Life On The World Of The Cross

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!

Making Rick Scott the front man for the medical industrial complex’s attack against health care reform is like hiring Dracula to head a Red Cross blood drive.

Scott is the former Columbia/HCA CEO whose company was fined, between 2000-2002, a record $1.7 billion for overbilling state and federal government health plans.  He is now associated with a group calling itself Conservatives for Patients’ Rights. (CPR? How ironic.)

And the company running the advertising campaign, CRC Public Relations? The same people who ran the despicable Swift Boat campaign against John Kerry.

Hubris trumps hypocrisy once again.

[Image found here.]

Tags: Columbia/HCA, Conservatives for Patients' Rights, CRC Public Relations, John Kerry, Rick Scott, Swift Boaters

Socialized Medicine. Takeover. Bureaucrat. Rationing.

Frank Luntz is certainly earning his money these days, focus group testing emotionally reactive words like these for distribution by the Medical Mafia and their mostly Rethuglican hit men and women on Capitol Hill.

As one vet wrote Senator Sanders this week:

“I’m active duty military. I have served in the Air Force for almost 13 years now. I have ‘government’ medical coverage. I may have minor complaints here and there, but over all I would say that it’s a good system. Seeing how much money my parents pay for health care makes my blood boil. I fail to see the difference between the insurance companies and a mugger who holds a gun to your head demanding ‘your money or your life.’”

Some 14,000 people join the ranks of the 46 million uninsured everyday. They already know who is “rationing” their health care and standing between them and their doctors. It isn’t the government that is denying expensive claims because of innocent omissions on their original application forms. (”Sorry, but you failed to mention that case of acne you had when you were a hormone flushed teenager.”)

One of the Rethugs’ favorite propaganda tools is aggressive projection– accuse the other side of the very things you or your policies are guilty of. This works especially well on the tube, where their hapless opponents reflexively spend the majority of their limited air time defending themselves, leaving their message in the dust.

Well, that little game has run its course. Works well in the abstract, when their intended audience is laying semi-comatose on their sofas after a long, hard day at work. But losing one’s job and medical coverage has a way of focusing the mind.

Laying on the Sofa, by Lycosia.

EVERYTHING WE THOUGHT WAS WRONG,
AND NOW THE LIGHT HAS GONE,
EVERYTHING WE THOUGHT WAS WRONG,
AND I’D BEEN WAITING SO LONG
EVERYTHING WE THOUGHT WAS WRONG,
HOW CAN WE CARRY ON.

Tags: lycosia, Medical Mafia, Rethugs, Senator Bernie Sanders

Democrats settle into the job they know best

Dems never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity (see, e.g., healthcare).

Rethugs never miss an opportunity to bully Dems into missing an opportunity.

And the circle of life goes merily along…

UPDATE: Apology to House Dems:

While the Senate has cowered from the debate over a public option in the face of Republican and conservative Democratic opposition, Rangel said he relishes the battle.

“I’m anxious to take on those people who oppose a public option,” he said. He’ll have public opinion on his side. A recent poll showed 3 out of 4 people want a public plan as part of health care reform. “We’ve got the momentum.”

Tags: health care

No time to ruminate today, the new MONKEY is in hand, and it’s a beautiful day to catch up with our human-animal friends, and have a nap in the banana trees, too.

Sealed with a curse as sharp as a knife
Doomed is your soul and damned is your life.
—Lord John Whorfin

There are only two ways we mortal bipeds can live together:  the material, or animal way, and the spiritual, or human way.  FEAR is the powerful and dominant animal vestige of our animal origin heritage.  When humans fail to discriminate the ends of their mortal striving, they find themselves functioning on the animal level of existence. (See Limpbot, Hannity, etc. )

The one indispensable aspect of being human is the soul— the self-reflective, truth-discerning, and spirit-perceiving part of a human— which elevates the human being above the level of the animal world.  Moral choice and spiritual attainment, the ability to know God and the urge to be like him, are the chief characteristics of the soul;  but the soul  simply cannot exist apart from genuine moral thinking and spiritual activity.
That means a stagnant soul is a dying soul, and a dying soul means you’re just another  sometime human animal, but an animal just the same.

Animals respond nobly to the blind and instinctive urge of life, but only humans are able to master the Art of Living; though very few of us put much energy into living beyond the fear-dominated urge to live.  Like their animal cousins, many men and women make no inquiries into the purposes of life;  Dancing with the Stars and pizza on the weekend is all they can handle.

When [we] dare to forsake a life of natural craving for one of adventurous art and uncertain logic, [we] must expect to suffer the consequent hazards of emotional casualties— conflicts, unhappiness, and uncertainties— at least until the time of [our] attainment of some degree of intellectual and emotional maturity.  Discouragement, worry, and indolence are positive evidence of moral immaturity.  —The Urantia Book

Modern human society is confronted with two problems that are hardly ever even noticed:  attainment of the maturity of the individual— and attainment of the maturity of the human race.  Hopefully you’re not asking, “Why is this important?”  Because mature human beings look upon all other human beings with feelings of tenderness, and with emotions of tolerance.  Mature human beings view immature folks with the love and consideration that loving parents bear their children.

…When life problems excite our profound fears, we refuse to recognize them. When the acknowledgment of our difficulties entails the reduction of our long-cherished conceit, the admission of envy, or the abandonment of deep-seated prejudices, the average human prefers to cling to the old illusions of safety and to the long-cherished false feelings of security. Only a brave human being is willing honestly to admit, and fearlessly to face, what a sincere and logical mind discovers.  —The Urantia Book

And just how many “brave” monkeys do you know?  Right;  and how many fearful, prejudiced monkeys do you know?  I thought so.  Prejudice blinds the soul— your humanity— to the recognition of truth;  and prejudices, which are invariably rooted in fear and hatred, can only be removed by the sincere devotion of the soul to the adoration of a cause that is all-embracing and all-inclusive of one’s fellow men.  Prejudice is inseparably linked to selfishness.

Moral acts are those human performances
which are characterized by the highest intelligence,
directed by selective discrimination in the choice of superior
ends as well as in the selection of moral means to attain these ends.
—The Urantia Book

Truth in advertising from the Medical Industrial Complex

Bob Cesca at HuffPo, in his post The Health Insurance Mafia Deserves a Good Screwing recounts his personal experience of losing his family’s medical insurance after his provider, without cause, raised their premium threefold overnight;  and makes the case for a public option.

Atul Gawande of The New Yorker provides a clue as to why medical costs are spiraling out of control in his article The Cost Conundrum . He travels to McAllen, Texas (population 127,00), located in Hildago County to find out why it is home to the most expensive health care in the country.

In 2006, Medicare spent fifteen thousand dollars per enrollee here, almost twice the national average. The income per capita is twelve thousand dollars. In other words, Medicare spends three thousand dollars more per person here than the average person earns…seven thousand dollars more per person each year than does the average city in America.

The mystery is solved as he exposes the vertical control over unnecessary medical services ordered and provided by the local medical mafia. Hospitals owned by investor-physicians receive, in addition to fees for their time, a percentage of the profits on all the tests, products, and services they order. Patients have morphed into clients, or more accurately, profit centers.

You might expect that more is better: more tests, services, and operations would produce better outcomes. You’d be wrong:

In a 2003 study, another Dartmouth team, led by the internist Elliott Fisher, examined the treatment received by a million elderly Americans diagnosed with colon or rectal cancer, a hip fracture, or a heart attack. They found that patients in higher-spending regions received sixty per cent more care than elsewhere. They got more frequent tests and procedures, more visits with specialists, and more frequent admission to hospitals. Yet they did no better than other patients, whether this was measured in terms of survival, their ability to function, or satisfaction with the care they received. If anything, they seemed to do worse...To make matters worse, Fisher found that patients in high-cost areas were actually less likely to receive low-cost preventive services, such as flu and pneumonia vaccines, faced longer waits at doctor and emergency-room visits, and were less likely to have a primary-care physician. They got more of the stuff that cost more, but not more of what they needed.

All in all, a dysfunctional medical system that profits a very few at the expense of the many.

Senator Bernie Sanders goes further than Cesca, arguing for a single payer health care system like the rest of the civilized world enjoys. He is circulating the following petition:

Whereas:

* 46 million Americans are currently without health insurance;
* 60 million Americans, both insured and uninsured, have inadequate access to primary care due to a shortage of physicians and other health service providers in their community;
* 100 million Americans have no insurance to cover dental needs;
* 116 million adults, nearly two-thirds of all non-seniors, struggled to pay medical bills, went without needed care because of cost, were uninsured for a time, or were underinsured in the last year;
* The United States spends $2.3 trillion each year on health care, 16 percent of its Gross Domestic Product;
* Americans spend $7,129 per person on health care, 50 percent more than other industrialized countries, including those with universal care;
* The U.S. does not get what it pays for.  We rank among the lowest in the health outcome rankings of developed countries, and on several major indices rank below some third-world nations;
* The number of health insurance industry bureaucrats has grown at 25 times the growth of physicians in the past 30 years;
* In 2006, the six largest insurance companies made $11 billion in profits even after paying for direct health care costs, administrative costs and marketing costs.

And, whereas:

* Medicare has administrative costs far lower than any private health insurance plan;
* The potential savings on health insurance paperwork, more than $350 billion per year, is enough to provide comprehensive coverage to every uninsured American;
* Only a single-payer Medicare-for-all plan can realize these enormous savings and provide comprehensive and affordable health care to every citizen.

Now, therefore:

* We, the undersigned, urge the United States Congress to pass a single-payer Medicare-for-all program which will provide quality, comprehensive health care for all Americans.

You can sign the petition here.

UPDATE ONE (June 18)

1. If you already signed the petition, you were one of 15,000 who did in the first 24 hours alone, according to Senator Sanders on Bill Press’ radio show this AM.

2. Bob Cesca cites a number of polls today showing overwhelming multi-demographic support for a public plan; and does a smackdown on Democratic “consultant”  turned medical mafia lobbyist, Steve McMahon.

3. A new ABC/Wall Street Journal poll shows a 76% approval for a public plan.

[Image found here.]

Tags: Bob Cesca, Medical Mafia, Senator Bernie Sanders, The Urantia Book

Primate Republican activist Rusty DePass thinks monkey-based racism is funny;  but seriously— can you blame him?  Some unfortunate creatures are just more animal, than human, you know?

A doctrinal fetish will lead mortal man to betray himself into the clutches of bigotry, fanaticism, superstition, intolerance, and the most atrocious of barbarous cruelties.
—The Urantia Book

It’s National Monkey Week, a few special days each year when we take our Homo sapiens ego a little less seriously by contemplating our humble hairy origins as Primates.  But many supposed Homo Sapiens won’t be celebrating with us this week,  like Rusty DePass, and Sherri Goforth.  These two examples of creation-by-fiat and fall-by-forbidden-fruit are too busy exposing their racist ideology on the national stage.

Racists like DePass and Goforth may or may not truly understand the nature and origin of their racism.  But a poignant reminder of its intransigence was inadvertently expressed by Sherri Goforth: “I’m very sick about it, and  it’s one of those things I can’t change or take back.”  Yeah, we know why you wish you hadn’t sent it to people who find you morally and ethically repugnant;  you know, similar to the way Michelle Malkin feels outrage about “perv” David Letterman.

The email poster Sherri Goforth was emailing to a select list when one of a series of tubes malfunctioned and directed the email to someone with liberal sensibilities, who immediately recognized how outraged Sarah Palin would be when she has a few moments off from the sexist Letterman joke scandal, and could direct some of her moral outrage at Republican racism.  (Still waiting for her come-to-Jesus moment on seriously saying Obama was a domestic terrorist?  Me too.)

No, Sherri Goforth probably can’t “change” her racist point of view;  she either isn’t able to fathom the intellectual and religious underpinnings of it in the first place, or is simply unwilling to do so, even now that she is a national public focal point of racism at its most puerile.  The affliction of the ignorant will always be that they are ignorant of their ignorance. [Read the rest. . . →]

Tags: Biblical inerrancy, evolution, fetishistic belief, Homo Sapeins, human self-realization, Moral self-consciousness, Primates, racism, Rusty DePass, Sherri Goforth

Scientists and religionists must recognize that they are on trial before the bar of human need. They must eschew all warfare between themselves while they strive valiantly to justify their continued survival by enhanced devotion to the service of human progress. If the so-called science or religion of any age is false, then must it either purify its activities or pass away before the emergence of a material science or spiritual religion of a truer and more worthy order.
—The Urantia Book

Marcus  Aurelius “The Wise” once observed, “He who does not know what the world is, does not know where he is;  and he who does not know for what purpose the world exists, does not know who he is, nor what the world is.”  As observations go, that one is still completely kicking our asses.

LIFE does not originate spontaneously. Life is constructed according to plans formulated by the (unrevealed) Architects of Being and appears on the inhabited planets either by direct importation or as a result of the operations of the Life Carriers of the local universes. These carriers of life are among the most interesting and versatile of the diverse family of universe Sons. They are intrusted with designing and carrying creature life to the planetary spheres. And after planting this life on such new worlds, they remain there for long periods to foster its development.
—The Urantia Book

From the origin of the universe, to the origin of life— big “s” Science remains embarrassingly clueless.  Yep, they’re damned good postulators, and they sure sound like they know what they’re talking about when they’re wrapped in relatively true facts.  But when push becomes shove they’ll usually admit that when it comes to cosmology, they still have their heavily starched undershorts on backwards.  What this means is, scientists will never be able to tell you (scientifically) what basic universe phenomena like gravity, or light, or even electricity fundamentally are. What’s more, scientists will forever be powerless to create even one atom of matter— or to originate even one flash of energy— or ever add to inanimate matter that which we call life.  That’s because the creation of energy and the bestowal of life are the prerogatives of the Universal Father, and his fellow Creator personalities.

Science must learn to keep its pointy nose firmly wedged between the butt cheeks of physical-energy activities;  religion must learn to keep its giant snotty proboscis filled with eternal values.  True philosophy always grows [Read the rest. . . →]

Tags: Cosmology, eternal values, Marcus Aurelius, meanings, The Urantia Book, things, universal Father, values

Tweety during his silver tongued false equivalency rant

On his Hardball show  yesterday, Chris Matthews did a segment called The Hate Machine about the dog whistle relationship between right wing extremists and their “conservative” enablers in the media. Though he didn’t mention the inciters by name, I will– O’Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh, Savage, and Beck being just the most prominent hate speech gunslingers out there.

In the last year alone, right wing violence has produced:

1. The murder of two parishioners at a Tennessee Unitarian Universalist Church by Jim Adkisson, because they were “liberals.”   Among spent shotgun shells and brass knuckles found in Adkisson’s house were the books: Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder by  Michael Savage; Let Freedom Ring by Sean Hannity, and Bully-O’s The O’Reilly Factor.

2. ) The murder of 3 Pittsburgh police  trying to serve a warrant, shot as they stood in the doorway by Richard Poplawski who believed  rumors from the winger commentariat that President Obama was going to take his guns away.

3.) The murder of Dr. John Tiller by “pro-life” fanatic, Scott Roeder, who from his jail cell promised further murders by like minded crusaders. O’Reilly referred to him as Tiller the Baby Killer” or some variant over two dozen times.

4.) This week’s murder at the Holocaust Museum of a black security guard, Steven T. Johns,  by  James W. von Brunn, an 88 year ex-felon with a long history of white supremacist associations and web site dedicated to the hatred of blacks and Jews.

Obviously, this is a dangerous and growing trend and deserves serious coverage. CNN is currently running a one hour special hosted by Anderson Cooper (where I learned that “88″ is code among neo-Nazis  for “Heil Hitler”, 8 being the number of the letter “H.”  Von Brunn was given to blurting it out on odd occasions with a smirk on his face.)

But Tweety, apparently compelled by lousy ratings to ape the “fair and balanced” tagline of his Fux News competitors, mucked it up by vamping on the spin provided by his conservative guest from the National Review, Deroy Murdock,  who played the false equivalency card–the  left is just as guilty at inciting violence as the right.

Tweety parroted the one example Murdock provided of leftist violence– the Environmental Liberation Front’s torching of some SUVs, and their burning of a half-built subdivision in an environmentally sensitive area. Though he didn’t regurgitate Murdock’s insinuation that Al Gore had played an inciting role, he did see fit to blame Oliver Stone’s 1991 conspiracy movie, JFK, for radicalizing a whole generation of leftists. I kid you not. Apparently, the inability to swallow the risible Warren Commission Report whole– exemplar of the “lone wolf” meme–  is all the proof that Tweety needs to show how unbalanced he is.

Neither of these bozos seem to have the slightest clue that ELF targeted property, not people. While destroying property always has the potential for injuring or killing people (and thus reason enough to avoid it), deliberately targeting individuals for murder is hardly its moral equivalent.

As for lone wolf exceptionalism, here’s what David Neiwart, who appears on the Cooper special, writes at Crooks and Liars:

Right-wingers like to use the solitary nature of this kind of terrorist act to dismiss them as “isolated incidents.” But in reality, the continuing existence of acts of this nature demonstrates primarily that the radical right in America is alive, well, and functioning better than it should. And the continuing — and as we’ve seen this week, ultimately futile — attempts by the right to whitewash their existence from the public consciousness have played no small part in helping that trend continue.

As for the cognitive merits of right versus left wing incitement, I’d love to see an FMRI comparison showing how subjects who self-identify as either right or left respond to talks by say, Al Gore, Oliver Stone and Michael Moore on the one hand; and Bully-O, Glenn Beck and Michael Savage on the other.

I rather suspect that the latter would show a disproportionate activation of the amygdala and other parts of the brain’s fear processing circuitry. Of course it isn’t easy to override a million years of evolutionary development  designed to rationally control our fear of the other. That’s why propagandists dress up their incitements to violence in ideological, religious, and moralistic garb. As the author below so clearly understood.

“Today Christians stand at the head of our country.
We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit.
We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press, in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of LIBERAL excess during the past years.” -Adolph Hitler

Tags: Adolph Hitler, Al Gore, amygdala, Anderson Cooper, Bill O’Reilly, Chris Matthews, Crooks and Liars, David Neiwart, Deroy Murdock, Dr. John Tiller, Environmental Liberation Front, false equivalency, Fux News, Glenn Beck, Hardball, Holocaust Museum, James W. von Brunn, Jim Adkisson, Michael Moore, Michael Savage, National Review, Oliver Stone, Richard Poplawski, Rush limbaugh, Scott Roeder, Sean Hannity, Steven T. Johns, Warren Commission Report

These two horny dudes loomed over my breakfast burrito

Riding shotgun gave me time to let the road movie play…

I made eye-contact with a young non-Caucasian boy staring from the back seat of a passing gull gray Jaguar as I licked Cheeto dust off my fingertips, one at a time…

Sometimes you can sense which drivers are going to look your way as you pass them…  Like the Limbaugh look-alike in a Liz Cheney wig, her long brown cigarette wedged between her arched-back left index and middle fingers resting at ten-thirty on the steering wheel, who gave me a ball chilling sideways glare…

Durango, Colorado before the corporate pods arrived

The food chains have exploded in once sleepy mountain towns…  and everything in between… Babo’s, Blimpie’s, Beaujos, Blondies, Bradley’s, Bart’s, and Bob’s;  Marks, Martha’s, Max’s, and May’s;  Nini’s, Norseman’s, Nero’s, and Natalias’; Pangea’s, Papa Murph’s, Pippo’s, and Poppy’s;  and through the alphabet.  If people have paid money to eat it, you can find it anywhere…

On the back driver’s side window of a behemoth Government Motors pickum-up truck…

And on another gas-guzzling GM pigmobile…

Still completely surrounded and outnumbered by Obama bumper stickers…

And then, there are these behemoths…

Made large to be viewed large…

Still, others think we live on…

But the most haunting image of the whole trip…

A workman’s empty glove
spinning in the wake of a semi
down the broken white line of the highway

Tags: Babo's, Bart's, Beaujos, Blimpie's, Blondies, Bradley's, Cheeto dust, Colorado, corporate pods, Durango, Government Motors, Marks, Martha's, Max's, Nero's, Nini's, Norseman's

Some days, it just doesn’t pay to get outa bed, even when you slept at a Holiday Inn last night.  But when check out time is noon, you have to.

It started with the coffee.  Holiday Inn Express serves that “smart” roast stuff, which makes it dangerous to start with;  because they serve it in styrofoam cups that can’t withstand the force of ten butterfly sneezes.  I simply tried to pry the lid off, and it headed for the carpet.  The instant it hit the floor, the entire bottom of the cup popped out like the lid of a Popeye spinach can;  all twelve ounces worth spent a nano-second on top of the thirsty fibers before disappearing into them.

Actually, I lied;  it didn’t start with the coffee, it started with the hand lotion that found its way into my laptop bag.  The lid wasn’t closed tight, and gravity was helped by a gradual altitude change, and two or three ounces worth found its way onto the power cord thingy, which now has a great vanilla scent, just like I do.

Colorado is currently experiencing one of those rare, but not unheard of, lush green springs fed by regular and copious rainfall.  But it’s still surprising to look out the window and see hills that are so incredibly green and verdant they put Scotland’s to shame. And it’s even more surprising to see puddles— puddles!  You know, little watermelon-sized pools of rain water that have no other place to hang out.  Awesome.

But back to the coffee carpet.  I grabbed one of them there “smart” towels and started blotting up the smart roast, which turned it a really dumb, dirty color;  a color I imagined the maid would not want to touch with your ten foot pole. Tossing a few items out of the way and onto the bed to get at more errant coffee spots on the tee vee stand, a couple of which were bottles of water, one of which was, of course open, and began belching huge mouthfuls of h2o onto the bed covers.  At this point we had to stop the festivities for a good tear-producing laugh, caught up as we were, in a weawee wet WTF! moment…

You know those little mini-fridges that are in hotel rooms now?  the ones than emit a high frequency whine all night that resonates with your my tinnitis and causes alien robots to commit seppuku?  Well I unplug those little droids as soon we set the bags down.  Even though my partner in comedy knows this, she nonetheless put the dinner leftovers, resting comfortably in their little styrofoam containers in there anyway, convinced it’s going to slow down the multiplication of untold billions of bacteria by a few dozen. When I opened the fridge, it triggered a mini-avalanche of frosty ice to drop off the freezer coils and— yes, slide out on the coffee stain.

By now we weren’t a damned bit surprised by this, but when we got out the styrofoam dinner boxes, both of which had little puddles on the top and were loaded with water from the melting freezer which, yeah, went all over the floor.

So the morning started with puddles in the parking lot, followed quickly by a puddle of coffee on the moca brown with cardinal red zig-zags colored carpet, followed by a not-so-smart attempt to make a water bed, followed by puddles on, and in, our doggie bags.

Needless to say, we got the hell out of there.

As we pulled out of the parking lot, a car just in front of us turned out and spilled another styrofoam cup full smart joe that had been left on the roof of the car.  And just for grins, tears started falling outa the sky.  I love this freakin’ planet.

Tags: Holiday Inn, Smart Roast

CNN’s Rick Sanchez’s smackdown of a lying Bully-O

Has it really been six years since the publishing of Al Franken book,  Lies: And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them ?

Chapter 13 is dedicated to television’s most arrogant narcissist, Bully Bill O’Reilly, a  self-styled “cultural warrior”  and former war correspondent. (He once covered the Falkland Islands war for CBS and brags that he knows what it’s like to be under fire, although he apparently never left Buenos Aires.) His out-sized ego is so big that Stephen Colbert found it easy to step into his skin and make a mint satirizing “Papa Bear” on his hit tv show, The Colbert Report.

Bully-O got Franken’s attention when he falsely claimed that he had won a Peabody Award for his television show, The Fucker Factor.  (His radio show was far less popular and was dumped earlier this year, quite a feat given the engineered dominance of right wing talk radio). Bully-O was so incensed by Franken’s book that he threatened Frankin would get “what was coming to him.” Apparently that included a seat in the U.S. Senate, so Bully-O  has at least been right about something.

In 2004, he sued his former producer Andrea Mackris for $60 mil for extortion, based on her allegations of sexual harassment. It didn’t take long for him to settle the suit, which became known as the “Falafel Affair.” Mackris apparently made phone recordings that captured of some of his more lurid remarks to her, including fantasizing about her with a loufa qua falafel in the shower.

To this day, Bully-O regularly includes stories and pictures featuring titillating women. On Monday of this week  he dedicated 2 1/2 minutes of his (commercially sponsored)  “cultural warriors” segment to discussing two year old photos of Britney Spears posing half naked and covered in fake tattoos, draped around a dancer’s pole.  He opened the segment by offering a lame excuse as to why he thought BS’s pathetic display was so important and worth covering. Unfortunately for him, one of the fillies that he keeps in his stable of fawning  blond bimbos, trotted out as trophy foils as the occasion demands, politely  disagreed with him.   Margaret Hoover, billed as a “Republican strategist,” said she didn’t think that Americans cared, frankly. (Thank you very much, Maggie. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.)

Bully-O’s tag line, Who’s looking out for you?, is patronizing on its face. As if his major demographic hadn’t learn to do that for themselves in their 65+ years of life. (Okay, maybe some of them haven’t– some people never learn. Others may be suffering in their advanced years from the terrible affliction of age-related dementia.)

For some reason,  CNN is promoting faux-populist Lou Dobbs‘ show with same tagline, minus the question mark. Juvenal’s ancient Roman warning Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? But who will guard the guardians themselves? remains as relevant as ever.

While hyperbolic spin has been Bully-O’s stock and trade for years, he had, in the age of digital media and the internet,  presumably tried to keep his blatant lies to a minimum. No more, and it isn’t just him. The whole winger commentariat seems to have chucked the requirement that their brand of propaganda is most effective when it contains enough factual accuracy to camouflage the falsehoods that are its rotten core.

Then again, desperate times call for desperate measures.

One good quote from Juvenal deserves another: Difficile est saturam non scribere: It is difficult not to write satire.

Tags: Al Franken, Andrea Mackris, Bill O'Reilly, Britney Spears, Bully O'Reilly, Falkland Islands war, Juvenal, Lou Dobbs, Margaret Hoover, Stephen Colbert

Not exactly family safe, but that’s the nature of hypocrisy, now isn’t it.

I stood in the road in front of the mailbox for fifteen minutes before I could recover enough to take the July issue of HYPOCRITE into the house.  But I get their point;  Repuglican hypocrisy has gotten so luridly sick and over the top crazy that it hardly registers as anything rational anymore.

Like hives gone crazy, Liz “Lizard” Cheney has done more than twenty-two appearances in less than a month— and these are just the ones that pissed someone off so much that they alerted Media Matters to start counting. I’ll bet you a fiver she’s scheduled to lie to the Lilliputians and the Blefuscuans before the end of the month.  Why the fuck does the media keep shoving this know-nothing, water-retaining hypocrite down our throats just because she’s willing to be the gargantuan mammaries’ equivalent to her daddy’s enormous lying Scrotum humanum full of unmitigated gall?

How do you prevent convulsions upon being subjected to the high whiney screech of half-baked Alaska governess Sarah Palin?  Forget waterboarding terrorists.  Just force them to hear Sarah Palin speeches for a few hours.  I can only just bear to read about her antics these days, and HYPOCRITE nails her on her latest iteration of ongoing hypocrisy, calling Obama a socialist “wealth spreader” again while she continues to distribute multi-thousand dollar checks to her fellow comrades up there in the better-dead-than-red state, which gets a little more than $506.34 per numbskull from our federal tax coffers more than they pay in taxes.. the highest in the nation.  So who’s the bigger frakkin’ “socialist,” beoch?

Who T. F. is Peter “Dick” Hoekstra say?  Just another garden variety hypocrite that has grown up under our feet when we were busy being socialistic. Seems someone has been teaching the Repugs about the Twitter, and Petey got on the Twitter thingy and disclosed the details of a classified trip to… well, the frakkin’ twitterverse.  This is the same hypo-tard who ranted in an editorial in 2006:
“We are a nation at war. Unauthorized disclosures of classified information only help terrorists and our enemies — and put American lives at risk.”

Okay.  I’m getting that six cans ‘o Bud-room spinning queasy thing from all the hyper-hypocrisy.  I’m gonna go hide in my sugar castle now.

Tags: "Mitch the Bitch" McConnell, Liz "Lizard" Cheney, Newt, Peter Hoestra, Sarah palin