Did you know? Big oil, besides getting truly massive subsidies, is rapidly using up scarce water supplies.


https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/09/25/climate/fracking-oil-gas-wells-water.html?unlocked_article_code=n-soqj6d8w3UAMKsCrtVAXiTZ3ZHT1AeLDNmcg9G2aXHWdRTclc6TEqeePCR02xbojdoXwbX3SQM0gC6MrWQxNbFtIWcOQKNLkLQ6P941eFU4eplphIwZ9H-tj1n5E0ipWey_TJ2lCTCD1k-z6LD_6iR8NwYWDw6mHna2PPmwmmY7-dlfHjU1QG_c8t7rAegPuTqUH-dO6qHHaNfMBKVMRsHawL-N0k7dsFbj9KIYpP_zrJGdOrhdaNyg9doMsqLKQTxztW4uVyN9uyi5x6cFTO0wn-kDDgHbsog_JKTBKluXMRfpyPlNsliHElLq6aM0JG6uezSBmrZ0D8pANCZnUpSnfhSLdfZ3w1ix5tVKpK4ySIsuso&smid=url-share

Source: The Guardian

Vivek Ramaswamy has described himself as an “outsider”, accusing rivals for the Republican presidential nomination of being “bought and paid for” by donors and special interests.

But the 38-year-old Ohio-based venture capitalist, whose sharp-elbowed and angry display stood out in the first Republican debate this week, has his own close ties to influential figures from both sides of the political aisle.

Prominent among such connections are Peter Thiel, the co-founder of tech giants PayPal and Palantir and a rightwing megadonor, and Leonard Leo, the activist who has marshaled unprecedented sums in his push to stock federal courts with conservative judges.



Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/25/vivek-ramaswamy-rightwing-elite-close-ties-leonard-leo-peter-thiel

---

So...just another shill for billionaire parasites - drill baby drill, open coal and gas all the way, blah, blah, blah. ALL ABOUT WALL STREET PROFITS.

Fucking hypocrite.

morning show:



I'd like to see a Democrat on one of the Sunday talk shows lead with THAT.

And, if the GOP person tries to squirm out of it, pivot to:



It's time to POUND on these fucks.

Why, here in 'Murika we be free!

Free to...what?

Be slaves to debt? You bet. Consumer debt here in 'Murika has topped $17.05 TRILLION.

Total student debt - $1.6 TRILLION
Total healthcare debt - $88 BILLION in 2022
Total credit card debt - $986 BILLION in 2022

But hey, our grandkids are FREE to get gunned down in their schools, or in malls, or in theaters, or while shopping, or while watching a parade! And right-wing nut-jobs are FREE to buy up all kinds of assault weapons. Heck yeah!

And we're FREE to pay out the nose at the grocery store for stuff in smaller packages being sold at higher prices. They are calling that GREED-flation, and that is darned right.

We're FREE to not get medical or dental care we NEED because it costs so much. And we're FREE to have crummy, rationed healthcare with financially crippling copays!

We're FREE to pay out the nose for inadequate health insurance and dental insurance is a SICK JOKE. And we're free to go bankrupt with an average of $43K in healthcare debt! Sure, Democrats are trying to remove healthcare debt from credit reports - the equivalent of putting a Band-Aid on a severed artery.

Sigh...so may ways to be FREE here in 'Murika...

But Wall Street is doing GREAT, and there are more billionaires here than ever before! I know that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy all over. That bronze bull-idol on Wall Street that has replaced God be hungry for more shareholder PROFITS. And we are free to hold those same shareholder PROFITS above human life, worker interests, consumer welfare and the earth itself.

And we individual taxpayers are FREE to pay in 84% of the federal government's total tax revenue while corporations pay only 9% but get all those tax breaks. And dirt-bags like Trump pay a few hundred in tax on millions in profits.

So, no we don't celebrate the 4th in my house because FREEDOM HAS BECOME A JOKE thanks to the Wall Street greed lizards, the billionaire parasites, the corporate takeover of the republic, the disgusting and immoral imbalance in wealth, the lucrative fear industry that has awakened racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, gun violence, white nationalism and religious intolerance...

But hey, isn't all this FREEDOM great?

Seriously.

Some people are just stupid. This is from an AP article dated May 15. This happened in Springfield, a tiny little town on the eastern plains about 40 miles south of Lamar. Hot, flat and lots of Trump supporters and Q people.

Here's an excerpt - I'll put the link in but it is only worth reading for a couple additional chuckles:



https://apnews.com/article/dog-dui-colorado-dca3f5a155d4ce3c1d6a5c1aaa1e9d43

I thought I would publicly acknowledge a few of the teachers who shaped my life.

Ms. Shep - who shepherded me through Kindergarten.

Ms. Howard, whose son was killed in Viet Nam c. 1966.

Mr. Akiyama, a true Nissai Regiment WWII war hero, and a humble, genuinely good fifth grade teacher.

Ms. O'Meara, who told me I should take AP English in high school, but I stupidly refused because my 'friends' were not in AP classes.

Mr. Stratton, who taught Latin and inspired me in many ways.

Mr. Guy, who told us about how anti-war demonstrators were treated (he was one).

Teachers take a lot of crap, you know? They are maligned, grossly underpaid, and probably want to vomit every time some person who wears his ignorance on his sleeve utters the tired old cliche, "Those who can..."

But you know, I had some real good ones. Bad ones too. But mostly good. Dedicated people who shaped me in those long ago years to become who I am now.

May all the teachers who go in, day after day, and give their life force to help young people along the way be warmly blessed and appreciated!

Usually I do not post videos because I am old fashioned and prefer to read articles. But this video speaks to the qanon and other haters about the horror of hatred, racism, anti-Sematism. This is a video worth watching.

May he rest in peace in perpetual light.

We should remember.

That is all.

My wife awakened this morning weeping from agonizing pain. As she has for the last two weeks.

Four weeks ago she had a shoulder replacement surgery on top of two unnecessary surgeries earlier this year - one in March to flush out a non-existant infection, and another in May to install an antibiotic plastic temporary shoulder to fight this nonexistant infection. She also had to have two six-week picc lines (essentially an needle keeping a vein open so the patient can inject antibiotics once or twice a day. It takes about half an hour each time).

How do we know her infection was non-existant? Her infectuous disease physician (with whom the surgeon had minimal contact, because...well, I don't know. But 'evidence based' is sounding increasing like bullshit to me to be honest) told her he didn't think she ever even had an infection.

Bottom line, we finally, after the second surgeon went off on her, became furious when she confronted him with what the infectuous disease guy had told her (the surgeon had used a test usually used for infections in metal prostheses, like shoulders and knees, and not for 'native joints'). The wife researched that on that bane of all the god-playing doctors, the internet, and found out the surgeon had probably misused this test on her to find 'infection.'

She complained formally, like that would do any good.

She had the final shoulder replacement, which was reverse, so she'll never have full use of the arm. And what was really wrong, you ask (if you have read this far, which I don't expect many of you will)? She had agressive rheumatoid arthritis in multiple joints, which if the HMO had read the warning signs instead of worrying about collecting copays and coinsurance and premium payments, they could have done some simple tests YEARS AGO and my wife wouldn't even have had to have shoulder surgery.

Evidence based = trial and error. Let's all be honest. THE PROFIT MOTIVE IS IN DIRECT CONFLICT WITH OUR INTERESTS AS PATIENTS. Evidence based is just a CYA song they all sing. Because in my wife's case the evidence was THERE all along - swollen fingers, surgery to remover an arthritis-twisted bone in her hand, a second knee replacement back in 2012. All there. But the cost cutting greed-measures in this system designed to serve Wall Street greed-lizards and shareholders rather than patients make me, at least, want to hurl.

And I'm TIRED of hearing how the Democrats took Medicare for all Americans off the table in '09 because they didn't have enough votes, and it wasn't good politics. It would have been moral. It would have been the right thing. I volunteered for Obama's '08 (and '12) campaigns BECAUSE HE CAMPAIGNED ON HEALTHCARE. Michelle's dad got shitty service because of inadequate insurance, bean counters denying payment for meds he needed, and a hospital much more concerned with cash flow than with actual patient care.

There are around 850 people who have been elected to high office, and if they wanted to do the right thing they could do it now!!! NOW!!!

Oh, but wait. The health insurance lobby! Oh no! We cannot possibly hurt SHAREHOLDER PROFITS!

Now, she's calling the nurse care line for what good they will do. We have to wait in a socialized medical system you say, but we had to save for two years to pay the financially crippling copay in 2019 for the hand surgery, and we had to TAKE OUT HEALTH CARE DEBT now, in our sixties, when we should be doing better than we ever have financially.

We need Medicare for all Americans NOW. It is the right thing, the moral thing, and FUCK SHAREHOLDER PROFITS.

OK, rant over.

My father was in the Pacific Theater in WWII.

He was in the Battle for New Guinea on Morotai.

It took the world upwards of sixty million lives and years of economic ruin to get rid of the Axis powers.

Dad had a friend, Herb, who was in Patton's Third Army and he had stories about liberating Buchenwald. Other stories, too. Patton really did tell his soldiers to grease the boogie wheels of their tanks with German blood and guts.

Hitler awakened nationalism, blew the ember of anti-Sematism into a raging fire and loosed the 'dogs of war' upon us all.

How in the world did WE here in America get to this almost exact parallel to Germany in the 30s?

Oh, that's right.
- The 1971 Powell Manifesto
- Death of the Fairness Doctrine
- Nixon's Southern Strategy
- AM hate-talk radio
- Growth of the Republican news (propaganda) machine (Fox, Sinclair, others)
- Sarah Palin waking up the ugly, stupid, ignorant, racist base of the GOP
- Trump and the 'good people' at Charlottesville
- Rise in right-wing militias (the American Stahlhelm and Sturmabteilung)
- Moscow Mitch packing the Supreme Court with Dominionist Christians

In the meantime Wall Street roars:
- The Espionage Act that put Eugene Debs in prison
- The legal doctrine of Shareholder Primacy in 1919
- The Taft-Hartley Act which made general strikes illegal
- Systematic union busting with little support for workers in the US Congress (1950-1990s and even later)
- Supply-side Chicago School economics (trickle down) calling for taxes for corporations and billionaires to be cut, cut, cut in order to transfer the burden of paying for the Federal Government to individual taxpayers, who now shoulder 86% of that burden while corporations are only paying in 6.8%.
- Supreme court rulings easing corporate corruption of elected officials, culminating in Citizens United
- The constant drumbeat about how government is bad, bad, bad
- The constant drumbeat about the national debt (only when Dems are in power - OK for GOP wars, though)
- The discipline of GOP talking points - right now, the words 'far left agenda' are being put forth in ads all over the US
- Immediate condemnation of anything that would materially help Americans and their families as SOSH-A-LIZM
- The neoliberal mantra of 'privatize, deregulate, and gut social programs'
- Bush trying to privatize Social Security in 2004

You get the idea. Lots of money behind creating a system THAT FUNNELS TAX MONEY FROM THE US TREASURY TO BILLIONAIRES AND CORPORATIONS. Make no mistake, please, EVER. This is and has always been about money, and more money for the uber-wealthy and corporations - from the days of the rise of Hitler to these unhappy days we're living through now. The racism and anti-Semitism is incidental in that DEMOCRACY IS NOT SUPPORTIVE OF OLIGARCHS.

It is far easier for oligarchs to steal money from taxpayers in a fascist state, after all. Trouble is the fascists tend to war and genocide, and the oligarchs ALWAYS foolishly think they can be controlled.

This, people, is why I call them BILLIONAIRE PARASITES.

This is a CLASS WAR and has been since the first time the people rebelled against aristocrats. Silly us, eh? Wanting better lives and all!