Etc.

The embroidery business is booming in Reno thanks to putting the finishing touches on those made-in-China uniforms.
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The lack of REAL dental insurance, and not those piddling benefits employers offer that pay hardly nothing thanks to annual limits, is a national scandal.

For-profit companies, as mentioned previously on this blog, are up to their eyeballs in this.

Necessities should never be subject to the profit motive.
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Well, Glenn, you rip what you sew.
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It would likely take a miracle for top racehorse Paynter, winner of the Haskell Invitational, to survive this very, very serious bout with laminitis, the same disease that caused Secretariat to be put down in 1989.

Paynter developed colitis, but then he ended up with laminitis in three of his four legs.

I would say the chances of survival are not good.

One Can Ridicule the Beck Rally

with videos like this one:



but the rally really isn't a laughing matter given the fact the billionaire and shadowy Koch brothers, who really are anti-American in their crackpot "libertarian" beliefs, are bankrolling these and similar efforts in getting Democrats out of Congress and further destroying the country.

These Abnormal Times

In normal times, nobody would give any time to a raving, intellectually challenged blowhard like Glenn Beck. Nobody would even tune this guy in on the idiot box, and he would have to go out and earn an honest living or go back into rehab. The fact anybody like this gets any kind of ink at all not only shows how far political discourse has fallen, but it also points to the glaring fact there is a complete absence of leadership in Washington.

Mr. "Hope and Change" turned out to be Mr. "Same Shit, Different Day." What "reforms" he has helped enact have been nothing more than windowdressing. They don't do anything to rock the boat against the health insurance industry or Wall Street; hell, the guy is nothing but a tool for those corporate interests anyway. We needed RADICAL surgery in this country by rejecting the special interests and financial elites, but instead we get the same damned thing.

The fact is Obama is little more than a Republican of the Friedmanite type than a real Democrat. The neoliberal poison has infected the Democratic Party and promises to destroy it from within.

I Didn't Bother to Watch

the crapola "march" on Washington this weekend, but a few people had the stomach to sit through it on television and write about what this "Beckola" event was all about.

When one cuts through all of the layers of piety and bullshit, what one realizes is Beck is just another con man trying to flim-flam the masses into accepting their inferior status to the elite class, of which Beck is now a member. We peons must accept crumbs so these crooks and con artists can have even more:

With 26 million American workers on the unemployment lines or unable to find a full-time job, millions more having lost their homes, and working people faced with relentless wage-cutting while Wall Street reels in record profits, such complacent clap trap will find no support from the vast majority of the population. If Beck were to advance an explicit political program based on the interests and aims of the financial aristocracy for whom he speaks, the hostility and opposition would be overwhelming.

Behind Beck’s fuzzy rhetoric about individualism and patriotism there does lie a program which these wealthy, right-wing layers support. It includes the systematic dismantling of all forms of social spending that constitute a drain on profit, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. It envisions the reduction of wages in the US to a level that would be competitive with those in China. And it seeks the even greater strengthening of the police-military powers of the government to suppress all opposition from the working class at home and to escalate militarist interventions abroad.

I couldn't have said it better.

Here is a link I came across through a discussion board about the real problem in this country, and that is the overconcentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands. When this happens, economic ruin and depression invariably results.

Bob Herbert is Right About Glenn Beck,

saying America is too good for this schmuck, but Herbert needs to realize Beck, the economic elite, and his corporate masters believe THEY are too good for America, or at least Americans. If the peons were smart, THEY would be rich. After all, if you are rich, that means you are more worthy, are better, than everybody else. Never mind HOW you got the money, and even if you "worked" to get rich, you didn't get there by yourself. The peons helped you get rich, either by working for you or by buying your products. The rest of the rich, the parasite class I call them, got there through marriage, inheritance, or through criminal or semi-criminal shenanigans (i.e., the Wall Street banksters). About the only way the peon class can ever get rich is by winning the Powerball or MegaMillions lotteries.

Never mind that the rich eat, sleep, and go to the bathroom like everybody else, to paraphrase Clark Gable. They also die like everybody else, but if the rich could buy immortality, they would do it.

Getting back to Bob Herbert. He is correct about worrying of the consequences to all of this "bombast," as he calls it. The "tea party" people would not be above committing widespread violence if they are incited enough.

But it isn't just the right-wing followers of bloviators like Beck who are about fed up. A LOT of people are.

I Have a Scheme

World-class dipshit Glenn Beck bastardized an iconic event today and turned it into a bash of self-promotion.

This twerp makes somewhere in the $30 million range, some $30 million more than he's worth, and wants to further toot his ignorant horn.

Religion, like patriotism, is a last refuge of a scoundrel, and Beck provided proof of that with his blathering about how the United States needs to return to God. No doubt his corporate masters are using him to help divert people's attention to the fact they are being robbed blind by the same jerks who are peddling "social" issues.

You'd think people would finally wake up and realize there has been a class war going on for thirty years by the few against everybody else; our elected officials don't even HIDE their contempt for the masses anymore since both parties have been bought off by the same elite interests.

The ONLY thing people have right now is the right to vote, and even here it has been compromised (examples include the presidential elections of 2000, of 2004, and the rigging of the Democratic primaries in 2008 so that Democrats would "choose" a right-wing, Chicago School-type politician over better candidates).

More stuff about the Beck nonsense are here and here.

A Boil on the Asshole of America

is the perfect description one commenter has on dim bulb Glenn Beck.

Usually I don't give this intellectually-challenged individual much attention, but he started yammering about the so-called 99ers, this time saying people should be "ashamed" to call these people "Americans."

I will tell you something, Glenn, and that is people not helping others or government policies designed to help rich bastards like you at everybody else's expense is what is anti-American.

It's unconscionable.

I know it is an election year, and it is time to play the old GOP standby of divide-and-conquer, but you will realize, Glenn, many of the long-term unemployed are Republicans, or were, until your ilk started trashing them.

As Bill Clinton Noted the Other Day,

the "vast right-wing conspiracy" is alive and well and probably even more nutty now than it was when he was president.

Somebody like Glenn Beck, who I regard as a mental midget when I used to watch him before I had my cable/dish service cut off, shouldn't even get the time of day, but there he is, with his mug plastered all over the place and even making the cover of Time. He and others of his ilk are fanning the flames of hatred all the while raking in the big bucks.

Naturally our mainstream media don't really hold these crazies and their political fellow travelers up to serious scrutiny. They are so afraid of being accused of liberal bias (think clear back to Nixon's day), they believe these wackos deserve equal time and little criticism.

The sad thing is there are people who actually believe in Beck and his ilk's drivel.

This Video

of Bill Clinton the other day has been posted everywhere on the net, and I am going to post it here because he is so right about the attempt to push Hillary out of the race, and "most of the media are not for her":



"She's winning the general election today, and he's not." Yep, the media KNOWS Obama can't win; he will be lucky if he isn't indicted in connection with the Illinois scandals. More to the point, they are more in the tank for John McCain, and he needs as easy a chance to be elected as possible.

Even right-winger squawk show host Glenn Beck agrees with Bill:

GLENN: Hang on. Stop here for a second. Stu, have you ever seen anything like this?

STU: Never seen anything like it at all, Glenn.

GLENN: Especially when the Clintons are involved?

STU: I've never seen the media seem to pick one candidate and just favor them in everything.

GLENN: It's just, I can't think of a time. Definitely, like, not in 1992.

STU: No, no. Definitely not at any point in the Nineties. There's never a point --

GLENN: Never a time.

STU: Where they picked one side and favored it and then completely trashed the other side.

GLENN: Yeah. Shhh. Keep your voice down.

STU: Sorry.

GLENN: I never saw, like, a time, ever, when the media would just take something and just distort it and turn it upside down on its head. You know, and just run with it like it was the truth.

STU: And blatantly lie about the other side of the argument.

GLENN: It's incredible. I'm with Bill Clinton. I've never seen this happen before, either.

BILL CLINTON: And I've never seen anything like it. I've never seen a candidate treated so disrespectfully.

GLENN: Hang on just a second. Stu, have you... (laughing). Have you ever seen a candidate treated with such disrespect?

STU: I've never seen it -- I've never seen a candidate been treated with such disrespect, certainly not the last seven years, definitely not (laughing).

Chuck Todd's "analysis" merely proves Bill Clinton's point:



The media are surely paranoid this thing will go to the convention. It should. Democrats will rue the day they forced Hillary Clinton out or did not pick somebody other than Obama.

I would add, though, the media have been picking our candidates all this season. They ignored Biden, Dodd, and Richardson for the most part, and they made goddamned sure John Edwards would be knocked out of the race. They continued talking him down. Then, when Edwards, the most electable candidate we had, was pushed aside, the media really pounced on Hillary Clinton for payback in not being able to run her and her husband out of Washington in the nineties. And they are on the verge of getting the candidate they want, corrupt beyond belief, to go up against McCain.

Glenn Beck

comes back from death's door or something:



Michael Moore should get hold of him.