Week of 10/18/2010

One Versus The World
– by David Matthews 2

Let’s start things off with a simple statement…

Two plus two equals four.

Simple enough, right?

It’s easy to figure out if you didn’t understand it. You just put two items in front of you and then two more items and then count the ones you have and come up with four.

It’s PAINFULLY simple, isn’t it? Something that pretty much everyone with a working brain would agree with.

But what if someone was to tell you that two plus two DOES NOT equals four? That it, instead, equals five?

No matter how hard you try to prove just how wrong that person is, that person is firmly locked into the belief that this otherwise simple math equation equals five instead of four. He or she comes up with long and complicated arguments, complete with chalkboard illustrations, to prove their point.

You’d think that person to be crazy, right? Demented? Delusional?

But now what happens if another person also believed the same thing? You’d probably dismiss that person as well.

And how about a third? And a fourth? And a fifth? How about five hundred people believing the same thing? How about five thousand?

What if the whole world firmly believed that two plus two equals five and that you were the only one who knew and accepted that truth? Boy that would be awkward, wouldn’t it?

And even if the whole world minus you believed that two plus two equals five, does that make it any truer? Does a fifth item magically appear when you put two items together with two other items? Does the physical universe rearrange itself to accommodate the whims of a whole world of people who believe that two plus two equals five?

No, it does not.

So why do social charlatans try to convince us that it does?

The biggest fallacy that media personalities, politicians, religious leaders, and special interest groups make is to convince people that TRUTH is merely a matter of NUMBERS. That someone’s honesty and reliability and truthfulness are somehow subject to how many people listen or agree with them.

Politicians pompously proclaim that anything they do is good and right simply because they are re-elected over and over again. Media personalities want people to think that they are right simply because of ratings, and they condemn their critics by accusing them of having no listeners or think that it’s all in some effort to get better ratings. Special interest groups want people to think that popular ideas are right simply because of NUMBERS.

And of course there are the POLLS! You can’t have a day go by without seeing some reference to at least one poll… and that’s not counting the election season, where you have daily and even semi-daily polling! And they also spread this fantasy that what they report is what the masses feel is right.

But does any of this MAKE something right?

No.

Let’s get brutally honest here… I am sick and tired of people trying to spread this LIE that truth or reason or reality or being right is merely a matter of NUMBERS. This universe and the rules and limitations that they impose on us are not dependant on the acquiescence of a certain percentage of the populace! That is nothing more than a sickening display of arrogance.

Having ten or a hundred or a thousand or even a million supporters doesn’t mean that you’re right. It just means that you’re persuasive. That’s not a measure of honesty or truthfulness. It’s just a tool that can be used in too many different ways for right or wrong reasons.

For those who happen to be religious, I probably don’t have to remind you that there was a guy who was considered immensely popular and then was vilified and subjected to torture and summary execution all within the span of one week. And he reportedly didn’t do anything different during that time to give the masses reason to turn on him. You probably heard of him… people have been invoking his name for the past two thousand years. Were his words or deeds disqualified because of the masses turning on him? Were all of the reported acts of miracles he performed or were performed because of him suddenly reversed simply because his popularity plummeted?

If you answered “no” to those two questions, then you also need to accept that the same thing applies to the rest of the world. The sun does not rise or set just because a POLL said it was okay. Likewise, saying that two plus two equals five does not make it so just because you can convince a certain number of people that it is.

Being right is not a matter of NUMBERS. It is simply a matter of BEING.

Week of 10/11/2010

The Perverse Fixation on Unions
– by David Matthews 2

Have you ever heard of the White Elephant trick? It’s a doozy!

If I were to tell you to not think about a white elephant, you will. No matter how hard you try, you’ll think of a white elephant. In fact, the harder you try, the more times you’ll THINK of a white elephant.

Apparently conservatives, neo-conservatives, and even some libertarians have the same problem when it comes to unions. They just can’t get unions out of their heads. Everything… EVERYTHING… every single thing that deals with politics has to involve unions, either in thwarting them, starving them, denying them, or otherwise attacking them relentlessly.

Conservatives and neo-conservatives will sabotage critical legislation, potentially sabotaging the nation itself, in order to get some sort of assurance that a union won’t get any kind of gain from it. National tragedy? People in desperate need of assistance? Lives at risk? Sorry, but you’ll just have to suffer because cons and neo-cons would rather see you DEAD than to have your needed emergency aid touched by even ONE union worker!

One has to wonder what kind of depraved mind would play such games with the lives of others… and then the answer comes automatically when you realize that we’re talking about a group of people operating with pretty much zero accountability, and not much can be said about their honor or ethics either.

But seriously, these guys have UNIONS on the brain! Every time you talk about reforming a costly system, bringing aid to people that desperately need it, they can’t help but then blurt out “And what are the UNIONS getting out of this? You can’t get a program passed without the UNIONS benefiting from it!”

These are the same people that had no qualms whatsoever bailing out Wall Street and the mega-banks, but then screamed bloody murder over giving even one penny of bailout money to automakers because it’s “payback for the unions”.

You can’t talk about job creation without them screaming about “UNION JOBS!” Oh yes, you can build houses using questionable workers from other nations, you can import workers to fill American jobs, and you can rubber-stamp deals that would outsource American jobs overseas, but you can’t talk about creating a single job in this country without them accusing you of creating UNION jobs.

Knock it off!

Do you hear me? KNOCK THE HELL OFF!

I am so sick of hearing about UNIONS!

Do you know what a union is? Really? Truly?

A union is nothing more than a poor substitute for good management.

Seriously, that is all that a union is, stripped down of all pretenses and platitudes; it is an organization that was created on behalf of employees to combat the abuses of really BAD managers. Every union that exists today can be traced back to a series of workplace abuses that did not have to happen, and would not happen if those businesses had management that was more appreciative of their workers. I know that sounds overly simplistic, and of course there were other factors involved in the rise and growth of unions as a political force, but if the business community basically treated it as an inside challenge to do better instead of as an outside invasion, there wouldn’t be such a thing as unions today.

But, hey, this really isn’t about unions, but rather it is about the cons and neo-cons using the unions as their perpetual bogeymen and ready-made excuses to destroy this nation.

Now it’s sort of strange that for a political faction with a mad-on hatred for unions, they somehow don’t necessarily share that revulsion with ALL unions. For instance, they don’t seem to have any problems with police unions. They can slam teamsters, dock workers, automakers, flight attendants, pilots, teachers, government workers, but somehow they tolerate police unions. Not only that, but they are seemingly oblivious to unions in professional sports, and they stop short of throwing a party when Hollywood unions go on strike. If unions are such the bane of existence that they paint them to be with such a broad stroke, why still support or otherwise root on certain unions?

Well there’s a reason why. The reason is this: these guys attack and otherwise demonize the unions that THEY would otherwise have on their side.

Remember Ronald Reagan’s presidential win in 1980? Well some of us do. Anyway, Reagan won because he managed to get the support of the Teamsters. Yes, that’s right; the man that was considered the ICON of conservativism actually sought out and got help from a UNION to become President of the United States!

Okay, so some of you are saying “Yeah, but that’s thirty years ago! That was a whole different time!”

No, not really. Because not long afterwards, Reagan pissed off union groups through the Air Traffic Controllers strike.

So… suck up to the unions when they can HELP you and then piss all over them when they can’t. That seems to be the game plan here.

But then again, there’s another reason why unions get demonized… and that is the company that the conservatives keep.

Think about it… what part of America do unions mostly represent? Hard working lower-to-middle-class people! Sure some unions bosses are in the upper echelons, but the base are really on the lower-half of the financial pyramid.

And how about the people who constitute “the base” for conservatives and neo-conservatives? Wall Street, Big Corporate, the super-wealthy, business owners and managers… and, yes, some middle-class people, but for the most part they spend their time with the upper-half of that same financial pyramid.

Oh sure they love to praise “small business owners”, but when you realize that under the rules that conservatives and neo-conservatives helped to put in that “small” is usually in name only. I mean, does anyone consider the Chicago Tribune to be a “small business”? And yet it is. In fact a lot of big multi-million dollar companies get away with being declared “small businesses” thanks to those same rules. So while you and I consider “small businesses” to be mom-and-pop stores, understand that the cons and neo-cons are thinking more Wall Street than Main Street.

Yes, I’m talking about class warfare here.

But this isn’t class warfare from the bottom-up as has been traditionally perceived over the past century. No, this is old-OLD-school class warfare… subjugation from the top-down. The people with the money and the power want their cake and eat it too. It’s really that simple.

The people up top don’t like unions. They don’t want unions to exist. But they also don’t want to do the things that would make unions needless. They don’t want to curb their own abusive incompetence as managers, thinking instead that being an unrepentant a-hole is somehow a good thing. Yes, denial of their own status as oversized sphincters also plays a role in this.

So they “contribute” (purchase) a group of parasites that promise to put the hurt to unions. They turn to that group of parasites that put up obstacles to unions and give them as much power as possible to subjugate the bottom-half of the economic pyramid, mostly because it is easier (and cheaper) to do that than to actually BE effective managers.

The problem, then, is that those same parasites now know how to press the buttons of their economic “friends”. All they have to do is say “unions” and they get all the money and support they want.

Of course it should also be mentioned that unions then “contribute” (purchase) their own gang of parasites that promise to give them more and more power and to cement their own position in the business world. And they too are often led around by those same parasites come election time.

But let’s get brutally honest here… this whole issue with unions, both as the convenient bogeymen and as a social group, is a NEEDLESS matter! As much as the people up top refuse to admit it, the unions were CREATED by their own abusive incompetence. And as long as they REFUSE to admit that fact, they empower their own parasites in politics to use unions as their ready-made scapegoats and political reaction.

Thus we get to the real reason why those political parasites and their special interest enablers are so fixated on unions… because it gets a rise out of the upper-crust and gets them to open up their pocketbooks without actually doing anything to get rid of the unions. They certainly don’t want to tell their “friends” what it would really take to deal with the subject, because it then deprives them of their leverage.

Listen, folks, the business world can get rid of unions all on their own. There is no big secret to it. It doesn’t require politicians or their enablers. It doesn’t require new laws or regulations or even the removal of laws or regulations. It can even be summed up in three simple words: STOP BEING A-HOLES!

But I suppose that is too much to ask for, isn’t it?

Week of 10/04/2010

The Company They Keep
– by David Matthews 2

There are times when I defer to the folks at the Reason Foundation for their sound words of advice regarding freedom. The folks there often have a better understanding of freedom than the vast majority of so-called “experts” who falsely claim to support the Constitution or fraudulently pretend to channel America’s “founding fathers”. (You listening, Beckites? I’m talking about YOUR lot!)

Unfortunately the folks at Reason also take stances that a freedom-lover like yours truly seriously has to question.

Recently Reason did one of their little video snippets attacking Hollywood for their fascination with painting capitalism as the villain in their movies. It’s a quick dig on the fact that the sequel to Oliver Stone’s classic movie “Wall Street” was coming out. In “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps”, the legendary Gordon “Greed is Good” Gekko (again played by Michael Douglas) is out of prison and discovering that what he did in the 80’s to go to prison for is now perfectly legal. (You can thank the GOP for that little Christmas present.) Then the folks at Reason tied it in with the overall robber-baron land grab theme of “Avatar”, the bio-weapon manufacturer in “M:I-2”, the “gotta save the alien killers to use as weapons” bureaucrat from “Aliens”, the sociopathic lawyers in “A Civil Action”, the hospital executives in “Coma”, the developers in “FernGully”, and so on and so forth.

And then Reason declared that capitalism somehow “enforces rules” about stealing, fraud, and violence, and to channel greed towards “productive means”. “Play by the rules,” Reason said, “and greed gets you the iPad. Break the rules and you get Bernie Madoff.”

WHAT?

What delusional world do the people at the Reason Foundation live in where they can come up with THAT fairy tale? Wherever it is, I want to be there, because here in the REAL world, capitalism has but TWO simple rules that it lives by.

The first rule of capitalism is profit at all costs. It doesn’t matter HOW they make that profit; just that they do. You can screw over your own family members, sell your children into slavery, and even sell your soul (repeatedly) just as long as you make that profit.

The second rule of capitalism is this: if it isn’t above the board, if it is bound to cause scandal, go ahead and do it, but don’t get caught. You can do everything you want to in order to make those profit numbers, but if it’s something that you don’t want to publicly take credit for, just don’t get caught doing it.

Just look at the plight of “Poor Bernie”, the example that Reason used for “bad greed”. There were red flags flying FOR YEARS about Bernie’s questionable practices. FOR YEARS! And they were ignored time and time again. Why? Because it followed the first rule of capitalism… profit at all costs. All of the safeguards that the Reason Foundation touts as being “Capitalism’s enforcers”, all of the watchdogs and auditors and overseers, even the ones on the INSIDE, that were SUPPOSED to prevent that kind of thing from happening… THEY FAILED!

So when the house of cards that was Madoff’s financial services finally collapsed, people started asking how that could happen. And just as soon as fingers started to get pointed towards anyone but Madoff, Madoff suddenly became the sacrificial lamb. All of the looks into other participants, all of the other groups that knew what was going on and did nothing to stop it, all of that focus immediately died down when Madoff pled guilty. Those groups followed the second rule… don’t get caught. Bernie got caught. He went to prison for it. The others didn’t, because the system didn’t LET anyone else get caught. It all stopped with Bernie.

Glory, Glory Capitalism.

But let’s get back to Hollywood here…

The folks at Reason somehow got it into their heads that Hollywood has a mad-on hatred of capitalism that they just can’t figure out. They apparently don’t like seeing business leaders being portrayed on TV and the movies as being self-centered, greedy, manipulative, backstabbing, narcissistic sociopaths. That’s just not fair, after all, to all of the GREAT and WONDERFUL things that they have given the world… like… like… like the gas-powered automobile! And the factories that manufacture the gas-powered automobile, which have been slowly outsourced to other nations. And the refineries needed to produce the oil needed to make the gas to power those vehicles, one of which recently blew up in the Gulf of Mexico, and the full extent of that devastation is STILL not measured.

Ooh… not good examples, are they?

Well the point is there is a REASON why capitalism is the easiest villain around… and that is because we see FAR too many examples of it in the real world! In fact capitalism is seemingly the one institution that allows you to engage in all of the deadly sins and then some and then wash your hands clean of it all and say that it’s “just business”.

Capitalism destroys whole communities much faster than they do building them up, and they’re not the least bit remorseful when they do it. It’s “just business”. They dehumanize people, transforming them into nothing more than account numbers on a spreadsheet, justify collecting every bit of information they can on those “account numbers”, and then sell that information off to other companies to make a quick buck. And they do it with a wink and a smile and say that it’s “just business”. They reward people for being ruthless, manipulative, obsessively fixated on succeeding at all costs, and then justify it all by saying that it’s “just business”.

These are all the traits of a classic villain.

You don’t hear too many stories of “good guy” businesses, because the business world, capitalism itself, doesn’t reward people for being honest and ethical. Those are usually the first ones laid off or bought out or shut down or otherwise made victims to the ruthless and cruel.

Remember “Tucker: A Man and His Dream”? That wasn’t a flight of Hollywood fantasy concocted out of the ether. That was based on real events of a real person named Preston Tucker, whose dream of designing a better car was destroyed by the automakers and the politicians who worked on behalf of the automakers.

And, yes, the folks in Hollywood KNOW that they get their movies made by capitalistic investors. They KNOW that the studios are just another part of capitalism. They KNOW that they have to make money to keep making movies. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t bring up the abuses - real or hypothetical - of that same capitalistic system.

Granted, the “corporate bureaucrat that would rather sacrifice a whole Marine unit to transport some xenophobic mass-murdering aliens to be studied for use as possible weapons” is a bit of a stretch, but if there is anything that would foul up an otherwise straightforward military operation, it WOULD be a spineless backstabbing corporate bureaucrat. And, as was pointed out in that same movie, at least the nameless xenophobic mass-murdering “Aliens” don’t screw themselves over for a profit margin.

But let’s get brutally honest here… the reason WHY capitalism is the preferred villain stereotype in entertainment is that capitalism not only ENCOURAGES villainous behavior, but also… those in the capitalistic community seemingly do not MIND being cast as the bad guys!

How many corporate executives still watch the original Oliver Stone “Wall Street” film and cheer when Gekko utters his “Greed is good” speech? How many of them watched Martin Sheen’s character Bud Fox and think he was a spineless coward?

By the way, how far do you think any of these projects that bash capitalism would get if the investors themselves said “no” to the portrayals? Not everyone in Hollywood can have the money or influence to churn out a movie on their own, and we’ve seen the end result of some of the productions. (“Waterworld” anyone?)

And while Reason is fixated on the evil that government does, and would rather whitewash all the evils of Big Corporate (mostly to appease their friends), the truth is that villainous traits are not a matter of vocation, but rather they are rooted in the use and abuse of POWER.

Once upon a time, the bad guys were all priests and noblemen. So were military leaders and small town law enforcers. Nosy neighbors haven’t exactly shaken off their stigma either. For a while even the scientists were considered the bad guys. Remember the “Mad Scientist” trope? From Doctor Frankenstein to Fritz Lang’s Rotwang to the early versions of Lex Luthor, scientists used to be portrayed as being inherently evil. That didn’t stop the scientific community from pushing through with their projects. That didn’t stop the advances in medicine or the new discoveries in technology.

Each of these villain groups have one thing in common: POWER. At some point, they all have the power of “GOD” (or the next best thing) and they decide to use it at the expense of others for all the wrong reasons. That sullies ANY profession or organization that they are connected to. And when done enough times, seemingly without remorse or regret, and without an effort to make things right again, then one cannot help but to paint that entire profession or organization with the same brush. Just look at the continual tar-and-feathering of the adult entertainment industry if you don’t believe me.

And if the key players involved in capitalism, and their friends in the Reason Foundation, have such a bug up their capitalistic butts about this typecasting, then maybe what they should be focused on is NOT Hollywood, but rather in getting their commercial brethren to clean up their own sullied houses. You don’t have to look very far in the real world to see evil afoot.

In fact, for the past ten years we have been barraged by a series of corporate failures and malfeasances from a whole array of companies, from Enron to oil companies to AIG to the “too big to fail” banks to the insurance companies and even to private contractors for the government. Most of these have gone on with seemingly no consequences for their actions. And even when the industry itself sets up its own rules and puts in place their own watchdogs, the system still FAILED, and nothing’s really done about it. Deals are struck, minimal fines are sometimes paid, sometimes a weak “mea culpa” is even issued, and then it’s back to business-as-usual. The ruined lives and shattered dreams are all written off as just the cost of doing business. THAT’S EVIL!

And that’s really not the kind of result that Hollywood would ever want to portray, because Hollywood usually likes to paint a happier ending when telling their stories. They want to give the illusion that the good guys somehow triumph and that the bad guys get their just deserts. That’s just good business for them.

Week of 09/27/2010

Memo To Government: You Can Stop Lying Now
– by David Matthews 2

I have a really simple message to the federal government in regards to our economy.

Stop.

Just stop.

Stop the lies. Stop telling us that it’s raining when all that you’re doing is peeing on our legs.

This past week the “OFFICIAL” word from the National Bureau of Economic Research is that there really WAS a recession. It “started” in December of 2007, and it “ended” in June of 2009.

Bull$#it.

Stop it.

Just STOP IT!

Stop lying to the American people!

I’m not questioning the presence of recession or its severity. It really is THE WORST economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930’s.

I’m challenging the “official” dates of it.

First of all, the recession DID NOT START in 2007. The seeds of our economic destruction were sewn LONG BEFORE then!

We can trace this economic disaster going back to the 2001 “mini-recession”, when businesses like Enron and WorldCom began to fail. Back then, we the American people were fed a placebo and told it was a cure. That placebo was cheap credit and housing values in the place of a growth in real wages. And we bought into this placebo because we had two wars to fight and terrorists to thwart.

We can trace this economic disaster through the changes made to banking and bankruptcy rules. The changes that allowed big banks to get even bigger and to make more and more risky decisions, while at the same time making it harder and harder for the rest of the American people to get out of the burdens that have been placed on their shoulders.

But if you wanted a REAL date of the start of this recession, then you’d have to go with September of 2005, when Hurricane Katrina barreled through the Gulf of Mexico and our President, having already weaseled in a generous thank-you to his friends in the oil industry, decided than it was more important to attend a fundraiser in California than to worry about the sudden shutdown of oil that ended up affecting the whole country. As far back as then, people started talking about a looming recession and wondering what could be done to stop it. And of course nothing WAS done to prevent the recession, because it was just too profitable to keep the status quo going.

Here’s a little friendly tip to these “experts”… every economic downturn in recent years, no matter how slight, were precipitated by spikes in oil prices. Go ahead and look it up and you’ll make the same connection I made. There’s your true warning sign.

Of course we can endlessly haggle over when the recession BEGAN. But what I REALLY object to - what I have to call foul on - is your declaration that this recession “ENDED” in June of 2009.

Bull$#it! It did not end.

Do you hear me? IT IS NOT OVER WITH!

Unemployment is still a huge problem in this nation. Fifteen million Americans are out of work, with that number expected by some to reach as high as THIRTY-ONE MILLION by the end of the year. Almost HALF of those people out of work have been out of work for at least a year or more, which pretty much makes them unemployable. And that number is not even an accurate account, because as more and more unemployed Americans run out of benefits, they are no longer counted. They cease to exist in the minds of the government.

Foreclosures and bankruptcies are still a problem in this country, and they will continue to be as long as more and more Americans are not able to find work. The people who still have work have been forced to make do with less. They’re not going to be spending money on things that would stimulate the economy. They’re going to be worried that they may not have a job by the end of the year and end up being part of that estimated THIRTY-ONE MILLION.

Plus the recklessness of Wall Street HAS NOT ABATED! The very bad habits that created the mess that we are in are still in effect. The business community has been given ONE TRILLION DOLLARS that they’re just holding on to. They’re essentially carrying on as though it has always been business as usual.

Does ANY of this sound like things are improving? NO!

So why are you LYING to the American people?

Stop it.

Just stop.

Of course it’s easy to see HOW you came to that conclusion when the conditions you list fail to factor in those FIFTEEN MILLION that are unemployed and instead focus on “survey” standards and you factor in corporate profits, which are NOT an indication of a healthy economy because the business world has been sacrificing jobs to MAINTAIN those profit margins.

Wall Street and Main Street are not interchangeable. What part of that statement do you NOT understand? And why do you still have jobs if you fail to comprehend that simple statement?

It’s easy to simply write off those MILLIONS of Americans, especially when the benefits start ending even though those MILLIONS haven’t found work. Out of sight, out of mind.

I can even understand WHY you would lie to the American people and try to spin this HOAX that the recession is already “over” with. It’s psychological. You want the people spending again, and they can’t do it if they think times are still tough.

But the joke is really on you. Because let’s get brutally honest here… WE KNOW YOU ARE LYING!

We KNOW the recession never ended.

We don’t need fancy degrees to know this. We just need eyes and ears. We just need to see the people still out of work. We just need to see the various financial systems still screwing people over. We just need to see the letter from our local bank saying that they got taken over by the FDIC. We just need to see our neighbors being forced out of their homes. We just need to see the continued misery and the continued despair for us to KNOW that you are LYING to us!

So stop it.

Stop lying to us.

Even worse, your lies about the state of our economy can be used to justify not doing all that needs to be done. You are feeding the insurrectionists that claim that people who are out of work are just lazy. You are feeding the insurrectionists that say that unemployment benefits should be eliminated and the FIFTEEN-TO-THIRTY-ONE MILLION Americans should just be left to rot. Your lies allow you to just throw your hands up and tell us “Well, we don’t have to do anything more… problem solved! It’s business as usual.”

Do you get it yet? Your continual LYING to the American people about the recession being prematurely over could potentially hurt them just as much as the recession itself!

So just stop it.

Stop lying to the American people.

We KNOW the recession is still going on. We KNOW that it never ended. We KNOW that as long as the things that continue to keep us in this recession are still in place and as long as the people that instigated this recession are allowed to continue as though it is business as usual that the recession WILL continue.

Since we’re dealing with politicians, I’ll explain it in ways that you should understand...

Those fifteen-to-thirty-one MILLION Americans that are out of work or will soon be out of work will have plenty of time to show up at the ballot box in November. They’re going to be angry. And they’re going to be angry at the people who appear to be out-of-touch with their plight. They’re not going to be making “deals”. They’re going to vote against anyone in office. They’re going to vote against anyone that appears to be not doing their jobs. They’re going to vote against anyone who is keeping the status quo intact.

Does that get through your dense skulls yet?

So stop trying to convince us that things are getting better when they clearly are not.

Stop trying to tell us that it’s sunny when the rain is still falling on our heads.

Stop lying to us about the economy.

Just stop lying to us, period.

Is it really that hard to do? It shouldn't have to be.

Week of 09/20/2010

“Just Sayin’…”
– by David Matthews 2

I really hate it when people invent loopholes to justify saying what they really want to say.

In the South, we have a little phrase that older Southern women who are heavily religious use when they normally “aren’t supposed” to speak ill of others. Any time they want to void the rules they just add in “bless his/her heart”. As in…

“Oh, you know Mary down-the-street? Did you know she’s pregnant for the third time? She probably doesn’t even know who the father is… she spends half her time strutting around half-naked… she leaves her kids with her parents so she can sleep around with anyone she feels like. That girl is nothing but a cheap whore and an embarrassment to the neighborhood… BLESS HER LITTLE HEART!”

It’s really disgusting, because this is the same group of people that are quick to talk about “tradition” and “ethics” and “values” and then turn around and invent ways to justify their own hypocrisy, and you can’t call them out on it!

Of course being RUDE and OBNOXIOUS and pretty much being a JERK can get you big money if it is done right.

Now I don’t mean people like Howard Stern. Stern is too blatant about it. Plus he never really pretended to be anything more than an entertainer. He’s an actor, and his best character is this exaggerated version of himself that he then brings out unapologetically for a good laugh.

If you REALLY wanted to understand the magic of Howard Stern… that’s it right there. Howard Stern is an actor playing a slightly exaggerated character called “Howard Stern”.

But he doesn’t try to pretend that “Howard Stern” is REALLY him. Nor does he try to convince people that they need to be more like “Howard Stern” and that America is really full of oppressed versions of “Howard Stern”.

On the other hand, there are plenty of people who go around serving as the measuring stick and echo chamber for the rest of society. These are the people who host shows on 24 hour cable news channels, host conservative and neo-conservative talk radio programs, and write endless books which somehow make a lot of money even before they show up on the shelves or appear online. And they continually claim (and their fans will back them up on it) that THEY represent the mythical “silent majority” that was made famous by President Nixon.

One of the phrases they use to get away with being rude and obnoxious is “just sayin’.” As in “if President Obama has nothing to hide, then he shouldn’t have had a problem releasing his birth certificate… just sayin’.”

Yes, these are the same people who will tell you that they’re “not Birthers” (people who believe that Obama wasn’t born in this country) and yet at the same time acquiesce to their theories by adding the phrase “just sayin’” at the end of it. It allows them to espouse extremist ideas without being seen AS an extremist.

But… why should they be the ones to have all the fun? I think turnabout is fair play when it comes to politics. I mean let’s get brutally honest here… if politics has truly become the bloodsport of the mind, why should one side be allowed to verbally decimate others without getting so much as a scratch in return?

So here are a few social and political observations that I’m “just sayin’…” about these factions.

For instance… why is it that the same political party that supported then-Attorney General John Ashcroft when he scolded “those who scare peace-loving people with the phantoms of lost liberties” are able to then pretend to be the reincarnation of America’s Founding Fathers and bemoan about those very “lost liberties”? How is it that the “threat” is only real when they’re not in charge of the government? I’m just sayin’…

How is that “no ratings” (or “no viewers” or “no listeners”) is considered the über-insult for cable news and talk radio people when they’re supposedly not doing these things FOR the sake of ratings? I mean, I can understand the rationality that doing stuff for the sake of ratings is considered cheap, but why is it that when their OWN credibility is on the line they turn around and say they have more listeners/viewers than their critics? Since WHEN did validation become a matter of NUMBERS? You can have 99.99999% of the populace believe that the world is flat, but that doesn’t mean that it suddenly is. I’m just sayin’…

Here’s a good one… how is it that someone who RESIGNS from public office barely halfway into their first term simply so they can make a fortune doing public speaking, book deals, and regular appearances on a certain cable “news” channel be considered “more experienced” than someone who served almost a full-term before moving on to become the President of the United States? I mean, it’s one thing if you resign from one public service job to move up to another public service job, but the person in question just out-of-the-blue decided to quit simply because they were looking to make MILLIONS on media appearances. Doesn’t that make that person… I dunno… doesn’t that make that person something of a media prostitute? I’m just sayin’…

I know that one will have the conservatives and neo-conservatives in an uproar, but, hey, I’m using their own “Get Out Of Condemnation Free” immunity catchphrase, so I should be good, right? And besides, it IS the truth, as painful as it may be. I’m just sayin’…

Besides, at that time, experience was considered to be something of a detriment. So how could saying that you’re “more experienced” make you a better candidate if it was better to be seen as an actual “outsider”? I’m just sayin’…

Oh, speaking of said unnamed person, how is it that regurgitating talking points and political catchphrases and only appearing in venues that don’t question said regurgitation make one a credible leader? That’s not leadership… that’s putting on a puppet act. That makes you less of a leader and more of a stooge, or even an assembly-line product. I’m just sayin’…

Hey, speaking of talking points… how is procedural gridlock considered a plan for good governing? Isn’t that called SABOTAGE? That would have even been called ACTS OF TREASON five years ago. It’s one thing to say that you’re for less government. It’s another to do everything in your power to literally SHUT DOWN a government. That’s called INSURRECTION. I’m just sayin’…

And speaking of plans for governing, how does a five-point program where every point starts out with “We will force the President to…” called a plan of action? How is it that FORCING other people to do something be considered a personal plan of action? That’s not a plan, that’s an ULTIMATUM. I’m just sayin’…

This one is for the air-fluffed ego-driven media… how is it that you can pride yourself in JOURNALISM when you tout your greatest assets as being egotistical media personalities that engage in nothing but OPINION? There is a difference between REPORTING the news and COMMENTATING about it. It’s a line that I have to point out every day. So why advertise that your 24-hour cable NEWS channel is superior over the competition when you’re glorifying the people that have NOTHING TO DO WITH REPORTING THE NEWS? I mean, that’s like trying to sell a car for its gas mileage by talking about the plush interior. I’m just sayin’…

Speaking of 24-hour cable news channels… how is it that you can have ALL of these so-called EXPERTS from think-tanks and political action committees that are willing to show up seemingly EVERY DAY to talk about the issue of the moment, but have absolutely NO IDEA how to RESOLVE the very problems that they’re talking about? You would think that with all of these EXPERTS around that there shouldn’t be single a problem left in the country to resolve! Where do these people COME FROM? And where can I get a job doing what they’re doing? Talk about a sweet goldbrick position! I’m just sayin’…

By the way, media personalities and politicians, can you guys stop trying to pick fights with Jon Stewart over at Comedy Central? Ditto for Bill Maher. I know this is going to be hard for you to comprehend, but these guys are COMEDIANS. That means they get paid to poke fun at things! Being interviewed by Jon Stewart is not like being interviewed by Oprah or Larry King. Sure you can promote your new projects just the same, but Oprah and Larry are not there to get a laugh out of the audience. Maybe you should pay closer attention to the name of the cable channel that Jon’s show is on… it says COMEDY Central, not COMMENTARY Central. I’m just sayin’…

And finally, how about a little consistency? I mean, if you want to talk about wasted spending, fine, but don’t talk about wasted spending while you’re inserting your own blank check political earmarks. If you want to talk about law and order, don’t do it while at the same time excusing out-and-out criminal activity. If you want to talk about family values and the so-called “sanctity of marriage”, then you better make sure that your personal number of marriages is less than TWO and that you don’t have some extramarital skeletons in your closet. Oh, and if you’re quick to condemn theocracies in other nations, you better make sure that you’re not backing the same thing by piecemeal in this country.

In other words, you’re not really doing a damn thing to clean up the mess called our political system if all you’re doing is swapping one batch of corrupt hypocrites with YOUR OWN batch of corrupt hypocrites and than expect things to somehow be different. Because I’ve got news for you… we just DID that between 2006 and 2009… and things only went from bad to worse.

I’m just sayin’… bless your little hearts…