Archive for the ‘Matt Taibbi’ Category

“This is a big fucking deal”  -Joe Biden.

“The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.”  -MLK

The Devil is thriving in the Catholic church.

The Ides of March have passed.

The health care bill passed with some drama.  As it should.

Outside, the wind blows hard.

My favorite part is that they lied without shame and cheated overtly and they still lost with ceremony all around them on worldwide television.  Republicans sucked the other day like they haven’t in decades and it was all on display.  They barked like dogs and continue to whine like toddlers.  Shameless.

I readily confess I don’t have my brain wrapped entirely around this bill and some specifics of the reconciliation language.  I have been paying attention.  I didn’t for a time and then I did again.  I got kinda sick of it all.  It does suck.  The bill.  As in sucking chest wound suck.  A mandate without fierce oversight, a mechanism to not only compete but provide accountability and barometric pressure is pure dumb.

A license to ill.

It was on it’s head already.  I sort of understand the economic imperative behind the mandate but throw us a bone bitches or don’t even bother touching me there.

 

I just can’t help but get caught up in the symbolism.  I know the bill sucks but it does accomplish some pretty important shit.  I’ll defer to the fantastic Ms. Maddow:

“On September 23rd…

• All kids get covered (no pre-existing conditions)
  
• Can’t get dropped if you get sick (no more insurance companies dropping you)
  
• No more lifetime limits (on benefits)
  
• Children can stay on until 26 (coverage up to that age)
  

On January 1, 2011…

• Premium payment reformed (80-85% for medical care) with rebate if you don’t use coverage
  
• Free Medicare preventative care (no co-pays)
  

By 2014…

• Total ban on all pre-existing condition denials
  
• Health exchanges open
  
• End to annual limits on benefits

Republicans want to repeal this…”  -democraticunderground.com

I’m not sure I want to “do” Rachel but I’m positive I want to get her drunk and cuddle.

So yeah, some good stuff.  It’s just that it barely flirts with incentive for fairness via non profit competition.

That’s the part I liked the most when we started this whole thing.  I see it as key.  Public option, extended Medicare, whatever.  Vital.  We have miles to go before we sleep.

Single payer, Universal, whatever label you choose and whomever you choose to accuse,  the richest spender nation on the planet ought to be covering it’s people.  We buy half of all the weapons.  Half of all of them.  Half of all the weapons made for war, we buy.  I don’t think we’re as big as Canada geographically, but our dick is way bigger.  Can you hear me now?  WAY bigger.  We could take Canada in 72 hours without the military.  They don’t have many guns but we do.

What exactly are health exchanges?  We now know they will be open.  How many?  Where?  I’ll assume that’s good news.  A place to trade bandages and syringes.  Do I have to volunteer?  I’m gonna have to choke a bitch.  I’m gonna have to read this bill and the 157 page reconciliation.  I’m working like twelve hours a week and taking a class.  You can see how I’m underwater.

My feet hurt and it’s humiliating.

It’s a simple problem and the answer is simple.  Shave five or fifteen cents off the defense budget and we can throw in some jobs for infrastructure.  Health care, jobs and mortgage relief.  We spend half the entire global budget on weapons and ten times as much as our nearest competitor.  China.  That there is my idea of Socialism, spending way too much of the people’s money on things they vehemently disagree with.  Wait, that’s Communism.  Isn’t it?  When they can’t afford roof and bread it is.  There is your Goddamn communism.

That there is your buttock.

Wars are your ass.

Your ass mam, has gone missing.

I’m trying to make a point here.  We still are a wealthy nation, despite our recent financial regress.  Much of it was concentrated without equity in the last decade but there is plenty of money right here in River City.  There is no reason, moral or fiscal, we should be denied this right.  It insults my intelligence when anyone complains about paying for it.  They talk about health care being 15 to 18 percent of our GDP.  The defense budget is well over half of every dollar you pay in taxes.  We spend so much fucking money on weapons, it makes the world go round.

Literally.  The world turns because of America’s efforts to be able to kill everyone of us.  Thank God for us.  Don’t piss us off.

Still, I’m impressed and finally proud again of the Democrats.  They pulled it off and scared the crap quite literally out of the obstructionist asstards by supplying them with an example of lockstep so long taken for granted as a fundament in the Republican playbook.  Smoked them at their own game.  Here’s hoping this bodes well and emboldens this heretofore assemblage of invertebrates.  See little Billy, we knew you could do it.  Now get your little ass back out there because the game isn’t even half over.  Be a Democrat for fucks sake.

Now the crazies come out like corpses of Laurel & Hardy with giant red eyed rats speeding off and away from their persons and pockets and folds.  Slack jawed zombies repeating obsolete talking points and swinging scythes.  The Baggers.  The Birthers.  The Hawks, Neocons, Bigots and Bible thumpers.  What an egregious ship of fools.  Obsructionist pricks for infamy.  Avoid their rodent familiars and do not dance with either of any of them.

It’s not safe to drink their liquor.

They really are beginning to parody themselves.

I’ve always thought that being a good loser is important.  I’ve been on the losing end enough to approach being gracious I think.  I’m hopeful that losing has humbled me, it sucks and it shames me but I try to learn and stuff and be polite about it.  The way one loses speaks volumes about one’s character.  If you listened to Boehner on the floor the other night or The Human Shitsmear and Butt Boy Hannity these last few mornings you might think the sky is about to kill you in your bed.

Not good losers, but excellent assholes.

These pricks are the epitome of sore losers along with the entire lock step, teeth full of Orios, lime green plastic tumbler full of cherry Kool Aid and rum mouth breathing members of the 1/4 Paradigm.  That was a pretty cool sentence.  If you don’t know about the 1/4 paradigm, categories are on the right on the main page.  Just scroll down.  I have a fairly general theory about relativity and how it applies without bias but with predictable pattern in a sociopolitical context.  I offer a bold constant.

I don’t really know about other countries but I understand very well that one of every four people in this country are ignorant dipshits.  My “1/4 Paradigm”.  In stores near you.

You’d think an invitation was extended to a banquet just ahead of the apocalypse.  You’d think because we passed a weak ass health care bill we were courting Satan himself.  The bill sucks.  Hello irony.  Fuck us in the neck.

The reaction has been of the meanest of spirit and bafflingly irrational.  Childish and callow.  Pointless.  Some fourteen state attorneys general have or intend to file suit.  Futile.  Not going to happen, if any single case enjoys a day in court it will be ashes, ashes and they will all fall down.  A waste of time money and the attention of even the dumbest citizens.  Give me a break.  Might as well piss up a rope.

Children of the corn.

What has my attention is the ugly and still gathering brutal reaction of the great unwashed.

Bricks through windows and awful terrorizing threats directed at our elected representatives that have finally and with courage, attempted the right thing on behalf of us all.  Stupak came around and they went after him like a common enemy.  Cheers Bart.  Those were your people.  An articulate bunch.  Very brave and very cool.

Kucinich is still the king of composure and principal.  What a class act.  I think Maddow and Kucinich should snuggle.  Just then, Dennis’ hot, six foot tall, copper haired, wife with a scorching accent enters the room in a black skirt, pumps and a line up the back of the stocking.  Nobody gets the Kucinich cool like I do.

Cantor’s claim of a bullet is looking dubious.  I bet that little prick is lying.

What frightens me is the virulence and vehemence, the irrational fury of those that would oppose a leap forward.

What makes me sick is the publicly elected officials who foment such dehumanizing disregard for common decency and difference of, or deference for, an opinion.  This is America.  We aren’t ever going to be herded onto boxcars for mass extermination.  If it ever happens here it will last an afternoon, maybe a day.  I’m not referencing irresponsible roundheads like Limbaugh, Hannity or Beck but rather the Boehners, Bachmanns, Cantors, Kings, Grassleys and Demints.  Allegedly responsible representatives who hobby, trade and wage in fear and dangerous incendiary nonsense.

Dirty, filthy immoral bastards who would blow anyone for $20k.  How do these people get taken seriously?  See above.

They deliberately cultivate and collect the same brand of bigoted, racist and ignorant subhuman that so violently opposed civil rights legislation.  Dumbass mouth breathing fucktards.  A handful of those folks have ended up being assassins.  Murderers.

American tradition and legacy is such that justice and liberty for all eventually prevails.  When there is will there is way.

It can take a while and never without a price.  The vulgar and profane consistently manage to extract more than a pound of flesh.  They are arrogant and bereft of humility.  At this pace, there will be blood.

They will go too far unfortunately and their cause will be consigned to history as ill advised and malattempted.  Political leprosy.  Social pariahs.  Just like McCarthy, Nixon and Dumbya’s entire posse.

These people are as ridiculous as they are dangerous.  There will be blood.

Just do the best you can to think peace.  It’s gonna get ugly.

It just might start rural.

All these earth quakes.  Bound to be a volcano.  See what I’m saying?

Health care is no mere privilege but a right that comes with being born human at least.  I believe that.  I always will.

Drinks for my friends.

Sorry but I did.

I would humbly refer you to last night’s blog:  http://brainspank.org/wordpress/?p=639                                                                                                                                                          You could always hit the back button and read it first.

What Max Baucus offered up to day at what admittedly is a moveable feast in the sense that it ain’t soup yet, was a shit sandwich or a turd taco or a fecal falafel or a serving of butt cobra carnitas, dookie dumplings, dung danishes, poop pirogis, bunghole bouillabaisse…………..sorry.  What happened was a most odious discharge from the boil infested ass of an obese insurance industry bureaucrat on a pickled cabbage, deviled egg, fiery chili and grilled onion slathered, spicy sausage diet.

It sucks and it blows with the ferocity of a furiously flatulent gale.  Tolja.

Had little fun there.  Hope it’s mutual.

Why so bad you ask?

The easy answer is congress, in the words of my father, is a scumbag.  He calls ’em like he sees ’em and he’s almost always right.

I cribbed and cobbled together the following from various sources including my memory, RJ Eskow’s piece on the Huffington Post, Olbermann, Maddow, Taibbi, my father et al.

You thought I was gonna read all 800 plus pages?  As my father would say, “in a pigs ass”.

a). Max Baucus is Judas.  He sold out the public option, despite being a vocal champion thereof less than a year ago.  He prostituted himself and our best interests to the insurance industry, just like I said he would.  I hold no bias nor do I harbor a moral or ethical imperative for prostitutes,  except maybe those who would knowingly infect their clients with painful burning crotch rot; that’s the kind of cheap hustler Baucus is and that is precisely what he’s done.

In it’s stead, Baucus proffers the idea of co-ops.  I’m not even going into it.  It’s bullshit.  A weak ineffectual and lame effort as substitute for a public option.  Dumb and intellectually dishonest.

Understand, without a vigorous public option, any health care reform legislation is worthless.  Bogus  Beyond single payer, the ultimate and most equitable solution, a public option, is the only realistic way to hold insurance company’s cloven hooves to the fire and make them bubble and blacken like a goddamn marshmallow.  We are smithereened without it.  No real reason to consider anything else.

I crap you negative.

b.) It allows the insurer to charge as much as five times more based on age alone, so much for affordability for everyone.  See, the idea is to spread and share risk so insurance is accessible for all of us regardless of income or age.  Level the playing field.  Apply some civil rights fairness to the process.

c.) If there’s going to be an individual mandate, the difference in premiums between potentially healthy and potentially sick has to be at least close to the same.  Insurance companies shouldn’t be allowed to discriminate.  It occurs to me that’s the implied spirit of health care reform.  They get more customers and a mechanism, by virtue of volume, to ameliorate profit and loss.  There is no methodology for the pooling of risk in this bill.  Nothing to foster responsibility and accountability on part of the behemoth bastards.

Again, the idea and spirit is to spread and share risk so insurance is accessible for all of us, regardless of  the relative waxing or waning of any individual patient.

Hey Max, it is profoundly irresponsible and egregiously stupid to mandate Americans buy in to a health care system without any realistic reforms.  Look at my thumb, sheezus you’re a stupid worthless fuckhead.

d.) Poor families, not impoverished ones, would be mandated to pay as much as 13% of their gross income for insurance or pay nearly half as much in penalty.  Either way, all monies would be mainlined into the veins of the insurance beast.  Fuck that.  Seriously, fuck that shit.  That’s enough to bankrupt many if not most families and the beast doesn’t stand to lose a goddamn thing.  If they don’t cover them they still get their money, one way or another.  What it does is spread mayonnaise or peanut butter on the dick of the beast and supply starving puppies and any activity that occurs beyond companionship is at the discretion of the two mutually consenting parties, you know, the emaciated puppies and the beast with the skin tone sequoia erection.

At the end of the day, what really chaps my ass, is how lacking the bill is in innovation, boldness and real quest for change that yes, we can believe in.  No controversy, nothing groundbreaking not even a single attempt to tip at even one windmill.  It bolsters the status quo.  It safeguards avarice by the big dogs and does less than little for the poor and middle class.  It is antithetical to the spirit of reform we so desperately need.

It’s crap.

Gamesmanship, brinksmanship and clownsmanship.

One step forward?  Not even.  Two steps back?  Obviously.

My father would say, “In a pig’s ass.”

Drinks for my friends.

It’s crazy.  DJ AM was found dead in his New York apartment due to an apparent drug overdose.  What’s even crazier, I have absolutely no idea who this guy is.  Or was.  What does that say about me?  I’m 44, a former multi-platinum record producer and I’ve never heard of this guy in my life.  Obviously he was a dj.  So?  High profile romances with Nicole Richie and Mandy Moore.  I kinda know who they are but again, so?  Not even a musician, much less a talented one, and he’s dated Nicole Richie who’s famous for what?  Being friends with Paris Hilton?  The adopted daughter of Lionel Richie?

I’m not so clueless as to know there exists an entire dj culture I know nothing about.

I worked with Lionel Richie, hell of a nice guy.

And Mandy Moore.  Never heard of her.  Sold some ten million records and is an actress.  Honestly never heard of her either, couldn’t pick her out of a lineup.  What does this say about me?

My adolescent heroes are by and large, still names on peoples lips, or at least, still familiar to most people eighteen and over.  Journalists, musicians, actors and writers.  Cronkite, Brokaw and Olbermann.  Miles, Eddie, SRV….  Sean Penn, De Niro, John Goodman, Frances McDormand….  Poe, Steinbeck, Capote, Vonnegut….  I could fill pages.

What does it say about us?  About me?  My generation?  Do the people who know who DJ AM is know who the Vice President is and that he spoke at a very important memorial this evening?  Do they know the last scion of Camelot is dead?  Do they even care?

I understand that there’s always been a disconnect between the youth culture and the more sober reality of the adult world.  Often that cleavage has yielded important cultural upheaval.  If American society had just listened harder and paid more attention to our youth in the late sixties, events might have been significantly less disastrous.  The under under 35 demographic played a huge role in last year’s elections.

A force to be reckoned with.  Pure and not easily confused.

I have to admit, beyond my bewilderment, I don’t necessarily have a point.

Well, maybe I do, but it smacks of codgerliness in an embarrassing ‘kids these days’ sort of way.  I mean, these are pivotal times.  The fate of the country certainly hangs in the balance, as does every single individual who has DJ AM on his or her radar.  Is our children learning?

I read Rolling Stone these days because Matt Taibbi has piece inside, otherwise I have no idea who or what they’re talking about.  The new artists are a mystery to me.  Weird.

To be sure, part of the problem is the phenomena of unchecked media saturation.  I grew up with two and a half channels, the newspaper, a 7-11 a half a hour way on a skateboard and a library forty five minutes away on a bike.  No cable, no internet, no cell phones, no video games except Pong and nothing but time.  I responded to this brevity of stimuli, entertainment and information by constructing powerful homemade explosives, listening to records, reading everything I could get my hands on and learning to play the drums.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I had no interest in sports.  I played a little tennis, these days I like to watch boxing and a little basketball, maybe the Superbowl.

Far  more constructive than today’s youth, I’m sure.

I understand that raging, pulsating hormones and prodigious pressure to succeed  pollute common sense and sometimes erode sensibility entirely, but work with me kids.  Whoever DJ AM was, I’m confident he commands no amount of gravity that even approaches the fight for your future that rages in town halls and the corridors of power as you lament the passing of this cultural speck.

What I’m trying to tell you is we need you.  Pay attention.  You helped us elect a man who was by far the best choice.  Your work is not done.  Sorry, it’s just begun.  It is the price you pay for what you already have.  It is what you owe for it.  Sincere earnestness is required to improve it all.  You are the future.  Read and masturbate more.  Reverse that, spank it more often and then turn off the insidious and ubiquitous media and read something.

The engine of youth is quite capable of driving the course of human events in this country when it’s fuel is righteous.

Drinks for my friends.