Bring the troops home

1.Bring all the troops home from both Iraq and Afghanistan.
2.Close all golf courses on all overseas airbases and cut the Airforce budget
3.Transfer all medical personnel (who do not wish to retire) to VA hospitals and hospitals in under-served communities.
4.Transfer all other Naval personnel to the heavily undermanned Coast Guard
5.Transfer all engineering personnel to rebuild America's decaying roadways,sewer lines, bridges and water towers.
6.Transfer remaining service personnel to serve in support of the heavily undermanned Border Patrol
And/OR
7.Provide retraining for remaining service personnel to assist in Step 5.

P.S. Return all Cuban land to Cuba.

Tips for Seniors: I. Health Care

The Proposed Health Care Bill promises many changes in how and how much seniors will have to pay for health care. Here are some tips on how to avoid these changes:


1. Seniors can circumvent the proposed upper limit on co-payments to physicians by simply tipping the physician the amount of your customary co-payment once that limit is reached. To be fair, 50% tip should be given directly to your physician and 50% sent to your insurance company.

2. To continue the gap in prescription coverage once your former life-time limit in coverage is reached, simply send the full cost of your prescriptions to the pharmaceutical company. (In some States it may be possible for you to give the extra dollars directly to the pharmacy.)

3. Opt out of Medicare. $35 a month for insurance is a ridiculously low amount. Insist on paying for private health insurance.

We Can Reduce Classroom Size and the Cost of Secondary Education

With California’s economy in disarray, it appears our State has no alternative than to cut back on expenditures for education. We will need to increase the number of students per class, lay-off well-qualified teachers, and delay the purchase of new equipment and texts indefinitely. Or will we?

What if we were to eliminate one year of high school? Long ago in a distant land, my classmates and I completed our elementary and secondary education in eleven, not twelve years.

Despite the seemingly foreshortened duration of our education, the breadth of our knowledge far exceeded that of the typical graduate of a California High School. We studied 17th Century European History and understood the reasons underlying the amendments to the United States Constitution. We were aware that Columbus already knew the Earth was round and had studied the economic factors underlying the American Revolution. (We also knew the names of many now forgotten cour de bois along with those of the scoring leaders in the NHL.)

We took shop with the result that I am still able to do electrical installations in my home, can change a flat tire, and can even change my rotor and condenser (if only there were such things). Alas, though our nation is in desperate need of mechanics of all sorts, California schools have abandoned their shop programs.

I must admit that in high school I was a B student at best. I spent much of my classroom time indulging in fantasy, counting the minutes till recess, barely enduing the moments that elapsed between lunch and the hour classes were over for the day. If I’d had to attend High School for yet another year, I’d of dropped out for sure. Decades later, in a year spent as a substitute teacher in California schools, I became aware of how many students already have mentally departed.

The 12th year of high school serves no useful purpose or California’s Community Colleges would not demand that all entering students complete a year of general educational requirements. Eliminating the 12th year would free up many teachers for service in the lower grades. It would permit sexually-active and would-be sexually-active young adults to live as the adults they were meant and want to be and not as the kids they no longer are.

But are all students equally ready to progress to adulthood? To facilitate the transition to the 11-year system, I propose we continue with a 12th year for a short period. A High-School Leaving examination will be given at the end of the 11th year. If students pass, they can bid their childhood farewell. If they fail, they must undergo yet another year of incarceration.

The result? When studying can yield freedom, those students who today sit sullen and apathetic (if not stoned) in high school classrooms, will bury their noses in books..

Will there be jobs for the increased numbers of departing students, openings at Community Colleges or the government sponsored trade schools we need so desperately? I have some solutions, but these form the basis of quite another column.

Bush destroys America in Just 8 years

The problem with http://www.truthout.org/video/011809Z is that with so much to report on the destruction of America (its principles and its economy) during Bush Lite's reign of ignorance, we tend to forget that he deliberately ignored for months the advance notice of 9/11 he received from the intelligence agencies of 16 countries including his own.

A radical proposal for Mid-East Peace

Moslems everywhere should stop sending the Palestineans weapons and help them to set up an industrial base instead.

Protocologists downcast

With the advent of the new year, protocologists everywhere are downcast as they no longer have a leader of the free world they can look up at.

The Bush Legacy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eih67rlGNhU&feature=related

CA's Proposition 8: A Tempest in a Teapot

Proposition 8 is irrelevant. Marriage is a religious sacrament. Religions, protected by State and Federal constitions, remain free to marry whomever they wish.

(As both Federal and State constitutions bar States from endorsing religion, states should stop issuing marriage licenses.)

The collection of legal obligations currently associated with marriage can already incorporated in a Declaration of Civil Union. As Proposition 8 affects only the issuing of marriage licenses by the State, Gays in California remain free to combine a religious marriage with a civil union.

The pig got up and slowly walked away

The negative attacks on Obama remind both McCain and Craig Unger (author of House of Bush, House of Saud) of the negative attacks on McCain by Bush adherants in the 2000 primary. As Unger notes on p195, these include assertions that “McCain’s wife had mob ties, McCain had illegitimate children, a “black” child (Obama??), an abortion in his family, .... and opposed breast cancer research.”

The wording changes; the meaning remains the same

The wording changes; the meaning remains the same.

"House Nigger"
changes to
"Oreo"
changes to
"Liberated but not Liberal"

Bush Had No Plan to Catch Bin Laden after 9/11

recall
1. saudi arabians finance attack on twin towers.
2. bush vows to confiscate saudi arabian bank accounts
3. taliban halts growth of poppies
4. bush invades afghanistan (allegedly in pursuit of Bin Laden)
5. poppy growth and opium production resume.
6.http://ipsnorthamerica.net/news.php?idnews=1722
7. bush has yet to confiscate financeers' bank accounts.

Tent cities spring up across the nation!

How about using $700 Billion for building homes for the homeless, plus safe schools, as well as replacing old water towers and sewer pipes. Labor free simply by bring troops back from Iraq to do the work. (Oops, I forgot we pay all those troops and their CEO generals, even if only the generals have post-mission medical benefits.)

The Pentagon Bailout Fraud

See http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174982/chalmers_johnson_the_pentagon_bailout_fraud

Books and DVD's about the war in Iraq

Gladiator at Law by Fredrick Pohl. Its highly prophetic opening chapter describes the war in which the last country in the world, Uttar Pradesh if I remember correctly, agrees to accept U.S. advertising.

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein details U.S. foreign policy from its undermining of democracy in the Congo to Hurrican Katrina and Iraq.

Nemesis by Chalmers Johnson describes the effect on other countries of the U.S. policy of establishing airbases and golf-courses in every nation in the world.

A Solitary War by Heraldo Munoz describes the pressures the US put on other UN nations to get them to join its war in Iraq.

The Fall of the House of Bush by Craig Unger details the lies the Bush administration told the US public (and General Powell) to get them to endorse the war in Iraq.

The film, Control Room, shows how the U.S, military retaliated against the Al-Jazeera network for putting pictures of dead civilians and g.i's on the air. "It gives the wrong picture of the war," one general said.

Which reminds me: Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo.

Good news for CEO wives

The recent 700 billion dollar bailout of the banking industry means your husband will get his golden parachute and you can keep your head up amid your Cayman neighbors.

Welcome to Zimbabwe

US plans to print 700 billion in additional currency in bank bailout. The resulting depreciation in the already depreciated US dollar will necessitate a rise in food prices and inflation at a record rate. In the worst case, senior can switch to dog food and those already eating dog food can die thus easing the burden on social security and Medicare which McCain plans to cut anyway.

Book Review: A Garden of Vipers

When I first read the description on its book jacket, "plunged into a world where truth is weakness, deception is admired, and death is just another cost of doing business," I thought, oh boy, another book about the Bush administration. But while the villians in this detective novel are spoiled rich psychotics, they live in Mobile Ala and generally only kill one person at a time. This is the Jack Kerley's third novel in the series and is every bit as exciting as its predecessors. Still, I kind of miss the political infighting which characterized The Hundredth Man, his first.

military takeover in 2011

It doesn't really matter who wins the election, the Manchurian Candidate or the Pretty Boy. Both seem reluctant to express the awful truth: real unemployment (counting workers who no longer are looking for jobs) is running well above 15%. Once, the military and the contractors return from Afghanistan and Iraq, unemployment will exceed 30%. Look for a military takeover in 2011.

Bush's Contributions to the World Economy

There has much been so many negative comments about Bush's destruction of the US economy, that we thought it time to set the record straight. Under Bush's leadership:

o The economy's of China and Vietnam have known unprecedented growth.

o Though profits plummeted and thousands of minority youths were thrown out of work after the Taliban destroyed Afghanistan's poppy fields, prompt action on Bush's part restored heroin production, profits are up for Bush's campaign contributors, and urban youth can again make a living selling crack and smack on street corners and school yards.

o Realizing that cutting taxes for the rich would not be successful unless there were huge profits for the rich to avoid taxes on, Bush sent hundreds of thousands of troops to Iraq. Not only have contractors profited there in the absence of oversight, but the oil companies have profited in three different ways:

1. The demand for oil has doubled due to the need to transport troops and equipment. This had led both to higher sales and higher profits per sale.
2. Taxpayer-paid service men and contractors have replaced oil company personnel in guarding oil fields and pipe lines.
3. To get US troops to leave, the Iraqii government has been forced to sign long-term contracts with the oil companies at ruinously low prices, thus ensuring that all profits on Iraqii oil will go to the oil companies.

o Deposits in Switzerland, the Cayman islands and other safe havens for excess profits have doubled.

Don't Blame the Manchurian Candidate

Those who would throw brickbats at McCain for dumping his wife and the mother of his children after getting out of prison, then marrying some rich bitch who would further his political career, should remember that after five of indoctrination at Communist hands he was merely doing what he'd been programmed to do. It's the Communists' next post-hypnotic suggestion, we ought worry about.

(Maybe Bush really was in the Air National Guard and got shot down over VietNam. How else to explain both Vietnam and China experiencing such never-before-seen prosperity as they have under Bush's leadership?)