Motley Moose – Archive

If you want to read a depressing but true book on the changes in our planet and it’s environment… not changes coming in a generation, but the changes that are HERE NOW, then pick up a copy of “Eaarth” by Bill McKibben (who 20 years ago tried to warn us with “The End Of Nature.” The spelling of the planet’s name is not a typo… McKibben wants us to see that our planet is somewhat familiar to us, but has changed enough to be not quite the same… and we will have to get used to it.

…Rand Paul, winner of the Kentucky Republican Senate Primary.

In an interview last night, Paul told Maddow that he agrees with most parts of the Civil Rights Act, except for one (Title II), that made it a crime for private businesses to discriminate against customers on the basis of race. Paul explained that had he been in office during debate of bill, he would have tried to change the legislation. He said that it stifled first amendment rights.

As I thought about Florida Rep. Ted Deutch’s quote in my previous post this morning, I also recalled a discussion I heard either on Olbermann or Rachel Maddow last night ( I really wasn’t looking at who was talking, but was lying flat on my back after taking a pain killer for my cracked ribs) in which a Republican said he was really in agreement on the nuclear decisions that the President had come to, but in terms of voting for the  treaty with the Russians he would probably have to vote NO. The reason? Because the Party Leaders are insistent on not supporting anything the President does prior to the November elections.

The goal is, still, to make the current Administration a failure.

Fla. Rep Ted Deutch and constituent

I’ve really only been to Los Angeles to spend time once, but during that time one of the most important things for me was to visit the Watts Towers, the folk art monument  and masterpiece in one of the city’s worst neighborhoods. The Watts Towers have been on my interest list since I first read about them in the early 1960s while a student at Northwestern (I got interested in them after seeing a black and white photograph on the cover of a paperback volume of poetry), and I have been monitoring their condition and appearance ever since.

And have you noticed that even when they are “in Session” they throw away most of Monday and Friday with traveling? And have you noticed that from Tuesday to Thursday Senators are rarely on the floor, so they are spending more time having Quorum Calls than they are debating?

Have you noticed that when they are debating neither side ever seems to be actually “debating” with the other side… like they don’t respond to each others’ comments and queries? And have you noticed that even when they do comment on a question from the other side they never really provide an accurate answer?

OK… while many are watching the NCAA Basketball games, I’ll be watching the big sports action of the weekend: The Health Care bill in the House of Representatives.

CSPAN is showing BOTH the debates in the House and the Reconciliation Bill debate in the House Rules Committee (on CSPAN 2). The major players will all be out there, making the points or stalling to try and get the bill bogged down. Whatever happens today will determine what gets voted on tomorrow.

I listened to a Congressman from Alabama give the Republican’s weekly statement (after the President’s weekly statement) on NBC this morning and was told that despite what Pelosi and Reid want, despite the threat of using reconciliation to push the Health Care bill through, the American People don’t want the Health Care bill as it has been debated and argued over the past year. He said the American People want Congress and The President to “start over on a new page.”

Here in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, about as American a location as you can find, I sit watching this knowing that I WANT a Health Care bill to be passed NOW. I know that if the government starts on a NEW PAGE it will be in the face of a rate-raising, highly profitable private insurance system and  a 10-to-1 ratio of lobbyists who are NOT starting on a new page, who will work day and night to weaken any progress.

This is the Holiday which, as far as I can tell, is designed for Car Dealers more than it is to revere the men who made our country great.

When I was growing up we had separate holidays for Washington’s Birthday and Lincoln’s Birthday. The first honored the man who was our first President and who led us through the military activities of the Revolution. We also remembered every year that he voluntarily stepped down after two terms when he could easily have become a lifetime American King. The second holiday honored the man who kept our nation together, freed the slaves and suffered assassination.

…and we in the good ole USA don’t, encountering stories like the one about artist Tom Fowler that Cary Tennis tells in Salon makes us regret the corrupt political/commercial alliances that have given us our current situation.

A clip:

Tom had died. He had gotten a toothache. He had gotten a toothache but had not gone to the dentist because he didn’t have health insurance to pay for the dentist. He lived with it. Then he got sick but thought he was OK. Then he collapsed and the emergency medical people came and they told him he should go right into the hospital. But after reviving he said he’d be OK and he went home and made himself some soup. He lasted a couple of more days like that. Then he got really, really sick and they put him in the hospital but by that point the infection that had begun in a tooth had spread massively throughout his body and despite the doctors’ best efforts Tom could not be saved.

He died because he didn’t go to the dentist and didn’t go to the doctor because he was trying to be an artist and didn’t have health insurance and didn’t think it would kill him.

C-Span has been running the videos from the Tea Party Convention in Nashville all night, and I started watching when I got up in the morning… and, believe me, this is scary stuff. I especially was taken by one Joseph Farah, who is the Founder, CEO and Editor In Chief of WorldNetDaily.

This is scathing stuff about the country’s move to Socialism over 90 or so years, the Marxist description of President Obama, and the focus on changing our underlying culture with its non-political organizations away from the socialist-leaning entities that, he says, they have become.