Category: GOP / DEM

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Silly Sheeple, Tricks are for Karl

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I’ve been amused for the past couple of days over Karl Rove’s remarks about Hillary Clinton.

The headlines have been funny.

Karl Rove faces backlash on Hillary Clinton remarks. Did he go too far?

Karl Rove Suggests Hillary Clinton has Brain Damage

Karl Rove didn’t go too far, he went EXACTLY far enough.  He manipulated the main stream media into propagating a discussion he wanted to put in front of the American People. He brilliantly used Hillary Clintons previous escape hatch from the Benghazi hearings to do it.

In chess this is called checkmate.

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Hillary will spend the rest of her Campaign (if she decides to run) answering questions about her health.

It’s very much like the Dr Who episode where The Doctor is angry at Prime Minister Harriet Jones. He tells her “I can bring you down with just six words.”

The words he whispers in the ear of her assistant are;

“Don’t you think she looks tired?”

She is brought down amid rumors of ill health and finally a vote of no confidence.

Life imitates art I guess.

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The Main stream media will continue to churn and regurgitate the question until Karl Roves part in the affair is forgotten and only the question remains. The question will take on a life of its own and will morph into an assumed “Fact” that Hillary has health issues and it will drag on her campaign.

Even now on Foxews.com there’s a piece titled

Clintons seek to show new vigor amid age worries 

Rove may be a Dark Lord, but DAMN! he’s good at it!

Hillary’s supporters spun up all of Tuesday trashing Rove, but in each and every piece, they explained what Rove said that made them so angry.  There was someone once who said  something like “Even bad publicity is publicity”.

The Hillary supporters, in one day, without realizing it gave Rove exactly what he wanted. Wide Distribution!  They can badmouth him all they want, but to do it, they have to repeat the message he wanted to get out. “Hillary may not be healthy enough for a Campaign or the Presidency.”  Hillary’s supporters are working for Karl Rove for FREE.

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Let’s be honest, isn’t the fear of poor health what killed John McCain’s run for the presidency?

No-one had a problem with McCain. The fear was that if he died in office, Sarah Palin would be President.

The Media had done such a wonderful job of character assassination on her, that people voted for Obama rather than risk the wild card of Palin being President.

Rove simply used the Democratic play book. I think the brilliance is that he’s gotten so far out in front, that Hillary’s campaign will be dogged by health rumors for the next two years.

Hillary can’t have so much as a simple cold.

I’m not suggesting that this is enough to end Ms Clinton’s campaign run, I’m saying that it adds stress to the campaign and that stress is going to be exhausting over the next two years.

I’ve no pity for Ms. Clinton. I don’t think she’s a particularly good person, and I think she’d be a really bad President. There are too many questions about her role in shady dealings starting with the Whitewater scandal and ending with the Benghazi attack.

Karl Rove may be a bastard, but I respect his brand of evil!

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I watched CSPAN yesterday.

Uhhh OHHHH!

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I continue to be disgusted by the machinations of Elijah Cummings.  I can’t help but think of him as doing nothing more than obfuscating and obstructing the truth.  

I’m not so naive as to believe that the Republicans are saints, THEY AREN’T but in the Lois Lerner affair I think it’s completely reasonable for her to be held in contempt of congress, if for nothing else, than the fact that she ignored a Congressional subpoena. 

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When I was growing up, you didn’t ignore a subpoena of any kind, much less one from Congress. 

I think it’s appropriate to ask for the justice department to evaluate Ms. Lerner’s use of her 5th amendment right, in her testimony before Congress.  

It’s reasonable to ask why Ms Lerner was, and is cooperating with the justice department. But refuses to provide information to a Congressional subcommittee.

I’d personally like to understand why, if there was no wrong doing, she invoked her 5th amendment right the moment she sat down in the Congressional hearing.

No I’m not going to hold my breath that we will ever hear the truth in this matter.

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I was particularly disgusted that Cummings talked about wasting money in pursuing the truth. The implication was that at some point the truth takes a back seat to economics.

By extension, this says if you hold out long enough no matter what you’ve done wrong you can get away with it.

I don’t subscribe to that theory.

I think that after Ms. Lerner’s second spectacularly disrespectful appearance before congress that she should have been carted off to jail.

Not for invoking her 5th amendment right, but because she so clearly held the members of the Congressional committee in Contempt.

I’ve always thought if I were called to testify about anything before congress, I’d be in trouble. I doubt that I could keep my personal contempt for some of the congressional members in check. I’ve always assumed that I’d find myself in a jail cell. I was surprised they let her out of the hearing room.

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Back on the phone with Anthem BlueCross

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This is what, the 12th time I’ve had to call these people in 4 months?

Today it’s about receiving a couple of bills that make absolutely not fucking sense. I’m sooooo Tired of dealing with this bullshit!

Then there’s the little annoyances that tend to get you (alright ME!) amped up before you’ve even gotten into a hold queue wating for an agent that will probably fuck your shit up worse than it already is.

I swear every time I speak to one of these people they claim that everything is happy and good to go and then a month later I get something generated from a computer that makes it obvious something is still horrifically fucked up.

So in order to blow off steam before I actually talk to a human, here are the irritations in the order of encountering them.

Item One

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Bills (one each) for portions of a policy. Contained within these 3 page bills is one page with explainations of how I can have an interpreter and a phone number for the Department of Insurance.

This page is printed in Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Korean, Russian, Japanese, Arabic, Armenian, Punjabi, Khmer, Hmong, and Persian.

The main bill is all printed in English and I’ve identified as being an English speaker, so I’m somewhat annoyed by the waste of 3 pieces of paper every month.

Actually it’s 9 pieces of paper every month because they are supposed to be billing this directly from my checking account.

What they’ve been doing is billing my account then sending me 9 pieces of paper telling me that they’ve billed my account.

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Item Two

Of course nowhere on this bill do they have a phone number to call if you have questions about billing. Instead they say you’re supposed to call the Member Number on the back of your insurance card. Only problem is:

THERE IS NO MEMBER PHONE NUMBER!

There is however a customer service number that puts you into the insanity of a voice prompted computer system that doesn’t understand standard spoken English.

Eventually I just start hammering around on random numbers until I get into a hold queue.

Item Three

The reminder that all representatives are still busy played every 30 seconds. Yeah I kinda figured out that you guys are busy BECAUSE I was on hold listening to shitty hold music! How about extending that notice to once every 90 seconds?

Then I hear someone answer the phone. Wow! I was only on hold for 45 minutes this time.

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I get to a very nice man in the Philippines. Yeah, the Philippines who is able to answer my questions. Really?

The folks in the Philippines are a very nice and gracious people but why aren’t we talking to Americans?

You know out of work Americans who are struggling to feed themselves and THEIR families?

Item Four

Anyway, the nice man explains that the two bills I have saying that payment is immediately due are because Anthem failed to debit my checking account again.

Apparently these bills are trying to catch up for 2 months of payments that are in arrears. He offers to bring the accounts up to date but wants to do it via a credit card.

I decline. I’m growing more suspicious of Anthem.

I mean really, if they can’t keep it straight that I’ve given them permission to take their payments right out of my checking account; this is the 4th time they’ve screwed this up since November, can I really trust them to pay for services to my Doctor?

Item Five

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The nice man tells me that one of the bills is for Dental insurance.

Uhhh, I cancelled that back in Feb. Then he explains… It’s for pediatric dentistry.

SAY WHAT? I thought that’s why my damn medical insurance when up after the fucked up implementation of Obamacare!

(I swear, if ever there was something that needed to be aborted, Obamacare fits the bill).

But since they’re sending me a bill for it separately, It occurs to me that I can refuse to pay the bill.

Item Six

As I’m thinking over this insanity It occurs to me the cost of my meds is 300 a month without insurance. If I go to Tijuana or use a Canadian pharmacy I could perhaps get my generic drugs cheaper. Even if I stayed in the American pharmacies I’d still save money.

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I wonder if I were to simply cancel the whole damn shebang and let our fucked up government BILL me for not having insurance if I’d be better off paying out of pocket.

I wonder if I can get a catastrophic policy just in case I end up in the hospital?

I find myself thinking of tropical beaches out of the US once a year taking a “Medical Vacation” to Indonesia, or Curacao.

The thought of a once a year checkup combined with warm sand and excellent diving is a cloying one.

I wonder if the math would work out.

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I’ve got till the 10th to decide what I want to do. I suppose I’ll think it over and run some math. Perhaps I’ll shop around for another private insurer who actually can keep the payment and billing straight on a month to month basis.

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A slow news day…

This morning over my morning coffee I noticed that the News feeds hadn’t changed their headlines much.

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The news lead on Google is about the botched execution where the inmate later died of a heart attack. 

While that’s an important issue I’m somewhat disinterested. The inmate died. That was, after all the desired result of the execution.

That the inmate died in a way that was not according to plan and obviously less than peacefully isn’t something I’m particularly worried about. I presume that his victim(s) didn’t die peacefully either. Perhaps this was simply Karma playing out.

I’m ambivalent about the death penalty.

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I used to be a staunch supporter, but now I’m not as sure as I once was. I’m not in favor of the death penalty today because there have been so many instances where the person convicted of a crime had their conviction overturned by DNA or witnesses recanting their stories.

Given these occurrences, I’m not sure that taking another persons life is truly the best solution. Death is final, conviction of a capital crime, on the other hand, may not be.

Regardless of where you stand on the death penalty, we as a society all bear the responsibility for throwing the switch.

Each of us is taking another person’s life by proxy. That responsibility is something that I am not convinced I should accept. 

As a result, I have voted NO in recent elections where the Death Penalty was on the ballot. Even with my NO vote, if executions are still being carried out in the name of the society (of which I’m a member) I still bear responsibility for taking another’s life.

On the other hand, if I were to see someone kill another human being during the commission of a crime with my own eyes… 

Sorry… Mr Killer, you’re a dead man.

My thoughts on this subject may be confusing to some, but this logic illustrates a point.

You don’t have to be 100% in either the liberal or conservative camp. You can use your mind and information to decide what you think is right or wrong from either side of the political coin.

In general I think our “News” organizations are failing us and that they have all become so biased as to be unreliable.

Cases in point

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Why hasn’t the media picked up on the recently retired Representative Keith Farnham (D) from Illinois being charged with possessing child pornography?

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From Breitbart, Why haven’t the Media Outlets reported the other cases of BLM overreach? There’s an interesting article here  discussing a “Land Grab” in California. Essentially the property owner has had his property value reduced to zero because he can’t build, subdivide, or sell the property to anyone except an organization that will then turn the land over to the BLM.

This guys had this kind of thing happen to him twice with two different pieces of land! 

There’s another piece on Breitbart about the BLM that further illustrates government overreach.

This stuff is Newsworthy. 

These articles are exactly why the media is supposed to be unbiased. Without the media, these kinds of abuses go on every day and allow our government to become more powerful, more abusive, and less American every day.

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Conservatism is no longer he ravings of a few disgruntled rich, fat, white men, or the lunatic fringe whose poster boy is Rush Limbaugh.

Each and every one of us should be concerned and taking notice. If a low level organization like the BLM can get away with this kind of thing, it begs the question;

What can higher level organizations get away with?

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Gotta love a good Tweet War

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While I was waiting to see the dentist on Monday, I saw a venomous tweet directed at an acquaintance. 

I thought “Wow, was it really necessary for that lady to call him a douchebag?”

I sent him a message that read “I see you’re making friends again.” 

I figured he’d laugh, and he did. 

What I wasn’t expecting was the venom from this lady who describes herself as a “balanced liberal” directed at me.

I suppose my levity wasn’t appreciated by her I ignored her.

My bud sent back greetings and said not to pay attention to her she did this kind of thing all the time.

I said OK.

Next thing I knew she was firing off all kinds of comments. Culminating in her, calling me an uneducated, hillbilly, redneck.

And threatening to report me to Twitter because my bud, said she was a bigot on par with the Aryan nation.

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I said she was an insult to the Aryan nation. And she called me a racist, uneducated, hillbilly. 

I responded that she’d misunderstood.

Since the Aryans dogma (albieit hateful) was at least consistent and her dogma was inconsistent she would therefore be a insult to them.

After all if you’re going to insult someone you should be clear about it.

Then she got really nasty!

I was laughing, she was entertaining while I waited to have my teeth drilled.

She threatened to report me again and my Bud did it for her. I told her that If I ended up in the twitter gulag I’d be joining a long line of good people who’d been sent to the corn field. 

Then I came up with this,

I sent;

“I find your characterization of my hillbilly kin as somehow “Less Than” in comparison, tantamount to HATE SPEECH and that I’d happily go toe to toe with you with the Twitter judges.”

Suddenly she was gone!

I figured I could use her own rules couldn’t I?

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As I understand Hate Speech, it’s speech that seeks to selectively call, imply or compare a group of people to something negative.

Usually the term hate speech is applied to negative comments about specific ethnicities. More often than not these groups are non European, but sexual preferences are also included in legal protections.

It occurred to me that so called “Hillbillies” might be considered a distinct ethnic group. As such they should be afforded protections against hate speech. One might also extend the definition to occupants of so called “Flyover States”.

Hey why not? 

Thiz means that the negative attacks on Conservatives, Republicans, or people of Faith, so common on Twitter can, and should cause the Gulagging of the liberals who so quickly and easily fling epithets and hateful comments toward these groups.

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After all what’s good for one group should be equally applied to other groups!

I’m totally egalitarian about it.

I’m thinking I’ll try to get the next Liberal that attacks me gulaged using this argument. It might be an interesting test of Twitters fairness policies.

Worst case scenario I’ll end up silenced and that will give me a reason to bail on Twitter altogether.

God! I must be really bored!

LOL