Dreams Of Noise

Again, again, again, the ratbastards want to make not having health insurance punishable by law. With hefty fines.

Let's see if I can explain this as simply as possible, for our poor, dumb fuck congresscritters and weaselly presidential advisers and shitheaded overgreedy lobbyists and reality-challenged commentators, none of whom have to worry about their goddamn health care.

What people need is "health care", not "health insurance".

For the most part, the people who don't have health care don't have it because the way the system is set up right now, they need to either have health insurance, which they cannot afford, or the money to get health care without insurance, which (being a good deal more than insurance) they really can't afford.

If they cannot afford health insurance, they cannot afford the fines for not having health insurance. Therefore, making it illegal to not have health insurance actually makes things worse, and still does not provide health care.

Comparing the prospective mandatory health insurance to no-fault car insurance does not work. Driving is a privilege. Your health is a necessity.

Admittedly, I don't know why I'm bothering. These evil fucks are trying to squeeze every last drop of blood out of people, and the Obama administration, all inspiring soliloquy and no cojones, are trying to help them.

My ass.

Abortion provider George Tiller was shot to death today, in the lobby of the church he attended.

This man helped women with difficult decisions regarding their own bodies, health, and lives.

Another man, who believed his God wants more births, shot up a church to kill him.

I don't care which side of the debate you take. This is wrong on every level.

And if you honestly believe that some gestating cells, the potential for a human life, have some sort of equivalency with this man's existence -- especially if you bring up the knee-jerk argument about "late-term abortions" without realizing that late-term abortions are almost always performed as a last resort to save the mother from being killed by an unviable pregnancy -- then perhaps you should ask yourself precisely what "pro-life" means to you.

I'm sure we'd all be fascinated by the answer.

ETA: jblaque links us to reaction from the Freepers.

It's been 100 days since Barack Obama took office as president, and all over the web you can find analyses, scorecards, praises, tirades and grumblings. But I'd like to take a moment to talk about the other side of the equation.

( The absolutely apeshit demented behavior by Conservatives and their supporters [WARNING: Long, long post].... )

Yeah, yeah, I've gotta get out the door. But I keep seeing goofy shit like this:

The Parents Television Council is warning parents about the Britney Spears song "If U Seek Amy" and urging radio stations not to broadcast it because the nonprofit organization believes it "would violate the broadcast indecency law" if aired between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.

Saying the title phrase quickly out loud produces a sound akin to spelling out the F-word, said PTC president Tim Winter. "There is no misinterpreting the lyrics to this song, and it's certainly not about a girl named Amy," he said of the track, the third single from Spears' new Jive album, "Circus."

"It's one thing for a song with these lyrics to be included on a CD so that fans who wish to hear it can do so, but it's an entirely different matter when this song is played over the publicly-owned airwaves, especially at a time when children are likely to be in the listening audience," Winter says.

The fucking goddamn economy is collapsing, we're in two motherfucking wars, and you're worried about Britney Spears being a potty-mouth.

This is, literally, kids giggling over a hidden dirty word. Or maybe gaping in wonder at the (gasp!) nipples exposed in an old National Geographic. Or a double-entendre from Paul Lynde or Charles Nelson Reilly or Dean Martin.

This ain't shit. The only people being harmed by "dirty" words are you, when you swallow your own tongue in shock hearing them. Lighten the fuck up. Better yet, go find a nice little production of Guys and Dolls to pretend you live in, mmkay? Not only do you not have a sense of proportion, you have no sense of... well, you have no sense. Not a goddamn scrap of it.

To remind those of you who may have forgotten, or never encountered, the above acronym, it stands for, "It's OK If You're A Republican".

Now. I understand from my Mother that she has occasionally sent people from her church to my LJ, all of them unsuspecting of the type of language I sometimes use here. If any people from my mother's church happen to be reading this, I apologize.

But ( insert loud, profanity-filled rant here.... )

ETA: As usual, Digby says it better than pretty much anybody.

ETA2: No use engaging hunterkirk in any more "enlightened dialogue". I banned him. Way to say Hello, guy.

The next several years are going to be difficult.

President-Elect Obama is being handed two wars, a broken economy, a broken military, a trashed international reputation, a long list of Constitutional violations, pressing environmental problems, a sixth of the nation without any health care at all, a desperate need to restart the jobs market and rebuild infrastructure and aim us now dammit towards energy independence, and a whole lot more.

Not to mention an opposition party that will fight him tooth and nail every step of the way, not because of their alleged "principles" but because of their need to cling to every bit of power they possibly can. (And if you think otherwise, then, seriously, you have not been paying attention for the past eight years.)

Even before all the returns were in last night, stunned Republicans and stuttering, desperate pundits were warning how veddy veddy important it was for Obama to reach out to the Republicans, just as the Repubs did in 2000 and 2004. Oh, wait.

It is the Same Ol' Same Ol'. Repubs win, it's a "mandate"; Dems win, Repubs caution them to be bipartisan, which means sucking up to the Repubs. Which leads me to say to Mitch McConnell, Joe Scarborough, BillO, and all the rest:

Fuck. You.

And the elephant you rode in on.

To any of my Republican readers who feel any need to express how the Dems must cautiously make inroads with the conservatives... kindly keep it to yourselves, at least for today. For today, we not only won, but you lost, and lost big. Your party, your philosophy, your ways of doing business, your "governing" have all been rejected. Your leaders gleefully stomped on my side, their insane policies set us up the bomb that blew up on Wall Street six weeks ago, the long-favored theories were put into place and have been shown one and all to be dust and nonsense.

And it wasn't that McCain or Bush or whoever "wasn't conservative enough". One of the most hilarious recurrent examples of denial I have ever seen, that I keep seeing, is the thought that "true conservatism" can be failed because it turns out that every single person practicing it "wasn't a real conservative". We've been living under precisely what all of your great thinkers had in mind for two presidential terms now, and we've got the biggest honkin' mess in the history of the world, and I probably should make some joke about how we had to hire the black guy has to clean it up, but it looks as if he has the savvy and the chops to do it that none of the Repubs have ever demonstrated.

We've got a country, ours, all of ours, to fix. Your side blew it completely. At the very least, shut up and get out of the way.

ETA: Another way to look at it.

Special Comment By Teh Keith.