ugh

The cruel cynics are going to win again. Obama's health care push failed to come to a vote by the end of the legislative session, and this has already been called his Waterloo. The voices of opposition have been too successful in railing against a public option as a move towards socialization, saying that private insurers couldn't compete. But these are the EXACT SAME PEOPLE always bitching about the massive bloat and striking inefficiency of the government, so why do they think that in the arena of health care the government would suddenly change itself up and run a great business? Why, after decades of inefficiency would the government suddenly be able to outperform health insurers that are almost a century old? Why has no one pointed this out (that I can find)? The blue dog coalition has been the biggest hurdle I think, but at least they're concerns are legitimate as far as I can tell. The staunch "ANTI!" Republicans just want to derail anything Obama proposes because it will make him look week.

Politics sickens and disheartens me more every day. Nothing gets done because our whole political system is exposed to the tyranny of the minority, and both parties abuse that power to no end.

I'm gonna go walk my dog now.

And in case you didn't the post just below this one: SPACED IS ON HULU! WATCH NOW!

HOLY JEEZ SPACED IS ON HULU!

Too Damn Early

It is simply too damn early for me to be up and functioning well. I've been trying to get up around 4 AM a few mornings a week to make use of the high volatility in Forex markets during the opening of the London Session, but I end up making lateral trades at best because I can't concentrate on anything except my runny nose and my lunatic dog. I'm listening to NPR just to have something vaguely informative playing so I don't just have to wonder what inappropriate thing Kirby is chewing on, but I can't help that either. So far this morning I have rescued a bra, Lucas's pants, a hoodie, a case of TD Cd's, and and one of my shirts.

And now we shift to...

Apparently the anti-immigration crowd is pushing for biometric national ID cards now. Didn't we already go through this shit with the RFID cards? Didn't the country as a whole decide we didn't want this? Didn't the governors of almost every state in the union say there is no way to pay for it? The best way to deal with illegal immigration is to change the business climate in the country, especially in Ag businesses along the southern border. We don't want to make our country unappealing to immigrants, because that would mean making our country, well, unappealing. If, however, the profit motive for hiring illegal immigrants can be dealt with through more subsidies (groan) or stronger enforcement of existing labor laws, then illegal immigration will become less profitable because there will be no jobs. More subsidies are a bad idea because we have the most phenomenally bloated farm subsidies package in the world already, and making it any worse should be inconceivable and intolerable. ID cards with your fingerprints imprinted on them are not the solution to this problem, because some illegal immigrants who are smart enough to steal existing social security numbers and drivers licenses will have no problem faking or stealing new cards either. Crime adapts quickly. In the meantime all of us will be stuck with compromising ID cards and a further intrusion by the government into everyone's personal life. It will also create a whole new biometric database with information like fingerprints and SSNs for every adult citizen in the country. How long do you really think it will take for someone to break into that database? It has bad news bears written all over it. I will never accept that the solution to the illegal immigration problem lies with penalizing the legal citizens of this country. Why don't we roll back immigration strategy by about a century and start closing our borders every few years to give the existing immigrants a few years to assimilate? Or better yet, why don't we readjust our public education policy to make people more accepting of immigrants? There's a novel idea. Teach our children that the US ISN'T the only country in the world, and English ISN'T the only language on the planet? Next thing you now I'll be suggesting that Jesus wasn't white and excessive defense spending is irresponsible.

Blow it out your tuchus, kids.

I just can’t help myself. I’m sorry.

So MJ is dead.

God Damn.

I keep thinking that he is the first real victim of this new cultural fascination with celebrity, starting when they are very young. This is not to suggest there were not celebrities before him who succumbed to the limelight, but he really defined the concept of "lifelong superstar" for a whole generation of kids. He was in the spotlight his entire life, and it finally burned him up. I'm not mourning his loss, but merely trying to suggest that his death might be cause for us as a society to reflect on the effects of our merciless celebrity addiction. It's too easy to look at his "eccentricities" and write them off as the products of a rich, irresponsible weirdo when we turned him into that weirdo. There is really no way of knowing that he could have turned out any other way, because there is no frame of reference. There has never been any other celebrity whose life even came close to his. We have a few pots on that stove right now, but drug addiction and massive amounts of STDs may claim them before they get to MJ's status.

It might really be time to accept our responsibility for this guy's misery, lunacy, and death. Now, I'm not one of those people trying to draw some grand hyperbole where we're all responsible for celebrity deaths. Paris could slit her wrists in my fucking kitchen and I wouldn't take responsibility for it, but MJ is a different case. He didn't literally blow his way to global notoriety and then force the world to sit and listen to mediocre pop mu…… wait. Ok, look I'm not talking about kids here, ok? Let's just get through the rest of this post agreeing that the whole "touching little boys" thing is accepted, adequately condemned, and appropriately glossed over.

Anyway, Paris Hilton is a dirty whore who should die.

This is also entirely the kind of shit we should be seeing on blogs, not on fucking CNN! I realize this cat has been a reliable cash cow for the "news" media for some time now, but publishing an article about the raffle being held to sell off tickets to the man's funeral just seems like a little much to me. Yes, I realize that I'm just another cog in this giant machine churning through these people by posting this, but sweet Jesus I just can't help myself. I frequently hear Britney Spears and her ilk referred to as "train wrecks" but it seems to me the trains haven't crashed yet. They are still alive after all. MJ's train finally wrecked though.

There. I said it. Now can we please get back to some real news? Please!?