Greetings, fellow freedom fighters! I hope everyone has enjoyed Labor Day, the day honoring the American worker and the institution he/she has formed, the Trade Union movement, for the empowerment of workers and other low-income people. I am also active in the movement to revitalize May Day as a workers' holiday in this country. We can have both May Day AND Labor Day, we deserve it!
There are efforts by Republican state governors in to keep unfavorable voters from voting. Wisconsin's chief idiot Scott Walker signed a voter ID bill prohibiting people who don't have state ID cards or driver's licenses from voting--and VERY conveniently closed ten Department of Motor Vehicles offices where people could get their IDs. This is a deliberate attempt to prevent African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, college students, and seniors from voting, or making it inconvenient to apply for a form of ID. Similar laws have been introduced in Ohio, Kansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Colorado, Montana, and Texas; there has also been cases of "voter caging," where voting officials challenge a voter's qualification to vote, thus intimidating the potential voter.
All this has been done in the name of "voter integrity" and "fair elections;" this, from the party of 2000, the party of voter fraud in Florida, of voters who would have voted against George DUH Bush purged from the rolls, where voters were intimidated by police, where the votes of the Supreme Court mattered-voter integrity, indeed! The idea is to prevent low-income, poor and working people-the same people-from voting and seeking their empowerment, thus skewing the state in favor of the wealthy and corporations.
The cat popped out of the bag when conservative writer Matthew Vadum wrote, "Why are left-wing activist groups so keen on registering the poor to vote?...Because they know the poor can be counted on to vote themselves more benefits by electing redistributionist politicians. Welfare recipients are particularly open to demagoguery and bribery." And here's the kicker-"Registering them to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals...It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country-- which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote. ... Encouraging those who burden society to participate in elections isn't about helping the poor. It's about helping the poor to help themselves to others' money."
SO--Wealthy people and corporations, that allowed this economic catastrophe to occur due to their ignorance and greed, that get trillions of dollars of federal money because they're "too big to fail", are productive, while working and low-income people, who work for money and spend it at local stores, thus boosting the economy, and leeches? Wonderful logic! And it's worded so that the villain is "some one else, not you nice people".
In the ‘seventies, the New Right movement, through the direct-mail guru Richard Viguerie, concocted the line of “producers,” working people and corporations, as opposed to “non-producers,” government, universities, welfare recipients, etc., to give a “populist” look to the movement; fascist movements in Europe also tried to look “revolutionary,” to appeal to the masses. Now the “populist” facade has fallen off the plutocratic edifice that is contemporary conservativism. If the conservatives are such populists, why are they trying to keep people from voting?
Forty years ago, President Richard Nixon declared a "war on drugs," mainly as a way of fighting the cultural changes of the 'sixties, like the anti-war and civil rights movements, and the general realization that the nation's political and economic elite is NOT perfect, that we don't have to look up to them. (Anyway...) Nixon's formed a commission, headed by former Pennsylvania Governor Raymond Shafer, to look into the effects of marijuana and other drugs, and the appropriate measures to take towards them. The commission, after serious research, told Nixon what he did not want to hear -- "No significant physical, biochemical, or mental abnormalities could be attributed solely to their marihuana smoking," and, "No verification is found of a causal relationship between marihuana use and subsequent heroin use." Thus, "The Commission feels that the criminalization of possession of marihuana for personal [use] is socially self-defeating as a means of achieving this objective . . ." The commission, obviously, did not want to encourage marijuana or drug use, but neither did they want to make it a crime.
But Nixon wanted to create a scare among the American people about minorities and anti-war activists, and he rejected his own commission's report. Forty years-the War on Drugs goes on. A war that lasts forty years? What are the casualties and the costs? As a propaganda move, Nixon must have thought this was a stroke of genius--have an enemy that has no nationality, no physical form, that is an abstraction, like drugs; and history shows that when you have a war, anyone who doesn't go along with the "war" is a traitor or a coward, and thus can be smacked down, either by public opinion or police terror.
(By the way, I recommend the biography of Nixon, The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon, by Anthony Summers, which goes through Nixon's own issues with drugs and alcohol; was Nixon projecting his own addictions on others, so that he didn't have to face his own? He would neither be the firstor the last person to do so.)
A forty year war; and the drugs keep coming into the country, and people still keep taking them, after all the arrests and propaganda. What's wrong with this picture? Is the government serious about stopping drugs? Are officials taking bribes to let the drugs in? Doesn't this remind us about the "noble experiment of Prohibition, where liquor was banned from legal sale, so criminal cartels made money from illegally selling the stuff, abetted by paid-off public officials? People's hypocrisy added to this, taking the booze while opposing repeal of Prohibition, because that was what nice respectable people believed.
Back in 2009, the "tea party movement"--founded with corporate money, in the manner of an "Astroturf" movement founded by public relations firms--made its debut by sitting in the front rows at congressional town hall meetings and threatening congress-members over the debate on health insurance; typical of totalitarian thugs, which the right-wing has degenerated into!
Now, the tables are turned; the Republican congress-members elected through the tea parties have faced criticism from constituents for their attempts to end such popular programs as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and the failure to create jobs--the preposterous political game playing about the raising of the debt ceiling, I‘m sure, didn‘t help things. Paul Ryan (Wisconsin), Ben Quayle (Arizona), and Chip Cravaack (Minnesota) had to hold meeting that people paid to see them; Jim Renacci and Steve Chabot of Ohio prevented cameras at their own town meetings; Dan Lungren of California was criticized for supporting the Bush tax cuts for the rich; Dan Webster of Florida threatened to kick out a constituent for calling for tax increases on corporations, and has put out a “watch list“ of activists who would DARE to question their elected officials; and Herrera Beutler of Washington had NO town meetings at all.
Whether or not the Democratic party leadership, from the President on down, is willing to take on the Republican-corporate-conservative onslaught is another matter; are WE willing to do so? That’s the key, and I believe we’re starting to do so. Let’s keep up our fight, and we’ll keep on winning, and we’ll have the confidence in ourselves to fight for our freedom. Bye!
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
The Mason Missile, August 2, 2011
Greetings, freedom fighters! Happy (belated) birthday to me! I thank EVERY body for their good birthday wishes.
Recently, I felt this pain in my abdomen, and I thought it was something I ate. I finally got sick of the pain enough to check myself into the emergency room of Thomas Jefferson Hospital, 1100 Chestnut Street, and I thought I would get a laxative or something; I had acute appendicitis (it didn’t feel too cute!) and I had a laparoscopic appendectomy, and I was out the next afternoon. I am grateful to the staff of Jefferson for their skill and friendliness.
This bring up two points:
The need for a national health insurance system in this country. Health care is a right and a necessity, like education-not a luxury.
The importance of joining a union. I showed the clerk my health insurance card, paid for through my union. But I urge you to not just join for the benefits, to treat the union like a "vending machine," you put money in a pull the lever and get something; get involved, take part in meetings, join a committee-you'll find within you confidence and skills you didn't know you had, and you'll have an extra family.
Are you as disgusted as I am with the stupid political game-playing in Washington over raising the debt ceiling? Boehner, Cantor, et al demanded cuts in such programs as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid--no mention of cutting the defense budget. Well, the deal is made, and the cuts in domestic spending are set.
Or ARE they? The "news" media has not discussed the effects of cuts on such programs as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, only how NOT raising the debt ceiling would effect the federal government's ability to make payments, and of the government's bond rating with Standard and Poor. (Who are our officials most answerable to, We the people or stockbrokers and bond-traders?) Nor was there ANY discussion, in Washington or the media, about raising taxes on upper-income people, the top one-tenth of the top one percent of the population, or of cutting military spending-such as cutting back on our losing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. It was all an excuse to take down the aforementioned programs that benefit people who have worked for a long time.
AND-Jon Kyl, in his reply to President Obama's address Saturday, kept up the idea that taxes would scare away businesses from setting up; a rehash of the supply-side theory that Ronald Reagan brought into Washington.
Where were these deficit militants in the GOP when Ronald Reagan ran up deficits, adding up to the deficits of all the other presidents combined? Or when George W. Bush, after Bill Clinton's budget surplus (due to a slight tax increase on higher incomes, but we had a great economic run in spite of the supply-side doom-saying) ran up a deficit due to upper-income tax cuts and two wars we can't win? No; it is just an excuse to target social programs, programs that benefit people, but are scapegoated as the cause of all economic ills.
(Of course, low-income and working people don’t have thousand-dollar an hour lobbyists wining and dining congress-members, and writing down the language in the bills with them.)
It does NOT have to be like this. We CAN and MUST drive out the Tea-Party types from the House; but not just replace them with “Democrats,” but with people dedicated to the public interest, preferably trade unionists who know what it’s like to have to try to decide, “Do I pay for the heating oil now, or concentrate on the gas bill, and how much can I pay for the orthodontist for the kids?”
Also-Some deep intellects in some state legislatures have pushed through laws against establishing Sharia (Islamic law) into state law. These are the same types who insist the US of A is a "Christian" nation, and all law should reflect that. Do these dimwit legislators really feel people will go along with this? But when you think about it, who votes these jokers in? The assaults on our Muslim fellow citizens is a new version of the old "Red Scare," and we must resist it.
Laws have been passed in Ohio, Wisconsin, and other states with Republican controlled legislatures and governors that try to limit voting rights for minorities, seniors, and college students, piously raising the specter of “voter fraud”. I look forward to court challenges to these bills, challenging their constitutionality, but with the Supreme Court the way it is, and memories of Citizens United, It's cause to worry. I have other memories, of how African-American voters in Florida in 2000 were either purged from the rolls, or intimidated by police from going to the polls, and then we had the eight lost years of George DUH Bush.
On the bright side, I’m enjoying the decline and (hopefully) fall of the Murdoch media empire. That empire lost one of its provinces, the British tabloid News Of The World, over such dubious journalistic practices as tapping into cell phone accounts of a missing girl. One other province of the Murdoch empire is Fox News in the US of A, which is merely a privatized propaganda ministry of the right, a disseminator of misinformation. For thirty years, Rupert Murdoch has bought up newspapers, magazines, and radio and TV stations, peddling junk excuses for “journalism” and causing politicians to give into him so he doesn’t smear them. This shows the need for an independent and alternative media in this country and all over the world.
The forces of reaction, my friends, must not and DO NOT have the final word-WE do. Let us enjoy our time off from the job and at the beach, so we’ll be rested and stronger for the fight. Bye!
Recently, I felt this pain in my abdomen, and I thought it was something I ate. I finally got sick of the pain enough to check myself into the emergency room of Thomas Jefferson Hospital, 1100 Chestnut Street, and I thought I would get a laxative or something; I had acute appendicitis (it didn’t feel too cute!) and I had a laparoscopic appendectomy, and I was out the next afternoon. I am grateful to the staff of Jefferson for their skill and friendliness.
This bring up two points:
The need for a national health insurance system in this country. Health care is a right and a necessity, like education-not a luxury.
The importance of joining a union. I showed the clerk my health insurance card, paid for through my union. But I urge you to not just join for the benefits, to treat the union like a "vending machine," you put money in a pull the lever and get something; get involved, take part in meetings, join a committee-you'll find within you confidence and skills you didn't know you had, and you'll have an extra family.
Are you as disgusted as I am with the stupid political game-playing in Washington over raising the debt ceiling? Boehner, Cantor, et al demanded cuts in such programs as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid--no mention of cutting the defense budget. Well, the deal is made, and the cuts in domestic spending are set.
Or ARE they? The "news" media has not discussed the effects of cuts on such programs as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, only how NOT raising the debt ceiling would effect the federal government's ability to make payments, and of the government's bond rating with Standard and Poor. (Who are our officials most answerable to, We the people or stockbrokers and bond-traders?) Nor was there ANY discussion, in Washington or the media, about raising taxes on upper-income people, the top one-tenth of the top one percent of the population, or of cutting military spending-such as cutting back on our losing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. It was all an excuse to take down the aforementioned programs that benefit people who have worked for a long time.
AND-Jon Kyl, in his reply to President Obama's address Saturday, kept up the idea that taxes would scare away businesses from setting up; a rehash of the supply-side theory that Ronald Reagan brought into Washington.
Where were these deficit militants in the GOP when Ronald Reagan ran up deficits, adding up to the deficits of all the other presidents combined? Or when George W. Bush, after Bill Clinton's budget surplus (due to a slight tax increase on higher incomes, but we had a great economic run in spite of the supply-side doom-saying) ran up a deficit due to upper-income tax cuts and two wars we can't win? No; it is just an excuse to target social programs, programs that benefit people, but are scapegoated as the cause of all economic ills.
(Of course, low-income and working people don’t have thousand-dollar an hour lobbyists wining and dining congress-members, and writing down the language in the bills with them.)
It does NOT have to be like this. We CAN and MUST drive out the Tea-Party types from the House; but not just replace them with “Democrats,” but with people dedicated to the public interest, preferably trade unionists who know what it’s like to have to try to decide, “Do I pay for the heating oil now, or concentrate on the gas bill, and how much can I pay for the orthodontist for the kids?”
Also-Some deep intellects in some state legislatures have pushed through laws against establishing Sharia (Islamic law) into state law. These are the same types who insist the US of A is a "Christian" nation, and all law should reflect that. Do these dimwit legislators really feel people will go along with this? But when you think about it, who votes these jokers in? The assaults on our Muslim fellow citizens is a new version of the old "Red Scare," and we must resist it.
Laws have been passed in Ohio, Wisconsin, and other states with Republican controlled legislatures and governors that try to limit voting rights for minorities, seniors, and college students, piously raising the specter of “voter fraud”. I look forward to court challenges to these bills, challenging their constitutionality, but with the Supreme Court the way it is, and memories of Citizens United, It's cause to worry. I have other memories, of how African-American voters in Florida in 2000 were either purged from the rolls, or intimidated by police from going to the polls, and then we had the eight lost years of George DUH Bush.
On the bright side, I’m enjoying the decline and (hopefully) fall of the Murdoch media empire. That empire lost one of its provinces, the British tabloid News Of The World, over such dubious journalistic practices as tapping into cell phone accounts of a missing girl. One other province of the Murdoch empire is Fox News in the US of A, which is merely a privatized propaganda ministry of the right, a disseminator of misinformation. For thirty years, Rupert Murdoch has bought up newspapers, magazines, and radio and TV stations, peddling junk excuses for “journalism” and causing politicians to give into him so he doesn’t smear them. This shows the need for an independent and alternative media in this country and all over the world.
The forces of reaction, my friends, must not and DO NOT have the final word-WE do. Let us enjoy our time off from the job and at the beach, so we’ll be rested and stronger for the fight. Bye!
Saturday, July 2, 2011
The Mason Missile, July 2, 2011
Greetings, freedom fighters!
I hope you all voted in the last election and in every other election. Nothing freaks me out worse than people not voting, a right people died for. I recall mile-long lines of people voting in South Africa, after the fall of the apartheid regime. In this past election, I heard election workers say that the possibility of rain kept some people from voting. For the right to vote, people were shot at, sprayed with fire hoses, mauled by attack dogs, firebombed, and other things. On the other hand, the quality of candidates for office can be pretty low.
As you noticed, I had to change my e-mail server to Comcast, since I was having billing problems with Verizon. To me, one capitalist corporation is just as bad as the next.
I tip my hat to Navy Seal Team Six, for their work in taking out Osama bin Laden. Of course, this does not end all terrorism -- there are several groups naming themselves Al-Qaeda, and they’re not organized in the classical military chain of command, squads, platoons, companies, etc.
What gets me is how Fox “News” and the rest of the rightist propaganda community act like George DUH Bush, who is NOT in office, had something to do with bin Laden’s demise. Bush had the opportunity to capture bin Laden in Afghanistan, but he declared war on Iraq instead. I don’t think Bush had ANY intention to get bin Laden, just use him as a boogieman to scare us when Bush’s poll numbers dipped; also there are connection between the Bush family and the Saudi royal family and other wealthy Saudi families, including the bin Ladens. This has been written about in the book by Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud.
This raises another question -- since bin Laden is dead, do our forces have to remain in Afghanistan? I originally supported the military action, and I thought it would lead to a better day for the Afghans. But Afghanistan’s “government” is corrupt to the gills, thus fueling the Taliban.
Plus--the Pakistani government is supposed to be our ally in the Afghanistan conflict, but the ties between the Pakistani military and intelligence apparatus to al Qaeda is still strong; how could they not know bin Laden lived in that mansion next to a military academy, in a city populated with military retirees? Pardon the cliché, but we have some rethinking of strategy to do.
Please forgive me that I take so much time in preparing the Missiles, I want to get my facts straight, now be like Rush Limbaugh popping off the first line of BS that pops into his wasteland of a mind.
The Republicans in Congress have made such a big thing lately of cutting government spending and closing the deficit. That’s been the line for over thirty years. However, that has just been proven to cut into such social programs as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, programs that have benefited people struggling to get by -- like yours truly.
Under the leadership of Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, chair of the House Budget Committee, the Republicans have voted to cut Medicare and continue tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, while the “middle class” -- euphemism-speak for those not of the highest faction of the highest one percent of the population -- those of us not wealthy enough to buy a senator -- have the entire tax burden placed on us. It’s like the old premise of “supply side economics,” give the corporations everything they ask for, and the economy will blossom.
Where were these Republican budget balancers during the Bush II era, when a surplus was turned into a deficit, and when we’re fighting wars, at least one of which was based on fraud and manipulation of our citizen’s anger and fear? Like I said, it’s NOT AT ALL about deficit, it’s all about satisfying the corporate elite. But the public has gotten its message out, and saying NO to all this.
Paul Ryan once said he got into public life because of the teachings and writings of Ayn Rand, the prophetess of the “Virtue of Selfishness,” whose fantasies were of heroic entrepreneurs at war with government bureaucrats and “the mob.” (Rather odd -- Ryan goes into public life, where the issues of people are collectively addressed, due to Ayn Rand and her “individualistic” ideas.) Now we see a revival of Rand’s books, and the film version of Atlas Shrugged released, which did terrible box office the weekend it came out. This is the fantasy world the right-wing and its minions live in, not at all connected with reality. In spite of the “individualistic” rap of Rand and her disciples, this is a form of (Yes, I WILL say it) Fascism, where the Great Leader and his Elite Vanguard Party rule over us, due to their very superiority, and we cheer them.
Alas, I shall have to say a few things about the Anthony Weiner thing, so here I go:
He was pretty damn stupid to put his tweeter out on Twitter.
The Democratic party leadership wimped out on him, while a Republican in a similar situation--say, David Vitter after his diaper fetish, or Rush Limbaugh with his drug addiction -- retained support.
Weiner’s constituents backed him up, showing greater leadership than the Democratic party leadership.
The commercial news media’s idea of “news” is a lot of soft porn and scandal, rather than intelligent discussion of what really touches on people, like unemployment and the economy.
The same commercial media, the so called “left-liberal slanted” news media, gives in readily to the right-wing movement, whether it’s conceding the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush, who got the lesser number of votes,, thus caving to Fox “News”; going along with Andrew Breitbart’s super-doctored video of Shirley Sherrod, the Agriculture Department official, to “prove” she hated discriminated against white farmers; and James O’Keefe, Breitbart’s pet boy, who played the pimp daddy to destroy ACORN (can you say "racial stereotype" and "secret fantasy"?), and the media and courts went along with it, even though the video was SO a fraud.
We in this country are still “shocked, shocked, I tell you” that people engage in Sex, and members of Congress, being human beings, are no exception; but the Republican Right keeps harping on traditional family values, while engaging in the very Sex acts they condemn; reference again David Vitter, Larry Craig, Ted Haggard, Jimmy Swaggart, and Jim Bakker.
I am SO disgusted with the spinelessness of our political and media establishment, constantly deferring to their “superiors” on the right-wing of the political spectrum, a movement hell-bent on restoring a plutocratic regime in this country. They would take us back to those ways of yesteryear, when children went to the mines rather then school for their education as to their place in society; when work days could be sixteen hours long, giving you time enough to drag yourself home and back to work again the next day, not spending time with your family or friends or your own mind; when at the work site you breathed more coal dust, chemical fumes, or textile lint then oxygen, killing you before you reached forty; where one ethnic or racial group was pitted against the other, this being encouraged by the bosses to prevent working-class solidarity and finding out who the REAL enemy is; where women had next to NO options for advancement.
I was delighted when Rich Trumka, President of the national AFL-CIO, proclaimed the Labor movement’s independence from the Democratic party, stating at the meeting of National Nurses United, “For too long, we have been left after Election Day holding a canceled check waving it about, (saying) ‘Remember us? Remember us?’--asking someone to pay a little attention to us...I had a snootful of this shit!”
Me too! The Democratic party has prided itself as the party of the New Deal and Great Society, government programs that strove to benefit working and poor people for a change as opposed to the corporate elite -- even as the party copped out on us, cutting deals with the Republicans to cut down, or out, these programs; and the Democratic party still tells us to vote for them, or we’ll hand the government over to the Republicans. No more of that, I say. I continue to advocate an independent and viable Labor-Socialist-Social Democratic party in the US of A, and take some of the Democratic party system with us to form it, from the humblest ward leaders and committee members to state organizations.
This is the food for thought for now, and more WILL come. Bye!
I hope you all voted in the last election and in every other election. Nothing freaks me out worse than people not voting, a right people died for. I recall mile-long lines of people voting in South Africa, after the fall of the apartheid regime. In this past election, I heard election workers say that the possibility of rain kept some people from voting. For the right to vote, people were shot at, sprayed with fire hoses, mauled by attack dogs, firebombed, and other things. On the other hand, the quality of candidates for office can be pretty low.
As you noticed, I had to change my e-mail server to Comcast, since I was having billing problems with Verizon. To me, one capitalist corporation is just as bad as the next.
I tip my hat to Navy Seal Team Six, for their work in taking out Osama bin Laden. Of course, this does not end all terrorism -- there are several groups naming themselves Al-Qaeda, and they’re not organized in the classical military chain of command, squads, platoons, companies, etc.
What gets me is how Fox “News” and the rest of the rightist propaganda community act like George DUH Bush, who is NOT in office, had something to do with bin Laden’s demise. Bush had the opportunity to capture bin Laden in Afghanistan, but he declared war on Iraq instead. I don’t think Bush had ANY intention to get bin Laden, just use him as a boogieman to scare us when Bush’s poll numbers dipped; also there are connection between the Bush family and the Saudi royal family and other wealthy Saudi families, including the bin Ladens. This has been written about in the book by Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud.
This raises another question -- since bin Laden is dead, do our forces have to remain in Afghanistan? I originally supported the military action, and I thought it would lead to a better day for the Afghans. But Afghanistan’s “government” is corrupt to the gills, thus fueling the Taliban.
Plus--the Pakistani government is supposed to be our ally in the Afghanistan conflict, but the ties between the Pakistani military and intelligence apparatus to al Qaeda is still strong; how could they not know bin Laden lived in that mansion next to a military academy, in a city populated with military retirees? Pardon the cliché, but we have some rethinking of strategy to do.
Please forgive me that I take so much time in preparing the Missiles, I want to get my facts straight, now be like Rush Limbaugh popping off the first line of BS that pops into his wasteland of a mind.
The Republicans in Congress have made such a big thing lately of cutting government spending and closing the deficit. That’s been the line for over thirty years. However, that has just been proven to cut into such social programs as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, programs that have benefited people struggling to get by -- like yours truly.
Under the leadership of Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, chair of the House Budget Committee, the Republicans have voted to cut Medicare and continue tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, while the “middle class” -- euphemism-speak for those not of the highest faction of the highest one percent of the population -- those of us not wealthy enough to buy a senator -- have the entire tax burden placed on us. It’s like the old premise of “supply side economics,” give the corporations everything they ask for, and the economy will blossom.
Where were these Republican budget balancers during the Bush II era, when a surplus was turned into a deficit, and when we’re fighting wars, at least one of which was based on fraud and manipulation of our citizen’s anger and fear? Like I said, it’s NOT AT ALL about deficit, it’s all about satisfying the corporate elite. But the public has gotten its message out, and saying NO to all this.
Paul Ryan once said he got into public life because of the teachings and writings of Ayn Rand, the prophetess of the “Virtue of Selfishness,” whose fantasies were of heroic entrepreneurs at war with government bureaucrats and “the mob.” (Rather odd -- Ryan goes into public life, where the issues of people are collectively addressed, due to Ayn Rand and her “individualistic” ideas.) Now we see a revival of Rand’s books, and the film version of Atlas Shrugged released, which did terrible box office the weekend it came out. This is the fantasy world the right-wing and its minions live in, not at all connected with reality. In spite of the “individualistic” rap of Rand and her disciples, this is a form of (Yes, I WILL say it) Fascism, where the Great Leader and his Elite Vanguard Party rule over us, due to their very superiority, and we cheer them.
Alas, I shall have to say a few things about the Anthony Weiner thing, so here I go:
He was pretty damn stupid to put his tweeter out on Twitter.
The Democratic party leadership wimped out on him, while a Republican in a similar situation--say, David Vitter after his diaper fetish, or Rush Limbaugh with his drug addiction -- retained support.
Weiner’s constituents backed him up, showing greater leadership than the Democratic party leadership.
The commercial news media’s idea of “news” is a lot of soft porn and scandal, rather than intelligent discussion of what really touches on people, like unemployment and the economy.
The same commercial media, the so called “left-liberal slanted” news media, gives in readily to the right-wing movement, whether it’s conceding the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush, who got the lesser number of votes,, thus caving to Fox “News”; going along with Andrew Breitbart’s super-doctored video of Shirley Sherrod, the Agriculture Department official, to “prove” she hated discriminated against white farmers; and James O’Keefe, Breitbart’s pet boy, who played the pimp daddy to destroy ACORN (can you say "racial stereotype" and "secret fantasy"?), and the media and courts went along with it, even though the video was SO a fraud.
We in this country are still “shocked, shocked, I tell you” that people engage in Sex, and members of Congress, being human beings, are no exception; but the Republican Right keeps harping on traditional family values, while engaging in the very Sex acts they condemn; reference again David Vitter, Larry Craig, Ted Haggard, Jimmy Swaggart, and Jim Bakker.
I am SO disgusted with the spinelessness of our political and media establishment, constantly deferring to their “superiors” on the right-wing of the political spectrum, a movement hell-bent on restoring a plutocratic regime in this country. They would take us back to those ways of yesteryear, when children went to the mines rather then school for their education as to their place in society; when work days could be sixteen hours long, giving you time enough to drag yourself home and back to work again the next day, not spending time with your family or friends or your own mind; when at the work site you breathed more coal dust, chemical fumes, or textile lint then oxygen, killing you before you reached forty; where one ethnic or racial group was pitted against the other, this being encouraged by the bosses to prevent working-class solidarity and finding out who the REAL enemy is; where women had next to NO options for advancement.
I was delighted when Rich Trumka, President of the national AFL-CIO, proclaimed the Labor movement’s independence from the Democratic party, stating at the meeting of National Nurses United, “For too long, we have been left after Election Day holding a canceled check waving it about, (saying) ‘Remember us? Remember us?’--asking someone to pay a little attention to us...I had a snootful of this shit!”
Me too! The Democratic party has prided itself as the party of the New Deal and Great Society, government programs that strove to benefit working and poor people for a change as opposed to the corporate elite -- even as the party copped out on us, cutting deals with the Republicans to cut down, or out, these programs; and the Democratic party still tells us to vote for them, or we’ll hand the government over to the Republicans. No more of that, I say. I continue to advocate an independent and viable Labor-Socialist-Social Democratic party in the US of A, and take some of the Democratic party system with us to form it, from the humblest ward leaders and committee members to state organizations.
This is the food for thought for now, and more WILL come. Bye!
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
The Mason Missile, August 19, 2009
The Mason Missile
The E-mail Newsletter of
John Oliver Mason
August 19, 2009
Jomason57@verizon.net
www.jomason.cjb.net
www.myspace.com/jomason57
(I’m also on Facebook)
Whoso would be a man must be a non-conformist.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Please forward to your friend)
(Donations appreciated)
Greetings, fellow freedom fighters, comrades, brothers and sisters! Happy (belated) Birthday to me! (August 1,a Leo.)
I have just taken and passed the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) test. This puts me further on the road to graduate school. I’ve always been a fan of education, which is the path to empowerment. You don’t necessarily need to go for a degree (it helps, though), just go to a library or an independent bookstore-PLEASE, they need the business against the Borders’ and Barnes and Nobles.
I have heard the stories of the deranged mobs, riled up by Fox “News” and the insurance companies, monopolizing town halls organized to discuss national health insurance-which I support 1000%, preferably a single-payer system as in Canada. Does health HAVE to be a commodity to be sold, is it a luxury? Through my union, I have a pretty decent health plan, where I don’t have to pay for visits in the clinic, and visits outside the clinic have a reasonable co-pay; I NEVER paid for dental work, either cleaning or checkups or two root-canal jobs; and the co-pay for prescriptions can be either five or ten dollars. I remember I had an accident once, and I hobbled around in pain; I paid over one hundred dollars for some pain-killers-big difference. (This is what a good union does for you-hint, hint!)
Sara Palin, the (fortunately) former Governor of Alaska and possible Republican presidential candidate (God help us!), has spread stories of “death panels,” government boards who, under a national health care plan, would decide to allow elderly patients to die if it’s more convenient. To spread these stories is irresponsible, and it shows the caliber of Republican leadership lately.
Fortunately, progressives, particularly in the Labor movement, are getting off the mat and standing up to these loonies; I myself was at the town hall meeting on August 12, held at Broad Street Ministries (Broad and Spruce), where US Representative Joe Sestak spoke. Health-care activists, representing the majority of Americans, PACKED the building, and I was one of those who had to be routed to the downstairs dining room. Only two anti-health-care people stood holding signs-one was for the insurance industry front group, “Patients First”-and a couple of lonely souls worked a table for Lyndon LaRouche. They must have thought we progressive people are wimps, easy to kick around; well, thank God, we’re kicking right back!
I remember in the mid-seventies, back in the day, the boogie stories about the Equal Rights Amendment, guaranteeing equal right for women-unisex toilets! Women forced to work outside the house! Husbands abandoning their wives! People did believe these stories.
What about the people yelling and screaming at the town halls about health care? Do they know how manipulated they are by the insurance companies and the corporate media? What drives them?
Also, there are the “birthers,” people who insist that President Obama, born in the State of Hawaii, was instead born in Kenya. Race is a major part of that-the fact that an African-American man is President of the United States-and this strikes at all notions of white-skin privilege, and what it means to be an “American” . (What if someone said that John McCain wasn’t really a citizen because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone?) This birther stuff has gone mainstream, beyond the racist web sites and blogs, and into Lou Dobbs’ show on CNN. (Dobbs has also gone off about illegal immigrants, so he does play the race theme.) These are the same people who try to crowd the town halls about health insurance. Is there any hope to reason with them, make them understand they’re being lied to?
The Republican party, with some honorable exceptions, has played up to these fears, constantly harping on them, to generate their base of voters-religious fundamentalists and bigoted people. Is that what the party of Abraham Lincoln has descended to?
From Nixon through Reagan to both Bushes, The Republican party has dumbed down political discussion. Nixon used racially suggestive code words, like “law and order,” right at the tail end of the civil rights movement; Reagan started his 1980 presidential campaign with stating his belief in “States Rights,” in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three Civil Rights activists were killed in 1964, appealing to sentiments that have festered since the end of the Civil War. Bush I used the Willie Horton ads to bring about fears of Black rapists to win in 1988, and Bush II used the Religious right apparatus to win in 2000 and 2004. Along with this was the Cold war, with the republicans calling the Democrats “soft on defense,” leaving the nation vulnerable to a possible Soviet invasion, and also hinting that Liberal Democrats would bring about a Communist or Socialist regime in THIS country, destroying our liberties. (Do they even KNOW what these terms “Socialism,” Communism,” or ‘liberty” mean?)
And the result of all this? The “law and order” president Nixon attempts to subvert the Constitution with the “plumbers” break-in at the Democratic National headquarters at the Watergate building, creating the groundwork for a police state; after Nixon resigned, Ford pardoned him, and the Nixon supporters in the media said Nixon “suffered enough.” (If a Democrat did the same thing, wouldn’t they call for his imprisonment?) In the Iran-Contra scandal that hobbled the Reagan administration, Oliver North violated the law by selling anti-tank weapons to the Iranians during their war with Iraq (as we passed on weapons to Saddam Hussein, including chemical and biological weapons), and passed the profits on the Nicaraguan contras, after Congress banned our government funding the contras. I heard radio editorials supporting North saying “he acted illegally, but he acted.” So much for law and order; their idea of law and order was to smash all opposition, Constitution be damned!
And the response of the Democrats? To prove they also are “tough on defense,” as well as “tough on welfare,” voting to continue spending on weapons systems that only make arms manufacturers richer and many times don’t work, and blame financial problems on unemployed people who have no lobbyists to campaign for them in Congress and no media to put forth their stories. This is the “Republican Lite,” me-too strategy pursued by Democrats after the George McGovern defeat in 1972. The interests of working and low-income people have been safely ignored, and the democrats, even after the election of Obama, still have a way to go before being a “people’s party.”
I believe in working within the Democratic party AND in forming a left alternative party at the same time. Local Democratic party organizations, from the ward level, through city and county organizations, to the state level can be hived off to form an organizational structure, which a new party needs right away. Let’s mull this over as we keep fighting the good fight. Bye!
The E-mail Newsletter of
John Oliver Mason
August 19, 2009
Jomason57@verizon.net
www.jomason.cjb.net
www.myspace.com/jomason57
(I’m also on Facebook)
Whoso would be a man must be a non-conformist.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Please forward to your friend)
(Donations appreciated)
Greetings, fellow freedom fighters, comrades, brothers and sisters! Happy (belated) Birthday to me! (August 1,a Leo.)
I have just taken and passed the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) test. This puts me further on the road to graduate school. I’ve always been a fan of education, which is the path to empowerment. You don’t necessarily need to go for a degree (it helps, though), just go to a library or an independent bookstore-PLEASE, they need the business against the Borders’ and Barnes and Nobles.
I have heard the stories of the deranged mobs, riled up by Fox “News” and the insurance companies, monopolizing town halls organized to discuss national health insurance-which I support 1000%, preferably a single-payer system as in Canada. Does health HAVE to be a commodity to be sold, is it a luxury? Through my union, I have a pretty decent health plan, where I don’t have to pay for visits in the clinic, and visits outside the clinic have a reasonable co-pay; I NEVER paid for dental work, either cleaning or checkups or two root-canal jobs; and the co-pay for prescriptions can be either five or ten dollars. I remember I had an accident once, and I hobbled around in pain; I paid over one hundred dollars for some pain-killers-big difference. (This is what a good union does for you-hint, hint!)
Sara Palin, the (fortunately) former Governor of Alaska and possible Republican presidential candidate (God help us!), has spread stories of “death panels,” government boards who, under a national health care plan, would decide to allow elderly patients to die if it’s more convenient. To spread these stories is irresponsible, and it shows the caliber of Republican leadership lately.
Fortunately, progressives, particularly in the Labor movement, are getting off the mat and standing up to these loonies; I myself was at the town hall meeting on August 12, held at Broad Street Ministries (Broad and Spruce), where US Representative Joe Sestak spoke. Health-care activists, representing the majority of Americans, PACKED the building, and I was one of those who had to be routed to the downstairs dining room. Only two anti-health-care people stood holding signs-one was for the insurance industry front group, “Patients First”-and a couple of lonely souls worked a table for Lyndon LaRouche. They must have thought we progressive people are wimps, easy to kick around; well, thank God, we’re kicking right back!
I remember in the mid-seventies, back in the day, the boogie stories about the Equal Rights Amendment, guaranteeing equal right for women-unisex toilets! Women forced to work outside the house! Husbands abandoning their wives! People did believe these stories.
What about the people yelling and screaming at the town halls about health care? Do they know how manipulated they are by the insurance companies and the corporate media? What drives them?
Also, there are the “birthers,” people who insist that President Obama, born in the State of Hawaii, was instead born in Kenya. Race is a major part of that-the fact that an African-American man is President of the United States-and this strikes at all notions of white-skin privilege, and what it means to be an “American” . (What if someone said that John McCain wasn’t really a citizen because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone?) This birther stuff has gone mainstream, beyond the racist web sites and blogs, and into Lou Dobbs’ show on CNN. (Dobbs has also gone off about illegal immigrants, so he does play the race theme.) These are the same people who try to crowd the town halls about health insurance. Is there any hope to reason with them, make them understand they’re being lied to?
The Republican party, with some honorable exceptions, has played up to these fears, constantly harping on them, to generate their base of voters-religious fundamentalists and bigoted people. Is that what the party of Abraham Lincoln has descended to?
From Nixon through Reagan to both Bushes, The Republican party has dumbed down political discussion. Nixon used racially suggestive code words, like “law and order,” right at the tail end of the civil rights movement; Reagan started his 1980 presidential campaign with stating his belief in “States Rights,” in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three Civil Rights activists were killed in 1964, appealing to sentiments that have festered since the end of the Civil War. Bush I used the Willie Horton ads to bring about fears of Black rapists to win in 1988, and Bush II used the Religious right apparatus to win in 2000 and 2004. Along with this was the Cold war, with the republicans calling the Democrats “soft on defense,” leaving the nation vulnerable to a possible Soviet invasion, and also hinting that Liberal Democrats would bring about a Communist or Socialist regime in THIS country, destroying our liberties. (Do they even KNOW what these terms “Socialism,” Communism,” or ‘liberty” mean?)
And the result of all this? The “law and order” president Nixon attempts to subvert the Constitution with the “plumbers” break-in at the Democratic National headquarters at the Watergate building, creating the groundwork for a police state; after Nixon resigned, Ford pardoned him, and the Nixon supporters in the media said Nixon “suffered enough.” (If a Democrat did the same thing, wouldn’t they call for his imprisonment?) In the Iran-Contra scandal that hobbled the Reagan administration, Oliver North violated the law by selling anti-tank weapons to the Iranians during their war with Iraq (as we passed on weapons to Saddam Hussein, including chemical and biological weapons), and passed the profits on the Nicaraguan contras, after Congress banned our government funding the contras. I heard radio editorials supporting North saying “he acted illegally, but he acted.” So much for law and order; their idea of law and order was to smash all opposition, Constitution be damned!
And the response of the Democrats? To prove they also are “tough on defense,” as well as “tough on welfare,” voting to continue spending on weapons systems that only make arms manufacturers richer and many times don’t work, and blame financial problems on unemployed people who have no lobbyists to campaign for them in Congress and no media to put forth their stories. This is the “Republican Lite,” me-too strategy pursued by Democrats after the George McGovern defeat in 1972. The interests of working and low-income people have been safely ignored, and the democrats, even after the election of Obama, still have a way to go before being a “people’s party.”
I believe in working within the Democratic party AND in forming a left alternative party at the same time. Local Democratic party organizations, from the ward level, through city and county organizations, to the state level can be hived off to form an organizational structure, which a new party needs right away. Let’s mull this over as we keep fighting the good fight. Bye!
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