Name:
Location: Granite Falls, North Carolina, United States

I'm an ordained United Methodist minister no longer pastoring churches, a former media producer with skills ten years out of date, a writer trying to sell my first novel, and a sales associate keeping body and soul together working for the People's Republic of Corporate America. I'm married to the most wonderful woman in the world, who was my best friend for 17 years before we married.

Friday, December 18, 2009

A Pox on Both Your Houses

I've been listening to Hardball. Chris Matthews is clueless and a jerk on a lot of issues, but he has a few good points tonight.


He and somebody else I didn't recognize were arguing with Pat Buchanan about climate change. It seems that Pat and the other troglodytes, as Chris called them, want to keep our dollars flowing to the Arab sheiks so they can keep funding al Qaida. I'm going to keep pushing that point to all the deniers I encounter.

And here is St. John McCain blasting Al Franken for objecting to Holy Joe Lieberman continuing past his time. Well, Tweety remembered when McCain did the same thing a few years ago.

The Republican Party has been taken over by the lunatic fringe, with no program other than stopping anything and everything progressive from getting accomplished. This even extends to voting against the troops to whom they pay so much lip service. Just to hold up the HCR voting. That has to be the stupidest move yet, but being a roadblock is so much more important.

I will continue to vote for the Democrats as a default position, but I can't support any of them enthusiastically.

The latest version of the Senate Health Care "Reform" bill is a big giveaway to the very insurance companies that have caused us so much trouble. First they give away the single payer plan right off the bat, even before they had to as a compromise. Instead, they compromised away the public option which the majority of the American people want.

All they have now is a mandate for everyone to buy health insurance in the same way as every driver in North Carolina has to buy car insurance. A big ripoff for those who can't afford to buy insurance, with no control over premiums. Oh, there are a few noises made about supplements for low-income folks, but Sen. Ben Nelson (D?-Grinch) is trying to cut them back, in addition to endangering the health for a multitude of middle-class women who, according to people like him, aren't adult enough to decide with whom they may share their bodies and their substances.

Where is your leadership, Obama? Oh, yeah. You're one of the sell-outs. I knew I didn't care for Obama, but by the time the North Carolina primary came around, he was the least objectionable choice left. Since he's been in office, he's continued the most objectionable of the Bush policies of rendition, preventive detention, shielding war criminals from prosecution, etc. Even before he took office, he sold us out on telecom immunity. Big disappointment, I must say, but the saddest thing is how much worse McCain would have been.

And it was Obama who led the sell-out to the insurance companies.

Two things: First, we need to raise hell. Taking to the streets doesn't do much good. The biggest anti-war demonstration in history went down right before the invasion of Iraq and got maybe one hundredth of the coverage that the Astroturf Tea Parties got this past summer. What counts is where it means something: in the voting booth. We need to support financially some real challengers to the DINOs, and then support them even more in the general elections. After all, our competition has Corporate America backing them. We need financing from the public, as a substitute for public financing, but that's a different topic.

Second, we need to hold our representatives' feet to the fire. Letters to Congress, letters to the editor, letters to friends. Letters on paper to the district offices of our Congresspeople and Senators are more effective than e-mails and on-line petitions. Let them know we're watching and keeping track.

But the main thing we need is a new party. I tried to stir up interest in re-forming the Whig party to fight the two Tory parties we have now, but that was only on this blog, and thus it never went anywhere. We need some real competition to the corporate-owned parties in Washington now.

As Leon Redbone sang, "I know it'll only happen/When I'm nappin'/ noddin' in reverie...."


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