"Hit me like a ton of bricks": a colloquialism that expresses missing the obvious when it is staring at you right in the face.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/12/19/health.care/index.html: an apparent deal has been reached in the health care debate, one that probably won't look like the one Independents and Progressives voted for last November.
I asked myself: "Why?"
What follows is admittedly, a "Conspiracy Theory." I am postulating something I have no data on, no research, etc. I am just applying common sense and putting it in the public record (this blog) to invite comment.
"Why?" The answer: "The body politic."
The health care debate has put in plain sight the fact that Republicans and so-called "Blue Dog/Conservative" Democrats are in the pockets of the health care industry (an oxymoron) for campaign donations. They therefore, serve their masters (the true body politic), not us.
That means: if you're conservative, you can have eight years of Reagan, four years of Bush the Elder, eight more years of Bush the junior, sandwiching 18 years around 8 years of Clinton and NOT eliminate abortion rights in the United States...because they can't.
The Supreme Court decided Brown versus Board of Education on a 9 - 0 vote. Eisenhower sent troops to Arkansas not because he LOVED black people: it was the law.
As much as anti-abortion has become the "litmus test" of conservatives, a shred of common sense would say it's a push-button to get people to vote their way without doing anything about their concerns.
Bush the junior supported Roe vs. Wade not because he believed in it...it's the law.
If a lower court were to argue successfully to the Supreme Court, still with its 5 - 4 Conservative Majority, Roe vs. Wade would be overturned as far as federal support.
President Obama would probably have his misgivings, but he'd have to support their decision nonetheless.
Then it gets complicated: it would go to each state's Supreme Court for a decision that conservatives have always championed: "states rights." Some would opt to continue abortion; some (like Utah, I'd expect) would not.
Back to health care reform: a lot of Independents and Progressives are outraged at the Democratic Party and the President for not using their majority in the House and the Senate to pass some muscular legislation that Republicans would do - moderate and conservative - in lock-step with each other.
Why are the Democrats taking the risk of losing so huge in November 2010 and 2012 when they won so huge in 2006 and 2008?
Answer: neither party are hurting for jobs.
Harold Ford (Democrat) was defeated for reelection to his congressional seat in Tennessee: he's an MSNBC political commentator. Pat Buchanan ran for the Republican presidential nomination: he's an MSNBC political commentator.
Abortion (both parties - for/against); War (both parties - for/against); the Economy (both parties - don't have a clue): these are water cooler conversations we have at work. We get sidetracked by these conversations that don't put a DIME in our pockets or JOBS in our country. It's bait-and-switch: the parties "change," but the outcome for industry stays the same. Do you think Big Insurance is paying 1.4 million a day to lobbyist and sponsoring the buses for the anti-health care reform rallies...to lose?
Yaphet Kotto said in the movie "Blue Collar" (1978): [Smokey James] "They'll do anything to keep you on their line. They pit the lifers against the new boys, the old against the young, the black against the white - ANYTHING."
Each party's members want desperately to hold onto their offices because they get a healthy retirement for LIFE and a cost-of-living adjustment: http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/uscongress/a/congresspay.htm; http://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/RL30631.pdf. President Obama's not going to be hurting either, whether he completes his presidency in 2012 or 2016: http://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/98-249.pdf.
If the Democrats truly are swept out of office in the midterms and general election, they'll wind up working as "consultants" for some of the very entities: Pharmaceutical and Insurance - they were voted in to "oppose."
And, of course, they can always resurface on CNN, FOX and MSNBC as...
(WELL paid) political commentators!
Monday, December 21, 2009
Fire
© 1991, The Griot Poet (an oldie)
It came to him quite by accident.
Rocketed from the heavens
On a bolt of lightening,
It hit the branch of a dead tree in an otherwise barren field.
His was a “fools courage” that allowed him to pick it up.
He soon became chieftain.
He used it to drive the Moors from Europe and raze the Holy Lands of the Moslem infidels.
He used it to destroy the Mayas during the Spanish conquest, erasing a once great history.
He used it to conquer the Native Americans and drive them from their rightful lands.
He used it to rape the continent of Africa, siring Mulatto children in the New World.
All the while, masking his noble ambitions as “God’s Will.”
His IS a fools courage.
Now,
The fire is electronic;
Chemical-Biologic;
Thermo-nucleonic
Poised to destroy worlds at a press of a button
To ensure his status as chieftain.
“And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
“With Ate by his side come hot from hell
“Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
“Cry Havoc - and let slip the dogs of war
“That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
“With carrion men groaning for burial.”
Julius Caesar, Act II, Scene I. The end of Mark Anthony’s soliloquy.
It came to him quite by accident.
Rocketed from the heavens
On a bolt of lightening,
It hit the branch of a dead tree in an otherwise barren field.
His was a “fools courage” that allowed him to pick it up.
He soon became chieftain.
He used it to drive the Moors from Europe and raze the Holy Lands of the Moslem infidels.
He used it to destroy the Mayas during the Spanish conquest, erasing a once great history.
He used it to conquer the Native Americans and drive them from their rightful lands.
He used it to rape the continent of Africa, siring Mulatto children in the New World.
All the while, masking his noble ambitions as “God’s Will.”
His IS a fools courage.
Now,
The fire is electronic;
Chemical-Biologic;
Thermo-nucleonic
Poised to destroy worlds at a press of a button
To ensure his status as chieftain.
“And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
“With Ate by his side come hot from hell
“Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
“Cry Havoc - and let slip the dogs of war
“That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
“With carrion men groaning for burial.”
Julius Caesar, Act II, Scene I. The end of Mark Anthony’s soliloquy.
Monday, December 07, 2009
Kinder, Gentler
© 7 December 2009, the Griot Poet
“Well I am moved. I want a kinder and gentler nation.” George Herbert Walker Bush said in his elation as his acceptance address at the RNC in 1988,
How does this relate to Willie Horton and now the “chickens coming home to roost” with Arkansas Governor Mike Huck-a-buck?
Benign: etymology: Anglo-French, “of a gentle disposition,” “of a mild type or character that does not threaten health or life” (e.g. benign tumor).
Benign tumors are usually removed from the host body before becoming rancid and…cancerous using drive-by chemicals HMOs infuse.
We live in a benign fascism, accepting exported barbarism from our shores done in our name, purposely averting our eyes and our turning backs to attacks on others’ homelands that we would not stand for on our own.
It was our sins in Eden that raised the ire of Osama and gave recruiting fodder to Al Qaeda, the estimated killing of 1.5 million children in Iraq due to carpet bombing in “no fly zones” (not by Bush II, but by Bill Clinton).
In comedy clubs, one attempts not to gain the attention of the craftsman on stage, otherwise you become the fodder for their freestyle material as they serially slay you in effigy for your own momentary lapse into stupidity.
We define left and right as if we have a choice of the course guided by the wings of a global, corporate Moloch, all-seeing wise guy owl sacrificing children on funeral pyres in “cremations of care.”
We live in a benign fascism, accepting exported barbarism from our shores done in our name, purposely averting our eyes and our turning backs to attacks on others’ homelands that we would not stand for on our own.
Like we did so express when we lost 3,000 souls on 9/11.
For a moment, we came together, not realizing the benign tumor was now rancid and at the point of…breaking.
We spent ourselves into a deficit before September the 10th, the attack icing on a bloody cake.
What was at stake was “civilization itself” an old warrior quaked even before his deplorable display at the United Nations.
We live in a benign fascism, accepting exported barbarism from our shores done in our name, Iraq, Iran or Afghanistan because revolutions and revolutionaries are not “comfortable.”
We stare at interactive “boob tubes,” equipped with keyboard, mouse, booming speakers and Internet access: populating FACEBOOK, MYSPACE, Twitter and YOUTUBE with information gathered on massive Cray computer databases detecting threat patterns to protect the global whore of Babylon system… from ourselves.
“Well I am moved. I want a kinder and gentler nation.” George Herbert Walker Bush said in his elation as his acceptance address at the RNC in 1988,
How does this relate to Willie Horton and now the “chickens coming home to roost” with Arkansas Governor Mike Huck-a-buck?
Benign: etymology: Anglo-French, “of a gentle disposition,” “of a mild type or character that does not threaten health or life” (e.g. benign tumor).
Benign tumors are usually removed from the host body before becoming rancid and…cancerous using drive-by chemicals HMOs infuse.
We live in a benign fascism, accepting exported barbarism from our shores done in our name, purposely averting our eyes and our turning backs to attacks on others’ homelands that we would not stand for on our own.
It was our sins in Eden that raised the ire of Osama and gave recruiting fodder to Al Qaeda, the estimated killing of 1.5 million children in Iraq due to carpet bombing in “no fly zones” (not by Bush II, but by Bill Clinton).
In comedy clubs, one attempts not to gain the attention of the craftsman on stage, otherwise you become the fodder for their freestyle material as they serially slay you in effigy for your own momentary lapse into stupidity.
We define left and right as if we have a choice of the course guided by the wings of a global, corporate Moloch, all-seeing wise guy owl sacrificing children on funeral pyres in “cremations of care.”
We live in a benign fascism, accepting exported barbarism from our shores done in our name, purposely averting our eyes and our turning backs to attacks on others’ homelands that we would not stand for on our own.
Like we did so express when we lost 3,000 souls on 9/11.
For a moment, we came together, not realizing the benign tumor was now rancid and at the point of…breaking.
We spent ourselves into a deficit before September the 10th, the attack icing on a bloody cake.
What was at stake was “civilization itself” an old warrior quaked even before his deplorable display at the United Nations.
We live in a benign fascism, accepting exported barbarism from our shores done in our name, Iraq, Iran or Afghanistan because revolutions and revolutionaries are not “comfortable.”
We stare at interactive “boob tubes,” equipped with keyboard, mouse, booming speakers and Internet access: populating FACEBOOK, MYSPACE, Twitter and YOUTUBE with information gathered on massive Cray computer databases detecting threat patterns to protect the global whore of Babylon system… from ourselves.
Sunday, December 06, 2009
Father to Son
© 5 December 2009, the Griot Poet (a.k.a. Pop)
Son: I could quote Langston Hughes and tell you “Life ain’t no crystal stair,” (so cliché), and by the way, the squiggly line that automatically infused by Microsoft Word under the colloquialism and urban English, I might be remiss not to correct my sentence.
Yet, that does not change your situation that you seem to run into each and every day you strive to achieve the prize that God has for you. And every level you conquer, there is another that wants you to QUIT.
It wants you to give up, go away, accept mediocrity, nap, pity your circumstance, let some man/woman/system/institution define and demand what you are.
I could run to your rescue and baby you, get in someone’s face and defend you, yet… it was stress that caused you to go from rolling/to crawling/to bouncing/to standing and taking your first steps.
You fell when you tried to ride a bike. You fell when you first tried to skateboard. You failed to make your first basketball team in middle school. You failed at your first karate break. You have since mastered all of this!
I could protect you from the forces that will label you “threat,” “mugger,” “rapist”; “n----r.” Yet, these were the same forces that made your Aunt Mamie march in the streets and brave fire hoses, police dogs and beatings. She survived.
And when the Apostle Paul asked God to remove the splinter from his side, Omnipotent’s reply was: “My grace is sufficient for you, for MY strength is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)
And you have dedicated hours and hours of study with people you could not have probably met had God not been in your corner – Luther “Ticky” Burden, Richard McMullen, Marquette Wilkins – for He is Pro-video/provider, the One who “pre sees” your needs before you do.
I could minister to you and quote scripture from the ONE who made you, and remind you your name exemplifies your purpose on this earth “God has given.” So, let’s do some IMAGINEERING, as coined by Disney – a fitting job description for creating a park of fantasies:
You could get recruited by a D1 school before May (or in the summer in AAU after June);
You could get recruited by a D2 or D3 school and still make history in the Cedar Park city as the FIRST to do so.
You could one day play for the NBA… or OWN a team of your own.
You could be a walk on and defy the expectations others have tried to label you with.
You could triumphantly (as I), go back to where you were despised and say: “see, I did it, despite you.” Living well is truly the best revenge.
No son, as Langston said in his poem “Mother to Son”: life ain’t no crystal stair.
But as long as I’m alive, from your first breath to my last, know that I’ll do my best to represent God in the earth and be there for you… I love you.
Son: I could quote Langston Hughes and tell you “Life ain’t no crystal stair,” (so cliché), and by the way, the squiggly line that automatically infused by Microsoft Word under the colloquialism and urban English, I might be remiss not to correct my sentence.
Yet, that does not change your situation that you seem to run into each and every day you strive to achieve the prize that God has for you. And every level you conquer, there is another that wants you to QUIT.
It wants you to give up, go away, accept mediocrity, nap, pity your circumstance, let some man/woman/system/institution define and demand what you are.
I could run to your rescue and baby you, get in someone’s face and defend you, yet… it was stress that caused you to go from rolling/to crawling/to bouncing/to standing and taking your first steps.
You fell when you tried to ride a bike. You fell when you first tried to skateboard. You failed to make your first basketball team in middle school. You failed at your first karate break. You have since mastered all of this!
I could protect you from the forces that will label you “threat,” “mugger,” “rapist”; “n----r.” Yet, these were the same forces that made your Aunt Mamie march in the streets and brave fire hoses, police dogs and beatings. She survived.
And when the Apostle Paul asked God to remove the splinter from his side, Omnipotent’s reply was: “My grace is sufficient for you, for MY strength is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)
And you have dedicated hours and hours of study with people you could not have probably met had God not been in your corner – Luther “Ticky” Burden, Richard McMullen, Marquette Wilkins – for He is Pro-video/provider, the One who “pre sees” your needs before you do.
I could minister to you and quote scripture from the ONE who made you, and remind you your name exemplifies your purpose on this earth “God has given.” So, let’s do some IMAGINEERING, as coined by Disney – a fitting job description for creating a park of fantasies:
You could get recruited by a D1 school before May (or in the summer in AAU after June);
You could get recruited by a D2 or D3 school and still make history in the Cedar Park city as the FIRST to do so.
You could one day play for the NBA… or OWN a team of your own.
You could be a walk on and defy the expectations others have tried to label you with.
You could triumphantly (as I), go back to where you were despised and say: “see, I did it, despite you.” Living well is truly the best revenge.
No son, as Langston said in his poem “Mother to Son”: life ain’t no crystal stair.
But as long as I’m alive, from your first breath to my last, know that I’ll do my best to represent God in the earth and be there for you… I love you.
Saturday, December 05, 2009
Holiday in Afghanistan
© 1 December 2009, Thom the World Poet, © 5 December 2009, the Griot Poet
and while we are there-take some holiday pix-
of civilians handcuffed to bars being struck with rifles
while post-traumatic stressed soldiers bomb wedding parties
Maybe we will in-curse into beautiful Pakistan
fly in on a drone with a camera in its nosecone
and bomb people in their houses
Perhaps we can cross borders undercover
in that phantom zone where guerrillas meet
In caves near Tora Bora, where the bones of Osama
are splattered beneath 500 lb bunker busters
We have the freedom to invade for no reason
send more troops in like those before us-
British, Russians-both of whom lost
They withdrew when their overseas jaunt grew deadly
They imported their weapons back to their front line homelands
Now we have terror bombs going off in Britain
when all the bombs we sent out overseas
want to come back home
to deal like our National Guard with New Orleans
Ruby Ridge, Waco, Oklahoma City
so we might never have to worry about terror again
we exported it(it returned to us!)
now we holiday at home(nervously)
Take off our shoes and belts and laughter on airplanes
and try not to remember when
we were free to holiday in foreign lands.
Without fear or favor/greeted as saviors
now no longer the flavor of the month
and all our dollars turn to Yuan.
and we cannot afford even to live at home.
WE ARE CIVILIANS! on December 1,2009
© 5 December 2009, the Griot Poet
we voted for change...
other than melanin, we get more of the same
clap trap gunboat diplomacy
encouraged by those less evolved than
intellectuals, scientists, poets, prophets...
instead...
ditto heads, hockey moms, birthers, deathers...
volume transcends reason
past summer "tea bag rallies" and
in this Yuletide season they shout:
"I want my country back!"
When the sad news is... it has never been.
Democracy is a dream we've lacked for a long, long time
that disappeared when the first robber barrons
used lawyers to interpret the 14th Amendment
to give person-hood to ex-slaves
for themselves
Corporations=corpus=body=person
isn't it so self-evident-obvious?
Corporations=corpus=body=person
which has more influence over our so-called politicians than votes
which is why health care reform is not a "no brainer"
but, a shouting match joke
invoked by insurance companies (busing in roughnecks) that require us to carry same
and blame the person
seeking care
for continuation of
their lives and welfare
of defrauding a system
they set up only
for maximum profit.
but, I digress...
in a country that broke ground on a "creation museum"
instead of planetariums
or presidential libraries
for C+ students-cum-motivation-speaker ex presidents that left us with a massive deficit…
brains are what we're lacking!
and while we are there-take some holiday pix-
of civilians handcuffed to bars being struck with rifles
while post-traumatic stressed soldiers bomb wedding parties
Maybe we will in-curse into beautiful Pakistan
fly in on a drone with a camera in its nosecone
and bomb people in their houses
Perhaps we can cross borders undercover
in that phantom zone where guerrillas meet
In caves near Tora Bora, where the bones of Osama
are splattered beneath 500 lb bunker busters
We have the freedom to invade for no reason
send more troops in like those before us-
British, Russians-both of whom lost
They withdrew when their overseas jaunt grew deadly
They imported their weapons back to their front line homelands
Now we have terror bombs going off in Britain
when all the bombs we sent out overseas
want to come back home
to deal like our National Guard with New Orleans
Ruby Ridge, Waco, Oklahoma City
so we might never have to worry about terror again
we exported it(it returned to us!)
now we holiday at home(nervously)
Take off our shoes and belts and laughter on airplanes
and try not to remember when
we were free to holiday in foreign lands.
Without fear or favor/greeted as saviors
now no longer the flavor of the month
and all our dollars turn to Yuan.
and we cannot afford even to live at home.
WE ARE CIVILIANS! on December 1,2009
© 5 December 2009, the Griot Poet
we voted for change...
other than melanin, we get more of the same
clap trap gunboat diplomacy
encouraged by those less evolved than
intellectuals, scientists, poets, prophets...
instead...
ditto heads, hockey moms, birthers, deathers...
volume transcends reason
past summer "tea bag rallies" and
in this Yuletide season they shout:
"I want my country back!"
When the sad news is... it has never been.
Democracy is a dream we've lacked for a long, long time
that disappeared when the first robber barrons
used lawyers to interpret the 14th Amendment
to give person-hood to ex-slaves
for themselves
Corporations=corpus=body=person
isn't it so self-evident-obvious?
Corporations=corpus=body=person
which has more influence over our so-called politicians than votes
which is why health care reform is not a "no brainer"
but, a shouting match joke
invoked by insurance companies (busing in roughnecks) that require us to carry same
and blame the person
seeking care
for continuation of
their lives and welfare
of defrauding a system
they set up only
for maximum profit.
but, I digress...
in a country that broke ground on a "creation museum"
instead of planetariums
or presidential libraries
for C+ students-cum-motivation-speaker ex presidents that left us with a massive deficit…
brains are what we're lacking!
Friday, December 04, 2009
Bubble
© 3 December 2009, The Griot Poet
It is called a “deluxe water ball assistant,” ninety-nine cents; “Made in China.”
It is a holiday scene suspended in liquid medium under an inverted aquarium. Solid figurines attached vertically to a horizontal faux base floor.
The only thing animated in clear, pristine silence are white faux snowflakes animated by shaking the bubble and letting each flake fall gently on the mannequins and the floor within.
So are our worshiped “American Idols”:
“Oh! If I could just touch a hem of his garment”; a lock of his hair/DNA sample/YOUTUBE unauthorized video performing God-knows-what (in the nude).
So are our worshiped “American Idols”:
Pop stars like:
- Lindsey Lohan;
- Britney Spears;
- Todd Bridges;
- Michael Jackson…
Politicians like:
- Mark Sanford;
- John Edwards;
- John Ensign;
- Bill Clinton…
Sports figures like:
- Dennis Rodman;
- Michael Jordon;
- Kobe Bryant;
- Tiger Woods…
We insist they behave in our preconceived parameters of their caricatures in our minds.
We participate like paparazzi vultures with the 4th estate in yellow journalism, hypocritically scripting their lives (and not our own).
We do not appreciate the blessing and gift of walking into a mart, a mall; a grocery store without thought of where our security detail is because we might get MAULED (or our lives threatened/our reputations blackmailed).
We assail them as we shake their bubbles.
Eventually we shake…
And shake…
And shake…
Until lateral forces starts a quake in the very structure of the mannequins’ unsteady base. Micro cracks and fissures appear at the microscopic level and manifest macroscopically in listing one side or the other, then eventually: both – sometimes all at once.
The cracks get larger until…
The figurine teeters and falls, like the flake, acceleration due to gravity cushioned by the viscous fluid as it falls gently to the faux floor.
And,
Since we can’t reach into their watery other world,
Where other rules of physics and reality apply to affect repairs:
We shrug!
And
We
Throw
IT
Away.
It is called a “deluxe water ball assistant,” ninety-nine cents; “Made in China.”
It is a holiday scene suspended in liquid medium under an inverted aquarium. Solid figurines attached vertically to a horizontal faux base floor.
The only thing animated in clear, pristine silence are white faux snowflakes animated by shaking the bubble and letting each flake fall gently on the mannequins and the floor within.
So are our worshiped “American Idols”:
“Oh! If I could just touch a hem of his garment”; a lock of his hair/DNA sample/YOUTUBE unauthorized video performing God-knows-what (in the nude).
So are our worshiped “American Idols”:
Pop stars like:
- Lindsey Lohan;
- Britney Spears;
- Todd Bridges;
- Michael Jackson…
Politicians like:
- Mark Sanford;
- John Edwards;
- John Ensign;
- Bill Clinton…
Sports figures like:
- Dennis Rodman;
- Michael Jordon;
- Kobe Bryant;
- Tiger Woods…
We insist they behave in our preconceived parameters of their caricatures in our minds.
We participate like paparazzi vultures with the 4th estate in yellow journalism, hypocritically scripting their lives (and not our own).
We do not appreciate the blessing and gift of walking into a mart, a mall; a grocery store without thought of where our security detail is because we might get MAULED (or our lives threatened/our reputations blackmailed).
We assail them as we shake their bubbles.
Eventually we shake…
And shake…
And shake…
Until lateral forces starts a quake in the very structure of the mannequins’ unsteady base. Micro cracks and fissures appear at the microscopic level and manifest macroscopically in listing one side or the other, then eventually: both – sometimes all at once.
The cracks get larger until…
The figurine teeters and falls, like the flake, acceleration due to gravity cushioned by the viscous fluid as it falls gently to the faux floor.
And,
Since we can’t reach into their watery other world,
Where other rules of physics and reality apply to affect repairs:
We shrug!
And
We
Throw
IT
Away.
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