Ewww, What an Image!

Tags

abortions, contraception, corporate greed, cosmology, creationism, gay rights, Glenn Beck, health care reform, insurance companies, Limbaugh, politicians, universe

This is pretty much apropos of nothing, but I couldn’t resist this remark this morning as being both funny and soooooo very true.

“The idea of Rush Limbaugh congratulating himself for ‘spawning’ Glenn Beck, is a little like being proud of spreading syphilis.” Keith Olbermann

Isn’t that a picture that you want to erase from your mind?

As I sat and contemplated another day of attacks and innuendo, the common fodder of the daily news fix, I had to remind myself, that truthfully, nothing much has ever  changed on the American political scene.

Watching another installment of the Ken Burn’s masterpiece on our national parks certainly can help to remind one that politics has always been a dirty business in which only the sufficiently hardened need apply.

Those who have seen the series know that part of the impetus for the national park system was the horrific mess that Niagara Falls became when left to  a “free market economy.” It became a side show of entrepreneurs shilling whatever they thought might fly, making the experience of the Falls, one of avoiding being taken to the cleaners by unsavory businessmen.

The truth is, that Yosemite and Yellowstone both survived attempts to rape them of their resources by ever greedy corporate boards. Had it not been for the federal government, congressman like Senator Lacey of Iowa, naturalist John Muir, and President Theodore Roosevelt, much of our national beauty would have been lost.

The desire to log, provide feathers for women’s hats, mine promising ore filled mountains, and other corporate enterprises were pushing hard for access to sites all over the US and barely were beaten back, oft times by fancy interpretations of existing executive power.

So that fact that our climate is filled with lies and hate today is, on par, business as usual. I refer to the latest health care industry threat: defeat this bill or be prepared to pay much higher premiums for health care, because we intend to raise prices if you don’t.

It seems that the dumping of a so-called “independent” analysis of the Baucus bill on health care conveniently, just moments before the vote in the Finance committee, was much ado about nothing. Of course, most of us, never for a moment, thought the conclusions were fair. After all the health care insurance industry paid for the study, and we have seen historically that business paid for “analysis” somehow always mysteriously favors their position. (Remember all those “smoking is not addictive” reports the tobacco industry submitted over the years.)

It seems the darling insurance agents forgot, oops, I mean struck from the report, the cost reducing measures in the bill in their calculations. Yes, Price Waterhouse, we understand is complaining that the report issued by the corporate pigs was not the one they wrote, but in fact had been scrubbed of information and numbers that the industry didn’t find helpful to their dog and pony show, namely that passage of reform will bring higher premiums to those who presently carry insurance.

That sounds about right I’d say. All the charities and sweet commercials aside, it does seem that most businesses are modeled on the short term, get as much as you can as fast as you can, for tomorrow we die. Ethics seems a dirty word to most. Morality is a word they have no truck with at all.

Which all leads logically to this point. Where was the press when the gay-rights march went on over the weekend? You probably missed it, since almost nobody even mentioned it, even though it was by some estimates as big as the tea-bagger march. No Fox Noise reports barely at all. I wonder why? I hear the Obama administration has strictly denied Foxy any sit downs at all. Fox is thoroughly outed as a shill for the neo-con and religious right sections of the Rethug party. It seems appropriate to “just say no.”

Then on the other hand, you get crazy stuff like this coming across the screen. Science it seems struggles these days to make headway against the rising craziness of creationism. Bill Nye the science guy, ran into this bit of nonsense at a talk he gave in Waco, Texas (yeah I know, Waco, what can you expect?)

He cited Genesis 1:16, which reads: “God made two great lights–the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.” Nye stated that the lesser light in the aforementioned quote was not technically a light, but a reflector, as in it reflects the sun’s light. The God-fearing folks of Waco were furious. One woman shouted, “We believe in God,” and proceeded to usher out her three children.

Now, last time I checked, the moon doesn’t generate light. I mean does anybody believe that it does? 

Good news that some won’t see as good. Abortions are down all around the world. So is contraceptive use. Any correlation? Experts seem to believe so. This angers some of the religious right who oppose contraception, but hopefully they still applaud the reduction in unwanted and terminated pregnancies.

Just a few things I ran into today. Now I’m off to meetings and more meetings!