Happy Veteran's Day!

Time for the annual genuflecting to our brave soldier heroes, the waving of flags, the ritual parading of veterans bragging about how they fought for our freedoms. Really? I didn't see any troops attacking Congress when they voted for the Patriot Act and abolished the Bill of Rights. What freedoms did they protect?

Read the Bill of Rights and tell me which rights the military has protected.

http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/freedom/bill/text.html

And now for another view-

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Unitarians and Mass Murderers

Unitarians and other empathetic bleeding heart liberals take a lot of abuse from the belligerent chest thumpers and wedding party bombers on the right.

We are accused of being cowards, unlike the brave heroes sucking up billions of tax dollars to protect us, in the military, the police state and Homeland Security.

Is it immodest to point out that in every mass killing (in the US, that is) so far, only the Unitarians rushed the shooter and subdued him? Without hurting him while doing so? The cowardly, unarmed Unitarians risked their own lives to stop the killing and save others.

The cop heroes usually cordon off the killing site and wait for the killers to go ahead and finish and then kill themselves, and then the cop heroes go in. I'm not sure what the soldier heroes did, but the (accused) killer ended up with bullets in him, so they didn't subdue him unarmed.

I'm just saying.

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Tragedy in Texas

A soldier flips out and uses his weapon to indiscrimately kill a bunch of people.

What makes this news? Big news? Front page, top of the broadcast, day after day news?

The fact that it happened in Texas, not Iraq or Afghanistan.

And the fact that the victims were US soldiers and not sleeping mothers and children.

Too bad that no one else will point this out.

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Doh!! Fooled Again

In yesterday's election, voters that voted Democrat last time voted Republican this time, in New Jersey and Virginia.

Ellen DeGeneres did a great bit where she wondered if goldfish ever get bored. She wanders back and forth across the stage as if it were a fishbowl, saying "I guess I'll go over here now. I guess I'll go over here now".

Who are these voters who never get bored with the duopoly of the corporate parties? Why do they fall for the "choice" again and again, like a baby playing peek-a-boo, endlessly believing that they are voting for something different? "I guess I'll vote for team A this time. I guess I'll vote for team B this time."

Half of the people in this country refuse to play this game. Most refuse on principled grounds, realizing that it doesn't make any difference who you vote for, and resisting the browbeating, the guilt tripping, the lecturing, the pleading, the preaching, the endless celebrities trotted out to insist that voting is important.

They tell us that we can't complain if we don't vote. Well. That's certainly the epitome of democracy! Vote, so you have the right to complain when they screw you over.

Then they tell you that you deserve the government you get. Well, that's infuriating! Not only do you have to deal with the betrayals, but then you're told that you asked for it. It's now not PC to announce that a woman deserves to be raped because of her dress or because she went to a bar, but voters are told that they deserve their government because they voted! That ain't right.

And my favorite, when people who actually vote complain about their choices, when they realize that both of the corporate vetted puppets are objectionable, when they want something that neither of the puppets are even bothering to promise, like peace, or liberty, or fair taxation, and you suggest that perhaps they should vote for the Green Party candidate, they laugh.

"I don't want to waste my vote", they say.

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Media says "Jump" Americans say "How High?"

It takes a few months to get the American people worked up enough to attack people they've never heard of before they're told that the New Improved Hitler has appeared in that country, wherever it may be. This is the task of the corporate media and their efficiency at focusing bloodlust to the approved target has been remarked on before.

My last post drew a comment from someone who has been turned against his fellow Americans by the media. It took a long time to work up this division, and, actually, it's only working on the young, not so much Baby Boomers and their parents, who mostly cling to the idea that they shouldn't be allowed to starve in their old age, as people did before Social Security.

Of course, it is ironic that people who are willing to kill millions of non-Americans to "save" American lives are usually the same ones who aren't really that fond of actual Americans. Actual Americans include non white people, poor people, old people, children on food stamps, liberals, and tree huggers. Except for those who are unborn, most killer Americans would be happy to see these Americans dead, or at least disappeared.

But I digress. What I meant to marvel at is the ability of corporate media to manipulate the public on a more basic level.

When the media hype about swine flu reached its peak, life in the ER was miserable. We were completely swamped. Everyone who coughed or sneezed ran in to be saved.

My coworker said that CNN had announced that "People are dying!! Get to the ER immediately or you will die!!"

Apparently, my ER was not the only one swamped. The word went out.

So my local TV station then said "Only go to the ER if your child looks blue or gray".

OK, that was too much of a turn around. But it started to make a dent in the flow.

All of a sudden, it stopped.

A patient who came in for a twisted ankle explained why. She said "I was afraid to come to the ER, because the TV said that I could get swine flu here, but I was afraid my ankle was broke".

The tsunami of coughers, followed by the dearth of patients, was an astounding demonstration of the power of the media on the day to day personal behavior of the well trained American public.

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Terrorist=Someone with a Bomb, but no Air Force

Many years ago, I lived near Moffett Air Force Base, and for two years, attended the Blue Angels show on 4th of July.

In some sort of dissociative state, I watched the precision flying with enjoyment, as if it were synchronized swimming or something innocuous like that.

Then I invited my Dad to go. He refused, pointing out that the purpose of those planes was to terrorize people and to drop bombs on them. Plus, it was a giant waste of energy.

I didn't go again.

But one year, as I was getting my mail, with my back to the base, a Blue Angel bomber flew very low over my head. I didn't hear it until it was over me, it was flying so fast.

Now I know what my Dad meant by terror! My heart was pounding, and I went inside and called the base to complain. Some sort of community soother calmed me down and promised that it wouldn't happen again. He told me that it was the last year the Blue Angels would fly there.

Lucky me, to be an American, and to be able to complain.

When the US attacked Iraq with their "shock and awe", which is very clearly an euphemism for raining terror on people, 24 hours a day, for days on end, how many people cared about the human beings on the receiving end?

I heard testimony about a woman whose two teenaged daughters couldn't take it. They were crying and screaming, so her husband and she and the kids got into the car to get out of Baghdad. They came to a roadblock of American soldiers.

As it happened, her husband had gone to college in the US., and spoke English very well. He got out of the car to explain to the soldiers that his daughters were terrified, and needed to leave the targeted area.

The soldiers killed him. Then they killed her kids.

I think about that man often. He came to America and met the tolerant, educated, friendly sort of Americans. Did he ever run into the nasty, ignorant, violent kind before that day? (At least, in person. Obviously, he had been a victim from the air). What did he think as he died?

Howard Zinn, like my Dad, was in WWll and came out with a hatred of war. I paraphrased his observation on terrorists for the title of this post. It says a lot about Americans that they think that someone with explosives around his waist is a despicable terrorist, but dropping bombs on people 24 hours a day is something to be proud of.

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Baby Boomers-We Will Get Screwed Again

Many, many years ago, so many babies were produced for a couple of decades that they got their own name - Baby Boomers.

The Baby Boomer mass of people created their own economic conditions, like rain forests creating their own weather. From coonskin caps to hula hoops to rock and roll records, money was made from catering to boomer whims.

And the millions of boomers provided cannon fodder for the Vietnam War, while the ones left behind got drugs funneled to them to keep them subdued, and to keep the CIA well-funded beyond their official allotment.

In the 80s, Alan Greenspan announced to us boomers that there were too many to continue to fund Social Security on its pay-as-you-go system. We needed to pre-pay our retirement, creating a trust fund of trillions to pay for us, and only us.

So ever since then, boomers and all others working since, have paid extra for this temporary trust fund, so as not to burden our children. And now, of course, we're told that they spent it and we shouldn't be so greedy as to expect them to provide for our retirement. Think of the children!

And here we go again. The health care bill that is supposed to "reform" the insurance companies and stop them from discriminating against people has a loophole.

Older people can be charged more! And by older people, I don't mean over 65. They are covered by Medicare.

No. The people younger than 65, that is, the Baby Boomers, can be charged more than everyone else for their forced health insurance tributes!

As screwed as we have been, from Vietnam to extra SS payments to now being forced to pay extra into the insurance coffers, I have to wonder what they have planned next?

Are they hoping we die before we get old? Or are they going to make sure we do?

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