Thursday, December 20, 2012

Jumping Off the Fiscal Cliff

Source: Google Images
I love brinksmanship, don't you? Especially when it comes to the people we elect to run our government.

On the one hand we have Barry, standing his ground demanding that millionaires pay a tax rate commensurate to the success they've enjoyed while the tax code was gerry rigged in their favor.

On the other hand we have Boner and Co. blindly clinging to the idea that they have some kind of mandate to screw us out of the insurance we've been forced to pay into for decades. Some mandate, the only way the retardicans have the house is through the continued gerrymandering of congressional districts in mid western and southern states where a white majority still hold out hope for glory days of domination gone by.

Let's get this straight Boner, you do not have a mandate to steal the hard earned money we have all paid into the government Ponzi schemes of Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid.

Since reduction of spending is the main thrust of the retardican effort to bring the budget in line, then why not start with your exorbitant pay and benefit package? How about shoring up Social Security by making it the retirement plan for congress? How quick will you guys go to the trough for your next boondoggle, if it's the same one feeding you?

While we're on the topic of spending cuts, how much money can we save if we re-set our defense stance to include only our borders? Why are we still occupying Germany and Japan sixty seven years after the end of World War II? Why have our leaders placed our nation into a permanent war time economy? We manufacture weaponry, and export it at far greater volume than the rest of the world combined; what happened to making things people use to enhance life, rather than ending it?
Why does our government use the media to keep us in a perpetual mental state of
"Us against Them"?

The reality is America, that we have a cabal of business and government leaders running our country who envision nothing less than a world of peons laboring for the wealthy in a bi-polar society of have and have not. The redistribution of wealth that has taken place with the decimation of organized labor, and thus our middle class, is nothing short of complete reversion to a time when our oligarchy ran roughshod over the rule of law, and the citizens the law was intended to protect.
These laws now only protect those who have the resources to influence their creation, while subjugating the masses.

Hear me now believe me later, the new push to ban assault weapons will not stop there. Adam Lanza provided our jailers with exactly the conditions necessary to invoke a weapons ban, thereby disarming a potential rebellion that would put the middle class back into it's rightful place in society. We'll hear, for a while, that we need to do something about mental health. And we will, we'll use that ruse to incarcerate those who bring into question the direction of our nation. Just as the Soviets did, and the Russians do to this day. Think Gitmo, only with American citizen prisoners, who have no rights.
You gave those up with the passing of the Patriot Act.

Ultimately, at this juncture of history we have a very serious choice to make; will we repudiate the work of Truman and Eisenhower who set us on the path of world hegemony?
Will we re-task our industry to peace time pursuits after almost 70 years of constant war readiness?
Or will we continue to allow our government to feed us bread and circuses while we bury our heads in the sands of ignorance; as we witness our middle class' evaporation like a rain fed puddle?

In reality America, this is what the cliff is all about, it's the battle for the salvation of the middle class, if we are allowed to fall off the cliff, whats left of the middle class will shrivel and die. While the wealthy just absorb a meaningless bump in their tax responsibility, the rest of us get to finance their profligate ways.
If you make less than a million a year and you voted retardican, the reason why is self explanatory.

Monday, December 17, 2012

American Tragedy: What Was Mom Thinking

As more facts come to light regarding the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the story becomes more tragic at every turn. One such crucial piece of information is something we should all take to heart, and act upon vigilantly.

Just revealed today, Mrs. Lanza mother of Adam who murdered 26 people, not only collected guns in a  home she housed her nut case son in, she actively pursued his education in handling firearms.
Normally I would applaud such a parental move; if any of us is to have guns in our home we should train our able minded family members in their safe legitimate use.

However when your child is troubled mentally; training that child to use a gun, or even keeping a gun where it can be obtained by that child is straight up fucking nuts.
That, as Mrs. Lanza had the extreme misfortune of discovering, was just as effective as placing the barrel of the gun at her own temple. The only difference being that twenty five other people had to die before that epiphany entered and left her dying mind.

Note to all of you who suspect you've got a family member ready to go over the deep end, it is incumbent upon you to actively participate in that individuals disarming.
If you're placing, or allowing guns to remain in the hands of the unstable, you are every bit as guilty of the crimes that person commits. Fortunately for Mrs. Lanza she doesn't have to be haunted by her sons deadly rampage, nor does she live with the consequences. That wreckage was left behind for the devastated families and community of Newtown to sift through.

American Tragedy

This last Friday December 14 2012, the world bore witness to yet another psychotic atrocity.
A young man loaded with weapons, ammo, and untreated delusions; destroyed the lives of every man woman and child in Newtown, Connecticut. After he killed his mother, and just before he terminated his own sorry excuse for existence, his actions took the lives of twenty kids in the first grade, and six adults valiantly attempting to stop the carnage.

In the aftermath of this inexplicable rampage, our society's knee jerk reaction is to regurgitate tired, old, and thoroughly disproven ideas of gun control, and prohibition of ownership of certain types of firearms.
Am I the only one looking at this from the standpoint of other failed prohibition attempts?
Why can't we as a nation face the fact that there are a very small number of us who must be institutionalized to protect the vast majority from these behaviors.

America has very little to offer it's citizens in the way of pre-emptive protection from the insane; 'twas not always the case dear reader, but due to the legal actions of certain civil liberty organizations, society's safety net of asylums for the insane has been largely dismantled. Thus we have the tragedy we had Friday; a mother out of her depth trying to homeschool a son who should have had professional help in a secure residential facility. Far from other children, weapons, and his mother who would no doubt still be alive were the option open to her.

People, we can all agree when children are senselessly massacred as they were December 14th, change must occur. But that change must not promulgate an entirely new set of problems for our society to confront. People kill people, the gun only operates at the behest of the human. If we go forward with any type of gun prohibition we blindly cast aside the lessons of our history, hard fought and often times futile.

Just a few short weeks ago,we witnessed the first strategic blow against another exercise in prohibition futility when Washington state citizens voted for the legalization of marijuana. With weed having been illegal for like 80 years, and evermore people imbibing, the reality of the situation for most forward thinkers has set in. Prohibition does not work. The genie has been out of the bottle for so long now, his descendants are intermarried with all of our clans.

The same is also true of guns in America, the reality is there are more guns floating around legally and illegally in our country now than at anytime in the history of man, that controlling them in any way is farcical in the extreme.
Ask yourselves, with all of the money and resources dedicated to the interdiction of drugs, the fact that drugs of greater variety and power are available in ever increasing quantities; what is the likelihood that a gun ban will work? Like drugs, they will only arrive in greater volume, be more powerful, and available to anyone with cash. No regulatory oversight, no taxes to pay, just one more chance for corrupt overpaid bureaucrats to look the other way while they take the gold rather than the lead.

Barry, you need to seize this opportunity to step up Barry Care to include mental health facilities that have been sorely lacking in our nation for decades. Your chief chip on the table to Boehner is the promise not to go after gun legislation. This episode should have lifted the veil from all of our eyes, it is imperative to pro-actively treat those in need rather than incarcerating or burying them and a whole bunch of others later.

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Vladimir Putin; Pussy Extraordinaire

Pussy Riot, the all-female Russian punk band, jailed for singing a protest song about Putin.
Source: Google Images

"Short people got no reason..."
"They got little hands, little eyes."
"They walk around tellin' great big lies..."

Sound familiar Russia? Amazing how song lyrics reflect real life, is it not?
Clearly Randy Newman had no way of foreseeing the rise of your very own Short People: Putin/Medvedev Inc.
However, he like the rest of us who study history, has a long well documented list of mini men who became dictators from which to draw inspiration for these lyrics.
Perfect analogies to what Russia faces today.

"They got little noses, and tiny little teeth."
"They wear platform shoes on their nasty little feet..."

They have no tolerance for freedom, despise free speech.
They jail young women, who use art to teach.
They fear losing power, knowing death is at hand.
That's why they locked up the girls in the band.

Little bitty men, with tiny little hearts.
Tore young lovers and families apart.
No sense of value, chained up in pride.
Nothin but darkness and evil inside.


"They got little baby legs, that stand so low."
 "You gotta pick em up, just to say hello."

They got little baby ears stuck to tiny round domes.
Full of bad ideas for you folks back home.
You threw out the czar, and the Nazis' too.
Best kill Vlad before he gets you.

Monday, December 3, 2012

How to Make a Cop Come

This past Friday evening, my girlfriend and I went to dinner at a favorite Mexican restaurant called La Carretta.
We've eaten at this establishment many times, love the homemade tortillas and authentic cuisine.
Unquestionably a great addition to the Fresno food scene and tax base.

Which begs the following question:
Why is it that when this restaurant is burglarized early on Friday morning, the crime reported to Fresno P.D. within minutes of discovery, yet as of 7p.m. Sunday evening when we returned, no police officer has arrived to take a statement? Dust for fingerprints?
Is this standard operating procedure across town?

Visual Approximation. Source: Google Images
I'm guessing that if the business in question had been a Starbucks in North Fresno, the police show up in a heart beat.
I could only suggest to the owner that she call Chief Jerry "Never Miss a Photo Op" Dyer's office direct, tell his minion that a tv crew is on the way to film the destruction.
I'm betting Jerry would be there faster than if someone had walked into his office shouting:
"Free donuts and Steroids at La Carretta..."
Fresno Police Department is a joke.
It's chief a trough feeder who has overstayed his time and overeaten his share.
Much like the Sheriff.
Glad I don't reside in the city or county of Fresno, my sympathies to those of you who do.