Mr. Trucker Goes To Washington

Greetings citizens, Spacetrucker here on board US Airways flight 2502 to Washington D.C.
As I sit here cramped in an aluminum tube filled to capacity with grumpy coffee breath mouth breathers awaiting take off, I try to come up with some witty lines to put into this blog.
Unfortunately nothing comes to mind at the moment, so I am just gonna thump type away on whatever stream of consciousness may happen.
I checked out the cockpit when I boarded and both the pilot and co pilot looked young and healthy. Luckily there should be no unscheduled passing of the flight crew.
We were delayed taking off because of a long ass line of women trying to use the fucking restroom on the plane.
Guess where my seat is?
Before getting on the plane I got a call from my union prez who is supposed to be traveling with me, saying they won't let him in because he missed the flight.
Obviously what happened was, the fuckers over booked the flight and it became first come first serve. That shit happens all the time, but the airlines usually give u a discount or even a free domestic flight for your trouble. These bastards evidently put the blame on you for being in the back of the line.
Him missing the flight would probably be funnier if for the fact the hotel rooms are booked in his name and he won't be arriving until later tonight. I hope the fuck I can talk them into letting me have my room. Else it is gonna be a piss poor fucking first day.
I spent the first part of this flight experimenting taking videos with my cell phone and transferring them over to my Nokia mini computer. I hope to be able to do some video blogging. As purty as I am it just ain't fair not to get my face on the internets as much as possible.
I think we may be getting ready for our descent, if so I will have to turn off this cell phone until we land, so I am closing up.
I will upload and post as soon as I am allowed.
Spacetrucker out.

What if~~~~~

As i watch the dramatic story unfold of angry protesters, rioting in the streets, demanding freedom, demanding justice it takes me back~~~~~~~~


It takes me back to another election. Same story, different actors. Where, oh where was the outrage in 2000? Sure there were protests, but they were small and scattered. Where was the outrage?
Had we reacted to that election the way Iranians are reacting to this one, would G Dubyah have still been president? Would we have gone to war? Would 911 have still happened? Would our economy have gone insane?
We will never know. Let history be our lesson and never be silent again.

Fixing a broken system

Our economy is broken. Everybody is aware of this fact. Unemployment is rising because people are not buying as much as they used to, businesses are sinking; lay offs and hiring freezes are inevitable.
Rising taxes are also inevitable, but the tax system itself needs a major overhaul. Loopholes that enable the very wealthy to avoid paying an equitable share of taxes must be closed. Wasteful government spending must be addressed and dealt with.
This is the legacy Barrack Obama has inherited. He is doing an amazing job, but to be fair, he doesn't have a magic wand to wave over the nation to fix everything that has been breaking down for many years.
Think about the government and the economy as if it were a car. If you maintain that car, changing the oil regularly, replacing worn belts, adjusting brakes and changing break pads, checking and adding fluids when necessary, it will run smoothly, without the expense of major repairs. It will cost a little to maintain, of course, but you will avoid high cost repair bills. Putting a fresh coat of paint on to pretty it up isn't going to make it run better. It will just be a nice, shiny hunk of junk. Our leaders have been putting fresh coats of paint on our system and ignoring the internal problems for so long that the repairs are going to be costly, with no guarantee that the government engine will ever run the way we hope it will.
We have entered a new age and what is broken may have to be entirely replaced with something that works better. That's scary, but change comes with a price.
I predicted back during the Reagan administration that if healthcare was not fixed, we would be facing what we are now.
Insurance companies and the medical business have created a monster. Here is an example that hit me directly. When my doctor prescribed a wheel chair, the insurance company decided that it should be a rental. The original cost of the chair was just under $2000. To date, the medical supply company has received over $6000 in rental costs, three times the original cost of the equipment. Medical billing must be addressed. Insurance companies are passing these extra costs on to consumers. It is not individuals who are the problem. It is the medical business and the insurance business, who, in their greed have forgotten that everything has a price. Wasteful spending is wrong. It costs us all. If you have been hospitalized, the cost of everything used during your stay is far above the cost to the medical facility.
Socialized medicine would curb the out of control billing by the medical community.
It is not communism or socialism. It is simply the right thing to do. When people are victims of uncontrolled medical costs, it ends up costing us all in the long run.
I don't believe we all should be receiving free, unlimited medical care. I do believe that a low cost, government run system would ultimately put insurance companies and the medical community in check, and end the profiteering that we have all faced for so long.
Should the medical community be allowed to profit and prosper? Certainly~but isn't a 300% profit a little steep? Should private insurance companies be allowed to profit and prosper? Certainly. But shouldn't they be made aware of the costs they incur on our behalf and made to address over billing more equitably? Insurance premiums are rising rapidly and the benefits are shrinking. We need to join the rest of the civilized world and end the joy ride of the medical/insurance industries.

wingnuts

Right wingers seem to have their heads so far up their asses, they should probably have their names stamped on the backs of their belts. How else will they know who they are when they come up for air?

You know you are a christian fundamentalist when:

This is not America {warning~very graphic}

I was playing around trying to figure out how to embed a video on this blog. Finally figured it out {I think}. This is my all time absolute favorite Aerosmith song. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do

In Reply to FoB

The following is in reply to the comment (below) on my prior post.

FoB said...
Who is applauding? We're not dealing with a few extremists, we're dealing with a single insane person.
June 2, 2009 4:13 PM


That might be a reasonable argument but for the fact that this is not an isolated incident. Abortion providers who are engaged in an activity that is still legal in this country and their employees are subjected to many forms of violence, harassment and intimidation, including physical violence, bombing, arson, death threats, bomb threats, facility invasion, burglary, break-ins, broken windows, glue in locks, nails in driveways, graffiti, clinic blockades, stalking of staff or physicians, home picketing, posting of "wanted" posters and harassment via the Internet. The intimidation and harassment does not end with the abortion providers. Frothing at the mouth abortion clinic protestors write down the numbers on car tags so that they can identify and harass patients of these clinics. All of the activity mentioned above is not only repugnant to people who, despite their personal views on the issue, stay out of affairs that don’t concern them, it is illegal.

This is not the first “insane” person who has murdered someone for this cause and probably, unfortunately won’t be the last.

1. Eric Robert Rudolph, who bombed an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, killing an off duty police officer who was acting as a security guard and maimed a nurse. Here is Rudolph’s web site http://www.armyofgod.com/EricRudolphHomepage.html.

2. Paul Hill, who murdered Dr. John Britton in Pensacola, Florida in 1994 "The short answer is no. I don't feel any remorse because I think it was a good thing, and instead of being shocked, more people should do what I did. I think more people should act as I acted."

3. James Kopp, who shot and killed Dr. Barnett Slepian with a single bullet from a high-powered rifle through the window of his Amherst, NY, home while he was standing in the kitchen
with his wife and children nearby.

The argument that this is one insane person is disingenuous at best and attempts to deflect the attention from the hatemongers and lunatics that engage in typical abortion protests. This was not just one insane person. This was the culmination of a society of insane people who think that they are above the law and that their cause, simply because they believe in it, justifies any action, including murder.

Well the elephant started it!

Pro LIfe Thugs

The assassination of Dr. George Tiller Sunday was a gang hit. Only this time, the gang activity did not occur in inner city Los Angeles, New York or Detroit. It occurred in Wichita, Kansas at a church. The person who killed Dr. Tiller was not protecting his own life or the life of his family and he was not protecting his city, state or country. We cannot know what was truly in the mind of this evil person, perhaps he was operating under the misguided logic that killing Dr. Tiller would somehow save fetuses from abortion, or perhaps it was retribution for the abortions Dr. Tiller had previously performed.

What is clear is that what Dr. Tiller was doing, performing abortions, is a legal, medical procedure, which women were given a legal right to undergo by a Court decision which has not to this date been overturned. What the assassin did was murder. I do not address whether or not abortion is moral, or whether or not I personally agree with abortion itself. It is legal, and each person faced with an unwanted pregnancy should be able to make those decisions on their own, without threat, coercion, or fear. The murder of another human being as a preventative measure for actions they may undertake in the future, or as revenge or retribution is an illegal act. Unless the man is determined to be mentally ill, there are no mitigating factors. He is no spokesperson, no hero and no martyr for the cause. His motivation should not be explored and his story should not be told. There are no qualifiers to lesson his guilt. He is a thug and a criminal and all the people who are applauding his actions are just members of the same gang.