Last week we (or “current resident”) received a slick 4-color 6×10 card stock mailer that looks at first glance to have come from our NC-11 congressional rep, Heath Shuler. At the top the reverse-on-blue header reads:

“Congressman Shuler Is Fighting To Make Medicare Prescription Coverage Even Better”

and on the bottom reverse-on-red the italicized message reads:

“Call Congressman Health Shuler today at 202-224-3121. Tell him thanks for fighting to improve Medicare without making seniors pay more, and ask him to keep on fighting until we get the job done.”

The wording struck me a little odd. Why would Heath tell me to thank him for his notably atrocious Blue Dog position on health care reform? I mean, it’s not like he cares what Democrats in his district have to say about the issue. So I flipped the mailer over and read on the bottom of the address/postage space:

“Paid for by Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.”

Whoa. Billy Tauzin’s notorious PhRMA lobby. The one that got a secret back-room deal with Obama before this issue ever got to committees in the House and Senate. And who are now sending deceptive mailers like this all over the country as part of a $150 million PR campaign to promote their continued obscene profits on the backs of senior citizens, while the mandate to force all citizens to purchase junk policies from the for-profit insurance industry amounts to a ~$12,000 per year (plus steep annual hikes at four or more times the rate of inflation) tax increase on the middle class. Earmarked directly to the Murder-by-Spreadsheet crime syndicate, this porker is uglier than Hogzilla.

FACT: According to an analysis of the proposed Part D changes by the Wall Street Journal, the Congressional Budget Office concluded that any decrease in average spending on prescriptions by seniors will more than be made up for by an increase in premiums seniors must pay for Part D. CBS News reported that CBO has confirmed seniors will be paying 20% more for Part D coverage by 2019 under this giveaway to Big Pharma.

FACT: The Baucus plan also abets another huge giveaway to insurers by allowing them to charge older people (age 50-64) up to five times as much as younger people for the insurance policies everyone will be required to purchase.

FACT: The per capita (per person) cost of ALL health care in the U.S. per year comes to right about $3,750. That is all care, for all people, insured and uninsured, Medicare, VA, Medicaid, SCHIP and charity. Why would anyone want to pay $12,000 a year for what actually costs $3,750? A government-run single-payer system could be paid for by graduated taxation based on actual costs and those taxes would be far cheaper even to the richest of the rich than the cost of a single for-profit insurance policy.

Links:

NYT: Drug Makers to Back Baucus Plan With Ad Dollars

NYT: How Much Should Older Americans Pay for Insurance?

WSJ: Part-D Offsets

CBS: 20% increase in Part-D premiums

According to figures from the Center for Responsive Politics Shuler has received the following contributions from shady players:

$195,262 from the health sector employees and PACs.
$13,750 from health insurance companies.
$74,800 from Big Pharma.
$77,062 from health professionals.
$27,900 from hospitals.
$10,500 from the nursing home industry.

$399,274 in total. Now, the figures from CRP are what the Blue Dogs (individually) have received since 1989 from the PACs and pools of various health related industries, but Shuler’s only been in office since 2007. So that’s quite the hefty haul over less than three years!

Below is the letter I have written in response to this blatant insult from the Drug Pusher’s Union Propaganda Squad…

__________

Dear Congressman Shuler;

The four registered voters in our NC-11 household were appalled by a slick mailer we received last week from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America urging us to “thank” you for working for them instead of us in the matter of health care reform. This letter is to lodge formal complaint and explain once again why we do NOT want either the insurers or the drug companies writing this necessary legislation.

Our formal complaint is to the information provided in this mailer that you work for Big Pharma and not for us, the constituents you were elected – by us – to represent. This lobby group actually expects us to congratulate you for serving out-of-state corporate donors instead of us. We most certainly do not congratulate you for succumbing to rampant D.C. corruption in record time.

The mailer talks about how Big Pharma’s contribution to the reform effort will help close the Medicare Part D “donut hole” they themselves wrote into the original bill to ensure obscene profits and force American seniors on fixed incomes to pay more for necessary drugs than anyone else in the world. As well as prevent Medicare by law from negotiating lower drug prices, as all other first world nations (with universal, single-payer health care) do and have done so successfully for so long.

In fact, according to an analysis of the proposed Part D changes under HR 3200 by the Wall Street Journal Health Blog, the Congressional Budget Office concluded that any decrease in average spending on prescriptions by drug-dependent seniors will more than be made up for by an increase in premiums seniors must pay for Part D. CBS News reports that CBO determined seniors will be paying 20% more for coverage by 2019. 20% is very significant to a great many seniors in your district, Mr. Shuler.

Two of the voters in this household – myself and my husband – will be 68 years old in 2019. Thanks to the recent destruction of the nation’s economy by greedy bankers and insurers (whom we and our children and grandchildren were forced to bail out to the tune of trillions in completely unaccountable dollars), our only income will be Social Security, and our only access to health care will be Medicare. So you are going to deliberately rob us further on orders from your corporate masters? That is completely unacceptable.

As proud long-time residents of WNC, registered Democratic voters and active participants in Democratic politics, we will be lobbying hard and very publicly beginning immediately in favor of a primary challenge to you next year from a candidate more committed to both the people of this district and the Democratic Party. You brought this on yourself, as we were all delighted when you were willing to run against Charles Taylor. We would have supported you for a very long career in politics if you’d just been less willing to sell us out in favor of corporations who do NOT vote in this district and cannot keep you in power.

Though they probably can make you rich, so you may wish to go ahead and apply for that post-Congress Big Pharma lobbying job now.

In Sincerely Sad Disappointment,

[the four of us registered voters, address in NC-11]
__________

Wanted: Dedicated public servant and Democrat with an understanding of policy issues that impact the residents of Western North Carolina, to vie for Heath Shuler’s seat in Congress in the 2010 primary.

We’ve been told Obama’s “got this” because he can shoot hoops in the WH basement with skill, and grab flies out of the air like a Kung Fu master. We’ve been told Obama’s playing “multidimensional chess” with his opponents by continuing every single one of the illegal and anti-democratic policies of his Neocon predecessor. And now, with the health insurance reform debate gone all Town Hall during recess, we are told we don’t really need health insurance reform, single payer health care, or even a public option to facilitate the expected mandate we’ll be handed that forces us to pay more money than we’ve got to the murder-by-spreadsheed for-profit industry.

We still have “state secrets” privilege on who’s lobbying in the Oval Office. We still have DADT in the military. We still have two illegal wars going, a new third front opened in Columbia, off-the-books deficits accumulated by the fact that there’s twice as many paid mercenaries in those war zones than U.S. soldiers, we’re still rendering and torturing “detainees” who haven’t been charged with any crimes and haven’t been afforded the status of POWs, and we’re still bailing out Wall Street gamblers to the tune of multiple trillions while not even beginning to address reinstating necessary regulations.

A plethora of Democratic/Progressive activist groups have sprung up to pressure Congress and the White House on these issues as well as health insurance reform, letter-writing campaigns, calls and emails to representatives and senators, mass demonstrations… You name it, it’s being done. And what we get from the WH is insults and dismissals as those of us anywhere to the left of center are repeatedly told to STFU.

Meanwhile, I am receiving between 6 and a dozen pleas for money every single day from various Democratic entities. DCCC, DLC, etc., etc., each one of them extolling me to give more to ensure that “my” interests are represented and protected by people who have amply demonstrated they don’t represent my interests or care about protecting me or my family from the corporatist policies of the Neocons who Won’t Go Away. So I have decided to take a clue from my grandson, who turned 18 last year and registered to vote for the first time. For Obama, of course.

We were originally a little piqued that he chose to register Independent instead of Democratic, but he was adamant and is perfectly happy with his choice. In our state he could still vote in the primary – one merely has to request either the Dem or Rep ballot to vote in one of them, it doesn’t matter what your own registration is. And I notice that he never gets any political mail asking for money he hasn’t got or telling him outrageous lies about what ‘his’ party’s doiing in the state or in D.C.

If the end product of this health insurance charade turns out just as it looks very strongly to be turning out, I am changing my voter registration from Democrat to Independent. Figure that the party hacks who don’t care about what I think or want can do what they do without my support or my money. They can just cross me off their list, and my email will be much more manageable. In writing this, there’s a small chance that others might consider the idea to be pretty good, and perhaps a few of them will change their registration too. If the idea catches on, a lot of people might decide to change their registration to reflect something real that nobody in D.C. seems to have noticed.

The Republicans are now marginalized to a regional sub-party status, claiming less than 20% of all voters and dominant in only 5 states. Libertarians are stronger than that. They’ve a few leftover power brokers in D.C. stonewalling all things necessary to save the country, but Democrats dominate. Dems now calll themselves the “Center-Right” party, telling us that the 79% of Americans who are center-left to progressive are insignificant. We don’t deserve representation. If they were to actually LOSE that 79% – or any considerable fraction of it – they just might have to start doing the jobs they were elected (by us) to do. And if not, we can go ahead and field candidates of our own and have a real chance of winning.

We are all the way to a single-party system in this country, all possible challengers relegated to 20% of the electorate or less. Except for the left-leaners in the dominant party, who have been told to STFU. Well, okay. We can split that coconut rather dramatically, and end up with a larger portion than they’ve got left.

Or not. I won’t be holding my breath for other progressives to catch a clue. I’m changing my registration and getting my name off their fundraising list. After more than a week of battling swine flu, it’ll make me feel much better, I’m sure. Wish me luck!

Iatrogenic, adjective
a medical disorder caused by the diagnosis, manner or treatment of a physician.

Iatros is the Greek word for physician. -genic means induced by. Iatrogenic disease is a disease caused by a physician. Given the sheer complexity and technological wonders of modern Western [allopathic] medicine have led to some stretching of the strict meaning of the term, which is now applied to ANY adverse effect associated with ANY medical practitioner or treatment. Thus it can be used to describe the cancers caused (years down the line) by radiation and radioactive isotopes used to treat initial problems, prescription errors, hospital-contracted infections, problems caused when a surgeon leaves an instrument or two in the patient, a chiropractor who breaks the patient’s neck, etc., etc.

When I was busy educating myself as much as possible when my daughter determined to have her baby at home, I discovered that the nations that have the best statistical outcomes – fewest maternal and infant deaths or injuries – actually encourage home births because hospitals are dangerous places to both mothers and infants. They’re dangerous places for anyone these days, it seems. According to statistics compiled by OurCivilization.com, there are 8.9 million “unnecessary” hospitalizations every year in this country, which lead directly to 1.78 million “Iatrogenic Events.” Of 7.5 million “unnecessary” procedures ordered annually by physicians, another 1.3 million patients suffer direct harm. That adds up to 16.4 million people channeled into a harmful situation by their medical providers every year, and 3.8 million cases of direct harm to those people that they otherwise would not have suffered.

The same source estimates annual deaths caused by various leading iatrogenic factors, reaching a total of 783,936 deaths at a cost of $282 billion. Every year, and that’s not the highest estimate available. A simple extrapolation on the statistics gives us a projected 10-year death rate of 7,841,360 people, more people than have been killed in all the wars the United States ever fought over its entire history.

Medical insurance reform – which is the most we’ll ever get from Congress, and that’s likely to be a simple mandate to buy junk insurance – does not even begin to address what’s wrong with the health care system in this country. All it will do is put more people in harm’s way, given that medical care is now the third leading cause of death in the U.S. The American iatrogenic Association [AiA] is working to make the truth known to the general public, and to promote policies that will begin to address the serious issues. I encourage everyone concerned about the health care situation in this country – both access and quality of care – to check out their website and the collection of articles, essays, studies and book excerpts they offer.

The Truth is that at least 12,000 people die every year of unnecessary surgeries. Another 7,000 die to medication errors in hospitals. 20,000 die due to other errors in hospitals. Hospital-acquired infections, many resistant to known antibiotics, kill another 80,000. 106,000 die of those nifty “bad effects” of drugs their doctor prescribed, often for no better reason than that some hypnotized medically-obsessed junkie saw it advertised on TV and just HAD to have it. Only heart disease and cancer beat the medical system in this country on number of victims every year. You can bet that many of those the medical system kills were there because they were diagnosed with one of those issues, but their doctor or hospital killed them before their disease could.

This unacceptable situation SHOULD inform us that more access to the system for more people is not going to cure what ails us. All that is just more money for the players in that nasty futures market in human suffering. I read about a woman the other day who had her baby taken away from her because she resisted a doctor’s insistence that she submit to C-section (dangerous major surgery), at a hospital with a C-section rate approaching 50% of all births. What the hell kind of quality control is going on there? C-section is medically indicated – to save the life of mother or child in an extreme situation – for fewer than 6% of all births. I for one do not consider a doctor’s tee-off date to be an extreme situation threatening the life of mother or child. I DO consider unnecessary surgery to be a direct threat to life and limb, and so should everyone else in the world!

So when your least-favorite WingNut starts ranting about “ObamaCare” and euthanasia for poor old Granny, respond with some REAL statistics about what’s way more likely to kill off Granny and everyone else in the family before their time – that which passes for “health care” in this, the supposedly richest country the world has ever known. If all our government can do is offer more citizens the ‘right’ to access the killing floor, we’re better off without it.

So. Just wanted to continue with a theme, because I think it’s extremely useful as a means of keeping our heads about us while dealing with clinically insane bizonker-birthers who can’t tell their asses from their outhouse in this so-called “Health Care Debate.” Nobody anywhere is really doing anything about what’s actually wrong with health care in this country, and they will continue to do nothing about it until we’re all dead of it (or maybe just old age). NONE of them are addressing the problems.

CNN commentator Roland S. Martin has a piece up today (July 22) entitled, Obama birth issue is nutty that proceeds to make good fun of the wingnuts. But since one of George W. Bush’s first serious actions as President after 9-11 was to arrange the biggest government overhaul since the New Deal – by inventing the so-called “Department of Homeland Security” – there are Americans out in the hinterland who are suddenly quite confused about their legal status. I’m one of them, and so is recent Republican Presidential candidate John McCain. Who, like me, actually wasn’t born in the United States of America.

McCain, like me, was a Navy brat. He was born in the Panama Canal Zone, I was born in the Philippines. There used to be a clear law on the books that held the children of American citizens born in a foreign country are indeed ‘natural born’ American citizens, even if they automatically get dual citizenship for the country in which they were born. I had that until I was 18, though after that I would have had to formalize, and I was never very fond of Ferdinand and Imelda “Shoe-Lady” Marcos. So I let it slide. Still, if nobody questioned McCain’s citizenship qualification for POTUS, the fervor with which wingnuttia rants about Obama seems even crazier. I mean, even if Hawaii hadn’t been a state when he was born, did not all Hawaiians receive automatic citizenship when it WAS made a state? It was a territory, after all. Like Puerto Rico. Which apparently some wingnuts in Congress think is a foreign country too, thus Judge Sonia Sotomayor couldn’t be a citizen. Weird.

The last day job I held was in the period after 9-11 when DHS became the designated troublemaker for Americans of all kinds. My problems started when Human Resources was informed that my birth certificate didn’t qualify as “proof of citizenship” for me to have gotten the job. So I responded that my state driver’s license and Social Security card should suffice if HR couldn’t manage to read the line that designated US citizenship for both my parents and myself on that Philippine-issued birth certificate. They told me I had to get a birth certificate from a state here in the US. So I asked them which state they’d suggest I pretend to be born in, thinking there must be a racket in California or somewhere that provides fake birth certificates for people like me who weren’t actually born there. They were not amused.

Then they found a “discrepency” on my Social Security card. Seems I had used the name I’ve always gone by in addition to the first name on my birth certificate, when I had the last name changed after I got married back in 1969. I was informed they could no longer make my pay checks out to my legal name (which WAS on the card), and which is the name on my bank account. The bank then proceeded to tell me it couldn’t cash my checks! I was informed I’d have to take unpaid time off work – for which I’d get in trouble because no one would approve it – to stand in line at the SS office to have the name changed again. So I could work. I began to get the very strong feeling they didn’t want me there.

So I wrote a nice missive to HR telling them that I’d been paying taxes for more than 35 years under the NUMBER on my SS card, and that the IRS – a duly authorized agency of the federal government – had never once complained or refused my money. I further wrote that when I got married, I had my named changed to his on that card, and nobody ever asked to see a court order or required me to get one that “legally” changed my last name. In fact, I had dropped my given middle name entirely and used the first initial of my original last name on all legal matters from that time on. Also a CUSTOM, not something for which I ever had to go to court. I further said that if I were to be required per DHS’s audit to legally change my name, they were going to have to go after every single married woman in the country who had ever taken her husband’s name or used their maiden name’s initial for their middle. That’s about 55% of the entire population, not something this nation had the money to accomplish while spending $10 billion a month in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I did end up quitting that job just because I know when I’m not wanted. Now write full time freelance, and my boss has never asked me to prove I’m a citizen or argued with me about what name I care to attach. Oh… and he uses direct deposit to pay me, in the account with my terrorist name attached.

I call it my “terrorist” name because DHS was supposed to be chasing terrorists, not messing up the lives and livelihoods of lifelong American citizens and taxpayers in good standing. Thus they must have believed I’m some sort of terrorist. I prefer the title “Terrierist,” since I’m quite fond of small dogs. You’d think these folks would have better things to do in the wake of 9-11, perhaps going after real terrorists or something. Guess that’s what I get for thinking.

I presume these crazy wingnuts would be doing this same weird Dervish Dance if John McCain were President right now. I mean, he absolutely wasn’t born in the United States, while Barack Obama absolutely was. And while they’re at it, they should make a new law that says the wives of military officers stationed overseas are forbidden to visit them or live with them, on the off-chance a baby might be born somewhere outside of Kansas. Sheesh!

Most of these idiots are so dumb and so ill-educated that they can’t even find California on a map, much less Panama or Philippines or Iraq. Why are they being given time and attention in the media? Shouldn’t we be ashamed of the morons among us, the fact that they represent a good 20% of our population? Is that inbreeding, environmental toxins, or just insane?

Whatever it is, I’m glad I’m not one of them. And I think there should be an IQ test administered to all employees of the Department of Homeland Security to ensure we don’t have to actually deal with any of these defectives in our day-to-day lives.

I wrote on June 3 about the murder of Dr. George Tiller in a Lutheran church in Wichita, Kansas. This week another right-wing terrorist – a notorious hater revered in places like Free Republic and Red State but labeled far too extremist by the neo-nazi group Stormfront – walked into the Holocaust Museum in the nation’s capital and opened fire, killing a security guard. In April of this year a younger neo-nazi wingnut hater killed three Pittsburgh police officers in a suicidal shoot-out because he was afraid Barack Obama was going to take away his guns.

Right wing domestic terrorism is all too familiar in this country. Timothy McVeigh was the most notable in terms of body count, but certainly was not the first or last of his ilk. The problem is present at all times, but the most deadly attacks happen more frequently when there’s a Democrat in the White House. The right wing propaganda machine (a.k.a. FoxNews) provides the verbal incitement, the loyal-but-stupid wannabe Rambos among Fox’s white sheet and dunce cap fan base do the shooting and bombing.

Also back in April the Department of Homeland Security [DHS] issued a report on the rising danger of right wing extremism/terrorism, drawing predictable outcries of persecution from the Fox talking heads and conspiracy theorists. Despite the now obvious to everyone correctness of the DHS intelligence assessment. As if law enforcement suddenly remembered that there actually ARE laws in this country against yelling ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater, neo-nazi hate radio icon Hal Turner was arrested last week in New Jersey for issuing assassination orders to his fan base against two Connecticut lawmakers and a state official. Turner, who was exposed as a paid FBI informant and agent provocateur in 2007, was arrested by the NJ Capitol police and held for extradition, apparently because the FBI that has actual jurisdiction in crimes that cross state lines was reluctant to rein in their puppet.

What the hell is going on here? When will we see the familiar ugly mugs of Rupert Murdoch’s pro-terror spin machine frog marched off to prison where they belong for their roles in inciting murder? How long is it going to take to turn the law enforcement machinery in this country back to enforcing the laws? How many more innocent people have to die because Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh or any of a dozen other hate-mongers don’t like their skin color or their religion or their birth place or their politics?

America has always been a violent place. Mass murder and genocide have always been the tools of state and law for the purpose of taking and holding the territory. Enforced social and economic inequalities, brutal slavery, indentured servitude and a serious lack of opportunity for at least a third of the population have been endemic from the beginning. And whole bodies of research in sociology and psychology have amply demonstrated for a full century that those inequalities are what lead to this nation’s reputation as Murder Capitol of the World. It is becoming perfectly clear that none of this will change under the Democratic leadership now firmly in control even as the world faces at least a decade of major economic depression. Something’s gotta blow, it’s going to blow soon, and it’s not going to be pretty.

So I’m going to say it right now, even though I don’t have a wingnut fan base or any reason to light the fuse on this overloaded powder keg – it’s not just fascistic neo-nazi FoxBots who value the second amendment and exercise it with responsible gun ownership. We lefty-type ’socialists’ are as likely to be armed as anyone else, we just aren’t famous for using those weapons against innocent people for no apparent reason. If the paranoid right-wing groupies really want to start something, there are plenty on this side of the barricades who can finish it.

So unless the machine that is our erstwhile government starts doing its job of protecting and defending We the People (of the US, not Dubai or Saudi Arabia), it’s going to find itself smashed into pieces so numerous and so tiny that it’ll never be whole again. Perhaps that it’s karmic due for being as corrupt as it is and has always been, but it’s not something the vast majority of us ever really want to see happen.

So wake up, America! Rupert Murdoch isn’t even a citizen of this country, he should not be allowed to control the propaganda or foment armed insurrection 24-7 on his cable network or in his big city newspapers. His puppets on Fox and Clear Channel radio need to be retired post haste to whatever off-shore haven they’ve banked their millions.

Because despite the violence endemic to our national nature and the sleight of mind distractions designed to keep the population cowering in abject terror of terror organized against us (this is called “state-sponsored terrorism,” like when the FBI pays people such as Turner to incite murder), some of us have NOT forgotten that this was once not just the land of the free, but also the home of the brave.

And we are not afraid.

We know these murdering terrorists all too well, as Tiller isn’t the first doctor they’ve attacked and/or killed. The goal of killing doctors who provide legal medical services is not to end abortion. Abortion is as old as the hills. Safe medical abortion is relatively new.

Humans of course have more choices than bears and deer and burrowing critters who consume certain plants to induce abortion. Humans decide to have sex (most of the time), then they decide to have or not have a baby. It is apparently the freedom to choose that the antis so vehemently disagree with, so they engage in acts of terrorism with the intent to scare doctors away from providing the safe medical procedure.

Now, the denizens of Operation Rescue and other anti-abortion groups don’t offer to cover the costs of prenatal and delivery care for those who think abortion is the best answer to their life-dilemma. Nor are they noted for assuming responsibility to care for the children they demand be born, by support, adoption or fostering. And they don’t much care about the heartache they’d visit on women and families faced with the birth of a child that is seriously compromised genetically or developmentally and has no chance for a decent life.

The specter of innocent fetuses (or just collections of rapidly-dividing cells) being removed is a much more powerful incentive to opposition than the true reasons for the fundamentalist religious objection to this medical procedure. Let’s face it – God is the #1 abortionist in the universe, causing at least a third of all pregnancies to end in ’spontaneous’ abortion. And there’s no evidence whatsoever that life – or even human life – has ever been considered “precious” to the Judeo-Christian God who demanded blood sacrifice, or to his fervent followers.

The FBI defines terrorism as:

The unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a Government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.

That’s clear enough. The government ruled in 1973 that women have a right to choose whether or not to have a baby, up until viability when states may exert their interest in the unborn child. In Jesus’s Jihadists Sara Robinson wrote:

The fact that this shooting occurred in a church (again) suggests that this tactic is now being tried out on more closely related faith groups whose views don’t comport with the fundamentalist party line. As Dave has often pointed out, bringing violence to houses of worship is usually an overtly eliminationist act.  They are trying to terrify liberals by making us feel at risk and unsafe inside our own spiritual sanctuaries — the very places we go to feel the most security and peace. This is terrorism, plain and simple — Christian fundamentalist terrorism, committed by people Sam Smith has started referring to as “Jesus’s Jihadis.”

The surest, quickest way for radical fundamentalist wingnut-ism to go away is for them to turn terrorist against other members of the faith. Make no mistake – Roeder’s choice of setting for his crime means as much as who the target was. After the Department of Homeland Security issued its Report on Rightwing Extremism naming anti-abortion groups as an example of the genre, Jay Sekulow of the right wing American Center for Law and Justice issued a statement:

“This is an outrageous characterization that raises serious questions about the leadership and direction of the agency charged with protecting Americans in the ongoing battle against terrorism. Why would the Department of Homeland Security single out groups like pro-life supporters when they should be focusing on identifying and apprehending the real terrorists – like al-Qaeda – groups that have vowed to destroy America?

Well, fact is that the United States government is a democratic republic by charter, does not recognize any state religion or denomination, and prohibits agents of the state to proselytize religion on government’s dime. It has three branches, one of those to decide matters of law, and it decided a long time ago that women have a right to privacy in terms of their reproductive functions. Religion has gifted American law with many of its most blatantly useless and/or actively harmful legislation over the years, and these eventually came to be struck down. Prohibition, slavery, eugenics, miscegenation, anti-abortion. Because forcing everyone to abide by one’s own religious beliefs doesn’t work.

What these religious terrorists want is to “destroy America.” They want to abolish the Constitution and the entire body of US law in order to erect something quite else in their place. A theocracy – government by religious authority and religious law – is not a democratic republic. These extremists are every bit as dangerous to the body politic as al-Qaeda, moreso because they live among us rather than in caves in Central Asia. These people share our schools and workplaces and streets and neighborhoods. They are invisible because they look just like us.

So yeah, I think religious and other extremists in our midst DO need attention from DHS. Hopefully before any one or more of them pulls a Timothy McVeigh and kills a lot of innocent citizens. I figure if the anti-terror apparatus is going to waste time and money spying on groups of overage pacifist Quakers, they ought to be spying on the really dangerous groups too.

ARGH!!! So now that Democrats will in January have the White House, the House and the Senate, Joe Lieberman (Lieberman for Lieberman Party-CT) gets to keep his Senate committee chairmanships as if he were a Democrat. This after Lieberman campaigned for Republican John McCain and several other Republicans for Senate.

Now, far be it from me to try and define regular, ordinary words for politicians, who don’t seem to understand the meaning of regular, ordinary words. Words like “Party” and “Loyalty” and “Procedure” and “Majority” and “Governance.” Politicians don’t want to know these things, preferring instead to make things up as they go along.

During these past couple of years when Democrats didn’t have an actual majority in the Senate, Lieberman has been allowed to be a Republican mole in the Democratic Caucus, reporting to his puppeteers and financial backers every move planned by members. He has been allowed to hold several committee chairs, including Homeland Security, where he has steadfastly refused to enforce subpoenas, investigate illegalities of the Bush administration, or even to investigate FEMA’s horrendously inadequate response to hurricane Katrina.

So Lieberman has been rewarded with a pass from the now-actual Democratic majority, encouraged to do more of the same obstructionism that has made him so immensely unpopular outside of Israel.

One day soon, as the public wakes up to realize the Republicans are now a fringe party of right-wing wackos and religious nuts and the Democrats are what the Republicans were before they purged everyone with any sense, there will be a new Progressive Party for the “rest of us.” And it will, within 8-12 years, be electing more than a handful of representatives and Senators, way more than the fringe Republicans, Greens, Libertarians, Communists and Nazis can ever manage.

Sigh. The more things “Change,” it seems, the more they remain the same.

Janis Joplin once sang someone else’s song very poignantly – “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose…” – and that’s semi-true in my experience. We all make choices about what’s important in our lives, and usually become enslaved to that which we choose. At the low end of the scale there’s never enough, just paying the bills is a constant struggle. At the high end of the scale there is also never enough. The thirst for more and more and more rules lives and ruins them too.

As Wall Street melts down we’re suddenly informed we must Spend, Spend, Spend!!! They can never make up their minds. Either we’re not saving enough or we’re not spending enough, it’s always our fault. I call bullshit. Slave wages have not even kept up with the cost of living, they can’t have it both ways.

I read about a 50-something day care worker yesterday who a coworker noticed sitting in the corner crying. When asked what’s wrong, she finally said she couldn’t feel her face. The coworker was alarmed, saw one side of her face drooping as they were talking, speech slurring. She drove her friend to the hospital, but the woman just cried harder and wouldn’t get out of the car. Said yes, she must be having a stroke, but if she walked in the door she’d lose everything – house, car, meager income (job)… she was terrified. Her friend finally talked her into going, she is still in the hospital and her coworkers are trying very hard to raise the tens of thousands she’ll need to pay for the care. There is no insurance at that end of the scale.

Some people on that discussion board from Europe and Australia were horrified. Simply trying to imagine what it must be like to face utter ruin just because you need to see a doctor – when you might be dying. Where dying is the “reasonable” choice, just so your children aren’t left bankrupt. Every other civilized country in the world provides basic health care for their citizens. Only in America…

This is wrong. We all work, much harder than the greed-head capitalists who skim the wealth we create for themselves. There are only so many hours in a day, and humans need sleep. If two full-time minimum wage jobs or three part-time minimum wage jobs – 16 hours a day, the kids are home alone – can’t provide a decent income, it’s NOT because these people are “lazy” or “shiftless” or anything. That’s wrong too. Now that Wall Street has cashed-out, millions who are very much willing to work won’t have jobs – there won’t be any. Great Depression v2.0. This is what unfettered ‘free market capitalism’ has wrought. It’s not pretty, and I sincerely doubt Jesus would approve.

So the haters are busy whipping up more hate. Buzzwords like “socialism,” taxing the rich, scary black people, gays and terrorists around every corner… “God’s Voter Guide.” That’s f***ing obscene! Dogs and cats living together, total chaos!!! Booga Booga, blah, blah, blah, Osama bin Laden, blah, blah, blah, Barack HUSSEIN Obama, blah, blah, blah. Disgusting.

We need change, not hate. Hate’s not going to help anyone, it’s just going to cause more pain. Maybe if the so-called Christians spewing hate 24-7 and worshipping golden bulls on Wall Street were exposed as the liars, posers and hypocrites they truly are, we could finally all work together to improve our nation and everyone’s lives. As if this were the United States of America, sans secessionists and domestic terrorists in the White House.

There’s a difference between “socialism” that has the government working for the people, and “socialism” that has government working for the corporate greed-heads. One is how the rest of the free world functions these days. The other is fascism. Things can’t go on like this, so when the dust clears which choice will we make? Valueless money is just mammon. Belongs to Caesar, not to God (who is pennyless). Our nation is drowning in it. If We the People ever come to our senses, we’d realize there are way more of “us” than “them.” So I hope. Right now that’s pretty much all there is, and a great many others are hoping too…

Happy Halloween – Booga Booga!!!

One of the reasons we voted Monday instead of Tuesday (when the library’s One-Stop will be open until 9 instead of 5) is because of what happened to Obama supporters in Fayetteville on Sunday. Not only were McCain/Palin supporters stationed to shout epithets and harass the long voting lines after Obama’s speech, but about 30 of the attendees of that rally got their tires slashed. Very ugly.

When I had finished marking my ballot, I fed it into the second of two machines there to take ballots. I don’t know why there were two, perhaps they switch them off day to day. It’s the first time I early voted at the library instead of journeying to the County Seat to vote at the courthouse. There are just two precincts at this end of the county, both actual polling places are in churches. I don’t like to vote in the First Baptist Church.

I noted the number on the machine (like a glorified copier) when I fed my ballot in, so I’d see it counted. It was. Number 445, in fact. This particular machine had received 444 votes since early voting opened last Thursday, and it’s not open on Sunday. That number reflects what must be extremely close to all the duly registered voters in both precincts of our town! Even if we’re up to maybe 900-1,000 people by now, there probably aren’t more than 500 of ‘em old enough to vote.

My husband made small talk with the poll ladies (who were all very nice and helpful) while we waited for grandson to finish registering and vote.  They said turnout had been surprising, and that new young voters had been registering in droves even though there’s only one high school and community college in our county, both in the seat. They’d apparently heard nothing about the Fayetteville rally on Sunday or the ugly antics of McCain supporters. We were the only voters there so close to closing, so it’s not like the conversation would have upset any other voters.

Now, I remember when Jesse Helms ran this state with an iron-fisted “machine.” Back when our poll was in the train station I’d see ambulances lined up to wheel elderly people in from nursing homes to vote, many of whom didn’t look able to punch those cards and couldn’t see well enough to know which to punch. They got a lot of help, of course, but to me it was quite the spectacle. Back in those days (early ’90s) you had to ‘prove’ you were out of state (or would be) on election day to vote absentee, otherwise you had to physically show up no matter how disabled you were.

After the 2000 election fiasco (when about a third of voters got ‘lost’ and a lot of dead people were on the rolls), they went to no-excuse absentee. Then after the 2004 fiasco when Diebold’s glorified Etch-a-Sketches threw state races into turmoil, they came up with early One-Stop voting and paper ballots. This year I expect there may be no more than a dozen voters who put it off until November 4th.

So… I am now wondering what it will be like when “election day” comes and nobody shows up… because they’ve already voted.

The parties may have to play catch-up with the voters this time. It’s entirely possible that this state will have been firmly decided well before November 4th. Wouldn’t that be a gas?

Secretary of the Treasury and ex-CEO of Goldman-Sachs Henry Paulson called Congressional leadership for a get-together. He tells them something – no doubt using charts and graphs – so horrifying, so absolutely terrifying that they all come out looking like Moses (er… Charlton Heston) after meeting the burning bush. Hair’s grown a foot and is stark white, their beards fall to their bellies, they’ve all got that far-away look in their red-rimmed eyes, and their hands are shaking. None dare breathe the edict: Set My People Free!

So. What was it, exactly, that Paulson told them? Gee, we dunno. Nor are we allowed to know. Just as if this were top secret intelligence pinpointing WMDs that don’t exist right in Saddam’s palace, we don’t get to find out. Even though it’s supposedly OUR trillion or three or four they MUST have right now to bail themselves out. With a laughable “emergency” plan that, Deputy Admin press secretary Tony Fratto said just today, was drawn up over the course of months.

Months. Not days or even weeks. They sure as shit knew it was coming, and simply waited for just the right moment of panic to spring it on us as if the end of the world is mere hours away. Ah, the lively tune reverberates in my mind…

“It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine!”

If that’s not a scam just waiting on the Greek chorus to sing the dirge I sure don’t know what is. They don’t care what I have to say about it, but I say “No.” If it turns out that nobody’s bothered to keep track of where all the paper went, then nobody really owns the lien on my house. It’s mine, free and clear (if they can’t produce the lien, they’ve got no claim). Except for the annual taxes I pay to my LOCAL government. Which I don’t mind paying at all since it supports the fire department, rescue squad, county hospital, roads, bridges, schools and libraries.

Looks to me like they’re trying to salvage the prime and just slightly sub-prime mortgage market by putting in a claim to the Treasury because if we were ever to figure out that our actual loans have been so fragmented and bundled and bought and sold that nobody bothered to keep the dead trees anywhere, we ALL own our properties free and clear and nobody who thinks they own the paper gets paid!

Which, btw, is just fine with me. Wall Street can crash, I don’t mind. I’m sure there are capable players just waiting in the wings to kick-start things when the wind dies down. Real estate’s still a good income investment and can be had cheap right now. Hold the liens yourself on just two or three houses and you’re guaranteed steady income for the entire life of the loans – even at straight interest of 8-10% non-compounded, you’re still earning the premium. And if they default, the property goes back to you and you just sell it all over again. Wall Street may fall, but Main Street will survive. For the most part, anyway…