artwrite's Blog

A Confederacy of Nitwits

2009-09-02T15:07:41Z

Who the hell are these people? It's not the lunatic fringe that's against health care reform, it's the idiot fringe. More specifically, an idiot fringe with neither information nor manners.
In recent weeks, Congresswoman Jackie Speier has held two Health Care Reform Town Hall meetings here in her California district. At the first of these meetings, one aging, bellicose shouter from Half Moon Bay, California, apparently just in from his barstool at the VFW, had no question but went on a five minute tirade about the government trying to take away our guns.
At the second meeting, a young guy from Daly City, California, proclaimed (actually spat in anger) that our government is based on the Declaration of Independence and that nowhere in that document does it say anything about health care, and that further, it doesn't doesn't give congress the right to make laws. He also noted that the public schools couldn't teach him to read, so his mother home-schooled him. Based on the evidence, she may have been qualified to teach reading, but not history and government.
In the news this morning, a protester at a Health Care Town Hall holds up a copy of what he calls "the U.S.S. Constitution," proclaims that he's read it three times and he can't find where it says the government has the right to provide health care. No mention of whether he was home-schooled or not. At the same event, a woman yelled that "our government comes from god" and that "the Jews walked through the desert for 40 years and their sandals didn't wear out." Which, I guess, must in some way argue against health care reform.
Where do these people get their information? Hmmm. From the media? Yesterday, a TV anchor belittled a 44 year-old congressman for not being on Medicare. Or from elected officials? Over the weekend, it was reported that Senator Harry Reid, is for the "public option" so long as it's "private." Harry, honey, read up on this health care reform business. Oh yeah, and pull out the dictionary and check the definitions for public and private. They're both under P. Or didn't your mom teach you that?

Setting Ourselves On Fire

2009-07-28T14:59:44Z

Yo! Senators, Congresspersons, Mr. President! What do we democrats have to do to get your attention? We want real healthcare reform. We would prefer a single payer system, but we will settle for a system with a "public option." But we will not settle for BaucusCare, or anything that smells remotely like it.
Did you hear us? WE WILL NOT SETTLE FOR BAUCUSCARE. We will not settle for it. What do we have to do to get through to you? Set our sorry middle class asses on fire?
We the real people are sinking fast. We're losing our jobs, our businesses and our homes. We do not want to see you dicking around with half-measures that favor fat-ass insurance companies, that cost the middle class even more than we already cannot afford. I cannot fathom what world you live in that you think this will be good for us, or that we will let you get away with screwing us again. We will not.
To you Democratic congresspersons, you of the safe gerrymandered district, just think 2010. Screw us and we're coming after you. You may think we'll still support you just because the alternative is worse. We will not. We will go Green or we'll stay home. In our eyes, you will cease to exist or matter.
To you Democratic senators. Look, we already think you're a bunch of out-of-touch-with-the-common-people rich bastards. And now you're proving our assessment correct. If you let Baucus and Grassley run the show and try to sell us a watered down health care plan that favors the rich and well-connected, well screw you too. Your six-year term is isn't long enough to save you. This time we will not forget whose side you chose. Your only chance will be to run as the Republican that at heart you really are, because we Democrats will dump you.
As for you, Mr. President, when you ran for the office you now hold, your platform included healthcare reform with a public option. Please do not sign a healthcare reform bill that does not include a meaningful public option and does not save a struggling middleclass from financial ruin. If you do, I for one will not vote for you again. Last time around I worked many long hours for your campaign, and I gave your campaign more money than I could really afford.
If you let me down on healthcare, Mr. President, not only will I not vote for you again, I will send you an invoice for the time and money I spent in your behalf. I won't, however, expect to get paid, because so far your administration has only handed out money to rich bankers. (When you walk down the White House hallways, doesn't the stench of the Goldman Sachs bailout bother you just a little?)
"Senators, Congressmen, [Presidents] please heed the call, don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the hall, for he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled..."
Hey, has anybody seen my matches?

There once was a Baucus named Max

2009-07-23T20:52:27Z

There once was a Baucus named Max,

Whose ethics it's said were quite lax.

He fished in Montana,

With friends from Humana,

For money to fill up his PACs.

There once was a Senator named DeMint

2009-07-23T15:52:40Z

There once was a Senator named DeMint,

His sweet southern smile it did glint,

He went on the attack,

With a Waterloo crack,

What hit him he had not a hint.

There once was a Senator named Baucus

2009-07-21T19:35:16Z

There once was a senator named Baucus,

With the insurance man he did caucus,

Together they schemed,

And the people they reamed,

Our good health was not their focus.

All Sotomayor All The Time

2009-05-28T20:10:11Z

Okay, media. All of you, calm down. The more you discuss the musings, rantings and posturings of the Washington bit players who are using the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to get a little ink or airtime, the more they will muse, rant and posture. All to no end, except to give a media a story they don't have to work very hard to get.

Judge Sotomayor will be confirmed. Everyone knows that. First, she will have to appear before the flaccid minds of the Senate judiciary committee. Those minds will huff and puff and pontificate for and against. They'll ask questions that they know a jurist can't answer because to answer now would mean recusing oneself later. Then she'll be confirmed just as everyone already knows she will.

So why all the Sotomayor-related stories? Is this a slow news cycle?

No. North Korea is shooting and exploding. After 8 years of 6 party diplomacy, we've achieved nothing. What are we going to do next? Where's that story? Someone is trying to make sense of and peace in the Middle East for the first time since 1996. Where's that story? Buried beneath the Sotomayor mutterings. The list goes on. Healthcare. Climate. An economy that is still beeding 600 thousand jobs a month. Where are those stories?

How do we get reporters to dig down and get the news? Instead of just amplifying the tired views of Newt, Rush and all the other Washington puffermen, right and left, who haven't had an original or important thing to say in decades.

The late Charles McCabe, columnist for the San Chronicle, once offered that being a PR person was the easiest job in the world. Why? Because reporters, editors and publishers were too lazy or timid to go find the news. And if you gave them the news, it saved them a lot of work.

It occurs to me that the "new media" is replacing the "old media" with the same kind of lazy, gutless effort that typifies the old media. Instead of digging and making news, you wait for the news to happen, then report what everyone has to say about it until you're reporting what each other says about it. TPM said that Politico said that Koz said that Raw Story said that Huff said. It's what I call "A Circle Link." The result: all Sotomayor all the time.

Boehner Belches, Cantor Highlights

2009-02-25T15:54:46Z

As I watched the president's speech on a webcast last night, the camera panned the audience and lingered a moment on Representative John Boehner as he slouched, almost sprawled, in his seat. With his eyelids half closed and disdain in his posture, he seemed to be on the verge of sleep, when suddenly his body convulsed as if my a hiccup,a belch constrained or a breath mint inadvertently swallowed. The camera quickly cut away and never returned, apparently remembering the reporters' dictum "never take a picture of Johnny after cocktail hour, like, say, noon."

Meanwhile, at Boehner's side sat Representative Eric Cantor, lips pursed in indignation, the very picture of sophomoric intensity. He balanced the president's printed speech on his knee, glared at it and furiously marked it up with a large yellow highlighter, coming up with new ideas, perhaps, for his next video. Eric, you're so earnest and lacking in subtlety, you're almost cute.

Israel is almost over

2008-12-31T16:29:35Z

Israel is no longer the land of plucky settlers carving a green homeland in the desert. That romantic image was always partly dishonest and now it is simply untrue. Israel today is a land of aparteid, oppression, intolerance and, occasionally, massacre, most of which is bought and paid for with American military aid and donations from American charitable foundations.

Israel is surrounded by the poor, dispossessed Palestinian people it has pushed from its (their) land. Those people live among massive "security walls," barbed wire and demeaning checkpoints. They are angry. (Who would not be?)

What Israel must come to understand very soon is that apartheid, oppression and intolerance never win. In the short run, might is right. In the long run, right is might. And Israel is not in the right. It must change or it will end.

What the US government must realize, today not tomorrow, is that we are, through our largess, state sponsors of Israel's wrongs. Indeed, we state sponsors of Israeli terrorism.

The girl with the backwards B

2008-10-25T18:29:41Z

There was a little girl

who took a little whirl

at carving a "B"

in her forehead.

The truth began to leak

when she missed and cut her cheek

with a backwards B quite florid.

The silly little girl,

really quite a churl,

blamed it all on a big black robber.

Her lie gave her no pain

for she loved McCain

to the Pittsburg cops she did slobber.

Speaking of McCain

his strategy it's plain

is to lie, fume and babble.

In order to advance

he has but one chance:

to incite and rouse the rabble.

The campaign with a backwards B

2008-10-25T17:53:05Z

Oh, Johnny, it's come to this. You've got your angry, confused little partisans in such a froth they've begun to imagine they're being carved up and robbed of money they didn't withdraw from an ATM they didn't visit by tall black robber who supports Obama, reads bumper stickers and writes backwards. Then when it's pointed out to them that they made the whole thing up, they blame it on the media.

Johnny, see the kind of people you and Sarah appeal to? See the crazy self-destructive anger your demogoguery is whipping up? They're your kind of people aren't they? Little, angry and confused. Makes you kind of proud, doesn't it, Johnny?

Yo, John, I'm Angry Too.

2008-10-23T03:29:21Z

John, I'm angry too, my friend. I'm angry about what you and your friends have done to this country, to other countries, to the earth. And now I'm angry about you, my friend, very angry. I've heard your colleagues and others talk about you, how you've changed, how you're not the John McCain they knew, or thought they knew. When they see your angry, slashing, lying, semi-coherent demagoguery, they say they're shocked and disappointed. I can't quite believe them. I think you've been that way all along. You're just a nasty opportunist, a guy without a philosophy or a plan, a guy who bullies his way through the pack, shoving, kicking and insulting people who get in the way. And you always have been.

But that's not what I'm angry about, my friend. No, I'm angry, you little red-nosed demagogue, because you and your nasty running mate are playing on people's fears, turning their fears to anger, inciting ugliness across the land. It's a scorched earth strategy isn't it, Johnny. You're losing, so you want to take everybody down with you. What a guy. Your America or a scorched America.

By the way, stop whining about John Lewis. He let you off easy. He didn't call you a demagogue, which you are. But I did. So come and get me little guy. C'mon punk.

What's Eating Him? What's Not?

2008-10-03T23:27:08Z

Everything and everybody is eating at poor Johhny. He's losing the election and he knows it. He's low on campaign funds and he knows it. People are criticizing him, even the editors of the Des Moines Register. He is constitutionally unable to accept criticism. People are questioning his honesty. E.J. Dionne today called him a liar. Johnny knows he's not honest, but he hates it when others point it out to him. Everyone who watched him hug George Bush for eight years (after what Bush did to him in Carolina) knows that he has a loose relationship with truth and principles. Lastly, he has a propensity for forgetting what he has said and then contradicting himself, sometimes in the space of a couple hours. He then lashes out at those who would contradict him. That is very suggestive of either or both early stage dementia or chemical addiction. If what's eating him keeps eating him from now to November 4th, and I think it will, there won't be much left of him. And the world with be a somewhat better place.