Sorry is Sorry except when it's NOT

Just a little note about apologies.  Anything qualified, anything that contains the words (or similar sentiment) "but YOU?" Not an apology.  Anything that goes on to defend whatever's being apologized for?

Not an apology.

So do me a favor, wouldja?  Next time the words "Hey, I'm really sorry, it's just that you . . . " start to come out of your mouth?

Just hush, okay?  Because you're not apologizing, and you're not improving my mood even a little.

Thanks!

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A little lesson in reality for the wanker-baggers out there who seem to think that shutting down the government will "undo" the Affordable Care Act:

It's LAW, you guys. Remember the whole School House Rock gig, with "I am a Bill?"  Remember how that works?  Congress enacts, the President signs, and WOW, it's the law?  Yeah, that's what happened, it is how our country works, it's exactly the process it was founded on.  And you remember what happens when a LAW's constitutionality is challenged?  It goes before the Supreme Court.  You remember them, right?  With their bagger victories like Citizens United and the garroting of the Voting Rights Act?  Yeah, those right-leaning freaks!  They examined the Affordable Care Act and found it . . .

NOT IN VIOLATION OF THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION!

That's RIGHT, boys and girls, the ACA (often known as "Obamacare") is the LAW, and it's CONSTITUTIONAL.  And you know what else it is?

FULLY FUNDED REGARDLESS OF GOVERNMENT SHUT DOWN.  What, no one told you that?  Your histrionic, fundamentally unstable, utterly dishonest bagger representatives didn't tell you that?  Oh, no!

Yeah, they shut down the government in protest of a law that shutting down the government won't interfere with.  But really, it goes deeper than that.  They shut down the government because they want a Presidential do-over. They're still butt-hurt because they lost.

They LOST!  Probably THE defining issue this past election was Affordable Health Care, and they LOST.

I find it deeply embarrassing that there are so-called Americans who have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, toward health care.  That there are some who view the INTERNATIONAL STANDARD of care as something evil, something to be avoided at all costs.  

Shameful!

The rich, who have gotten so much richer in the past few decades, and who contribute so much LESS to our society, be it through wages or taxes, have actually managed to hoodwink us, to turn us against our weakest members, so that we point fingers at the poor and bemoan their need, begrudge them a buck-twenty a day in food assistance, all the while not noticing that we're being buggered senseless by the right and their "corporate-people" masters.  

It's always worked that way.  Always.  If you can turn a people against those weaker than themselves, you can manipulate them all sorts of ways while they're distracted by their hate.  Immigrants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, the poor, Blacks, Hispanics--it's what the "upper class" does--it distracts us, lets us feel superior to some other group, and takes advantage of our inattention.  

I think it's worse this time around because they managed to tie it all up with "patriotism."  And raging nationalism combined with vicious xenophobia?  Stirred up in a pot of falling educational standards?

Disaster.

We lag behind the rest of the industrial world in . .  . well, pretty much everything but military spending and the percentage of people in prison.  

Think about that.  Educational attainment?  Nope.  Life expectancy?  Nope.  Literacy?  Nuh-uh.  Infant mortality?  Nopers.  Maternal deaths?  Nope.  Health care?  Not even close.  

Oooh, I know!  Guns!  We have more guns per capita AND more murders!  So our proud country can boast top honors in violence, weaponry, military spending, and incarcerated citizens.

And the right has us waving those flags and shouting "America, love it or leave it!"

Which is THE most UN-American thing to say.

We are AMERICANS, when we see something wrong, we're supposed to FIX it, not DEFEND it! I get that our educational standards have fallen, I get that people just aren't as smart as they used to be.  But are we really THIS stupid?

Really?

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Speaking of stupid, I made the mistake of checking the profile of a Facebook friend's friend.  On it was a rather racist/anti-Arab cartoon.  Enough to make me wince just a little, but not enough to really make me upset.  It was the dull-wit comment left by another friend of a friend that got me going.  She says (and this is copied and pasted) "I wish they would all do it once out in the desert..All mussies." 

I.  I don't.  

Oh, gosh.

Her  name isn't Olga (but it's close) and she lives in Wisconsin or Minnesota or Michigan or some such northern clime.  Lovely places.  But one of them has Olga, and that makes it a bit less lovely. Olga's wall is crowded with painful stupidity--so much so, you'd think . . . well, I was going to say "you'd think it would be spilling over," but considering her idiot post on someone else's wall, I'd say it HAS spilled over.  Her wall offers up such gems as Reverent-posted/Olga Shared Photoshopped images of dead babies with comparisons to Hitler.  With her pithy comment "Yep.  Sad."  Memes squealing about "defund Obamacare!" and "Send him back to Kenya!"

And guns, of course.  

And Jesus.  Vertiable butloads of Jesus.  

Because nothing says "Jesus" like hate, bigotry, stupidity, and guns, right Olga?

Olga?

Her friends list is crowded with folks who have guns for profile shots.  A few have bagger takes on Confederate flags.  A bunch of Jesus-y stuff.  A lot of Obama-hating.

She's a stereotype.  Heck, Olga may not actually be real.  Isn't that a reassuring thought?

Here, a collection of meme's from Olga's wall:

I think you get the point.  Olga's an idiot.  But the crowning glory, the one that really drives home just what kind of ugly creature she is?

That's right--our First Lady as a flying MONKEY.  Yeah, racist point made, Olga.  I'm sure your "Tea Party Patriots" will reward you for your slack-jawed adoration.  No, really, I'm sure they will. They'll probably even give you health care that almost begins to approach the industrialized world's standard. 

Or at least easy access to a gun so you can end it when the health problems progress beyond your ability to pay.  Which, considering the breathtaking sums our medical complex demands for even the simplest of treatments, shouldn't be long.

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And that's that.  I'm all politicked out for the day.  Haven't run across any really awful baby names, though I did come across a bit from a guy who won't hire people with crappy names, with a specific stiffy against "black" names.  And I think that sucks--you can't help what your parents named you.  Bad names should result in parental slapping, not prejudice against the victims.

Niiiiiice.

Stones, Stones, Who Took His Stones?

"Well, I think the election changes that. It's pretty clear that the President was reelected. Obamacare is the law of the land." 

-- Speaker John Boehner, in an ABC News interview on November 8, 2012, on whether he would still try to repeal the health care law.

Congressional Battering and a Lesson in Fear

Today, I had the talk with our son.  You know, the "honey, because of those cruel, petty asshats in DC playing politics with our lives, your daddy may be out of work next week" talk.  The talk that details the things that will immediately fall by the wayside.  Like cable TV.  Like the paintball Zombie-fest he's been looking forward to since March.  Like the strings for his electric guitar and the new cord to stop that crazy buzzing.

Like his beloved Hapkido classes that represent the only real "in person" interaction he gets with other kids his age. It's three nights a week he gets to hang out and learn and grow with other kids.

And it is OUTTA HERE if those mean, politicking monsters in Congress keep it up.

Explaining to him that, unlike the last time this happened, these bastards almost certainly won't reimburse the families they're devastating.

And make no mistake--they are threatening to devastate us.  It's his first lesson in what happens when bills don't get paid.  How they don't just scoot forward a month, but they become overdue, compounded with fees and fines and penalty interest rates, then lumped into the next month's bill, which is still due.  Things don't get pushed back, they get piled up.  And then the vicious tide of endless calls from creditors starts.  The three, four, five calls a day per creditor.  And each time they pretend they don't know you've already called, already explained.

Already begged.

We are working so hard to drag ourselves up and out of debt.  This will be the end of us, financially.  There will be no recovering from this.

Add that that my looming medical appointments for the large, growing mass in my forearm.  Oh, the copays.  Not just the 35 bucks a pop for doctor's visits, but the fifty+ for the MRI, the 100+ per hospital, etc.  Like having a possible sarcoma growing in my arm wasn't enough, the Republican Party has to trap us under their boot and gleefully threaten to twist that heel.

And it is gleeful.  Don't you DARE tell me otherwise, I read their words, I see their satisfied little smirks.  What happened to public service?  They're not serving anyone but themselves and their corporate masters.

And here's the truly bitter part: any one of them could fix our financial woes in a second. They have that kind of money.  They could just say, "Oh, shoot, 15 grand is all you need to be solvent? Here you go."  But that would be welfare.  That would be wrong.  Bootstraps and all that crap.  Except they're looking to slash those bootstraps and then, once again, castigate us for not being able to save ourselves when they've taken away our only means of salvation.  We are trying, we are paying things down and paying things off, but it's going take about two years to get it all done.  Unless they shut down the government.

Then it won't ever happen.

And all of this over a program the American People have already weighed in on.  They did--they VOTED FOR BARACK OBAMA!  Seriously, what do these bastards think that meant?   They ran their boy Mitt on a platform of killing Affordable Care, and they LOST.  They LOST, and yet they keep terrorizing Americans in attempt after attempt to  . . . unlose?

I know what they're trying to do.  They hope that, if they can make things as painful and miserable and bloody as possible for folks like us, we'll throw our sad, terrified hands in the air and say "Fine! Defund Obamacare, just please, please don't sink my family!"  They know that, given enough fear and hurt, we'll eventually buckle under and throw our fellow Americans under the bus to save our own families.

According to one nutty windbag down in Texas, if the American people get a taste of affordable care, they'll be "hooked."

"Hooked" on affordable health care for everyone.  Oh, the horror!

The stress kills.  They say that it shortens your life and opens you up to all sorts of awful ailments. From obesity to cancer, there's a stress link.  So it's not much of a stretch to say that the Republicans in Congress are attempting to murder me.

This is terrorism.  There's no other word for it.  Every few months, they come at us with threats of shutdowns and furloughs and slashing of services, using us and our lives as game pieces, bargaining chips.  And each time, the constant, thrumming adrenaline, the panic, the insomnia, the tears.  It's terrorism, plain and simple.

Congressional Republicans are terrorists.  They're why Guantanamo Bay needs to stay open for business.