A friend of mine just made this long and profound statement on Facebook. I think it needs to be preserved for as many people to see as possible. I left her name out of it, but her identity does not matter. NO ONE should have to endure this!
Monthly Archives: August 2016
Why party labels in the USA are completely useless
Watch this video:
The anti-slavery party of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War was NOT the party of Big Business from the 1870s to the 1930s. The party that defended slavery before and during the Civil War was NOT the party that fights for the rights of blacks and other minorities today. The Religious Right which infested the Republicans in the 1980s had almost nothing in common with the likes of Donald Trump now.
This is why we need a MULTI-PARTY system like in some European countries. The two-party system we Americans have always had is by nature misleading. The south has ALWAYS been conservative compared to the north. If the Ku Klux Klan was founded today, it would be founded by southern REPUBLICANS. Conservatism is the ideology we must always fight, no matter what party label it marches under.
For the record, it is not BIG government we should oppose, but STUPID government which is a problem no matter what its size. Did you know that Ronald Reagan, a conservative Republican, actually increased government by massive military spending….that we also never needed in the first place?! And why did Reagan do that? Because so many big businesses have had contracts with our military and profit from every war we end up fighting in! I can guarantee that if a Republican gets the Presidency in the next decade or so, then he will find an excuse, any excuse to get us into another overseas war like Bush Sr. did when he pushed us into war with Iraq in 1991. and his son did again in 2003. Consider yourselves warned!
As for illegal immigration, the rules were designed beforehand to exclude non-white people from Latin America, including Mexico. Ironic considering we conquered and annexed half of Mexico’s territory in the 1840s. “Hey, thanks for all your land, but we do not want your people! GO AWAY!!!” Meanwhile, Puerto Rico, which is majority Spanish-speaking and non-white, remains a mere possession of the USA and not a state. Go figure.
This corporate backstabber belongs in PRISON!
Read this outrageous story (emphasis mine):
EpiPen maker’s stock value plunges nearly $3 billion as investors panic
Mylan Pharmaceuticals — the company that makes the EpiPen rescue device — has watched its stock value plummet over the last five days as panicky investors jump ship.
According to U.S. Uncut, outrage over Mylan’s decision to jack up the price of the EpiPen has spooked shareholders, whose departures have reduced the value of Mylan stock by 12.4 percent. On August 19, Mylan stocks went from $49.20 per share to $43.11 on August 24, a net loss of nearly $3 billion for the company.
The EpiPen is a popular rescue device for food allergy sufferers who run the risk of anaphylaxis — a potentially lethal reaction to allergen exposure. The device rapidly delivers a dose of epinephrine to the system, which for severe allergy sufferers can mean the difference between life and death.
The device was conceived and developed for the U.S. Department of Defense by researcher Sheldon Kaplan. The studies and testing were all underwritten by U.S. taxpayer revenues. The device was originally created as an antidote to nerve gas, but it was released to the public as a rapid remedy to anaphylactic shock.
Tom Cahill at U.S. Uncut wrote, “However, in 2007, Mylan Pharmaceuticals acquired the rights to the EpiPen and immediately started raising the price. After Heather Bresch, its former top lobbyist, successfully pushed for legislation in Congress that required all public schools to carry EpiPens for children with food allergies, its price hikes became more frequent and more severe, raising by at least 10 percent every other quarter from the fourth quarter of 2013 to the second quarter of 2016. A score of U.S. Senators are calling for an investigation into the price hikes.”
Over the course of her tenure at the company, Bresch — daughter of U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) — raised her own salary 617 percent and conducted an offshore reincorporation of Mylan, Inc. under the Netherlands’ looser corporate laws, but maintained the company’s headquarters and operations in the U.S.. This practice is known as “inversion” and it has become a popular way for U.S. companies to lower their effective tax rate while continuing to enjoy all the market rights and privileges of companies conducting all of their business domestically.
Bresch — who was one of Fortune magazine’s most powerful women of 2015 — gave a disastrous interview to CNBC on Thursday, attempting to pass off her $16 million salary hike and the 450 percent increase in EpiPen prices as perfectly normal business practices in the pharmaceutical industry.
Interviewer Brian Kelly pointed out that Bresch apparently used her power as a lobbyist-turned-CEO and her influence with heads of state to legislate a market for her company’s product, then inflated the price.
“I’m legislating in the access to EpiPens!” she protested.
An estimated 15 million Americans suffer from food allergies, including 1 in every 13 children under 18. Every three minutes, a food allergic reaction sends an American to the emergency room, totaling around 200,000 hospital visits per year.
This is exactly the sort of despicable thing about “Big Pharma” that progressives like Bernie Sanders were warning us about.
What is especially troubling about that is that the Senator who enabled his daughter to commit these unethical atrocities is a DEMOCRAT. This is one case in which I would be happy to see a Democrat voted out of office, even if a Republican does take his place.
What Heather Bresch did should get her and her father arrested, tried and convicted of a conspiracy charge, and imprisoned for many years! Food allergies are literally a matter of life and death! WE NEED SOCIALIZED MEDICINE!
Five Things Most Christians Get Wrong About the Bible
Inspired by atheist YouTube personality Steve Shives, I have compiled the following list of five things Christians, and many other people, typically get wrong about the Bible.
- It is treated as a single work, when in fact it was sixty-six (and perhaps more, according to some Christian denominations) SEPARATE works that were never intended by their many original authors to be put together. That did not happen until centuries after the books were written. Imagine a massive English book that assembled some of the works of Dr. Suess, Stephen King, Louis L’Amour, Anne Rice, Barbara Cartland, R. L. Stine, Sidney Sheldon, and Richard Scarry into a single volume to allow people easy access to samples of American literature. Would it ever have been reasonable to claim that those specific works by those specific authors must from then on always be sold together in that specific form?
- It combines scriptures from TWO different religions, but misrepresents them in the process. The scriptures of the Jewish religion are called the “Old Testament” and the scriptures of the Christian religion are called the “New Testament”, even though they are actually over 1900 years old and thus are hardly “new” by any standard you can name. The implication that Christians should have any claim to the scriptures of some other religion, even an earlier and related one, would be considered nonsense by most people if we were talking about any other subject. Do Americans have any claim whatsoever to the Constitution of the British government?
- It is assumed that these scriptures were intended for all of mankind, when in fact most of the Jewish Scriptures were written by Jews and intended only for Jews. Maybe the Christian Scriptures were intended for all mankind, but…….Jesus only came to the Jewish people and was never known to go outside his people’s homeland. It was only later after his supposed resurrection that he dispatched his disciples to preach the Gospel around the world.
- Even more damning, there is NOTHING in the Christian scriptures that came directly from Jesus himself. In fact about half of the Christian Scriptures came from Paul, who was depicted in the book of Acts as originally an enemy of the Christians who later converted to Christianity and helped spread the Gospel among non-Jews. In what context would this be considered credible anywhere else? Imagine if Abraham Lincoln was credited with ending slavery in the USA, but wrote nothing about slavery that we have to verify his involvement, except biographies decades after his death that do not even agree on the circumstances of his birth, and most of the work of ending slavery after him was done by General Robert E. Lee, himself once a slaveowner who fought for the Confederacy during the American Civil War and later became an abolitionist.
- Revelation is treated by most Christians as the last thing God ever revealed to mankind. Sure, let us ignore the Quran, the Book of Mormon, the Urantia Book, and Conversations with God, among other things. But if those are not valid, why accept the Christian scriptures……or even the Jewish ones, for that matter?
A Family of Messengers
I’m going to post a series of short stories featuring characters I have made up. Allow me to introduce them.
“Daniel the Intellectual” – Scientist, father and strong critic of religion.
“Maria the Caretaker” – Wife of Daniel, artist and new age musician.
“Matthew the Warrior” – Son of Daniel and Maria, rock guitarist and singer for the Band of Messengers and computer gamer.
“Suzanne the Feminist” – Daughter of Daniel and Maria, rock singer and guitarist in the Band of Messengers, lesbian and a sworn enemy of the NRA and the Republican Party.
“Tommy the Comic” – Younger son of Daniel and Maria, drummer in the Band of Messengers, loves to tell jokes to make others look stupid, but also very loving to those he cares about.
“Lisa the Latina” – Romantic partner of Suzanne, joins the Band of Messengers as a bassist.
“Carla the Afro” – Matthew’s African-American girlfriend, joins the Band of Messengers as a keyboardist. Continue reading
A Kidnapping Gone Wrong
Once a group of criminals kidnapped the teenage daughter of a rich man and called the father a few hours later. They told him that if he did not pay them $100,000 within 24 hours, they would kill the girl. This was the father’s reply:
“So you believe in human sacrifice? The Aztecs did too! Are you descended from them? I heard that some cultures sacrificed virgins to gain favor with their gods. I know my daughter has a boyfriend, so would you like to ask him if they have had sex? As for the 100,000 dollars, did you know that the largest dollar bill ever printed by the U.S. Mint was in that amount? Sadly, no such bills are in circulation today, I would so love to have one! With all the billionaires in the world, we would find such bills extremely useful for special transactions. Anyway, I’m sure once you kill my daughter you will either find someone else to kidnap or the police will hunt you down before you can pull that off. In any case, you won’t get a cent from me! I’m a rich man for a reason and one of those reasons is my refusing to merely throw away money for trivial causes…..and giving money to someone who has not earned it is as trivial as it gets…..unless you consider kidnapping someone to be hard work, of course!”
The kidnappers were so gobsmacked by the rich father’s callous attitude that they soon released the girl.
First Amendment Issue?
I just noticed the following story on a right-wing internet news publication called the Federalist. I will post the parts from the original story in red and my responses to it will be in blue.
http://thefederalist.com/2016/08/04/how-to-fight-black-lives-matter-harassment-in-houston/ Continue reading
Cleaning up Congress
Read this story:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-congress-approval-rating-drops-to-11-percent/
Congress’ approval rating drops to 11 percent
Congress’s approval rating has slipped to the lowest level this year, according to a poll released Wednesday by Gallup.
The poll found 11 percent of people in the United States approve of Congress, which is its lowest job approval rating this year.
It’s also only 2 percentage points higher than the all-time low of 9 percent approval from November 2013 after the last government shutdown.
Meanwhile, 86 percent of the public said they disapprove of Congress.
Gallup began tracking congressional approval ratings 41 years ago and the ratings since 2011 have been among the worst recorded. Congress experienced a record-high 84 percent approval rating in October 2001, a month after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The new survey also found 8 percent of Republicans said they approve of Congress while 13 percent of independents and 11 percent of Democrats said the same about lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
The poll comes just weeks after Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, was elected as speaker of the House and after Congress passed a major budget deal to raise spending limits and lift the debt ceiling into March 2017. Lawmakers still must pass a spending package before the Dec. 11 deadline to fund the government and avert another shutdown.
The poll surveyed 1,021 adults between November 4 and 8 with a 4 percentage point margin of error.
How is it possible for the general public to so despise Congress when they have two year and six year intervals to replace its members? Because, quite simply, they almost never do! Most Americans only pay attention to the Presidential races and usually the Governors’ races in their respective states and do not take much notice of the Congressional and state representative races. And yet it is Congress that makes the laws and decides the federal budgets for the United States, while state legislatures do the same at the state level. The President and the Governors have very little power, so merely electing them means almost nothing.
This is why the American people elected Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, then watched in amazement when Republicans took control of Congress in 2010 and 2014, causing incredible amounts of gridlock later. If you do not vote in ALL elections and for ALL positions in government, you end up with a government that you do not approve of! It is the extremists that take advantage of the mid-term elections to get their stooges into Congress….and there are FAR more right-wing extremists in America than left-wing ones. You can blame dogmatic Christian denominations for that as well as the media being controlled largely by corporations with their own economic and political agendas!
Also, most Americans tend to support their own Representatives or Senators and assume that the “other ones” are the problem. That is not true! You can only replace the members of Congress that are supposed to represent you, so if you do not vote them out, you are to blame for the failures of Congress. Not other people in different states and districts.
And of course, there is gerrymandering too.
Dale Husband's Intellectual Rants 