The War on the Middle Class

The economy is in the toilet. Unemployment is drifting around 10 points with no real relief on the horizon. Good, hard working folks are seeing their paychecks shrink as their employers take more away. Bills are coming fast and loose for people who have two cents for every three that have to be paid out. Food banks, thrift shops, food stamps and free clinics are finding popularity with a whole new batch of customers.

And they tell me that the tide has turned and we are coming out of the recession.

Today, the Dow Jones reached 10,000 pts for the first time in a year and everyone is popping the corks and sparking the bowls. Yippee!! Wall Street is coming back! Bonuses have returned to the Street along with bigger paychecks. Some of these icons of American Capitalism have found ways of getting around the rules and keep some of the worse of the sub-prime mortgages alive and well. Credit card companies are seeing huge profits from the strong-arming of Americans.

This would be a bad gangster film if it weren't reality.

Nothing is going our way. The promise of electing Obama and the Democrats into power has fallen as flat as an old convention balloon. They postured from every soapbox that the days of huge corporations feeding at the trough of American taxpayers is over. Tax loopholes closed, universal health care, new green jobs and a real stimulus package to get the economy kickstarted.

They had their fingers crossed.

The stimulus was too little too late. It did as good a job as it could but was woefully inadequate. If you want to help a starving man, giving him a TicTac isn't going to do the job. Lots of good, green programs that would have provided real, well paying jobs were kicked to the curb because they gave the Republicans fits. Republicans.

After the elections, the American people let it be known that the last thing they cared about was the fucking Republicans. These WATB's have been sniveling about Obama at every turn. In addition, the Handjob Media has courted their every word; words that were mostly blatant bullshit that a high school journalism student could have debunked.

So, here we are. Nearly a year since a landmark historic election and the promise of real change in America. What do we have to show for it? Where's the reward for all of our hard work? Wall Street has made out like bandits...literally. Gov't reps and congress critters have made bank from all the free money on K Street. The shitty situation the country found itself in before the election is worse now and any hope for relief is becoming rare.

When is it our turn?

America the ATM. America the Chump. America the Rube. Wall Street was playing three-card Monte with our livelihoods and we asked for help. What we got was a government that took out hand, soothed our fears then told Wall Street to use a new deck of cards.

The problem is deeper than just getting our pet projects accomplished. Health care reform, environmental reform, getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan, new green jobs, etc, etc, etc.... ad nauseum. These are great steps but they rely on too much change, change that is not just hard but near impossible. What we need to do is take back the country for the people. Corporations were established 150 years ago to help finance the Industrial Revolution. It brought America into the 20th century as a force in the world. But leave it to the greedy to take a good idea and pervert it into a pestilence. America does not need the corporate structure like it did in the 1880's.

We have too much wealth concentrated in one spot. Regulations must be enacted to rein in this abomination. Socialism isn't the answer but a more measured approach to capitalism is necessary. Then our agenda will come about like we expect. If you want to plant a garden on the battlefield, you have to figure out how to win the war first.

update: I just noticed that my blog roll was seriously deficient in penguins. The management regrets this oversight and it has been corrected. The responsible parties have been punished.

And so it goes...
David A.

Food for thought...

I really need to be more attentive of this site.

Healthy Foods...

We are what we eat - so the saying goes.

Ain't it the truth.

Americans cram pounds of crap down their gullets every day and spend billions trying to get rid of said crap after the fact. We want it fried, dried, fresh or frozen, packed with sugar, racked with salt, high fat, high carb, low fat, low carb, boiled and baked, covered in sauce, bathed in glaze, roasted, toasted, basted, tasted, leftovers wasted, extra foam, no room, skimmed, trimmed, take out the fat, heavy on the cream...three times a day.

We're fat. We're lazy. We love to tell our kids to eat their vegetables then give them a Big Mac 'cause we haven't got time for dinner. Our refridgerators hold six condiments, leftover Chinese, something brown, and a box of baking soda. We haven't a clue.

A single blueberry has all the natural ingredients to save our bacon but we add 2 grams of sugar, 8 grams of fat, dress it up like a work of art, give it a $13.00 price tag and call it dessert.

We give billions of dollars to people to tell us this and make us do something about it. They bend us, break us, pull our muscles, bruise our egos, take us to task, lift that bale, tote that barge, give me $800, now you're in shape.

We live in front of a box of shiny lights that sucks the imagination out of us like a puddle evaporating in the sun. It tells us what crap to buy, what to look for, what is in and what is out. It tells about a new gooey bar of processed sugar and fat that has more unpronouncable ingredients than a medical research project that's just waiting for your gluttonous consumption.

Whole industries have sprung up in the last 50 years that serve no purpose but to fill our arteries with cement. We spend decades of time and millions of dollars to break our bodies down then lament the high cost of fixing them up. No one wants to see to the root of the problem - no, that would be sacrilege. Thou shalt not bite the hand that feeds you this crap. We are a gloriously Capitalist Society and, God willing, will stay that way through every coronary bypass, diabetic coma, liver transplant and 31 flavors of cancer treatments.

And God help us if we run into those who've taken the pledge. Instead of going after the root cause of our food calamity - over-processing - they select certain types of food to rail against. No meat, no fish, no sugar, no milk, no eggs, no carbs, no fat, no dairy, no calories, no way, no how, no left turn, do not pass GO, do not collect $200.

Vegetables are a vital form of food, one that should be on every table at every meal. But so are meat or fish. The answer is not exclusion of food but balance and moderation. We have to re-learn to prepare our own food in a way that's healthy. Make the time to fix your own damn food. Take the time to feed your children what they need. Give them a reason to eat healthier. Fill them full of nothing but sugar and fat and you make them dependant on that crap like an alcoholic. Fast food is a multi-billion dollar industry because we are too damn lazy to cook the good stuff. Convenience has replaced responsibility. Parents would rather spend 30 minutes and $50 on fat, salty crap then spend $20 and an hour to feed their family a healthy meal.

Long ago we sat at the dinner table and ate like families. We prepared the food, set the table, got all the kids together with Mom and Dad and ate as a family. We discussed the day, asked each other about this or that, got kudos for the good stuff, got reamed for the bad; we saw each other as part of something wonderful. If someone was absent, they had their dinner set aside for their return - provided it was an acceptable reason. Screwing around with friends was not a good reason so no dinner was saved. There was a price to pay for missing dinner. No one could raid the fridge for goodies later, dessert was earned by good behavior not provided pro bono.

But we put all that aside. We enrolled our kids in soccer and ballet and baseball and softball and tae kuan do and boy scouts or brownies or any of dozens of other afterschool activities. Not just one though, we signed them up for two or three sports just to keep them busy so we could work longer at the office, see the girls at the club or finalize the sale of the Johnson house. We have to make an appointment to see the kids or our spouses. Every family member is glued to the cell phone or the blackberry, twittering, texting or talking to a spider's web network of other mindless robots, grabbing a quick bite at Mickie D's or Jack in the Box before heading out to the Mall. Even when we finally get back to the homestead, we plop our butts in front of the Shiny Box to watch the latest and greatest dreck ever conceived by demented minds about something called 'reality' that has no connection to the actual word just a distorted play on semantics about worthless pathetic victims of their own greed and gluttony.

We no longer use the dinner table to sit and eat. We use it to organize our bills, put the laptop down to work, or kept nice and clean with place settings of sparkling dishes in stylish colors that will never be obscured by gravy or spaghetti sauce. We eat standing up, staring zombie-like into dead space while talking into an electronic cockroach attached to our ear. Family members with white strings coming out the sides of their heads run in and out of the kitchen oblivious to everything except the sugary sodas in the fridge or the chocolaty sludge bars in the cupboard. Dinner isn't roast beef with gravy, mashed potatoes and green beans; it's a chili cheese burrito fresh out of the microwave with a Coke and a Ho-Ho.

We talk about change. We talk about doing what's right. We talk, talk, talk, talk until we can't speak any more. But we don't do.

Eat your own food. Drink real water. Buy fresh. Grow it yourself. Let your belly do all the processing. Spend your time with the kids at the park with frisbees, a ball and glove, or a volleyball. Eat dinner at the table then see a movie. The television isn't a lamp. Talk about what's on TV then decide if it's worth turning it on.

Get to know members of your family, I hear they're kinda cool.

Update: I posted this as a diary on the Daily Kos to see what response I would get. It only got about 3 feet from the line of scrimmage... Oh, well. So much for fame and fortune! I'll stick to my own neighborhood for now.

So Mote It Be,
David A.

Courage and Cowardice

Courage is a rare commodity in the halls of leadership today. I see faces on my TV box that are supposed to be in my corner giving aid and comfort to the enemy, namely the GOP.

Senator Harry Reid...grow a fucking spine. Jesus H. Christ, Senator, you fold more than an old lawn chair. He covers his yellow streaked ass by making it out that he's a crafty strategist. How can it be good strategy to cave in to your opponents at every turn? What, win the battle by losing the war? I think the reason he's so scrawny is from all the lunch money he had to fork over as a kid. I hear he was a boxer. Well, how many boxers lose a fight with their own shadow?

When I speak of courage, understand the distinctions I make when using a well-trod upon term. Courage is listed in the dictionary as: "the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear; bravery."

There are aspects of courage that are more observable, more apparent by action rather than attitude, than just a 'quality of mind'. Any one can talk a good game of 'courage' but what happens when they face that insular moment when the talk has to be substantiated? Courage isn't a soundbite, it doesn't exist only in novels and history books. It exists in the actions taken by those who need it - now.

One problem is that we are a visually based society. If we don't see it, it does not exist. We claim the reverse to be true as well; if we do see it, we believe it. Just seeing something gives many of us all the proof we need that a certain condition exists. Conversely, if someone tells us that something doesn't exist because he can't see it, we tend to believe him because he seems to have gone to the trouble of looking for it so it must be true. Seeking out verification for what we claim and what we believe is hard. Too hard for talking heads who make their living on the people's ignorance and the politicians who service them.

I consider most right wing talkers and bloggers to be abject cowards. I say most because recently I witnessed Chicago talk show host 'Mancow' Muller subject himself to water boarding to show that it's nothing but getting wet. He got schooled and schooled hard. He lasted six seconds without interrogation. Afterward, he related an epiphany - "yes, this is torture and I have to admit that"

That took courage. Not only to be subjected to the pain of the water board, but to go on to admit that he (and the rest of his cohorts on the AM dial) were wrong about this form of torture. So, give him props for doing something Hannity, Limbaugh, Fox Nuz, and Newt Gingrich would never do.

I look for courage in my leaders. Sounds sappy and trite but I expect the people elected to high office to have a modicum of courage to accomplish the task of running the country. I see it in the President but it's Deja vu' all over again when he starts backing off issues near and dear to progressives. We saw it during the Clinton years. Lots of speeches, lots of promises, then the aides and advisors come in and pour cold water over the whole agenda. Obama needs real leadership in both the Senate and the House. Instead he got cowards. Reid has to go. For the sake of the nation and the progressive movement in general, Harry Reid must be sent to the Old Washington Home for Cowards, Capitulators, and Compromisers.

The issues that mean the most to the American people are coming to the forefront now. Health care, education, economic assistence, global climate change, energy, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan need, no - beg for a radical shift from the status quo solutions. We've done the ol' 'tried and true' and found them to be wholly inadequate for the task. The Repugs want the ship to stay the course. They're on the Titanic and still feasting from the buffet line. Why give up a good thing if it feeds the greed?

Courage. My dad has it in spades. He worked the woods for 50 years as a logger and helped raise 8 kids with near poverty wages. Our troops have it too. They serve with honor and distinction and still get the shitty end of the stick in pay, rotation, and respect. I've seen courage come from little kids, feeble old folks, and young people of all colors and creeds. But we are losing our center by not focusing on making a courageous life the only life we should be striving for. We teach our kids how to get around the rules, how to shirk the responsiblities inherent in life. They enter adulthood with the education to be a con artist, not a responsible human being.

I'm tired of watching my leaders cower under their desks in Congress. Sick and tired of seeing Repug wingnuts give wedgies and noogies to the people I have to rely on to run this country. The Democratic Party better take a long hard look at their leadership and start making some definitive changes while we still have control of Congress. Most of the Dems I see on my TV Box haven't the backbone of a marshmallow Peep.

So Mote it Be,
David A.

Time to get our heads right

So much shit. Who do you trust? Which way is up?...Up, down, right, left....

Did we torture? Yes, we did but was it legal?
Fuck you, it WAS against the law!

No, you dirty damn hippie, our lawyers wrote the magic memo! It was legal, kinda.
Besides, we had too! The evil Brown People were coming to make us all Muslim!

The give and take between the right and the left is getting shrill. This is just the torture memos. Health care is on the table now and we have some of our own party blocking single payer insurance. The corporate whores of the for-profit health care industry, the insurance industry, and the pharmaceutical companies are no-holds barred trying to woo Dems away from Obama's original plan.

The battles are on many fronts today. Too many to count and too many to mount much opposition. Our personal windmills are being pushed into the background as the MSM determines what story should be foremost on the news. This means my issues of affordable health care and decriminalized marijuana take a back seat to Miss California's tits.

So, I give you a moment of zen. A musical Valium to wrap your head around the situation and get a new perspective. This video takes us back to a time when the country was in chaos like now. Different time, different war, different players but the shit was just as deep. Then, as now, music was our channel to truth. Or at least the seeds of it.



I will update this post in a few. Work is calling and I have to bring home my meager slice of bacon. Enjoy the trip!

So Mote It Be,
David A,

No overtime pay for Mom

On this second Sunday in May, I want to take a moment to give a shout out to those young ladies (of all ages) who have brought life into the world. One in particular brought this poor old grizzled hippie into the light 50 years ago.

I wasn't the only one. No, I was only the second of eight children bore by a housewife from South Dakota who married a logger from Eastern Washington.

Talk about love, they've been together for 54 years These fine folks, right now, are sitting at the kitchen table, having a cup of coffee, reading the paper and telling the grandkids to shut the hell up.

Mothers Day is the day we set aside to honor our maternal parent, the lady who wiped our nose and our ass when we leaked, swatted that ass when we screwed up and praised us when we made her proud. Like when we got three book awards to Angie Johnson's two in second grade. (In your face, Mrs. Johnson! Whoop-Whoop!)

My mom looked the other way on many an occasion when she could have taken me out like a bag of trash. Like the time I experimented on the electrical properties of a dinner fork. After replacing the fuse and putting out the little fire on her brand new bedspread, she simply said:

"Well, you won't do that again, will you?" At least I wasn't holding the damn fork when I plugged it in.

Growing up, I saw the power of compromise. I learned what sharing REALLY means. If you buy candy, you better eat it all before you get home or you have to give some to everybody! With seven brothers and sisters, my mom taught us how to get along with all kinds of people. Even those who would take your favorite yellow Foghat t-shirt to a slumber party and get a god damn, big ass grease stain on it. Fucker!

In 1977, I wrote out an essay about a day in the life of my mother. It was about the daily care and feeding of three youngsters and four teenagers. My English teacher submitted the essay to a contest and my mom was selected Mother of the Year by my town's Chamber of Commerce. I would show you a picture but it was 1977 and I'm wearing a gawd awful leisure suit type thing so that photo will never see the light of day.

To my mother's credit, my siblings and I get along really well. We have our fights and arguments, but in the end we hold no grudges. We talk to each other on a regular basis, exchange gossip and take great pains to interfere in each other's lives. My in-laws (spouses of siblings) have said that our family is a tough club to crack into. We do stick our noses where they don't belong, that's true but we stick together in times of trouble. Some of my sisters' ex-boyfriends can attest to that. Imagine facing down three older brothers AND a dad who knocks down trees for a living. It's a wonder any of them are married at all.

Mothers have great powers. They have the power of time travel and can re-awaken a person's youth. Even at 50 years old, I still revert back to 12 when talking to Mom. She can sent me back in time to 1971 in a single sentence. "David, I'm disappointed in you!" I can only respond "But Mom!"

Such is the power of motherhood.

Happy Mother's Day to all the young ladies (of all ages) who have gifted us with life and love. We are in awe of your grace and your patience. And if one of your children causes a minor power outage by cross-circuiting the toaster, be gentle.

So Mote It Be,
David A.

Wednesday Morning - Hump Day Offering

Here it is Wednesday already and I haven't posted anything since Sunday. I've been traveling the 'Toobs, especially my blog list (see sidebar) and leaving comments around like so many landmines.

As some of my co-conspirators of the less-than-famous blogs know, I've been fighting a battle with health issues. To those who have asked, I'm finally on the mend. I'm actually able to walk to the store without a lot of assistance. Now, if I can find a way to get rid of this 80 lb beer barrel strapped to my six-pack abs, I'll be a damn sight better. Now that these old bones are getting better, the worst part is becoming apparent... paying for it.

I have insurance through work. Over the course of the last three years, my employer (who shall remain nameless) has reduced benefits and raised costs - go figure! As a result, I find myself in the middle of the health care battlefield. I am luckier than a lot of folks. I'm not so far in debt that I can't eventually crawl out. But, should I lose my job or suffer an additional medical setback - I am thoroughly screwed. However, I know of folks who have chronically sick kids or who have cancer or AIDS who are racking up bills like a drunken sailor in Singapore.

There will come a point for them when they can't go on any more. They will have trashed their credit with unpaid bills, lost their homes and assets, blown through any savings only to face their personal war on that illness - the fight of their fucking lives - with no resources, no weapons and no allies. Do they just give up and die? Let the bastard disease win? Do the rest of us just sit in the bleachers and watch and say: "Damn, I thought he was going to get better. He was really strong in the end, why did he just roll over?" All over money.

All of us know this game. Many of us live it. Health is humanity, humanity is health. There are certain absolutes that humanity requires to exist. However, it seems those absolutes are negotiable. Corporate greed has cast its deadly shadow upon those absolutes; chief among them maintaining good health. We have the means to provide every American with excellent health care. American medical care is second to none. It's there. It exists all around us like the air we breathe. But it's kept in a vending machine. The problem in our health care system isn't that quality doesn't exists, its that it only exists for those who can pay for it.

For-profit hospitals, insurance companies, HMO's, and pharmaceutical companies have placed quality health care on the top shelf, out of the reach of many Americans. When confronted with this fact, these corporate goons say that the problem isn't that their services are out of reach, it's that the population is too short. In other words, we have to rise up to meet their needs, they don't have to lower to ours.

The crime in this isn't the companies though. They are born and bred greedy bastards, that's their nature. You can't expect any other action from these groups. The crime is that we, as a society, have allowed them to do it. There have been many opportunities to rein in these bastards and put this system right. At each point, we shied away, allowed ourselves to be gilded by the scare tactics and insidious lies and propaganda of these industries to maintain the status quo.

We let our ignorance and fear dictate our actions over the objections of our best interests. Even now, as our leaders debate the health care crisis in the halls of Congress, we are starting to smell the acrid scent of capitulation, feel the fear and loathing of all things government creep into our psyche and the pushing of our best interests once again into the dark basement where it has been for the last twenty years.

There may come a time in my medical treatment when I say "Stop! I can't afford any more!" That frightens me as I'm sure similar situations frighten millions of my fellow Americans. How did we get here? But more importantly, how do we get better?

So Mote It Be,
David A.

Friday the 13th! Oooooo!

Waning full moon, Friday the 13th, Rush Limbaugh still has a radio show, lots of things to be 'fraid of.

Why Friday the 13th? Personally, I would think MONDAY the 13th would be unlucky. At least on Friday you have a weekend to look forward to.

On Monday the 13th, if you have a shitty day you still have four more days of work to make it worse!

Just a thought.

So More It Be,
David A.