This is going to be one of those vent your spleen type postings. I'd like to go on an Andy Rooney rant against tightwads. You know, my dad lived like a miser and he died like a pauper. Some would see poetic justice in this but I'm not a big fan of shottenfreuden. My Dad was screwed over multiple times by hospitals, plural, doctors and nurses in the months leading up to his death. My sister in law sent me a copy of a moving letter she sent to the hospital where my Dad died. My dad died as though he were a piece of welfare scum who didn't deserve a second thought. It was a case of massive incompetence and not by just one isolated individual but on a massive, pandemic scale. He died of sepsis of the colon, which had nothing to do with why he was admitted. But as tight as my Dad was, my Mom is tighter. I got far less money for Christmas this past year, like forty dollars, from my Mom than I would have received if my Dad were still alive. Of course people in this place where I live drop and die like flies. There just hasn't been any recently. But certain events get in my craw. If there is an extra glass of punch on the table and the other person never shows up to their place, they get mad at you if you drink their punch. Lately Thu Thai has been giving her food to Manfred. Today an aid told Manfred he couldn't get in the seconds line because he already had Thu Thai's food. I guess you could call it the generosity dividend in reverse. These people probably fish the gold out of your teeth before turning the body over to the family. I have lost forty-five pounds, I tell you no lie, in the past two years largely because the food portions are so meager now. My parents played the tightwad theme to the hilt growing up. Of course Calvary Chapel has its own version of tightwad-ism. They sometimes describe God's blessings as a roaring waterfall or an oil gusher. And yet with their gushers not a drop hits the ground. It's as though someone spread the roomer that earthworms liked to eat oil and that they were becomming overweight and now on the media everywhere the media was flooded with stories of the "crisis of earthworm overweightness, and how this will ruin the ecology. So every time an oil well gushes new oil they move with cartoon speed to spread tarp over the ground before a drop of oil touches the ground. Of course the left wing is good as obsessing over things that were never important before. For instance there is talk of Big Tobacco and "Big Fat". Rush Limbaugh in late August of 1997 did a parody of "Big Fat" and how it will become the next big crisis the media obsesses over. Who would have suspected as with so many Rush Limbaugh parodies, that yesterday's jest becomes today's reality. Second hand smoke is one of these obsessional items. My family would obsess on my smoking if I'd let them and I have to be careful how the conversation is steered this Saturday when we meet together. I don't like this idea of "Big Science" either. I don't like the idea of obsessing over topics that didn't matter before just now. Mc Cain is obsessing over what will happen to Iraq. Clearly there are enough factions in Iraq that the morass is unsolvable, with or without U S troop aid.
On the other end of the "nut" scale - - are people like my Dad. Why is it all the people who are anti war are ones that served in the military whereas people like me, who often see good in war- - never served. My Dad got released on a disability and we can argue about that and whether General Patton would look at my Dad and say "You're not dead yet, back to the front!" People talk about "crises" that "wake people up". One of the biggest lies in the "Oh God" movie is the line "I work best under pressure". With all due respect God falls completely apart under pressure. I can think of a few "Pearl Harbors" in my life. One was my suicide attempt. Another was the events in and around October 8th. 1987. These were both"Pearl Harbors" in my life. If my Dad were President during December 7th. 1941 he'd be every bit the asshole George Bush and Mc Cain are but from the opposit direction. My Dad would see the billowing black smoke and destroyed ships and go "Oh well I can see how some might be troubled by this but we must Stay the Course of Peace. We won't"let" this "minor event bother us". If the enemy sees this event "bothers us" he has won. Therefore we will not go to war and therefore we'll send a message that will be remembered in history. There is a theme in the Bible that God is our protector. If my Dad were to have made such a speech as president I'd be among those clammoring for impeachment. If there is one thing you get from the Jesus Christ show it's "Don't count on God showing up when you need him. Because God has to "ballance" your own concerns against his own Divine Sovreignty. And besides remember that even when the worst happens "There is a reason for it all". This is another of my Dad's favorite sayings, and he has a belief in God that "It all makes sense". And the Calvary people say "Yeah and if it appears not to make sense then it's because you don't know everything God knows". There are times when you have to say, "Screw God. I choose to follow my own conscience" (Selah) If our nation truely ever were "attacked by a foreign power" of course I'd want our nation to rally around and defend itself. But we abuse this sacred trust with frivelous campaigns like the Iraq War. As Thom Hartman says "We won the war. This is an occupation". And we know that in occupations in other lands- - the eventual goal usually is to get out at some point.
I'd like to talk a little about this beating in the Orange County Jail. A 41 year old man was beaten by multiple inmates and presumably died. Yet the guards won't be prosecuted though they are clearly culpible. One Spanish teacher I had said "If you put your test paper where others can easily copy off it it- - I consider you just as culpible". The man was roomered to be a child molester when in actuality he just had child pornography. Obviously children were molested in the making of that pornography but that's for another day. But the guards as much as expected the guy would be beaten up. They slept often on the job and let the inmates run the assylum. They were just feet away and were doing things like playing video games and texting people, or else sleeping. I guess they sleep well knowing an innocent person is being beaten up. I guess being in prison is like the military. It's just luck whether you come out alive.
Johnny Wendell has made much of Hillary's firing of campaign manager Mark Felt. This is a guy who had connections to the Mc Cain campaign. He also had connections to Blackwater. But he was fired for helping to broker a Columbia NAFTA style deal that George Bush wanted, so Bush loves the guy. All the while Hillary was campaigning against NAFTA. Of course when you combine this with the whole donations issue with the Presidential library and possible influence peddeling, and also Hillary's "sniper fire" incident in Bosnia, it isn't looking real good for the Clinton campaign right now. But unlike Johnny Wendell, I don't see this firing incident as the smoking gun that's going to sink the Clinton campaign. I really don't think people care. There are still two whole weeks to go till Pennsylvania votes. Obama is now only down six points in one poll and is dead even in another. I don't know how the average working stiff would take to knowing how rich the Clintons are or how they are secretly working for NAFTA. Thom Hartman coined a very apt expression today. he said that "Free Trade" was just a buzz word for exporting slavery, exporting pollution, and perhaps exporting poverty. We don't have to worry about polution because we've exported it to others and we can point the finger of shame at them now. We abolished slavery in this country but tollerate it in many other nations. Child labor doesn't bother us if it's half way around the globe. Apparently John Negroponte was one guy whenever she showed up labor unions would be abolished and the goon squads would come out. Of course we know that labor rights were better under Saddam Hussein than they are now in Iraq. I guess the question is whether Hillary really has a heart for the common working man and woman or whether it's just words. I will say this: Electing a Black man would certainly "Send a message" that we have as a nation come a ways in the past forty years since Martin Luther King died. What these super-deligates have to ponder is just which of the two democratic candidates best suits the J F K mold of "New Frontiers" and looking tword the future with hope and resolve, and which one will be the "same ol' same ol' we've had for decades.
The whole thing with the Olympic torch is still an issue. Now a guy with a John Lennon T shirt is beaten up because some Chinese official thought it was the Dali Lama. I can't help but be heartened to know there are a lot of people in England and France and in San Francisco who still value liberty and are willing to "make a statement". If I didn't say so I'm also rather annoyed at this whole Urban blight thing they have in Peking where they clear out the dwellings of poor people who have lived there for decades. But then I didn't like sweeping the streets of homeless in New York for the Convention either. I think we need to acknoledge the America we have. We don't need signs around like 'No Jews or Dogs" like they had in Nazi Germany.
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