4 posts tagged “politics”

I have a problem with all this making fun of Sarah Palin.

It's not that it's undeserved.  It's not even that her "positions" are defensible.

It's that it makes me extremely uncomfortable to watch her.  It is the same problem that I have with watching the TV show "The Office."  While I find the humor in the show quite hilarious and I spend most of the show laughing like the writers intended, I also spend most of the show cringing.

Watching Sarah Palin speak is like watching the most hilarious thing you've ever seen while undergoing dental surgery before the advent of anesthetics.  Frankly, it is not something that I look forward to.  So I'm going to try to avoid all this Palin-bashing, if only to spare myself the spine shivering (rip-roarin') spectacle.

Besides, it's not like I needed any further convincing.

The balance of power has shifted in Washington and around much of the country.  This is a good thing, on the surface.

Thinking a little more about the whole thing though, I can't help the feeling that it's a tenuous victory.  It's like watching a football game where your team is the overwhelming underdog, and somehow you have a 1 point lead at halftime.  in other words, there's hope and you've done well so far...  but the juggernaut is making plans to crush you at this very moment.

I think the reason I feel this way is because of the purported reasons that people voted the way they did.  Depends on who you ask, but I keep hearing that people were voting on "the war" or "the corruption in the Repuglican party."

While these are certainly valid reasons to vote them out, you just can't ignore the fact that the Dems "won" this election only because people were voting against the elephants.  Now if you ask me, I never like to win that way.  Going back to the football analogy, that's like throwing 4 interceptions and giving up 2 fumbles, but somehow still winning the game by one point.  In other words, you didn't win:  they lost.

So as America moves forward (instead of backward, for the first time in 6 years) I think the message should focus on everything besides the war and the corruption.  Sure, we need to find solutions to both of those situations, and soon.  But let's not forget all the other reasons to root for the good guys:  social justice, keeping the government's morality police at bay, our international standing, the strength of our economy and our currency, the rights of the individual over the corporation, the environment, a real energy policy, a real foreign policy...

Like I said, this is halftime.  We'll know in 2 years who wins the game when the whistle blows on the current President.

The major oil companies have posted a profit totaling $31,600,000,000 this quarter.  That's thirty-one billion six hundred million dollars.  I think it's important to put all those zeros in, unlike most major news sources, to emphasize the enormity of that number.

That is more than $5 per person on earth.  Profit, not revenue.  Profit.

That's $350,000,000 (three hundred fifty million dollars) per day.  Or, if you prefer, $14,600,000 per hour...  or $4,000 per second.  Yes, that's right, in the amount of time it's taken you to read this far, they've made about your annual salary, give or take a few ten thousand dollars.

Here's a great snippet from the Seattle P-I:

While more productive refineries contributed to Chevron's upturn, Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Fadel Gheit said the company reaped its biggest gains at the gasoline pumps. "They really cleaned up there," Gheit said.

Without providing specifics, Chevron Chief Financial Officer Steve Crowe confirmed during a Friday conference call that the company's profit margins were higher at the gasoline pump than at its oil refineries. "That shouldn't be terribly surprising," Crowe said, citing the "stickiness" of gas prices as he discussed the results with industry analysts.

In other words:

"We think you are dumb, and we are going to clean you out.  Ha ha ha."

These people are Evil, man.  Just remember that when you hit the polling place next month.  Yes, we are their hostages now, because they have conspired with your government and your business leaders to create an energy monopoly.  But there are other forms of energy out there.  We just don't have any way to use them because these people hold them at bay with all their might so that they can pillage you.  Yes, you.

So be smart.  Don't vote for anybody that will even talk with an oil company executive.  Or, at the very least, vote for the guy who stands to profit less from oil.  And maybe use the bus when you can?  Carpool, at the very least?  Turn your heat down 1 degree?  C'mon.  Small steps.

I'm on a quest to make words like "mainstream," "normal," and "middle America" bad words.

I want people to equate "mainstream" with prejudice and racism, and here's why:  it makes me shudder when I hear politicians talk about how something or someone is or is not in the "mainstream."  What they're really saying underneath the veneer is "let us use our prejudiced thinking to exclude others from our America."  And overwhelmingly, this means a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, corporate, "manifest destiny" America.

America is supposed to be a melting pot, and it's supposed to be the champion of the poor, and all that lip service.  A government sanctioned idea of what is "correct" or "mainstream" is divisive, and will ultimately destroy the power of our diversity.  America should not just be the place for all peoples only if they are willing to become drones of the corporatocracy.  America should be the place for all peoples, period.

So the next time you hear one of the talking heads say "mainstream," read it for what they really mean.