The Observation Post

 I don't know why I expect people to act like rational humans, not brainless jackals...in fact, jackals have a lot more discernment than some people, but I digress... The constant barrage of idiocy, hatred, bullshit, lies, propaganda, fear mongering, and manipulation that I see in this so-called 'civilized' country S TILL makes my neck muscles tense. We have to develop a different way to cope. We can't all pull the blankets over our heads, 'forget' to vote or throw up our hands and say 'what good will it do?". Here's a beginning of a plan- 1- lower our expectations- that others are as rational or intelligent as we are, or that they actually WANT to learn. 2- be aware that there are people who are pre-disposed to follow the herd, to revere the biggest, loudest or meanest; because on a primitive level, maybe thousands of years ago (or at war), he might have helped protect the tribe. Know when you're seeing or talking to one of those tribal ty

We are pack animals; tribal. We pick sides easily because it's in our genes- a survival trait from thousand of years of evolution. BUT it doesn't serve us when we are not in a do-or-die situation and we can't discern, or separate individuals from the pack. It's laziness. If you throw someone in a box, you already have the labels on the outside and don't have to think about it, but you also don't get to learn about the individual. I had someone jump at me once, saying 'what the fuck do you know about prejudice, whitey?" But he didn't get to hear about how I was in fights when I was little for having dark skin and got called 'n**r' plenty of times, including by my own father. I had a young kid tell me that Italians were 'mud people'.... The fright wing media makes a living at separating us into packs so that their corporate overlords can keep us weak and un-focused. That's how they get away with all the looting and pillaging they

You ever think about how the GOP tells us that they want to give us 'opportunity', that we can all be rich too?...then tell us that when disaster happens, don't help each other...get your guns? We're sold the idea of money determining or being a measure of our worth, our value, then we see people like Beck, Lush Rimjob, Hannity, making MILLIONS peddling hate, delusion, sedition, and mental illness. One of the richest men in the world made his money off of hard working immigrants trying to send money home to help their families (Mexico). How is that any different than glorifying Bernie Madoff, or a druglord? I think some of the wealthiest people in the world ran toward the victims of the Boston explosions; volunteer for the Red Cross; help people get back on their feet after a hurricane...WITHOUT getting paid to do so. Example- people I knew in California who drove TO New York (9/11) and New Orleans to help after those disasters, on their own dime, while Haliburton an

Something I don't see people talking about, re the sequester- a lot of important programs are getting severe cuts, like research by the NIH, or FDA inspections. Some people seem to think that the money will be restored as the economy picks up, after the books are 'balanced'. WRONG! If you listen to the rhetoric of the GOP, they want to take those 'savings' to cut people's taxes, or give more breaks to corporate gamblers,  thus further reducing revenue. It will take YEARS of fights by agencies to get some of that money back.  Congress will say 'NO, you just want to go back to the old tax and spend nonsense."  And to the people that suck up to the Teathugs, just try to find out how much you will get back in tax savings...you know that 'keep your own money' idea? I would bet that a lot of people will get NOTHING, or so little that if you spread it out over a year, you wouldn't be able to buy a regular coffee, let alone "invest' in a

Open letter to my liberal friends Is it just me, or are others on the progressive side feeling increasingly like talking is over-rated, and maybe WE should be building up our arsenals? At least of baseball bats? It's like the onslaught of hate and stupidity from the fright wing fringies (redundant, I know) is endless! They get away with it, so more pile on and get increasingly more strident to get attention; like a pack of barki ng dogs getting increasingly louder and more rabid. I'm sick of seeing totally dismissive commentary that comes from brain dead assholes like- Palin/Hannity/Beck/Jones/ Malkin/Coulter/Limpnuts/ WorldNetDaily/NewsMax/the whole DumFux Noose angry monkey troop. You can't have a discussion in any open forums without people jumping in to call you names like libtard, obamanot, Nazi, or wishing you dead. If you suggest discussion of a topic, you invite some shit for brains making death threats. I think for a long time the left has tried to be nice an

Stay awake for the next elections! I hope progressives will stay awake enough to work to toss out the fright wing trolls that have infected government at all levels in the midterms. I'm still basically pissed off at the Dems who sat on their hands in the 2010 election to 'send a message' to Obama that they were disappointed. I got in a few arguments with those people online who wouldn't take the time to even go to White House.gov t o look at what had been accomplished, despite all the blocking, and other shenanigans by the TeaOP to sabotage the President. They acted like petulant children who said 'I asked for chocolate ice cream and he got me neapolitan." The result was, the right wing agitated the hell out of ignorant, frightened, people to rush out and vote against the evils of Nancy Pelosi, and gay FEMA soldiers coming to take their guns. And we all ended up with GOP redistricting, so that even if more people voted for the Dems than the GOP, we STILL got

Following different conversations about gun safety. Whenever someone tries to talk reasonable, they're met with a slew of angry pit bulls who take it to an extreme, including making death threats! Thus proving we DO need to beef up mental health and it shouldn't be too hard to find the people that really need help! I'm especially dismayed by people who say 'I was a soldier and I don't need to foll ... ow YOUR laws', or repeat the propaganda of the fright wing media whores for the NRA and gun makers by saying 'we have plenty of laws. The ATF has been castrated by the NRA shills in Congress. There are so many rules that prohibit them from doing their job, it's a joke. Then to make thing worse, the fright wingers blather on, falsely, about how 'we're already tracked and regulated'. There is evidence that a handful of gun dealers are skirting the law to supply weapons that end up used in crimes. But the ATF is NOT ALLOWED to investigate a gun d

This week is the 'anniversary' of the beginning of the Iraq war part 2 'Mission accomplished' and other horror stories. Bin Laden helped a handful of men kill 3000 Americans and destroyed a couple buildings over delusional dogma. Bush/Cheney/Rove helped kill over 4500 Americans, 100,000 Iraqi's, wounded and crippled thousands more of each, destroyed a whole country, and shot a major hole in our economy, over delusional dogma....now tell me, who's the bigger criminal?

I used to live next to Palo Alto and Atherton, Calif, where you could find houses worth several million dollars. So you know the gardeners were outside those homes, not inside. My experience of trickle down economics was that the uber rich owners did NOT want to pay for sewer upgrades, police, and fire services, but DEMANDED that the police show up as soon as they hung up the phone. When they wanted to upd ate, landscape, or clean their homes, they hired contractors who'd buffer them from the undocumented laborers who did all the work. Meaning they were usually white. They were owners of electronics, later software, companies that didn't mind getting all sorts of tax breaks to build their fab plants. But when they got bigger, they had to please stockholders need for maximum profit by abandoning those fab plants, along with thousands of workers to move overseas. So farmland that disappeared under asphalt to build those facilities became wastelands almost overnight. And small bu

Guns and False Equivalents I hate the argument 'if you ban guns, people will STILL find a way to kill". I've seen and heard arguments where peoples say that if you take away guns, people will kill using knives, or bats. I can kill you by sticking my thumbs in your carotid artery on your neck, putting a plastic bag over your head and face, or stabbing you through the ear with a chopstick, locking you in the garage with your car running ...there are plenty of creative examples in movies. BUT, you can't do any of that by just twitching your finger. That is why people hang so rabidly onto their guns...the faux sense of being god-like. You point at someone and they fall dead...wow! What a rush. Even my TV remote doesn't work that well.

The Devolution of John McCranky...I mean McCain Quick poll- are you getting tired of John McCranky angrily attacking any move forward? Of anything that has a Democratic fingerprint on it? Or his DumFux Noose type interrogation of appointees? Tired of his constant war-mongering? If you listen to him, we'd have troops in Syria, Egypt, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea...and maybe go back and finish VietNam. I used to think he was one of the rational Republicans, but after the 2008 election, he had to pipe in on every issue as if he thought he was the Assistant President. Maybe whatever brain disease Sorry Pale One has is contagious and he got it from breathing in her brainfarts. I think that as time passes, he is more afraid of losing his 'right' to die in office; of losing all that power he built up. He is trying to be one of the cool kids, so he is pandering to the Teathugs, who would love nothing more than to see DC burned to the ground. That would also p