Politics – Page 7 – Reality Me

Posted on August 19, 2009August 19, 2009 by Doug McCaughan — 2 Comments

Thank you Barney Frank!

We need more of this!

Posted on August 17, 2009August 17, 2009 by Doug McCaughan — 1 Comment

Dropping Public Option is NOT an Option

Contact your representative today! It’s easy. Just click here. Tell your representatives that giving up a public option is NOT an option. A pubic option is indispensable! Government run health care is not about jobless people or illegal aliens. Government run health care is about the millions of people who cannot get insurance and therefore cannot get affordable health care. The reasons people cannot get insurance vary from being self-employed (living that American dream!) and either not having enough employees or enough profits to get affordable health care, to pre-existing conditions which may or may not even be a factor in their health care (did you know being on anti-depressants 10 years ago could be enough of a pre-existing condition to deny you insurance coverage even if you no longer use the drugs?), to working jobs with inconsistent work schedules which cause the employee to be laid off for lengthy periods of time such as construction and fisheries (that lobster you enjoy so much was probably caught by a U.S. citizen without insurance), people who have maxed out their insurance such as the mental ill (just because they are ill doesn’t mean they should be shoved away), and the elderly.

50 million people is a lot of people. That means you probably know several people without insurance or health care. They are probably ignoring conditions that could be treated which will result in more expensive care in the long term or early death. So if you don’t believe we need government backed health care, have lunch with one of these people today, look them in their eyes, and explain it to them.

Remember, these people do not want insurance! They want health care!.

Update: My apologies for the numerous grammar errors and word omissions in this post. I believe most have been corrected. I was a bit rushed this morning and really did not have time to be posting but felt this issue deserved attention. It definitely won the "2009 post in greatest need of an editor" award.

Posted on May 18, 2009 by Doug McCaughan — Leave a comment

US could insure everyone by reducing bureaucracy

By adopting Canada’s system of administration, the cost savings would allow all uninsured people in the United States to have medical care.

USA wastes more on health care bureaucracy than it would cost to provide health care to all of the uninsured … Administrative expenses will consume at least $399.4 billion out of total health expenditures of $1,660.5 billion in 2003. Streamlining administrative overhead to Canadian levels would save approximately $286.0 billion in 2003, $6,940 for each of the 41.2 million Americans who were uninsured as of 2001. This is substantially more than would be needed to provide full insurance coverage. [Source, Medical News TODAY]

The benefit to the single payer plan is the reduced overhead and associated costs of managing the health care system. France has issues but it may be a better model for the US health care system.

The American health care model, [Houston native Jennifer Hua] says, is too expensive and too insecure. France offers her family good medical treatment, better insurance, more convenience and no worries about how to pay medical bills if her husband’s job changes.

French model encourages people to put health ahead of economic anxiety.

As America seeks a better way to provide medical care, France offers an example of a system where everyone has government-provided, basic health insurance – citizens and immigrants alike. Expenses for such chronic illnesses as cancer, diabetes and multiple sclerosis are covered entirely by the state so patients can focus on treatment rather than financial ruin.

[Source, Dallas News, Is French health system a model for U.S.?]

I personally think I’d live longer and contribute more to our society if I wasn’t constantly worrying about how I will be able to pay for my family’s health care. The worry makes me more ill than anything else.

Posted on April 15, 2009April 16, 2009 by Doug McCaughan — 27 Comments

Let’s Talk Tea

I was going to sit this one out but there has been so much misinformation on the Tea Parties that I feel compelled to make some commentary. Let’s discuss these things:

I love protests even if I disagree with you
Do you really know what the hell teabagging is?
Bob Krumm is wrong.
The Boston Tea Party was not about eliminating or reducing taxes.

I love protests!

First off, I love a good fight. I love a good cause. And I’ll step up for my beliefs. I am an activist and happy to live in America where I have that right. I respect your right to fight for your beliefs even when I disagree with you and if I choose to protest your protest I am not saying you don’t have the right to express your views, I am just offering an opposing view (which also happens to be a freedom of speech).

Do you remember all the protests under George W Bush? Probably not because when they happened, the protesters were cordoned off away from the main activity and the press was limited in their ability to report.

Free speech zones were used in Boston at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. The free speech zones organized by the authorities in Boston were boxed in by concrete walls, invisible to the Fleet Center where the convention was held and criticized harshly as a “protest pen” … Reporters are often barred by local officials from displaying these protesters on camera or speaking to them within the zone.[Source, Wikipedia, Free speech zone]

Granted, free speech zones are not a new development. They have existed since the 1960s but were most heavily used by George W Bush’s administration.

For the record, I will not be participating in today’s Tea Parties nor will I be counter protesting. Quite frankly, I find it rather amusing that so many people are eagerly running around declaring they’ll be participating in a mass orgy of strangers plopping their nuts on each other’s faces. And that brings me to my next question.

Do you really know the definition of teabagging?

Last week I beat around the bush about the meaning of teabagging. I am betting that many of the protesters have missed the double entrendé. I think it is time to be direct.

Teabagging is a slang term for the act of a man placing his scrotum in the mouth or on or around the face (including the top of the head) of another person, often in a repeated in-and-out motion as in irrumatio. The practice vaguely resembles dipping a tea bag into a cup of tea. [Source, Wikipedia, Teabagging]

This is a vile, demeaning image and not a term that should be thrown around in mixed company and splattered all over the news in such a way that children are compelled to learn and teach their peers its meaning.

I was very vocal about my disagreement with George W Bush and my belief that his administration was causing long term damage to this country. My words and thoughts are immortalized in this online publishing. Although I was harsh on GW, I do not think I did anything to disparage the office of the presidency. And I will strike that out the moment someone reminds me with a link to something I wrote. We are a democracy and even though our favorite candidate does not always get into office, that person IS still the president of our country and deserves certain respects. I do not think it speaks highly of someone to say you want to put your balls on the face of the president. I do not think that speaks highly of your country!

Bob Krumm is wrong.

Bob Krumm wrote "There is no high-profile Farrakhan-type organizer or a well-funded Brady Campaign organization behind today’s protests" but Lee Fang has documented that corporate lobbyists are the driving force behind the Tea Parties as a Anti-Obama mechanism specifically Freedom Works (the GOP version of MoveOn) and Americans for Prosperity.

Despite these attempts to make the "movement" appear organic, the principle organizers of the local events are actually the lobbyist-run think tanks Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works. The two groups are heavily staffed and well funded, and are providing all the logistical and public relations work necessary for planning coast-to-coast protests. [Source, Think Progress, Spontaneous Uprising? Corporate Lobbyists Helping To Orchestrate Radical Anti-Obama Tea Party Protests]

Jane Hamsher at The Huffington Post has more explanation and commentary about the lobbyists. Momocrats has this video (note the testicular image behind the reporter) which flat out says "Not a spontaneous uprising. The people who came up with it are a familiar circle of Republicans including Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey."

They oppose Mr. Obama’s tax rates which will be lower for most of them and they oppose Mr. Obama’s tax increases for the rich whose taxes will skyrocket to about 10% less than it was under Reagan. [Source, Youtube, David Shuster GOP Going Nuts For Teabagging, But They Need A Dick Armey]

The Boston Tea Party was not about eliminating or reducing taxes.

I’m hearing people, even relatives, spout of various reasons for the Tea Parties. No one seems to be on the same base. Momocrats is also trying to figure it out. Mostly I have heard people say they do not want their taxes increased and have tried to draw a parallel to The Boston Tea Party. As the video above pointed out, The Boston Tea Party was about representation and rights.

The protest movement that culminated with the Boston Tea Party was not a dispute about high taxes. The price of legally imported tea was actually reduced by the Tea Act of 1773. Protestors were instead concerned with a variety of other issues. The familiar "no taxation without representation" argument, along with the question of the extent of Parliament’s authority in the colonies, remained prominent. Some regarded the purpose of the tax program—to make leading officials independent of colonial influence—as a dangerous infringement of colonial rights. This was especially true in Massachusetts, the only colony where the Townshend program had been fully implemented. [Source, Wikipedia, Boston Tea Party]

I also hear mutterings about Obama in his short time in office being responsible for today’s tax rates. As the video points out, this just isn’t the case.

The taxation rates that they will all be protesting are the George W Bush Republican taxation rates. [Source, Youtube, David Shuster GOP Going Nuts For Teabagging, But They Need A Dick Armey]

I think it is important to remember that TARP was a 2008 program that "allows the United States Department of the Treasury to purchase or insure up to $700 billion of "troubled" assets." That’s the mortgage bailout. The economic situation the United States faces did not start on January 20, 2009.

As you talk about the successes of your Tea Parties, please be aware that the goal of the Tea Parties is not to reduce or change taxes but to try to find a chink in the Obama armor as a means of getting the GOP back into control of the presidency in 2012.

Posted on April 9, 2009April 13, 2009 by Doug McCaughan — 2 Comments

I don’t understand tea bagging.

Apparently on April 15 from 3pm-6pm, Republicans and Conservatives alike (perhaps Democrats and other parties) will be meeting at the World’s Fair Park for some tea bagging. As much as I enjoy a good protest, this just doesn’t sound like my kind of thing:

Teabagging is … an erotic activity used within the context of BDSM and male dominance, with a dominant man teabagging his submissive partner, either a woman or a man, as one variation of facesitting and/or as a means of inflicting erotic humiliation. [Source, Wikipedia, Teabagging]

Just sounds like someone’s going to get themselves arrested.

ShareThis WordPress Plugin Broken – Easy Fix!

I recently added a ShareThis link to each of my posts. I chose ShareThis.com because it seems to be very robust while leaving a relatively small footprint on the blog and appears relatively unintrusiveness and benign. Of course, some folks will be quick to point out that the tracking features and having the icon linked back to sharethis.com is very intrusive and anything but benign. In this instance, I don’t see it as that big a deal. One of the attractions to ShareThis.com was its WordPress plugin making setup as easy as going to the website to generate the widget code, then inserting that code in the settings box on the admin screen in your WordPress blog. But it didn’t work.

At ShareThis.com, a publisher generates a script that looks like this:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://w.sharethis.com/button/sharethis.js#publisher=abcdefgh-ijkl-mnop-qrst-uvwxyz012345&type=wordpress&embeds=true&post_services=facebook%2Cdigg%2Cdelicious%2Cybuzz%2Ctwitter%2Cstumbleupon%2Creddit%2Ctechnorati%2Cmixx%2Cblogger%2Ctypepad%2Cwordpress%2Cgoogle_bmarks%2Cwindows_live%2Cmyspace%2Cfark%2Cbus_exchange%2Cpropeller%2Cnewsvine%2Clinkedin%2Cfriendfeed&headerTitle=Thank%20you%20for%20sharing!"></script>

After updating, the code will have a 2nd publisher id appended to the end. With two publisher ids, ShareThis will not register your site nor collect statistics.

After reviewing the plugin code, I realized the way ShareThis generates the script must have changed overtime. Crowd Favorite wrote a great plug-in but it expects the publisher=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx to be at very end and if it does not find a publisher id at the end, it puts one there which is why you will end up with two publisher ids. To fix this, simply move the publisher id to the end of the script before pasting the code into the ShareThis settings box in the WordPress admin:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://w.sharethis.com/button/sharethis.js#type=wordpress&embeds=true&post_services=facebook%2Cdigg%2Cdelicious%2Cybuzz%2Ctwitter%2Cstumbleupon%2Creddit%2Ctechnorati%2Cmixx%2Cblogger%2Ctypepad%2Cwordpress%2Cgoogle_bmarks%2Cwindows_live%2Cmyspace%2Cfark%2Cbus_exchange%2Cpropeller%2Cnewsvine%2Clinkedin%2Cfriendfeed&headerTitle=Thank%20you%20for%20sharing!&publisher=abcdefgh-ijkl-mnop-qrst-uvwxyz012345"></script>

Note: In the settings box, the & will be converted to just & but the code correctly uses & with the post. Your code will still be xhtml compliant.

Posted on April 5, 2009April 8, 2009 by Doug McCaughan — 4 Comments

Active Thermite at WTC to Fuel Conspiracy Theories

Like the questions surrounding JFK’s assassination, I don’t think we will ever have definitive answers to what happened on September 11, 2001. Scientists, some who have since been released from their university or laboratory jobs, have released a paper "Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe" which will likely have conspiracy theorists once again presenting their arguments that the plane alone could not have destroyed the World Trade Center.

We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in all the samples we have studied of the dust produced by the destruction of the World Trade Center. Examination of four of these samples, collected from separate sites, is reported in this paper. These red/gray chips show marked similarities in all four samples. One sample was collected by a Manhattan resident about ten minutes after the collapse of the second WTC Tower, two the next day, and a fourth about a week later. … The red portion of these chips is found to be an unreacted thermitic material and highly energetic. [Source, Bentham Open Access,Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe]

For more information on the super-thermite, read The Raw Deal.

Today on Reddit, the question was posed "2,740 Americans died in 9/11, justifying the removal/restrictions of many of our freedoms. How many people died to give us those rights in the first place?" Within the answers, this illuminating comment:

It’s sort of a nationalistic cliche to say that soldiers fight for our freedom but what they really fight for is the sovereignty of our government, which happens to guarantee us certain freedoms.

When we say a soldier died fighting for our freedoms, what we really mean is that he died in a war which threatened the loss of some or all of American sovereignty to a foreign or domestic power which would likely guarantee less rights than the present government.

This distinction is important because in the history of American wars, very few have definitively fallen under that category – and even in those cases, preserving the rights of American citizens was ancillary to sustaining or expanding the sovereign power of the U.S. government.

[Source, Reddit.com, 2,740 Americans died in 9/11, justifying the removal/restrictions of many of our freedoms. How many people died to give us those rights in the first place?]

We now live with a generation that has never known the feeling, the freedoms, we had prior to September 11, 2001. There is a different feeling. I felt more secure! I wish my youngest children could know that feeling and could experience true trust. I have lived with a tension since 9/11 that I had not known prior. The tension is not from a fear of terrorists; they’ve always been around (well, at least from the 1960s First U.S. Aircraft Hijacked, May 1, 1961 and at least 1800BC for the rest of the world). The fear is from my own government! Prior to 9/11 the police were different; now everyone should fear the police.

Question: “The police are here. They want to talk to me. What should I do?”

Answer: “Make no statement to the police under any circumstances.”

– Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson

[Source, Brasscheck TV, Why you should
never talk to cops
without a lawyer]

The terrorists won.

The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics.

The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.

And we’re doing exactly what the terrorists want.

[Source, Bruce Schneier – Security Expert, Refuse to be Terrorized]

Whether the terrible incident of September 11, 2001 was foreign or domestic terrorism, whether it was solely the plane or the plane timed with well placed explosives is irrelevant. Our society has dramatically changed, some say irrevocably. We were a better America when we could trust our government. We were a better America when the police were not the enemy. We were a better America before Civil liberties were taken away.

Posted on March 10, 2009 by Doug McCaughan — 5 Comments

TN Continues to Make Dumb Laws

Michael Silence notes that Sen. Jim Tracy is trying to pass legislation that would make it illegal to read or send text messages while driving. These nanny state laws treat symptoms and not problems. My comment on No Silence Here:

We don’t need a nanny state! We need better education. IF we would teach people how to use T-9 then they could text without looking at the phone! er, I mean if we taught people the importance of not texting behind the wheel. You know..give a man a fish..well if he were eating fish while driving that would probably be bad too. Maybe we need a law to ban eating fish behind the wheel. Yes! Definitely. And fishing licenses. When the police pull cars over they should check for fishing licenses because he might be planning on catching a fish to eat while driving and we need to make sure that doesn’t happen. That’s important. Important enough that we need to set up road blocks and check everyone’s fishing licenses!! But then people might send text messages warning about the road blocks. No, we outlawed text messaging behind the wheel so that would never happen of course neither would the eating fish behind the wheel because we outlawed that too so why do we need the road blocks? You know, the radio stations will pick up on these quickly. We should outlaw radios in the cars. Wait a minute, wasn’t there a time when legislatures feared car radios would cause too many accidents and deaths. What happened to outlawing radios? Wait another minute. At least 2 people died in his district while text messaging behind the wheel. I wonder how many died tuning their radio?

Things we need to outlaw to keep people alive:
spiders, aids, diving, earthquakes, buildings, sports, suicide (wait, that’s already illegal), alcohol, lightning, steps, cold, heat, cancer, tall places, bees, surgery, and sharks.
http://i28.tinypic.com/5v0v1d.jpg

The problem with these types of laws is that it does nothing to prevent the happening but only punishes if and when it is caught. To educate people to pull over, have a passenger do the texting, or just plain ignore the phone is a better use to time and tax dollars than more laws:

Republican Sen. Mae Beavers of Mt. Juliet opposed the bill because of provisions in the current law.
"I really don’t see the need for the bill," she said. "I’ve said time after time, I don’t think we can legislate against stupidity."

Furthermore, driving is a skill and not everyone has the same abilities. That is not a statement to justify one person texting behind the wheel while another doesn’t but to point out the people who are crossing the center line while texting may just as well be doing the same thing while reading a billboard, talking to a passenger, tuning the radio, or daydreaming. We have all done stupid things while driving. I bet everyone at one point has turned the wrong way down a one way street. I did in Memphis as a teenager. It scared me silly to see 3 lanes of lunch hour traffic barreling down on me. A law preventing me from going the wrong way on a one way street would have done nothing to prevent me from making that silly mistake..wait a minute..it is against the law to drive the wrong way on a one way street….oh.

Posted on January 25, 2009January 25, 2009 by Doug McCaughan — Leave a comment

Best thing seen on the Internet today

Seen in the popular section of Popurls.com: "Haha! I’m about to Pwn you in my speech."

Posted on January 18, 2009 by Doug McCaughan — 11 Comments

Are you bemoaning the $160 million inauguration?

Well Bush’s inauguration cost $157 million.

the Obama figure of $160 million that got repeated in the press included security costs associated with the massive event. But the Bush tab of $42 million left out those enormous costs [Source, Media Matters, The media myth about the cost of Obama’s inauguration]

Posted on January 2, 2009 by Doug McCaughan — 2 Comments

Robin Williams on Obama’s Election

How did I miss this! 2,584,449 views at the time of posting which probably means Youtube will pull it soon.

Seen on Political Irony.

Posted on December 19, 2008 by Doug McCaughan — 5 Comments

Thank you for throwing your shoe site

Although it has scrolled from the page, I have continued to update the Iraqi Reporter Throws Reddit Alien at Bush post with related shoe throwing news. Today I added a link to a new website called http://www.thankyouforthrowingyourshoe.com/ which is a gallery of images from people holding up their shoe for Muntadar al-Zeidi. I have to agree with this statement from the website:

We don’t condone shoe throwing, but we prefer it to war.

Posted on December 15, 2008 by Doug McCaughan — 3 Comments

From the mouths of babes

Dad: "Noah, do you know that the school board passed a new rule allowing random searches at the school?"
Noah, 12 years old: "No."
Dad: "It means that teachers can just pull you aside and have you show them everything in your bag and pockets. How do you feel about that?"
Noah: "I’m not doing anything wrong so I guess I’m okay with it."

My heart sank. He gave the scripted answer! The system has him. I think Noah is old enough to read 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451. Time to knock the dust of my copies.