Thursday, November 19, 2009

How Can The Right Be So Wrong?





As readers of my blog may have learned from a previous post I wrote in September about the fierce opposition to a pro-education speech Obama made to students, I don't do stupid. In fact I think we should enact a three strikes law to censure those that willfully and dangerously mislead the public, particularly a segment as vulnerable as the elderly, with such reprehensible fear-mongering and insane distortions of the truth. I know it would never happen, but it sure would be a peaceful respite if it did.

I react to right-wing wackos spewing fear and deception like others react to fingernails across a chalkboard. And one person who is responsible for blanketing the media with fear and lies of late is Sarah Palin. You may remember her as the intellectual powerhouse that responded to a question in an interview by People magazine about whether she felt she was ready to be a heartbeat away from the presidency in this fashion:

"Absolutely. Yup, yup!"

Palin, in a last-ditch effort to capture some political relevance, has become an outspoken puppet for the Republican Party working overtime to spread lies, fear and disinformation about the health care reform plans of the Obama administration in an effort to discredit him and lay waste to his political future. One huge fallacy that she has been strongly promoting, and which has taken a strong hold on the elderly, weak-minded Republican constituency, has been this spurious claim of "death panels." She writes:

"The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."

Exploiting the fears of our senior citizens and basically telling them they will be hauled off to confront some faceless panel of government bureaucrats to defend their existence if health care reform passes is just morally irresponsible, and I have to wonder how many are now panic-stricken and unable to sleep nights because of the terror she is perpetuating. Sadly, it's these misinformed citizens that have the most to lose in this battle. By buying into this paranoia the Republicans are selling, they are rejecting a health care plan that could someday save their lives and their life savings. In fact, the health insurance industry is counting on it with every million dollars they put forward to defeat health care reform legislation.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

- H. L. Mencken

I have become so fed up with Palin panicking senior citizens by telling them that Obama's "death panels" will be deciding their fate or that he will be coming after her Down Syndrome baby so that it can be sacrificed to the state. Not just seniors are swallowing this rubbish either. Now there are whole mobs of dissenters and agitators that the Republicans have indoctrinated and mobilized to spread the lies, fear and hate at these town hall meetings. Pretending to be local citizens, they are told to sit in the front row, interrupt, yell, scream, and just beat back the speaker with a verbal assault of insane ravings and disinformation until the meeting has to be adjourned.

Strike one!

I'm not going to get into the pros and cons of the health care reform bill. That's a subject for another day. But what I am railing against today is the type of sleazy, mean-spirited chicanery perpetrated by the right-wing conservatives in their efforts to obstruct passage of legislation that would benefit all Americans for the sole purpose of political gain.

Republicans have focused on this issue because for Obama to achieve a victory in this arena, where for decades Ted Kennedy and so many others like him have failed, would be a major coup, and Lord knows they can't allow that to happen at any cost. Why? Some might speculate that it was payback at the defeat of the McCain/Palin ticket. I'm sure many in the "good ol' boy network" want him to fail for no other reason than their contempt for the color of Obama's skin.

Personally, I think it's just the same old infantile political power struggles that play out in elementary school playgrounds each day where "if I don't get my way I'm going to take my ball and go home." This is the sort of "business as usual" practice in Washington D.C. that makes one wonder if our system of government shouldn't be the recipient of an enema. The bottom line is that their obstructionist activities are having a big impact on what could have been a very promising bit of legislation.

The unfortunate thing about this issue is that the Republicans are using it as an excuse to fling mud at Obama and the Democrats while truly they have no interest in reforming health care. As Senator Jim Demint of South Carolina told his fellow Republicans recently, "If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him..." Never mind the millions of uninsured people for whom the lifesaving care that this bill would provide. Don't concern yourself, Senator Demint, with trying to reform a self-serving health care insurance industry which cares more about profit margins than people. Those people will just sink helplessly into debt trying to pay their medical bills and forgo necessary treatments and die. End of problem.

Strike two!

The Republicans are making no secret that they are the party of NO, not proposing any alternatives, but instead deriding the whole concept of fixing the system that is strangling both Americans and the economy. Instead they are all quoting the Lewin Group, a government think tank, which is strongly advising that no changes be made to the health care system as it now exists. I guess it doesn't matter to them that the Lewin Group is owned by one of the largest and most profitable health insurance companies, United Healthcare, which has nothing to win and everything to lose if health care reform succeeds.

As an interesting sidebar, this same company earlier this year was forced to pay $400 million dollars to settle a case where they tried to defraud patients on their insurance claims by changing data in their system so that they could be denied. Is it any wonder that Republicans are working so hard to defeat health care reform when, after all, they are in the back pocket of these corrupt insurance companies? Politics does make strange bedfellows, and by accepting dirty money from these heartless corporate lobbyists, these "public servants" in Congress are actually profiting off of the suffering of their constituents.


"The profit motive, when it is the sole basis of an economic system, encourages a cutthroat competition and selfish ambition that inspires men to be more concerned about making a living than making a life."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Goaded by right wing extremists like radio personalities Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, in addition to Palin, conservatives are not stopping at just trying to sink Obama's health care plan, they are personally attacking him at every opportunity. And as strange as it seems, the more bizarre or irrational a claim is, the more likely the nut job activist followers dumbly swallow it as gospel.

One ridiculous red herring was that Obama was not a U.S. citizen, and as such his election was not valid. And even when his birth certificate was authenticated and it showed that he was born in Hawaii, the "birthers" as they are called, claimed that it was a forgery and that Obama was, in actuality, a Kenyan national. Some Republicans have already expressed their embarrassment by this lunatic fringe element of their party, but most see the value of this as a distraction to keep Americans from focusing on real issues instead of the imaginary ones.

Other popular right-wing assertions are that Obama is a Nazi. Indeed, many critics of Obama compare him to Hitler, including a Georgia congressman, and when they protest there are always plenty of swastikas around to inflame the passions of these delusional morons. There have also been many assertions that he is a muslim and some even say he is plotting with terrorists to attack the U.S. And of course there's the ever-present charge that he is leading the country into socialism with his government reforms. I wonder how they would feel if we suddenly stripped the country of all it's "socialist ways." Let's cancel Medicare and Social Security tomorrow and see how anti-socialist they are then!

Strike three! Now shut the hell up!

It's so sad that elements of our esteemed government have sunk to such lowly depths that they would accuse our leader, the President of the United States, of all these bogus accusations. How can we move forward as a country when corrupt corporate leaders and their government cronies block or delay every attempt to move this country forward in their pursuit of profits and power? How can we purge ourselves of these greedy scoundrels that put the health and safety of our people in peril so they can rake in millions instead? I'm not so sure we can. The Sarah Palin's of the world are either too stupid or too corrupt (or both) to change the direction they are headed and unfortunately they have succeeded in brainwashing enough lemmings to follow them into the abyss. The President made a final plea in his health care reform speech where he said:

"We did not come to fear the future. We came here to shape it. I still believe we can act even when it's hard. I still believe we can replace acrimony with civility, and gridlock with progress. I still believe we can do great things, and that here and now we will meet history's test."

If the Republican's reaction to Obama's desire to help all Americans live healthier lives is any indication of how we will meet history's test, then I am afraid that they have already doomed us to failure.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Goodbye To My Friends


Dear friends,

It pains me to tell you this, but your faithful narrator on this blog will be leaving the blogosphere forever. I have been informed that my number has come up and that the newly established "death panel" that is now deciding the fate of all of us Americans as a part of the recently adopted Health Care Reform bill, has concluded that my continued existence on this plane of existence is no longer required. They stated that while they appreciated my past contributions to society, that they nonetheless felt that since I have reached 47 years of age, the expense of my upkeep would no doubt cancel out any future benefit.

Likewise, my mother, my Uncle Joe and my Aunt Millie have all been selected as being superfluous in the government's future plans and they too have been scheduled for euthanasia. In our discussions about our upcoming termination my mom alleged that the reason she was getting whacked was that she didn't vote for him and this was Obama's way of getting back at her. I told her that was just silly and what he was doing was for the good of the country. It does surprise me, though, that we are being eliminated whilst thousands sit in prison, many on death row, costing the taxpayers millions every year, and yet they haven't been tapped as being expendable. Oh well. The government knows what it is doing.

Little did most of us know when the bill was passed that it was secretly a plot to kill old people and those that factored little in America's future plans. I understand that there were needed cuts in social security and Medicare, but this just seems to me to be a bit drastic. Also surprising was the government's decision to eliminate the country's seriously ill and those with physical and mental disabilities. I have to say, I think it shows a degree of insensitivity on the part of the Obama administration, particularly in the killing of diseased and infirmed children. But I suppose extreme situations require extreme solutions.

Of course the government couldn't count on all it's citizens to go quietly into that valley of death, so they assembled death squads of ninjas who we are told are quite adept at killing people. The reason why the government is using foreign labor instead of hiring Americans is that they didn't want to have to deal with any conflicts of interest. A plan to use highly specialized robots was scrapped after it was determined that the upkeep on the robots would have made the effort moot. At least the end will be quick and not some protracted affair. Just a quick stabbing sensation and then...nothing.

Before I go I wanted to pass on some information to you that I have become privy to so that you might be prepared for what is to come. Apparently our social programs are still facing insolvency despite the death panels, so other steps are being taken to "thin out" the population to a manageable level. It is now clear that our government has been experimenting with germ warfare and was responsible for the H1N1 Swine Flu epidemic that continues to rage about the country.

We have recently been informed by contacts within the Center for Disease Control and Prevention that the vaccine is in fact tainted with the virus and is not an effective preventative measure. In addition, the government is behind a plot to introduce carcinogenic elements into our drinking water supplies and is involved with tampering with over the counter medications and with the efficacy of prescription medicines. You need to be warned that the conservatives were right all along...they are out to get you, and get you they will.

I am gratified that those of us who are chosen are given 30 days notice to get our affairs in order before being put to death. This way I am given the opportunity to say goodbye to my friends and fellow bloggers and wish them well in the future. I don't know what terrors await you, my dear readers, but I trust you will face them with courage and strength. I'm hoping that those of you that survive will enjoy a country with peace and prosperity for all.

And now, I must go. I have an appointment to give blood this afternoon and I can't be late.

Best of luck to you all!

Tom

Monday, November 9, 2009

Gift Ideas For The Person That Has Everything

Forget about expensive jewelry and sexy lingerie this year. Most guys hate that stuff anyway. If you ask me there's just something very mystical about a High School Musical Magic 8-Ball that makes it the perfect gift for that special someone who has everything already.

Well....everything good, anyway.

All of us have at least one someone that we agonize over each year in terms of deciding what to get them for a Christmas present. For me, it's my mom, because she has everything and needs nothing. And I know from past experience that if I just get her the usual boring, thoughtless gifts that she gets every year (slippers, bottle of wine, flowers, book of erotica, etc.) she will thank me and give me her usual polite smile, as all moms do after they receive a crappy gift, and then go off to some distant corner of the house somewhere to cry. Sometimes she also rolls her eyes as she shakes her head from side-to-side while mumbling "Why me God?" right before she kicks the dog.


Being both observant and a student of body language, such subtle cues as this are not lost on me.


While she may be trying to project an image of someone who is happy with her gift, I can tell that her appreciation is less than sincere and that what she really wants to say is “You bastard! Boy, what a rotten gift! I can’t believe I carried you for nine months in my womb, changed your diapers, fed you and took care of you all these years and this is the thanks I get? You dirty, lousy, ungrateful son-of-a-bitch!” Yes, I know. She does have a way with words. But then, she was raised Catholic.


As a public service to my fellow bloggers I have scoured the internet searching for unique gift ideas (items rivaling soap-on-a-rope and singing fish in terms of universal gift satisfaction) so that none of us need fear the dreaded gift giving disappointment of previous years. I will be posting these ideas over the next couple weeks so you have ample time to order them for your loved ones and other people you despise but tolerate at Christmas.


All of the gifts ideas I will post are available online for your convenience. Those of you who prefer to shop early for gifts (instead of waiting a couple days before the holiday like the rest of us normal people) can purchase all of your gifts online in one fell swoop and have more time for drinking booze and getting high volunteering at the homeless shelter!


In addition to the ideas shared here, I’m more than certain that incredulously fantastic gifts can be found by clicking the many ads found on my blog. Possibly the best present for that loved one in your life that you really want to impress and make beam with happiness is but one click away from you right now. Yes, dreams can be fulfilled, lives can be forever changed and you can be the recipient of life-long unconditional love and affection with just the right gift found right here, again, just one small mouse click from where you are right now. Sort of boggles the mind, doesn’t it?


Of course I would never be brazen enough to encourage my readers to click on my ads nor have all their friends click on my ads. I find that sort of shameless self-promotion to be in bad taste, especially at this time of year when many people are struggling financially, like myself (paying for little Timmy’s kidney dialysis is an overwhelming expense as you would expect), and have a limited amount of money to spend on presents. Be that as it may, please remember that the true meaning of the season is giving to others less fortunate than yourself, even if it amounts to something as simple as a well-placed finger spasm on a computer mouse while reading a certain blog.


But I digress.


Here are some Christmas gifts guaranteed to brighten the spirits and make this holiday the best ever for anyone that receives one of them. Well, except little Jimmy…. er...Timmy, anyway.



New For This Year Is The Latest In Chia Pets, It's Chia Obama!

Designed in honor of our 44th President, Barack Obama, this latest Chia design is destined to be a collector's item. Previous Chia pets, such as Chia Homer, Chia Bart, Chia Shrek, Chia Garfield and others have managed to retain their value exceedingly well and can be found gracing the desks of CEO's and corporate executives the world over. And because it is a plant, moms and grandmas love them too! Buy one for your boss, for your girlfriend, for your barber and the guy that sells you weed. Everyone loves a Chia! Check it out online here.


Ceramic Drunk Chicken Heads Add Fun To Your Barbecue!

Fans of Drunken Chicken, where a can of beer with seasonings is inserted into the bottom of a chicken to flavor it while it barbecues, will appreciate this new gadget. These plucky ceramic chicken heads insert at the top of the chicken prior to roasting (or if you prefer, you can put them on afterwards or on store-bought rotisserie chicken for that matter) to add color and personality to your meal. Don’t settle for decapitated birds anymore!

This is a great gift idea for those on your list that prefer to see the faces on the food they cook and take some sick pleasure in watching the unbelievable horror as the flames mercilessly lick and sear the soft white flesh of the birds, turning it a crispy golden brown, while sizzling juices send pungent chicken-scented smoke into the air. Currently there are three styles available, including Bug Eye, Southwestern and Malibu.

Rumor has it that they are working on a Sarah Palin head and a John McCain head for next year (their supposed “Maverick” line) as well as a Hillary Clinton head. Calm down, Bill. It’s not what you think.

Get the whole set of three Ceramic Drunk Chicken Heads for only $14.95!




Beer Holsters - For The Fastest Beer-Slinger You Know!

Not since the advent of the incredible Double-Beverage Drink Helmet has something so cool come along for alcoholics and the people that like to emulate them. Like the gunslingers of the Wild West, the Beer Holster is sure to usher in a new day in beer drunkdom. The day of the 12 ounce quick draw is finally here and beer-slingers are honing their skills for the challenges to come in the quest for the Fastest Beer-Slinger in the West. Or even the fastest on Harper Avenue between 23rd and Magnolia, for that matter.

All competition aside, the beer holster is constructed of leather and attaches to a standard belt with additional nylon straps which wrap around the thigh for extra support. It can be used to hold either a 12 ounce bottle or can of beer (or beverage of choice) and is great for keeping your hands free to tend to your grill or attending tailgate parties or whatever debauchery your mind desires. A perfect present for that lucky individual on your gift list. So do you feel lucky? Well, do you, punk?

Come to think of it, this might be a very good self-gift! Check out the Beer Holster for yourself!




Jazz Up That Bedroom Or Study With A Trophy Head Wall Plaque!

The hot new trend of mounted faux animal heads, like this Whitetail Deer, is taking off and interior designers are all abuzz about this humane and stylish decor item. So if you know someone who has an empty spot above their fireplace or in their den and could use some cool wall hanging to give it that cozy, lodge-like feel, I believe this is your answer! This is a great gift idea for that lover of dead stuffed animals on your Christmas list this year.

The Trophy head wall plaque above is listed at $109.00 as are a number of their other trophy head designs including a bear, mountain goat, and a moose. All heads are mounted on light oak or mahogany wall plaques and measure 15" wide x 20" high x 16" deep. The sales ad notes that the "skillfully detailed faces and features enhance the friendly personality of these lovable and whimsical faces."

This trend may actually lead to a cottage industry of work-at-home moms, ripping the heads off their children's stuffed animals and mounting them to wooden plaques. I wonder how much of a market their could be for a Barney the Dinosaur?

Target practice, anyone?

Well those are just a few ideas for you to dwell on this holiday season. There are so many other wonderful ideas out there, but they will have to wait until next time. As for my mom, I'm not sure yet what to get her, but I'm sure not going to repeat last year's mistake. I wonder what she ever did with that anal bleaching kit anyway?


Monday, November 2, 2009

Cooking Turkey The Ron Burgundy Way



I love scotch. Scotchy, scotch, scotch. Here it goes down, down into my belly...

Cooking a big holiday dinner doesn't have to be a tedious, thankless chore this year. Not when there is scotch in the house! Just ask San Diego's Channel 4 news anchorman and devoted scotch drinker, Ron Burgundy, who prefers imbibing while cooking to make the time-honored tradition more pleasurable.

"I'll have three fingers of Glenlivet, with a little bit of pepper... and some cheese."

With Thanksgiving rapidly approaching, I wanted to share this step-by-step procedure which Ron uses in hopes that it might be helpful to those of us whose culinary skills are not as fully developed as our alcohol consuming skills (you know who you are!)

Without further adieu, I present the following for your consideration:

How To Cook A Turkey

Step 1: Go buy a turkey
Step 2: Take a drink of whiskey (scotch)
Step 3: Put Turkey in the oven.
Step 4: Take another 2 drinks of whiskey
Step 5: Set the degree at 375 ovens
Step 6: Take 3 more whiskeys of drink
Step 7: Turn oven the on
Step 8: Take 4 whisks of drinky
Step 9: Turk the bastey
Step 10: Whiskey another bottle of get
Step 11: Stick a turkey in the thermometer
Step 12: Glass yourself a pour of whiskey
Step 13: Bake the whiskey for 4 hours
Step 14: Take the oven out of the turkey
Step 15: Take the oven out of the turkey
Step 16: Floor the turkey up off of the pick
Step 17: Turk the carvey
Step 18: Get yourself another scottle of botch
Step 19: Tet the sable and pour yourself a glass of turkey
Step 20: Bless the saying, pass and eat out













You stay classy, San Diego!



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