No, politician/pundit/dickhead, your idea is dumb and the only reason you’re saying that is because some lobby group is paying you an obscene amount of money. Admit it! Just admit you have no interest in climate change or gun regulations or abortion or tax laws or anything outside of your own self interest and you’re only pretending to because you get money for unsupportable non-ideas meant to preserve the status quo. Just admit it.
“We can’t reform health care because it will bankrupt the taxpayers.” Really? Because there are plenty of examples of better health care systems around the world. Everywhere, glaring examples of why you’re wrong and your non-ideas are infuriatingly stupid. What you’re saying is that the American health care system is perfectly fine and doesn’t prey on the poor and that everyone in the middle class isn’t just one health scare away from financial ruin and that the U.S. health care system isn’t ranked just barely above Slovenia and right below Dominica (which I didn’t know existed let alone was a country until right now) on the World Health Organization’s health care system rankings!?! It’s right there. Look around, there are plenty of examples of better ways to conduct a health care system.
“We can’t reform our gun laws because that would encroach on our Second Amendment rights.” As much as I am confounded by how so many people can afford guns (they’re pretty expensive), I am equally confounded by people’s resistance to preventing guns from getting into the hands of religious extremists, toddlers and generally unhappy people. You like guns and want to keep your toys, that’s fine, there are other countries who said that they like their boom-boom good-times and manage to have policies that reduce the number of unhinged butt-faces who can get their hands on death sticks. It’s right there. Look up, U.S., Canada has plenty of guns but also has plenty of regulations on who can buy them. It seems to be working pretty well for Canadians not dying all the time from gun violence. The NRA doesn’t represent the will of the people, they’re a lobbying organization that represents people who make a disgusting amount of money manufacturing and selling fear.
“We shouldn’t act on ‘Climate Change’ because it’s a myth.” It’s right there, all the preponderance of evidence from a majority of scientists (all of the scientists that aren’t being paid directly from those profiting from fossil fuels). But okay, that still doesn’t convince you, even if you ignore all of the facts, there’s a better, more profitable way than fossil fuels. Look at Elon Musk. Dude is making a mint on alternative energy. It’s right there. Proof that there’s a better, more profitable way to do things.
There are other ways to get rich and be successful than to exploit the status quo. We should make like Steve Jobs and become hailed as geniuses by stealing other people’s good ideas! Why don’t governments do that? Why are we so resistant to the better way to govern? Oh, because massive profits are reaped by those with a vested interest in the current system. And we tolerate it. We accept, through rhetoric and misinformation and jingoistic nonsense and delusional exceptionalism that change would somehow be detrimental despite evidence to the contrary.
It’s right there. Yet, I can’t do anything about it except shout into the void.
Strangely Naked 
Gahhh these things fill me with rage (way to go on the dr cox/scrubs photo though. the best.)
Get money out of politics! Get money out of politics so politicians can say the dumbass things they really believe, instead of the dumbass things they’re getting paid to say. Siigh
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Yep. The frustration boiled over this last week when I saw people shutting down any rational conversation with “Barak Hussein Obamacare wants to take away all our guns.” The type of idiotic banalities that are the end of all rational discussion.
I’ll try to get back to light hearted fart jokes later in the week.
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Do we really want to be Canada, with their great health care system and their lack of gun violence?
Sure, they’re happier and healthier than we are, but… Justin Bieber? Bryan Adams?
No thank you. I’ll take uninsured and bleeding over that any old day.
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But they have the good sense to EXPORT Bieber and Mike Myers,. In the US we keep our Charlie Sheens and personified farts like Sean Penn (let us not forget that he tied up and beat and tortured Madonna, his wife at the time, for days) or hail child molesters like Elvis as heroes.
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For once, I’m going to leave a serious comment. My heart aches for the United States. A great nation on the road to ruin.
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Let’s not forget good, old-fashioned laziness. Change means work… and learning. You really expect people in charge of things to learn new, better ways of doing things? Different ways of doing things??? I’m not sure they can handle that.
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Maybe people would be more willing to compromise on gun laws if they were called “boom-boom good-times.”
And don’t knock our healthcare system. By having prices that would bankrupt most people for even the most basic of hospital visits, it causes us to never be sick or injured because we force ourselves not to be. Broken arm? Meh, I don’t have $5,000, I’ll just walk it off.
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I’m so grateful for the Affordable Care Act. I know we can do better, but at least it’s a start. I don’t understand all the people who insist that other countries with tighter control over guns have a murder rate as high as the U.S. It’s not true. My son and I have chatted about living in Canada (a country we love visiting), but we can’t afford to move. I don’t think I can handle the snow, either. We lived with heavy snowfall for years. I love not shoveling snow. I love turning on the AC on Christmas Day.
But why do we have so many vacant houses and stores and so many homeless people? Why are so many people who live on the streets mentally ill and receiving no care? When my daughter went to grad school at Berkeley, she usually felt pretty safe on campus, but the minute she was off the grounds she lived in fear of the homeless people. She knew they couldn’t help the way they acted, but a couple of times they screamed at her and wouldn’t leave her alone. ON the campus during the Occupy movement, she stayed away from the area where the protest was, not because she didn’t want to be involved, but because she was afraid of the police. Her dept. held its own sit-in, in a safe building.
The police are scary. They’re so angry. Someone asked the police to perform a security check on me when I was sick and not online. Two officers with two cars showed up at my door, which I opened with trepidation. They told me why thet were there. I said I was sick but would be okay. They didn’t ask if I needed help. They didn’t ask if they should call an ambulance. They looked threatened when Franklin came to stand behind me with his tail wagging. Then one off the officers shouted at me to tell people to NEVER call the police to check on me again.
During the brief time I taught high school in Florida, I was appalled by the students’ racism. The blacks hated the whites. The whites hated the blacks. And God help you if you were Haitian because everyone was out to get you. I had a new student one day. He had a Latino name and accent. I made the mistake of asking him in Spanish where he was from. When he answered Puerto Rico, I saw the wave of hatred go through the classroom. The students wanted to know where I was from. When I said I had lived many places but mostly in Maryland, some said, We ain’t gonna learn nothin’ from no Yankee lady.
They were right. They didn’t learn a thing from me, except that if they complained enough and got their parents to complain that they could get rid of a teacher who insisted they sit in their seats and make an effort.
I’m afraid of the idiots who STILL insist that President Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. and that he’s a Muslim. Anti-Islamic hatred will only push the undecided deeper into considering the possibility of joining ISIS so they can off some racist Americans.
I think Sarah Palin’s invention of death squads for elderly people as part of Obamacare has finally settled down, and I don’t hear as many complaints now about the ACA destroying businesses. We CAN have health insurance, even if it’s very basic. I have quite a nice plan. I have to give up some things to pay for it, but it’s a lot better than living in fear that an illness or injury will bankrupt me.
I am tired, though, of the emails filled with lies that are passed from one person to another with such glee. They’re still making fun of “the old woman who spilled a little coffee in her lap and sued because of it.” The McDonald’s spin machine continues to win with that one. The woman was not driving the car. Her nephew was driving her. They got coffee at a McDonald’s drive-through. The nephew pulled into a parking place before they opened their coffee. When the woman “spilled a little coffee on her lap,” she was burned so horribly that doctors didn’t know if she would live. She had to have skin grafts. I’ve pointed this out to some people who continue to pass around that information and gotten the response, I DON’T CARE.
Well, I do care, and no one can stop me from caring.
Sorry to go on so long, but I think it’s important. I love you, Pickleope, even though I can’t stand to eat a pickle.
Love,
Janie
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I must add that I do stupid things, too, and I’m unkind and rude. I don’t want to act that way. Sometimes I find I can’t stop myself, but then I start over again at trying to be nice. I see a doctor and take antidepressants and medicine for anxiety, but I continue to suffer from depression, anxiety, and PTSD as a result of abuse. I also have OCD, but I don’t complain about it much because I get some good out of the OCD. My house is quite well organized, and it makes me a better editor. When I think of someone such as Donald Trump, I wonder how anyone takes him seriously when it’s so obvious that he’s mentally ill, and sick in a vicious way. If he didn’t come from a wealthy family, he’d probably wander the streets of New York while eating out of a garbage can. He needs help just as badly as so many other people do.
I thought of something else that bothers me. People complain about how bad the public schools and teachers are, but when an intelligent child comes along, the child is often attacked by the other kids and even by the teachers. They said my daughter was too smart for her own good. Now she’s Dr. Too Smart For Her Own Good. I wouldn’t let anyone bring down my children.
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Too smart for her own good? Unbelievable.
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That coffee lady thing makes me deliriously angry ever since it happened. People use it as a supposed example of our litigious society when really it’s an example of willful ignorance, kind of like your racism example. Thank you for your stories and your kind compliments.
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Tort reform my ass.
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I am just one health scare away from financial ruin, and it’s making me sick.
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Politicians make me sick, especially the ones in the office who are as fake as a retouched playmate on a Sunday morn, smile and you, then stab you in the back because you know they’re incompetent.
Do you know the type?
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But you are so educated and entertaining when you rant about jingoistic nonsense. Is that like shouting nonsense at a jiggalo? You’re brilliant, PVP. I’m equally frustrated, and I agree with all of it. If only I could get my hands on a jiggalo.
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Can’t help you with a jiggalo, but I know a Juggalo I could introduce you to.
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