Proof The GOP Wants The Poor To Just Shut Up And DIe Already

GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch seems to think children who
need government funded health insurance should
stop being so lazy and get a job, dammit. 

The tax scam bill the Republican Senate passed last week is proof enough that the GOP, taking orders from their ultra rich donors, want to transfer all wealth to the 1% and take it all away from the lower and middle class.

They want us all to be serfs, essentially.

Two quotes from two Senators pretty much prove it to my mind, as they insist anyone not rich like themselves are just lazy jerks who want to sit on their butts and take government money so they can booze it up and gamble. This includes children, apparently.

Here's Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who was explaining that we can afford a trillion dollar deficit to give tax breaks to the wealthy, but we can't afford the to pay for the Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP:

"I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won't help themselves, won't lift a finger and expect the federal government to do everything."

Got that kids? If you're 10 years old and sick and your parents are poor, get yourself a f*$&ing job you lazy ass bum. Don't do things like go to school to better your future and help around the house. Just go make sub-minimum wages in some dangerous factory like kids had to do a century ago.

You owe it to your billionaire overloards to do that. So get to work!

GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley thinks everybody with modest
incomes is poor because they spend all their money
on booze and sex, rather than say, groceries or housing

Then we have GOP Sen. Charles Grassley, explaining why we have to get rid of the estate tax, which only makes the wealthy wealthier and has no effect on the rest of us:

"I think not have the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing - as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it's on booze or women or movies," Grassley told the Des Moines Register.

Yep. The reason why the single mom making minimum wage at McDonald's has not amassed a fortune and become a millionaire at least is because she's squandering her pay on cheap vodka, sex and probably porn movies.

Grassley seems to be suggesting that no low and middle class people are spending what little money they've got on things like groceries, putting a roof over their head, things like that.

To the GOP, we're all selfish as hell and not worth the time of day. We apparently owe the trillionaire class whatever pittance we have. Hand it over, I guess.





“I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing — as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies,” Grassley told the Des Moines Register i

Trump IS Running America Like A Business

Trump got into the Oval Office in part because people wanted
to have the government run like a business. Trump, and many
of the people who voted for him, are discovering why this
method isn't such a good idea.

Frustrated with high taxes and government waste, a lot of people tell us they're sick of the way Washington is run. 

Why can't the government be run more like a business?

That's why a lot of people voted for Donald Trump and the Republicans.

Well, I'm pleased displeased to report that the United States government is being run exactly like a business.  Not a very well run business, mind you, but a business.

I hope you're happy

Traditionally, western democracies are run in such a way that everyone is in this together. You have rights - voting, free speech, government services, etc - and you have responsibilities.  You vote, pay your taxes, don't violate the laws and you contribute to society.

A business is different. If you're running a business, you try to maximize profits. And you shed the parts of your business that are not making money. Everything is dispensible. Including people. It's cold, dispassionate decision making.

So let's look at how things are going in our government, which really does seem to be running like a business now that Trump, Mr. "Art of the Deal" is running the show.

The process has been a mess, with deals and counterdeals and doubts and recriminations. This Washington DC "corporate board room" is admittably pretty dysfunctional.

The bottom line is they were looking at repealing Obamacare and replacing it with....something else.

This something else would mean that people who are poor, elderly, sick, don't work are denied health coverage.

Oh, I know the GOP will tell you that the free market will take care of these people, that they'll get insurance one way or another.

That's just PR - another important part of running a business.

But we have to deal with reality. Let's face it: The poor, elderly, sick, disabled, etc. are not profitable.

They don't really have much in the way of incomes. Which means there's no money they can be cheated out of . They're expensive, what with all those health issues. Why put up with such a losing part of the corporaton?

So cut them off. Without health insurance and any other social net kind of protection, they'll die off earlier. They'll go away. They won't be a burden on the bottom line. Write 'em off!

Of course you'll never hear the likes of Paul Ryan put things in those terms. Bad PR. (See above) Most people don't have this cold, calculating attitude. But some of the most successful corporate people do, and if some people die in the process that's just business. Gotta make a profit!

When you're running a business you've got to protect yourself from competition. You don't want some frisky upstart to screw up your business model.

That's probably a good share of why the EPA is so anti-environmental, why the EPA chief denies climate change, and the Secretary of State is an oil executive.

There's all those entrenched oil companies making oodles of money, and that could be threatened by those damn climate change activists and alternative energy upstart companies.

What if somehow, the products made by the clean energy companies become wildly popular, inexpensive and easy to use?

Those oil companies would be stuck with little income and tons of oil sitting "uselessly" in the ground.

With Trump being friendly and cooperative, and probably an investor in oil, why not use the White House as a business model to make sure those upstart competitors don't siphon profits away?

Secretiveness is a hallmark of running a business. You don't want competitors or regulators finding out what you're doing. If they do, they'll take advantage.ll

Speaking of regulations, rulemaking is why government shouldn't be run like a business.

Most of the time, businesses are regulated by laws and regulation that prevent, say, cheating customers, polluting the atmosphere, swindling stockholders, that kind of thing.

Regulations cost money. That's why the Republicans are (seriously!) talking about getting rid of things like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Education.

Sure, that's politicians giving a hand to their business constitutents, but it benefits them, too. (See: campaign contributions.)

Plus, the Trump administration is full of people from industries and business, including Trump himself, who will personally financially benefit from fewer regulations.

Abolishing the Education Department would really be a win for the Corporate White House. Uneducated people, which is what they want, tend not to ask critical questions, or even know which questions to ask.

Again, if some of the rest of us suffer because of pollution problems, lack of education or some other anti-regulation effect, too bad. We should just shut up and allow these corporate titans to make their billions.

Us 99 percenters are dispensable, apparently.

It's turning out to be hard, though to run the United States government like a business. We saw that with the imploded attempt to get rid of Obamacare, which, as noted above, would have made it impossible for millions of us to get health insurance.

Activist stockholders can be annoying to the Corporate Titans, but voters in a democracy are even "worse."

As Congressional Republicans worked to abolish Obamacare, voters screamed and hollored and lobbied and harassed the politicans who would do them harm in the name of personal profits.

Betray voters like this and a politician might find himself or herself eventually out of a job. Plus that pesky judicial system occasionally stymies the corporate profit making machine in government by pointing out that some of what they're doing is unconstitutional.

I guess the Constitution is a hinderance to unbridled profit taking in government.

Oh well.

The health care "overhaul" turned into an embarrasing disaster for the "businesslike" GOP that should have known better.

Corporate chiefs like Trump and his minions are used to barking orders and getting what they want.

Trump isn't as powerful as he thinks he is. We all know his thin skin and snowflake like insecurity makes him weak.

And, we hope, he's beginning to prove he's no match for a constitutional Republic.

Trademark Troll Company Trying To Take Yosemite Away From Us

A trademark troll that used to run concessions at Yosemite
National Park is threatening to not allow anybody to
use the names of iconic buildings and features at the park
unless the U.S. government and taxpayers cave
in to its extortion demands. They might get away with it. 

An outfit called DNC Parks and Resorts at Yosemite not long ago lost a contract to have concessions that ran various businesses around Yosemite National Park.

For one reason or another, they lost the contract to do that.

Now, they're demanding the National Park Serve change the names of iconic buildings and locations around and in Yosemite that have had their names for decades.

They're arguing trademark protection.

Incredibly, the National Parks Service is caving to these demands, I guess because they don't want to pay lawyers' fees to defend against this outrage.  I get the idea of not wasting taxpayer money, but do we really want to cave to trademark trolls?

These are publicly owned landmarks that they're changing the names of. In other words, you, me, and every other American owns this stuff.  But, a private company is forcing the change of fun and especially profit.

Yosemite landmarks like the Ahwahnee Hotel, the Yosemite Lodge, the Wawoman Hotel, Curry Village and Badger Pass ski area will have to change their names, signs maps and guidebooks to satisfy the morons at DNC.

It gets worse. DNC, a division of Delaware North also claims it holds the trademark for any merchandise and it alone can sell things like Yosemite shirts, mugs and whatnot, says BoingBoing, using Outside Magazine as a source

Says BoingBoing, via Outside:

"DNC refuses to hand over those trademarks unless the incoming concessionaire buys it out, setting in motion a chain reaction that will presumably endure until the end of the USA itself in which the sums that concessionaires bid to profit from public property are reduced by the expected dead-weight losses to license trademarks that should never have been granted in the first place.

DNC also registered trademarks for other U.S. public property, including the Space Shuttle Atlantis."

Makes you wonder if the very name of Yosemite National Park will go away.

Judging from what's going on, that doesn't seem so far-fetched now, because it does appear to be unclear how far DNC will go to make its private profit from a name all of us as taxpayers, should rightly own.

Says Outside, quoting Yosemite (for now!) National Park Spokesman Scott Gediman:

"The outgoing company also trademarked 'Yosemite National Park' for merchandising purposes, said Gediman. Will you be able to buy a Yosemite t-shirt at the gift shop come March 1? 'That's something that remains to be determined,' Gediman said."

What about the fact that, as I noted, the public owns this park, despite DNC's trademarking spree.

Outside magazine again:

"Gediman added, 'We feel very strongly that these historic names are associated with the buildings and belong to the American people.' As for the value DNC has attached to them, 'We strongly disagree with the numbers.'"

From what I see, DNC is a classic trademark troll, which is a variation of the always hated patent troll. 

Patent trolls try to extort money from businesses by claiming patents on commonly used equipment these businesses have in their offices and factories. These businesses find it less expensive to just pay patent troll extortion demands than fighting them with expensive lawyers in an iffy judicial process.

Trademark trolls basically do the same thing with objects and brands they don't really own. All for fun and profit, you understand. Especially profit.

I'm all for trademarking original ideas, businesses, merchandise and that type of thing, but DNC's trademark efforts are a great example of how the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is being abused.

According to Outside, government attorneys, and basically anybody watching the case, thinks this is just the way DNC's does "business," to make any money they can, however they can. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office seems to have no teeth, or no decent regulations on trademarks and patents.

Editorialized BoingBoing in a post I heartily agree with:

"It's evidence of the dysfunction of the U.S Patent and Trademark Office, which should be heartily embarrassed by this, and the cult of fiduciary duty, which holds that companies should do anything they can to earn a profit for their shareholders, no matter how odius and unethical."

That "fiduciary duty" to me is a part of a larger American shortcoming these days. Everybody yells about their rights, but ignore the responsibilities and ethics that accompany those rights.

Yes, we have the right to make a profit, to have successful businesses. But what gives anybody the right to run roughshod over everything and everyone else, in the name of greed.

Right, Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli?

Obviously, I hope DNC somehow loses out, or gets its comeuppance like Shkreli did.

But I'm not optimistic.

Makes me wonder if every name, everything we do, will have some corporate for-profit stamp on it.

That would be a shame.

Evangelicals Say We're Persecuting Them, But Is It Other Way Around?

The Blount County Tennesee Commission, led
by member Karen Miller, is begging Got not to
smite them because of all those icky gays out there.  

Some Evangelical Christians are famous lately for giving us the persecution complex: You know, there's a war on Christians, they're going to be put in jail for their beliefs, the godless government is after them, yada yada yada.

Is it really the other way around, though? The most famous example is of course Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who is shoving her religious beliefs down everybody's throats.

She fought and fought the idea of giving marriage licenses to those icky gay couples because of her religious beliefs.

Of course, that hypocrite has been married three times and doesn't appear to hold to the other tenets of Leviticus, which these religious types always cite, so I don't know about her.

There's been a number of other interesting cases of evangelicals imposing their religious views on the rest of us, two of which I found recently that are interesting. One of the cases is harmless, if both comical and obnoxious. The other did real harm to at least one person.

I'll get into the comical one first, I guess. Hat tip to Ring of Fire and Raw Story for this one.

It involves the Blount County, Tennessee Commission, which is normally in charge of things like setting budgets and municipal employee salaries and otherwise administering county public business.

Oh, but the Blount County Commission is much more than that, nowadays, yessirree!

The commission has written a resolution begging God for mercy and asking God not to smite their community (and presumably smite others instead) because the U.S. Supreme Court authorized gay marriages earlier this year.

Here's part of the resolution. It helps to read it aloud like one of those over emotional southern-fried corrupt televangelists:

"We adopt this resolution before God that HE pas us by in His Coming Wrath and not destroy our County as He did Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighborhing cities. As the Passover Lamb was a means of salvation to the ancient Children of Israel, so we stand upon the safety of the Lamb of God to save us.

We adopt this Resolution begging His favor in light of the fact that we have been forced to comply and recognize that the State of Tennessee, like so may other God-fearning State, MAY have fallen prey to a lawless judiciary in legalizing what God and the Bible expressly forbids."

Well, then.

Of course, not all the fine citizens of Blount County, Tennessee are behind this.

According to The Daily Times newspaper in Maryville, Tennessee, Ginny West Case, a retired Christian educator at a local United Methodist Church, says "I'm tired of God being used as a battering ram. The Bible, over and over tells us God is the God of love and grace and mercy."

Amen, sister.

Meanwhile, in Alburquerque, New Mexico, Holly Salzman had some coparenting issues with her ex-husband that had to be resolved in family court.

The judge in the case ordered Salzman to attend 10 sessions with a counselor named Mary Pepper.

So far, so good. Counseling is often ordered in messy family court cases. Can't hurt, right?

Well, it can. Especially since Pepper turned out to be one of those obnoxious evangelical proselytizers.

This New Mexico mom temporarily lost custody of
her kids because she objected to being forced to
attend religious counseling.  

When Salzman went to the first session, Pepper started blabbing on about God, reports television station KRQE in Alburquerque.

Salzman, who doesn't go for that kind of old time religion, asked the court to let her see another counselor. The court never responded.

She stopped going to Pepper because the prayers continued. She went to court again, told them about the problems, but the court said they hadn't had any problems with Pepper and to keep going.

Among the tasks Salzman had to complete were homework assignments such as, "What Is God To Me?"

But Salzman stopped, and temporarily lost all custody of her kids.

She finally returned to the sessions and endured all the God stuff just to get her kids back. But should the government be telling a non-believer to attend what amounts to church just to retain custody of her kids?

Since when do you have to be Christian to be a parent in the United States?

I'm all for Christian counseling, but only for people who want to go, and are not forced to by the government.

By the way, KRQE says Pepper held counseling sessions in municipal libraries, even though you're not allowed to conduct business there.

And Saltzman, along with many other of Pepper's clients, had to pay Pepper in cash, apparently in part because you're not supposed to do business in the library.

Hmmm. So Pepper might be deceitful, too? How Christian!!

So which is it?  Is the nation becoming anti-Christian? Or is it the other way around. I think it's time some of the most offending evangelicals ought to put a sock in it.

Fired Law Professor And Jerk Says U.S. ISIS Policy Critics Are Treasonous. Ugh.

William Bradford thinks people who criticize
the War on Terror or military actions
are guilty of treason. So much for the 1st Amendment

West Point law professor William Bradford is now a former West Point law professor.

He was found to have exaggerated his academic achievements.

But that's not what's really infuriating about Bradford.  I don't know bow a scary guy like this got into the position of teaching law to West Point cadets.

Here's the deal: Basically, he's saying anyone who criticizes U.S. policy toward ISIS is treasonous.

According to The Atlantic, academic scholars who disagree with Bradford's views on the terrible terrorist group ought to be arrested because they are somehow aiding and abetting the terrorists.

It's not that the professors Bradford targets like ISIS. They hate those awful people, like most of us do. They just don't completely agree with all of the "war on terror" policies the United States has had in the past decade or so.

Bradford's language as to how these scholars are guilty of treason are straight out the McCarthy Red Scare tactics of the 1950s. The supposed pro-ISIS scholars, who are anything but, are guilty of "professional socialization, pernicious pacifism and cosmopolitanism."

So apparently it's treason for these professors to socialize with each other, call for peace and tend not to be particularly nationalistic.

Bradford calls the academics he opposes the "fifth column." The Atlantic says Bradford actually believes the scholars should be treated as "unlawful enemy combatants" which would theoretically open them, the schools they work at, their homes, and even  journalists who quote them to a military attack.

Well, then. There goes the First Amendment! And let's combat ISIS by becoming as militaristic, fundamentalist and lacking in human rights as they are! That'll teach 'em!

Luckily, Bradford is out of West Point now, and presumably there are more sane law professors teaching our fine young men and women there.

However, as The Atlantic puts it: 

"But it leaves unanswered the question of how he got hired there in the first place, given his checkered past and allegedly exaggerated credentials. And it also fails to explain how a scholar pushing these ideas seems not to have raised red flags any earlier."

Indeed!

Family Has Too Many Cars Parked In Driveway, Stupid Regulators Say

The four cars parked in this Kennesaw, Georgia
driveway is apparently a terrible crime.
County zoning enforcers told the people who
live here they need to pay for permits
to park more than two cars in their own driveway  

Readers of this blog know I'm continually fascinated by how some zoning enforcers or homeowner association fascists love to micromanage how people manage their property.

At the garden supply company where I work, a woman recently wanted to buy a purple hose but had to settle on a dark green one because her homeowners' association said purple hoses are just too gauche.

Then today, I saw this one: A family in Kennesaw, Georgia was informed by the county they faced fines because there's too many cars in their driveway: Four of 'em.

These aren't broken down cars on blocks, rusting in the hot Georgia sun. I'd object, too, if that were happening.  I can also see needing to obtain permits for parking on public streets, but this is the family's own home, and they point out they already pay property taxes.

These cars are in good running condition and look fine because they belong to the couple that live there, their kids who are home from college, and visiting relatives.

The driveway is also plenty big enough to accommodate the cars, so nobody is parking on grass and ruining lawns.

But for reasons unclear, you have to get a permit to have more than two cars in your driveway, says WSB-TV in Atlanta. 

"I am angry. I am beyond angry. I don't see how the government can tell me whose cars I can park in my own driveway," said Kim Oviedo, who owns the house with the dreaded four cars.

When WSB-TV and other media attention hit about this, the county government, likely embarrassed, will let the family keep four cars in the driveway this summer. But if it happens again next summer, they said, watch out!

Because of all the things bad that can go on in a neighborhood, four cars in one driveway is apparently the WORST!

Maybe We Can Get Our Beer and Other Supplies By Drones After All

Awhile back, toward the end of January, I bemoaned the fact that the Federal Aviation Administration put the stop to a brewery who was trying to deliver beer to ice fishing enthusiasts out on a Wisconsin lake.  

Flower deliveries via drone? So far, it looks
like it might be legal.  

Well, now, there's a glimmer of hope.

In a move similar to the beer drone enforcement, the FAA in February ordered FlowerDeliveryExpress.com, part of Wesley Berry Flowers, in Michigan to stop its experiment of delivery blooms via drone, CBS Detroit reported.

However, a federal administrative law judge, Patrick Geraghty, ruled that he could not accep the FAA's argument for regulating drones, which applies to flights below 400 feet.

Had he agreed with the FAA, the judge said, "a flight in the air of a paper airplane or a toy balsa wood glider could subject the operator" to FAA penalties.

The judge's ruling applies to fights under the ceiling of 400 feet. Drone flights above that are still definitely iffy in the legal department.

Geraghty wasn't ruling on the flower deliveries, but instead another guy who was fined $10,000 for reckless flying when he used a drone to film a 2011 University of Virginia promotional film, CBS Detroit said.

Official FAA rules about drones are due late this autumn, but those rules have already been delayed over and over again.

Judge Geraghty's ruling in favor of the Virginia photographer basically means there are currently no rules for drone flights that don't go above 400 feet. The Detroit florist said that means he'll resume testing his drone flower delivery system.

And presumably, beer can go out via drone to those Wisconsin ice fishing enthusiasts.

You know what would get really interesting is now that pot is legal in Colorado, will drones deliver that, too?

New Jersey Man Ordered to Reimburse State $15,000 in Unemployment Benefits He Never Received

I am always fascinated and appalled by Kafke-esque bureaucratic nightmares that governments always seem so creative at dreaming up.

Bill Woodward was told by N.J. he had to pay back
$15,000 in unemployment benefits he never received.
Photo by Russ DeSantis, N.J. Star-Ledger.  

The latest case centers around a guy named Billy Woodward of New Jersey. The State of New Jersey was demanding he repay to the government $15,000 in unemployment benefits he incorrectly received.

The only problem? He never received $15,000 in unemployment benefits or any other kind of government assistance and he could prove it, according to the Star-Ledger in New Jersey. 

Woodward did collect $642 in unemployment benefits in August, 2013, but that was legit, since his employer laid him off briefly because of slow business.

Woodward apparently tried repeatedly to straighten the whole thing out only to be repeatedly rebuffed. The state even took away a $3,793 tax refund because the state said he owed the money, wrote Karen Price Mueller, who writes the Bamboozled consumer column for the Star Ledger.

Of course this all got fixed when Price Mueller, that pesky reporter, started poking around and asking questions about the case at the New Jersey tax offices. Nothing like bad press to make a government stop torturing people.

The Star Ledger reported that Department of Labor spokesman Brian Murray said the problem stemmed from a data entry error, which snowballed when nobody corrected it and Woodward couldn't get through to anybody to get them to correct the issue.

OK, data entry mistakes happen, that's perfectly understandable. But my cynical self can't believe for a minute in all the paperwork and calls that went back and forth between the state and Woodward, somebody didn't discover the problem and fix it.

No, I think some loser in the government made a mistake, and rather than get in trouble, decided on an elaborate stonewall effort, hoping Woodward would just go away and shut up already.

This seems especially likely since Price Mueller has reported on similar problems in the New Jersey tax and labor departments before.

The scary thing is I wonder how many people do give up and pay, rather than keep fighting for money that is legitimately theirs and not the government's.
'
I know most state government workers are dedicated, honest and hard working, (really!) but there's GOT to be a better way to weed out the horrible ones, no?

Rich Troll Twit Tom Perkins' Latest Idea: Let Rich Buy Up Votes In Elections

Poor Tom Perkins.

Tom Perkins thinks the rich should buy up all the votes
 

By poor, I don't mean monetarily. He's a billionaire.

But in his mind, he doesn't have enough rights. In his mind, if you're rich, you should be able to buy everything. Material things like mansions, Lear jets, baubles and jewelry isn't nearly enough, oh no sir!

If you're very rich, like Perkins is, you ought to be able to buy the adoration of all the serfs under his feet.

How dare anyone have the temerity to criticize the rich!  Or say even the most slightly mean thing about them! Even to envy them!  In his mind, respect is bought, not earned.

Yes, last month, he was the guy who said that criticism of the rich amounted to Kristallnacht, that awful night in Nazi Germany when they started rounding up the Jews for extermination. Yep, mild criticism of the rich is JUST as bad as the Holocaust.

Now our buddy Perkins is back with a brand new idea. Oh, some of these rich people are full of ideas! See, in his mind, elections are another commodity. You buy as many votes as you can muster.

No "one person, one vote" crap that has kept this country running all these years.

According to CNN Money, this is what Perkins said is his great idea:

"'The Tom Perkins system is: you don't get to vote unless you pay a dollar of taxes,' Perkins said, 'But what I really think is, it should be like a corporation. You pay a million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes. How's that?"

Oh, perfect, Tom! Instead of this byzantine system of corporations buying off politicians through campaign contributions to do their bidding, you just buy them off directly.

Pay a few million bucks to just do whatever you want and screw the wishes of everybody else, who you think were too stupid, too undeserving to become obnoxious billionaires like yourself.

Plus, this guarantees the people with the money stay rich, and one of your serfs who has the audacity to try to get rich through talent, hard work and great ideas has no way to do so, because you've thwarted  him or her by buying the government.

 CNN Money reported that his audience at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco kind of laughed at the idea, but Perkins said he's serious, though he allowed, "I intended to be outrageous and I was."

Tom, you were right. We are outraged. I know we shouldn't even pay attention to you. You're just a troll. A moneybags troll, but a troll, and we're not supposed to feed the trolls. It encourages you.

But I'm going to pay attention to you and your ilk anyway. We serfs have to do everything we can and expose your nonsense to you don't buy off the nation for yourself even more than you already do.

Yep, people like me hope to be your Kristallnacht. Except we're not going to smash your windows, arrest you, put you in concentration camps, persecute you or otherwise hurt you. You deserve to live out your life in opulent splendor. Go for it!

Instead, us serfs need to do something that to your mind is surely much, much worse and much, much more painful.

We want to ensure that everybody, even you, Your Highness Tom Perkins, obey the same rules, laws and societal conventions as all the rest of us, including the poor you hate so much, are expected to do.    

Oh the horror!

Did NSA Pick The Wrong Congress Person To Fight With?

Some people love him. Some people hate him.

My guess is U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt isn't
finished with the NSA quite yet.  

But almost everyone agrees that when Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt, gets into a battle, he doesn't let go.

So it will be interesting, to say the least, now that the National Security Agency has basically blown off Sanders when he asked whether the agency spied on any member of Congress.

First of all, I get it that we have to spy and gather intelligence pretty intensely on our terrorist enemies, and I understand that work can get murky, messy and shady. I accept that. Somebody's got to do the dirty work, and that's the NSA's job.

However, it does seem the NSA has gotten a bit carried away, spying on anything that moves, it seems. And what do they do with all that information anyway? They don't seem like the most trustworthy bunch in the world, after all.

The Snowden leaks seem to indicate the NSA pretty much obtained information on everybody, and probably a lot of their work was illegal.

But hey, laws, schmaws. I'm sure the James Bond wannabes at NSA are having a grand old time collecting data on boring emails and phone calls.

I'm criticizing the NSA here, so I half expect their agents to show up at my door even before I finish writing this post, so they can arrest me for daring to complain about them, or something. My computer and cell phone are probably bugged now, too.

Oh well, if the NSA wants to read my boring emails about normal winter weather in Vermont, let them.

Anyway, the latest bit of trouble for the NSA came last week, when Sanders decided to make an inquiry. According to the Burlington (Vt.) Free Press, here's what Sanders asked:

"Has the NSA spied, or is the NSA currently spying, on members of Congress or other American elected officials?....Spying would include gathering metadata on calls made from official or personal phones, content from websites visited or emails sent, or collecting any other data from a third party not available to the general public in the regular course of business?"

The good news is the NSA got back to Sanders pretty much right away. The bad news is, they didn't answer his question. Again, like or hate Sanders, you'd think a government agency would have a little more respect for a Congress person than that, just kind of blowing him off.

Here's part of the NSA's response to Sanders, according to the Free Press, which received this statement from an NSA PR person:

"NSA's authorities to collect signals intelligence data include procedures that protect the privacy of U.S. pesons.....Such protections are built into and cut across the entire process. Members of Congress have the same privacy protections as all U.S. persons."

The NSA also said it is still reviewing Sanders' letter.

Well, that's surely a non-answer. Sanders didn't ask for WHICH members of Congress had been spied upon, if any. He just wanted to know whether it happened. The NSA could have protected privacy by answering Sander's question with a yes or a no, and leaving Congress people's names out of it.

So, reading between the lines, I guess the NSA's non-answer to Sanders is a yes, that they have been spying on Congress.  Some members of Congress, including Sanders, have not said kind things about the NSA, so maybe the agency is annoyed with them, and so maybe they are spying to get the dirt on them?

We may never know, but I bet Sanders will try to keep finding the answer. As I said he doesn't give up very easily.

Yeah, yeah, I know some of this is political posturing on Sanders' part.  But I love watching a good battle, and the one between Sanders and the NSA is going to be a good one, indeed.

Some Congress Creatures Are Profoundly Mentally Ill, And We're All Suffering For It.

A few relatively sane people managed to save the nation from an economic crisis with the budget deal last week,  so maybe, just maybe,  the inmates aren't running the asylum. 

But don't count on it. We haven't heard the last of that awful contingent in Congress that is profoundly mentally ill.
  
Think about it. The strange Tea Party wing that shut down the government and almost caused a global recession live in their own alternative reality where facts are besides the point. 

They just make up their own facts. It's more fun that way. 

They are so narcissitic that they expect the rest of the country to bend to their will, no matter how crazy their ideas and how many people oppose them.  And they delight in dragging the rest of us into their sad, twisted psycho drama.

Sounds like a severe mental illness to me.

Let's pick these symptoms apart.

Facts:

Most people base their decisions on the facts in front of them. Since everybody's different, people will  respond to the facts in various ways. That's why some politicians take a liberal course and others react in a conservative fashion when dealing with the facts, with reality.

That's fine. Eventually, the liberals and conservatives, using the facts as a guide, will argue a bit then work out some sort of compromise.  In the real world, maybe sane conservatives and liberals each have ideas that might improve Obamacare, improve the economy, improve our lives. Each side is worth listening to. 

However, the mentally ill Congress creatures, mostly Tea Party, that precipitated this mess didn't like the facts, so they just created their own reality, by retreating to their own bubble, brought to them by Fox News and lobbying groups like the ironically named Americans For Prosperity. 

So now, instead of dealing with facts, they think the economy won't suffer because they decide not to pay the nation's bills,  that shutting down the government will somehow lead to cost savings when in the real world it's worsening the deficit and made our economy take a $24 billion hit, that everybody supports them when in reality all the polls show most Americans really, really, really hate them.

Plus, they've gerrymandered their Congressional districts so much that they preside over what I might call weird shaped Tea Party ghettos.   

The alternate reality these Congress creatures live in is fed by a weird media and lobbying apparatus that tells them  our socialist terrorist Muslim Kenyan not legitimate president  put down his Quran, stop taking our guns away, and stop sending cash to terrorists, everything will be OK.  

It's why demonstrators, OK, one demonstrator, during a protest amid the shutdown decided to wave a Confederate flag in front of the White House, prompting  journalist Jeff Goldberg to Tweet:

"In many parts of America, waving a Confederate flag outside the home of a black family would be considered a very hostile act."

Note: Right now it's hard right conservatives who have this mental illness. But it can afflict the hard left, too. Chemtrails and 9/11 conspiracy theories, anyone?

Bottom line: That Congress creatures that created this mess are clinging to a fantasy world  is one sign that something is weird mentally. And they insist, are convinced they are right, that they are our saviors, that everyone else is wrong, and we should do whatever they say, no matter what people in the real world think

Which brings us to the next aspect of this mental illness:

Narcissism and No Responsibility:

The whole episode brought us a lot of weird moments that demonstrated this aspect of mental illness.

That's why we had one Congress Creature, Randy Neugebauer,  yelling at a park ranger for closing a national monument that HE helped close and the ranger had nothing to do with. We had another one, Lee Terry of Nebraska saying he wouldn't give up his salary during the shutdown, so that he could afford his "nice house."   (Both later apologized after the expected horrible press)

And we had another one saying the Democrats had to give the Republicans lots of concessions, because, well, they have to. 

"We're not going to be disrespected... We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is," said Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind. early in the shutdown.

Yeah, he didn't know what, but they have to get something to be respected. Um, don't you have to earn respect? 

Not all Tea Party and strongly conservative lawmakers are afflicted with this mental illness, of course. I heard one Tea Party Congressman from Virginia speak on NPR the other night who gave all the Tea Party talking points, but opposed the past two weeks of shenanigans because it harmed the country, didn't get them what they want, and avoided what he sensibly called "principled compromise."

Another conservative, Peter King, a conservative Congressman from New York who does not appear to be affected by this mental illness, was moved to say this last week:

"The party is going nuts.... So many people I run into who are normal people--and I hate to use that term--just don't understand what is going on."

To understand what's going on, what King and the rest of us should do is just examine U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who is widely considered the ringleader of this debacle.

He's the one that did that weird, pointless 21 hour speech as the shutdown loomed railing against Obamacare. During the shutdown, he kept insisting he and the GOP were "winning" the fight, despite plunging poll numbers.

And when it was all over the other day, when Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell was saying a deal had been reached, Cruz tried to steal the media spotlight outside at that very moment saying he'd fight on

And Thursday,  Cruz said Thursday he wouldn't rule out causing another government shutdown to stop Obamacare. 

So they're all delusional. The sad thing is, had more sane people who oppose Obamacare, who have different ideas on how to coax the economy along, they might have made some progress had it not been for the crazies.

And the economy, Americans, wouldn't have suffered as a result. 

Of course, the whole point of trotting out these crazies is to make barely less crazy right wing ideas seem a bit less off the wall, thereby making them acceptable to us.

Hey, sequestration, which use to be regarded as completely off the wall, seems like the norm now.

Obviously, I have no good ideas on how to get out of this mess. I'm not a psychiatrist, so I can't fix Congress. I don't think anybody can. That's the disheartening thing about living with someone with a mental illness.

You're trapped in their chronic, sad condition.

All you can do is make jokes about it. The Onion had it right with its story last week about a broken sewer pipe. You've GOT to read it to make you feel better. (click on this hyperlink)  

Did Somebody Put Stupid/Crazy Pills In Washington DC's Water?

It's official. Some terrorist put some horrible substance in Washington DC's water, which made everybody go crazy and off the deep end.

Michelle Bachmann never fails to disappoint
with her craziness  

We had the tragic and definitely unfunny incidents in which the woman in the car with the toddler thought she was being monitored, caused that chase and was shot to death by Capitol Police.

This was followed a couple days later by that guy who mysteriously burned himself to death on the Mall.

Then, this week, people are saying the most amazing things.

We have the ever reliable Michelle Bachmann, who added to her usual cannard about how Obama is funding terrorists

But she's changed her tune! She's no longer upset about that! Because it's a good sign.

It's a sign of the End Times!  According to Right Wing Watch she said this:

"This happened and as of today the United States is willingly, knowingly, intentionally sending arms to terrorists, now what this says to me. I'm a believer in Jesus Christ, as I look at the End Times scripture, this says to me that the leaf is on the fig tree and we are to understand the sign of the times, which is your ministry, we are to understand where we are in God's end times history.

I'd settle for the End Times to Bachmann's Reign Of Error in Washington, but you can't have everything.

Meanwhile, a group of truckers have come up with a remarkable plan for later this week.  According to U.S. News and World Report, the truckers, to protest what they say is Washington trashing the Constitution, will slow traffic in DC, then put handcuffs on members of Congress and President Obama and make citizens arrests for treason, says Earl Conlon, a Georgia trucker who is handling logistics for this whole plan.

I'm almost disappointed a truckers group
won't try to arrest Obama, Congress during
a planned protest this weekend.  

What can possible go wrong with that plan?

Well, for one, not all of the group, Truckers Ride For the Constitution, are on board with this.

On the Truckers Ride for the Constitution Facebook page, it turns out that Conlon was not authorized to be spokesman.

Contrary to what Conlon might have said, the Truckers Ride for the Constitution people say now they will NOT try to arrest Obama or members of Congress.

In a way, I'm disappointed by this sudden little dose of sanity,  because the drama would have been a nice diversion.

Love the logo for the group, by the way. A hot babe in a blue dress standing in front of a big, manly truck. Cool!

I'm all for the trucker protest, as long as they don't play that hideous trucker CB radio song from the 1970s "Convoy." Makes me throw up every time.

Judging from the Truckers' Facebook page, most people in their ranks are relieved. They want to make their voices heard, which is good, but they don't want to be regarded as kooks, which is also good.

However, there's a few in every crowd. commenters on the Facebook page want action and some  arrests. Somebody named Cody Updegrave wrote of the arrest idea:

"Unlawful you say? How about the citizens who are being drug (sic) from their homes because the government want their land...or the countless Americans who have been stripped of their 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th amendment rights. FUCK THE LAW...it's time to take back our country."

 Um, from who? The people you elected.

It must be something in the water.

City Council Meetings Are Just Like Epic Summer Blockbuster Movies!

A lot of people think city council meetings are boring.

They drone on about recreation budgets, street repairs, sewer facility upgrades. What's the charm or excitement in that?

Well, the Whitehorse, Yukon City Council begs to differ. You can watch their derring-do up there in northwestern Canada every Monday at 7:30 p.m. on Community Cable 9.

As an aside, I love how the Whitehouse web site home page has the following announcement: "Government and agencies to participate in operation Nanook"

If you haven't already abandoned reading this post to book your next flight to Whitehorse to watch the City Council in action, this ad will get you moving. The excitement! The intrigue! They've got my heart palpitating already:

U.S. To Bomb Guam With Poison Mice To Combat Snakes

If you needed more proof that the United States is a leader in weaponry innovation, here it is:

We're going to bomb Guam, a U.S. territory, with toxic, poison mice, according to the Associated Press

Dropping poisoned mice on Guam
might solve a snake problem.  

Yes, it sounds like this is one of those snarky "Your tax dollars at work" attack on government waste, but this actually sounds like it might be for a good cause.

The poison mice, raining down from the skys, will seem like manna from heaven to the invasive brown tree snakes that have pretty much wiped out the bird population on Guam. That is until the snakes, having eaten the poison mice as if they were at a giant rodent buffet, get sick and die.

I like this line from the AP story:

"The solution to this headache, fittingly enough, is acetaminophen, the active ingredient in painkillers including Tylenol."

So, I guess Tylenol is good for my headache, but bad for brown snakes. I wonder if the mice have headaches that get cured before they die from acetaminophen poisoning.

The plan is pretty brilliant in that the scientists are taking care not to hurt other animals. The toxic mouse bombs have stuff attached to them so that they get hung up in the trees when they fall, so the tree snakes get them, but the rodents don't make it to the ground, where they could otherwise harm other wildlife.

As for hurting birds on Guam with the toxic mice, that's no problem. The tree snakes have already killed all of the birds,  so poison mice aren't a problem in that regard.

I just wonder what happens to the dead snakes after they've eaten the Tylenol flavored mice. On second thought, maybe I don't want to know.

No Death Star Proposal From White House This Year

Lost in all the news in the last week or two about gun control legislation, debt ceiling debates and budget hassles was one development at the White House that is sure to depress or anger some Americans:

To the disappointment of at least 34,000 people
the U.S. government will not build a death star like this one.

The Obama administration has turned down a petition to create a Death Star.

More than 34,400 people signed the petition for the death star, exceeding the threshhold of 25,000 signatures needed to force a response from the White House.  It's part of the administration's "We the People" program, where people can sign petitions on any issue they wish, and if a certain amount of people sign, the White House has to respond.

As you'd imagine, you do get some weird ones. Like when Hostess, the maker of Twinkies went bankrupt, a petition demanded the Obama administration nationalize Twinkies, to keep the supply going.

That effort failed.

But another petition met with success. The White House was persuaded to release the recipe for its homemade Honey Brown Ale.

In regards to the Death Star petition, Paul Shawcross, the Chief of the Science and Space Branch at the White House Office of Management and Budget, gave an emphatic no.  

He noted construction of the device would cost a cool $850,000,000,000,000,000. "We're working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it," Shawcross wrote.

Actually, we could reduce the budget deficit if we shortened Shawcross's job title.

The Obama administration apparently opposed Death Stars from a policy prospective, too. "The Administration does not support blowing up planets," Shawcross wrote.

In my view, it should depends on which planet. The ones in our solar system are good enough, but what if we find a particularly nasty one somewhere else. Why would we want a grim, ugly planet messing up our beautiful galaxy?  I think the door should be left open to destroy planets, but that's just me.

Additionally, Shawcross questioned if a Death Star would be effective. "Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that cae be exploited by a one-man starship," he wrote, reflecting his knowledge of the Star Wars series.

So the chances of us getting a Death Star to rule the universe look slim. On the bright side, Congress keeps ordering equipment for the Defense Department that it doesn't want, so I suppose there's a glimmer of hope here.

It's My Constitutional Right to Demand We Act Responsibly!

After the Newtown massacre, everybody is talking about rights: The right to guns, free speech, religion, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I'm stepping back and looking at the big picture. There is one overarching symptom that is making life harder in this nation. Not only in the context of Newtown, but in everything.

Many of us have stopped acknowledging that with our rights come responsibilities.   We have a ton of rights, most of them enshrined in the Constitution. We're lucky, compared to the repressed lives of people in so many nations, where so many governments force their people to endure a life without the freedom we have.

Implicit in the Constitution, though, is the rights we enjoy come with personal responsibility. I think that's why the Founding Fathers generally wanted government out of the way: They trusted us to balance our personal freedoms with everybody else's.

Has that trust broken down?  Maybe it has.  

Yes, we have the right to free speech, to say anything we want. But don't we have the responsibility to at least not be one of those horrible Internet trolls who say things that are beyond dreadful, wishing innocent disaster victims suffer more or die, because said trolls get their jollies from it? Or to call in threats to churches in Newtown,  also because it's fun?

It's not all about you. So shut the F**k up.

We have the right to pursue our religious beliefs as we see fit. But our religious rights don't give us the authority to impinge on how others worship.  I don't want to hear any more from some religious nutcases that the fact I don't pray the way they do, I'm taking away their "rights."

The way you worship works for you. You don't have the "right" to tell me or anybody else how to pray. You worship how you want in your church, and I'll do the same in mine. If we disagree, we'll just leave each other alone. It's not that hard.

The Second Amendment says we have the right to own guns. Many of us own guns for hunting, personal protection, target practicing, whatever. Great! But a few people who own guns seem to think they have the "right" to handle their weapons any way they want. Even if it endangers the rest of us. Don't we all have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?  Not to mention the right not to get shot by some stupid yahoo?

Speaking of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, your right to such pursuits doesn't mean you can run roughshod over the rest of us. If money makes you happy, you have the right to earn as much as you can, as long as you have the responsibility to not screw the rest of us over in the process.

You have the right to the liberty of doing whatever you want on your own property, as long as you are responsible enough that you don't trash, ruin or destroy the value of the rest of our properties in the process .

I'm not looking for the government, some corporation or some other refereeing overlord to keep us all on the straight and narrow. My call for responsibility might fall on deaf ears, but I figure we all have to start somewhere.

After all, it's both our right and responsibility to do so.

Torturing Airline Passengers is Seasonal Tradition

A lot of us are taking planes to see the family this holiday season, my husband included, so that means it's time for the national game to begin: Torturing airline passengers!

It started early this year with this news. About a week ago, Delta Airlines employees thought the perfect target for a holiday torture would be to focus on a Marine that had been badly wounded and disabled in Afghanistan, according to the Washington Post.

Delta Airlines is accused of mistreating
a disabled Marine in a wheelchair

Lance Cpl. Christian Brown is a double amputee, and Delta employees thought such a person belonged in back of the plane, and clumsily bumped and pushed and jarred his wheelchair down the narrow plane aisle in full view of everybody.

There were plenty of chances to give him a far more dignified ride. Several passengers in First Class in the front of the plane offered to give up their seats for Brown, but the employees refused, saying the plane had to take off immediately.

Turns out the plane was actually running early. And besides, how long would it take for somebody in First Class to move to Coach and give Brown the seat?

The Washington Post quoted retired Army Lt. Col. Keith Gafford, who witnessed the incident thusly:

“I have been flying with Delta for a gazillion years and this crew treated Chris worse than you’d treat any thing, not even any body. I did 27 years in the military. I have seen a lot of things and have seen a lot of guys die, but I have never seen a Marine cry,” said Gafford, who served two tours in Iraq. “What the kid said was, ‘I have given everything that I can give and this is the way I am being treated? This is how I will be treated for the rest of my life?’” 

A Delta spokesperson gave the usual corporate apology, and said the company would take the additional necessary next steps, but didn't say what those steps are. Firing? Retraining? Or is Delta just going to let the whole thing blow over?

Meanwhile, the Transportation Security Administration thought it would be fun to harass a wheelchair bound, sick 12 year old girl at a Dallas airport, according to television station KDFW, Fox 4 in Dallas.

Apparently, the TSA agents detected what was believed to be bomb residue on the girl's hand and/or wheelchair. False positives happen sometimes, so OK, so far, not so bad.

TSA is also accused of abusing somebody
in a wheelchair, this time a 12 year old girl

But in this case, they kept the girl out in the public eye, not letting her mother near her, and not explaining what was going on. This lasted for nearly an hour, during which the girl was clearly upset, and occasionally cried.  They finally let her go without an apology.

How about a little compassion until or unless it was proven the kid was some nasty little terrorist, or something?  And maybe investigate the situation out of the view of all those passersby?

Yes, I know the TSA has a tough job and yes, I know we all want them to stop anybody from making terrorist mischief on our planes, and yes, some people are going to be subject to false alarms. Deal with it. But do you really have to be this insensitive?

TSA, in response to the publicity, like Delta, sent out the usual bland statement:

"TSAs mission is to safely, efficiently and respectfully screen nearly two million passengers each day at airports nationwide. We are sensitive to the concerns of passengers who were not satisfied with their screen experience and we invite those individuals to provide feedback to TSA through a variety of channels." 

Which leads me to my big point here. It' is INFURIATING that every time some company or some agency gets called on the carpet with some real or alleged misdeed, they resort to these same bland statements, that was probably written by one guy 20 years ago and just recycled by everybody.

These bland PR statements arguably anger people more than the original problem, because they don't address specifics, and don't say what will be done to fix the problem. The message in these statements. "Go away and quit bothering us. We'll do what we damn well please."

And notice how the TSA statement implicit blames the girl and her mother for the PR mess. They wanted them to provide feedback in their channels. So that unpleasant publicity not happen and the TSA can just bury the problem without doing anything.

More people ought to stand up and make a public stink if treated horribly. That doesn't mean complaining at every slight, or going into hystrionics. But really. let's hold people and companies just a tiny bit accountable, shall we?