To Hell with the mob

Shouldn't they call themselves the "Lynch Party"?

2009-12-07T09:43:00.000-08:00

Should the “Tea Party” movement organize itself to run congressional candidates across the country, it would poll better than the Republican Party, according to a new survey by Rasmussen Reports.

In the national telephone poll of 1,000 likely voters released Monday, 23 percent said they preferred to vote for a candidate from the yet unformed “Tea Party” for Congress in 2010. The Republican Party trailed the non-existent political organization by 5 percentage points, getting the support of 18 percent of respondents. [Link]

This is a really stunning and scary state of affairs. The extreme lunatic fringe has become the mainstream among rethuglicans, and the few remaining sane, moderate members are reduced to the status of a fringe.

Goldfinger...

2009-12-02T19:00:00.000-08:00

Dah dah dah... he's the one... the one with the loaded gun...

I'm still not sure of the veracity of the story I linked to in my previous post, but here's a doozy: it seems Goldman Sachs executives are arming themselves in case of a populist uprising.

This story tells you everything you need to know about who really runs this country. It does strike me as a little needlessly paranoid on Goldman Sachs's part. The mob can always be manipulated into mindlessly acting against its own interests. If you can get them foaming at the mouth about socialism and death panels when someone tries to give them access to health care, you can do anything with them.

As Thomas Frank wrote in What's the Matter with Kansas:

The angry workers, mighty in their numbers, are marching irresistibly against the arrogant. They are shaking their fists at the sons of privilege. They are laughing at the dainty affectations of the Leawood toffs. They are massing at the gates of Mission Hill, hoisting the black flag, and while the millionaires tremble in their mansions, they are bellowing out their terrifying demands, "We are here," they scream, "to cut your taxes."

Goldman Sachs health care plan

2009-11-20T13:19:00.000-08:00

(Reuters) New York: Having inoculated its employees with H1N1 vaccine dosages usurped from pregnant women and children, Goldman Sachs has increased its vigilance against the contagious virus by banning employee contact with spare change.

An internal memo outlines steps staff should take to avoid becoming ill, starting with the eradication of the potentially infected currency that may have lodged itself under the seats of their automobiles. The hazardous materials are being collected and sent to Small Business for disposal.

The memo also advised employees to “resist the urge to open your own car door ; let your driver do it.” [Link]

I couldn't find this at the Reuters site so I don't know if it's legit or satire. Still, it's a good summary of right-wing attitudes to health care.

The men who stare at moose

2009-11-20T09:33:00.000-08:00

The fact that the number-one issue currently roiling the lunatic-right mob is a picture of Sarah Palin in jogging shorts speaks volumes about what a bankrupt, irrelevant joke the rethug party has become.

First of all, Palin is - by her own freely chosen actions - a private citizen, not even the governor of Alaska or mayor of Wasilla any more. It's not like anyone owes her presidential decorum. Secondly, the fact that this issue is dragging on so long is testament to the woman's total lack of substance. There have been beefcake photos of Barack Obama on the covers of magazines, and the world didn't stop turning. Everyone moved on, because there is a hell of a lot more to Obama than bare-chested photos.

Palin's petty, whiny book, in which she refuses to take responsibility for the self-destruction of her presidential campaign, further confirms that she is totally out of her depth on a national, statewide or local political stage. Her 15 minutes of fame are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over. She should go back to the Little House on the Tundra and pump out a few more babies.

Sarah Flailin'

2009-11-19T13:39:00.000-08:00

Does anyone with the IQ of a tog turd - i.e. everyone except the mob - still think Moosejaw Mooselini would make a good president?

She's a creationist. She can't tell Iran from Iraq. She is the willful ignorance, stupidity and backwardness of the mob personified.

What's most disgusting about Palin is that not only is she totally out of her depth, she is too stupid and clueless to know it. Hell, she was out of her depth as mayor of some one-horse burg in the tundra. She was mayor of Wasilla for less than a year, but plunged the town $25 million in debt (25 times its usual annual operating budget) and made it a byword for political corruption in Alaska. Just think what she could do to the country!

It's 100% certain that the Twit-in-Chief will be the rethug nominee in '12, and the only question is whether her running mate will be Orly Taitz or Joe the Plumber. I'd love to think this is good news and that Obama will bury her. But as the saying goes, nobody ever lost a penny underestimating the intelligence or taste of the American public.

Fox fux up

2009-11-11T17:20:00.000-08:00

Fox "news" falsified their coverage of the teabagger rally at the Capital building, by splicing in footage from a much larger teabagger rally on 9/12 to give the impression that the crowd was larger than it really was.

Can anyone still say with a straight face that Fox is a legitimate news network?

If the bag fits...

2009-11-10T17:14:00.000-08:00

Having proudly and gleefully taken the name "teabaggers" to themselves last summer, the mob (collectively having about two neurons firing) has belatedly realized the sexual connotations of the word, and they are shocked - SHOCKED! that Democrats would refer to them this way.

LMAO! Tell ya what, rethugs. If you don't like being called teabaggers, I'll gladly call you what you are - douchebags and scumbags.

The inmates have taken over the asylum

2009-11-09T09:15:00.001-08:00

The GOP is now officially under the control of the mob. And for those who are inclined to cheer at the thought of the party self-destructing in the insanity of birthers and teabaggers, this is not good news for the country.

That's your problem right there...

2009-11-07T13:54:00.000-08:00

Michael B. Keegan, President, People For the American Way, is correct up to a point:

McCarthyism is back. Let's call it what it is.

We are seeing one witch hunt after another led by right-wing opinion leaders, media outlets, organizations and even members of Congress. They pursue personal smear campaigns, grasping at straws to create "guilt by association" and challenge the legitimacy, allegiances and patriotism of their opponents.

Remember the Bush-era attacks on the patriotism of anyone who questioned the administration's policies? Those look tame in comparison. Now, with Democrats in power, the insinuation is that the president, his advisers and his political allies are actively trying to destroy America from within and, despite being elected by the people, are inherently unfit to lead.

We stand up to right-wing bullies every day, and we want to help all courageous Americans do the same. People For the American Way is ready to confront this new McCarthyism head-on. In the coming days and weeks we will be exposing the Right's tactics and rhetoric, creating tools to help activists combat them and educating Americans about the insidious nature of what we see happening in this country, and we will impress upon Americans the urgency of stopping it.

In a 1954 Senate hearing, Army head counsel Joseph Welch famously put Senator Joseph McCarthy in his place, saying, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

Here's the problem: not only do the mob and its hate-mongering puppetmasters have no decency, they are proud of the fact that they have no decency. They're openly contemptuous of democracy, civility, competence, ideas or experience.

The mob is a mindless monster that is baying for blood. It will never act in good faith. It cannot be reached with facts, reason, logic or reality. It must be destroyed!

Glenn Dreck in a nutshell

2009-11-07T12:10:00.000-08:00

...With the emphasis on "nut". I know everyone and their dog is linking to this, but it's too good to pass up.

Oh, the stupidity!

2009-11-07T11:19:00.000-08:00

There is no argument so dumb, so inept, so irrelevant, so jaw-droppingly insane that the useful-idiot teabaggers won't gleefully seize on it in their never-ending campaign to deny healthcare to workers. See if you can stomach this mind-boggling piece of deranged verbal diarrhea from yesterday's Letters to the Editor in the Arizona Repulsive:

On Monday, I had an auto accident and the damage to my car was $2,000.

On Tuesday, I bought auto insurance.

On Wednesday, I filed a claim for the accident, but the insurance company refused to pay for the damages to my car. It said that the damages were a pre-existing condition.

Needless to say, the author of this mindless screed thinks he is incredibly clever and witty. Or maybe he heard it on Glenn Beck's latest meltdown and is just moronically regurgitating it.

Anyway, try this for an analogy: I buy comprehensive insurance on my car, get in a head-on accident, and see my claim rejected because the car had a cracked taillight before I bought insurance.

Of course, it's pointless trying to counter the drooling idiocy of the teabaggers with logic, facts, reason, or anything connected to reality.

These people are sick!

2009-11-06T11:15:00.000-08:00

The photo at this link says it all.

All the news that would give Fox "News" a fit

2009-11-05T10:06:00.000-08:00

Former New York City police chief Bernard Kerik has pleaded guilty to lying to the White House and has also said he will admit tax crimes.

Remember Kerik? He was Rudy Giuliani's leg breaker, a brutal street thug whom Giuliani promoted overnight from chauffeur to NYPD police commissioner and who almost became chief of Heimat, I mean Homeland Security. He was hyped up as a "hero" of 9/11, while he was screwing various mistresses in an apartment that was supposed to be for the use of emergency workers at Ground Zero.

I'm sure he did lie to the White House, but given who was in it at the time, I'm equally sure they knew he was lying - they were all liars themselves.

I know it's off topic for this blog but I can't help indulging in a little schadenfreude.

V for Vendetta

2009-11-05T07:46:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday, the Democrats won two congressional elections and picked up two more votes for healthcare reform. How does our "fair and balanced" media analyze this story?

Nervous and fed-up voters send a message to Obama

Democrats downplay election losses as GOP celebrates

And so on and on and on. Not just Fux Noise but all the major media outlets are singing from the rethug party hymnsheet - this is a stunning defeat, a slap in the face for Obama, yada yada.

Never mind that the elections the Democrats lost were local elections, where voters who were polled overwhelmingly said that they based their votes on local issues. Never mind that the one election that the rethugs spent millions trying to turn into a referendum on Obama - NY 23, where the Palin wing of the party forced out the official candidate to make room for a teabagger-carpetbagger extreme-right basket-case loonie - was a humiliating defeat for them.

Oh, and did you know that Barack Obama is even worse than Kenyan - he's actually a flesh-eating lizard from outer space, and the new remake of V is trying to warn us about him. Jeeeeeeeeeeesus!

A random thought

2009-11-02T10:13:00.000-08:00

Why are rethuglicans so hell-bent on denying people access to health care? Obviously, part of it is that they are in the pockets of the HMO's, as are far too many Democrats. But it goes beyond that.

When your access to healthcare for you and your family is tied to your employment, it creates a huge disincentive to switch jobs. You become in effect your employer's indentured servant for life. This is exactly what rethugs want - a sort of neo-corporate feudalism where the workers, the people who actually create the wealth that the richest 1% monopolize, are peasants with less job security than medieval serfs.

The rethugs' worst nightmare is a European system where workers have rights, security, unions, and the ability to vote with their feet when corporations exploit them. The status quo is tailor-made to perpetuate exploitation and economic injustice. That's why healthcare reform, including a strong public option, is essential for restoring democracy in this country - and why the forces of corporatism are spending billions to defeat it and rile up armies of screeching lunatics to froth at the mouth against it, and are prepared to use violence to prevent it from happening.

What an asshole!

2009-11-01T12:52:00.000-08:00

During his eight long nightmare years as pretender to the presidency, George Bush Junior never attended a single funeral of any of the troops he sent to their deaths in his illegal pet war against Iraq. In fact, he had military coffins flown into Dover AFB at dead of night, stacked up in the holds of cargo planes like cords of firewood, and even had journalists arrested and imprisoned for trying to document what was going on.

So now that President Obama has gone to Dover to give some overdue recognition and honor to those who sacrificed everything, how does the lunatic extreme right react? Do they acknowledge him for fulfilling a duty that Junior shirked? Yeah, right.

The Rethuglican Party leader Tush Limpballs is sneering at Obama for holding a "photo op". What a sick, slimy bastard. I note that Limpballs himself got out of being drafted and sent to Vietnam by having an ingrown hair on his ass - no doubt from having his head up there all the time.

Time to update Tush's hillbilly heroin dosage - he's suffering anal leakage again.

Night of the living death panels

2009-10-31T11:08:00.000-07:00

Fox "News", the network that panders to the undead brain-rotted zombies of the lunatic extreme right, is once again resurrecting their false and reckless conspiracy theories about "death panels". How can anyone still imagine that they are a legitimate news service? It could not be more obvious that they are a partisan operation dedicated to overthrowing Obama by any means possible.

The public option - up in flames?

2009-10-28T17:13:00.001-07:00

Remember The Boys From Brazil, where Joseph Mengele (played by Gregory Peck) shouts in frustration: "Lieberman! Will I be hounded to my grave by that impotent old Jew?" That's kind of how I feel after hearing today's news.

Joe Liebershit has announced he will veto a public option. This almost certainly kills any meaningful health care reform legislation in this session of Congress. Liebershit's reasons for kicking his constituents in the face are best summed up here:

Ezra Klein of Washingtonpost.com and Jonathan Chait of the New Republic both point out that Lieberman's reason for opposing the public option—that it's too expensive—makes no sense, because the public option actually lowers the cost of health reform by exerting downward competitive pressure on the private-insurance premiums whose purchase the government would subsidize. The Congressional Budget Office's scoring of the Reid proposal is expected to show this. But any illogic in Lieberman's position strikes me as evidence not that Lieberman is likely to change his mind when he becomes better acquainted with the facts but, rather, that Lieberman has already decided facts shouldn't get in the way of his opposition.

Why would Lieberman want to sink health reform? Klein points out that in the pretty recent past, Lieberman has supported the general goal, if not the specifics, of Obamacare. But consider Lieberman's political situation. He is no longer a Democrat. That means he no longer has a political base. In the future, he will have to rely more on constituencies and on cash. The White House suggests that Lieberman wouldn't dare alienate voters by opposing health reform. But what's the most cash-rich constituency in the Nutmeg State? The insurance industry, which is headquartered in Connecticut and employs 64,000 people.

I just wish Harry Reid had the balls to make it a real filibuster and force Liebershit to stand up in the Senate for days on end and explain why he doesn't want working people to have access to health care. Let's make it a true filibuster! Force the wrinkly old gnome to keep talking until he kicks the bucket. Problem solved.

Help a fellow blogger

2009-10-22T13:18:00.000-07:00

Mahablog is one of the best progressive blogs out there. It's always a great resource for up-to-date news and sane, insightful commentary. Now it looks like the author, Barbara O'Brien, may be losing her home due to shenanigans by her co-op board. Read her story and see if you can find a way to help.

Fucking HMO bastard pieces of shit, yet again

2009-10-22T13:00:00.000-07:00

I know it's been a while since I blogged, not that anyone noticed. But I am outraged by this. Rape victims are being punished by being denied health insurance!

Christina Turner feared that she might have been sexually assaulted after two men slipped her a knockout drug. She thought she was taking proper precautions when her doctor prescribed a month's worth of anti-AIDS medicine.

Only later did she learn that she had made herself all but uninsurable.

Turner had let the men buy her drinks at a bar in Fort Lauderdale. The next thing she knew, she said, she was lying on a roadside with cuts and bruises that indicated she had been raped. She never developed an HIV infection. But months later, when she lost her health insurance and sought new coverage, she ran into a problem.

Turner, 45, who used to be a health insurance underwriter herself, said the insurance companies examined her health records. Even after she explained the assault, the insurers would not sell her a policy because the HIV medication raised too many health questions. They told her they might reconsider in three or more years if she could prove that she was still AIDS-free.

I guess this is a new twist on the previous administration's abstinence-only policy...

I don't wish rape on anyone, even Sarah Palin, but I really wish all those know-nothing idiots who are screaming and foaming at the mouth against health care could see what it's like to be in someone else's shoes.

At last, a Dem with backbone

2009-10-01T13:54:00.000-07:00

We need a medical research program that will clone this guy and put 70 of him in the Senate and 400 in the House!

A day that will live in blasphemy.

2009-09-30T14:40:00.001-07:00

Okay, definitely off topic for this blog, but:

Happy International Blasphemy Day, everyone!

The Gathering Storm

2009-09-30T11:04:00.000-07:00

Calls for a military coup against Barack Obama are getting increasingly frequent and brazen. Clearly, the corporatist power elite wants to correct the mistake it made in allowing a fair election last November.

I don't think most rank and file troops would be so treasonous as to rebel against their legitimate Commander-in-Chief. But what most people don't know is that George Bush Junior installed a large number of Christian Dominionists in key positions in the military during his tenure. These ultra-radical loons have access to some pretty heavy firepower and believe that they are accountable only to the religious right and to Jesus, or at least their version of Jesus.

I think some type of coup attempt is virtually certain before 2012. Whether it will succeed is anyone's guess, but if it does, we're all screwed.

The dead peasants are revolting! (or should be)

2009-09-29T17:29:00.000-07:00

The United States is not a democracy, it is a plutonomy - a state controlled by and for the benefit of a small super-wealthy elite, the richest 1% who control 95% of the wealth. The whole economy revolves around producing luxuries for the Paris Hiltons of this world, while everyone else is literally seen as a dead peasant - worth more to his slavemaster, I mean corporate employer, dead than alive.

These are among the revelations in Michael Moore's latest opus, Capitalism: A Love Story. Capitalism, when allowed to run riot with no regulation whatsoever, becomes a thoroughly evil and corrupt institution that causes untold suffering to its victims - the workers who actually create the wealth that Wall Street's Gordon Geckos so conspicuously enjoy.

It's looking more and more like the collapse of the economy last September was not just typical Bush Jr. incompetence and corruption, but was deliberately engineered as the greatest theft of our tax dollars of all time. Junior and Cheney gave their corporate cronies almost a trillion dollars of our money, as a parting gift. The trillions poured into the coffers of Cheney's Halliburton in no-bid contracts, and the wholesale slashing of public health regulations on heavy polluters, evidently wasn't enough.

If the useful idiots of the extreme right, who are so easily stoked up by forged Kenyan birth certificates, blatant lies about "death panels" and the like, could be forced to watch this movie - and if the had a single working brain cell between them - their anger would make their current state of frothing rage look catatonic. And they would direct their anger where it belongs - at the corrupt and criminal fat cats who are screwing them just as much as they are screwing everyone else, and at the political whores who make this looting and plundering possible.

Looking for a silver lining...

2009-09-29T14:44:00.000-07:00

I try to comfort myself with the thought that conservatives are, by definition, on the losing side of history. They've been wrong on just about every issue in the history of this country.

Conservatives were against American independence and wanted to remain loyal and subservient to the English crown.

Conservatives fought to maintain slavery.

Conservatives screamed and ranted against the New Deal, even though they are happy to feed on its benefits such as Social Security.

Conservatives wanted the US to align with Hitler or at least not oppose him.

Conservatives vowed, "segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."

Occasionally, conservatives win enough political power to stop the clock or even turn it back, as happened under the Reagan and Bush regimes. But the tide of human progress cannot be held back indefinitely, and it only flows more strongly when the dam breaks.

The fact that the conservatives are openly advocating armed violence against a legitimate president, though scary, is a tacit admission that they are politically irrelevant. Bullying, threats and violence are all they have left. I'm still waiting for Obama and the Democrats to realize this.

Obama "an enemy of humanity"

2009-09-29T14:12:00.000-07:00

Once again, Arizona shows itself to be the most insane state in the Union, full of drooling, mouth-foaming lunatics who are incapable of comprehending anything except the most brutish impulses of hatred and violence. And that's just our Congressional delegation, to say nothing of the rank-and-file mob.

Watch 2nd District representative Trent Franks calling our duly elected president "an enemy of humanity" and declaring that he has "no place in any station of government". Incredible! It's one thing to claim falsely that Obama was born in Kenya, but now this stark raving asshole lunatic is practically begging the mob to assassinate him.

We have to start standing up to those cocksucking bullies and assholes. No more mild expressions of disapproval in the House. Charge these scum with treason and put them away for a very long time.

A day that will live in infamy.

2009-09-29T14:03:00.000-07:00

Right-wing Democrats in the Senate have capitulated to the bullying of the Repulsive party and its mob proxies and HMO paymasters, and killed the public option. This is a slap in the face to the vast majority of Americans who are suffering under our present greed-driven healthcare-denial system and are demanding real, meaningful change.

I can only hope those craven cowards who surrendered to mob rule will be kicked out in the next election, and replaced by genuine Democrats. In the meantime, unfortunately, we will get some window-dressing piece of half-assed legislation that will only make the situation worse.

Teabaggers still fomenting violence

2009-09-28T16:48:00.001-07:00

Vote in the Obama poll! Should Obama be killed?

Charming.

I'm sure the pundits are already furiously scribbling articles on the lines of "This is just a joke! Don't you libs have a sense of humor?"

How bad will things have to get before the federal authorities start investigating the overwhelming deluge of hatred, racism and violence from the extreme right?

The re-lynching of Bill Sparkman

2009-09-28T13:06:00.000-07:00

I reported earlier on Bill Sparkman, the census worker who was lynched and had the word "FED" written or carved on his chest. His body was found on the mob's holy day, 9/12, shortly after teabagger lunatic Congressbitch Michelle Bachman had called for violent resistance to census workers and the right-wing hatred machine started spreading lies that the 2010 census would be conducted by ACORN workers for the purpose of rounding up conservatives into concentration camps.

Now the mob is lynching Bill Sparkman all over again, by claiming he was a child molester. My god, these subhuman vermin are infinitely sickening and beneath contempt. Despicable fucking assholes, every one of them.

Family values, my ass

2009-09-26T10:46:00.000-07:00

Jon Kyl is a senator from Arizona, and he's just as big of a pompous twit and gasbag as John McCain. In this video he shows his deep understanding of the whole concept of health insurance:

Repulsive mentality (if that isn't too much of an oxymoron) in a nutshell: I've got mine, screw you. It's too bad Kyl's mother didn't take the pill.

The mob tastes blood

2009-09-24T10:14:00.000-07:00

Bill Sparkman, a US census worker, was lynched from a tree and the word "FED" was carved on his body.

I knew it was only a matter of time before the avalanche of shrieking, mouth-foaming hatred spewing 24-7 from Fox "News" directly into the empty heads of the mob would lead to violence and tragedy. As far as I am concerned, Glenn Dreck, Sarah Palin and all the other lunatic-right ranters and screamers have this man's blood on their hands.

Won't someone please think of the HMO executives!

2009-09-23T10:28:00.000-07:00

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

Good news at last!

2009-09-22T15:02:00.000-07:00

Legal system’s patience with ‘birthers’ may have ended

I’m thinking that Orly Taitz, the Queen Advocate of the Birthers, better come up with ten grand pretty quick. Then she should turn her attention to finding another line of work, because her time as an attorney may be coming to an end soon.

No doubt she'll get a gig on Fux News when Glenn Dreck's head finally explodes. Still, it's good to see that sanity can prevail once in a while. Slowly but surely we will take this country back from the mob!

Making me sick

2009-09-22T10:56:00.000-07:00

Repulsives in the US Senate are sending out a "push poll" survey designed to make people think that healthcare reform will discriminate against white people. I wonder how much of our tax dollars they used for this sickening stunt?

Meanwhile, HMO giant Humana is also using tax dollars to scare elderly people into thinking that their Medicare will be shut off.

I know it's hard to make a case when you are defending a status quo that racks up obscene profits for Humana and other HMO's by killing one American every 12 minutes, but my god, how low can those assholes sink?

Behind the Bushes

2009-09-21T10:25:00.000-07:00

This is maybe a little off-topic for this blog, or maybe not...

If you think this country is a democracy, and that leaders are chosen by the people, Russ Baker's book Family of Secrets will be a rude awakening. The reality is that a small handful of families constitutes a power elite that perpetuates itself down the generations by corruption, criminality and sometimes even treason.

How does someone like George Bush Junior get to be the most powerful man on earth when he's obviously as dumb and incurious as a box of hammers? Answer: Poppy put him there. In fact, Junior has never accomplished anything in life on his own. From dodging service in Vietnam, deserting the National Guard, getting into Yale, into the Texas governor's mansion, into the White House... Junior always depended on Poppy to pick up the phone to some crony (usually a Texas crony in the oil and/or intelligence business) and ask a favor for his idiot son.

By the way, did you know that Bush Senior was on Dallas the day JFK was murdered, and that he misled the FBI about it? Or that he had close contact with a man who was a close friend of Lee Harvey Oswald? In fact, it was Poppy's cronies who got Oswald a job in the building which came to be known (incorrectly) as the Texas Schoolbook Depository.

There are lots of other explosive revelations in this book, including a whole new interpretation of Watergate and Poppy's insidious and previously unrevealed role in it. Nixon was always hated as an outsider by the power elite. Was he a patsy, just like Oswald?

When you see how the power elite operates, with total contempt for the law and the good of the country, the current mob hysteria and violence appears in a much more sinister light. The mob is being manipulated and controlled by shadowy figures like Poppy, who are motivated purely by greed and power-lust.

As I keep saying, the current situation goes far beyond the single issue of health care and cuts to the heart of what this country is all about. Is this a fascist oligarchy where a privileged elite uses howling mobs of useful idiots to enforce its will? Or is the US a democracy which cares for all its citizens, not just the wealthiest 1%?

Where Glenn Dreck gets his craziness from...

2009-09-18T18:59:00.000-07:00

If you really want to know, it's from some geezer named Cleon Skousen who was so extreme right, even the far-right conservatives didn't want to know him.

Is the mob racist or just batshit crazy?

2009-09-17T16:42:00.000-07:00

Frank Schaeffer is my new hero. Watch these videos where he talks with Rachel Maddow about the brain-rotted zombies of the lunatic extreme fundamentalist right, and the cynical assholes who manipulate them.

"A village cannot reorganize village life to suit the village idiot." I love this guy!

If you kicked the shit out of a Repulsive, there'd be nothing left.

2009-09-17T14:48:00.000-07:00

For a good laugh, read this fine example of Repulsive pomposity, hypocrisy and ignorant know-nothingism.

[I]t’s a real head-spinner to bash a government-run system for failing to adequately serve an enormous anti-government protest after opposing government funding for it.

The issue was the DC Metro service's alleged failure to transport teabaggers to an anti-Obama protest. Why didn't they just get the HMO lobbyists to drive them there in limousines?

Fucking HMO bastard pieces of shit, Part Deux

2009-09-15T17:58:00.000-07:00

HMO's are spending 0.7 million dollars a day to sabotage health care reform. That kind of money buys an awful lot of screeching mobs. And CEO pay ranges from $3 million to $24 million.

Jesus, I hate those bastards.

Lies and the lying liars who scream them

2009-09-15T16:20:00.000-07:00

White trash Joe Wilson has been formally rebuked by the house for his asshole behavior during President Obama's address to Congress. This is a good thing. Wilson's kind of thuggish and brutish behavior should not be condoned and rewarded.

Of course, thuggish and brutish behavior is the defining characteristic of the mob and the extreme-right echo chamber, which right now is working itself up into a frenzy of mouth-foaming rage. Personally I'm glad that the Dems finally showed that they at least had a strand of wet spaghetti where their collective backbone should be. If they had let this slide, as the chattering class pundits wanted them to, it would open the floodgates for even more boorish and asinine behavior from the Repulsives.

The Repulsives are liked spoiled brats who were given everything they wanted for the last eight years, and allowed to run riot and wreck the country. Now they are throwing tantrums because they don't get everything their way. Tough shit, assholes!

Strange bedfellows

2009-09-15T13:48:00.000-07:00

How the mob eagerly embraces its role as useful idiots for the corporate power elite. A must-read.

Insanity and racism of the American right

2009-09-14T09:42:00.001-07:00

Some US journalists are starting to see what has been blindingly obvious to the civilized world for months.

Maureen Dowd: Boy, Oh, Boy
Matthew Norman: Insanity and racism of the American right

I wish more of the "liberal media" would stop ignoring the ten-ton elephant in the living room. I don't just mean Rush Limbaugh, and I don't just mean the Repulsive Party - I mean racism. To the mob, Obama is disqualified from serving as president because of the color of his skin, and therefore he must have been born outside of the United States - no matter how lacking the evidence and how mouth-foamingly crazy the theories they put forward to support this falsehood. Obama is an uppity nigger, and he must be dragged from the White House and strung up from the nearest tree.

Obama and his people don't want to acknowledge this ugly truth. They campaigned on the basis that he is a post-racial conciliator, not an angry black man, any suggestion of which would have killed him at the polls. Obama wants to serve as president on the same basis.

But it's suicide not to recognize the huge amount of frantic screeching racism that is out there. And if Obama thinks that he can defuse the situation by capitulating on healthcare reform and throwing his supporters under the bus, he is in for a rude shock. His real crime, in the eyes of the mob, is PWB: presiding while black.

The first step in defeating racism is recognizing that it exists and that it is still a hugely potent force in American politics. Fortunately I think there are enough decent people that we can defeat it, but not if we bury our heads in the sand!

Fucking HMO bastard pieces of shit!

2009-09-12T16:49:00.000-07:00

Remember that line from the movie As Good As It Gets? People in cinemas all around the country were cheering when Helen Hunt said it. That was only about 10 years ago. Today the mob is screaming, "Oh my god, Obama's health plan is going to put the poor defenseless HMO's out of business."

The saddest thing about the current political situation is how ordinary, hard-working people have been brainwashed into becoming mouth-foaming zombies who are screaming for the corporate power elite in the US to keep screwing them over. Name one decent, honorable thing the Repulsives did during the time when they had a total monopoly of power. One thing that wasn't about lining their own pockets or the pockets of their cronies. You can't! The Repulsives are evil, corrupt, cynical and consumed by greed. The HMO's aren't the only fucking bastard pieces of shit!

Oh for Christ's sake!

2009-09-10T18:02:00.000-07:00

I will let this speak for itself:

Birthers Want To See Obama's Penis

The teabagging of the president

2009-09-10T12:38:00.000-07:00

I'm glad that southern trailer trash Joe Wilson contented himself with interrupting Barack Obama's speech with a verbal outburst (akin to Dick Cheney's "fuck you" to Pat Leahy on the Senate floor), and didn't bring an assault weapon and a bullhorn to shut down the entire speech. But despite the impression given by the media, Wilson was very far from being the only tantrum thrower.

After spending the entire summer riling up the mob into a fever pitch of racism, hatred, ignorance and mouth-foaming stupidity, it's only to be expected that some of this behavior would rub off on the Repulsives themselves. The only surprise is that more of them didn't revert to mob-like behavior. Christ knows they have done everything else imaginable to shut down this debate and prevent healthcare reform from happening.

At this stage it should be obvious to every sane person that the Repulsives have nothing to offer but fear itself.

Speaking of lying hypocritical bitches...

2009-09-09T16:42:00.001-07:00

Jesus... why won't Orly Taitz go away???

Some coward refuses to follow orders to deploy to Afghanistan, and right on cue, Oily Taint crawls out from under her rock to file one of her poorly-written and barely literate nuisance lawsuits. And the moronic birthers are in full screech once again.

Tell ya what, how about a deal - Barack Obama posts his birth certificate right after Oily Taint publishes her:

Law Diploma from an accredited law school (she only has a correspondence course diploma from some unaccredited diploma mill)

DDS degree (she claims to have a dentistry degree from Hebrew University in Israel, but there is no evidence that she ever even attended that school)

Certificate showing that she passed the bar exam

Real estate license

Green card - by her own admission, she entered the US on a tourist visa and married a stranger to get a green card. That constitutes immigration fraud and is grounds for revoking any green card she may have.

And for good measure, let George Bush Junior post his complete national guard records showing that he fully met his obligations. Then we can talk about birth certificates!

Sarah Palin is a lying, hypocritical bitch

2009-09-09T11:11:00.000-07:00

When she was governor or Alaska, Sarah Palin encouraged Alaskans to have living wills. Now she's once again lying about "death panels".

And remember white trash Levi Johnson, the self-described fucking redneck who impregnated Palin's equally white trash daughter? Remember his deer-in-the-headlights look as he was hauled onto the stage at the Repulsive convention, while the choir sang "Yay teen pregnancy, teen pregnancy is great, it's as American as apple pie." What a relief it must have been for him that Palin lost, otherwise he would have had to marry the skank. Well, now he is dishing the dirt on the woman who came perilously close to being his mother-in-law:

Well, according to her former almost son-in-law, Levi Johnston (19), Palin doesn’t know how to hold a gun, goes to church only three or four times a year, and is an abysmal mother.

[...]

The former future son-in-law disputes Palin’s campaign claims to be a devoted wife and mother. She and her husband Todd fought often, slept in separate rooms and talked of divorce, he says.

"There wasn’t much parenting in that house. Sarah doesn’t cook, Todd doesn’t cook – the kids would do it all themselves: cook, clean, do the laundry, and get ready for school."

Johnston describes Palin as an idle airhead who never read newspapers, came home from work early and sat on the sofa in pyjamas watching women’s television programmes.

"She always wanted things and she wanted other people to get them for her," he says.

He and Bristol were often dispatched to Taco Bell to fetch Palin’s favourite – the Crunchwrap Supreme.

Why does anyone take this stupid cow seriously?

I have a scream

2009-09-08T09:46:00.000-07:00

Despite the frantic, mouth-foaming screeching of the mob, Barack Obama's speech went ahead, and the world didn't end. Hordes of glassy-eyed child zombies aren't streaming out of classrooms at this very minute to impose socialism, fascism, communism and euthenasia on the US. The mob had its worst fears confirmed, though: there's still a black man in the Oval Office.

In Arizona, education czar Tom Horne decreed that children would need a permission slip from their parents to see the speech, prompting some children to ask the obvious question, "Why do we need permission to listen to the president?"

(Horne, incidentally, claims that children will be forced to worship Obama. This is rich, coming from a guy who treats the Arizona Department of Education web page as his personal site - note how many times his mug is plastered all over it - and who has racked up a pile of tickets for speeding through school zones, but considers himself above the law and refuses to pay.)

Hopefully the children will learn a valuable lesson, even those who are prevented from watching the speech in school. They will learn that a great many grown-ups, possibly including their parents and certainly including Horne and most other Arizona politicians, are batshit crazy and racist. And also that they would lie to children and teach them to be afraid of their own president, that he is Satan incarnate and wants to kill them for their body parts.

With any luck, they will remember these lessons when they are old enough to vote, and the Repulsive party will be destroyed once and for all.

Is our children learnin'?

2009-09-07T12:52:00.000-07:00

Not if Repulsives can help it.

Amen, Brother Bill

2009-09-07T12:51:00.001-07:00

Sarah W. Palin

2009-09-07T12:05:00.001-07:00

I've often wondered why Sarah Palin - Little Miss Nobody from Nowhere - captured the attention of the mob, to the extent that she was the de facto Repulsive candidate last year, and John McCain was relegated to the sidelines as soon as he announced her.

Finally, it struck me - she is a female George Bush. She's incurious, anti-intellectual, mawkishly religious, proud of her ignorance and stupidity, proud of the fact that she never had a passport until 2007. She also has an overweening sense of entitlement, despises the "little people" who clean up after her, and seethes with resentment against anyone smarter and/or less privileged than her.

Bush won a huge, worshipful following (but not an election) by pandering to all the is lowest and most backward in the American voter. Palin is doing exactly the same. Let's hope she never gets a chance to do as much damage as he did.

We don't need no edjoo-kayshun!

2009-09-04T11:03:00.000-07:00

Once again we see the infinite stupidity, ignorance and hypocrisy of the mob and its Repulsive puppetmasters. Every modern president, including Reagan and both Bushes, have made addresses to schoolchildren. Now that Obama plans to continue the tradition, the lunatic extreme right is erupting in mouth-foaming rage and screeching about "indoctrination".

Obama plans to tell children to work hard and stay in school. Well, we can't have that, nosiree Bob! Heck, that there's soshulism! We gotta keep our kids dumb, just like us, so that they grow up to be good Christian Republicans! Heavens to Betsy forbid that some uppity nigger should give them ideas about reaching above their station in life...

Conservatives are losing their heads!

2009-09-03T14:52:00.000-07:00

Is the federal government building secret camps to lock up people who criticize President Barack Obama?

Will it truck off young people to camps to brainwash them into liking Obama's agenda? Are government officials planning to replicate the French Revolution's Reign of Terror, using the guillotine to silence their domestic enemies?

Secret camps and guillotines? Groups make `birthers' look sane

The article goes on to give the obvious answer: no. Obvious, that is, to anyone with the IQ of a dog turd.

Unfortunately, it's too late to reach out to the mob with mere facts. They are far past the point where they can be reached with facts, reason or logic of any kind. For years they've been immersed 24-7 in the vast right-wing noise machine and hatred machine. They've been hooked up intravenously to a never-ending drumbeat of hatred, rage, bigotry, and willful stupidity and ignorance from Jabba the Rush and all the other hatemongers.

As I've said before, healthcare is really only the pretext for this outbreak of mob violence - if it wasn't healthcare, it would be something else. The mob would be waving its assault weapons, bellowing into its bullhorns, and screeching its spluttering, unthinking rage over GATT talks or changes to the 1872 Mining Act or whatever the hatemongers told them to scream about.

I almost wish there were in fact detention camps, guillotines and whatever else figures in the mob's frenzied lunatic fantasies. If we could put the mob out of our misery, the collective IQ of the nation would increase over 1000%.

Shilling for healthcare reform

2009-08-31T16:14:00.001-07:00

I like this ad. The guy is a genuine Iowan - he says "Warshington"!

Putting the "ass" in "assault weapon"

2009-08-31T16:00:00.000-07:00

Domestic terrorist Chris Broughton, who is unaccountably still at large despite attempting to disrupt a healthcare rally by brandishing an assault weapon, is a member of an extreme fundamentalist church whose pastor regularly prays for Barack Obama's death. What a pair of asses.

Kiss my grassley

2009-08-31T12:27:00.000-07:00

The prize for most dishonest and sleaziest hypocrite in the whole healthcare debate undoubtedly goes to Iowa senator Chuck Grassley. He has been double dealing and acting in bad faith all along, dangling the carrot of bipartisanship in front of the Democrats while pandering to his lunatic birther/deather/teabagger base with dog whistle messages. He's played the Dems for suckers, continuously stringing them along, moving the goalposts, delaying and obfuscating, and covertly trying to sabotage any chance of healthcare reform.

Grassly was the Repulsive who proclaimed that Democrats needed 80 votes to pass their legislation in the senate. Remember when the Repulsives had 50 votes in the senate, and Dick Cheney was called on a record number of times to break ties? Back then, 50 votes was sacrosanct and meant that the Repulsives with their extreme, fringe ideology could ride roughshod over everyone else. Then the Dems gained a majority, and suddenly they were not allowed to go to the bathroom unless they had 60 votes. As soon as they had 60 votes, the threshold suddenly became 80. I wish the Repulsives would be honest and say that they don't give a damn about democracy. They want absolute power, and if they can't have it, they won't let anyone else exercise any power whatsoever!

Why do we even give those Repulsive assholes the time of day? They got slaughtered at the last election and are politically no more relevant than their British counterpart, the Monster Raving Loony Party. It is precisely because of their political impotence that they are riling up the base to armed revolt and hope to return to power by violence. I wish the cowardly, craven Dems in Congress would grow a pair, see past the Repulsives' bullying and blustering, and tell them to shut up and go away.

The lunatic extreme right has waved its weapons, screamed its soudbites, and thrown its tantrums. Now it's time for the grown-ups to have their say.

Ghouls and vultures

2009-08-30T16:21:00.000-07:00

Ted Kennedy was laid to rest yesterday. I didn't watch the ceremony but its seems to have been a very fitting and tasteful sendoff. Which of course drove the lunatic extreme right berserk. This comment from Rev. Mike Huckabee is about as much as I can link to without throwing up.

I’m just surprised the mob didn’t turn up at the funeral with their assault weapons and bullhorns, and drown out the service with their screaming.

One Million Lone Nuts

2009-08-28T22:22:00.001-07:00

Watch the mouth-foamingly insane Glenn Beck splutter semi-coherently through a laundry list of wacky conspiracy theories while bearing the point from my last post in mind: whenever the Repulsives accuse the Democrats of doing something evil, you know that's what the Repulsives are doing themselves.

Beck is a gibbering simpleton, but it would be unwise to ignore what he is saying. He is a mouthpiece for some very powerful and evil forces in this country, and he is delivering their message to tens of millions of extreme-right useful idiots who believe every word he says is gospel truth.

Notice how the Repulsives keep upping the stakes. Yesterday, it was granny who was the target of Obama's death panels. Today it's veterans. Clearly the goal is to target people with military training, and get them in a frenzy to put a bullet in Obama's brain. Tomorrow the message will go out that Obama wants to kill active serving military members and replace them with his private SS. Next week the revelation will be that Obama is the Antichrist who is building gas ovens for all born-agains.

Will the power elite who are currently controlling the mob, via mouthpieces and assholes like Beck, use the mob as a patsy while having professional assassins perform the actual killing of Obama? Or will they unleash the mob to do their dirty work for them?

The corporate power elite wants to kill Obama but doesn't want to turn him into a martyr, like what happened with JFK. They want to destroy him first by convincing tens of millions of armed lunatics that he is Hitler, Osama bin Laden and the Antichrist rolled into one. They're certain that at least one will get within sniper rifle range of Obama, but they also have a backup plan.

During the Bush regime, not only the entire federal government but the military was stuffed top to bottom with Christian dominionists. They are a fifth column waiting to overthrow the legitimate government by violence. The mob's puppetmasters are waiting for the nationwide atmosphere of mob violence and insanity to reach fever pitch, at which point Obama will be assassinated and a "temporary emergency government" of hard-right theocrats and corporatists will be installed.

This is probably the most dangerous time in US history since the Civil War. I wish I had some assurance that I was wrong about this, but every day, as the extreme right rises to new heights of screeching frenzy, I get more scared about where this is all going.

A worrying thought

2009-08-28T16:47:00.000-07:00

All extreme-right rhetoric can be understood by keeping one word in mind: projection. Repulsives always accuse the other side of what they are already doing, or planning to do. Election tampering, bullying and intimidation, fraud and corruption, you name it... they can't help giving themselves away.

So now that they are banging on endlessly about death panels, their agenda is pretty clear. They want to provoke mass armed violence to overthrow the US government, as I've already discussed, and once they've seized power, the real death panels will begin. Anyone who has ever registered Democrat will have a gas oven in their future!

Please prove me wrong...

This is sickening

2009-08-28T11:46:00.000-07:00

The Repulsive Party continues to encourage the mob and is becoming more and more indistinguishable from it every day. The mob is howling for Barack Obama's blood and making more serious assassination threats, while Repulsive politicians are either tacitly endorsing the bloodlust with their silence, or praising the terrorists, or even amping up the rhetoric themselves. I am becoming more and more convinced that they are plotting a coup d'etat and that it has a good chance of succeeding, and will certainly lead to widespread violence, disruption and suffering.

Who's behind the mob?

2009-08-27T11:30:00.000-07:00

The readiness with which the lynch mobs took to the streets for Fox "News"-orchestrated teabagger parties, insane theories about Kenyan birth certificates etc. etc. suggests to me that healthcare is only an excuse for the current surge of mob violence. If it wasn't about healthcare, it would be something else. No doubt if Obama decided to fix our broken education system, the mob would be screaming that education is a communist plot. I can see the protest signs already: "We don't need no edjoo-kayshun!!!"

The question is, why are the Republicans manipulating the mob this way? What do they hope to achieve? Obviously they want to make healthcare Obama's waterloo, and deny healthcare to millions for the sake of petty partisan gain. But I think it goes far beyond that.

Look at how they keep upping the stakes. First it's a lone nut with a pistol strapped to his leg. Then it's an armed posse with assault weapons. No doubt next time it'll be a full militia platoon with sniper rifles and grenade launchers.

Also look at how the Republicans keep coming out with ever more frenzied lies about death panels and the like. They are constantly driving the mob to new levels of frantic mouth-foaming hatred. It is obviously planned and coordinated.

It's quite clear that the Republicans are hoping for mass outbreak of armed resistance to the lawful US government. They know that they can never win back power at the ballot box - at least not for decades, after their corruption and incompetence totally destroyed the economy - and they want to seize power by violent means. The mob is their weapon.

I only hope I'm not the only one who has connected the dots. I hope the Obama administration is aware of the danger and monitoring it, and that they will have the guts to take action before it gets too late.

My Cafepress store is now open!

2009-08-27T08:43:00.000-07:00

Please visit and support my store. There is a maximum markup of $1 on each item, and all profits will be donated to Americans United For Change.

Stupidest letter to the editor. EVER.

2009-08-27T08:28:00.000-07:00

Phoenix is the asshole of the bible belt, and there are a lot of stupid, Neanderthal opinions expressed in the letters to the editor page every day, including in the editorials. But yesterday's page really took the cake. First of all, Pheonix is where President Obama was greeted by a heavily armed mob including at least two people with assault weapons. (There was also a much larger crowd of healthcare reform supporters, of which I was one, but needlessly to say the mob got all the publicity.)

So anyway, yesterday the following letter appeared:

Dear civil-rights haters:

The men who openly carried firearms in downtown Phoenix are patriots who are tired of sitting in the back of the bus. I would like to thank these "gun toters" for standing up for our civil rights!

OMFG!!! You can't make this stuff up. Funny, I don't remember Rosa Parks carrying an assault weapon on the bus!

The letter goes on to rant and rave about the NRA being "too liberal". It's very scary that there are people this insane, fanatical, extremist and out of touch with reality walking around out there.

Let's be clear about something. The US is supposed to be a democracy. Pointing a military weapon in your opponent's face is not a legitimate debating tactic! This is not about anyone's second amendment rights - what the hell does the second amendment have to do with healthcare anyway?

People who bring guns to healthcare debates are all about bullying and intimidating the opposition, and shutting down the debate. They want to take away my first amendment rights. They are not patriots - they're terrorists. Pure and simple.

Excellent idea

2009-08-26T10:54:00.000-07:00

Pass healthcare reform and name it after Ted Kennedy. It would be a fitting memorial to his life's work.

There will be a national March for Healthcare on September 13. I'll be there!

Why I care

2009-08-26T09:55:00.001-07:00

The health care issue hits home with me because I have a medical condition that requires specialist treatment every two weeks. I'm lucky to be within two hours of a top class hospital that can treat me. I'm also lucky enough to have insurance - for now. But - a few days after every visit, I get a bill in the mail, typically for $1500-$1700 but sometimes over $2500. I call the hospital and they tell me my insurance company refused to pay. I call the insurance company and they tell me, "oh, your claim was denied." "Why?" "I don't have that information, I'll have to get back to you." It takes several weeks of fighting the run-around and appealing the denial until they finally relent and pay the bill.

This happens so often that I've come to recognize the voices of the people I speak to at the insurance company. There was one lady who was a little less robotic than the rest and actually seemed like she wanted to help me. At one point when I was questioning a denial, she let slip: "They wouldn't have looked at your file yet, this is only your first appeal." When I asked her what that meant, she clammed up, no doubt remembering that the call was being recorded "for quality assurance purposes." I never heard her voice again.

I hate to think someone lost their job on my account, especially in the current economy, but this experience together with some other evidence leads me to conclude that this company has a policy of automatically denying claims until you appeal the hell out of them. They are hoping you will give up and pay the bill first. That's how they make their billions! And this company is considered one of the better ones.

Heaven help the tens of millions of people who have no insurance, or the tens of thousands every year who go bankrupt and become homeless because of medical bills - even though they've been paying through the nose for years, but were dropped or denied treatment by the insurance companies. And the mob rants and raves about bureaucrats coming between a doctor and his patients if health insurance is reformed! I wish they'd pull their heads out of Jabba the Rush's ass.

The HMO's are collectively a monster out of control, feeding on our sickness and suffering. There will never be reform as long as they are the tail wagging the dog, because they will spend millions to rile up the mob, bribe politicians and do what it takes to keep the billions rolling in. That is why a public option is essential, and anything else is meaningless window dressing.

Is this country merely a jungle where the strong kill and eat the weak? Or is there any shred of decency left? That is what the issue comes down to.

A victory for the conservatives, a defeat for compassion

2009-08-25T18:44:00.000-07:00

One of the early casualties of mob violence against health care reform was the provision to cover end-of-life counseling. Without knowing anything about what it was howling and screeching about, the mob with its bullying and intimidation forced out a provision which was minor in the overall scheme of things but represented a sensible and compassionate approach to end-of-life issues. This article explains what's at stake, and why it's stupid and inhumane to discourage people from having living wills.

Imagine how much trouble we'd have been spared a few years ago if Terri Schiavo had written a living will! I wonder how many of the ghouls who showed up outside her hospital and screamed abuse and death threats at the doctors and nurses trying to get to work, are now on the "death panel" bandwagon. I'd guess there's 100% overlap, and something approaching 100% with the idiot birthers.

Of course the real death panels are the bureaucrats who work for the HMO's and routinely deny essential treatment in order to bloat the HMO profits and the obscene salaries of the executives.

Who would Jesus deny healthcare to?

2009-08-25T17:53:00.000-07:00

"Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give." - Matthew 10:8

That's Jesus speaking, folks. I'm no bible thumper, but I'd like to know how the mob - who no doubt consider themselves good family-oriented christians - can square the teachings of Jesus with their frantic, screeching opposition to healthcare reform?

Why this blog?

2009-08-25T16:04:00.000-07:00

I'm just an ordinary person who's never been very politically active, but I've been watching the rise of mob violence in the US with growing alarm. This goes far beyond health care. If health care wasn't the issue, it would be something else - the "Obama is an illegal alien" insanity shows that the mob has no connection with reality.

Ultimately, for the mob, it's all about racism. They just can't accept that a black man is the president of the United States. And the increasing frequency - and firepower - of weapons at health care rallies shows that many of them would feel perfectly justified in using deadly violence to remove Barack Obama from the office to which he was democratically elected. Slavery may have been officially abolished but the lynch mob mentality is alive and well in this country!

As for those who are manipulating the mob - the shadowy Republican lobbyists that specialize in bogus astroturf groups - the motivation is obvious: greed. Every fair-minded person acknowledges that the health care system in the US is hopelessly and indefensibly broken, but it is an incredibly lucrative system for the HMO's. They rake in billions of dollars in premiums, and then arbitrarily deny you when you need the service you paid an arm and a leg for! Who wouldn't want to keep that gravy train rolling? Assuming of course you had no conscience or moral compass.

But as I said, this goes far beyond health care and cuts to the very heart of what the US is about. Is this a fascist state where armed goons can bully and intimidate with impunity? Where organized brownshirts can shout down elected representatives and shut down debate? Or is there still hope for democracy in the US?

Stay tuned, I'll have much more to say.