Flim-Flam Leakers

I seesaw between laughing or pitying so many gullible folks out there. Making the rounds, again, is the "leaked" documents by Wikileaks: Web Publisher Under Attack.

Basically its fundraiser time, send money.

Wikileaks is billed as having "... some significant organizations behind it. Associated Press, the Gannett Company, and the Hearst Corporation are listed as steadfast supporters..." and "founded by Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and start-up company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa." Well at least you vaguely know a little about who and what is leaking on you. AP, Gannett, Hearst - the conservative equivalent of trusting Washington Times, The Weekly Standard, and Fox News.

WIKI: A never-before-seen military manual detailing the day-to-day operations of the U.S. military's Guantánamo Bay detention facility has been leaked to the web, affording a rare inside glimpse into the institution where the United States has imprisoned hundreds of suspected terrorists since 2002. The 238-page document, "Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures," is dated March 28, 2003. It is unclassified, but designated "For Official Use Only." It hit the web last Wednesday on Wikileaks.org. The disclosure highlights the internet's usefulness to whistle-blowers in anonymously propagating documents the government and others would rather conceal. The Pentagon has been resisting -- since October 2003 -- a Freedom of Information Act request from the American Civil Liberties Union seeking the very same document."

Well if the ACLU is suing for it - it must be important.

Wiki-type scams have been around at least as long as I have. It sells to the wannabe revolutionaries and armchair pseudointellectuals. Such documents are prefaced with phrases like "never-before-seen" Such documents are among millions of pages of government generated paperwork that may or may not say "classified" but contain nothing more than mundane military operational rules.

The never-before-seen SOP manual is all over the internet, specifically in University libraries and every Wired, Raw Story, and PrisonPlanet website pretends, it seems without reading it, that it contains horrific information on the G-O-V-E-R-N-M-E-N-T.

The WaPo adds about 2 cents worth: The SOP manual deals with everything a guard at Guantanamo would need to know, from how to remove detainees' clothing when they first arrive (cut it off, Station 1, because detainee is shackled, Station 2 is showering, Station 3 cavity search, Station 4 new clothing) to what guards should do if they find a detainee's plastic foam cup with writing on it (confiscate it). Rolls of toilet paper are considered "comfort items" that can be given to detainees as rewards. (If you ever visit the Middle East, be forewarned that many folks without this comfort wipe with their robes.)

Some websites are saying such things as "The document exposes, among other matters, systematic methods to prevent prisoners meeting with the Red Cross and the use of extreme psychological stress as torture."

That would be Chapter 17 regarding the ICRC. There were 4 types of Red Cross visitation allowed: No Access, Restricted, Unrestricted, and Visual. One whole page is devoted to Red Cross/Detainee procedure rules, page 105. I saw no mention of "methods to prevent prisoners" meeting the Red Cross.

There is nothing at all regarding the use of stress as torture - that is a bald-face lie, but you only need to look at the folks who are believing and/or donating to keep the leakers/hypesters funded; Wikileak needs $700,000 yearly. A lot of money just to "leak" SOP manuals hinting as somehow exposing "systemic methods" of government gone wild.

WaPo also insinuates something nasty with: "The manual also confirms previous reports about dogs being used at the facility and detainees spending time in "segregation cells," either as punishment or for intelligence gathering."

They are patrol dogs people. Patrol dogs. Military K9 units. Nothing about unleashing the dogs on prisoners but doesn't that comment call up images of Abu Graib, especially for progressive folks. "Segregation" is known as solitary in civilian prisons, which by the way most progressive/liberal folks believe is also torture. I agree, so lets put all those pedophiles and child murderers in the general population, then you can complain about the State not protecting them after the gen-pop is finished with them.

DailyKos includes several links, including how to donate, to Wiki stuff. Because, you see friends, Wiki is under attack. Here's a link to an official-looking 34 page document which Wiki interprets as an attack on them by US Intel. I trudged through and conclude the report is reporting how Wikileaks using a variety of public sources and leaked sources with a high degree of technical capability and resourcefulness to portray the US as the bad guys, with no editorial oversight, fact checking, or accountability. The report also discusses the legal challenges Wiki faces in some foreign countries regarding the privacy of individuals and corporations, etc. It alleges that some believe the website is an instrument of propaganda and/or a CIA front.

The report also admits that Wiki and other such sites are likely to proliferate and could represent a potential threat to the US Army in the foreseeable future, some very dry technical info on the how and what of Wiki software, etc. Although looking at that paragraph on page 1 of SECRET/NOFORN, they do not have a spellchecker. It seems to me Wiki pulls a lot of information together to create spreadsheets and invites everyone to offer an opinion. Doesn't mean the info is reliable or accurate but an "open society" type geek would be in hog heaven in forming his opinion about it. And we all know where opinions come from.

WIKI states on page 1 of the under attack report: This document is a classified (SECRET/NOFORN) 32 page U.S. counterintelligence investigation into Wikileaks. “The possibility that current employees or moles within DoD or elsewhere in the U.S. government are providing sensitive or classified information to Wikileaks.org cannot be ruled out”. It concocts a plan to fatally marginalize the organization. Since Wikileaks uses “trust as a center of gravity by protecting the anonymity and identity of the insiders, leakers or whistleblowers”, the report recommends “The identification, exposure, termination of employment, criminal prosecution, legal action against current or former insiders, leakers, or whistleblowers could potentially damage or destroy this center of gravity and deter others considering similar actions from using the Wikileaks.org Web site”. [As two years have passed since the date of the report, with no Wikileaks’ source exposed, it appears that this plan was ineffective]. As an odd justification for the plan, the report claims that “Several foreign countries including China, Israel, North Okra, Russia, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe have denounced or blocked access to the Wikileaks.org website”. The report provides further justification by enumerating embarrassing stories broken by Wikileaks—U.S. equipment expenditure in Iraq, probable U.S. violations of the Chemical Warfare Convention Treaty in Iraq, the battle over the Iraqi town of Fallujah and human rights violations at Guantanamo Bay." (I used a spellchecker.)

Hmm ... as two years have passed since the date of report ... with no sources exposed, it appears this plan was ineffective." Or, it may be the information Wiki hypes as monumental earth shaking "leaks" is of no dire concern to US Intel. Or maybe, maybe Wiki is an intel front ... Or, the "plan" as stated is to find government employees who leak information and fire/prosecute them, not uncommon in any enterprise, and thus crimp Wiki's style. What does it say to you when the US government, with the best and latest technology available, cannot identify the folks running Wiki or its leakers ...

For you folks who love all things leaked my advice is go to Ebay or Craig's list because there are numerous salespeople selling never-before-seen unclassified and declassified bound and collated crap that you can eagerly force yourself to read through hoping the next page or the next page will reveal some "rare glimpse" and irrefutable proof about the sins of the US government - because surely the government has written and admitted in detail their evil deeds for us to read. I have a few such never-before-seen documents leaking in my attic from 40 years ago - back then we sold them at quirky little stores, on street corners, flea markets, protests ...

All Sex, All the Time

All Sex, All the Time - Theodore Dalrymple (Anthony Daniels)

... But few people are averse to the message that one can indulge appetites freely without bad consequences to oneself or others, and so Mead's book passed as authoritative. And if youthful sexual libertinism was possible in Samoa with only beneficial social and psychological effects, why not in Sheffield and Schenectady? Even had her depiction of Samoa, per impossible, been accurate, no one paused to wonder whether Samoa was a plausible model for Europe or America or whether the mere existence of a sexual custom—the celibacy of religious communities down the ages, say—should warrant its universal adoption.

So generations of educated people accepted Mead's ideas about adolescent sexuality as substantially correct and reasonable. They took the Samoan way of ordering these matters as natural, enjoyable, healthy, and psychologically beneficial. No doubt Mead's ideas were somewhat distorted as they filtered down into the class of people who had not read her (or any other) book: but it does not altogether surprise me now to meet people who started living in sexual union with a boyfriend or girlfriend from the age of 11 or 12, under the complaisant eyes of their parents. Only someone completely lacking in knowledge of the human heart—someone, in fact, a little like Margaret Mead—would have failed to predict the consequences: gross precocity followed by permanent adolescence and a premature world-weariness.

For example, an intelligent young woman patient of 20 came to me last week complaining of the dreariness of life. She had given up on education at the age of 13 to pursue sexual encounters full-time, as it were, but the initial excitement had worn off, leaving only grayness and a vague self-disgust behind. At the time of her induction into the sexual life, of course, she had been led to believe that it was the key to happiness and fulfillment, that nothing else counted: but as with all monochromatic descriptions of the ends of life, this had proved bitterly disappointing.

And, of course, once boundaries, such as the age of consent, that are to some extent arbitrary but nonetheless socially necessary are breached, they tend to erode entirely. Thus children inhabit a highly sexualized world earlier and earlier, and social pressure upon them to exhibit sexualized behavior starts earlier and earlier. A schoolteacher friend recently told me how she had comforted a seven-year-old who was in tears because a girl in his class had insulted him, calling him a virgin. She asked whether he knew what the word meant.

"No," replied the little boy. "But I know it's something horrible."

The sexual revolutionaries' ideas about the relations between men and women—entailing ever greater sexual liberty, ever less mastery of the appetite—were so absurd and utopian that it is hard to understand how anyone could have taken them seriously. But mere absurdity has never prevented the triumph of bad ideas, if they accord with easily aroused fantasies of an existence freed of human limitations.

One of the earliest of the sexual revolutionaries, the English doctor and litterateur, Havelock Ellis, had strong opinions about marriage and relations between the sexes in general. For many years, this supremely strange and repulsive, though learned, man—who looked like a tripartite cross between Tolstoy, Rasputin, and Bernard Shaw; who was one of the many semi-pagan ideological nudists that England produced at the end of the nineteenth century; and who never achieved full sexual arousal until his second wife urinated on him in his late middle age—won respect on both sides of the Atlantic as a sexual sage. His works enjoyed immense prestige and wide circulation during the first third of the twentieth century. He attached supreme, almost mystical, importance to the sexual act (perhaps not surprisingly, given his great difficulties with it); his conception of ideal relations between men and women was completely untouched by any awareness of human reality and was at the same time implicitly sordid. Many venerated his views and made them the basis of an entire philosophy of life, as did D. H. Lawrence, another English sexual pagan.

... What is left but personal whim in the determination of sexual conduct? It is precisely the envelopment of sex (and all other natural functions) with an aura of deeper meaning that makes man human and distinguishes him from the rest of animate nature. To remove that meaning, to reduce sex to biology, as all the sexual revolutionaries did in practice, is to return man to a level of primitive behavior of which we have no record in human history. All animals have sex, but only man makes love. When sex is deprived of the meaning with which only the social conventions, religious taboos, and personal restraints so despised by sexual revolutionaries such as Ellis and Comfort can infuse it, all that is left is the ceaseless—and ultimately boring and meaningless—search for the transcendent orgasm. Having been issued the false prospectus of happiness through unlimited sex, modern man concludes, when he is not happy with his life, that his sex has not been unlimited enough. If welfare does not eliminate squalor, we need more welfare; if sex does not bring happiness, we need more sex.

... Another rhetorical technique the sexual revolutionaries favor (apart from the appeal to a fantasy of limitless eroticism) has been to try to dissolve sexual boundaries. They preached that all sexual behavior is, by nature, a continuum. And they thought that if they could show that sex had no natural boundaries, all legal prohibition or social restraint of it would at once be seen as arbitrary and artificial and therefore morally untenable: for only differences in nature could be legitimately recognized by legal and social taboos.

The arch-proponent of this viewpoint was Alfred Kinsey, author of the famous reports, a man who spent the first half of his professional life studying and classifying gall wasps and the second half studying and classifying orgasms: though in the event, he was to find the taxonomy of gall wasps far more complex than that of orgasms, since he came to the conclusion that all orgasms were created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, etc.

Kinsey's program had two pillars, designed to free people of the sexual restraint that he considered the cause of all their miseries. The first was to establish by means of extensive survey that the sexual behavior of Americans was very different from what it was supposed to have been according to traditional morality. Without doubt, he skewed his survey to ensure this intensely desired result. He had a personal ax to grind, of course: he was himself a man of perverted sexual appetite, though like most sexual revolutionaries he was a very late developer. He pierced his own foreskin and put metal wires up his urethra, and his filming of 2,000 men masturbating to ejaculation (ostensibly to discover how far they could project their semen) must rank as one of history's most prodigious feats of voyeurism.

... It isn't necessary, of course, for people to read the original sources of ideas for those ideas to become part of their mental furniture. But the ideas and sensibilities of the sexual revolutionaries have now so thoroughly permeated our society that we are scarcely aware any longer of the extent to which they have done so. The Dionysian has definitively triumphed over the Apollonian. No grace, no reticence, no measure, no dignity, no secrecy, no depth, no limitation of desire is accepted. Happiness and the good life are conceived as prolonged sensual ecstasy and nothing more. When, in my work in an English slum, I observe what the sexual revolution has wrought, I think of the words commemorating architect Sir Christopher Wren in the floor of St. Paul's Cathedral: si monumentum requiris, circumspice.

---- si monumentum requiris, circumspice - (If you're searching for a monument, look around.) Initially I had a brain cloud moment with that phrase but if interpreted as "If you're looking for a monument, it's all around you" it makes sense, as in the fruits/labor, reap/sow, etc. can clearly be seen today.

Pricing Free Stuff

AT&T Inc. said it would take a $1 billion charge against earnings tied to the federal health-care overhaul, joining a number of other companies in reporting an impact from the bill signed into law this week. On Friday, 3M Co. joined AT&T in saying it would take a first-quarter charge, in 3M's case of $85 million to $90 million. Deere & Co., Caterpillar Inc. and AK Steel Holding Corp. also said they were taking such charges.

--- Cost of phone and post-it notes to rise, as will the cost of living (AK Steel in automotive, appliance, construction, Deere agriculture/food,etc. etc. more to come) - the "tax" is passed on to consumers. You know, to pay for government healthcare and other "free" stuff.

Earth Hour

It's lights out in Baltimore today. The city, as well as Annapolis and 3,500 other municipalities around the world, will be turning off their lights for 60 minutes tonight in observance of Earth Hour, an effort to reduce energy use.

Mayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake is encouraging residents to turn off lights and appliances from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Seven municipal buildings, including City Hall, will go dark. Maryland and 32 other states have passed Earth Hour resolutions.

---- Brought to you by the same symbol-minded thinkers who, 60 years ago, reminded us to "duck and cover" and more recently "plastic and duct tape," or tie a yellow ribbon. Let's just have the government shut off the grid at designated hours - that's how it's done in the developing/third world - they call it rationing. Americans need to get used to that word.

Say What

Protestors Hurl Racial Epithets at CBC Members. Self-proclaimed tea party demonstrators, infuriated by President Barack Obama’ health care legislation, shouted “nigger” at Georgia Congressman John Lewis as he walked into the U.S. Capitol building on March 20. Lewis is a civil rights icon who was severely beaten during an Alabama march in the 1960s.

According to a report from McClatchy Newspapers, lawmakers said protestors also shouted obscenities at other members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). "They were shouting, sort of harassing," Lewis said in an interview. "But, it's OK, I've faced this before. It reminded me of the ‘60s. It was a lot of downright hate and anger and people being downright mean."

Lewis said protestors were also yelling, "Kill the bill, kill the bill,” and he responded, 'I'm for the bill, I support the bill, I'm voting for the bill.” Protestors were later heard chanting, “Kill the bill, then kill the nigger.”

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., told McClatchy Newspapers he was a few yards behind Lewis and clearly heard the word "nigger." "It was a chorus," Cleaver said. "In a way, I feel sorry for those people who are doing this nasty stuff. They're being whipped up. I decided I wouldn't be angry with any of them."

---- Hmmm. Does anyone have any video proving this? With all the video and cell phones in the crowd surely someone caught one 'n' word on tape. I can't find one video capturing the slurs.

In this Olbermann interview, James Clyburn (he was there) says he did not hear the slurs. Although with Olbermann he's bolstering the notion that racism is widespread and that he hasn't seen this sort of hate since the 1960s. What? He says he has since received racist faxes with drawings of nooses. Would like to see those published or traced to the originator.

McClatchy Newspapers apparently broke this "story" and as I've blogged for years McClatchy is, like most newspapers today, untrustworthy, unreliable, full of bull (once gave them a Turdal Award).

A few years ago I didn't like conservative liars trying to paint all anti-war folks as loons, but I dislike even less the progressive liars painting all anti-big government folks as racist. Labeling a group as loony is an insult. Labeling a group as racist is trying to instigate. Who's whipping who here? But, when your platform is built on the backs of colored folks, what else can you stand on?

Uncle Sam's Turnips

I told you a few times last year that Uncle Sam taking over healthcare would be the tax man cometh. Word is that 16,000-17,000 IRS agents will be hired to be sure you are paying your portion of Uncle SamCare.

Refunds will be the first the IRS can grab. After that, if you own property, the feds can place a tax lien on your property. But lets say you don't own a pot to pee in and work a low wage job and have a small to no refund - then what can they do.

They can put a wage levy on you. According to a quick search - the amount of income that is exempt from an IRS wage garnishment is figured by adding the standard deduction you can claim on your taxes and the amount you can claim for exemptions, divided by 52. A family of three subject to a wage garnishment will only be allowed to keep about $325 per week. But if you're lower on the totem pole, say making $900 a month living on a friend's couch, they can still take about $140/mo from you. That's because the folks who write these rules consider $140 chump change, as they spend that amount on a healthy salad lunch with wine. Surely Joe Couch can cough up lunch money.

Business, big and small, will also create ways to hand Joe Blow the messy end of the stick. If the small business cut off penalty is 50 employees - hire 49. Hire only those who appear to have a somewhat favorable BMI. Many low wage employees are transient or do not stay at one job any length of time - let Uncle Sam pay or collect the healthcare tab like he does now.

Don't worry though, Uncle Sam and IRS will enact new methods and laws to extract the blood out of your turnip. And the most painful effects of the bill won't happen overnight - although faster than you want. Is mandatory life insurance next? Or do we get the ID card first? Grinding poverty may be the new cool class - having no turnips, Uncle Sam will give you a little one.

This bill also will offer, supposedly, beginning "... in 2010, a variety of new loan repayment and scholarship programs kick into effect. But more importantly, in 2011, the government directly expands primary-care training programs and sends a 10 percent increase in payments to primary care doctors in the Medicare program (which makes being a primary care doctor relatively more lucrative)."

Now that Uncle Sam and BigDaddy government have taken over the student loan industry (passed Sunday in the healthcare bill), they will have more revenue to create more doctors, or so they say. And here again, those students who default or have trouble repaying, will turn their turnips over to the IRS - and/or take that post in the hinterlands to repay it.

Here's where we will see more women enter the primary care field, as in the old USSR (see Uncle SamCare link above). And, like it or not, when mass numbers of women enter a field of work, contrary to it being "more lucrative," wages are lowered. For all the decades of suffrage, economically the average woman is little better off, and in the lower classes in worse shape since she's been liberated to have a pack of kids without a helpmate (other than BigDaddy or Uncle Sam).

Next up will be blanket amnesty for illegal immigrants so they too can contribute their turnips to the IRS. Won't stop the stream of folks crossing the border illegally but will add a few dollars to Uncle Sam's coffer, until the next round of blanket amnesty, and the next.

So ... I guess the fix is pretty much in. Federally controlled health, education, welfare, taxation, employment, life regulated and registered. Fortunately, the government's media minions will make it all sound good even while it feels bad. Will Kill the Bill fade to the place-of-lost-chants as Bring the Troops Home did?

I sometimes grieve about the future my grandchildren and their children will live in as adults. But I suppose by then they will be accustomed to all this legislated "progress" and if still around I'll be the grumbling nana talking about the old days, because I didn't just fall off the turnip truck.

Divide & Conquer

Dozens of talking heads and pols have compared congressional republicans stance on healthcare reform as being similar to republican resistance to Roosevelt's Social Security Act, against Johnson's Medicare, and a few truly clueless even compared it to the Civil Rights Act.

In 1935 the Social Security Act passed in the House 372-33.

In 1965 the House vote on Medicare passed 307 to 116.

The 1964 Civil Rights act: The House passed the bill by 289 to 126, a vote in which 79% of Republicans and 63% of Democrats voted yes.

Tonight's House vote on healthcare: Yea 219, all democrat. Nays 212, 178 rep, 34 dem.

More banana republic every day.

Charley

Charley Pride


I grew up in the Mississippi delta. Picking cotton as a child
I remember after a day of work, lying in bed, cool night breeze
coming through the window, my hands would feel as if
they were still filled with cotton.

Freddy

Freddie Fender


Freddy


Haydn Vitera

Vertigo

I believe I'm getting lightheaded just thinking about Obamacare.

WSWS rant: The Detroit Medical Center, the largest hospital system in Michigan and the state’s largest provider of health care to the uninsured, will be sold to for-profit Vanguard Health Systems for $417 million in a deal announced March 19.

The sale follows months of negotiations between DMC executives, Detroit Mayor Bing, Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano and Vanguard. As part of the agreement the city of Detroit and county and state authorities are pledging to create a “renaissance zone” that will free Vanguard from virtually all taxes.

The sale of DMC is part of a national drive to subordinate every aspect of health care to the demands of private profit. It will inevitably mean that the health care safety net, already severely strained by a huge increase in the number of uninsured, will be further eroded.

The move is also part of Bing’s campaign to privatize city services and downsize and depopulate broad sections of the city. Detroit Medical Center has long served as a place of last resort for those without medical insurance. Nonprofit hospitals are required to provide a certain minimum of uncompensated care and other benefits to the local communities they serve to maintain tax-exempt status. Vanguard says it will invest $850 million in capital improvements over the next five years at DMC hospitals. DMC Board Chair Steve D’Arcy called the deal, “the largest single private investment in the city’s history.” He said the conversion to a for-profit model would allow the DMC to compete with suburban hospitals.

----- And on and on about the horrors of for-profit hospitals versus nonprofit. Honestly, I haven't seen any real difference between the two. The goal of both is to profit at the federal trough. Here's a tidbit article that mentions the CEO of Vanguard, Charles Martin, Jr., in a moment of healthcare history.

Vanguard's purchase of Detroit's hospital system tells me that initially the government is going to input a massive amount of money into existing hospitals. Vanguard and others are buying up too much for there not to be a windfall in the near future. The prospects of federal dollars for healthcare overhaul is also why the Catholic Hospitals have rallied behind Obamacare. Ka-ching. Catholic hospitals and healthcare deliverers receive federal money through Medicaid, Medicare, and grants, i.e. Fidelis Care, "... the largest government programs-based health insurance company in New York State."

Not that there's anything particularly wrong in providing profit or nonprofit medical services - but post-Obamacare there will be less coverage for more people, as the bill will eventually cut what it pays to providers - cost savings, etc. This is when movers and shakers will look for new areas to invest in. Perhaps we will see a revival in mental asylums as the 2010 mental health budget is extremely "enhanced." Of course, the programs long in use are not working so the cost savings will come from institutionalizing versus the current handholding and mentoring. Maybe a good thing - wouldn't most folks, faced with the choice of the lunatic asylum or getting their sh*t together, cure themselves?

Maybe we will see a lot of junk medicine disappear, as it should.

For instance, a large part of the PT (physical therapy) field. You might be surprised to know that the bulk of the PT industry is not rehab for traumatic injuries or events - it's for treating such bogus things as bowel and bladder hygiene and dyspareunia (painful intercourse).

I know a dozen physical therapists who's specialties are working with 5-12 year old children who still regularly urinate and defecate on themselves. No physical or congenital cause for their ailment, they're just still messing their pants and beds. All of this therapy is government paid. If you haven't potty trained your kid by that age then something is wrong with you and your home - call the department of child welfare, not a doctor. A couple of the therapists are women's specialists. They use dilators and vibrators on the patient and give them a detailed home program, to cure painful intercourse. Excuse me, but why should I pay to teach you how to masturbate and perform a Kegel contraction.

Another couple of fields that have sprung up around junk medicine, and may peter out with budget cuts, are sleep apnea and pain management. The sleep apnea industry mainly serves those so overweight or obese that their own weight depresses lung function. The "cure" is an uncomfortable CPAP machine and mask device, which most patients take home and don't wear - easier to sleep sitting up. For apnea suffers who are not overweight, the apnea/insomnia stems from poor sleep hygiene, i.e. sleeping past noon and up half the night, not enough physical activity, sinus clogging diets, too many uppers and not enough downers in the medicine cabinet, guilty conscience.

Pain management, often associated with spine clinics. Junk diagnosis that work are fibromyalgia, chronic pain syndrome (affecting 86 million Americans), migraines, chronic fatigue syndrome (discovered in the '80s among the cocaine yuppies), TMJ (jaw pain), and of course the eternal excuse of menstruation. According to WebMD chronic pain can occur without a known cause.

But again, why should I have to pay for Bubba and Peggy Sue's lifetime of pain pills? Because their OxyContin or Percocet runs $200-400 for 20 tablets. Unless they're reselling them which can run $40 a pill on the street (according to my hillbilly sources).

Females seem to have more anatomical problems than men. Dysfunctional uterine bleeding, pelvic inflammatory disease, endometriosis, PMS, dysphoria, on and on. Usually requiring at least a D&C with years of on and off treatment until the coveted hysterectomy. My brother has a crude way of describing this phenomena, and it does explain the cause of most women's plumbing problems. He calls it Dirty-&nasty-Cock.

Unfortunately, I have a sneaking suspicion that Obama's grand new deal will not overhaul healthcare in any of the areas it should - for the simple fact that it is more feasible and profitable, politically and socially, to keep folks doped, dumbed, and messing on themselves.

Banging Healthcare

Lord help us - just watched Obama's speech on healthcare. Sick of it.

Basic high school economics tells us, or used to, that if a commodity is offered at zero price, demand will increase, supply will drop, and a shortage will develop.

When prices are zero, demand exceeds supply, and queues form. You think that ER wait is long now ...

The economics was obvious within a few years after Medicaid and Medicare rolls swelled. Locally, only the worst dentists and physicians accept Medicare or Medicaid now, and I suspect that has become SOP around the nation.

Most physicians didn't immediately cut their numbers, there was too much money in it initially, overbilling, over testing, making money hand over fist for doing next to nothing other than booking patients at 5 minute intervals and writing a prescription. When government began to cut the reimbursement percentages and/or the procedures it would cover - many doctors simply limited the number of welfare patients they would keep on the roster.

However, most public hospitals still love Medicaid/Medicare. The average public hospital, supported by fundraisers, subsidies, private donors, and welfare patients, keeps limping along - after paying administrators and physicians 6-figure incomes. After all, people have to be well paid for removing ear wax and prescribing Cymbalta for your flat affect.

The idea that health care should be equally distributed is part of the progressive/egalitarian culture. In those areas where there is socialized medicine, Canada, Europe, etc., the majority overall believe people should pay nothing to see a physician and hospital care should be free. Never mind that quality is lowered and cost takes a huge chunk of national revenue. Taxing productive folks will take care of it.

As in all other countries with some form of socialized medicine or nationalized medicine, medical personnel salaries drop because of government control. Europe, the old USSR, Hugo's Venezuela, Cuba all cap or control salaries - and surprise surprise income control/salary caps have a negative effect on incentive.

You know what's amazing? The folks I know who have no medical coverage but found the funds for breast implants, rhinoplasty, and tummy tucks. Will Obamacare pay for elective plastic? Did government healthcare pay for Pelosi's "scrotum stretched over a doorknob" face?

Obama keeps reading letters of despair from the common folks who just cannot hang on - b.s. as all would be eligible for either emergency or permanent Medicare and Medicaid - such as poster person Natoma in Ohio, who by the way owns the home her parents built in 1960, on 5 acres with an annual tax bill of $3700 and carrying an equity loan, expenses which Natoma managed to pay from her house cleaning business which earned her reportedly an annual profit of $6000. I read yesterday that when questioned, Natoma says she has found she is eligible for "something called Medicaid and Medicare disability." I have a problem with folks who support socialized medicine yet are seemingly unaware of "something called Medicaid and Medicare disability" benefits. Don't sob in your bedpan. What Natoma doesn't know is in 10-15 years when she is 60-65 years old, if she has another bout of cancer, she will not find treatment as quickly and easily as she does today. Her letter to the president will not be published or used as a political talking point.

Do politicians have staffers smoking medical marijuana with a little wine, sifting through mountains of mail and newspapers in search of poignant letters that can be used in a stump speech?

Regardless how Obamacare is initiated - part private/part socialized, yadayadayada, future this and later that, the end game is that it contributes to the "progressive" social ideology which is - that economic conditions should be equalized for one and all, well, for most people; you'll still have the rich living as they always have.

Read my lips - there is no society on earth that is "egalitarian" - never has been, never will be. There is always a pecking order and some peckers have more than others, some less.

The end game is what it's all about. Total control from cradle to grave. Health, education, welfare, employment ... shrinking class mobility. The only folks supporting more government control of a citizen's life are either those who will profit from it or those who have no life. Both groups unconcerned that the US is smelling more and more like a third world nation, i.e. - the masses becoming more "equal", living in government provided squalor, preying on one another, in a nation dependent on foreign loans, ruled by corrupt political families who are happy to be part of the inner circle of the new world empire, whomever that may be (China?).

On the bright side, in 10 years, those egalitarian social progressors will no longer be bashing the military as unfortunate poverty driven grunts or killers of innocents- but as patriots willing to defend the American way of (progressive) life, brave soldiers stopping the spread of capitalism - maybe dissidents will call it gunboat egalitarianism, spreading progress at gunpoint.

Obama promises you will get more "bang for your buck." Yes you will. Problem is - it isn't your buck - it's BigDaddy government's buck (after the IRS confiscates it from someone) and BigDaddy alone will determine how much banging you get for it.

Indignity of Charity

Imagine my shock to surf to Fox News last night and witness Obama being interviewed by mild mannered Bret Baier. I mean, after Obama stated that Fox was an arm of the GOP it was unsettling to see the president sputtering and tap dancing around the questions and answer interruptus of Fox's boy next door Baier.

I did ask myself if past interviewers have been as dogged, bordering on rude, with past (white) presidents. But, to be honest, I would have appreciated and enjoyed the press pinning Bush. Did we not cheer when Helen Thomas managed a pointed question or two at GWB.

I don't remember any similar interviews in the recent past, i.e. Clinton or Bushes, but then they weren't publicly twisting arms and bribing to pass a huge package like healthcare. Clinton knew when to stop twisting, and Clinton's advisers/handlers were not the elitist mob from Chicago who believe they make offers you can't refuse.

If only ... if only Obama put as much effort into draining the swamp and letting in the sunlight ...

I expect this behemoth healthcare package to pass, to the regret of the public. Personally, I cannot see how anyone with a brain can believe any of it. The rhetoric and promises are the same as LBJ in 1965 signing the Independence of the Medicare Bill, which was to give dignity to the elderly and poor, because they were entitled.

Truman said at the signing: "Not one of these, our citizens, should ever be abandoned to the indignity of charity. Charity is indignity when you have to have it. But we don't want these people to have anything to do with charity ..."

Government charity is different - because you "earned" it. Never mind that millions the government is dignifying have paid little or none into the coffers they're drawing from. Never mind that the affluent and upper class rush to liquidate or hide everything ma and pa have so they're eligible for government provided dignity. Never mind that all this free (or lost cost) dignity helped produce a generation of crippled young folks with bad backs, bad knees, carpal tunnels, obesity, and/or bipolar and attention deficit disabilities. Never mind that most physicians are now nothing more than legal drug dealers and gallbladder and uterus removers. Never mind that folks consider it dignified to prolong the life by a decade of nursing home family throw-away, lucky semi-lucid granny dignified with bedsores and gangrene amputations and oxygen tanked. Is this the new quality of life. Does anyone know anything about quality of life versus quantity.

This from Johnson's Medicare speech struck a familiar chord: "The people of the United States love and voted for Harry Truman, not because he gave them hell--but because he gave them hope. I believe today that all America shares my joy that he is present now when the hope that he offered becomes a reality for millions of our fellow citizens."

Ahhh, hope (and change) recycled. Warm fuzzy, warm fuzzy.

Course, we all know that in 45 years Medicare fraud and corruption has created more millionaires and billionaires then you can shake a rubber glove at - pharmaceuticals, nursing homes, physicians, medical equipment companies, research foundations, or like the scandalous HCA, founded by the Frist family, former Senator Bill Frist, a physician. Ever wonder why the last few decades so many doctors enter congress? Illness is the latest lucrative frontier.

Do you really believe Obama's trillion dollar overhaul of health care is going to expand coverage and slash the deficit as supporters claim? Name me one government program that has ever benefited the majority and slashed the public debt. Just one. (Wha jest look Bubba at the dignity and hope that safety nets brought to black culture, yessuh.)

Expand coverage/slash deficit - an oxymoron, contains the prefix for air and moron. Airhead, lack of oxygen to the brain, hot air, mild mental retardation, moron, politicians.

"The 10-year plan would provide coverage to more than 30 million people now uninsured through a combination of tax credits for middle class households and an expansion of the Medicaid program for low income people.

---- Excuse me, but in 10 years the US population is projected to be 362 million, so will there be another 30+ million uninsured that will have to be insured? Is anyone factoring in population growth cost?

"It would restructure one-sixth of the U.S. economy in the biggest expansion of the social safety net since Medicare was created in 1965. It would also impose new obligations on individuals and businesses, requiring for the first time that most Americans carry health insurance and penalizing medium-sized and large companies that don't provide coverage for their workers.

Hospitals and doctors, drug companies and insurers would gain millions of new paying customers, but they would also have to adjust to major changes. Medicare cuts would force hospitals to operate more efficiently or risk going out of business. Insurance companies would face unprecedented federal regulation. Health care industries would be hit with new federal taxes. Upper-income households would face a new tax on investment earnings."

---- There it is folks, the truth parts in bold. Impose new obligations on individuals (you and me) and make it mandatory you carry health insurance. You'll be able to buy it from Uncle Scam at congressional approved rates. For those "upper-income households" don't worry - tax shelter lobbyists, along with "respectable" accounting firms and law firms will always be with us, turning those earnings into many ways to avoid taxes.

Do you really believe that Big Daddy government will "penalize" companies who don't cover their workers? Ooooh, slap on the wrist with a penalty and then a big tax break or bailout over there in another part of the tax code. Like Wal-mart, who offers health plans but only half their employees are willing or able to pay for it. Now Wal-mart can have Big Daddy hold the safety net or the government that "requires" you to carry insurance will force you to buy it from your employer, i.e. Wal-mart. And by the way - hypochondria and Munchausen will no longer be covered - you may be forced to get a job instead of getting a trendy "disease." You may even be forced to get well.

If you think you're SOL now with health care - just wait until your health care is walmartized. But on the bright side - maybe, when folks have to be the "new paying customers" bent over the exam table by quacks and false compassion, they will purposefully stay healthy.

How to Handle an In-law

Placido Domingo

Core 'ngrato (Ungrateful Heart) For someone we know.

Iniquities

Poor Tom Hanks. He was purring along, sounding like a younger version of Hal Holbrook in Douglas Brinkley's positively reverent Time magazine cover story--the one where Brinkley calls Hanks "American history's highest-profile professor"--until the penultimate graph of the story, timed to tout HBO's new series, "The Pacific," which debuts Sunday night at 9 p.m. That's when disaster, of a kind, struck. After spending thousands of words paying tribute to the U.S. soldiers who fought in the Pacific theater ... Hanks suddenly veered off course, going from being a gauzy celebrator of the importance of studying history to an unruly political activist.

"Back in World War II," he told Brinkley, "we viewed the Japanese as 'yellow, slant-eyed dogs' that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what's going on today?" In a separate interview, Hanks referred to the war in the Pacific as one of "racism and terror."

-------- Another Hollywood history expert. I used to like Hanks until he made the awful Bonfire of the Vanities, after that it was years until I watched any of his films again. I have yet to make it through the bloody ocean of Saving Private Ryan or Forrest Gump. But it may be because we're not big fans of the last 30 years of television or film. I'd rather watch the black and white classics and catch all the sexual innuendo that I never noticed the first time around. I have never understood America's love affair of escape in movies and television; I irritate everyone as I will argue vehemently with the screen.

As I've blogged hundreds of times - all wars are about profit/power. Race and religion are secondary, although often used as justifiable cover, depending on the mentality of the sheople who fight them, and most of our forefathers of whatever class and creed, have known wars are fought for profit and power, which they usually shared in to some degree. Wars are rarely fought for self-defense. And yes, I've heard and read all the tinfoil about Pearl Harbor. The spin of whether the US powers that be knew the attack was coming and "let it happen" to the US provoking the attack - doesn't matter, fact is Japan attacked.

Hanks remarks seem to indicate he believes WWII and today the Middle East are fought for racial and cultural differences. If so, he is ignorant of history and/or has swallowed too much Hollywood activist crap. You know, as if he's saying: you low-browed ignorant American knotheads, your fathers and grandfathers weren't the "greatest generation," they just wanted to annihilate those yellow slant-eyed dogs because they were "different."

The US was so "racist" it shielded the defeated Japan from many war crime charges and kept Hirohito on the throne, rebuilt their economy, and negotiated fair reparations from Japan to China, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand. Pay no attention to the fact that Japan out slaughtered even the Nazis by about 4 million, used prisoners for medical experiments, buried POWs alive, and cannibilized others (Lt Gen. Yoshio Tachibana was convicted of murder and "prevention of honorable burial" because cannibalism was not covered under war crimes law).

"Certainly, we wanted to honor U.S. bravery in The Pacific," Hanks says. "But we also wanted to have people say, 'We didn't know our troops did that to Japanese people.' " He wants Americans to understand the glories — and the iniquities — of American history."

Crapactivists always begin sentences with "...certainly we wanted to honor US bravery... but" BUT, but not really, in between the emotional interviews with aging veterans and special effects reminiscent of Private Ryan, the real intent is to get you dumbed down boob-tube folks to wallow in flat screen heart-warming sadomasochism and think you've been educated on WWII in 10 cinematic episodes, a $200,000,000 tribute. The Pacific is not a documentary, it is entertainment, a drama based on some real life events/characters and a lot of poetic license, to make a profit. Brought to you by the same folks who did the 2001 Band of Brothers, the Pacific is sort of a Hollywood sequel.

I lost an uncle in WWII France. I had an uncle who spent months as a POW with a head wound in a German camp (at first he feared they would experiment on his head but they put a metal plate in). Another uncle (working as a civilian contractor in the Philippines) survived the Bataan death march and a year in a Japanese prison camp. We know atrocities by US troops happened, it goes on in all wars on all sides. But I also know US atrocities wouldn't compare to the horrors my uncle experienced and witnessed at the hands of the Japanese - the Japanese of WWII made the Vikings look amiable. Yes the US has committed gross injustice - do the wealthy in Russia, China, the Middle East use $200M to "educate" their citizens on their "iniquities"? A free library card would better serve you.

History is something a person should study from all sides and sources, but don't rely too much on propagandized violin versions from Hollywood or movie stars or script and screen writers with an agenda, especially Spielberg's orchestrated crescendos of emotional manipulation. The enfeebled media snobs can provoke anger, outrage, shame, pride or warm fuzzies, but they produce nothing objectively - war films have always been glorified melodrama or horrifying pornoviolence or a mix of both. Most likely Hanks opinion above was written for him for the sole sake of publicity; as The Pacific is rumored to be a $200M thud.

A Communist Plot?

Yuri Bezmenov 1983 - Ideological Warfare

Part 1



Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Part 5


Part 6


Part 7

Blink, Gulp, Sniff

Kennedy says "somewhere I heard that during the Vietnam war..." he was born in 1967... I think bipolar Pat is back on the booze and pills. Sometimes I seriously believe we need to bring back the lunatic asylums, instead of sending them to congress and D.C.

Enough

Always this time of year are stories of children lost in fires connected to utility shutoffs. It's been going on every winter for decades. In this story, "State attempts to victimize mother of fire victims" 3 young children died.

"The Michigan state government is attempting to victimize the mother of three young children who died in a fire that erupted only hours after the family’s utilities were shut off on Tuesday.

The state attorney general general’s office has reportedly filed a neglect case against Sylvia Young, 30, for not being home at the time of the blaze. Young says she fears the state will attempt to take away the four children who survived.

The move by the state is part of a media-backed campaign to blame Young for the tragedy, covering up for those who are responsible: DTE Energy for cutting off her utilities, and the government for approving the utility company’s policy.

A space heater the single mother was forced to use to warm her seven children is believed to have caused the fire, which quickly engulfed the old wooden structure on the 4600 block of Bangor on the city’s west side.

Lost in the March 2 fire were Tro’vion Young, 5, Fantasia Young, 4 and Selena Young, 3, who died of smoke inhalation and soot. Thanks to the quick and collective action by neighbors the other children made it out alive, including three-month-old Serena, who was tossed from the second floor window. Sylvia’s 8-year-old son, Jalen, 11-year-old son, Tywon, and 6-year-old son JaShawn also escaped.

Spokesmen for DTE Energy have said they cut off service to the home because it had been “illegally” hooked up and there was no record of a paying account at the address after previous residents moved out in mid-December and cancelled their service.

Sylvia told the WSWS that the lights and gas were in her landlord’s name and were included in $650 in rent she paid each month. “The DTE guy said if I showed him a lease statement saying how long I had been there that might help. I told him that my landlord was on the way with the lease and he would be there in 15 minutes or maybe half an hour. He said he couldn’t wait.” She continued, “I had an outstanding bill from before with DTE—that’s why I put the utilities in my landlord’s name. I knew they wouldn’t hook the services back up because of what I owed, and I couldn’t afford to pay it.

Sylvia told the WSWS, “I am on FIA (Family Independence Agency) assistance. I’m raising seven kids on $347 every two weeks. Out of that I pay $650 a month in rent.”

Sylvia pointed to the hypocrisy of such claims. "DTE never contacted me to help. Everything is a money thing with DTE. If you are a dollar off on your payment plan they will cut you off."

------ There are many lies in this sad story, from the mother and WSWS writers. I see the same situations here in Podunk. Thirty-year old single mothers with 7 children. Some of the truth is Sylvia should not have 7 children and no daddies to help. The truth is Sylvia has reached the point where she no longer is eligible for much of the aid that is out there. She burned those bridges before the house burned.

If Sylvia is paying $650 for rent, then she has disqualified herself from Section 8 housing for some reason - this could be from not paying utilities as Section 8 requires you to be up to date on utility payments, or not paying her portion of the rent (in her case would be $20-65 a month), or someone in the home is involved in illegal drug activity. I know someone locally on Section 8 and her share of the rent to the landlord is $20 per month - yet she is 6 months behind in her rent.

All utility companies work with state and local agencies that assist folks in paying for utilities. Many have the words "Area Economic Opportunity" in their acronym. Folks are usually only eligible once a year for energy assistance - once AEO has you current on your utility bill they expect you to keep it paid up. Often such groups also provide weatherization programs, even for renters. You may be on a waiting list for a while, so if you continually change house/apartment that sets you back.

Here in the 'hood of Podunk, mothers, like Sylvia, move around a lot (especially if they've lost their Section 8) - to live a full year in the same house/apartment is the exception, not the rule. Even so, they still manage to stiff the landlord for a few months rent and quite a bit in clean up and repairs. Landlords give them a decent reference just to get them out of their rental - let the next slum lord deal with it.

The article does not say if Sylvia is employed or not but she is on FIA, which also has a low income energy assistance program and weatherization program. Since Clinton's Welfare-to-Work, women are only eligible for cash assistance for a few years (4-5 years) - although there are ways around that sometimes, however, this has forced most welfare mommas to work low wage jobs. Here in Podunk the majority of the Sylvias don't mind too much because childcare is paid for, they still receive foodstamps and Medicaid, and that yearly $4000-7000 EIC February tax refund is like winning the lottery.

In Podunk, every year these refunds are spent at Rent-to-Own, down payment on a used car at loan shark rates, on new clothes, new nails, new weave, and new boyfriend. The more responsible women turn half the refund over to the landlord for months of unpaid rent. But none in Podunk, not one, will pay old heating bills. For some reason there's this ingrained idea that electric and/or gas heat should be free, or paid by someone else. For decades mothers went through the names and social security numbers of their children to hook up utilities, ruining the payment history of each kid. With technology and interagency connections that tactic can no longer be used - now Big Utility can see your new service request is for 9-year-old Lakesha.

If Sylvia's gas and lights were in her landlord's name they would have been current, and if not would be shut off - which they were which is why someone illegally hooked up Sylvia's electric. With Michigan winter heating bills in poorly insulated homes being at least $400 per month, and electric another $100 or more, her landlord would have little profit if he paid the utilities - and slum lords like their profits. Where was Sylvia's copy of the lease? Was she really out buying space heaters, or is that another lie in a lifetime raised in trying to game the system, while losing the game but dumb enough to think it's winning.

Years ago I felt outrage and despair at such stories, but it's misplaced emotion, because no matter how much we spin it, this woman and her children are not the victims of Big Utility or the capitalist system. Sylvia is the victim of a society that will not face the truth of what lifelong entitlement has done to the soul and character of generational recipients, the children are the victims of their own mothers and fathers. Enough is enough.

Zombies

Young People Waiting

I'm still amazed at how much propaganda people are exposed to and how seriously I once agreed with so much of it. I can no longer read anything without auditing it for b.s.

Take the following piece for example. Written for a left/progressive audience it really says nothing, yet for a "believer," it says everything and all.

Young People Wait Out the Recession…and Their Youth. By Michelle Chen

---- Beginning with the title... sounds forlorn and painful doesn't it? A mental picture of young people, life passing them by, waiting, staring into a dismal empty future, like a sad t.v. commercial - without the eye fly.

CHEN: "Young workers may not know it, but the jobs crisis threatens to turn what should be the best years of their lives into another "lost generation."

---- "Another" lost generation? I was not aware we lost others before, not to a recession anyway. We've lost a couple to generational social programs and a society that prefers doping themselves and/or their kids rather than raising them. Personally, in looking back, I found every decade of life the "best years." Although the usual batch of "revolutionary" folk heroes were telling my generation the same things - how dreary our lives were because of this or that, i.e. that being rich white people, or this capitalism, or inequalities, and all sorts of bleakness they claimed was on the horizon.

CHEN: "Do young people have anything to look forward to in this upside-down economy? The inequalities embedded in the country's young workforce are growing more pronounced."

---- The economic world is upside-down ... especially for young people. Inequalities ... growing more pronounced. "Embedded" good word for planting the idea that the situation is hopeless and you're helpless, unless our pols perform some drastic sociopolitical surgery to cut out the embedded unfairness of life. Oh woe is us, what to do, what to do. Of course, the propaganda would not be complete without calling on the immigrants and black folks, segregation, poverty, and the prison system:

CHEN: "In the Black community, joblessness consistently hovers at epidemic levels. Joblessness among blacks aged 20 to 24 edged up to 28.7 percent in January, compared to (an also frightening) 14.9 percent among whites. Neighborhood segregation and concentrated poverty already prime children for economic stagnation later in life or even downward mobility, according to a Pew study. Involvement in the criminal justice system could either take young people out of the workforce through incarceration (that's one reason why Black unemployment figures are often underestimated), or ensure that they'll have doors slammed in their faces for years to come. On top of a bleak job market, many immigrant youth are legally blocked from pursuing economic advancement. Students residing illegally in the U.S. are often excluded from higher education thanks to policies precluding subsidized public college tuitions. While they push for passage of the aptly named DREAM Act, their aspirations are left to atrophy as Washington's impasse over immigration reform drags on."

"... Black community joblessness" and "... residing illegally ..." Residing illegally? Oh that is a good one; is that what we're calling it now? "... left to atrophy..." what I call use it or lose it. And if you're waiting for D.C. to fulfill your dreams and aspirations you deserve to lose it, if you ever had it.

The white "left" still pretending that Latinos and blacks are on the same side of social issues for no other reason than pigmentation. They must believe that below a certain income level all nonwhites think alike. Black unease about immigration goes back a long way. In the 1870s, former slave Frederick Douglass warned that immigrants were displacing free blacks in the labor market.

If my sweetest daughter-in-law can teach herself English and come to America at 16 and join the Army to gain citizenship ... (see video below)

CHEN: "Internally, economic turmoil could sow a cycle of anger and defeatism that may manifest itself in depression, heavy drinking, or even family violence."

---- Sow a cycle of anger, depression, drinking, domestic violence. I guess all those rich and affluent folks have the same problems for other reasons. Or maybe 'the economy made me do it' is a one size fits all excuse.

CHEN: "In a 2008 study, analysts with the Center for Labor Market Education predicted that the low rates of teen employment (which have since intensified) meant that “Low income, Black and Hispanic teens face the equivalent of a Great Depression.” Something as mundane as a shortage of teen summer jobs has implications for future earnings, career choices, and teen pregnancy rates. The Center for American Progress and Center for Law and Social Policy have devised plans for “reconnecting” at-risk youth through public service jobs programs ala the New Deal."

---- If we don't find summer jobs for teens, they're gonna get pregnant or choose the wrong career? A standard "progressive" stink tank is cited. Center for American Progress (CAP) - funded mainly by George Soros and Wal-mart. In March, 2009 CAP strongly supported Barack Obama's escalation of the US wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Progressives for war. That's a whole other blog post.

CHEN: "Absent a comprehensive government commitment on job creation and expanding the role of the state, the AFL-CIO's survey of young workers portrays a generation adrift. About one in three surveyed workers under 35 lived with their parents. About half of young workers of color and women workers said they “worr[ied] somewhat to very often that I will not be able to afford education costs for myself.” So they do with their futures what most people do when they can't afford something they want: take a pass and try to wait out the slump."

---- Comprehensive government commitment has to create jobs lest this generation is adrift, living with their parents, worried about their future and ... oh, getting pregnant, drunk, and beating family members. One in three workers under 35 live with parents - can it be they're teenagers/students? How many are what I refer to as Crosslins? As in Nancy Grace's latest obsession, Misty Crosslin, who sits in jail begging her dad, a drug addict on probation, and mom, a drug addict on probation, and drug addict brother on probation, to please find her bail money.

And who is Chen kidding with "can't afford something they want: take a pass.." Most people today under age 40 delay nothing, it's instant gratification and they will beg, borrow, steal, con, manipulate, and reach for their cell phone to get what they want. And another thing that bothers me about "progressives." They push the insane idea that everyone should be college educated when we know that half the population can barely read and write and are ill-equipped and unqualified for higher education. Progressives have made menial/manual labor a dirty word rather than what it is - an honest day's work. (They will say it's an honest day job if done by anyone residing illegally though.)

CHEN: "But one lesson we can draw from the experiences of previous recession-era generations is that avoiding risk comes at a high cost in an economy notoriously impatient when it comes to human concerns."

---- What risks? Who is avoiding risk? Government? Policy makers? Youth? Note the "human concerns," more ideological buzz words, to make the reader feel he will suffer greatly if someone or some entity doesn't step up and risk something real soon. Previous generations were not bailed out by government - even during the Great Depression, people had helped themselves and one another by the time government got around to it. Today's rich and poor bailouts are socialism - "progressive" snuck right up on you didn't it.

CHEN: "So it comes full circle: those baby boomers donning Wal-Mart vests have much more in common with angsty cubicle denizens than you think. Workers young and old are struggling to find firm footing on an economic path wending toward indefinite misery. The longer communities and policymakers push back the question of creating a meaningful future for young workers, the more elusive the answers become."

---- Indefinite misery - unless someone creates a life for you, creates a job for you, creates passing scores for your education, creates your meaningful future, and makes certain when you're gray you never have to wear a vest, even if you want to. Damned if I know what you're supposed to be doing.

DIL - in several shots but I particularly like the cucumber one.

Exercise Bald Eagle III @ Yahoo! Video