Archive for the ‘Political’ Category
Here it is February all ready. I can come up with several reasons for not posting sooner and being in the hospital was one of them. No need to say there was no partying for the new year while you are on your back in the hospital. Though I could have borrowed my wife’s laptop while mine was in the shop. There is a plethora of items that should have been exposed to y’all. They are going whole hog after the wolves in the west again. I know twenty eight does not sound like many but when you count them against the total number the percentage of living wolves decreases.
On another front our internet is facing an attack from our congress and supposedly our president will sign the bill into law. This one would forbid search engines from displaying any sites that are accused of copyright laws. This especially attacks foreign web sites. Right now the pirates are not a significant percentage of over all users and a lot of these pirates would not mind paying for digital content if it was packaged with a reasonable price and the ability to use the content you just bought and paid for but you could not watch or listen to the dvd or cd you legally bought. You buy it, then if you want to watch it on your laptop you are in violation of their law. To me there is something inheritability wrong with this scenario. There is a huge number of people that use Apple’s iTunes service and it would make a great model to other digital content providers. Plus we can not forget that this will affect some of our favorite sites, like facebook, twitter and lest we forget google who is going to be under a law suit brought out by ViaCom to the tune of a few billion dollars.
More to come soon.
For the first thing let me apologize for not posting earlier but again I have been under attack by my immune system. Arthritis, rosacea and and my fibromyalgia have ganged up on me and attacked me all at once. It can be a tough “row to hoe” and I would not wish these medical problems on my worst enemy much less on any one else. That alone is enough to pretty much take me out yet. Adding to my feeling so bad was the fact that I had to take care of our eBay business. Helping to thrive and drive was my sister-in-law Sharon. Now she has left me and I am doing her part as well as mine and it is much more difficult. Time consuming as well. I know my wife and daughter promised to take up her part but so far I have not seen any help other than the few minutes my brother helped me while shipping. It is a big push from eBay as the coming Christmas gift buying is in full swing. Plus anything that sells and ships for free with expedited shipping will be eligible for a 20% discount. That means a huge deal for us sellers that are “Top Rated Sellers” will get an additional 20% discount totaling for an over all 40% discount. Being as most of my shipping is free to the customer. First Class qualifies as expedited shipping. So for most of my listings will see the final value fee reduction. That will be a boon to us as we ship in one day and we ship for free.
Unless you have been sleeping under a rock then you surely know that next year is an election year. Next year we decide upon who will be President the following four years. Ron Paul one of the front runners is planning to abolish the Departments of Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce, Interior and Education. This in itself is pretty radical and would affect nearly every American and most for the bad. Now even worse Republicans are advocating eliminating the EPA. Earlier this year former House Speaker Newt Gingrich became the first high-profile conservative to champion one of the most extreme environmental positions in recent memory: total elimination of the EPA. I personally feel that this position is ludicrous. I think the upcoming elections need to be watched closely. These programs that they want to eliminate protect all of us and our country for not only us but our grandchildren and their grandchildren. Some help us gain ownership of homes. There is oversight of our roads and airways, protection of public lands, energy planning for our future,Commerce and education. Somethings they say sound good but you need to listen to everything. loss of all of these would be bad for the country and only help those who wish to rape and pillage our country for themselves and to hell with the future. I hope you are able to see through their facade and see them for what they really are.
It has some several days since I last posted and There are numerous reasons for this. Either I am in the middle of a flare or something much much worse. We buried my nephew this week. Of all my nephews both on my wife’s side and my side he was my favorite all through his shortened life. He was a victim of capitalism. He had a steady job at a sawmill when he had a life changing accident. The machine he was running threw a 2×4 piece of lumber towards him and impaled him. He almost died then before they could airlift him to the hospital. After multiple surgeries and the loss of a good portion of his intestines and stomach he was finally released from the hospital to waste away his remaining days living off of intravenous feedings and vomiting every thing he tried to eat and when he ran out of food to throw up he still continued to vomit. He held on for a little over two years until he lost the fight last week. I was there while the paramedics were doing their best to revive him but it was too late and the Lord took him home to suffer no more.
One would think that an accident like that would force a change in the machinery and install some sort of guard to protect the operator if it happened again and happened again is exactly what it did. O.S.H.A. forced them to shut down two days and then allowed them to open right back up with no new safety updates. I personally know of two more incidents of the same machine doing the same thing to two more men at separate times. Each time O.S.H.A. would shut them down a day or two and then allow them to open right back up with no new safety requirements in place. Not only was a government agency negligent in their protection of workers but the owners were so greedy that they would not spend a dime to protect whomever was unfortunate enough to be running that machine. A case of capitalistic greed plain and simple.
Now those of us who loved him are left wondering why. His poor wife and three small children left to grow up without a father and her without a husband. And for what? Capitalistic greed is all. I am neither a socialist nor a communist but still feel there are some better options than to let capitalism run the show as they are doing now. His death is small by comparison to what is done in the name of profits. Rape of our mother earth goes on everyday and so few stand up to say anything. Enslaving the populace goes on everyday in the name of capitalism. I do not know the complete answer to fix this but somehow we need to find a way to progress and keep our communities thriving but at what cost are we willing to pay?
Today I site here feeling very privileged. I just got through a private screening of a movie that is to be released later this year. It was a documentary about our failing health care in the United States. The working title is “The Health Care Movie” and is narrated by Kiefer Sutherland. It compares our health care system to Canada’s health care system. Seeing it made the plan we have here in the good ol’ USA pale in comparison to theirs. They believe in taking care of their citizens and not favoring huge corporations over the masses. They also see it as a basic human right. Something we agreed to, and ratified when we signed the “The Declaration of Human Rights”. If you look it up and start reading go down to article 25. There you will find us agreeing that health care is a human right. But I am off topic here somewhat.
I was talking about the movie I was allowed to see. It gives some shocking facts and numbers about our nonexistent health care. I hope that everyone will see this and be mad as hell. Writing their congressman or senator mad. Everyone needs health care at some point in their lives. That is a fact no one can dispute. The question is can you afford it? Is your insurance going to cover it. How much money comes out of my pocket? None of us can deny it. Even if you have health care you will have a co-pay and how large does that go? What if my bill becomes so large that my out of pocket money is too high for me? Will I have to sell the house to pay? Will I have to file bankruptcy because of an illness or accident? In our system all of these scenarios are not only possible but happen. A lot of times this is the story. Even a wealthy family can be bankrupted by a prolonged illness. I feel like this is a travesty that we allow for profit, private insurance companies run our health care system. They arbitrarily dictate what treatments we can or can’t have and we let them have their way in the name of democracy. If you were to remember your history you will find that Lyndon Johnson pushed medicare and medicaid through the halls of Congress. That was in direct apposition with insurance companies and their lackeys in Congress. Back then it was painted as an end to democracy and the beginning of socialism. Now it is considered essential. It is a sure fired method of losing votes if you voice a plan on cutting medicare and medicaid. It took some wrangling and over the objections of insurance companies they were passed into law. That is what we need now. someone to push expanding medicare and medicaid to cover everyone in the USA. But that is my simple plan. No need for all these tax credits and vouchers.
Anyhow that is my opinion. I have good health care from the VA but not everyone has served their country.
I was able to view the movie early because they used my sons song part of the movie. The title is “Silence
Is Consent“ It was really great to see my sons name in the credits. It brought tears to my eyes for him to be so honored. The song fits this movie perfectly as my son feels very strongly that everyone should have access to health care regardless of whether they have money or not. I made the song title a link to his “website“ joshua121. You can hear the song there on the site. I recommend that you listen to it then write your congressman or woman. Don’t forget that you have a senator that needs to know that we need health care. That is the only thing that matters to a politician, votes and how much money he can gather from corporations and others for his next reelection campaign.
I received an email today that has absolutely pissed me off to no end. It said that our President Obama wants to give Jane Fonda an award as one of the top women in the last hundred years. That makes me livid. I can still remember when she visited Hanoi during the heart of the Viet Nam war and actually fired anti aircraft shells at our planes as they flew over on their missions. That should have earned her a bullet in the base of her skull as far as I am concerned but I did not know everything and this email described even more atrocities. I am going to copy and paste the entire email at the end of my rant. Please copy and email this link to everyone you know. Or at least copy and paste the text into your own emails. This makes me sick to my gut.
Barbara Walters comments on Jane Fonda
She can lead her present life the way she wants and perhaps SHE can forget the past, but we DO NOT have to stand by without comment to see that she is “honored” as a “Woman of the Century”.
( I remember this well)
Never Forgive A Traitor
For those of you too young to remember Hanoi Jane is a bad person and did some terrible things during the Vietnam war. Things that cannot be
forgiven!!!!
For those who served and/or died. . .
NEVER FORGIVE A TRAITOR. SHE REALLY WAS A TRAITOR!!
and now OBAMA wants to honor her……!!!!
In Memory of LT. C.Thomsen Wieland who spent 100 days at the Hanoi Hilton
IF YOU NEVER FORWARDED ANYTHING IN YOUR LIFE FORWARD THIS SO THAT EVERYONE WILL KNOW!!!!!!
She really is a traitor.
A TRAITOR IS ABOUT TO BE HONORED. KEEP THIS MOVING ACROSS AMERICA
This is for all the kids born in the 70′s and after who do not remember, and didn’t have to bear the burden that our fathers, mothers and older brothers and sisters had to bear.
Jane Fonda is being honored as one of the ’100 Women of the Century.’
BARBRA WALTERS WRITES:
Unfortunately, many have forgotten and still countless others have never
known how Ms. Fonda betrayed not only the idea of our country, but specific men who served and sacrificed during Vietnam
The first part of this is from an F-4E pilot. The pilot’s name is Jerry
Driscoll, a River Rat.
In 1968, the former Commandant of the USAF Survival School was a POW in Ho Lo Prison the ‘ Hanoi Hilton.’
Dragged from a stinking cesspit of a cell, cleaned, fed, and dressed in
clean PJ’s, he was ordered to describe for a visiting American ‘Peace
Activist’ the ‘lenient and humane treatment’ he’d received.
He spat at Ms. Fonda, was clubbed, and was dragged away. During the
subsequent beating, he fell forward on to the camp Commandant ‘s feet, which sent that officer berserk.
In 1978, the Air Force Colonel still suffered from double vision (which
permanently ended his flying career) from the Commandant’s frenzied
application of a wooden baton.
>From 1963-65, Col. Larry Carrigan was in the 47FW/DO (F-4E’s). He spent 6 years in the ‘ Hanoi Hilton’,,, the first three of which his family only knew he was ‘missing in action’. His wife lived on faith that he was still alive. His group, too, got the cleaned-up, fed and clothed routine in preparation for a ‘peace delegation’ visit.
They, however, had time and devised a plan to get word to the world that
they were alive and still survived. Each man secreted a tiny piece of paper,
with his Social Security Number on it, in the palm of his hand.
When paraded before Ms. Fonda and a cameraman, she walked the line, shaking each man’s hand and asking little encouraging snippets like: ‘Aren’t you sorry you bombed babies?’ and ‘Are you grateful for the humane treatment from your benevolent captors?’ Believing this HAD to be an act, they each palmed her their sliver of paper.
She took them all without missing a beat.. At the end of the line and once
the camera stopped rolling, to the shocked disbelief of the POWs, she turned to the officer in charge and handed him all the little pieces of paper..
Three men died from the subsequent beatings. Colonel Carrigan was almost number four but he survived, which is the only reason we know of her actions that day.
I was a civilian economic development advisor in Vietnam , and was captured by the North Vietnamese communists in South Vietnam in 1968, and held prisoner for over 5 years.
I spent 27 months in solitary confinement; one year in a cage in Cambodia; and one year in a ‘black box’ in Hanoi . My North Vietnamese captors deliberately poisoned and murdered a female missionary, a nurse in a leprosarium in Banme Thuot , South Vietnam , whom I buried in the jungle near the Cambodian border. At one time, I weighed only about 90 lbs. (My normal weight is 170 lbs)
We were Jane Fonda’s ‘war criminals….’
When Jane Fonda was in Hanoi , I was asked by the camp communist political officer if I would be willing to meet with her..
I said yes, for I wanted to tell her about the real treatment we POWs
received… and how different it was from the treatment purported by the
North Vietnamese, and parroted by her as ‘humane and lenient.’
Because of this, I spent three days on a rocky floor on my knees, with my
arms outstretched with a large steel weight placed on my hands, and beaten with a bamboo cane.
I had the opportunity to meet with Jane Fonda soon after I was released. I
asked her if she would be willing to debate me on TV. She never did answer me.
These first-hand experiences do not exemplify someone who should be honored as part of ’100 Years of Great Women.’ Lest we forget….’ 100 Years of Great Women’ should never include a traitor whose hands are covered with the blood of so many patriots.
There are few things I have strong visceral reactions to, but Hanoi Jane’s
participation in blatant treason, is one of them. Please take the time to
forward to as many people as you possibly can.. It will eventually end up on her computer and she needs to know that we will never forget.
RONALD D. SAMPSON, CMSgt,
USAF 716 Maintenance Squadron,
Chief of Maintenance DSN: 875-6431 COMM: 883-6343
PLEASE HELP BY SENDING THIS TO EVERYONE IN YOUR ADDRESS BOOK.
IF ENOUGH PEOPLE SEE THIS MAYBE HER STATUS WILL CHANGE
Our so called representative are busy trying to figure out how to keep the Bush tax breaks that had been scheduled to run out are about ready to let the payroll tax break expire. What this means is that if the GOP gets their way the wealthy will receive tax breaks while increasing the tax on the working poor. Many do not know or understand that their is a payroll tax that all employed citizens pay out of every check they receive. The payroll tax normally was 6.2% of their wages that was matched by their employer for a total of 12.4%. Last year they Congress approved Obama’s request to drop the workers share to 4.2%. Therefor saving millions of dollars. Workers could keep more of what they earn. Obama wants to renew this tax break for at least another year. What is in store though is they extend the Bush tax cuts and let this small break to the employed expire. What this means is the wealth will save money with their tax breaks and the workers will pay more. Sounds kinda screwy to me. Increasing the tax on the poorest in our land while reducing taxes for the wealthy.
Dr Thomas Fuller made that quote back in 1732 and it is still as valid today as it was back then. Supposedly we have made many progressions since then but in the availability health care is only for the people with money. If you are poor or even working poor you get no health care in this country. This country with all of our nation building and meddling in other countries affairs does not take care of itself. When we first chartered into the United Nations we signed a treaty that in part agreed that a nation should take care of its citizens.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, proclaimed that “everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of oneself and one’s family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care.”
Oops. How did that one slip by? Could it be that the United States is being run by corporations instead of the people? High powered lobbyists can slip a little money into campaign funds and buy the vote of our representatives in Washington DC. Happens all the time. Could it be that the government that President Lincoln espoused as “of the people, by the people, for the people” has changed to of the rich, by the rich, and for the privileged. We know it is true but so many refuse to open their eyes and see what is in front of them. How can we a country that is supposed to set the standards for other nations to follow lag so far behind? Our allies and even regimes that we are opposed to have government sponsored health care. Call it socialism if you wish but the government is supposed to help its citizens not bow to the wishes of for profit insurance companies. Until we collectively stand up and demand a change it will remain as it has been for many years now, broken. All we need to do is expand medicare and medicaid to cover all individuals. If you do not like them making decisions about your health care then buy a private insurance policy. Then you can be in the hands of some huge corporation that can turn you down.
According to a study published by the Journal of Social Science & Medicine. Researchers in Montreal found out that unemployment will shorten your life span. The findings that analyzed data over a forty year span, in fifteen countries and millions of individuals say that 78% of men and 37% of women face the likely hood of premature death. With our unemployment rate at nearly 20% that means millions of Americans are at risk of an early death. Right now our representatives are wrestling with our budget trying to cut out programs that help unemployed as well as under employed citizens. The easiest thing to do would be for Obama himself to invoke the 14th Amendment and raise the debt ceiling where they do not have to cut out programs that are essential for the unemployed and poor people who comprise about half of the US. The Republicans darling, Ronald Regan not only raised taxes in his term but he raised the debt ceiling eighteen times while he was in office. However Obama and the rest of the democrats are trying to make the Republicans look bad so they can insure that they win big at the polls when Obama comes up for reelection. I know we need to do something about this runaway debt we have accumulated but why does it have to be done by cutting out programs for the less fortunate citizens who need these services the most. Why not cut out the corporate welfare we have been dishing out with nothing in return? These tax breaks and bailouts were supposed to keep these companies in business so they can create more jobs. But that is not what they do. Instead of creating new jobs they gave huge bonuses to the very same ones that got them in such hot water financially. How did that help us out? Those huge billion dollar bailouts could easily have went to fund the very same programs the Republicans want to make deep cutbacks in or it would have went a long ways to an actual health plan that would work for all Americans. Those who do not like what is offered can always buy their own health care policy. Of course no one actually wants that as they have their greedy pockets lined with lobbyist money.
According to the Boston Globe, Massachusetts wants to establish a database with the information gathered by license plate scanners installed in police cars. The scanners will scan license plates of every car the police vehicle passes and transmit that information (along with the location) to a database that will be made available to various government agencies. The data will be kept indefinitely. Civil libertarians are raising an alarm and rightly so. This makes me wonder if “1984″ was accurate other than the timing with the date. This sounds like another move towards fascism by our government. Our founding fathers could never have known that technology would proceed as far as it has come. I am sure that if they had of known what was coming they would have definitely banned it while they were defining the Ten Amendments that guarantee our civil liberties. Â So many of our liberties are being tossed out the window as our new technological feats make gathering and storing data on individual citizens becomes easier and easier. I can see where they would be of great use if they were simply used to scan the thousands of vehicles a police car sees almost everyday. If they were using the plate readers to look for a specific license plate of someone who was wanted by the authorities and they were not saving all the information gathered into a huge data base where they could check your whereabouts and track your movements maybe that would be a good idea. However scanning all those plates seen by the plate reader into a database to be used by whomever managed to get into the data base is wrong. Keeping track of your movements when you have committed no crime should not be allowed. If you live in Massachusetts you need to contact your local Senator and Representative to block this legislation.
Also a note to Massachusetts politicians: Such videos will be used against you at some point. Count on it. If you don’t care about the privacy of the citizens, at least think of your self interest before voting for this.