Is it time for the Democrats to put up an anti-Obama primary candidate?

It’s time to come right out and say it. Barack Obama hasn’t merely disappointed his base. He has betrayed us.

He has put Social Security and Medicare on the table – to him nothing more than chips than he can exchange for some vague Republican promises to fiddle around with tax revenues.

This will “cause some political pain…” I heard him say on TV this morning. Political pain?

How about real human pain? The pain of hunger among many seniors and disabled kids, just for openers. Not to mention the pain felt by all of us over 65, who cheerfully accepted Social Security and Medicare deductions from our page checks for decade after decade – because we knew the money were putting in would tide us over and take care of us when we were ill in our old age.

And now we're being cheated out of delivery of a promise and a lifetime of contributions. The Republicans are raiding Social Security as if it were an abandoned bag full of money. And Obama says, well okay, my own supporters don’t want you to do this, and you do want to do this, so we’ll compromise. You can do it.

He “compromised” this way at least once before, when he bargained away his once staunchly defended “public option”

I don’t know what Obama thinks he’s doing. I don’t even know if he thinks. Some deep personal flaw leads him to turn on the people who put him in office — perhaps assuming that come the next Presidential election, Democrats will have no one to vote for save Obama anyway. If that's his thinking, he is a terribly flawed president indeed.

It’s time for us to turn on him. We need a prominent and thoroughly gutsy United States Senator, former senator or a civil servant with experience on the highest level to prepare pronto to run against Barack Obama in the presidential primaries.

In my heart of hearts I know that Russ Feingold or Barney Frank or Bernie Sanders couldn’t carry a national election, even though if we had one of them in the White House, we'd have a great president. Which leads me to one simple question:

Hillary, where are you when we need you?

Luddite would-be rapist tries an attack the old fashioned way – with a bow and arrows

While it was clearly nothing less than a nightmare for the two victims and I don’t mean to belittle their terror and agony, there’s something about this story I have to love.

A young couple, he a New Zealander named Matt Scheurich, she a French anthropologist in graduate school, were enjoying a picnic and swim at a river in New Guinea when a native rapist attacked them – with a bow and arrows.

Here’s an excerpt from the story in The Huffington Post:

He fired an arrow at Matt Scheurich as the 28-year-old New Zealander relaxed on a river bank while his girlfriend, a French doctoral student studying tribal life, swam in the river.

The first arrow hit Scheurich on the right side of his chest, Dr. Turharus said. The attacker then emerged from his hiding spot and fired a second arrow at Scheurich which hit him in the left side of his chest and deflected down into his stomach.

"Normally they use these arrows for hunting, for shooting at cassowaries and bears," Dr. Turharus said.

Cassowaries are large, flightless birds native to Australia and Papua New Guinea.

The attacker also threw rocks at Scheurich's head, the doctor said. The man then attempted to sexually assault the French woman, but she managed to bite his hand and run to a nearby village…

Think about it. In a day when terrorists who want to restablish medieval Sharia law born of a nomadic culture attack with airplanes and IEDs…when forgers pursuing an ancient art now use their MACs to scan and copy $100 bills…when American rapists use semi-automatic pistols …. this dude tries to pull off a rape with his bow and arrow and by throwing rocks.

That’s Ludism for you. And if you managed to doze through this little nugget in your history class, Luddites were followers of Ned Lud, a 19^th Century technophobe who tried to protect the jobs of hand weavers, who were being automated out of their jobs, by smashing those newfangled weaving machines.

The escape from rape was also begun without the help of technology. The intended rape victim bit the rapist’s hand. But after she ran to safety, she activated a temporary locator beacon. She and her fiancée were evacuated by aircraft. Saved by technology.

Now the would-be rapist, whose identity is known, is being sought, presumably with every high tech tool at the local constabulary’s disposal.

“It might take some time, but it won't be difficult,” one of them said.

I’m not sure what this bodes for folks who, thanks to technology, have seen their jobs exported, their incomes reduce sometimes to nothing, and their lives and future wrecked by the onslaught of applications designed to make sure the rich grow richer while the rest of us grow broke.

Nor do I think there’s a ray of hope here for those of us who have to keep updating our computer technology at the whim of Apple and Microsoft executives. When humanity stands up to the cold hand of technology, it seems that technology wins almost every time.

But I can tell you this. When the high tech forces of the super rich come for me, I’ll be ready to fight them until they zap me off the planet. I’m sharpening my arrows now.

Speech coach arrives from Mars to coach Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin

New York:- His flying saucer put down at JFK International Airport at three o’clock in the morning when there were few people around to witness his arrival.

Within moments, Nictu Platu, the famed and often mysterious speech coach from Mars, had boarded a helicopter and was secretly whisked off to New Hampshire to help coach Republican presidential primary candidate Michele Bachmann with her interview appearances on television and before the public.

“Michelle needs help,” Platu explained briefly to a bleary-eyed press pool reporter who had been awakened from a gin stupor by a phone call from his editor and told to go interview the visiting Martian. Platu is said to work only for way-far-right Republicans and a few disturbed Libertarians.

“What kind of help?” the reporter asked.

“Well, she confused the press, which thinks she mixed up John Wayne, the movie actor, with John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer,” said Platu. “This was in Waterloo, Iowa, which she said was the birthplace of John Wayne. Actually, it was John Wayne Gacy’s birthplace.”

“Right, said the reporter.”

“Well, the truth is, she was thinking about John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer,” said Platu. “It’s just that the press refused to accept Michele’s word at the time and forced her to change her story.

"The truth is, she admires serial killers. That’s why she was for the pointless war in Iraq. That’s why you’ve never heard her complain in a right-to-life speech about the rights to life of an abortion doctors who was gunned down in church. Also, she loves TV serials and cowboy movies, which is how she learned about life in the first place. Not to mention history.”

“You mean the Paul Revere’s ride thing?” the reporter asked.

“Nah, now you’re talking about Sarah Palin, a different one of my students,” said Platu.

“Why do you only take Republican candidates?” the reporter asked.

“On Mars we have a saying. Only a dull knife needs a honing,” Platu said mysteriously.

And with that, he shut the helicopter door and took off for New Hampshire.

Is the AARP about to betray millions of its own dues-paying senior citizens...again?

When the AARP came out in support of the Medicare Part D "donut hole" a few years ago, it was a sellout from which millions of American seniors suffered higher drug costs that they're still paying today.

Now, from FiredogLake.com comes this communication, which I quote verbatim without further comment. Read it and draw your own conclusions:

It's time to burn your AARP card.

According to news reports this morning, the AARP will drop its opposition to cutting Social Security benefits. The huge organization wants a "seat at the table" to will decide how to void our country's social contract.

What's worse is that AARP will now use its considerable wealth and stature to advance this devastating idea in Congress. The group plans to hold town hall meetings across the country to evangelize this new stance to their millions of members.

Social Security is in grave danger. Tell the AARP that you won't back down to threats against Social Security.

As one of the largest lobbying groups in the country, AARP will likely now focus much of its $1.4 billion on providing cover for members of Congress, the administration and others seeking to cut Social Security.

AARP was instrumental in the passage of George W. Bush's disastrous Medicare Part D plan that diverted millions of dollars to private insurance companies. In the end, AARP ended up with huge profits from the corporate giveaway that passed Congress.

Now that they've decided that Social Security and the millions of seniors that depend on the program are no longer worth their time or money, you can bet that they'll use those same resources against us.

What's insidious is their attempt to paint this move as a good thing to their members, and that the death of the Social Security and Medicare programs are inevitable. Despite countless reports of their stability, AARP is now feeding the public the same lines as Alan Simpson and Obama's Deficit Commission.

Can you add your name to our letter and show your support for protecting Social Security?

The fight to protect Social Security has huge implications for future generations of Americans. Thank you for standing with us as we vehemently oppose any attempts - big or small - to kill these critical programs.

Thanks for all you do,

- Brian

Brian Sonenstein
Organizer, Firedoglake.com

PS: For more information on this story, check out this Firedoglake.com post from Eric Kingson, professor of social work at Syracuse University and former social security advisor to President Obama during the 2008 campaign.

Our disgusting news media

Watch it and puke!

Nancy Pelosi held a press conference, to talk about the economy, how to keep your job and Social Security safe, what we can do to save Medicare – the things that concern nearly every American.

She didn't want to talk aboutCongressman Anthony Weiner's resignation. And to tell you the truth, there's almost nothing left to say.

But when she announced that she would be talking about America's pocketbook issues and not Weiner's weiner, the networks cut away. They're a bunch of philistine nincompoops. May they'll all get fired in the next wave of media layoffs. Maybe there ought to be a National Switch Off The News Day to protest. Anyone?

Anyway, check out the clip from TPM.

House Republicans take food from the mouths of starving American children but feed azaleas

You can't make this stuff up.

Michelle Bachmann and the big lie that got away

I’ve been waiting – and waiting, and waiting, dudes – for some press truth squad to point out that Michelle Bachman was so full of bullpoop during the Republican candidates debate in New Hampshire the other night that she could have fertilized a 40-acre turnip field.

I’m speaking particularly of her reference to America’s roots as a Christian nation.

She caught me off guard. I wasn’t taking notes because I didn’t think any claim so bald-facedly false would emerge from the debate. But at some point she lectured us on the founding fathers’ belief in Christianity and how this make us a Christian nation.

Her proof? The line from the Declaration of Independence (Didn’t she mistakenly say the line was from the Constitution?) that “all men are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights ….”

She, she in effect said, the founding fathers wrote “creator” because they believed in God.

Sorry, Michelle. Once again you flunk history. The revolutionary founders used the word “creator” because they didn’t want to use the word “God.” There were quite a few deists among the founders. They believed there was something that created us, but whether it was a god or some other force they couldn’t say.

Go here and you’ll learn

Deism has no church and no official organization, hence, it is not considered a religion. It is more a reason-based view of religion in general. Deism is sometimes referred to as a religious philosophy or a religious outlook. In general, Deism did not see Christ as the Son of God, did not believe in the Trinity, had no strong belief in miracles, and had no belief in atonement or resurrection. The Bible was not considered “sacred text” among most Deists, although most Deists were (like Franklin) Christian-friendly.

Deism could fall into certain subcategories of Deist-Christian (i.e. Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson) and Deist non-Christian (i.e. Thomas Paine, Ethan Allen). Deist-Christians generally believed the Bible provided good lessons to live by and they attended church regularly. Deist non-Christians generally felt that Christianity was largely an impediment to growth and they did not attend church regularly.

In fact, in a 1796 treaty, the United States declared that the United States government “is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”

So shut up, Michelle and stop spewing your bullpoop. Just…shut…up.

Take off that mask, “Public Advocate of the U.S.” Your name sounds like you’re part of the government. But you’re really a hate group.

If you got an e-mail from someone calling himself “Public Advocate of the U.S.” you might be tempted to think you were hearing from a government official.

Not a chance. You’d be hearing from a group in Falls Church, VA., the late Reverend Jerry Falwell’s old turf. According to their own website, the group is devoted to opposing same-sex marriage, prohibiting women from choosing to have an abortion, fighting against “Gay Rights” (they put the phrase in quotations marks), and a whole bunch of other early-Neanderthal ambitions. Oh, but they’re for something, too. Tax cuts.

The kind of anti-homosexual hatred the Falls Church creeps are stirring up is the kind that leads to lynchings, street assaults, bullying and harassment of kids in school and other violence.

I didn’t go looking for these goons. They found me. Here’s how it happened:

I put one of my e-mail addresses on the mailing list of a “self defense” training school some while ago. I wanted to do – and did do – a blog piece about the school because it was giving away just what the average Joe needs to blow away the neighborhood and disembowel his neighbors: free AK47s and bayonet sets.

Evidently Dr. Ignatius Piazza, the chiropractor-turned-gun-guru who runs the school traded my e-mail address to the so-called “Public Advocate.” Hey, it makes sense. If I’m really interested in owning a free AK-47 and a bayonet set, it stands to reason I’m the kind of red-blooded patriot who’s also open to bayoneting pregnant women as they try to enter abortion clinics, blowing away doctor who provide abortion services, or reducing the National Endowment of the Arts to rubble.

The Falls Church creeps wrote to me asking me to contribute money to fight The Student Non-Discrimination act, aimed at the reduction and bullying of gay and lesbian kids in classrooms around the United States. To get me fired all up with outrage, they keep calling the act “The Homosexual Classrooms Act.”

The purpose of the act, they said in a truth-twisting and sometimes outrightly lying letter, is to

Indoctrinate an entire generation of American children with pro-homosexual propaganda and eliminate traditional values from American society.

 Their ultimate dream is to create a new America based on sexual promiscuity in which the values you and I cherish are long forgotten.

I hate to admit it, but if they pass the deceptively named “Student Non-Discrimination Act,” that’s exactly what they’ll do.



The letter from the “Public Advocate of the U.S.” also lied to me that the Student Non-Discrimination Act would:

Exempt homosexual students from punishment for propositioning, harassing, or even sexually assaulting their classmates, as part of their specially-protected right to “freedom of self-expression;”

Nowhere does the act say any of this. You can read the bill yourself, S555, straight from the U.S. Government Printing Office (a real government agency) here. Warning: the text is so boring you may have to prop your eyelids open with toothpicks.

What the so-called “Public Advocate of the U.S.” really wants is your money. They’re asking for “contributions” of $30 to $200 so they can keep making a living by pumping out hate-filled, lie-laden trash.

Beware.

Here's my nomination for the best smart aleck comment of the year. So far.

"Only in America would an elected official call a press conference to confirm the identity of his penis."

(Gail Shister commenting on Weinergate at TV Newswer.)

Warning: Once Zacks.com gets your e-mail address, they might spam you forever, like they’re spamming me

At noon on May 31^st, I sent an e-mail to support@zacks.com headlined, “Get me off your database, damnit.”

My misadventure with Zacks started months before, when I made the mistake at some other financial website of clicking on an ad from Zacks.

Then the e-mail started coming in. Various come-ons to buy something I didn’t want. Day in. Day out.

Finally, I’d had enough. I clicked on a paragraph at the bottom of the spam mail that said, “If you would prefer to not receive future profit-producing emails from Zacks.com the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service, then please click here and confirm your request."

I clicked, and got a screen inviting me to unsubscribe. Which I did.

I quickly got back a message that said sorry, the e-mail address I was giving them was not in their database.

Huh? They had just e-mailed me at that address. I went through the process again. Same result. And several days later, still again, producing the same result yet another time.

Finally I wrote to the only Zacks e-mail address that seemed to apply to my problem, support@zacks.com.

My message to them – the one headlined “Get me off your database, damnit” – said:

“I keep receiving e-mail at the address [redacted]. I keep writing you to stop it. I keep getting messages back from you that this address is not in your database.

I think you are in violation of the law. If I receive one more – one more – e-mail from any Zacks entity, I will blog this all over the Internet.

Stop it! Just stop e-mailing me! Stop it!

I didn’t get a reply from the “support” people at Zacks. But since then, on two successive business days, I’ve received two more pieces of spam from Zacks.com. One offered me an “insider opportunity,” extended “but only until tonight.”

The other is trying to sell me the Zacks “Research Wizard” with the offer of a free trial. It tells me the product Zacks is selling is "like a license to steal," which sounds to me like not just poetic license, but a guarantee of investment results, in violation of FCC regulations. And it scolds, “...why haven’t you jumped on this opportunity?”

I’ll tell you why, Zacks. Because Zacks is a pain in the butt that does lousy research, that’s why. I have a Fidelity account, and whenever a list of analysts’ ratings of stocks contains the Zacks name, Zacks is almost inevitably near the bottom of the StarMine Accuracy scores.

Examples: Coca-Cola, 36 out of possible 100. Johnson and Johnson, 15 out of a possible 100. 3-M, 21 out of a possible 100. Pitney-Bowes, 21 out of a possible 100. Most of these stocks give the best analysts scores in the 90s.

The truth is, – based on their consistently pathetic StarMine accuracy ratings – Zacks couldn’t correctly guess the weather in a snowstorm, much less analyze stocks in any consistent and trustworthy way. But they can eternally pester you.

They seem to be experts at violating even the wishy-washy the CAN-SPAM act of 2003. They not only ignore your unsubscribe messages, but also lie about having you in their database while regularly sending e-mails to you on database autopilot.

What the victims of Zacks need is a law firm to launch a class action suit against the spammers at Zacks.

A Democrat's prayer (and also a comedian's)

Oh please Lord, let Sarah Palin win the Republican nomination for President. Yes, nominate Sarah, who once revealed to Katie Couric that she doesn’t know the name of a single newspaper, probably because she has never read one. Assuming she knows how to read.

If it can’t be Sarah Palin, Lord, let it be Michelle Bachman, whose ignorance of history makes her a laughing stock.

If it can’t be Michelle Bachman, Lord, let it be the plastic Republican who is named after a baseball glove and who once strapped his dog to the roof of his car and roared down the highway, and who was for Obamacare before he was against it.

If it can’t be Mitt Romney Lord, let it be Paul Ryan, whose plot to kill Medicare has the majority of Americans seething with outrage.

Y’see, I believe that America for some strange reason is coming to its senses. And when the process is complete, the Republicans are finished. I was about to say “the crazy Republicans,” but is there any other kind?

Harold Camping was right. The world absolutely did end on Saturday, May 21st. You simply failed to notice it.

According to a story by Joanne Scheffler in the Cincinnati Enquier, end-of-the-world prophet Harold Campaing is “missing in action” while his radio station is playing nothing but music.

Camping has not made, says Scheffler, “at least an attempt at an explanation as to why his predictions "... have failed again … just like his last on September, 1994.”

Okay, so I have a theory. I know it’s only a theory, but play along with me here.

Suppose the world did end on Saturday. So many of us were left behind that we haven’t noticed any changes. Harold, of course, has gone up to heaven.

Meanwhile, the end of the world is happening, only it’s happening on the slow side. A tornado wipe out a third of Joplin, MO. Do you think that’s simply a coincidence? Than how about the flooding Missouri and Mississippi Rivers?

It’s too late to repent, dudes. You and are doomed. The righteous are already in heaven. As for the rest of us, none of us is getting out of here alive, even if it takes a few decades to die.

Incidentally, you’ll know for sure you’re in Hell if the Republicans take over the Senate as well as the House come the next elections.

New York’s Emperor Mayor Michael Bloomberg, hoodwinked by fairies, seems to think subway beggars have been whisked off to Never-Never Land

So if you regularly ride the New York subways, you’ve heard speeches something like the these a couple of times a week from somebody shaking a filthy paper coffee cup full of coins at you:

“Ladies and gentleman, your attention please. I got AIDS. My wife is in the hospital with TB. I’m homeless. I got three kids to support and one of them is in a wheel chair when he fell out a window on the other two, who are on crutches. I’m a Viet Nam veteran. I lost my job. All I’m asking is that you give me a dollar, a dime, even a penny will help, anything you got….”

“I am part of da United Effort To Help Da Homeless Inc. If you’re carrying a cheese sandwich you don’t need, a ham sandwich you don’t need, a happle you don’t need, anything like dat, we will pass it on to some hungry people. Udderwise, please donate money…”

“I ain’t out there robbing nobody or killing nobody like other people….all I want is money to buy food. Do you want me to have to mug you for it?”

You’ll also occasionally hear people around you muttering, “Why doesn’t the mayor do something about this? This is against the law.”

Well here’s why he’s doing nothing – or at least nothing effective. According a story by Leo Standora in the New York Daily News, during a press conference somebody asked the mayor about panhandlers in the subway. His immediate reaction?

“Bloomberg got irritated when the question of panhandlers came up in a press conference.

He cut off the questioner, saying, "There aren't very many panhandlers left, in all fairness to the MTA. Come on."

Yeah, right. Come on, Emperor Mike. There are also the quartets that come through crowded cars, elbowing riders out of the way to sing do-wop songs or to play mariachi music, followed by some aggressive passing of a hat. There are people with sunglasses banging passengers' shins with white canes while holding out a cup or a hat or a bag.

And did I mention the insane homeless who can empty a car during rush hour while they lie across seats, reeking unbearably of days-old sweat and excreta in their pants, picking lice and bedbugs from their hair and clothing, while laughing insanely, or cursing, or glaring menacingly at the passengers halfway down the car who are trying not to inhale?

Nope, the mayor, who claims to ride the someway to work regularly (although he takes a limousine, escorted by a security detail, to a subway entrance in midtown rather than walk to the one near his private mansion)…the mayor hasn’t noticed any of this.

Maybe he’s just out of touch. Maybe, as the New York Daily News suggested, the security detail that precedes him into the subway at 59^th and Lexington (his home is on East 79^th Street, a mile and two subway stops to the north)…maybe the security detail scares the panhandlers away. Maybe he’s secretly blind and has cotton stuffed up his nose and in his ears.

Or maybe he’s been hoodwinked by his staff, or maybe even by leprechauns or fairies, into believing those aren’t really beggers, they’re tailors who are sewing him a new suit of clothes. After all, the expensively-tailored Bloomberg did in effect declare himself emperor, overturning a term limits law that he had himself supported so he could run for a third term.

Given the Bloomberg bait-and-switch record on term limits and other matters, my guess is that he’s simply a liar.

So is he so out of touch that he doesn’t see or hear about the legions of panhandlers in the New York subways? Or does he see them but pretend they don’t exist? As my pal Hotwire Kellington from down the block during my Brooklyn childhood used to say, “Youse pays yer taxes and youse takes yer cherce.”

Mass murder accessory gets 15 and a half days in jail for each person he helped kill. Not a bad deal (for him) in my opinion.

I read that John Demjanjuk, the former SS. Guard at Sobibor concentration camp during WWII, is biding his time in a nursing home after a court sentenced him to a whopping five years in prison for being a Nazi death camp accessory to 28,060 murders.

I whipped out my handy-dandy calculator (well, actually I clicked on its icon) let the math happen, and calculated that he gets 15.6 days in prison for each person he helped to exterminate.

At that rate, it would pay some enterprising-but-out-of-work person to contract to kill, say, three people at $25,000 a head. You, for example? You'd have to do 46 days plus in prison, but you'd emerge with 75 grand in walking around money. Not a bad tradeoff.

Why such a light sentence?

I get the feeling the legal authorities felt sorry for Demjanjuk. He’s 91, wheelchair-bound, and got schlepped almost straight from court to the tender ministrations of what I suppose are geriatric nursing home nurses. And he had been on trial for two years. Poor baby!

Okay, okay, to be fair to the prisoner, an Israeli court dismissed a conviction against him (which named him as "Ivan The Terrible," a particularly sadistic death camp guard) as a case of "mistaken identity." And Demjanjuk claims he was framed by the Soviets, although it's hard to imagine why they'd go to all that trouble to mess up an otherwise nonentity.

Anyway, he’s not off to the clink yet anyway. He has six months or more of an appeals process coming up, during which he’s free to enjoy his nursing care, so long as he doesn’t leave the country.

My guess is he’ll die of natural causes before the bars ever slam shut behind him . Meanwhile the Ukranian community of Munich will take care of him and his ailments.

And not with gas in a “shower room.”

Too bad. This is almost a case of life imitating art, the art being a 1970-something book by Lawrence Block in his Tanner mystery series called The Case of the Cancelled Czech.

Tanner, a kind of freelance secret agent, captures another doddering former concentration camp killer and wheels him – on a gurney if I remember correctly – to an oven, and shoves the SOB in while he's still alive.

However, real life is so much more civilized than art.

Except when it isn't.

What good is Medicare if doctors won’t accept it? Thank Republicans in Congress if you can’t find an experienced doctor to treat you.

Someone I know in California is 66 and has a heart condition. He’s had open heart surgery in the past. He had to wait six weeks to get to see his own cardiologist.

He’s not alone.

The problem is that while inflation increases, our Republican Congress has been whittling away at reimbursement rates, all in the name of cutting medical costs. Consequently, fewer and fewer doctors are accepting Medicare patients.

What follows is the general impression I get of paperwork that people have been getting from Medicare recently. It certainly feels right:

Your doctor charged: $9,750

For: nine hours of tricky neurosurgery.

We reimbursed him: $18.79.

You may be liable for the balance.

Have a nice day.

Sadly, doctors are being reimbursed at a pinchpenny rate that would bring joy to the heart of Ebenezer Scrooge. Yes, we need to control Medicare costs. But the way to start is by allowing Medicare to negotiate with drug companies, medical equipment makers and other profiteers – the big businesses that are out to make the elderly swallow a bitter pill of backbreaking costs on medications for chronic illnesses. These are costs that no other western country is paying.

Little wonder that last year, the number of doctors accepting Medicare patients dropped to record lows thanks to ridiculous provider payment rates.

And little wonder that Buzzflash.com is declaring, “Eric Cantor implies he supports death panels, as long as insurance companies decide and the rich are exempted.”

As long as the Republicans keep driving down doctors’ reimbursements we can be sure that:

•Fewer doctors will accept Medicare patients

• More Medicare patients will die or become gravely ill unnecessarily

• Fewer smart and talented people will want to incur the debt for the education it takes to become doctors. Instead, they’ll seek out a career trading subprime securities derivatives – and make billions while the nation grows poorer and sicker.

•Thanks to Republican (and some Democratic) servants of the insurance agency, there will be one class of medical care for the very rich and for Congress. The rest of us can face Republican death panels.

No wonder they’ve carried on about these death panels in the past. The Republicans invented the idea and evidently are champing at the bit to deploy it.

While you were watching the royal wedding this morning...

I'm only kidding. But it's a good thing I'm only kidding. Television news this morning – I toggled between NBC and CNN while I got dressed – was a "vast wasteland" as the late Newton Minnow once put it, of frippery, tomfoolery, and royalty worship.

Hey news viewers, while you were looking at the dowdy hats of the invitees and so-called "news people" (even Meredith Viera was wearing a dumb hat) there was a major shift in diplomatic alliances in Egypt. There were people made homeless by a storm in Alabama. The economy was continuing to "recover" while real people failed to benefit from it, continuing to lose their homes and find themselves unable to get real jobs, or in some cases even "McJobs."

Did I mention that American civilization as we used to know it is slowly slipping down the drain?

But oh, we got to see replays of the first royal kiss. I mean, is that what matters or what?

Send your favorite member of the broadcast media a lump of coal.

Bad News For Believers

According to AOL and the Internet, there is 
either no God, or no Heaven,
or none of either. I present the following evidence:
The line beginning with "<<<" describes 
the specific reason your e-mail could not be delivered.  
The next line contains a second error message which 
is a general translation for other e-mail servers.  
Please direct further questions regarding this 
message to the e-mail administrator or Postmaster 
\at that destination.  --AOL Postmaster      
 ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors ----- 
<God@Heaven.org>     
(reason: 550 #5.1.0 Address rejected God@Heaven.org)     -
---- Transcript of session follows ----- 
... while talking to smtp.secureserver.net.: >>>
 RCPT To:<God@Heaven.org> <<< 
550 #5.1.0 Address rejected God@Heaven.org 550 5.1.1 <
God@Heaven.org>... User unknown 

Don’t envy the super rich. After they’ve stolen all your money … their lives, and their spouses' and their children’s lives will be in grave danger.

Some years ago when The Crank’s Beautiful Girlfriend was still alive, the two of us went down to Ecuador. Our intention was to see the Galapagos Islands, but we also let some travel agent talk us into spending four days in mainland Ecuador, escorted by a private guide.

It turned out that we needed our own guide because the experience was not pleasant. As we soon discovered, Quito is a dangerous place. Even in downtown Quito, we were advised that it was unsafe to cross the street at night. I mean that literally. One night, just as the sun had set, we stepped through the front door of our luxury hotel.

“Where are you going?” the doorman asked.

We pointed to another luxury hotel just across the street, where there was a restaurant we had been told was pretty good.

“I’ll call a taxi for you,” said the doorman.

“But it’s only across the street!”

“It is not safe,” insisted the doorman. He blew his whistle. A taxi pulled up. The doorman held the door open for us.

I thought this was a scam to earn a tip for the doorman and a fare for the taxi. Little by little I became convinced it was something else.

Once we exited the taxi across the street I noticed that the driver waited watchfully until we entered the hotel restaurant on that side. Just as we walked in, he pulled away.

It was the same story on the return trip. Another doorman pleaded with us not to cross the street back to our own hotel, except within the safety of a taxi. And again, the taxi waited until we were inside before driving off.

The super rich get to pay for two armed killers at the door

Then, during a ride through one of Quito’s“nicest” neighborhood, we found ourselves getting driven among the hills above town, past nice-looking but not extraordinary suburban-style houses. Most of the houses had a uniformed armed guard with an automatic rifle standing at the front door. A few houses had two armed guards with automatic weapons.

I asked why a smattering of the houses had two armed guards instead of one,

“Oh,” said are guide, “those are the homes of the super rich.”

And that’s when I saw the future of America’s top ten percent of the population that owns and controls seventy-one percent of the wealth.

No, there will be no revolution against them in this country. No chance of the masses rising up and taking control as they did in Egypt and Tunisia.

We eliminated that possibility ourselves when we eliminated the draft. That insured us that instead of having a citizen-soldier army, like the one that refused to fire on their fellow citizens in Egypt, we would have an army loyal to the people who rule – like in Libya. If you mass to protest in a way that will seriously threaten the power structure, you will die in a hail of bullets. Kent State was just a precursor.

Suddenly to be super rich will be to put your life on the line

Instead, what will destroy the quality of life of the super rich will be the cost of attempting to defend themselves from gangs of ambitious thugs who form little fiefdoms led by ruthless and ambitious criminals who kidnap, torture, rob, and kill in order to survive and amass wealth outside of the power structure.

In short, the thugs who are robbing America of our Social Security and Medicare and product safety and education today will live in fear of even bigger thugs tomorrow.

This is how it is these days in most of Mexico, most of Nicaragua, much of El Salvador – in fact in every one of the impoverished Latin American nations where the top few have all the money and power while the people at the bottom struggle desperately to survive. Here’s travel authority Rick Steves talking about it:

The saddest thing about visiting Managua and San Salvador is experiencing the fear caused by the violence that comes with extreme poverty in a big city. Every major hotel and nearly every business has an armed guard. It's unwise to walk around after dark, especially with a big camera. While you're unlikely to be hurt, the risk is that groups of young thugs might just rob you at knifepoint. I found that, rather than whole safe neighborhoods, there were mostly small islands of safety around malls and fancy hotels. A wealthy tourist (and nearly all tourists here are wealthy, in relative terms) happily pays triple for a taxi that works with the hotels so you know you're safe. You generally hop from one safe zone to another by cab.

The future of super wealth in this country will be a future filled with fear of kidnapping. Fear that gangsters will surround your car and shoot your driver, drag you into a truck, chop off your thumb and send it to your family to show that they are truly sincere about wanting all the cash your relatives can put their hands on.

If it's not you who gets kidnapped, then it will be your son. Or your daughter. Or your wife.

Believe me, the “kidnapping tax” rate will be higher than any income tax that any Democrat has ever called for.

Decapitated heads at your font door

Expect to see decapitated private policemen among those who you hired to protect you. Dead guards lying in pools of blood in front of your bullet-riddled front door. Expect to take your daily drive to the office by a different route each day, preferably in a different automobile each day, to confuse those hoping to kidnap you and torture you.

It boils down to often-repeated history: those who sow unreasonably acquisitive greed will reap a whirlpool of blood.

And all when it would be so easy if you simply accepted a marginal tax rate a few points higher than you pay now, rather than demanding a tax cut while you milk the middle class and the poor for their social and medical security, driving them into penury.

Enjoy your money now, pal. It’s going to be hard shuffling your bankroll to count your wad when your thumbs are chopped off.

If you were Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York, which half-truth and half-lie would you tell? And should you tell it in a suit or shirtsleeves?

From the “Politicker” Column of the New York Observer comes word that Mayor Bloomberg is “testing” at least two different junk mail packages to see which one does more to support his budget and fading reputation.

One talks about “no new taxes” which sounds nice, until you understand that the “no new taxes” he’s talking about amount to a tax saving for the rich. That would be people like, umm, Michael Bloomberg.

The package also talks about “fighting for new jobs in every borough,” while failing to mention that he plans to put some teachers out of jobs, which amounts to destroying old jobs.

The second package talks about “nearly $2 billion for our schools, while working to keep the best teachers in the classrooms.” That would be nice, if completely true, but again, he’s planning to fire teachers. And since younger teachers earn less than older teachers, what do you want to bet that the “not best” teachers will be mostly older than 50, an age category where new job opportunities are slim?

Clearly the $2 billion isn't a wind blowing a lot of good to most New Yorkers. Mayor Bloomberg knows that compared to his own personal wealth of $18 billion, it's a pittance. Why, I wouldn’t be totally surprised if by the time he retires from politics, Bloomberg will have spent almost a billion bucks just advertising himself.

How William and Kate’s wedding could help Tea Party Republicans destroy Social Security

It’s no secret there’s a Republican plot afoot to “recklessly slash funding to the Social Security Administration” in an attempt to jeopardize its ability “to get vital benefits into the hands of seniors and people with disabilities and provide assistance to the public.”

But how can they get away with it when so many disabled and older Americans rely on Social Security for their very survival?

In the past, Republicans created distractions. Gay marriage. Gays in the military. Abortion. Any emotional wedge issue that could get some Americans so fired up that some of us would forget about our bread and butter issues.

Now the Republican Tea-Party fringe is having an opportunity handed to it on a sterling silver platter. On April 29^th, Prince William and Kate Middleton will be getting married, and our fickle press will turn its full attention, or nearly full attention, to England.

According a piece by Nat Ives in Advertising Age, which follows the networks and the broadcast advertising dollars,

• “CBS's expansive plans include Katie Couric anchoring the evening news from London for three nights starting April 27”
• “NBC News has also introduced a free 'Royal Wedding' iPad app with hundreds of photos, more than 40 new and archival news reports, an interactive royal-family tree and a countdown to the wedding.”
• "Extensive coverage by CNN, which was less than a year old at the time of Prince Charles and Diana's wedding,” has already begun
• "'…and there's going to be so much hype, it's going to be wall-to-wall Will and Kate,’ said Brad Adgate, senior VP-research at Horizon Media. 'I could see people buying DVRs just for this or HD TV sets for the occasion.'”

And on and on. It’s a perfect opportunity for mischievous Republican bullies to put millions of Americans on a cat food diet by cutting their Social Security while the rest of us are focused on Kate's gown, which fewer and fewer of us could afford, since the middle class and working poor only get get tax increases while the rich get tax cuts.

The Republicans do their thuggish work best when the nation is distracted. This time, it’s the royals who could be doing the distracting.