Monday, December 7, 2015
Week of 12/07/2015
The 2015 Brutally Honest Awards
Well another year has come and gone, and while some
people wished the year would end sooner, I’m just glad that we just endured it.
And with the end of 2015 is the end of my self-imposed
ban on talk about the 2016 Presidential Election and all the wannabes seeking
to replace President Obama. I have had
to bite my tongue and bide my time for a whole year since the GOP clown car
started loading up because...
Wait, wait, wait.
Let’s make this official.
The Biggest Waste Of Time And
Attention In 2015: The GOP and Democratic Presidential Contenders For The 2016
Elections – Let’s get brutally honest here... the media and
the pollsters and the political “experts” have been wasting all of our time and
attention for the whole year for nothing more than an overhyped glorified
fantasy football tournament! This has
all been one huge fraud on the American people!
It’s a shell game, a diversion, a way to take our eyes off the comings
and goings of the world around us and focus instead on nothing less than a
concocted fantasy involving two separate clown cars of wannabes and pretenders.
What’s worse is that this has been nothing short of a raw,
stinking money grab for so-called “political consultants”. There’s a story
out now that shows that Super-PACs may be raking in billions and billions
of dollars, but the vast majority of that money is going right into the pockets
of “consultants” instead of into the campaigns they claim to be raising the
money for.
So when I’m saying it’s all a huge fraud, I’m not
exaggerating.
The Biggest Lie Told By The Media
To The American People in 2015: Explaining Rick Perry’s Dropping Out Of The GOP
Clown Car – Former Texas Governor Rick “Pray For Rain” Perry
was one of many GOP clowns who thought he had a chance to be President... for a
second time. And then he wimped out long
before a single primary or caucus could be cast.
And how did the media explain it?
“The voters simply weren’t ready for Governor Perry.”
Excuse me, media?
Ex-cuse me?!?
“The voters” never had a say in the whole thing! Not one!
Not one single solitary voter cast a ballot in any way, shape, or form
yet!
It would be one thing if Perry dropped out after the
first or second primary or caucus and it was clear voters weren’t voting for
him. Then the media can make that kind
of claim.
But the voters don’t have any say whatsoever right now
in this overhyped overpaid fantasy football game! It’s all the figment of pollsters,
consultants, and members of the media!
So it wasn’t “the voters” that were not “ready”...
... it was the media.
The Hypocritical Failure Award
For 2015: Governor Scott Walker’s Bankrupt Clown Car Campaign
– Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was yet another member of the GOP clown car,
and his supposed strong suit was his “success” in controlling spending in his
state and in breaking the control of the unions. So... funny thing... he was yet another one
of those early losers who wimped out before a single vote could be cast, and
somehow... he’s broke!
Well, technically, his campaign is broke.
Last month, Governor Walker needed to beg his supporters
for more money to pay
for the $1 million in debt his campaign incurred.
Wait a minute, Governor! You’re supposed to be a conservative! You’re supposed to be a “successful governor”! You’re not supposed to have this kind of a
problem! So not only are you a failure,
but you can’t even be fiscally responsible for your own campaign?!? Where’s your “proven management skills”, sir?
The Brief Moment Of Sanity Award
for 2015: The United States Supreme Court Decision Over Same-Sex Marriages
– I’ve said it since day one and I’ll repeat it here. The subject of same-sex marriages doesn’t
affect me one bit. To me, it’s an issue
of individual freedom, and the majority of justices in the Supreme Court got it
right when they ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment prevailed on this
subject. As soon as one state legalized
same-sex marriages, all the others had to follow suit and recognize them. That’s what the Fourteenth Amendment was
designed for. And the GOP should know it
because they were the party that pushed for its ratification a
hundred-and-fifty years ago!
To borrow from William Shatner: I’m laughing at their “superior
intellect”.
The American Ayatollah Award for
2015: Kentucky
Clerk Kim Davis – While most places in America either
rejoiced at the Supreme Court decision over same-sex marriages or screamed
bloody murder over it, Kim Davis decided she was going to defy the American
system and the very oath of office that she swore to on her bible. And thanks to the Christian Dominionists and
the GOP clown car of presidential wannabes, they turned her into a fake martyr
and fraudulently claimed she was jailed because of her beliefs.
This is someone who should not be working her job if
she can’t do her job according to the very oath she swore on her bible to carry
out. She can hate the Supreme Court
decision, she can curse the justices and the judges and the Americans that
support it, but she has no right whatsoever to use her government position to
impose her religious beliefs on others, period.
That is why she went to jail!
“Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.” Remember that? Marriage is Caesar’s, not God’s. Accept it and deal with it.
The Judas Award For Backstabbing
Every Male In America: Playboy Magazine – This month, the
last issue of Playboy Magazine will be released which involves nudity. Decades of social and legal struggling for
this content for men to read is
flushed down the toilet thanks to a hack editor in the name of “rebranding”. What will be released next year will be a
fraud with a rabbit’s head logo. And
when... not if... the magazine eventually fails, that editor will have nobody
to blame for it but himself.
The Douchebag Award For 2015:
Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli – Let’s see... buy
the company that is the sole manufacturer of a life-saving drug, jack up the
price 5000 percent, then smugly get in front of the media and BS the world as
to why this is a “good” thing, then promise to lower prices... and
then reneges on it. Yeah, you’re a
real saint, pal.
The good news is that there is a company that decided
enough was enough with these price-gouging Big Pharma companies and they’re
coming up with generic
alternatives for $1 a pill.
Oh, and Shkreli’s response? He says he “regrets” jacking up the price
5000 percent. He
says it should have been higher.
This is why Wall Street people are the scum of
humanity, people.
We now have our “Let Them Eat Cake” moment, folks. Who
wants to build a guillotine?
The Smartest Political Decision
Of 2015 (tie): Vice-President Joe Biden Not Running For President and House
Speaker John Boehner Resigning – Biden decided that it just
wasn’t worth the hassle to run for the White House, and that was probably best
for him especially since he did lose his son earlier this year. Unfortunately for America, it may also cement
Hillary Clinton’s nomination.
Meanwhile, I have to give Bohener credit for knowing
when to get out. He couldn’t control his
own House. He’s had to watch as his
radical extremists sabotage the legislative branch of government and then get
the blame for it. That branch is now in
the hands of “Mister Budget”, Paul Ryan, which thankfully means that “Boy
Wonder” won’t eventually try to run for the White House as long as he’s there.
The Biggest Clown Of 2015: Donald
Trump – Like that’s a surprise!
Seriously, the secret to Trump’s so-called “success”
is that he’s a self-promoting clown who knows how to play the media like Stevie
Wonder on a piano. And like I said
earlier, this whole fantasy football hoax is being run by the media. They created Trump. They continue to cover him even as he
castigates them and badmouths them. They
put him on the pedestal and keep him in the limelight. And as long as they do that, he will milk it
for all that it is worth.
I want you to imagine what it would be like if the
media suddenly decided to treat him like they currently do to, say, Rand Paul. Since the polls are controlled by the media,
do you really think Trump would be anywhere near the top if they decided he
wasn’t worthy of it?
Remember this well: polls are not votes! It doesn’t matter what the polls say. What matters is who shows up at the polling
places and cast ballots for the primaries and caucuses. We’ve seen this play out time and time again. We’ve seen supposedly “unstoppable” people
who come out on top in the polls and then fold when the votes come in. Remember New York City’s thug-mayor Rudy
Giuliani? Remember Howard Dean? Remember Hillary’s first campaign?
If Trump can actually get people to vote when it
matters, that’s one thing. Until then,
he’s just a clown playing a clown act in the biggest overpriced and overhyped
circus on the planet.
The Double Faceplant Award For
2015: DC Comics – So thirty years ago, DC hit the reset
button with “Crisis on Infinite Earths”.
And it did what it was meant to do; it allowed DC to start over and keep
their characters fresh and timely. Unfortunately,
it also opened up the idea that they can continue to come up with these big “mega-crisis”
specials at least once every year, and then once every fifth week, and then
pretty much once a week. And then they
overlapped so-called “mega-crisis” events so they would be part of other “mega-crisis”
events. And then they would hit the
reset button again and again.
Well this year DC decided to unload “Convergence” on
the readers. Basically it’s the “Hunger
Games” done with superheroes... and it wasn’t even the first time they tried
that shtick either.
And do you know what they did when it was done? They undid “Crisis on Infinite Earths”!
It was bad enough that they erased seventy-plus years
of content with “Flashpoint”. Now they
took their biggest and best maxi-series and neutered it. Why?
So they can re-invent the wheel all over again.
And they wonder why they keep losing to Marvel?
The Biggest Waste Of Opportunity
In 2015: Marvel’s Cinematic Universe – According to Marvel Studios,
the three “Iron Man” movies, the two “Thor” movies, the two “Captain America”
movies, the two “Avengers” movies, the “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Ant Man”
movies, the Netflix shows of “Daredevil” and “Jessica Jones” along with the
forthcoming “Luke Cage”, “Iron Fist”, and “The Defenders”, and the ABC series “Marvel’s
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D” are all part of the same universe.
So why does it seem like they’re not?
This is something that I’ve brought up before. It’s like the movies are part of one
universe, the ABC series is in a parallel universe, and the Netflix shows are
in yet another universe, with no sides actually connecting. The lead-in from “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” to “Avengers:
Age of Ultron” was weaker than their lead-in from “Captain America: The Winter
Soldier”, not to mention disjointed. And
even though both “Daredevil” and “Jessica Jones” take place in New York City,
you don’t see Avengers Tower in the skyline, which is supposed to be as
distinctive as One World Trade Center. In
fact, they only mention established Marvel characters in the most generic of
terms as “that guy with the hammer” or “the star-spangled guy”.
And don’t give me that “licensing” crap either! Disney owns Marvel Comics, Marvel Studios,
and ABC, and they licensed the Netflix productions. They own it all, so they have absolutely no
excuses whatsoever to not take advantage of it.
Make it all one big Marvel Universe, guys. You owe it to the very fans that are watching
it.
And finally...
The “Enough Already Goddammit”
Award for 2015: The Media Over The Whole Jenner/Kardashian Clan
– Kim Kardashian did not “break
the Internet”. She can’t even begin
to do that. And I’m sick of hearing
about her husband wanting to give Beyonce every single music award. I can’t even take his claim of wanting to run
for president in 2020 seriously. Congrats
on the new baby, but, seriously, enough.
Okay, so Lamar Odom, estranged husband of Khloe
Kardashian, overdosed in a Nevada brothel.
I’m glad he got help. But,
seriously, why did it suddenly become a “Kardashian” thing? They were trying to get him out. This only serves to help him stay.
Then there’s Kylie Jenner, also of the Kardashian
Clan. Okay, so she turned 18 this year
and the media treated it like she suddenly started walking on water. Even one California media personality said
he had enough of this, and I was in full agreement.
And then there was Caitlyn Jenner, otherwise known as
the athlete formerly known as Bruce. Hey,
if you want to call yourself “Caitlyn” instead of “Bruce” but still keep your
man-parts, that’s your choice. Doesn’t
bother me one way or another. What does
bother me is how the media was all in our collective faces about the whole “introduction”
and their continued insistence that she was now “Woman of the Year”.
Excuse me?
There are women around the world that have done more
for other women than Bruce/Caitlyn ever have done since she “reintroduced
herself”. There’s a young woman who
turned 18 who almost didn’t make it to that birthday because religious extremists
tried to kill her for teaching other women to read. There’s a mixed martial artist that showed young
girls that you can be beautiful and still kick butt. There are female singers that have helped
young girls both in their songs and in what they stand up for. None of them have gotten even a scintilla of the
kind of attention in the media that was foisted on the woman that used to be a
male Olympic champion simply because she was attached to the Kardashian Clan.
You know, it’s one thing when Clan Kardashian were
putting their lives on display in their various cable news shows. Then at least we can avoid that channel. But we can’t do that when the media decides
that Clan Kardashian should dominate the local news and the national news and
the news websites and ESPN and the morning radio shows. It’s hard to avoid the Clan Kardashian when
the media decides to shove it in our faces at every opportunity.
Again, this isn’t about Bruce/Caitlyn. Or, for that matter, about the Kardashian
Clan. This is about the media. The same media that tries to tell us what to
think, and that polls are just as good as votes. That Wall Street is the economy, and that
Orwellian fascism is “the new normal”.
Well that’s it for 2015! I’m sure there are other things I could have
brought up from the year, but these are the big ones.
Next month is a new year, and it’s when the clown cars
will run smack into the primaries and caucuses, and the clowns will dwindle
down to the biggest and the worst of the lot.
I wish I could say “the biggest and the best”, but I know the kind of idiots
that show up at these things. And, as
you may have noticed, I’ve gotten a lot more cynical about the voting populace
this year.
So enjoy the break.
I know I will. And next year, we
hit back with a vengeance.
Monday, November 30, 2015
Week of 11/30/2015
The Evils That Big Corporate Do
– by David Matthews 2
– by David Matthews 2
As I’m coming up to the end of 2015, I had a few
thoughts go into my head that I was trying to get sorted out. One of those thoughts, I believed, would end
up being the subject for this week’s article.
But then I realized that they were all pretty much connected. They all had one thing in common. They all were the problems we have with Big
Corporate.
Now I know someone is going to get all snooty and
pompous and say “Well... there’s no such thing as ‘Big Corporate’!” Yes, there is; and the fact that your
self-righteous ego refuses to recognize it does not detract from the reality
that the collective of corporations with their greedy, self-centered, self-serving,
money-grubbing, predatory practices have been laying waste to the world pretty
much since the Industrial Revolution.
First of all, there’s a sub-group of Big Corporate
called Big Pharma. Much like their sister
sub-group, Big Medical, Big Pharma are pretty much all of the big drug-makers. All of those slick ads on TV about various
pills that you can take to supposedly make your life easier and more manageable
are all from Big Pharma.
Now Big Medical and Big Pharma have been raking in the
money for a long, long time. They have gotten
fat and rich and powerful because they’ve been operating behind-the-scenes in
the healthcare business, thanks in no small part to the government and Big
Insurance. And they don’t want anything
to stop their money train from keeping them fat and rich and powerful. So when they heard that the government was
finally going to do something about healthcare, they threw a fit, they staged
national protests, and then they used their friends on K-Street to quietly
substitute their own fraud into place which we call the “Affordable Care Act”
or “Obamacare”.
It's not what the conservatives and neo-conservatives have
been screaming about. It’s not the
fictional “monster” that Fox News and talk radio and newspaper editorials have programmed
the masses to think it was. It’s not
even what the liberals wanted it to be.
It was worse. It’s not “socialism”
in any stretch of the imagination, and certainly not “communism”... because if
you had a single brain cell in your head that wasn’t pre-programmed by Big
Corporate, you’d know the ACA does not fit any definition of “socialism” or
even “communism” other than the neo-conservative screed of “I
don’t like it, therefore it’s socialism”. It’s actually corporatism. Go ahead and look it up. I won’t hold my breath for your apology when
you realize that I’m right.
So while Big Medical has been raking in the bucks, and
Big Insurance has been wailing and whining like the spoiled bitches they are,
Big Pharma has been doing something very dirty.
They’ve been engaging in raw, naked price-gouging of certain drugs that
one company or another has sole control over.
Take, for instance, a life-saving drug. Let’s suppose the consumer price of that drug
is $1 a pill. Now let’s suppose the
maker of that drug jacks the price up to $500 a pill. You may not think anything of it. “Free Market” and all that B.S., right? “Whatever the market will bear”, right?
Yeah, you’ll chant that corporatist gospel until the
day you die... unless you’re the one that needs the drug to live, or if someone
close to you needs it. What? Insurance?
Right. Unless they tell you they
won’t cover it because it’s now “cost-prohibitive”. And, yes, it’s
happened. A lot of drugs that people
need, especially for things like cancer, are now in the
“top-tier” of costs, which means the insurance companies aren’t going to
pick up the tab for them.
The media has been focusing on the mechanizations of
Turing Pharmaceuticals and their slimy douchebag of a CEO, Martin Shkreli, but
there have been several
other companies that have been doing the same thing. They acquire the rights to an important drug,
then jack up the prices so they can make a blind-stinking profit at the expense
of the patients, who now worry whether their insurance providers – which they
are forced by law to pay because of the corporatist ACA – will even bother to
cover them.
I’ll make it simple, Big Pharma. Stop.
Just stop right now.
Do you really want the government to come down on
you? Do you really want there to be a legal
and political showdown between the Food and Drug Administration and your blind
stinking greed?
Sure, your shyster attorneys may prevail in court,
eventually. You may even get to defend
it in the Supreme Court. But between now
and then, you’re poisoning the very customer base that you need to make your
blind stinking wealth. And that customer
base votes! Especially the ones that are
getting older and older and need those drugs but don’t have the money to feed
your greed.
And if you think that your fellow “Bigs” - Big Medical
and Big Insurance - will somehow back you up in your price-gouging, think
again. Big Medical doesn’t like
hearing that you’re gouging people literally to their deaths, and Big Insurance
won’t be able to cover your greed for very long. And, remember, you’re really not preying on
the patients with this greed of yours, Big Pharma. You’re preying on Big Insurance!
So just knock off the attitude, knock off the greed,
and get your heads out of your asses.
The second “Big Corporate” issue in my wheelhouse
right now deals with an event that has been in the media for years now: Black
Friday.
The ultimate problem is the corporatist takeover of
the Holiday Season and the over-extension of it well beyond the traditional
time from Thanksgiving until New Year’s Day.
I’ve complained in the past about how Big Corporate and their quest for
more and more money have stretched the holiday sales pretty much into the
Fourth of July.
But Big Corporate’s Christmas Day has always been
Black Friday; the supposed time when they can make up for all of their perceived
losses from the rest of the year and be in the financial “black”. It’s always been on the Friday after Thanksgiving. That’s why you see Santa Claus – the secular icon
of the holiday – at
the very end of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. It officially marks the start of the Holiday
Shopping Season.
Unfortunately for us, the consumers as well as the store
workers, Big Corporate have been stretching this time as well. First it’s the start of business on
Friday. Then it became 6am. Then 3am.
Then right at the stroke of midnight.
Then Thanksgiving night. Then
Thanksgiving afternoon. Then
Thanksgiving. And now it’s a day or two
before Thanksgiving. There are “pre-Black
Friday” sales to tempt the shoppers.
So now it’s happened.
People are sick of Big Corporate’s B.S. over this time of the year and
they’re doing what I’ve been trying to do for years: stay as far away from the
stores as possible. Attendance at these orchestrated
mob gatherings is
lax in many places this year. Stores
are complaining that there’s more merchandise than customers.
Some stores made
the decision on their own to keep their doors closed on Thanksgiving and
let their employees enjoy the day with their families before taking part in the
madness. A wise move on the part of
those store owners.
This leaves people to ask the inevitable question: is
Black Friday doomed?
And my answer is this: no. Not by a long shot.
Yes, Big Corporate is being called out for
being extremely greedy, but let’s get brutally honest here... having one
lax shopping period is not a sign of doom for the whole concept of Black
Friday, as much as we’d hope that it would be.
The rest of Big Corporate certainly kept up the
insanity this year, and some
of the masses still were very much asses when it came to those “doorbuster
sales”. And don’t think for a minute
that this mob sickness wasn’t planned! Getting
people wound up for a really great “sale” and then putting an extremely limited
supply for the mob to fight over is nothing short of Big Corporate’s form of “Bread
and Circuses” entertainment! The Romans
had lions. Corporate execs have stupid
people fighting for big screen HDTV’s at cutthroat prices.
And let’s not forget that Corporate America has
harnessed the power of the Internet as well.
So even if Black Friday is a bust, it doesn’t stop the millions and
millions of shoppers from hitting the online stores for their holiday deals. After all, who do you think created the whole
concept of “Cyber Monday”?
You want to know just how crazy Black Friday deals
are? The people behind “Cards Against
Humanity” gave the ultimate in raw deals for Black Friday. You give them $5, and they give you...
nothing. And I don’t a special pack of
something they called “nothing”; I mean you don’t get a single thing for your
$5! They keep the money. And they were completely honest in their intentions. They minced no words and told no lies when
they said “Give us $5 and we will give you nothing in return.”
Do you know how much they made from that one-day
deal? Over
$70,000! That’s a lot of nothing! That’s how gullible the great unwashed are,
thanks in no small part to Big Corporate.
Listen, despite the wailing and moaning in the media,
Big Corporate isn’t going to go broke because of a mediocre Black Friday. And they sure as hell won’t cancel it anytime
soon. After all, there are still going
to be plenty of people who either don’t trust the Internet, don’t have the
access, or simply like the experience of actually getting the item in the
brick-and-mortar store and taking it home instead of doing all of that waiting
and worrying.
It’s your choice if you want to play Big Corporate’s
games during this time of the year. Just
remember that its by their rules. It is,
after all, the real “reason for the season”.
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