He doesn’t own his copyright http://ping.fm/WKzWi
Mad As Hell Doctors http://ping.fm/1gmME
Everybody’s a reporter: http://ping.fm/LzOZF
Stripping the wings (http://ping.fm/lEet5)
Two wives & three husbands (http://ping.fm/4PAHO)
Squid Factor
“Squid factor” is the batty slippery grasping inky confusion of history, fact, delusion, timelines, hate & looniness that is right-wing debate.
It doesn’t always include screaming. It usually includes the line, “I’ve been studying history for years!” and then, when the person using it cannot define terms or communicate a point and is asked to do so, the line, “Well, you must not know history.”
Add to this the use of circular logic, that leads them to make pronouncements such as — heard recently — “The eastern bloc and the cold war led to the Holocaust.” When it is pointed out they’ve got the timeline backwards, their eyeballs jiggle as they attempt to make some kind of clarification to themselves before spitting out the next nuttiness, such as equating the Romanovs with the Communists — whatever the latter term may mean in their minds.
They usually believe some historical event their ancestors were involved in is part of a great conspiracy to keep it a secret. They sound like NPR interviewing an author who claims no one knows about the Einsatzgruppen, regardless of the Wiki link.
These people are like clones. Their knowledge of history comes of disconnected moments they remember from the History Channel or some movie version, or possibly some romantic novels, along with the right-wing blogs that reflect their own confusion, or the kind of religious gossip that is rife along the Israeli/Palestinian border. They wouldn’t know historical rigor if it came up and bit them in the socks.
Then again, sooner or later, they’ll start telling you about what native tribe — usually Cherokee, sometimes midwest — their family is part of, and how they’re not accepted by the tribe. Perhaps their confusion of the timeline is part of a misunderstanding of Native American circular time?
I should note that the best way to set this off this raving is to threaten their rice bowl. They often work as part of the overall drug dealing/drug war/police/criminal system which is becoming a major employer in this country. It’s no use pointing out they work for Monsters, Inc. — being paid from the misery of others. Sooner or later they will hint, in more or less obvious terms, that “certain groups” need to be swept so that the world can be a Decent Place again. This may include anyone from “terrorists” (which in their minds can mean anything from anyone who speaks Farsi to the whole of Hollywood), but they seem to have a thirst to either wipe out the troublemakers, branch and root, or use them to expand the funding for the drug/cop/prison system.
Obviously to the detriment of the school system.
Patience and the Pigskin
National Public Radio is doing a series on high school football culture.
Rather than get into what this culture does to those of us who don’t want to be part of it, here’s a tip for those of you who are being dragged to pep rallies against your will. It’s easy, it’s simple and it works.
When you’re forced to leave your classes to go to the gymnasium to whoop up the team, simply gather in one of the upper corners of the bleachers and quietly read or do your homework. It won’t be long before the people who like games will complain that you are quashing their vibe.
Since the administration can’t force you to stand up and cheer, when approached simply ask for a separate study hall, with a monitor. After one or two times, when they discover that all you do is read and study when you’re in the study hall anyway, the monitor will head back to the rally where he or she wants to be anyway.
Then you can bring out the chess and ouija boards and have arcane debates and art and dance contests.
Win/win.
Whose Rice-bowl is this?
After several arguments with people who offer me all kinds of crap about the new health-care debate, someplace in the conversation they give away they’re associated with the health-care industry.
BEFORE you start discussing health care with anybody — if you don’t want your head to explode — find out if they receive any sort of money from the health care industry. Doctors, clinicians, nurses, medical writers, even janitors in hospitals. Every single one of them will argue for private health care, and offer arguments against those very draw-backs already part of privatized care. They’ll even tell you the government will force you to go to certain doctors or pharmacies — and what private insurance company doesn’t already do that? They’ll tell you the government will decide on your treatment or deny you coverage — how would that be any different, even if it were true?
Their rice bowls are being threatened. They can only see a future of shrinking paychecks — and it will be over your dead body.
Yes, I want to see that 1000-page bill posted on the net. How much you want to bet most of the riders are based on what the health-care industry lobbyists want? Let’s see this thing — it could backfire on the people demanding to see it.
Nearest just said there should be a debt-forgiveness program for all health-care workers, doctors to nurses to pharmacists, with huge college bills on their backs. Or they’ll stay in a constant state of panic over who is going to pay off those student loans. Let’s face it, as the boomers fall out of the system and the money starts drying up, those loans are going to get hellish. Who’s going to pay those? Not the CEOs of the health-care industry. All those doctors who were in bed with them they’ll just smother with a pillow (that’s a metaphor, for those people who don’t understand the word “rhetoric” — like in the recent Supreme Court hearings).
Lies and Stupidities
Well, the right wing is lying like crazy about health care and somebody got stupid on the White House site. Or so it seems. At this point, there’s blood in the water — people are dying left and right as they are denied health care — and it’s getting crazy.
A White House site supposedly asked that it receive “fishy health care” information, because of the recent right-wing misinformation campaign about health care. According to the wording I’ve seen, it asked in a sloppy manner, that made it possible to interpret that the administration wanted to monitor everybody’s email. First of all, the language was like something written by an intern with a laptop. Or some middle-management schill trying to quash a problem and going about it badly. Secondly, would you really want to be the poor schmuck in a small administration who gets to monitor all that email? Any reporting will self-collapse. No KGB are coming to drag you away in the night, or — so much worse in so many Americans’ minds — make you let black people or Indians walk on the same sidewalk as your sister.
So much for dorkiness. Now for just plain mean:
When my husband left work we lost thousands of dollars we’d paid into health care. I’ve spent years cobbling together some kind of dental and eye care, and making sure we eat right and take herbs. Now we’re on Basic Health — which does not subsidize our health care. It subsidizes the money the health insurance company pirated off with when it got the chance.
Recently our health clinic nurses explained why complete coverage would not work for everybody, and couched it in terms of health care profits. I snapped, “I’m not a number. I’m a human being. I want my teeth fixed when I need it.” Their leader tells me “You don’t want government health care.” Hell I don’t — our government leaders all have government health care, and when I was in the army I had government health care. Hell, ANY health care is better than NONE.
If you’re of the younger generation and you’ve been denied health care, it’s because the industry has been harvesting us boomers for years, but as we retire, our money goes away. They’ve taken off with it –flat-out stolen it — and what makes you think you’re getting in on a 30-year-old Republican ponzi scheme as it collapses? Lotsa luck, kids.
Those of you running around squawking you’re living under the Nazis, now — torture camps and the Iraq war were built by Republican administrations. The right wing is still fighting to keep them, and keep health care away from you. But I don’t know if it’s any use warning or explaining any more; you’ll all just have to suffer because I guess you like it that way. Nothing else explains it any more.
Plant or Stooge?
Recently I’ve been receiving posts from a new acquaintance. Supposedly she is “an old-time activist.”
She’s been feeding me blathering, screaming emails that are supposedly on our side. Whenever I ask for more basic links, rather than the nit-wit blogosphere versions, I’m accused of censorship.
Are we running into the same kind of plants and stooges that tried to clot the green tweets on Twitter? The pro-demonstrator users outed the Iranian police and kept an eye on their attempts to block real news with nonsense.
Our own right is filling the internet with the kind of garbage our kind of people won’t read. They’ve figured out we’re turned off by screaming, so they’re using plants to block the real story with goofery. Certain bad guys in history discovered that intelligent, decent people cannot stand screaming and temper-tantrums. They used bad-baby behavior to turn us away from what they were up to. Need I name the most famous artificer?
I’m going to wipe the afore-mentioned person off my Parlor Tricks list, send out this blog link, and then put her back on, so I can send out alerts to real stories buried in the right-wing muck. We need to keep track of what the Right Wing underground is up to. She’s a nice clean feed for the dirty tricks. I’ll keep the wire up.
