Sunday, September 30, 2007

Think Progress » Kristol’s Dark Humor: Bush’s ‘Heartless Assault On Our Children’ Is ‘A Good Idea’

Think Progress » Kristol’s Dark Humor: Bush’s ‘Heartless Assault On Our Children’ Is ‘A Good Idea’

What a low-life Republican scumbag Bill Kristol is. He's right down there with Bush and Cheney.
This kind of disgusting rhetoric plainly shows what kind of people Kristol and Bush are.

The only “pathetic” part of this story is that an editor of a major national publication (The Weekly Standard) would dare say such a thing.

And there's this gem, “You really wonder how stupid they think the American people are”.
Well Bill, they're stupid enough to have believed anything this administration has ever said, they're stupid enough to have voted for Bush, TWICE, and besides that Bush (&Co) is the king of using soldiers and children as props to enhance his propaganda photo-ops!

And oh yeah, some 'Americans' are stupid enough to actually pay money to read your magazine.

You g-damned POS! (There's some 'straight talk' for ya)

Friday, September 21, 2007

Shame!

Dispute it. Prove that it's not true, or let it go. Our [representatives?] sat on their hands while 'Swiftboat' and other similar ads flat out lied about honorable men who served with distinction and sacrificed parts of their body in service to their country.

Compare that with an ad that is honest and reflects the feelings of many Americans.
We feel that Gen. Petraeus betrayed his country by knowingly lying to Congess.
He doesn't deserve to be treated deferentially after such a display of dishonesty!
If he had come and given his honest assessment it would have been different, but as predicted he chose to do the president's dirty work.

He chose politics over honor and honesty, and for that he got called on it.


Now 22 democrats (and even Gen. Wesley Clark!) think it was wrong. They say this ad, so much more than the disgusting ads lying about Kerry and Max Cleland deserves to be denounced by Congress?

Why? Please explain yourselves. Especially the 22 democrats!
Why this ad and not the truly offensive ones of the past?

I'm disgusted by this display of hypocrisy and will not vote for anyone who voted "yea", period.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Mika Brzezinski, don't slant the facts!

I'm sitting here watching MSNBC [Morning Joe] at 6 AM and here's how Mika Brzezinski characterized
last night's vote "on capital hill now, a major blow to Democrats after senate Republicans blocked a bill to give US troops more time at home between deployments. The proposal largely seen as a Democratic attempt to challenge president Bush's war policy fell four votes short of the sixty needed to cut off debate... ".

"largely seen as a Democratic attempt to challenge president Bush's war policy"... excuse me?
and
"
a major blow to Democrats"? How about a major blow to our overextended troops instead?

By that you're saying that this wasn't a bill about trying to save our military from unending tours wringing the last blood and sweat from our service men and women and sending them home in many cases broken in mind and body? No, to you this is all about the Democrats trying to stick it to the president, eh? You are as twisted as Chris Mathews. You've spent most of your life in the Washington scene, both of you, and you are much too close to the players in this disaster called the Bush presidency.

Your characterization of the Democratic effort to get our troops some much needed rest is a slap in the face to our service members who have suffered while the media (like you) perpetuate the
president's fraud!

And while I'm at it, the morning after one of Keith Olbermann's special comments I heard you utter "chill out..." after playing a clip.
NO, Keith shouldn't "chill out", he's the only one of you who has the character and guts to say [on prime time TV] what the majority of Americans are saying, and the rest need to hear.
You are part of the problem that allowed the fraud leading up to the war to become public perception, and that led us to commit our troops and ultimately to the deaths of close to four thousand of them.

Now you're still at it. Turn around what you said and you're closer to the truth.

And I'm not naive, I realize that politics are involved, but the bottom line of the bill was to aid our troops, and instead of saying that, you chose to perpetuate the Republican fraud and mislead your viewers, the 'fraud' being that Democrats don't support the troops, which is a flat out LIE and you know it!
After last night's vote, any Republican who claims to support the troops and who voted against the Webb amendment is a bald-faced liar. And I fully expect each and every one of them to be called on it.

Think of it this way, if the military was a automobile, the Republicans and the president have stolen it and are driving the military/auto on it's rims and the engine is about to blow up because it being driven so hard for so long.

Q: Why were they allowed to steal the car?

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Truthdig - Interviews - Jeremy Scahill on Soldiers of Fortune

The MSM doesn't talk about this nearly enough, if at all. I'll bet my life that the majority of Americans don't have any idea that this is going on. The number of private soldiers, how much they're getting paid (by the US taxpayers) and how they don't have to play by the same rules as our military troops also Blackwater's close relationship with the administration. Face it, war is good for their business!

This is INSANE. [We] have to stop this. And I'll say it again, the ones with the keys to stopping this runaway bus are the Republicans. If it wasn't for the majority of Republicans voting with the president every time the Democrats put together bills trying to change course in Iraq, we could start to find the least disastrous way to withdraw from this quagmire.

Every death in this war is on the Bush supporters heads .

Link to Truthdig - Interviews - Jeremy Scahill on Soldiers of Fortune

Monday, September 17, 2007

New "Furl" entries I posted today

I'm currently in the process of reading the news and posting links and comments to news items that I need to comment on. The last one I just did was about Tony Snow getting defensive with Suzanne Malveaux. I'm not done, so there should be more to come, I just wanted to leave a post pointing to [my] latest Furl additions.

Wish me luck, my brain seems slower than usual, and searching for the correct words is painfully slow this AM.

Friday, September 14, 2007

Streams currently running...(ITB)

Number one, Novartis cut me out of their [$5 copay] assistance program with absolutely no warning so I haven't been able to take my Ritalin for around a month and I have no idea how to come up with the $300+ Wal-Mart wants for 100 pills.
Novartis is demanding that I provide a 'refusal letter' from Medicare part-D (which I can't afford) for them to continue providing assistance (in stark contrast to Novartis ads and those of the Prescription Assistance people [with the bus and the TV personality/shill for the drug companies Montel Williams]).
I find it interesting how their stated income limit (in the letter) is exactly the amount I get each month from Social Security...

Update: The real 'prescription assistance' people (the wonderful women at my local hospital) tell me that drug companies stopping their assistance with no warning has become commonplace lately!
Since the Bush administration gave drug companies the 'gift' of "Medicare Part-D" legislation it's been used as an excuse to drop needy patients while BS'ing the public with misleading advertisements. THIS is the culture that Bush&Co brought to Washington DC!

On a side note, yesterday on CNBC I heard them talking about Novartis and how they were in a 'good position' because they still have a number of years before many of their products go 'generic'.
I always thought that because Ritalin has been around for so long that it was available as a generic but not so. It wasn't until asking the price of Ritalin [without] the 'co-pay' assistance I found out that there still is no generic equivalent!


Q: Is it even 'legal' to cut someone off from their medication(s) with absolutely no warning?
Shouldn't there be a 60-90 day notification of some sort?
I need some advice on the subject but can't afford it, and I don't know of any local legal advocate service for the poor here in Concord, NH (even though Franklin Pierce Law School is right here in town).


I live on a single Social Security Disability payment each month and my only semi-asset is the 2000 Toyota Camry that was my father's until he passed away last April, so I live on the 'edge' of disaster constantly.

Recently I went without my [2] blood pressure meds for around 3 weeks because I couldn't afford the $8 they cost at Wal-Mart. You see by the first week of each month I'm almost out of money, so if my meds run out during the mid-to latter part of the month I'm 'SOL'.

Not having Ritalin manifests itself in a number of ways, and the main thing is motivation and being able to focus on one thing at a time (for a meaningful period of time). I've done more sitting in my chair watching TV [lately] with the PC three feet away and having absolutely no desire to make the effort to get up and use it.
I never noticed the effect while I was taking Ritalin, but after the first day without it all I felt like doing was sleeping. Then as the days went on a general malaise set in and I've found myself mostly sitting, and frequently having bouts of extreme sadness and feeling hopeless. Of course that exacerbates my chronic depression and anxiety.

One health emergency or car repair away from an even worse standard of living.

Actually, many of those things have already happened to a certain degree, which results in bills having to be put off, going without medication and living off the cheapest foods which are largely high in carbohydrates/fat. And don't forget the harassing phone calls (Concord Hospital!).
Right now it's 2 weeks into September and my car still isn't inspected because it needs rear brakes and I have just enough money left for the 'inspection' fee but not for the repairs.
(On the 'bright' side, I am saving on gas...)

Living with all this uncertainty just compounds the daily effects of my Depression. I've developed mental tricks to tolerate some of those by (now that I think about it, I don't at this moment know exactly how I deal with it). Some of the effects are undoubtedly manifested through my body as various maladies, and contribute to my 'dark days'.

It's so frustrating, the president and others in control seem to lie with impunity while the world falls apart, and the poor having many of the strands of their 'safety net' slashed by the Republican party in favor of more 'corporate welfare' and war costs. That frustration manifests itself in bad ways also.

The situation that our president has lied his way into stabs at me like a knife, and there seems to be no hope of things getting better for a long time. He and his surrogates continue to lie with impunity, playing out the clock until finally they will be gone and will try to pass the blame.
And the way things are these days, with the majority of the MSM too obliged to their corporate overlords to challenge BushCo's lies, they'll probably carry the president's water/message and blame Democrats in some absurd way.

Since Bush wormed his way into office, life for people like me has gone steadily downhill.
Cutting money for social programs while literally throwing money at 'big business' and the ultra-rich. Much of that is 'war profiteering' for friends and associates of the Bush/Cheney families.
I'm actually surprised crime rates aren't up dramatically with people claiming that "if the President and Attorney General (and so many others) can break the law and nothing happens to them why can't we?"

Here's the main reason that we're still in the quagmire called Iraq:
Republicans who continue to support Bush [period]. If not for their votes supporting Bush the war would be much further along towards some kind of conclusion.

To add to the outside influences, I've had a new neighbor for some months now. He's in his 20s, a survivor of brain surgery, a budding 'rapper', and fresh from Brooklyn, NY.
Now the previous occupant of the apartment was very quiet and respectful of his neighbors.
Jahar, on the other hand is not. He's got a big boom box that serves as his 'alarm clock' and when it comes on the bass is cranked all the way up and the thump makes it so that his neighbors can't enjoy what they're doing. A number of times the 'alarm' has gone off and he wasn't even there!
He's come up with some really childish excuses and came down knocking on my door recently babbling something about how he was sorry and that he 'cut the wires' and that it wouldn't happen again... but I hadn't heard a thing and didn't know what he was talking about. The very next weekend at around 10:30-11:00 PM the thing started blasting, I went up and knocked at his door (at times using a 'mule kick') but he wouldn't come to the door (as usual).
He's around 5'10" and 240 lbs. and he told me he was associated with a big gang in NYC so I don't know why he avoids coming to the door, but he told me later he was 'sleeping' through the blasting music and me almost kicking in his door....right.
NOTE: While I was knocking at his door two young black men came out of the elevator and one asked if he could be in my 'movie' (I was using a video camera to record the attempt to get the music shut down). I told him what I was doing whereupon he started laughing at me. His companion was even bigger than Jahar and wearing a black head-thing like the 'gangsta's' wear.
I told the kid to STFU but he was cackling like a hyena and disappeared down the hall. He later must have gone back to Jahar's apartment and told him what I was doing because Jahar came and knocked on my door asking me what was going on. That's when he claimed he was 'sleeping' through the whole thing.

Jahar thinks the solution to all my problems is just that "You need to smoke some weed!" although I don't think he does.

I think that what I need is for him to grow the f* up and have some respect for his neighbors!


Why don't I just be done with it and demand the landlord do something further? Not sure, I guess I'd rather he just behave/grow up. I don't want him evicted, but while the music is blaring, I feel like ripping his face off!
I guess that I forgive too quickly and screw myself in the process.


I just want to live in peace. I don't bother anyone (I have a powerful stereo w/ a subwoofer that could shake the whole building, but I won't use it [here] because I know it would disrupt my neighbor's lives and I don't have any right to do that)


To date I've written two complaints to the landlord (Hodges Corp./C.A.T.C.H.]). Those weren't done until I'd spoken to him and to date he still doesn't seem to get it. I've waited to complain again because I'd rather he 'conform' than be evicted.


That's all for now*, writing this has taken a lot of energy (and 2-3 hours). I don't have the wherewithal (or the patience) to edit myself, so here it is, raw (rah-rah-rah! [Big Bambu]).

Speaking of raw and unedited, I heard something on Public Radio the other night about Jack Kerouac the author of the "On the road" series of novels, and how his style of writing incorporated 'stream of consiousness' writing. I'd like to learn more about that, but for me and people like me there's a huge gap between wanting to get something done and actually doing it. So many other things take up space in my consciousness and thoughts and 'wants' come and go like wisps of smoke or the wind at times.
And like smoke, if you try to grab it it just disappears.



Until next time...whenever that may be, and remember "life is but a dream"**

Tom


* This is typical, I'm about to stop writing then I get on another subject and the stream continues meandering.
** Thanks to Dr. Wayne Dyer.