Mitts Off Ladies, He's Mine

MDH shocked the shit out of me this morning by asking to do a guest post on my blog. The poor lamb tossed and turned all night after watching endless hours of Pennsylvania Primary news coverage.

Please address your comments to MDH as the views and opinions expressed in this blog post are not necessarily those of The Lady Who Doesn't Lunch.

And now... here's my baby:

Subject: This I believe: govt of the peeps, by the peeps, for the peeps aka the American Experiment teeters on failure

PA like OH, MI and FL is where the general election is won or lost.

So what does it mean that 10% of the PA voters are not planning to vote & 15% will vote for the old guy and of those 15%, 90% of them say they voted for Hillary Clinton? Those are the GOP supporters meddling with the Dem election....in other words, given that single digits would have been bad for Hillary Clinton's fundraising the Rush factor made all the difference between a win that results in Hillary Clinton being bankrupt and gaining a miniscule number of delegates and not being able to push more super delegates into her camp to a convincing win that will net her a miniscule number of delegates, delay decisions by some super delegates, & allow her to raise money to continue....just like in Pittsburgh where the chief financial backer of the actual vast right wing conspiracy against Bill endorsed Hillary Clinton, look for the GOP, broke though it is, to have amazing amounts of cash to spend in NC & in on race baiting TV to continue using Hillary Clinton to destroy the Dem party.....and if she prevails, and by no means does the rookie have this thing as locked up just because he has won it by the actual stupid rules of the Dem party, the GOP will pivot all of those resources to re-demonize Hillary Clinton & to convince Barak Obama's voters they got screwed. Add in the confusion voters currently have between McCain 2000 who crushed GOP cash register lobbying and McCain 2008 who welcomes an endorsement from a group dedicated to ending life on the planet....for jesus, the navy man might, with a smart vp choice and despite giving increasingly incoherent, frankly sad to see, interviews each day, yet rise to a higher rank then his daddy. Don't get me wrong....I have always been in favor of seeing an actual Vietnam War vet in the White House, but I had the impression the one I would get would actually vote for veteran's benefits for our current multiple felony committing, gang banging, rapists of fellow service people, but, at least not gay and fully supportive of cross national military Christian groups, heros. BTW - next week I will be back in DFW airport which usually means I'll have a good look at several hundred of our best fellow Americans going or coming from the war zone. Please do anything you can to support these poor bastards as they are bearing the absolute heaviest burden resulting from god's own party's stupidity and the Dem's (except Paul Wellstone – rip), 2002 missing spine.

Either way the future doesn't make me gotta wear shades...... the long march of America from a nation mostly inhabited by christians to a christian nation (hang in there Turkey) continues with more & more tax dollars going directly to religious institutions in exchange for votes/power & end times rhetoric becoming an acceptable political policy........our almost inevitable looming financial collapse from debt is moving ever closer as the mortgage write downs worldwide, better regulatory institutions outside of the US, and spiraling worldwide inflation dramatically reduce the risk of getting out of the dollar based economy............ our elected federal officials' continue their inability to stop even the most insane unsupportable US govt giveaways, like social security for millionaire retirees including the old guy & his beer barroness and direct subsidies for 'farmers' like the wolf family in Columbus or the Van Andel family in Grand Rapids........and the prison population, more and more managed for profit or for religious conversion, keeps climbing faster then a Manny ball hit to left.

And then there's infrastructure, the one sure way govt can help an economy (there used to be 2....you had war which used to be good for the economy, however, the GOP has figured out how to profit from outsourcing the war to sub-contractors....many of whom use non American labor) but we live in a country basically still operating new deal public works projects, where bridges fall into rivers, airlines rig their safety records with help from fed regulators, entire streets disappear into a cloud of steam or morph, as in Michigan, into one giant pothole.

Think I am as crazy as senator's McCain's or Obama's more of the same, almost universal, you would only buy that crappy policy if you had a better tax break health care plans? Those that have the luxury of traveling or living outside the US can judge with their own eyes....fall ill on a street in Taiwan and see a system where your health records are instantly available in every office of every provider in the country, or go to Japan where they laugh at our cell phones, or Europe where they laugh at our public transportation system, or the Netherlands where they laugh at us for our 'get tough' policies to jam prisons with non violent drug users, and or to brazil (buy CZZ) and France (if atomic energy is good enough for bob it is good enough for me) where they laugh at our energy policies that enrich our enemies/friends. In India and Ireland people are emigrating home from the US for a better quality of life for their children and country after country can now literally look down on us as their people get taller and we get wider.

But why did yesterday push me over the edge to declare that the end was nigh....well it wasn't the election, nor the horrific stoppage time own goal right smack in the middle of you'll never walk alone...it was this: from the Harvard med school...... Over these four decades, the researchers found that the overall US life expectancy increased from 67 to 74 years of age for men and from 74 to 80 years for women. Between 1961 and 1983 the death rate fell in both men and women, largely due to reductions in deaths from cardiovascular disease (heart disease and stroke). During this same period, 1961–1983, the differences in death rates among/across different counties fell. However, beginning in the early 1980s the differences in death rates among/across different counties began to increase. The worst-off counties no longer experienced a fall in death rates, and in a substantial number of counties, mortality actually increased, especially for women, a shift that the researchers call “the reversal of fortunes.” This stagnation in the worst-off counties was primarily caused by a slowdown or halt in the reduction of deaths from cardiovascular disease coupled with a moderate rise in a number of other diseases, such as lung cancer, chronic lung disease, and diabetes, in both men and women, and a rise in HIV/AIDS and homicide in men. The researchers' key finding, therefore, was that the differences in life expectancy across different counties initially narrowed and then widened. http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050066&ct=1

The hollowing out of America, akin to the 70s but with a hell of a lot more places for people to put their money and faith outside of the US, is nearly complete. (as general franks and beans once said "a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event [will occur] somewhere in the Western world – it may be in the United States of America – that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event.") liberty's lamp could be doused once and for all, just like the right of habius corpus, by a bi-partisan movement of the sheeple.

But beyond buying that villa in Costa Rica and getting a few more weapons for this year's mandatory office secret Santa I want you to know that I remain filled with hope that once the drunkenness wears off we can turn the tanker away from the rocks! Look at 2006's punishment of the GOP. Look at the GOP voters attempting to punish themselves with McCain. Look at the Dems possibly selecting an actual, real American family to occupy that nice house in Washington City. America's cities, forced into tolerance and good management by their human density, refuse to go quietly into the night. US States are getting more active in demanding the feds stop the madness and more people then ever outside the US, despite our foreign policy screw ups in an attempt to help them to freedom or maintain corporate profit margins, are living with liberty, democracy and the rule of law.....so while our time as Winthrop's shining city on the hill is clearly waning & the Kinks reprise catch me now I'm falling, here's to Brazil, India, & Europe. If we in the states can delay our use of nukes to bring about the second coming for just a few more decades I am confident that Adam Smith and the new mega democracies will bring a reformed China and maybe even old/new Russia to freedom's blessings. As a man once said in the face of certain destruction "there is always hope"

My very best vibes to you all!

PS - anyone who didn't see the HBO John Adam's, I highly recommend you not only see it but try to read the book about my fellow Scorpio before watching and it will be even more rewarding/fabulous.