Fox in the Hen House

Why do people watch Fox News; an organization dedicated to dishing out the most bias, right wing, dose of misinformation of any other network TV.

I just learned that 30% of Fox viewers think that Obama was not born in this country and 35% think that global warming is a hoax.

Why is this?  Well, the correspondants of Fox TV constantly ask the question as to where Obama was born and continally question global warming, in spite of the fact that our president was born in Hawaii and every credible scientist in the world says that global warming is a reality.

Where will Fox TV be when the polar caps melt completely?  They'll simply say that the world is heating up but that it's not global warming and has nothing at all to with humans.  This, of course, is not true, but getting out the truth is not the agenda of Fox TV.

It's agenda is to poison the American well and discredit the reality of our climate and the fact that we have too many people on this planet.

I am watching 4 9-11 responders who are asking why are Republicans in the Senate refusing to help those who have incurred illnesses as a result of their work.  Jon Stewart just showed a great clip of Sen. Mitch McConnell getting emotional (apparently the new "In-Thing" for Republican males) at the departure of Judd Gregg of N.H., but not shedding a tear who are sick and dying as a result of their good work trying to save people at the World Trade Center.

What's wrong with this picture?  You can rest assured that Fox News will be right there opposing any help for those workers who the former Republican president, George Bush, exploited at every turn during his time in office.  These people are breathtakingly hypocritical and should be ashamed,  but as we've seen, they have no shame.

Demise of America

I'm in a protracted email conversation with a good friend of mine who coincidentally a very conservative Republican.  He's pretty convinced that the Democrats are responsible for our debt, our regulations and all of our troubles.  He doesn't see the tax cuts for the top 0.01% of the nation's wealthiest people as a tax break, since, as he says, they pay all the taxes.

I've tried my darndest to explain to him that the problem(s) aren't that easy.  My contention is that leaving the world to the rich isn't necessarily the best answer.  The mega-rich never have enough money or enough power.  Without regulation and oversight the end game would be that we'd end up back to the days of the Pharaohs.  One person rules a nation of slaves, which is great if you're the one person.

The fact is that governments came into being so that we would have the playing field appropriately lined and boundaries set.  Lately the lines have been blurred.  In America the gap between the extremely wealthy and the middle class is widening more every day.  Power and greed are replacing reverence for our country.

The time is fast approaching when Americans will have to decide who will run/rule the nation.  Is this going to continue to be a nation of the people, for the people and by the people or are we simply going to hand the keys over to the mega-corporations and allow them to year in and year out take our hard earned tax dollars for their own corporate gain?

Your thoughts?

Whose Ox will get gored

There much for all Americans to think about in the coming months.  Below is a quote that appears in today's NY Times.  Yes, the Republicans did a great job in creating a movement called the Tea Party.  That was the handy work of Dick Armey.  Now they control the House here's what Mr. Boehner has to say:

“Beginning in January, the House is going to become the outpost in Washington for the American people and their desire for a smaller, less costly and more accountable government,” said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the incoming House speaker.

“I will tell you,” he added, “we are going to cut spending.”
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OK, this is wonderful.  Let's see where they start with spending cuts.  For 50 years Republicans have wanted to gut Social Security and Medicare.  They say they don't, but they really do.  They've tried to privatize SS, which had they been successful the recent recession would have decimated the program.  They just have a real aversion to any program(s) that help people; regular old Americans.  They are all about subsidies for mega-corporations that have no business being subsidized, like the nuclear industry, the farm industry, the oil industry.  These industries have been around for decades.  Why do they need you and me to subsidize them?

I guess that's obvious.  Why spend your own money when you can spend taxpayer dollars.  Frankly, the D's are just as bad in many regards.  They, too, bow at the feet of the corporations and have no problem handing over your money to them in exchange for some of it coming back to them so they can run for re-election.

On one level I agree with Boehner.  We should cut government spending and the first place we should look is corporate subsidies.  The next place is the military.  The last place we should look is at programs that help the weak, the sick and the poor, but rest assured that'll be the first place Boehner will look.  And while he

eviscerates programs that help people, I'll bet he won't even shed a tear, which will be quite an accomplishment for a guy who cries at the drop of hat...a rich man's hat.

Choices

Hello Americans and Happy Holidays,

We've got some choices to make.  The Christian radical right in this country are now looking to demonize those who think protecting our environment for future generations is a good thing.

There is most certainly enough craziness (and crazies) going on out there to make me think that perhaps it is time for Vermont to seriously consider withdrawing from the Union.  I know, I know....that's a little over the top, but this is the state that is recognized as one of the nation's cleanest states.  We take protecting our environment seriously.  Why?  Because it matters not just to those of us who are here today, but to those who will be here 100 years from now.

This stellar record impacts other things as well.  For instance, Vermont's unemployment rate is 4 points lower than the national average.  Being clean and green is also good business.

In a world where greed now runs rampant and people are only concerned about themselves and the here and now, it's really nice to live in a state with people who genuinely care about tomorrow.  Which leads me back to the idea of going it alone.  If the rest of the nation wants to follow the lead of Christians who have the nerve to demonize anyone then perhaps we should leave you folks to yourself.  Go pollute your waterways, let the big corporations have their way with your environment so that they can increase their profits.  Just stay away from Vermont.  We don't tolerate that nonsense here.

The Day Before

Tomorrow's the big day.  Our daughter and son-in-law are arriving tomorrow with our granddaughter, Thyra Grayce.  We are on the threshold of grandchild overdose.

It's amazing to contemplate how a three month old person who is only 22" long and weighs like 11 lbs. can dominate so many lives.  I can assure you that as soon as they arrive all things important will cease to exist.

Christmas shopping?? It better be done, because once the baby shows up, that's it.  I spent part of the day making vegetable beef stock for what I hope will be a delicious soup for tomorrow night.

Nothing else matters.  Once the baby arrives it won't matter that the Christian right are now declaring that all environmentalists are threatening the world and hurting the poor.

It won't matter that Congressman Issa is about to go nuts on the Obama Administration for whatever he can.  He'll spend the next two years and millions of our tax dollars on nothing more than a fishing expedition.

It won't matter that the Republicans have demonstrated breathtaking hypocracy on deficits and earmarks.

Nope, nothing really matters except a tiny person who can make her grandparents melt with a simple smile.

The Weeper

If you're born and raised in Vermont you learn at a very early age to worry.  You worry about everything.  You worry about the weather.  You worry about your car or tractor breaking down.  You worry about an early frost that will then cause you to worry about whether or not  your crops are going to fail.  You worry about sugaring season.  You worry about sliding off slippery roads.  You just worry.  Goes with being a Vermonter.

As if we don't have enough to worry about these days we're about to have a guy running the US House of Representatives who cries at the drop of a hat.  After his appearance on 60-Minutes this past Sunday he has rightfully gained the title "Weeper of the House".  If Pelosi cried one-tenth as much as this guy does Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck (if he could hold back his own tears) would be all over her.

John Boehner said on 60-Minutes that he can no longer go to schools because he cries when he sees children.  He said that he's worried they won't experience the American Dream.  Meanwhile, he works overtime with his corporate lobbyists friends to ensure that our jobs go overseas and that there's no hope of anyone experiencing the American Dream except the Chinese.

He weeps for our troops being deployed to war, but does not shed one tear for the workers at the 9-11 site who now need health care.  The guy is an unstable hypocrite

If he were to come to Vermont, sit in a bar and start blatting away to a Vermonter about his sorry childhood and the tough jobs he had to do, he'd get his ass knocked off the bar stool and tossed out the door.  That would be because the grown man/Vermonter is still doing that menial job here in Vermont.

The simple fact is that this guy is unstable.  It's not natural for a man or a woman to cry as much as this guy does and in public no less.  Tammy Faye Baker was the last person I knew who cried this much and most people thought she was a loon-ball, because she WAS a loon-ball.

So suck it up, America.  Don't shed a tear for the guy who'll cry enough for all of us.  But you should be worried.  You should be worried about the safety of our president and vice president, because, heaven forbid, anything should happen  to these two guys, Mr. Cry-Me-A-River-Weeper-Of-The-House will be your president.  So much for sleeping at night now....

Vermont's new administration and Garrison Keillor

Gov-Elect, Peter Shumlin, is continuing his mission of building his administration.  So far, his picks are being met with praise.  He has chosen Lawrence Miller to head up the Commerce Agency.  Miller is the founder of Otter Creek Beer.  This man knows what it takes to create and market a product as well as how to create jobs.  He's very familiar with the State's permitting process and stated on VPR just now that the process is as onerous as many make it out to be.  It just needs to be more predictable.

People want to come to Vermont, because of what Vermont stands for and what it is about.  It's a state that was created by independents; people who grew tired of religious fanatics and simply wanted to live life in peace.  Obviously, they didn't care how tough their life would be or else they would have moved south instead of north.

I had the occassion to see Garrison Keillor on Monday evening at the Paramount Theater in Rutland, Vt.  If you've never been to a show there; go.  It's a wonderful, restored old Vermont theater, which is gaining in popularity every day.

Keillor was outstanding.  There are few people on this planet who can sit on a bar stool and tell a single, convoluted story for two hours and hold a pack house in the palm of his hand.  You could hear a fly fart in the balcony the place was so quiet.

It was a Christmas show, which began with Keillor singing a Carol about an atheist who had been forced to go to church every year at Christmas.  After all this time the atheist was opining that maybe it would be a good thing if there was a god so that all that time spent in church didn't go to waste.

I have written my next column on the man who has hosted "A Prarie Home Companion" for three decades.  Once it's released in the Bennington Banner I'll post it here.  In the meantime, here is a column that I wrote some time ago.  Enjoy...

Priorities

There are more than a few things that I find more than a little annoying these days.  First, we have yet another person who says that he’s pastor; a man of the cloth, who is allegedly involved in a sex scandal.

Pastor Eddie L. Long of Lithonia, Georgia, is a man who founded church and built it up into an empire.  He’s an archconservative who condemns homosexuality and calls for a ban on same-sex marriage. His church holds seminars promising to “cure” homosexuality. 

He’s more than welcome to his beliefs, but now we learn that he coerced some of the younger members of his flock into having homosexual relations with him.  This is another example of people of power and influence who pretend to be holier than thou proving to be otherwise.  I thought that we had had enough of this with some Catholic priests going down this road. 

Pastor Long now joins the ranks of former Congressman Mark Foley and former US Senator, Larry Craig; two men who also decried homosexuality while simultaneously being a closet homosexual.  What is it with these men who speak out so stridently against homosexuality only to be the person that they rail against?

I was born to family that believed what other people did was their business.  My parents may, or may not, have approved of homosexuality in their day, but whatever they believed they kept to themselves.  They were pretty tolerant of others, well, unless you messed with their property stakes.

What galls most of us is that folks like Pastor Long tend to be so darned sanctimonious.  Do we really need to be preached to on sexual orientation by the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and now Mr. Long; especially when some of those doing the preaching are latent homosexuals?

The world would be a much better place if these folks would simply worry about their own lives and let others live theirs.

I’m not sure if this bothers me as much as getting ripped off by people that we’ve spent a trillion dollars trying to help.  I’m talking about our friends in Iraq who we decided needed liberating whether they wanted it or not.

You and I recently paid for a shipment of laptop computers to go to school children in Iraq.  Of the over 8,000 computers that we bought only a few ended up in the hands of kids.  The rest were stolen by a corrupt regime.

According to a story in the New York Times: “The computers — 8,080 in all, worth $1.8 million — were bought for schoolchildren in Babil, modern-day Babylon, a gift of the American taxpayers. Only they became mired for months in customs at the port, Umm Qasr, stalled by bureaucracy or venality, or some combination of the two. And then they were gone.   Corruption is so rampant here — and American reconstruction efforts so replete with their own mismanagement — that the fate of the computers could have ended as an anecdote in a familiar, if disturbing trend. Iraq, after all, ranks above only Sudan, Myanmar, Afghanistan and Somalia on Transparency International’s annual corruption index.”

This disturbing news reminded me of L. Paul Bremer’s colossal bilking of the American taxpayer.  You may recall in January of 2005 we learned that this upstanding citizen who was in charge of overseeing the reconstruction of Iraq lost $9 BILLION.  And what were the tough penalties for losing $9 billion?  He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 

Where was the outrage over wasteful government spending when all this nonsense was going on?  I don’t recall a Tea Party movement going ballistic over a genuine and serious waste of money.  $9 billion would go a long ways towards helping out the average American, but there was hardly a peep when this went down.

To be sure, there is plenty to be angry about in the world today and we are now seeing some citizens becoming animated about life in America.  But I wonder if they aren’t angry at the wrong people.  Should we be madder at those who created a health care bill that will now guarantee children cannot be dropped by insurance companies, because they have a previous illness?  Or should we be madder at those who lose $9 billion and get medals they don’t deserve?

Maybe instead of being persuaded and manipulated by people who preach to us about morality we should just strive to be the best person that we can be and let the other guy try to do the same.  If a person living in either northern Vermont or next door to me is gay I don’t think that impacts my life.  If the man condemning homosexuality, while taking your money, turns out be gay than you were a fool and he a hypocrite.

If a government we support steals 8,000 computers meant for children then we should stop supporting that government.  There are kids right here in America that could put those machines to good use.  We really need to get our priorities straight, don’t you think?

Bob Stannard 9-26-2010