paid for the roads that they haul their supplies and finished goods along, the people who paid for the water system, the power grid, the police, the fire department that keeps their buildings safe, etc. They don't want to pay their share, as stockholders sucking profits out of the system, or as corporations that use the roads, the water, the air, the land, and the educated workforce without paying it forward.

You know what they call such things? Parasites.

I heard Michelle "Batshit" Bachmann bleating the other day about "Job Creators, blah, blah". Problem is, after a decade of tax cuts and more tax cuts, they have only *shed* jobs, not created them. Every time we cut taxes, employment seems to drop more. Jobs creators my ass - they are sending it all into the corporate officers' and major shareholders' pockets. The ratio of CEO to bottom employee pay has gone up, not down. That's what tax cuts give you: greed for MORE.

Tinkle down economics is a failed theory. We have 30 years of proof that human nature is for the rich to always want to be richer, and thus keep more and more of the money, not spend it on creating jobs or making purchases. When they say "A rising tide lifts all boats", you have to realize that you don't make the tide rise by giving the rich guy a bigger boat with more water storage. You have to taken the stored water off of the rich guys barge and put it back in the sea.

So, 'supply side economics' seems like 'centrally planned production', with the suppliers (corporate oligarchs) deciding what to make, where make it, how little to pay the workers, where to sell it, and who to sell it to. The consumers just become a passive proletariat, manipulated by advertising pitches targeted on their income+borrowing ability and psychological weaknesses, kept in hock and enslaved to the corporation by debts that not even death allows him to shed. Should the consumer fall from grace, and lose his job because someone else will do it cheaper, he will still be marketed, but also stigmatized, called "not ambitious enough", "lazy", druggie", "stupid", "too picky" until he takes his life and his children inherit his debts.

These are the glories of "pure" capitalism according to the GOP.

Fuck that shit.

Google+ Update

I went ahead and got a Google+ account - under my pseudonym! I won't use my legal name there, period.

I have used this pseudonym for 30 years, and there are people IRL who do not know my real "legal" name. If Google+ wants to ban me, fine. I've been around since before they were, and I'll be around when they are gone.

I have more links on pseudonyms for your perusal, of course:
A Case for Pseudonyms
Preliminary results of my survey of suspended Google+ accounts
Posted at the request of someone even more tired than I am... :-)
Real-name social networking
Name Dropping

Google+ gets a minus

They have fallen into the "Real Name" trap. So I won't be there (under my wallet name). I won't go and "be social" where my social identity (my nom de net, or pseudonym) is unwanted.

It's bad enough that I have a FarceBook account under my real name. I post nothing of importance there, I don't talk about work, home, or even any deep politics there. I don't post pictures, and although I link to various progressive political stuff, I don't tend to comment much.

Geek Feminism Blog has an excellent post entitled Anti-pseudonym bingo, complete with a graphical bingo card, that covers many of the arguments against pseudonymity that I have heard online and IRL since UseNet.

My LiveJournal has various rants that I've done over the years about SF&F cons demanding my Real Name™ and city of residence for display on my badge, plus other stuff on pseudonyms (tag: pseudonym). Stalker enabling, that's all it is. It's not just on the net.

The Real Name™ thing is all bound up in privilege - especially those who trot out the "what do you have to hide" trope, or "I want to know who I'm really talking to" baloney - they want to be able to discount you if you have a funny name, or a female name, or might be a POC, or whatever. Or they want to be able to "look you up" (read: "hunt you down and intimidate you") if they disagree with what you have to say. Thank, but no thanks, you can stuff your privilege where the sun doesn't shine.

So, Google+ is actually Google-, until they fix the pseudonym problem. We don't need another FarceBook for stalker convenience.

Other Links:
Living in the Metaverse: Pseudonymity (part one)
Living in the Metaverse: Pseudonymity (part two)
Female-Name Chat Users Get 25 Times More Malicious Messages
Forward: On refusing to tell you my name
An object lesson in pseudonymity and internet privacy

Dear Stupid Republican Teabaggers

When will you get the point that Social Security and Medicare are not "entitlements"?? "Entitlements" implies that somehow they weren't paid for, that people just feel "entitled" to them, something for nothing.

You assholes. I've worked since I was 18, paying taxes into Medicare and the Social Security Trust Fund. The government, with the strength of it's buying and investing power, is supposed to invest and keep those monies for when I retire. Just because every time the GOP get their hands on the purse strings it wants to raid that piggy bank to buy another bunch of bombers and tanks doesn't mean I haven't paid in my share.

Now you chiseling asswipes want to wipe out all of that. You want me to have to go to the fucking market with a puny voucher after I'm 70 (you already have fucked over my retirement at 65) to "buy" health insurance. You fuckheads - I'm uninsurable in the private market at 49, what makes you think I could hope to buy insurance at 70? What sort of fantasy land do you live in? Medicare isn't insurance - it doesn't have to make a profit or deal with actuarial tables. The private market does. Most people over 60 can't buy private insurance for the combined amount of your penny-ante "voucher" plus their meager Social Security stipend (that they earned and paid for, damnit!)

Over-Privatization

What the hell is with this selling of America to the highest bidder? Have you no goddamn shame? Private industry is seldom the most efficient provider of social services - there is not enough profit in it without screwing the recipients over. Fire departments are a classic example, but you want to turn that over. The only way to do it is have the government pay, or require the taxpayer to pay, a monopoly provider. Yet you've seen what cable monopolies do in the various markets - drive up prices. You think the government privatization would be different? Oh, yeah, they'd cut costs all right - by cutting service, outsourcing our jobs overseas, and then coming back for more money.

You bastards would sell your own mothers, wives and children to a private company as debts slaves if it meant that they'd give you a campaign contribution. You are idiots, willing to barter away to corporate greed everything that this country has worked for over the last 100 years.

All FITB do X - NOT!

So, I've been following the snark that occurred when a wannabe anthropologist at Slate wrote How Black People Use Twitter - The latest research on race and microblogging. It, and the jingoistic graphic that went with it, spawned the cute and snarky hashtag #browntwitterbird. @InnyVinny posted a fantastic mixup of graphics and pointed snark, and requests for variations started pouring in. Then other bit-whackers started contributing art.

What almost, but fortunately not completely, gets lost in the flush of adorable icons is this craptastic tendency of so-called journalists to make sweeping generalizations about ethnic and social groups. Saying things akin to "Black people link to each other and talk dirty late at (US) night" is like saying "White people go to John Birch meetings on Fridays and church on Sunday". In both cases, not the case. Sure, you didn't say "all", but it's implied that you're talking about the majority in your generalization. Unless you have the statistics, preferably a supermajority to back it up, don't go there.

The "researcher" in the Slate piece looked at a subgroup of young, urban, American, mostly black youth who were interlinked. They mostly used phone text apps to twitter from. Well, folks, I can explain the night thing right there - nights are cheaper on most phone plans - as in "unlimited night and weekends". That plus working during the day, and it's not a mystery, or even a social phenomenon. Younger people tend to be "connected" electronically in the US - there are plenty of articles out there bemoaning the fact that "too many" kids have expensive cell phones. He generalized this subgroup to be "Black People" - as in "most black people", by inference. Ummm, no.

Then this person comes up with the term "blacktags". I cringed. Tell me, are there corresponding whitetags, yellowtags and redtags? How about "turbantags"? Shall we get really jingoistic here? I guess I should be glad he didn't call them "n*****tags" - but that would take Dr. Laura, I suppose.

He points out that these late night tags chatty tags tend to trend. Well duh. Most of the chatty cathys of the daytime are gone for the night, asleep like responsible adults. The tweets are from an interconnected group that does a lot of retweeting and repeating their own tweets - like most youth, vying for attention among their peers, having fun. So they trend. BFD. I've been awake late nights, and followed some of what might have been subjects of his "research". Some of them I had to muffle my laughter in a pillow to avoid waking up my roomies, they were so funny, especially in context.

He quotes a few black guys as some sort of representatives, and they all basically blow holes in his thesis. I guess this is his throwing a sop to the other side of the conversation. But he never really goes back and corrects his original hypothesis.

If he'd said "Young Blacks", I might have had slightly less problem - because that was actually the demographic he was looking at. Still, the article had no point to be written - other than sensationalism, and pseudoanthropologic voyeurism.

See, social clusters happen in social media. Cliques are as old as society itself. They are just bigger online. Political wonks have theirs, SF&F fans have theirs, soap fans have theirs, sports addicts have theirs, etc. But jackasses don't post "How White People Use Twitter" and then claim that all of them follow hashtags like #lost, #idol, and #baseball. They restrict that stupidity to talking about black people. Not even asians or hispanics get the treatment.

Then there's one final thing: The only way you know, on the net, what race, culture/subculture, country, gender, gender identification, political affiliation, sexual preference, etc that a person has is if they tell you, or otherwise let slip. Even icons that are pictures can lie - what if they use their favorite celebrity? On Twitter, if you don't put a lot of detail in your bio, or give a separate website (like this one), no one knows that you're really a housecat named Speckles. Really.

Edit: An new hashtag in the mix #NotAllBlackPeople - a fun read, again kicking over and poking fun at stereotypes. Take that, Dr Laura "BigotBrain"!

The upshot? Watch your generalizations, they can bite you in the ass!

Hey Conservative Penny Pinchers!

You are soooooo worried about the national debt that you have to deny the unemployed the very lifeline they need to keep their homes and food on the table, why don't you put your bankster bailout bonus money, stock market windfalls and oil company payoffs where your concern is: Make a voluntary contribution to reduce the public debt!!

After all, your favorite presidents have increased it on their watch, especially Bush II - with two intractable quagmire wars, one started purely for the sake of his ego. Clinton reduced the deficit, but Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II increased it, so you are to blame for it, you get to reduce it.

You claim to be the party of "personal responsibility"? Fine, take responsibility for what your votes and your political party has wrought: help pay it down. I didn't vote for Reagan, or either Bush, why should I have to suffer because of their ballooning of the deficit?

If you don't do this, don't come whining to me that I have to endure your fucking "tough love" and "take responsibility" for my "economic choices" (yeah, like I chose not to be born rich, and not to get lucky and marry a millionaire.) You take responsibility for your votes for warmongers and spendthrifts who believe in voodoo economics and disastrous deregulation.

IOTW, PUT UP OR SHUT UP!

The Banksters OF AIG

Warren, Head of TARP Oversight Panel, Criticizes Bailout of ‘Frankenstein’ AIG This is tame. (Warren's full prepared remarks) The truth is ugly, and AIG is just the most obvious and egregious case. They are all arrogant, obtuse, and ungovernable.

The whole outrage about the bailouts garbage is that it said to all Americans These Banks Are Exempt From The Rules Of The Free Market Governing Failure, You Have To Take The Losses Instead!. They got a "Get Out Of Bankruptcy Free" card, on our goddamn dime!!

The Teabaggers talk about "Socialism"?? Well, bank bailouts are nothing more than socializing losses. The profits, and bonuses, are still private, as their shopping habits attest - The Bonus Bounce and Hamptons again warmed by Wall Street's glow.

We, the taxpayers, paid for most of that, by bailing out megabanks and propping up the rigged shell game that is the stock market these days. Where's my cut, bankster?

The big banks must be allowed to fail and go though ordinary bankruptcy. The high flying brokers need to spend a few months eating rice, beans and ramen. Exempting these creeps from the rules that apply to us little folks (paying your debts, losing it all when your business goes bankrupt, etc) is bad for business, bad for the country, and a horrible precedent to set.

The people who engineering this garbage need to do jail time for fraud - they defrauded their customers and the US taxpayers. Let them wear prison stripes and "trade" bars of soap.

Private Property Versus Public Discrimination

The Controversy

I watched the Rachel Maddow segment where Rand Paul stuck his foot in his mouth, up to his hip, about the Civil Rights Act (1964). He expressed "reservations" about one of the Titles of the Act - it turns out to be Title II - that prohibits discrimination by private businesses that were public accommodations. He also seems to have a problem with Title VII, that prohibits discrimination in private company hiring.

The Libertarian Argument

He argues that prohibiting discrimination by private businesses is, essentially, a government taking of property from the private sphere into the public sphere, negating the owner's property rights completely. Plus, he sees it as trampling on their free speech and free association rights as well, all by evil government fiat. It's a classic libertarian, Randian worldview - all rights are absolute, or they are worthless.

So back to Title II. In the Randian world, private property and private rights are god above all else. Any infringement on this is a state overreach, and evil. In Randian Libertarianism, all property is private, and this is a Good Thing™. Hence, the labeling of any business that serves the public a "public accommodation" (a commonly used label, by the way) that can not discriminate by law is a horrendous government theft of business and freedom.

I can almost see his logic - but only almost. You see, his logic only works if you see the world in a binary view - either/or - all rights are absolute or nonexistent.

But in the real world, everything is comprised of competing rights. Your right to swing your fist stops where my nose begins. Your right to walk wherever you want stops at my property line. Even the Ayn Rand libertarians have to acknowledge this, but will throw a lot of double talk about personal responsibility and government overreach at you to quickly change the subject.

The Reality Argument

In the real United States of America, there are competing rights to everything, and specific private rights, particularly property rights, or even a person's freedom itself, can be abridged if there is a "compelling public interest" - in other words, if the good of the many outweighs the rights of the few - and there is due process in the taking or abridgment.

It is used all the time in criminal cases - people who are convicted of a crime are locked up (denied their freedom) for a compelling public interest (punishment and prevention of further crime.) It is used when they need to build a new freeway - eminent domain is often used by municipalities to put in new roads. (Now, eminent domain is often abused for corporate gain, but that's another rant.)

Research more about "compelling interest test" for determining the constitutionality of a statute that restricts the practice of a fundamental right, and the the Fifth Amendment and takings for the long standing back and forth over just property takings. Google is your friend.

In Title II these were used, with full deliberation and vote of Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on July 2, 1964. It has been challenged in court. The right of people not to be discriminated against in public accommodations outweighed the private property rights to discriminate of the owners of such accommodations.

Why are they "public accommodations"? They are designated public accommodations because they are designed, as part of their business model, to attract and provide goods and/or service to members of the public - food, lodging, entertainment, supplies, equipment, etc. They don't require the proprietor to know you by name before you do business with them. You don't have to give your name to buy lunch at a lunch counter or go see a movie - you are just a member of "the public", hence it's public accommodation.

Was there another way? Not that I can think of.

What about private clubs, private houses? One thing to note is that Title II does not require landlords/hoteliers to rent rooms to people if they live in the small dwelling - you can discriminate against people if you actually live in the house you are letting out motel rooms in like a bed and breakfast. It also specifically excludes private clubs, which is why the Boy Scouts can discriminate against Atheists.

A Civilized Society Is Not Binary

That's how it works in the real world, people. A civilized society does not see rights as all or nothing - often one set of rights competes with another. How we balance the various competing interests to provide the maximum liberty and justice for all is where we make this country great.

Banksters

There is, supposedly, one area where the left and the Tea Party agree: The Government should not have bailed out the banks with taxpayer money.

Why, then, is the Tea Party avoiding the bank protests? Why is their lap dog media not covering it?

Could it be that they are really just astroturf saps in the employ of the corporatocracy? You know, working for the very jerks who run those same banks that are sucking our money from us in fees, usurious interest rates and taxpayer funded bailouts? Could they be that stupid?

Yes, Tea Party, lets reclaim our country - from the banksters who have driven us all to the brink of ruin, and in many cases beyond. Where are your armed protests of the subprime mortgage and CDO frauds?

Sedition and Tea Party America

Lets Talk About Sedition

Main Entry: se·di·tion
Pronunciation: \si-ˈdi-shən\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English sedicioun, from Anglo-French sediciun, from Latin sedition-, seditio, literally, separation, from sed-, se- apart + ition-, itio act of going, from ire to go — more at secede, issue
Date: 14th century
: incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority
- Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved April 18, 2010
See also the Wikipedia Entry on Sedition

Sedition differs from treason in one critical way - treason involves a betrayal of the country or government to a foreign power, whereas sedition is insurrection against the lawfully constituted government of your own country. A spy or a foreign sponsored terrorist commits treason, a domestic terrorist advocating overthrow of the government commits sedition.

Now, I will be honest, the original founding fathers of our country committed, knowingly, sedition and treason (by forming their own government, it became treason) against the British Crown. Pledging their "lives, fortunes and sacred honor" was quite literal - the acts they committed had the death sentence attached if they failed, and included the "civil asset forfeiture" (nice of the republicans to bring that back, huh) of everything they and their families owned.

Now, these "Tea Party" people are bleating about "taxation without representation". I call bullshit. They have the right to vote - unless they've been convicted of a felony. With the amount of guns they cart around, they better not be felons.

People who can vote for their representatives - state and federal elected officials, from school board to President - are NOT "taxed without representation"!! They may not agree with the decisions of those representatives, but that's why we have periodic elections - so that if people are really annoyed, they can vote them out.

So the "Tea Party" is made up, at best, of deluded idiots, or liars. They have representation - they can vote. Their representatives over the years, most of them Republicans, have dug us the hole that we are in now. So what do these idiots do? They talk sedition against the duly elected Democrat government. They lost an election, after their representatives spend us into the poorhouse and deregulate us back into the gilded age of the robber barons, and now they cry that they have "no representation", so they should eliminate liberals. "If Brown can't, a Browning can"?? Honey, that's sedition.

Bush was, and IMO still is, a candidate for arrest and trial as an international war criminal. Furthermore, I believe that he violated the US Constitution by arrogating to himself the power to make war, and lied to Congress about the reason he should be given any ability to deploy troops to Iraq. But that is a far, far cry from advocating the shooting of all conservatives, like the tea partiers advocate shooting liberals. Bush, Cheney, Rove and Rumsfeld should be held accountable in court, according to our laws, not the drumhead of a revolution.

To start bleating about "states rights" after the duly elected Congress passes a law, and proposing "militias" to oppose "federal overreaching" - that is bordering on sedition, people. To start suggesting that various members of Congress be murdered for doing their jobs? Sedition.

The proper way to remove a sitting member of Congress from office is by impeachment, recall or replacement in regular election. Same with the President. If (King) George W Bush didn't get his lying ass impeached, Obama sure as hell won't, because he hasn't lied to Congress and the American people.

I really don't care if you don't like Obama. Elections have consequences, and Obama WON, honestly, in spite of Republican dirty tricks like rigged voting machines and biased voter purges. Dubya? Appointed by the Supreme Court (packed by his father) to his first term, rigged voting machines and voter purges for his second term. A fraud. But we on the left put up with it, for the sake of our country. The least you fake patriots on the right could do is the same, for a properly elected President. Or does patriotism only apply when it's your guy who's in charge?

Tea Party America

The Tea Party itself is an astroturf organization. The money comes from extreme right wing corporate moguls such as the Koch family, and corporate funded right wing front groups like Freedom Works and Americans for Prosperity.

Tea Party America is not one that is friendly to the ordinary worker, really. Sure, taxes will go down - for corporations. Government will get smaller - fewer cops, firemen, libraries, etc. Schools will all be private, so will all health care (even the ER), even the roads will all be toll roads. It will be a veritable libertarian paradise, with huge international corporations, not the hamstrung government, writing the rules. You would not like it. It will not help Main Street America.

Sure, you'll have free speech, but there will be no "public square", "public airwaves", or "public internet" to say them in. Saying them on private corporate property will get you arrested for trespassing and disturbing the peace, plus sued for whatever their lawyers and their deep pockets can think of.

Oh, and your rented apartment, that you think of as your "home"? It will actually just be more "private corporate property" - not yours to speak freely in. You won't be able to actually buy and keep your own home - the recent perversion of eminent domain and the Citizen's United decision will insure that it can be seized for "redevelopment" as condos (paying you a fraction of what it's really worth) and then rented back to you for twice the price.

You'll technically have a "free press", but you won't be able to buy the equipment and supplies to publish anything, much less manage to distribute it through the completely privatized postal service. Since they will be private, their terms of service will allow them to open and read anything, and not carry it if it is "hostile" to them or any "affiliated company".

Most police work will be subcontracted out to paramilitary organizations and security firms like Blackwater or Brinks. Prisons will be completely privatized, instead of only partially like they are now. Court fees will skyrocket, meaning that even trying to have your day in court against a megacorp will be more expensive. There will, of course, be no citizens accountability groups.

Municipal elections will be a joke. The mail and the airwaves will be flooded with propaganda as the largest corporations pimp their candidates. If you work for a major corporation, you will get election propaganda at work, too.

The only "freedom" you will have is a pick of which corporate backed megachurch you attend. Not going to church will be allowed, but it will hamper your ability to get and keep a job, rent a place to live, or get credit. References, you know.

Failure to follow the laws regarding personal conduct and "responsibility" will get you thrown in jail, of course. The only people who will be able to pick up the pieces and restore any semblance of normality after your mandatory maximum sentence will be the megachurches if they feel you have had as genuine conversion experience. Then they will parade you around as an object lesson for a few years. You will have no assets by then anyway, and neither will any of your relatives by then. This circus of fall and redemption makes for excellent drama, of course.

Still, you will pay "government" taxes - they will soak the lower class for the funds to pay for the wars - probably more than you do now. Corporations don't pay for those things. You just won't see any benefit in municipal services, safety net or anything - it will all go into corporate pockets. So they'll still keep the "base" stirred up, while they have their hands in our pockets and around our throats.

Retirement will be a joke - they will privatize all social security, medicare, and private pensions, and then tie them to the stock market. Then they will let the corporations raid them, until the funds are gone. Even 401ks will be shell games, worthless, or taxed into worthlessness. You will have to work until you die.

Fortunately, because of the deregulation of all aspect of business to get rid of the evil interference of government in the "free market" (free from government, not free from monopoly), all environmental, safety and health regulations will be eliminated from both the workplace and the marketplace, so both your employer and foreign companies will be free to poison you and your family with tainted supplies, food, water and air. You won't have to work too long.

Tea Party America is not a place I want to live. Think of the worst combination of a cyberpunk dystopia, 1984, and something out of A Handmaid's Tale. Think of the worst MicroSoft and RIAA EULA that you've ever heard of, and the worst enforcement they've done on it. That's what the corporate backers of the Tea Party want for America, and have the Dominionist nutjobs like Palin to shill for.

This is what these people want to throw out our elected government in favor of.

Spend American Money In America

Our government, no matter what you think of it, has a fundamental charter to expend funds for the public interest - if for no more than "providing for the common defense". Yes, these are taxpayer funds, money from you and I. These funds, coming from the American people, should be spent among the American people, for the good of the American people.

Recently, though, I believe the companies that it has allowed to suckle at the government teat have not been truly American companies - they have had headquarters in various offshore tax havens like the Cayman Islands or the Dominican Republic. Even the ones that are US headquartered have been outsourcing the actual work paid for by US tax dollars to India and China. I bet China doesn't allow it's government funds to be spent on American labor, they insist that a Chinese national be hired to do the work!

When I propose that taxpayer funds be restricted to US companies, I get this crap about WTO "sanctions", and how they will "punish" us by taxing or restricting our exports. What exports? You mean the ones that are already banned or taxed, without a whisper of protest by the vaunted WTO in Europe and elsewhere? Or the ones that no one buys because of the cheap Chinese crap that has flooded the market?

The US taxpayer has a reasonable expectation that their money will be spent within this country, not shipped to some opportunistic foreign job shop to pocket and provide tainted goods and/or shoddy service.

State governments are especially horrible at this. I keep hearing about outsourced, to India, unemployment call centers. Great way to indicate that you want your people to get back to work - hire people overseas to "help" them with their unemployment.

I don't mind paying my taxes as part of this great nation, provided those monies are well spent. But prosecuting illegal wars (ala George Bush), bailing out banks, stockbrokers and insurance companies (Bush, Obama), spying on the American people (Bush), wasting money on sewcurity theatre (Bush, GOP) or buying shit from foreign companies that should be bought here is a waste of my money.

Call me isolationist if you like, but we have no responsibility to pay the rest of the world, too. They sure won't pay us. I pay taxes to help my fellow citizens, to advance the nation as a whole, not to make a bunch of offshore tax haven corporate fat-cats richer.

On the subject of taxes, I firmly believe that the capital gains tax rates and the income tax rates should be the same! Why should money you get from letting stock site there (letting your bet ride) be taxed at a lower rate than money you went out and earned? Mind you, I sold stock last year and this year, so this is not just an abstract thing for me.

Also, a single person making over $250,000 is rich, not "middle class". $100,000 is middle class (barely middle class in the SF Bay Area.) How do I know? In tax year 2008 I almost cleared $100,000, and that was basically middle class in the SF Bay Area. 2009 will be maybe half that, and 2010 could be worse.

Single people making over $250,000 need to have their tax rate go up a lot. Back to the Reagan era tax rates would be a good start.

Also, while we should do away with the individual AMT below a certain income threshold (indexed for inflation), we must have a corporate AMT.

Yes, the tax increases will hurt. But, as the teabaggers and GOP whiners have pointed out, we have this biiig, baaad, deficit to pay down. The fact that they didn't do a single damn thing about it when Bush spent the money on his damn wars, useless tax cuts, and unfunded Medicare drug giveaway just seem to pass their notice - it's easier to blame Democrats.

If the Democrats are going to be tagged "tax and spend", they might as well get down to the taxing part so they can do some good for the economy with the spend part. The truth of the matter is that the GOP is "borrow and spend" and the Democrats are "tax and repay".

Christianity, Social Justice and Politics

'Render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.' - Matthew 22:21

Most reasonable people pay their taxes, regardless of their religion. It's part and parcel of living in a civilized society. We pay for the socialized benefits of roads, airports, police, fire departments, schools (including our own education as children), courts, military, and even those "socialist" things like social security/disability, medicare, medicaid, environmental protection, national parks, and food safety inspection. Our society has a lot of infrastructure and services, plus regulations, that make this nation both productive, safe and desirable to live in.

This is appropriate, because we all must live in this world, no matter what our religious views of it are. Christians for one are supposed to not consider themselves of this world, but part of Jesus' kingdom. But they still live here, and spend government (Caesar's) cash, drive on government roads, are subject to government laws. Unless you want to withdraw to some entirely off-grid compound in the boonies and try to be a total anti-tax protester, you get the benefit of government infrastructure, therefore you should pay your share.

But the right wing, especially the ones that pander to the theocrats, want to do away with that. They want to do away with all taxes except those that get fed to the military/industrial complex, the prison guards unions, or the police officers unions - and even the police are on the chopping block! They want corporations to pay nothing, small businesses to pay some, the middle class to pay more, and the poor to pay most (but get the least). They truly believe in "trickle up".

Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, 'Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was hungry, and ye did not give me to eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me not in; naked, and ye clothed me not; sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.' Then shall they also answer, saying, 'Lord, when saw we thee hungry, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?' Then shall he answer them, saying, 'Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of these least, ye did it not unto me.' - Matthew 25:41-45

Feed the hungry, shelter the stranger, clothe the naked, tend the sick, help the imprisoned: this is social justice. Yes, social justice is more, but Jesus says more, too.

Now the blowhard of the right, Rush Limbaugh*, says to run away from any church that talks of "social justice". Asshole. Jesus was all about social justice. Overturning the moneychangers tables in the temple was pure social justice. In our society, working for social justice is the way people of conscience see to it that what is right is done without cramming their religion down other people's throats.

The way in which Christians in our society go about the great work is by working for social justice, equality for all. The civil rights movement of the 1960s, the women's suffrage movement, the labor movement - they were all backed by the churches that followed Jesus' teachings. (Before you neocon's look down your nose at unions and the labor movement, remember that they brought us workplace safety, sick pay, vacation pay, overtime pay, child labor laws, workman's compensation and the 40 hour work week. You own lives and your parents lives would suck if those had not existed.)

All of these thing share the principles of justice and equality that Jesus demonstrated and preached. He didn't preach "Attack your neighbors", he said love them, feed them, care for them. When the church started to stray from this basic vision back in the 70s is when I lost faith, when I saw that the whole thing was a fly-trap for hypocrites who loved the old-testament laws and Pauline misogyny more than the words of Jesus himself.

And he answered and said unto them, 'Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition? For God said, Honor thy father and thy mother: and, He that speaketh evil of father or mother, let him die the death. But ye say, whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, That wherewith thou mightest have been profited by me is given to God; he shall not honor his father. And ye have made void the word of God because of your tradition.' - Matthew 15:3-6

Many people could not, or did not, take care of their elders, both in biblical times and now. Many were more than poor, but destitute and starving, plus dying from lack of medical care. In the passage above, people would sequester their funds saying they were "a gift to God" - dedicated or tied up in trust and thus unavailable to help their parents. Kind of like spending your kid's college fund on a yacht.

Social Security and Medicare, the things that have significantly reduced the absolute impoverishment and mortality of the elderly in this country since their introduction, are classic examples of social justice, and direct Christian principles being put into a workable secular format. In part, they let people contribute toward their own future retirement. (Yes, I know Congress has mismanaged it - but we've had a mostly conservative Congress for most of the last 20 years!) This is how the principle "Honor thy father and mother" from Jesus' viewpoint can be put into action in a secular, worldly, non-religious manner (in the world, but not of it.)

'And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me: But whoso shall cause one of these little ones that believe on me to stumble, it is profitable for him that a great millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be sunk in the depth of the sea.' - Matthew 18:5-6

"For the children" - Perhaps one of the most misused rallying cries in the world today. Still, some very important social justice has been done for the children - TANF, welfare, public education, all of that. How does it relate to the above bible quote? Simple: If children do not have food, shelter, clothing, medical care or legal protection, they are often forced into prostitution, theft, drugs, gang activity, and other activity that by any reasonable definition is a sinful "stumble". Yet so many conservatives are very quick to throw children and youth social programs under the bus (after all, they can't vote) and criminalize (enhance the penalties on) the consequences of their neglect.

Don't go all righteous and "pro-life", and then be anti-welfare, anti pre-natal care, anti public schooling, either. If you want to insist that a woman's uterus is yours to command, then you need to help to care for the child that you have insisted that she bear. Also, if you are anti-contraception, you are just a hypocrite - since a child who isn't conceived can't be risk being aborted or end up "in the system."

And being asked by the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God cometh, he answered them and said, 'The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, Lo, here! or, There! for lo, the kingdom of God is within you.' - Luke 17:20-21

The theocratic wing of the Republican party wants to turn the government (Caesar) into an arm of their interpretation of the kingdom of God. They want to rule this country according to "biblical" principals, to pass laws that make their religious views the law of the land. They already do so in the abortion and gay rights area and it has taken generations to undo the damage, and they keep coming back, like cockroaches.

But the theocrats don't want to pay much taxes. They don't want their corporate friends to pay any taxes. They don't want any safety net - they want to have us all enslaved to the corporations, soothed only by the promise of heaven that comes in brief doses on Sunday. They want "God's laws" imposed. They want to stone gays, force birth on pregnant women, stone adulterers, and burn "unrepentant" non-Christians. They don't want their "Godly" government to follow Jesus and tend the sick, feed the hungry, clothe those needing clothing, minister to those in prison (helping them to prepare for release). They want life to be nasty, brutal, and short, lived only for breeding more soldiers for Christ and singing hymns to the BroodJesus and God.

This is wrong. They want all the power, all the authority, all the right to punish and force people to do as they say, but they already don't want to pay for the small things that their own Messiah commanded them to do that our existing government accomplishes better than any individual or even megachurch could!

And behold, one came to him and said, 'Teacher, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?' And he said unto him, 'Why askest thou me concerning that which is good? One there is who is good: but if thou wouldest enter into life, keep the commandments.' He saith unto him, 'Which?' And Jesus said, 'Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honor thy father and mother; and, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' - Matthew 19:16-19

The theocrats want an Old Testament government. The laws they want are all derived from the piddling strictures of ancient Israel, and it's tribal quarrels. Sort of like a Christian Sharia. Like the Pharisees of Matthew 15, their so-called traditions and cherry-picked old testament bible quotes are more important to them than actually following the words of Jesus.

Jesus himself mandated just 6 commandments: 'Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honor thy father and mother; and, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' The Republican party has had more adultery scandals in the past 10 years than the Democrats. Their media voice, Fox News, lies regularly, and has even gone to court to prove that it is not illegal to lie about the news! Wall street has both lied to us and stolen from us. The theocrats want to kill by stoning people who don't obey the Old Testament Sharia laws.

'Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves. By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but the corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Therefore by their fruits ye shall know them.' - Matthew 7:15-20

The theocrats and neo-con religious right are no true followers of Jesus. What they are trying to do is not just wrong in the secular world, it goes directly against the teachings of Jesus himself. The threat to our society is not paganism, or humanism, or atheism, but arrogance and presumption of moral authority on the part of the Religious Right where none exists, even within their own religion!

Jesus raised no army. There is nothing is the gospels about soldiers except in reference to Roman soldiers. Even the sword was only used as a metaphor for strife. (Paul may have incorporated military metaphors, but I hold that Paul has no authority, having been an agent provocateur.) So why are these lunatics raising an "Army of God"? Why are there "Soldiers of/for Christ"? Why is "Joel's Army" supposedly "God's Army"? If your God is as powerful as you say, he doesn't need any damn army!!

The theocrats, dominionists, neoconservatives, and charlatans who deride social justice and promote a gospel of anger or secular power are real wolves in sheep's clothing, and sometimes even shepherd's clothing. They want to twist the words of their own messiah, the words of a great teacher and mystic, to their own selfish and egotistical ends. It is they you need to run away from, whose channel you need to change, who you need to report to your church leadership as being un-Christian.

'Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me cast out the mote out of thine eye; and lo, the beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.' - Matthew 7:4-5

Face it, people, you have a lot to clean up in your own religion before you can start thinking about cramming it down some non-believer's throat. Start by working within the secular system on what your own Messiah told you were priorities: the hungry, the poor, the sick, the homeless, the imprisoned, the old, the children. Start by seeking social justice, equality, and loving your neighbor as yourself.

* Correction: It has been pointed out that it was Glenn Beck, not Rush Limbaugh, that exhorted people to run away from churches advocating for social justice. Mea culpa. I just can't tell one right wing blowhard from another some days.

Triviata

I want to scream about food, contaminants (additives) and health. I am still seething about the changes they have made to tuna packaging. The tuna "in water" isn't anymore - it's packaged in "water" and "vegetable both" (which contains soy)! I don't know about your reading, but I read water plus "broth" as just "broth", albeit more diluted.

So the food manufacturers adulterate and lie, once again. They also sneakily reduced the can size to 5 ounces, instead of 6. Of course the price didn't go down. They think that no one will notice, or care that they get less tuna adulterated with the 7th most common food allergen - soy - if they don't change the big print on the labels.

They should have to call it Tuna in Soy Broth

If you want tuna without soy, you have to carefully read the labels, and pay much more. Fuck, if you want anything without nasty soy, you have to pay more.

Now some magazine has named fucking Mosnato company of the year? What are they smoking? They want to patent the entire damn food supply, so that they get a cut of every calorie consumed, no life without paying Monsanto. Problem is, their shit is toxic, and is causing a rise in previously rare diseases.

Corporate rule is a fucking scary thing, and unless we start actively fighting it now, we will be slaves to immortal, amoral sociopaths seeking only profit, to be amortized, used and then discarded when we cost more than we can generate in revenue for the corporation. If you don't understand the horror of this, look at the history of Haiti under the French slaveholders.

The Lwa of Vodou and The Devil™

Let me make one thing very, very clear for all you hate filled cretins out there: The Lwa of Vodou are not "The Devil™" of Christianity and Islam. Sorry, that dog doesn't hunt.

Oh, yes, any deity, demigod, helping spirit, angel, etc. that you don't recognize is "The Devil™" in your book, but the fact that you say it just doesn't make it so. I get so damn sick of your narrow little binary thinking that I want to puke. Hell, some of you shitheads see even the Catholic saints as "Demons™". I say you are all so full of shit your eyes are brown.

It is a matter of argument whether the lwa are gods, demigods, helpful spirits, "angels", or what. I will leave that to the Vodou practitioners to declare. But from what I've seen, Vodou is pretty damn Catholic, to the point of making me not want to practice it.

So a bunch of revolutionaries praying to God and the lwa before fighting for their freedom from brutal slavemasters is not a "Pact with The Devil™", I don't care how you try to spin it.

The reason Haiti is so poor? The fucking French made them pay REPARATIONS for having dared to win their freedom from brutal slaveowners. They won, and the fucking French extorted reparations for over a century. Between that and US shenanigans because southern bigots were afraid of a free black nation near our borders (afraid that our own black slaves and/or lower class might get ideas), they've been robbed blind.

The only "devil" involved in Haiti's poverty has been white.

Haiti and Hate

I am saddened by the tragedy in Haiti. I saw some of the first pictures, of people just lying there, smashed, of the presidential palace pancaked. We had some mild, but very noticeable shakers in the previous week here in Northern California, so it really feels like we've dodged a bullet.

They say earthquakes don't have "seasons". Well, with the amount of headline making shaking that has been happening just in the last few months, I might well argue that.

There is one thing that never seems to go out of season, though, and that is right wing hate.

It starts with the crap from Rush Limbaugh, the renowned OxyContin addicted Republican policy godfather and radio host, who had the gall to criticize the President for reacting quickly to the humanitarian crisis in Haiti, with hundreds of thousands dead, but not jumping up and down yelling "Panic" over a foiled attempt by a guy to blow up his underwear on a plane. Oh, where's our priorities? He intimated that the President doesn't care about the country because he didn't panic and fret about a guy who tried to light his dick on fire, and failed, but gets serious about the dead and dying! Oh, wait, those guys are black and foreign, I guess he should ignore them?

Then it piles horrendously deeper with the sheer excrement from evangelical bigot Pat Robertson spreading the hackneyed myth that the people of Haiti have a 'pact with the devil' for their freedom from the french many years ago (I guess because in right wing mythos, black people can't win anything on their own merit and strength.) He goes on to explain that the earthquake is his "loving" God's "punishment" for that deal with the devil.

Wow, that's such an inspiration to come and worship his god, huh? Worship him, or he's gonna wipe your country off the map anytime in the next several centuries. I just adore worshiping a deity that has a cosmic gun to the head of me, my countrymen, and our descendants!! What's a few hundred thousand casualties when you're talking about saving souls, huh?

Sounds like the very definition of evil to me. Pat Robertson pushes a death cult, and a god of torture, murder, and brutality, who wants not freedom and fee will, but slaves and masochists for worshipers. Sheep indeed - for shearing, and your children for lambchops.

Finally, of course, phoney weeper Glenn Beck gets into the act. He adds his simpering voice to Limbaugh, crying crocodile tears over, not the people dying, oh no, but the fact that our President dared to respond quickly to a disaster in a poor black nation!! Oh, the horror!!! He hates whites, he hates the country, waaah, waaah, gimme the vicks so I can cry some too. What a piece of work.

This, people, is what the once proud conservative tradition in our country has become. Fat, drug addled, fake tears, blowhards without any compassion or humanity, who care only for their own money and power. These filthy leeches on the body politic have taken the party of Lincoln and made it kiss the ring of the godfather of pork, OxyContin abuse and bellowing, bow at the feet of a weepy whiney scared cat little boy, and worship a twisted god at the behest of a heartless bigot preacher.

Even if you, like me, have no money, give at least a prayer or well wish to the universe for those suffering in Haiti.

We, as a nation, are better than those who use the power of their money, privilege and media platform to spew hatred and division when people are suffering and dying. We, as a nation, must repudiate these freaks of the right wing, deny them their power over us and our way of life.

It is not the right that must take back the country. It is the heart.

New Year Blither

It has come to my mind that I need to write more. You see, all the "A List" bloggers are prolific bastards that spew forth profound BS whether they have anything to say or not. I tend not to write unless I have some thing to say. Well, in truth, I always have something to say, I just don't think it's worth writing about. I just need to start writing it down anyway.

I write in several locations. There is here, which is my public blog. There is my Live Journal, which mostly mirrors my DreamWidth Journal - there I occasionally have public posts. I also, heaven help me, have become addicted to Twitter, and where I am http://twitter.com/Ravan_A.

What fascinates me is that I like Twitter. I didn't think I would, because a lot of the early adopters I saw were twitting about dumb shit, and didn't know how to pack their words. Turns out that many actually do - those who were journalism trained. See, I learned in junior high and high school journalism how to write good headlines and leads. 140 characters is a good lead sentence. Add a shortened link and you're done. I don't tend to write lengthy "prose" anyway, which counts against me in some places.

I have always wanted to be a journalist, but didn't like the industry. Not when I looked into studying it, and the "dues" they wanted you to pay, and not when I looked at the career opportunities even if I got a degree in it. When I learned about it in high school, it was all about packing the most information into the least space. I did manual newspaper layout and paste-up, newsletter publishing, and have since done some (not fancy software) desktop publishing. This includes writing and copy editing.

Because of this, blogging came naturally. I was my own editor, I was not as constrained to objectivity as a straight reporter would be, but I could at least write better than some of the sheer excrement that I have read out there. Some of the so-called A-List blogs that I've perused just weren't worth following - ego spew and link spam, at best.

I do have standards, however. I try, fairly hard, to have neutral and objective sources for factual data. Don't quote Fox News or AFA sources back at me and expect me to take you seriously. I try for things like the AMA, CDC, universities, and other organizations without obvious or overwhelming political agendas. Certain polls are known to be biased, by the way they compose their questions. I just point and laugh. Then again, reality tends to have a "liberal" bias - facts don't change just because your god says it's evil.

I have, I will freely admit, a progressive bias. I like real progress, I think it's good for people. My definition may be a little different than some might think. I do not thing GMO crops are "progress", for example.

I also tend to be anti-corporate - corporations are fine as long as they don't have the rights accorded to people. You start treating corporations like real people, and you unleash soulless immortal sociopaths on the population - you can't kill, or even really punish, a corporation, they have no ability to have a conscience, and they have the ability to assemble unlimited power without any accountability to the public (and little to the stockholders).

I used to submit stuff to WitchVox, but they changed their submission guidelines to require 1000 - 3500 words. "Essays under 1000 words will not be considered for publication—we are looking for more than off-the-cuff commentary." My reaction? Well La Di Fucking Dah! WitchVox won't be getting my stuff any more - I usually write short and sweet, not long and turgid. I won't pad to meet length. Yes, this is really a problem for me - half of my entries in this blog are well under 1000 words, but are not "off-the-cuff" commentary! Even some of my longer ones are only 965 words. Assholes!

So this entry has covered, several subjects: why I write, locations online where I write, what my background in writing is, what my bias and standards are, where else I've submitted and published but don't any more. At under 800 words. See the problem?

Taxpayer Funding of Murder

I bet you think this is about abortion. In a way, it is, but not the way you think.

You see, my tax money routinely funds things I consider to be murder, or otherwise immoral:

• Unprovoked wars - murder of civilians by US government sanction
• Capital punishment - judicial murder of people who may actually be innocent
• Torture and "extraordinary rendition" - murder, and worse, by US government
• Blackwater mercenaries - paid killers, murder for hire
• In vitro fertilization - unnatural fertility for those who can't accept fate
• Viagra - unnatural hardons for those who can't accept aging

If the control freaks who have decided that their pissant God gives them control over women's bodies can whine about "taxpayer funding of abortions", then I DEMAND that my tax monies no longer be used to fund things that I find to be criminal.

After all, fair is fair - if the "pro-lifers" can deny taxpayer funding of what they consider "murder", I can demand that taxpayer funds should not be used to fund what is more arguably actual murder, or otherwise unnatural and immoral.

Tell your congressperson about this.

Debate on Healthcare? Not really.

I am just repulsed by what is being pulled on the health care debate by the right wing, the blue dogs, and the health insurance lobby. There is so much spin, so many lies and pure bullshit propaganda, including red baiting and dog whistling, that I, and many other rational people, are just flabbergasted and getting very, very angry.

• How do you reason with people who believe that paying for end of life planning is the same as euthanasia? Who believe that "living wills" are all about "pulling the plug on Grandma"?


• How do you reason with people who don't even know that fascism is an inherently right wing, corporatist, anti-union ideology? Who engage in thuggish tactics and violence, but whine that they are being falsely labeled terrorists?


• How do you reason with people who believe that the president in not a natural born citizen, in spite of a legal Hawaiian birth certificate and two newspaper announcements of his birth in Hawaii? I don't even have that level of proof - I just have the same type of birth certificate (not a hospital certificate), and no newspaper articles!


• How do you reason with people who think that socialism is the same as communism, and that any government involvement in anything but the military is socialism? But yet they'd never give up their roads, fire departments, police departments, municipal sewers, water delivery or courts in which to sue people (or get sued by corporations, more likely.)


• How do you reason with people who say they oppose "big government", but are all for the massive "homeland security" bureaucracy? They don't bat an eyelash at corporate welfare to banks and defense contractors from the public coffers, but heaven forfend that taxpayer money should be used to keep taxpayers alive, healthy and able to pursue happiness!


• How do you reason with people who think that it's fantastic that a previous president authorized wiretaps and email snooping on all Americans, but scream bloody murder at the mistaken idea that the government is collecting email addresses of people who disagree with legislation under consideration?


• How do you reason with people on Medicare, something that the Reaganites vehemently opposed, who now rabidly oppose health care reform for the benefit of the rest of us?


• How do you get these people to understand that they are being gouged for prescriptions because their party won't let the government negotiate (a good free-market principal) on prescription drug prices for Medicare recipients? These people don't want the *government* to touch their *government* health care to save them money?


• How do you get through to folks who, when you tell them that millions of people are uninsured, and uninsurable, reply that most of those people are illegals, drug addicts, or irresponsible? Especially when the "source" they cite are right wing lie sheets and insurance company propaganda? When the people you personally know that are in that situation worked hard, then took care of their ailing family members, and are now to sick to work, but not able to get disability because they played caregiver for family for too long?


• How do you reason with people who whine that you're engaging in "class warfare" when you want to tax the rich more, but yet have themselves been making war on the middle and lower classes for the last thirty years by:
  1. increasing the tax burden on the middle class while giving breaks to the rich,
  2. eliminating funding for programs for affordable housing that keep people off the streets and able to get jobs,
  3. eliminating funding for vocational education
  4. union busting and exporting manufacturing jobs, thus keeping the working class desperate and sinking farther into poverty
  5. fighting tooth and nail against making the minimum wage once again a livable wage
  6. making more minor drug offenses into major crimes with mandatory sentences so that more and more people are imprisoned or can't get work because they're a "drug felon".
  7. restricting access to birth control, prenatal care and abortion for the poor by eliminating funding for family planning, harassing clinics, and shooting ob/gyn's who do abortions, so only those who can afford to travel can afford to rule their own bodies?


• How do you get through to people who, when you tell them that 79% of bankruptcies are due to health care, and that over half of those started with insurance and got "rescinded" or lost it because they couldn't work, say that those people were irresponsible and should "get a job with insurance"?


• How do you get the point across to people who, when you tell them that a lot of big companies like WalMart don't offer their part time employees insurance, just say "they should be willing to work full time jobs", despite the fact that WalMart deliberately won't bring their hours to full time so they can avoid paying benefits?


• How do you keep from screaming at people who act like their (or their spouse's) employer health insurance is great, they'll have it forever, and all anyone needs to do is get a job like theirs? Never mind that that insurance can get changed, they can get laid off, or in an accident that means they can't work, or sick with something nasty and get dropped/rescinded or denied - they have theirs (for now), so the rest of the nation can just suck it up and deal, better luck next time??

I'm sorry, but if these people are going to be that damned stupid, we even more desperately need to pass health reform with a single payer system, and make sure that it includes psychiatric, because a lot of these people are delusional! They are deathly afraid of a "nanny state", but then they turn around and act like irrational children playing with fire and gasoline!

Over 70% of the country wants national health care, and most of them prefer a single payer, no nonsense system. But the lunatic fringe gets all the press, and the health insurance and big pharma shills score the lobbying points. What we'll end up with is a crappy "mandate" by law to buy a toxic, overpriced, non-competitive and unfriendly insurance from the very companies that have brought us to this crisis!!

Seriously, President Obama and the Democratic Party, stop trying to be adult and "fair" - the right will not play along with bipartisan anything, except maybe bipartisan feeding at the lobbyists trough. We won. It's our damn turn to steer the ship of state.

In the 8 years of the Bush regime (and the "Contract OnWith America' before that), they never had any interest in allowing any compromise or inclusion of the Democrats ideas - it was "my way or the highway'. They have spent the last 30 years tearing this country apart, often suborning centrist Democrats (Reagan Democrats = Republican light) into "compromises" that were really sell-outs.

I strongly suggest that "bipartisanship" come to mean "we listen, nod that we've heard, and then do things our way anyway". Seriously, I voted for Obama because I wanted my country back, I wanted the rule of reason and the people to kick corporate interests and religious hypocrisy out of the drivers seat. I am sick of the Republicans, their lies, their demagoguery, their imperialism, their jingoism, their bigotry, their racism, their hypocrisy, their baseless moralizing, their willingness to enslave us to corporate interests. I remember how their cronyism deregulated and fucked over California's energy market, and how the Republicans just tried to say the 'solution' was more deregulation! Yeah, it would solve their desire to get richer?

I will gladly pay more tax to be assured that the piratical leeches of the health insurance industry never again risk scuttling our nation, never again drive hardworking people into bankruptcy, poverty and death from denials, lifetime maximums, and rescisions.

I will rather pay my taxes to cover the indigent, the unemployed, the working poor, and even lazy bums rather than have them go to fund unnecessary wars and sweetheart deals with Lockheed, Halliburton, and Blackwater (or whatever they call themselves now).

I am angry, and apparently we have more ground work to do to reclaim our once caring, fair and proud nation from the cesspit of banana republic corporatism and thuggish, uncaring religious fanaticism. I waited, fuming, until we got smart enough to vote the jackals Bush and Cheney, and their party, out of the White House. I waited, hoping that the previously spineless Democrats in Congress would grow a pair and push back against the corporate blackmail and Republican lie machine.

We have the majority, but the limp-dick slaves of the corporatocracy are still selling us down the river.

I ask you, if your congressman/woman does not back health care reform with at least the compromise of a strong public option (and preferably single payer), that you vote them out in the next primary. Don't put so-called conservatives/Republicans in, but don't support sell-outs, get new blood who will answer to the people.

The job is not done. We must render the neoconservative movement a sad footnote in history, a failed experiment in greed, imperialism and hypocrisy. We must wrest the moral compass of the nation out of the hands of the hate-filled religious fundamentalists and the corporate hypocrites who fund them.

I want my country back, damnit.

Shock! AFA Advocates Fairness?

The people in the AFA, who ordinarily repulse me, came up with a comment that is fair, principled, and right:

Here is the single most important question you can ask your Representative and
Senators concerning ObamaCare.

/"Will you vote to require members of Congress to be included on any bill
dealing with health care? Please give me a yes or no answer."/

If the ObamaCare health care bill isn't good for the members of Congress, then
it is not good for the general public. Members of Congress should live under the
same laws as the general public.

I agree. Whatever Congress passes, they must be bound to it as well. Equal treatment under the law, and them putting their health and lives where their mouth is.

The only way to get true health reform, and sane, fair, economical coverage for all is to force the people making the rules to live under their own creations:

• If we have to use private insurance in the "free market", so should they.
• If we can be denied, rescinded, and lifetime capped, so can they.
• If our "preexisting conditions" make us uninsurable, so should theirs.
• If we have huge copays, low coverage percentages, and huge out-of-pocket costs, so should they.
• If they get gold-plated lifetime care at taxpayer expense, so should we. We pay the bills.

The lobbyists can push money at them all they want, but if their health and life rides on it as well, they won't be as likely to sell us down the river for a lobbyist donation.

So yes, Donald E. Wildmon, that is a very, very, very good question to ask.

We all should ask it, and not just regarding health care. No more political elites.

Republican Hypocrisy

From here

The House approved a measure Friday that would put new constraints on executive pay, capitalizing on outrage over multimillion-dollar bonuses to Wall Street executives whose firms were bailed out by taxpayers.

and

The bill, introduced by Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, would let regulators ban risky incentive-based pay that could have an adverse effect on the financial system.

This is the galling part:

Republicans slammed the measure as yet another example of needless government intervention into private business practices, similar to arguments that Republicans have been making in the debate over health care overhaul.

“The Democratic majority has a great desire to have the government everywhere in our lives,” said Representative Tom Price, Republican of Georgia. “It cuts at the very core of our free market system.”

What a steaming pile of bullshit!

When you and your corporate masters come, hat in hand, asking the government to bail out your "free market" business, you have no right to bitch about "needless government intervention". By the real principles of the "free market", if it isn't profitable, it should fail! No bailouts, no tax breaks, no favors.

So, Mr. Price, if you and the rest of the Republican vultures want a free market, your corporate cronies can give back the bailout money right now.

If they don't, then they, and you, can just shut the fuck up about government "interference" - that eeeevil "government interference" is why a lot of your corporate buddies still have jobs, houses, cars, yachts, and all of that. They could be like the rest of us, one unemployment check away from homelessness or no health insurance.

So STFU, Representative price, your "Fuck you, I've got mine!" hypocrisy is showing.

Single Payer and HC Links

These are not generally left-wing sites.

For-profit medicine is a national sickness

Health insurance for the 21st Century

Single-Payer Myths; Single-Payer Facts

Paying More, Getting Less

Research Firm Cited by GOP Is Owned by Health Insurer - can you say astroturf?

Medical bills prompt more than 60 percent of U.S. bankruptcies

Health Insurance Coverage

A Healthy Bottom Line: Profits or People? - Santa Clara University Ethics discussion

Alliance for Advancing Nonprofit Health Care - if not SP, then make health insurance non-profit

What the For-Profit Trend In Health Care Really Means - interesting 1996 article, and seeing where we are now (Hint: Some of the previous non-profit are for-profit now [eg BC-BS], and the major for-profits now dominate and rule the industry.)

These are generally considered progressive:

Crazy Wingnut Healthcare Attacks Exposed

Mythbusting Canadian Health Care -- Part I

Mythbusting Canadian Health Care, Part II: Debunking the Free Marketeers

The Health Care Debate: Another Country Heard From

Healthcare Now main page - lots of stuff

The White House Health Reform site - more focused on the wimp-out "public option" to appease the insurance lobby.

Massive takedown of for-profit "health" "care" - "You Can't Buff a Turd"

Single Payer Myths Disproved By Canadian Research!

When Wealthy Isn't Healthy - for-profit health care industry makes more profit while offering fewer services - Brief Article - 1999 article, again it's worse now.

Healthcare vs. the Profit Principle - 1997 article (it's only gotten worse).

More later...

Oh, about rationing and elderly (from Mythbusting Canadian Health Care Part II):

Another persistent (and ridiculously mendacious) rationing myth about the Canadian system is that old people are cut off from treatment and left to die. I've never heard about a single case of this in Canada; but it happens routinely to Americans on Medicare and many private policies, which have strict limits on how long you can stay in the hospital with an acute illness. When the benefits run out, ready or not, they send you home. If you die, you die. The Canadian plan has no such limits: you stay for as long as you need to. But in the US, these limits fit the very definition of "rationed care."

Who does euthanasia, but without anesthetic? Not Canada...

Debunking Wing Nut Baloney About AAHCA

The wingnut post that I am responding to is here. Beware the slime.

My comments are in italics

COMPARE THE FOLLOWING ITEMS TO ACTUAL BILL:

BILL: http://docs.house.gov/edlabor/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf

This is my analysis and debunking of the fearmongering and either deliberate or illiterate misreading of the bill. Anything the moron puts in ALL CAPS is distortion or hysteria.

Pg 22 of the HC Bill MANDATES the Govt will audit the books of ALL EMPLOYERS that self insure!!

The IRS does already. Not an issue.

Pg 30 Sec 123 of HC bill - THERE WILL BE A GOVT COMMITTEE that decides what treatments/benefits you get

Instead of health insurance bean counters. Government committee is accountable to the public, transparent, instead of insurance company beancounter voodoo.

Pg 29 lines 4-16 in the HC bill - YOUR HEALTH CARE IS RATIONED!!!

Wrong. Says nothing about rationing - just sets up group of real experts to determine plan, not beancounters. Original wingnut doesn't know what rationing is.

Pg 42 of HC Bill - The Health Choices Commissioner will choose your benefits for you. You have no choice!

Now all you get is what your employer can afford (if anything) and the insurance company can't avoid paying for. You already have no choice.

Pg 50 Section 152 in HC bill - HC will be provided to ALL NON US citizens, illegal or otherwise

Already is, via ERs can't refuse to treat sick. Not a change. Also, untreated foreigners with diseases can spread to citizens.

Pg 58 HC Bill - Govt will have real-time access to individual’s finances & a National ID Health care card will be issued!

Health insurers already have this, and sell it to drug companies to sell you stuff. Universal ID already here via REAL ID and corruption of social security number.

Pg 59 HC Bill lines 21-24 Govt will have direct access to your banks accts for electronic funds transfer.

"Enable" =/= "require". The government already has this option for tax refunds and collection.

Pg 65 Sec 164 is a payoff subsidized plan for retirees and their families in Unions & community orgs. (ACORN).

Horseshit. Retirees need coverage too - subsidizing them is the right thing to do. Not a "payoff", just making sure that everyone is covered. Non-profits are not evil, and "ACORN" is dog whistle nonsense.

Pg 72 Lines 8-14 Govt is creating an HC Exchange to bring private HC plans under Govt control.

Private HC should be regulated, so people don't get repeatedly screwed.

Pg 84 Sec 203 HC bill - Govt mandates ALL benefit packages for private Health Care plans in the Exchange

No, they mandate the minimums to be eligible to sell through the exchange. No more insurance bait and switch.

Pg 85 Line 7 HC Bill - Specs for of Benefit Levels for Plans = The Govt will ration your Health care!

That's stupid. Government specifies *minimum* coverage, not maximum. Not rationing, it's a floor that you can't get less than. Again, this moron doesn't know what rationing really is. Hint; the insurance companies ration your care based on how much profit they can make on you over your lifetime.

Pg 91 Lines 4-7 HC Bill - Govt mandates linguistic appropriate services. Example - Translation for illegal aliens.

Wow, lots of racism here! You can't tell where someone got an infectious disease if you can't communicate with them.

Pg 95 HC Bill Lines 8-18 The Govt will use groups i.e., ACORN & Americorps to sign up individuals for Govt HC plan

Non-profits are not evil. They can often reach underserved individuals, and get them covered and healthy. Dog whistle racism at its finest.

Pg 85 Line 7 HC Bill - Specs of Benefit Levels 4 Plans. AARP members - Your Health Care WILL be rationed

Again, minimums are NOT "rationing".

Pg 102 Lines 12-18 HC Bill - Medicaid Eligible Individual will be automatically.enrolled in Medicaid. No choice.

This is a problem why? You don't have to use it - you can roy in your own filth if you choose.

Pg 124 lines 24-25 HC No company can sue Govt on price fixing. No “judicial review” against Govt Monopoly.

No one can afford to sue the health insurance companies, on their cheese paring and price fixing, so no change there.

Pg 126 Lines 22-25 Employers MUST pay for HC for part time employees AND their families.

Good. Then they don't end up in expensive ER because their employers are too cheap to make them full time and eligible for benefits (like WalMart does).

Pg 127 Lines 1-16 HC Bill - Doctors/ #AMA - The Govt will tell YOU what you can make.

Instead of the insurance companies that tell you what you can make? Not a change, except a more transparent process.

Pg 145 Line 15-17 An Employer MUST auto enroll employees into public opt plan. NO CHOICE

Universal coverage. You don't have to use the insurance, you can go see a faith healer and die if you like.

Pg 149 Lines 16-24 ANY Employer w payroll 400k & above who does not prov. pub opt. pays 8% tax on all payroll

If they don't insure you, they have to pay a tax that is still less than private insurance.

Pg 150 Lines 9-13 B w payroll between 251k & 400k who doesn't provide public opt pays 2-6% tax on all payroll

If they don't insure you, they have to pay a tax that is still less than private insurance.

Pg 167 Lines 18-23 ANY individual who doesn't have acceptable HC according to Govt will be taxed 2.5% of income.

Much, much, much cheaper than COBRA or individual plans.

Pg 170 Lines 1-3 Any NONRESIDENT Alien is exempt from individual taxes. (Americans will pay).

Visitors don't pay. That's fair.

Pg 195 Officers & employees of HC Admin (GOVT) will have access to ALL Americans financial and personal records.

Now, health insurance claims processors in foreign countries hae access to your records.

Pg 203 Line 14-15 HC - “The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax” Yes, it says that.

Incomplete quote, out of context. The rest is "... imposed by this chapter for purposes of determining the amount of any credit under this chapter or for purposes of section 55." This crap is really reaching.

Pg 239 Line 14-24 HC Bill Govt will reduce physician services for Medicaid. Seniors, low income, poor affected.

Read the whole section. Not a reduction, just recalculation.

Pg 241 Line 6-8 HC Bill - Doctors, doesn't matter what specialty you have, you’ll all be paid the same.

Refers to service categories (type of service performed) without regard to specialty. Says nothing about different services being paid the same. Again, misreading, fearmongering.

Pg 253 Line 10-18 Govt sets value of Dr’s time, prof judgment, etc. Literally value of humans.

More fearmongering crap. "Relative value units" are to try to make fair payment for equal effort.

Pg 265 Sec 1131Govt mandates & controls productivity for private HC industries.

Hahahaha! That way they can't suck us dry and waste our premiums anymore. This is a good thing.

Pg 268 Sec 1141 Fed Govt regulates rental & purchase of power driven wheelchairs.

No. It expands the definition to cover other adaptive devices like power chairs that weren't previously eligible. Increase of choices is a good thing.

Pg 272 SEC. 1145. Treatment of certain cancer hospitals – Cancer patients - welcome to rationing!

More illiterate fearmongering crap and distortion. This section actually requires cancer hospitals to be paid more if their costs are higher.

Page 280 Sec 1151 The Govt will penalize hospitals for what Govt deems preventable readmissions. (Incentives for hospital to not treat and release.)

Good. Hospitals now release people with open wounds and no home care because insurance companies won't pay. This will stop this dumping practice.

Pg 298 Lines 9-11 Dr's, treat a patient during initial admission that results in a readmission-Govt will penalize you.

Again, if the doctor doesn't effectively treat things, just prescribes a band-aid and aspirin, they should be penalized.

Pg 317 L 13-20 PROHIBITION on ownership/investment. Govt tells Dr's. what/how much they can own.

Prevents sweatheart deals where doctors can refer for expensive surgery at expensive hospital that they own. Not a prohibition, a limitation. See this article for why this is needed. The idiot who wrote this doesn't know the difference, or deliberately distorted it.

Pg 317-318 lines 21-25,1-3 PROHIBITION on expansion- Govt is mandating hospitals cannot expand.

Only if they are owned by a single doctor. Again, distortion.

Pg 321 2-13 Hospitals have opportunity to apply for exception BUT community input required. Can you say ACORN?!!

More dogwhistle. Community input is required for malls, housing, and other structures. Community is taxpayers, citizens, people, not corporations. This is a good thing, except to corporatists.

Pg 335 L 16-25 Pg 336-339 - Govt mandates established of outcome based measures. HC the way they want. Rationing.

Outcome based measures means that the treatment has to work, not be witch doctor snake oil. I fail to see how you can equate outcome based measures with "rationing".

Pg 341 Lines 3-9 Govt has authority to disqualify Medicare Advantage Plans (Part B), HMOs, etc. Forcing people into Govt plan.

This means that plans which take seniors money and don't provide a real benefit can get shut down. No more scams = a good thing. Not forcing people into anything, but protecting vulnerable seniors.

Pg 379 Sec 1191 Govt creates more bureaucracy - Telehealth Advisory Committee. HC by phone/Internet?

Not bureaucracy. Many insurers already have this, and can save the time, wait and expense of a office doctor's visit.

Pg 425 Lines 4-12 Govt mandates Advance [Death] Care Planning Consult. Think Senior Citizens end of life.

This is a good thing. In our society, many people avoid planning for their inevitable demise. Advance care planning makes sure that they get their wishes for nursing homes, extreme measures, hospice, funeral, wills and all that written down, rather than putting their families through it at the last minute.

Pg 425 Lines 17-19 Govt will instruct & consult regarding living wills, durable powers of atty. Mandatory!

Good. Then the living wills (patients wishes) are more likely to be obeyed, rather than a more dead than alive husk stuck with tubes and in pain.

Pg 425 Lines 22-25, 426 Lines 1-3 Govt provides approved list of end of life resources, guiding you in death.

Good. Government helps avoid bogus funeral scams and other schemes to fleece the old and ill.

Pg 354 Sec 1177 - Govt will RESTRICT enrollment of Special needs people!

No, the government prevents their coverage and care from being changed often, and people scamming their way in.

Pg 801 Sec 1751 The Govt will decide which Health care conditions will be paid. Say RATION!

Say bullshit. This regards medicaid only, and says that diseases that a hospital gave you aren't covered by the government - they should be paid by the hospital.

Pg 810 SEC. 1759. Billing Agents, clearinghouses, etc required. to register. Gov’t takes over private payment sys.

I wish it said that the government was taking over private payments systems. It would reduce paperwork and cost. But this only applies to medicaid, and if they want to get paid by the government (Medicaid) they must register with the government and meet their standards. Not unreasonable, not a bad thing.

Pg 820-824 Sec 1801 Govt will identify individuals ineligible for subsidies. Will access all personal financial information.

Fearmongering crap. This section is designed to prevent "welfare queens" from scamming the system at our (taxpayer) expense.

Pg 824-829 SEC. 1802. Govt Sets up Comparative Effectiveness Research Trust Fund. Another tax black hole.

Not a black hole at all. Effectiveness research is esential to stop the quackery and scams that are prevalent in many areas of our health care system. Federally funded means that the pharmaceutical companies can't use bogus research to pimp out killer drugs.

Pg 829-833 Govt will impose a fee on ALL private health ins. plans incl. self insured to pay for Trust Fund!

This will replace the huge markups and profits that pharma companies put on all their drugs.

Pg 835 11-13 fees imposed by Govt for Trust Fund shall be treated as if they were taxes.

So? Earlier this twit was screaming (erroneously) about something not being treated as a tax. Make up your mind, idiot.

Pg 838-840 Govt will design & implement Home Visitation Program for families with young kids & families expect kids.

The actual words are "voluntary home visitation". This is not a bad thing, especially for new parents who might be overwhelmed with new kids.

Pg 844-845 This Home Visitation Program. includes Govt coming into your house & telling you how to parent!!!

Only if you voluntarily invite them in, and a lot of people need all the help they can get, especially during the early years. Parenting is not instict, it's a learned skill.

Pg 859 Govt will establish a Public Health Fund at a cost of $88,800,000,000. Yes that’s Billion.

* F-22 that the silly GOP wants: $361 million per aircraft, plus $44000 per hour of flight each! 600 of these is $216 Billion.
* The AIG and bank bailouts: up to $23 Trillion! $40 Billion for AIG, $20 Billion for BofA, $20 Billion for Citigroup (TARP corporate beneficiaries).

$88 billion to get everyone health care? A bargain, and an investment in our citizens.

Pg 865 The Govt will MANDATE the establishment of a National Health Service Corps.

What's the problem with that? You don't have to join, but if you do you will get *training* in health care professions.

Pg 865 to 876 The NHS Corps is a program where Dr's. perform mandatory HC for 2yrs for part loan repayment.

Not required for all doctors, and a good way to help pay the high costs of med school. A good thing for the medical profession.

Pg 876-892 The Govt takes over the education of our Med students and Dr's.

No, again a distortion. The government helps pay for training of doctors, thus helping people who aren't rich already become doctors. This is a good thing.

Pg 898 The Govt will establish a Public Health Workforce Corps to ensure supply of public health prof.

So? It will help to get more primary care doctors, nurses, etc. Then we won't have to import doctors and nurses from third world countries like we do now.

Pg 898 The Public health workforce corps shall consist of civilian employees of the U.S. as Secretary deems.

Someone has to pay them during their training, and the insurance companies won't.

Pg 898 The Public health workforce corps shall consist of officers of Regular & Reserve Corps of Service.

So? Structure, not some dastardly conspiracy.

Pg 900 The Public Health Workforce Corps includes veterinarians. WHAT???

Who else will help control stray animal populations, treat service dogs and see to it that our livestock is healthy?

Pg 901 The Public Health Workforce Corps WILL include commissioned Regular & Reserve Officers. HC Draft?

No, that's fearmongering. This just defines structure.

Pg 910 The Govt will develop, build & run Public Health Training Centers.

Good. Teaching hospitals are in short supply.

Pg 913-914 Govt starts a HC affirmative action program thru guise of diversity scholarships.

Aww, poor little white guy, no more priviledge in attending med school. Again, not a bad thing - now med school wants lots of money (rich white make privilege)

Pg 915 SEC. 2251. Govt MANDATES Cultural & linguistic competency training for HC professionals.

Good. Weeds out the bigots.

Pg 932 The Govt will establish Preventative & Wellness Trust fund- initial cost of $30,800,000,000- almost 31Billion $.

Less than AIG sucked out of us. Potentially a bigger payoff in healthcare savings.

Pg 935 21-22 Govt will identify specific goals & objectives for prevention & wellness activities.

They already do this - Surgeon General

Pg 936 Govt will develop “Healthy People & National Public Health Perform. Standards” Tell me what to eat?

They already do. Along with every asinine diet and celebrity shill.

Pg 942 Lines 22-25 More Govt? Offices of Surgeon General -Public Health Svc, Minority Health, Women’s Health

Specialties are good. Wasn't this guy whining about specialists being underpaid/

Pg 950 - 980 BIG GOVT core pub health infrastructure including workforce capacity, lab systems; health info sys, etc

This whining doesn't make sense. The insurance companies already have this, at our expense, and use it to deny us coverage.

Pg 993 Govt will establish school based health clinics. Your kids won’t have a chance, they will be indoctrinated into the government system.

Oh, another dog whistle - "indoctrinated" - the legislation says nothing about indoctrination. School based clinics are essential to being sure that kids get access to healthcare, even if their parents work and can't take them to appointments.

Pg 994 School Based Health Clinic will be integrated into the school environment.

This basically reestablishes school nurses that have been cheese-pared. Not a bad thing.

Pg 1001 The Govt will establish a National Medical Device Registry.

Less opportunity for snake oil, bogus devices and fraud. Another good thing.

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All in all, while the bill falls woefully short of taking the profit motive out of health care, it provides much better regulation of the health insurance industry, and even helps poor people get training in health care! And it's far, far cheaper than Bush's wars and TARP.