And Now, A Word From Our Sponsors!

Money. Like radiation, it is in its way absolutely vital to the function of the system it occupies. Also like radiation, it utterly destroys and mutates everything it touches when introduced in the wrong amounts, in the wrong places.

The latest ruling of the Supreme Court cannot bode well for American civil society. Things were bad enough when they could only donate limited amounts of money to particular candidates. Now, in this single stroke, it has been made legal for corporations to spend, freely, as much as they like on advertising for political agents and actions. Considering the current practice of such advertising (Freudian manipulation to elicit exclusively emmotinal behavior) what horrors must now await us? Thinking of the irrational behavior and emmoting fostered by FNC, this sort of thing is only going to encourage more people to completely ignore reality in favor of what makes them feel good.

Jesus H. Fucking Christ, these are the same people who want to sell cigarettes with cartoon characters.

Makin a M*A*S*H of things, pt. II

Words almost fail me. After a year...another year, if we think back to the previous attempt in the 90's, we still can't seem to bring ourselves to say that human beings have a right to be alive. Yes, I'm taking that tack, because that is the most basic point addressed in the conversation about health care reform. The obstructionists appear to have won. Again.

Let me just summarize the condition being enforced by conservatives: "You have rights; particularly, you have the right to choose between living in poverty, or dying in poverty."

I am thoroughly disgusted with Republicans and conservatives in general for deciding that the profits of insurance companies are more important than the lives of human beings. I am thoroughly disgusted with the Democratic leadership for putting their own political careers over and above the interests of the people they claim to represent. As of this moment, I see only one recourse for the current majority to salvage it's honor and the remnants of it's integrity. As has been voiced by Rep. Clyburn of South Carolina, the only viable path to genuine reforms now is to use the Budget Reconciliation process.

Clyburn today advised, in an interview on POTUS (XM130) that the best option remaining would be to strip out the reform issues from the bill, use the Reconciliation process, then force votes on a handful of individual reform points; Tort reform, coverage withdrawal, pre-existing conditions, etc. I don't especially like this method but for the sake of getting the results we need, I can get fully behind it.