Crazy Talk

By Bill Devol

“This cannot pass. What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass. We will do whatever it takes to make sure this doesn’t pass.”

That’s a direct quote from Michele Bachmann, a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives representing Minnesota’s 6^th District.

Ms. Bachmann was encouraging a crowd in Denver to join her in doing whatever it would take to stop President Obama’s healthcare dreams from becoming a reality.

Glenn Beck claims that President Obama has staged a coup d’etat in the guise of an election and that he is stealing power…actually, Glenn Beck thinks President Obama hates white people…what he said about the coup d’etat was that “they” staged the coup d’etat. Glenn warns that “they” might be able to get away with it because “they” are so far ahead of us.

Glenn ended his paranoid rant about a coup d’etat with, “God help us in an emergency.” I know, right…look what happened the last couple of times we had an emergency…the President started two wars, tried to shred the Constitution, tortured people, and lined the pockets of his cronies after September 11, 2001…then the same President completely blew it after Katrina in August of 2005…oh, wait that was President Bush.

Crazy talk is all the rage. People willing to spend any amount of money and people willing to say anything have gotten together to ratchet up religious and racial prejudice to new heights.

The plan is brilliant! It renders fact-based arguments useless.

• A “public option” for healthcare in America can help cut healthcare costs across the board…Page 37 in the Obamacare plan requires all children to be queered at least once before they reach puberty.

• Every year, the ratio of out-of-pocket expenses for the insured to dollars spent by private health insurers slides in favor of the private insurer…President Obama wants to bang your sister without wearing a condom while quoting from the Satanist bible.

• August 2009 was the worst month on record for the deaths of American service personnel since America went to war in Afghanistan…Obama’s Vietnam is a quagmire no sane white man would have gotten us into in the first place.

• We could expand Medicare to cover all Americans by imposing a $20,000-a-year deductible on all citizens younger than 65 and allowing the existing private healthcare industry to sell supplemental insurance to cover the deductible…Black people will be allowed to eat from the plates of white people in all restaurants in America.

• America tortured prisoners to death while attempting to get them to confess to a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden that never really existed…Nancy Pelosi, while wearing nipple clamps and a leather teddy, personally water boarded Christians to get them to convert to Islam.

This is really fun; you should give it a try.

Take a fact…hmmmm, at least 45 million people in America don’t have health insurance…grab an object of racial or religious fear…let’s say Jessie Jackson…come up with something private or personal…using the toilet…put them all together…

• At least 45 million people in America don’t have health insurance…If Obamacare passes, Jessie Jackson will follow you into the stall every time you use the bathroom at work.

You see how easy it is to counter facts with crazy talk if you just keep paying people willing to say anything? Oh, at first, you have to pay people to say crazy stuff, but once the real crazy people start to get the idea that it’s OK to talk crazy, they will do it for free because they believe they are telling the truth.

I think Ms. Bachmann is really crazy and Glenn Beck is getting paid to talk crazy, but does that really matter in the long run?”

I’m kind of depressed this week because I think Barry and the Pussycrats have had their asses handed to them on healthcare. I think this is just the beginning of the political party with a majority in both the House and the Senate, as well as possession of the White House being taken to school on how to crush the opposition by the Republican Party.

To be sure, politics is a game, but in the healthcare arena as in many other arenas, the stakes are very high…the following is by Robert Frost, but I first read it in a Robert J. Parker detective novel…

“My object in living is to unite

My avocation and my vocation

As my two eyes make one in sight.

Only where love and need are one,

And the work is play for mortal stakes,

Is the deed ever really done

For heaven and the future´s sakes”

Tick-tock, Barry and the Pussycrats, tick-tock.

Happy Freaking Birthday

By Bill Devol

That guy on the right is me at 21. The guy on the left is me at 5. The guy in the middle is me at 55.

I loved that Zorro suit. In many ways, I’m still the kid in the Zorro suit in my head. Look at those boots! That was one bad-ass outfit. I’m standing on the front steps at my Grandparent’s house in Carbon Hill, Ohio, in the Zorro picture. Grandma and Grandpa are both gone, but my sisters live in that house now.

If I have a place I think of as “Home,” it’s that house.

That Zorro picture was taken after we got back from Hawaii where my baby sister was born in 1957. It was before my baby brother was born in the Bethesda Naval hospital in 1960. It was before we went back to Hawaii in 1963. We were in Hawaii when President Kennedy was killed, and Dad went to Vietnam in 1965.

I’m wearing glasses under that Zorro mask. I’ve had glasses since before I remember being on the planet. I got my first pair when I was 22 months old. Superman wore glasses when he was Clark Kent. Superman was one of my favorite television shows. I dreamed of having super powers.

I did have one super power; I could imagine that I was all by myself even in conditions of total chaos. My sisters remember things like teacher’s names, phone numbers, and actual addresses. I remember little of that real stuff, but I remember being Zorro or Superman or Paladin inside my head.

Richard Boone played Paladin on Have Gun, Will Travel for 6 seasons starting in 1957. I met Richard Boone when I was in Hawaii.  He bent down and shook my hand and blew whiskey breath at me. His nose looked like a tomato that had been caught in a meteor shower…so much for Paladin.

We lived in Kensington, Maryland, when Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy were killed.

Kensington is so close to Washington, D. C., that I could see the glow in the sky from the fires that were started in the rioting following Dr. King’s murder. Bobby Kennedy’s murder assured Nixon would be President and more people would die in Vietnam.

Dad came back from Vietnam the second time and retired from the Navy in 1969. We were living in Carbon Hill. We moved to Buchtel (about 5 miles from Carbon Hill) when I was a junior. It had only been 10 years since the Zorro picture.

During my high school years, Nixon dragged us through Vietnam, Kent State, and Watergate. I fell in love for the first time. I got a drivers license…I still wished I had super powers.

I went off to college in 1972. The picture of me at 21 was taken in a news writing class in 1977 at Ohio University. Not long before that picture was taken, I started to notice that I didn’t look like the incoming freshman. They looked and acted like Alex P. Keaton. They didn’t trust hippies…so much for the Age of Aquarius.

I got a teaching job and shaved for the last time in 1977. I got married in 1980. I worked as a weekly newspaperman from 1984 until 1986. I started technical writing in 1987. We had two daughters; Jessica in 1987, and Amanda in 1990. I got divorced and laid off in 2001. I got laid off again in 2006.

When I look out through my mental Zorro mask and into a mirror, I see that white-bearded guy everyone else sees. Let me assure you that Zorro is in here. That hippie is in here. An unapologetic liberal commie pinko is in here. There is a school teacher in here and a journalist. There’s a Dad in here and a son in here. There is a brother and a technical writer in here. There is a committed partner of Gail in here. It’s crowded in the neighborhood between my ears.

It’s crowded, yes, but it’s all pretty much just me in here. Inside my head is where I’ve holed up against the world and the morons and the bad stuff and the fools. It is also where I have holed up against the people I should have let in here with me. For that, I’m sorry. I wish I could promise that it will get better, but the thought of throwing the gates of Fort Noggin open wide is still very frightening.

If you notice, I wrapped the majority of my life into one paragraph. That paragraph goes by real fast, as has the majority of my life thus far. Time disappeared down the rabbit hole at an alarming rate.

That Zorro picture is 50 years old.

So, please join the crowd in my head as we wish me Happy Freaking Birthday!

Now, get off my lawn; my feet hurt.

Suggestions?

By Bill Devol

I will be 55 years old in one week.

I have no health insurance right now. The soonest I can get some is October. The only one I can afford to cover is me. My family has four people in it.

Suggestions? Ideas? Let’s think outside the box.

Come on all you whores of the private health care industry; what should I do to afford the greatest health care system in the motherf**ing world?

I was lying in bed early this past Sunday morning. I was on my left side. I got a shot of pain through my chest. It subsided, but another jolt happened quite soon after. Don’t worry; I belched into my pillow and was fine. I had gas.

What follows is what went through my mind in the twenty or so seconds between the first pain and the belch.

“If this is a heart attack, I hope it kills me straight out…no f**king around…boom… dead.”

I don’t want to die…right, yes…we all die, but I mean I don’t have a death wish. I want to teach my grandchildren to curse, and I don’t have any yet.

I was just being practical. Without health insurance, I would be wiped out by even a brief stay in intensive care. I can afford to be dead; I can’t afford to be sick.

Dead, I won’t lay in the hospital and worry about how the bloody Hell I’m going to pay for my medical care. Dead, I won’t have to worry about what happens if Gail, Amanda, or Jessica get hurt or sick.

Nice system we’ve got here.

Late last week, President Obama sounded like he was willing to pussy out on a Public Option. The Democrats in the House and the Senate sound like they will pussy out on a Public Option. The Republicans wouldn’t vote for any version of “Obama Care” under any circumstances.

You know what? F**k all you all. Screw you…the horse you rode in on…your Momma…your sister…your favorite elementary school teacher, and one another.

The whole lot of you can line up and take turns kissing my ass until your lips start bleeding and my cheeks get sore if you don’t do the right thing and get our country a health care system that isn’t controlled by the private health care industry.

I need affordable health insurance you dick heads!

I need health insurance that won’t tell me to go f**k myself because I happened to age and need freaking health care.

I need health insurance that doesn’t scream, “Bend over and grab your ankles” when I say that I have diabetes, high blood pressure, and depression. Oh, right, I forgot; I’ve had skin cancer too. Four preexisting conditions means they won’t even use a lube when they screw me.

We are all about to be sold down the river because the health industry whores we helped elect are scared their Johns won’t give them all that nice green money any longer.

“The government has no right to be involved in private, family health care issues,” say all the health industry whores.

Is that so? Then why were you motherf**kers all up in Terri Schivo’s private, family medical issue back in 2005?

I repeat, “F**k you.”

Glenn Beck, you leg-humping asshole…which is it? Is the health care industry in this country the monster you claimed mangled your butt surgery 18 months ago or is it the greatest health care system in the world like you said last week?

Hey, Glenn, “F**k you.”

Rush Limbaugh, you fat-assed drug addict, are living wills the first step toward shoving a pistol in grandpa’s mouth and pulling the trigger once he starts pissing the bed or are they a good idea like you say in your LegalZoom commercials?

Hey, Rush, “F**k you.”

President Obama, you slayed the dragon back in November, but the dragon is one nasty piece of work that keeps getting back up like some crazed killer in a slasher film. Never underestimate the power of unlimited money.

It may be against your nature, but you have to keep kicking that dragon in the teeth and keep slicing off its head. You and a handful of politicians are the only defense we have against the power of unlimited money.

The power of unlimited money can do just about anything. You’ve got two dragons chewing on your ass, Mr. President. The military industrial complex and the private health care industry are both looking to make you their bitch.

It’s ironic that the last President to kick the dragon in the balls and get real health care reform passed in America was the same President that allowed the military industrial complex to help kill thousands of Americans and millions of Vietnamese.

Open your eyes, Mr. President. I worry that you might be our last hope.

Socialism, Smoshialism

By Bill Devol

I have no health insurance. I have diabetes, high blood pressure, and depression.

The company that went belly up while I was working for them (4TECHWORK) canceled our health insurance about a week before they told us they were dead.

Since there is no 4TECHWORK, there is no Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) coverage.

“COBRA gives workers and their families who lose their health benefits the right to choose to continue group health benefits provided by their group health plan for limited periods of time under certain circumstances such as voluntary or involuntary job loss, reduction in the hours worked, transition between jobs, death, divorce, and other life events. Qualified individuals may be required to pay the entire premium for coverage up to 102 percent of the cost to the plan.” (U.S. Department of Labor)

There soonest I could be covered under the plan through my new employer is October 1, 2009. That plan would cost me about $5,500 a year. That plan would just cover me. To cover the whole family, the yearly cost would be nearly $14,000.

There are some cheaper plans, but they are for people that never get sick…young people.

I called the people that insured me previously (Medical Mutual). To get my same level of coverage for me and not the family would be just under $17,000 a year. I didn’t bother to have them check family coverage rates.

At least 4TECHWORK covered my domestic partner, but Ohio law does not require insurance companies to offer such coverage, so “family” coverage doesn’t really cover my family.

You should hear the moment of awkward silence when I ask salespeople if their company covers domestic partners, but that’s another topic for another day.

I have some other estimates coming from other sources, but I will be 55 in two weeks and I have 3 pre-existing conditions for which I take medicine.

Why have I told you my sad story?

I just want somebody to tell me how we have the finest health care in the world. I want somebody in my face screaming that they are scared of what America is becoming. I want some ass hat to tell me they don’t want socialized medicine.

I don’t freaking care if Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Khrushchev all come back to life and march down the main street of my motherf**king town as long as they’d bring me health insurance for my family.

How did I screw up? I went to work everyday and the people I work for were willing to keep paying me. Is it my fault that 4TECHWORK was run into the ground by a bunch of sons-of-bitches that couldn’t figure out that the money coming in had to be more than the money going out?

“Sorry family. I’m the only one I can afford to insure.” Is that what I’m supposed to say?

“Sorry, Amanda, Jessica, and Gail. The reason we don’t have a public option for situations just like this is that a whole bunch of in-bred racist cracker bastards can’t handle that a black man got elected President of the United States of America.”

“Sorry guys, but because a bunch of sister-humping hillbilly cretins think ACORN stands for A Communist Organization of Radical Ni**ers, you’ll just have to hope nothing goes wrong.”

It breaks down to this…the private health care industry is willing to drop lighted matches into the gas can of racism in this country so they can keep pulling every dime they can get from people that are on the ropes and ready to fall.

The private health care industry is using bought-and-paid-for insurance whores (politicians) and Zeb and Clem from down to the KKK meetin’ to try and kill health care reform in America.

If it sounds like I’m taking it personally…I am. I don’t know how else to take it. I am crammed right up on the front lines of health care issues, and all people want to do is yell, “Where’s the birth certificate?”

This is powerful evil, folks. Take huge portions of corporate greed. Mix in a few dead Grandmas and some dead babies. Top it all off with racism, and you got a case of the nasties getting all ready to jump the tracks and raise Hell.

Just imagine how private health care profits will skyrocket if they get a bunch of gun-totin’, America-lovin’, God-fearin’, good old boys and their bleach blonde Dogpatch hookers to shoot a few of them pesky Democrats and a few of them uppity ACORN members.

It’s a win/win scenario for the beleaguered private health care industry. Our pain is their profit.

Here is the bottom line. I can’t afford to insure my family without cutting into the meat of my life. That is as personal as it gets.

Crap

By Bill Devol

The good news is that I still have a job.

The bad news is that the company I worked for until Tuesday evening no longer exists and went out of business owing me for 17 days of work.

Today was going to be payday. Now, it’s just August 7.

Believe me; I am grateful that I have the option of keeping my job and my health insurance. I worked for a consulting company that rented me out to a client. The work and the client are still fine, so another consulting company will pick me up. I have not always been that lucky.

I have been laid off three times since October of 2001. The last time, I was lucky because I went directly to a new job. The first two times…Oh Boy!

The first two times, I could have gotten health insurance coverage through the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA).

“COBRA gives workers and their families who lose their health benefits the right to choose to continue group health benefits provided by their group health plan for limited periods of time under certain circumstances such as voluntary or involuntary job loss, reduction in the hours worked, transition between jobs, death, divorce, and other life events. Qualified individuals may be required to pay the entire premium for coverage up to 102 percent of the cost to the plan.” (U.S. Department of Labor)

In the first instance, it would have cost me about $350 a month. In the second instance, they wanted $900 a month and they wanted three months in advance.

I could afford neither rate either time, so I went without health insurance.

After the first layoff, I got both of my daughters a private plan for $90 a month for each girl. Healthy pre-teen children hardly ever get sick, so rates were cheap.

After the second layoff, Ohio had a public option for which my ex-wife qualified. Both girls were covered under this Ohio program. My ex-wife had custody and I paid child support and alimony.

By the time I had a new job, Ohio had tightened its belt. I was required by Ohio to take out family health insurance coverage from my employer. That was $650 a month.

Here’s the cool part about that; by the time I was eligible for health insurance, I had been uninsured for a year. My health insurance company wouldn’t pay for anything for me for 12 months…I still had to pay the family premiums for a year, but I wasn’t covered.

If things should get even worse here in my day job, I won’t be able to afford COBRA…again. I will have to take my chances without health insurance. I will have to tell my college-aged daughters that they are on their own for health insurance.

When I was 21, health care was aspirin. I will be 55 this month, and aspirin doesn’t even begin to cover it.

On Friday the 13^th in March of this year, I fell in a parking lot and cracked a rib and twisted myself up pretty good. Because I have health insurance, I was able to get treatment in an Emergency room and follow-up care with my doctor. Without health insurance I would have just had to suck it up.

In May, I broke up a cat fight by letting one of my cats bite me really good on my right index finger…yes, it was not very smart. The resulting infection, complicated by my diabetes, nearly got me admitted to the hospital. My doctor told me that I could have lost the finger or worse if I hadn’t received medical attention. Without health insurance, I would have been screwed.

I would gladly pay a little extra to expand health care to cover people that turn around one day and get kicked in the balls by the economy…you know, lazy bastards that would rather buy whiskey than health insurance.

I hear all kinds of things from people that don’t want national health care. Mostly, it boils down to, “I got mine you sons of bitches and you can go to Hell.”

Those same folks had no trouble with us spending money to kill our soldiers in Iraq. Of course, we could have bought everybody in America a doctor for the money we spent on Iraq over the last 6 or 7 years, but the people opposed to national health care would rather spend money killing Muslims than spend money on health care.

Follow the money people…follow the money. Have just a little imagination; the private health care industry is spending money like sailors on liberty in Bangkok, Thailand to kill this latest threat.

The private health care industry’s slogan has become, “Sure we are screwing you, but not as hard or as often as the government will.”

Oh, by the way, Medicaid and Medicare are government-run health care systems, you freaking ass hats! How about you give that up?

The Secret Plan

By Bill Devol

Did you hear that under President Obama’s health care plan old people will be killed and turned into a crispy, sugary breakfast cereal and fed to their grandchildren?

It’s true; I read it in an email.

Did you know that President Obama was never even born in America? Turns out his mother was abducted by Venusians who impregnated her with an angry, half-black, white-hating, abortion-happy, and communist fetus. He was actually born in a spaceship in a geosynchronous orbit hundreds of miles above Hawaii.

It’s true; Lou Dobbs said so.

I heard from a guy whose brother works for Mayor Bloomberg that in New York City gay people lick your food in restaurant kitchens before your meal is brought to your table.

I was shocked when I read that President Obama is planning on giving the country back to the Indians. New Mexico will be the first to go; seriously, who will miss it, and think of the casinos.

A new federal law will require Pharmacists to publish the names of all men over the age of 60 who have prescriptions for Viagra or other erectile dysfunction drugs. Really, they ought to be ashamed.

I heard Bill O’Reilly talk about it on his radio show.

A conservative Christian blogger revealed that President Obama wants Nancy Pelosi to get a law passed which would force hotels and motels to remove Bibles from the rooms…OR…add a copy of the Koran. The guy was a Christian; he wouldn’t lie.

From secret NAACP memos, Rush Limbaugh discovered that every white person in America will be required by federal anti hate crime legislation to have a black or brown friend and to own at least one hip-hop/R&B CD.

Brian Williams of NBC News announced this week that he will no longer do stories on white people. “White people are so boring,” Williams said. “They get all the press. White people are Newsy McNewshogs; I’m so tired of talking about white people that I could scream.”

A group of concerned parents in a suburban Denver school district is angry about plans to expand a third-grade health unit to explain what Mommy and Daddy did to make them and how gay people have sex. Mountain View School District Superintendent, Roger Darnell released this statement, “Get over it. Obama is President now, and things are gonna change now, baby.”

The recently nominated Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin announced Tuesday that marijuana is really a pretty mellow buzz and will no longer be illegal. “All this gateway drug bull crap is really bringing me down. Go ahead, burn a fatty and put on Dark Side of the Moon…remember, it’s doctor’s orders,” Benjamin said.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has signed a book deal with Harper and Row worth a reported $4 million. It is supposedly to be a memoir about Reid’s experiences during the administration of George W. Bush. The current working title of the book, according to sources inside Harper and Row, is “He Called Me Monica.”

In an attempt to atone for the sins of all Alaskans, former Governor Sarah Palin announced this week that she planned on becoming God’s daughter by adoption and having herself arrested, scourged, and crucified. When one of the reporters at the Wasilla press conference told Governor Palin what scourged and crucified meant, Governor Palin, said, “Oh, geeze, oh, poo, that’s not what I had in mind at all…oh, look, there’s Russia.”

Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma voiced the concern of many when he called a press conference Wednesday to insist President Obama produce a copy of his marriage license. “For all I know,” Inhofe said, “He might just be shacking up with Michelle on the taxpayers’ dime. We also have the right to know if we’ve got little bastards living in the White House.”

Michael Savage is a pompous dick.

Go ahead, take any or all of these tidbits, throw them in an email, and send them to ten friends and swear they are true. Sit back and see how long it takes before one of these morsels comes drifting back into your Inbox…or shows up on the floor of the House or Senate.

People just love to believe crap. If the crap supports their point of view, it is accepted as gospel.

We need some fact checking up in this bitch.

Hell, if I found a story that said Rush Limbaugh shoots heroine and buggers underage Somali pirates in a gay love nest he shares with Dick Cheney, I’d check the facts before I repeated the story as honest-to-goodness truth.

Have some critical judgment, please.

Only one of my news-like snippets is actually true; can you guess which one?

You guessed it…Michael Savage is a pompous dick…I just love saying that…one more time…everybody…Michael Savage is a pompous dick.

Have a great weekend.

This is getting embarrassing

By Bill Devol

According to Patrick J. Buchanan, “The Supreme Court, far from being the last redoubt of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant in America, reflects the collapse of that WASP establishment, and a rising racial, ethnic and gender consciousness and solidarity.”

Wow, Pat, you might be on to something. Since we let those pesky women and minorities have the right to vote, things have really gone down hill for white men.

Since we started frowning on racial and gender brutality, those women and minorities have the balls to expect to be treated like white men. This is getting embarrassing. What will the rest of the world think?

As you pointed out on the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC last week, white men did all the heavy lifting in America. You said all the signers of the Declaration of Independence were white men. You said all the authors of the Constitution were white men.

Black people were too busy being owned and just couldn’t be bothered to rise up, fight to escape slavery, and do anything to help the white men who were busy inventing America…lazy bastards.

Pat said that 100 percent of the men that died at Gettysburg were white. I guess black people were just a bunch of cry baby sissies back then. You know Pat, now that you mention it…nearly 200,000 Black men served in the Union Army in the Civil War.

As many as 66,000 black men lost their lives in various battles and campaigns of the Civil War…you know Pat, looks to me like they’d do anything to get out of marching.

Pat, that “rising racial, ethnic, and gender consciousness and solidarity” just shows a real lack of gratitude toward white men. After white men told women and minorities to shut up and go away, those ungrateful idiots started sticking together and helping one another…I can’t believe they aren’t kissing white men’s asses for not killing or imprisoning them for annoying us.

And, women, Pat, don’t get me started about the women. Don’t they realize that success is a finite commodity? For every successful woman, one successful white man has to be ruined and forced to live on the streets.

For every successful black, Hispanic, Jew, or Muslim, a successful white, Christian man has to become impoverished. The rise of women and minorities in America has taken a horrible toll on the overall success of white men. It’s almost like just being born a white man doesn’t translate to instant superiority any longer. What’s that about?

Lordy, lordy, Pat, you are such a dick.

But…the dick parade continues…

Last Thursday United States House of Representatives member Todd Tiahrt, a Kansas Republican, suggested that public funding for abortion is a terrible idea. After all, he suggested from the floor of the House, if abortions had been publicly funded back in the day, perhaps both Barack Obama and Clarence Thomas would have been aborted.

That offends so many people on so many levels that I don’t have the time it would take to explain it to Todd. Let’s just leave it at this…Todd, you are such a dick.

By the way, Todd; I thought you Republicans believed that black women had babies to get welfare payments. Now you tell me that publicly-funded abortions would save welfare money…come on, Todd, that sounds like something you could get behind.

Rush Limbaugh has thrown down the Obama birth certificate gauntlet again. Rush you are a dick’s dick. You know Barack Obama is an American citizen. If he weren’t, Hilary Clinton and John McCain would have chased him out of the Presidential race it two seconds. Rush you know you are tossing gasoline on a fire, and you don’t care.

VP Dick’s daughter, Liz Cheney is doing her part to carry on the family tradition of dickishness.

No, she didn’t shoot any old men in the face, but while on Larry King’s television show with Democratic (and truthfully kind of dickish) pundit James Carvelle, Liz had a chance to say what she believed about this birther nonsense. Did she say one way or another…no; she said that since President Obama was such a pussy, she understood why “you see people so concerned about this.”

I bet Poppa Dick is proud of his little girl. She called Barack Obama a pussy on national television while not alienating the far right-wing of the party.

The Chairman of the Republican National Committee, Dick Steele, has been touting the Republican solution to the health care crisis. He suggests…1) allow employers to pay employees to lose weight and stop smoking, 2) cut costs for malpractice insurance, 3) cap award amounts allowed from lawsuits, and 4) trade the cow for three magic beans.

Then, we can climb the beanstalk and get the goose that lays the golden eggs.

We are a real hoot

By Bill Devol

Chris Rock, the comedian, once explained the violence in Ireland like this:

“I guess in a country where there aren’t any blacks or Jews, white people make do with what they’ve got.”

Richard Pryor once explained that he thought the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor showed a lack of understanding of the American culture. His explanation went something like this:

“The Japanese that planned the attack on Pearl Harbor must have only met white people from the University of Southern California or UCLA. They thought they’d attack and we’d be too scared to fight. They never met any white people from Mississippi or Alabama. Down south, we got white people that scare white people.”

In the early days of the African slave trade, Africans captured and sold other Africans to the white slavers. In the middle 1990s in Rwanda, black Hutu tribesmen killed black Tutsis tribesmen by the thousands often raping the women and girls before hacking them to death.

I couldn’t tell the difference between a Serbian and a Croatian if you held a gun to my head, but either would be happy to use the gun on the other. In the early and middle 1990s, the world witnessed a little “ethnic cleansing” over in Bosnia. “Ethnic cleansing” comes from the Latin words ethos (to kill) and cleansor (everybody).

The Japanese slaughtered thousands of Chinese early in the 20^th Century. The Chinese slaughtered each other during the “Cultural Revolution” (see ethnic cleansing).

Russians killed Russians. The French killed the French…which is hard to believe since I picture a French civil war as a battle over who can surrender first. Spanish killed Spanish. Romans killed Christians. Christians killed Jews. Germans killed Jews and attempted to kill everybody else at least twice.

Muslims kill Jews. Jews kill Palestinians…Don’t even get me started about India and Pakistan. Chris Rock and Richard Pryor were on the right track, but they developed their theories through their own experiences.

I’d pretty much have to say that when human beings congregate they commence to choose up sides and rape and kill one another just as soon as they get a bite to eat and a warm place to sleep. My neighbors better watch out. As soon as I get the leak fixed on the back porch, I’m going to figure out who is on my side and why I hate the rest of them.

A couple of weeks ago, Godstapo Agent and member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives Sally Kern introduced what she called the “Oklahoma Citizen’s Proclamation for Morality” in which she suggests that we are in such a sorry state because we have lost our way in the Christian sense.

One Whereas in Sally’s proclamation says that …”this nation has become a world leader in promoting abortion, pornography, same sex marriage, sex trafficking, divorce, illegitimate births, child abuse, and many other forms of debauchery…”

Sally’s solution is that we all become devout Christians. Sally suggests …”that the HOPE of the great State of Oklahoma and of these United States, rests upon the Principles of Religion and Morality as put forth in the Holy Bible…”

I assume that Sally believes that the whole world could benefit if …”all who love Truth and Virtue…live above reproach in the sight of God and man with a firm reliance on the leadership and protection of Almighty God…”

That’s a great idea, Sally…except many of the people hating and killing each other think it’s OK because they are convinced that Almighty God approves of their behavior. Some even do their hating and killing in the name of Almighty God.

People often quote Exodus 21:23-25 as a license to do evil.

“But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.”

Those folks ignore Matthew 5: 38-42 where Jesus is quoted as saying:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth. But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”

How about this Sally? Let’s make this really, really simple. We will break this down to one tiny idea and try our best to use it in our daily lives. Let’s pick that idea right out of your Bible…turn with me to Luke 6:31…”Do unto others as you would have them do to you.”

Let’s start there; if we get that down, we can try other stuff.

Finally coming to an end?

By Bill Devol

Robert Strange McNamara died this week. His decisions as Secretary of Defense from 1961 until 1968 helped kill nearly 60,000 Americans in the Vietnam War.

I have a friend that has always said the most horrible disease on earth wasn’t long enough or painful enough for Robert S. McNamara.

Joseph L. Galloway, a columnist for the McClatchy Newspapers, started his piece about McNamara’s death with the following sentence:

“Well, the aptly named Robert Strange McNamara has finally shuffled off to join LBJ and Dick Nixon in the 7th level of Hell.”

Mr. Galloway is referring to the part of the Seventh Circle of Hell in Dante’s Divine Comedy where murderers are boiled in a river of blood for all eternity.

Not all the biggest players in the Vietnam War are dead yet. The most famous future member of the Seventh Circle of Hell who is still on the right side of the grass is 86-year-old Henry Kissinger, former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of lesser-known people that helped get Americans killed in Vietnam; most of them are older than I am. Most of the Vets from Vietnam are older than I am. Most of the people that protested the Vietnam War are older than I am.

I will be 55 in August. I was born the year after the Korean War ended and just about the time President Eisenhower was letting America dip its toes into the bloody cesspool of Vietnam.

Here we are 40 years after Robert McNamara’s last day as Secretary of Defense, and people still hate his guts. Lyndon B. Johnson’s last day as President was 40 years ago, and people still think of all the Americans he got killed. Dick Nixon’s first day as President was 40 years ago, and he will be remembered for bombing Cambodia and sending troops into Laos and extending the Vietnam War for political reasons, thereby ascending to his second term over a big pile of dead Americans.

Vietnam ended 35 years ago. Korea ended 56 years ago. World War II ended nearly 65 years ago. None of those wars will really be over until the last person that lived through those wars finally goes to their reward.

I mention these things because I want to give Dubya, VP Dick, Rummy, Wolfowitz, et al., some idea of how long their names will be linked to needlessly dead Americans. All things being equal, there should still be someone willing to spit on their graves clear into the next century.

People take getting people killed rather personally.

That brings me to the pile of dead Americans we can blame on President Obama.

Officially, President Obama’s pile of dead Americans hasn’t reached 100. In the scheme of things, that’s not that many dead Americans; for the families of those dead Americans, however, the number is significant.

Governor Sanford and Senator Ensign got caught with their pants down. Farrah Fawcett died. Billy Mays died. Ed McMahon died. Michael Jackson died. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a dead celebrity or someone’s naughty bits.

Governor Sarah Palin (in hip waders) wanted to explain how real winners quit before the job is done, and networks flew their first team up to Alaska to interview an ex-beauty queen with the mental agility of Jello.

Americans die in Afghanistan (a war that would have been over if Dubya hadn’t started his wet dream war in Iraq.) and Americans die to make Iraq safe for multinational oil conglomerates, and we get file footage because everybody is out covering Sarah Palin and worrying about who really fathered Paris, Prince, and Blanket.

Once the Democrats screw up National Health Insurance, they will have blown the two biggest wishes of the people that gave them their paper majority…they will have failed to end the war and to make health care affordable for everyone. Hell, if we could get the Democrats to starve a few old people or kick some orphans in the teeth, we’d have the Republican Party.

Hey, Democrats, on November 2, 2010, there are going to be some elections. We get to pass judgment on everyone in the House of Representatives and on one-third of the Senate. Perhaps you should get off your asses and start giving us what we want.

Back to my point…Yes, I’m still pissed that Robert S. McNamara tried to get my father killed and that he succeeded in getting so many other people killed.

Dubya and his crew might as well relax. They will be associated with lying to get Americans killed, torturing our prisoners of war, and shooting old men in the face long after I’m gone.

I can hold a grudge for a long time. My final wishes are to be cremated and have my ashes divided up into small piles which my daughters are to blow into the eyes of my enemies.

Have a nice day.

Independence Day

By Bill Devol

“…All men are created equal…they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” (American Declaration of Independence)

“…To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” (Ibid)

All men…not just straight, white, rich, Christian men…If you have a penis, you are in the club.

Unfortunately, however, it is clear that the founding fathers did not suggest that all women were created equal or that they should have any say as to what we men decide about how the government should be run.

That leaves people that get a penis through surgery and hormone therapy and people that were born with a penis and lost it through surgery, accident, and/or disease in some sort of rights limbo.

Our founding fathers never intended women to have any unalienable rights. Thomas Jefferson (et. al.), must have thought women’s rights should be alienable…”capable of being transferred by a legal process to another owner.”

Women got the right to vote in 1926 when men gave their consent to women’s suffrage. Women have had a say in things since men agreed to give them the right to vote; August 26 will mark the 83^rd year that women have had any official role in regulating what goes on around here.

Since womens rights are alienable, we men could vote to take any rights away any damn time we want to vote them away. It would be very hard, however, since we already gave women the right to vote, but all it would take is 51 percent of the country to vote to repeal any alienable rights bestowed on women.

Of course this whole crazy idea is rendered moot by Section 1 of the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

You see what those tricky bastards did? They switched from men to person, so, once women were given the right to vote, they couldn’t have that right taken away from them “without due process of law.”

Those tricky bastards then cut off the probability of taking away rights even more by saying States couldn’t deny “any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” That one word, “person,” screws everything up.

Let us leave this misogynist day dream behind. I do not advocate the disenfranchisement of women.

I have put myself at the mercy of women with no sense of irony to suggest that what happened to the rights of gay couples in California amounts to the same thing as taking back the rights of women to vote, own property, enter into a contract, or marry whomever they please.

Look, as long as we are denying rights based on sexual orientation, I’d like to put in a bid for banning Furries from damn near everything. Ever heard of them?

They dig anthropomorphic animals so much that they dress up in mascot suits and hang out with each other. They develop “fursonas,” and some Furries find sexual gratification while in their mascot suits the ultimate turn on.

Sex with someone of the same gender seems normal compared to sex between two people in Wiley Coyote suits.

I say we stop leather freaks from marrying and people with pierced genitals from riding public transportation.

Saran wrap and chocolate pudding fetishists really have no business teaching school at any grade level.

Come on, the only reason the Bible doesn’t say God hates people that cover themselves with primary color latex paint before they have sex is because the people that took divine dictation thought God was joking around when he said, “Write that down…No latex paint with sex!”

Look, when Adam and Steve love each other very much, they should be able to get married…Hell, Angelina Jolie was once allowed to marry Billy Bob Thornton.

As long as one is male and one is female and both are of legal age, the government has almost nothing to say about who gets married. Both people could be gay and just get married for medical insurance, but Tricia and Eve are just out of luck.

Why is that fair?

“…All men are created equal…they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Happy Independence Day!