I know, I know. I’m getting lazy. But hey, it’s a funny video, eh?
More seriously, I haven’t been able to form a rational and intellectual response to the debates about either health care, or the somewhat related “controversy” of the President’s speech to schoolchildren. The reactionary viewpoint — on full view at Fox, accepted by the mainstream Republican party, and accepted as “just another point of view” by the MSM (yes, NBC reporters, there is a difference between saying “the controversy over the President’s speech” and “the President’s controversial speech”) — is so jaw-droppingly disingenuous, ill-informed and dangerous, I find it hard to form a response other than anger.
“Keep the government’s hands off my Medicare!” “Only Kim-Jong Il makes speeches to schoolchildren.” The only thing I can think to say is what I now yell at motorists who yell or try to intimidate me while I’m riding my beloved bike (with compliments and apologies to Van Jones):
They should convene a panel for the next Meet the Press with Jenna Bush Hager, Luke Russert, Liz Cheney, Megan McCain and Jonah Goldberg, and they should have Chris Wallace moderate it. They can all bash affirmative action and talk about how vitally important it is that the U.S. remain a Great Meritocracy because it’s really unfair for anything other than merit to determine position and employment.
Jenna Bush, assiduously studying for her future as NBC's "national education consultant."
Got a famous parent? Get a job. Not that there’s anything new here, as I was punted aside at CBS News decades ago for some Kissinger filles. Still, when you’re looking for work, it’s gotta’ piss you off. I mean, Jenna’s “redeemed” herself and everything, but we need her as a national “expert” on education, literacy, and child welfare? I guess Pinochet’s kids’ English ain’t good enough.
The time is now. Time for Democrats to put up or shut up. Time for the obstructionists and outright liars of the radical right that is today’s Republican Party to stop their class warfare on average American families.
North, South, East, West. Decent, affordable health care for all Americans, as a right, not a privilege.
The middle-class needs protection from health care bankruptcy now.
In the ultimate act of moral and political hypocrisy, Congressional Republicans and so-called “blue dog” Democrats rail against “government controlled health care,” while enjoying the benefits of gold-plated government-controlled health care.
Here is the sitewhere Federal workers get to choose from dozens of health care plans. We should only have such choices. (But we’re schmucks, you know, who are so much better off with the free market.) Members of Congress also receive benefits above and beyond “normal” federal employees, with a pharmacy and clinic on site at the Capitol.
Any opponent of the so-called “public option,” like the long-overdue for retirement Jim DeMint of South Carolina, the always despicable Lindsey Graham and the pasty-faced liar Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, should voluntarily surrender their Congressional health care plans. Since they are so insistent that only the private sector is capable of delivering value, let’s give them vouchers, and let them voluntarily source their health insurance from the private sector instead of the government.
Put your health care where your mouth is, Senators DeMint and Graham. I understand Aetna offers “excellent” individual policies — like the ones that your politicking leaves me and my family “free” to buy.
Get with the program today, fellow, and start supporting the free market. Otherwise, your consituents might start suspecting you of socialisim, or of not being “natural-born American citizens.”
As we continue to live with the consequences of the anti-public onslaught visited on our society these past decades by the radical reactionaries who have been calling themselves “Republicans” and “conservatives,” towns and cities across the United States have been forced to cancel their 4th of July fireworks — and sometimes their entire 4th of July observations — due to a lack of public funds.
Cancel the 4th of July? Think about it.
Thank your local “conservative” for working so hard all these years to “starve the beast” of government. As the man said, “Wave that flag; wave it wide and high!”
Of course, if you live in a large-enough city, you can still enjoy a fireworks show this July 4th. One brought to you through the “benevolence” of the executive overlords at your local, global corporate entity, like Macy’s in New York, or Target in Detroit. The national fireworks show, on the mall in DC, is itself brought to youas a good deed by a consortium of defense contractors (Base Technologies, Inc.) lobbyists (Tell America; The International Webcasting Association), and the usual corporate citizens, like Boeing and American Airlines. This, in our executive-overlord dystopia, is the way things are supposed to work: our government is supposed to be beholden to the “benevolence” of corporations. Have some municipal initiative? Better get your private funding and the chamber of commerce on board, boys. Anything else would be socialism.
Of course, when your country is up for sale to the highest bidder, attractive properties like the DC Mall, or the West Side of Manhattan garner the most “investor” interest. Meanwhile, hundreds, if not thousands of smaller towns and municipalities have cancelled their 4th of July, including my home town of Yonkers, NY. A cursory Internet search gives you an idea of the scope of this “patriotic” farce; towns cancelling their 4th of July include:
Yonkers, NY; Parma, OH; San Jose, CA; Charlottesville, VA; Hialeah, FL; Mesa, AZ; Colorado Springs, CO; Niceville, FL; Garland, TX; Gwinnett County, GA; Miami-Dade County, FL; Flint, MI; Montebello, CA; Nixa, MO; Bristol NH; York, ME; Methuen, Peabody, Randolph, Abington and Bridgewater, MA; Roseville, CA; Gurney, Elgin, Berwyn, North Riverside and Harvey, IL; Newton, IA; Loxley, AL; Rahway, Milville and Ridgewood Park, NJ. This is a representative sample from 5 minutes on Google News, not an exhaustive list.
Plymouth, Massachusetts — you know, as in “Plymouth Rock” — cancelled its 4th of July parade and celebrations altogether; after many years of being funded by private citizen donations, this year the contributions just dried up.
As for me — I’ll be out riding my bike this weekend as usual. And despite my memories of wonderment at the little fireworks show that used to be staged at Ft. Totten in Bayside, NY when I was a kid, as I enjoy the unusual quiet this weekend, I’ll know who to thank.
If nothing else comes from the past weeks’ headlines out of Tehran, let us hope that Americans, generally, will become aware that Iran is far more complex politically, historically and culturally than the average American has been led to believe. Current American perceptions seem so often hopelessly colored by a steady diet of Ahmadinejad’s anti-Semitic rants, half-remembered impressions of the American embassy hostage ordeal, and the occasional story of atrocities committed by the country’s despicable religious vigilantes.
photo by Tarnie/Creative Commons
We Americans, unfortunately, don’t have a particularly rosy history when it comes to international affairs in the post World-War world. Our sad history of military intervention in Southeast Asia, and our recent adventurism in Iraq shared a key characteristic: a willful blindness before-the-fact to the local historical and political context. It is almost as if, as a nation, we want continually to mimic the worst stereotype of the American tourist (or more kindly, revisit the high-minded naivete of Alden Pyle, the eponymous Quiet American of the classic Graham Greene novel) who even on the familiar ground of Western Europe, can still wonder why no one speaks “American.”
Those of us who live in the New York area, have the opportunity to correct some of our ignorance of contemporary Iran by visiting the compelling ‘Iran Inside Out,’ an exhibition of the “Influences of Homeland and Diaspora on the Artistic Language of 56 Contemporary Iranian Artists” at the Chelsea Art Museum between now and September 5.
Nothing you could do in a single afternoon will give you a better understanding of the true motives of Iran’s “green revolution” reformers, or prepare you to understand the context of the particular political and cultural crossroads at which Iran stands today, and the potential resolutions that may play themselves out there in the days, months and years ahead.
For those of us without convenient access to New York City, an online version is here: Iran Inside Out. Please take this opportunity to appreciate and ponder on the work of these brave voices.
Inspirations and Aspirations 