Yep.  Even at this late date I could give a shit.  So the Republicans/Conservatives/Tea Partiers/People of hereditary privilege have found yet another way to trip up this President.  But what have we REALLY learned about the National Debt? Throughout this entire non-newsworthy debacle?

1) Congress has always overwhelming voted to raise the debt ceiling.

Why? Because it’s necessary.  Why aren’t they doing it now?  Let’s see…what major thing about Washington, the White House specifically, is different? No, it’s not that it’s a black President, there is just something magical about the number $14 trillion.  That’s just the natural limit for a country’s indebtedness.

2) Rich People are gonna get their money

Get real people.  There isn’t going to be any kind of default.  This is coming out of social security checks for old people and paychecks for our nation’s servicemen.

3) White people love money more than they love feeling superior because they are white

White people have had this choice before.  At the end of the Civil War rich white people could have devoted some of their slaves to the Confederate War effort and possibly saved their racial hierarchy.  But they decided overwhelmingly not to do this.  Robert E. Lee who popular legend would have you believe abhorred slavery, fought his father in-law’s will freeing his slaves because…he wanted money.  And he wanted to lead the Confederate forces because he thought his military career would advance quicker as the George Washington figure of a new country.

All that is to say that white people who make above X amount a year ALWAYS act in their self-interest.  Maybe that is true of all people who make above slave wages, as I have never heard of an Arabian Prince actually committing rather than just simply planning a suicide bombing.

Ugh.  I am tired of writing about this.  It took me 20 damn minutes to figure out how to load the icon that is my signature.  I just wanted to be on the record in late July saying I still don’t care one bit about the National Debt.  It’s a non-issue, like a runny noise is a non-disease.  I don’t care if you can’t find a tissue, or need a tissue for your runny damn nose while I’m sitting in the corner bleeding out.

There are some great stories here.  I am also adding this to the blog roll.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/down-not-voices-long-term-unemployed-125453267.html

Sorry for the long delay.
Here is the link until I can post this properly

http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/11412507

Ugh.  Why Benito? Why would you save our posts and write yours on your phone?  Is this to punish me for not giving you my old laptop when yours broke? Of course this happens when I send you a post that literally solves the healthcare crisis in our nation.

I was inspired by a pompous windbag who saw my Obama ‘08 sticker (but apparently  not my PENN Medical decal) and decided to lecture me on the pitfalls of Obama’s healthcare platform.  During the rant he recounted everything a doctor has to go through and concluded that he “had no problem with doctor’s salaries.” Thanks, because you know, if it wasn’t ok with you I’d be sending some of that money back.

Part of the answer is easy.  Obama plan (including individual mandate) + public option. Nothing was funnier than hearing this fool rail on about people who use emergency rooms as family practices leaving the rest of us to pay while simultaneously condemning the individual mandate. Idiot.

The next part has to do with the training of doctors.  Basically there are not enough of us and it takes too long. Well, let’s let common sense take a crack at this one.  First we create more doctors by creating more medical schools.  These would be public works, the type that create jobs (but really, whose trying to do that in this economy).  Trust me, the demand on the student side is there.  Second you make a medical education free IF you stop at the primary care level.  If you specialize (which now most doctors do because it’s the only way to pay back the loans they’ve already acquired) then the gift becomes a debt and you pay your way from there.
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Ok. Because all of your are too lazy to click on the other categories available on this site, throughout the summer I am going to highlight past posts of note.  This is also a good time to search the blog by author, checkout the media section or just pick a random month before you discovered this site and see what everyone was up to.

Specifically I would recommend:

Tales of an Unpublished Author – Our mini series from last summer.  I must read for aspiring authors.

Mike Triforce Says Go to Law School and Get Paid – Our debut (and so far only) xtranormal movie.

The Roommate – Our debut (and again so far only) short story.

Enjoy your summer everyone.  The Job Applications will be there after Labor Day.

Hopefully our short story selections won’t follow in the footsteps of our movies.  Without further ado I present: “The Roommate” by Angsty Kong.

The Roommate

Matt Finer was on death row for the murder of his roommate Michelle Row.  A last minute stay of execution had been denied.  Finer was a lawyer and had tried, unsuccessfully, to avoid execution due to a mental illness.  The guards didn’t buy it, just another trick to keep privileged pricks like Finer out of the hot seat and in minimum-security resorts.  Matt Finer was guilty and he deserved to die.  He wouldn’t even give Row’s family the location of the body.  It was widely believed that unwillingness contributed to his sentence more than any other factor.

Up to this point, Finer had been about as calm and coherent as anyone facing execution, particularly a person who ought to have a lot of regrets.  But when the guards came for him he was wide-eyed and wild, already hoarse from screaming and bleeding all over his face from scratching himself, like he tried to claw his own eyes out.  Experienced guards who’d led hulking beasts such as ex-football players, ex-military and hired killers down the Green Mile were having trouble with a 5’-8” dumpy kid who five years ago had been tossing a Frisbee around his ivy-league campus.

The guards began to strap Finer into place and he grew even wilder.  It was more than just fear.  He’d seen something behind the glass where the family waited to view his execution.  Standard procedure was to keep the curtain pulled until the inmate was strapped in, but Finer’s antics had caused them to run behind schedule.  The crowd was restless.

“I wish executions had previews,” remarked one guard and his colleagues nodded.

Once everything was prepared Finer grew calm.  He said several times he had something to say and the warden ensured him he’d be permitted to speak before the execution.  When the warden asked him if he had anything to say Finer said, after visible deliberation,

“I should have watched the end of the tape,” then nodded when asked if he was finished.

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It’s the first day of summer.  My phone is no more and I am not due for an upgrade until September.  Of course my mother just figured out how to text her friends on her church committee last week and is unwilling to let me have HER phone which she previously never used, not even to call 911 when she fell off the kitchen stool while reaching for the flour at the top of the cupboard.  Of course she was reaching for the flour to bake me a cake so it was my fault.  The cake was to celebrate a job interview.  Obviously I didn’t get the job.  When an interview begins with “I’m sorry, we thought you were someone else,” it is not a good sign.

But I digress.  Summer is about escapism.  Escapism in the form of movies and stories.  I know I promised you guys movies a few months back, then delivered nothing past our inaugural film.  That’s my bad.  Despite that failure, I am now offering in addition to movies, short stories in the media section.  That’s our goal for the summer here folks.  Build up the ole media library.

I was wondering how long it would take for something ignorant to happen and ruin my thorough enjoyment of all the Bin Laden coverage.  Not surprisingly the ignorance comes from UVa.  If you haven’t heard a black male student wrote a letter about racial profiling, purposefully distributed it to various media outlets and it turned out to be fabricated.  It was an allegory, a teaching moment, or some such crap.  The idiot needs to take a lesson from this blog and write anonymously while making references to fictional characters that are pop-culture icons.  Speaking of which, I saw Mega Man the other day and punched him in the face.  Well, I thought about punching him in the face.

Now law students are a sorry bunch.  They lie all the time and their “honor codes” are a joke.  Particularly at UVa.  If this kid had lied about a hit and run accident or cheated on an exam I wouldn’t have strong feelings about whether he graduated or not.  Sure, he did something awful but find me a law student who hasn’t.  In Philadelphia law students shoot each other.  It’s no big deal.

But what this fool did was inexcusable.  Not because it soiled the reputation of the Charlottesville police.  I’ve been pulled over in Charlottesville for being black.  Same run of the mill crap, certainly not story worthy.  What this kid did was give the bastards who spend 24/7 trying to convince the world that racism doesn’t exist ammo.  I mean did he learn nothing from the Duke Lacrosse case?

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Osama Bin Laden is dead.  Yes he deserved to die.  I hope he burns in hell.  I was elated when I heard the news.  However, when I logged onto facebook most of my ultra-liberal brethren were posting shit quoting Dr. King talking about how they personally took no joy in his death and how it was wrong to do so. I, for once, was outside the ultra-liberal mainstream.  SO three questions come to mind.  First, why do I and my liberal friends disagree? Second, who is right? Third, is this even tangentially related to anything having to do with being in debt?

The first thing that struck me about the Dr. King quote was that he was talking about enemies who directly and repeatedly wronged him and his family.  Most of my liberal friends do not have that relationship with Bin Laden.  They hadn’t lost anyone in the attacks and the ten-year war that followed did not affect their lives in any material way.  They’re liberal, but they’re not self-immolating to bring the troops home from Afghanistan.

Second, are they right?  Probably.  I am sure I should not be fantasizing about the first lonesome, hideous bottom-feeding sea creature that might stumble upon a delicious, stinking bag of white-wrapped flesh and manage to use some gruesome appendange to wrest it open.  I know that’s not right.  But I know something about having enemies, about waking up everyday knowing the person (people) responsible for your situation are waking up in relative comfort everyday snickering about what they did to you and hoping they can do it to others like you.

Now I am not saying they are DEFINITELY right.  I believe that killing him and recovering his body was the right (and only right) thing to do.  I also believe that the visceral reaction to the death of a monster is inextricably linked to the burning desire to sacrifice everything for one thing that is sacred.  That is why we risk sacrificing many lives to save one life.  Because a life is sacred.  We do not do this for vengeance, justice or to honor the dead.  We do this because it is who we are.

I tried not to write about it.  I didn’t want to be just another liberal blogger uninentionally calling attention to the “birther” movement and thereby adding legitimacy to it in the subconscious minds of many Americans who vote.  When the White House went above and beyond any legal requirement of any American citizen to do anything (not to mention presidential candidate, not to mention sitting president) and released his long-form birth certificate I patted myself on the back for staying out at least one pointless debate.  And now they want his college records.  And of course the birthers are not satisfied with the long-form birth certificate.

So let’s go over what we know.  Birthers are racist, and not the pseudo-intellectual “there exist some gifted negroes but as a race they are intellectually inferior” but the “there are just some things nobody with mongrel blood should ever, ever do and being president is damn sure one of them.” All Republicans, racist or not, know that birthers are racist and deliberately pander to this group for political points by pretending that the birthers really care where Obama was born not as much what he looks like and who he was born to.  Polls indicate that over half of people who identify themselves as Republicans don’t believe Obama is American or aren’t sure.  Believe it or not, I can live with that.  Or rather, I have to – I’m black in America.

But here’s what makes me angry.  It’s the fact that so many people, with nothing to gain to from this slander and libel against the President, don’t get angry and don’t stand up to make any sort of change.  Case in point: If you haven’t struck up a conversation with an acquaintance or stranger about how absurd this birther thing is, then guess what? Black or white, you’ve failed the racism/self-hatred test. 

Ok, let’s back up.  Raise your hand if you’ve overheard a birther talking on the bus or in a bar sounding all authorative like he’s king shit of fuck mountain?  Yeah all right, all of you.  Now, raise your hand if you’ve EVER heard someone DENOUNCING birtherism loudly and in the same manner? Now put your hand down if you’re at a small liberal arts college North of the Mason Dixon line with no division 1 or division 2 athletics.  Yeah, not a single hand raised.

Look people.  It’s 2011.  We know that progress isn’t guaranteed with the passing of time.  We’ve seen slavery, holocaust, genocide and the like.  It’s not just that we know what our primal demons are like, we also know, as people how extremely cowardly we are.  I mean, you won’t come to the defense of the President of the United States? Your President? Supposedly the most powerful person in the world?  If not then guess what, you’re not coming to the defense of the gay kid who is being bullied.  You’re not coming to the defense of the Hispanic-American who is having his citizenship questioned by an angry mob.  Come on people, we need to start controlling how the masses think.

Oh, you’re one of those “you can’t control how people think” people are you?  Ever heard of advertising? Your deepest most sacred convictions are bought, sold, bundled, divided and sold again every day on Wall Street.  Your very concept of what it means to be American is 80% commercials you’ve watched during Major League Sports.

So read a book, figure out what your convictions are, and PLEASE don’t just STAND UP for them if they get attacked in front of you.  Convictions aren’t to be used for self-defense only.  ADVOCATE for them.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, I hate stupid people as much as the next guy.  But you know what I hate even more?  A coward.