I am honest- hear me roar!

The most honest capitalist has got to be Bayer CEO, Marijn Dekkers. The Bayer company created a cancer drug called Nexavar which costs Indians (of the India variety) $69,000 a year. That's a lot of money and you may know how much Indian's love to bargain. In 2012 an Indian court licensed an Indian company to market the drug at a 97% discount. Wow. That's a steep discount. The same drug costs $96,000 a year here. And that's where Dekkers's honesty comes into play. He says the drug "isn't for Indians but for western patients who can afford it." Does it get more honest than that?

Martha MacCallum of Fox news claims there is no pay gap between men and women and that women are paid exactly what they are worth. She added:

“I think most women do not want to be treated as sort of a special class of citizen. They want to go to work every day, they want to get paid for being a professional, for doing their job really well, and they don’t want to be treated like some special group of people who have to be, y’know, given a little special handout just to make sure they’re OK.”

That might be Martha's version of honesty, for all I know. She may really believe that. In fact, she adds that when you factor in the time off women get for dropping babies in the field, they actually make more than men. So there's that!

I just don't know what to make of this honesty. I get the argument that it costs money to develop drugs and yada-effing-yada and that's the end of the argument for any God-fearing capitalist- that you have a God-given, Constitutional right to a profit. It's written somewhere that you do....just not in the Bible or the Constitution.

What I don't get is why medicine and healthcare has to be operated at a profit. And not only a profit but an obscene profit at that.

Well, because that is our system! It's as simple as why women make 77 cents on the man's dollar. It is profit. DUH!

Martha didn't come right out and say it but,  that women work for less is why women work at all. Two things happened in the early seventies that were a direct result of the women's liberation movement. Corporations discovered that women would work for less money than men. And, if you got women out of the house and into the workforce, you could get people to buy more things and pay more for them. Two could spend more money than one. EZ credit made that even more possible and I should say that three things happened due to women's lib.

To Martha and to the GOP and the corporations they serve, this is accepted fact. The CEO's tell us that the country cannot afford to raise the minimum wage. The so-called "GREATEST COUNTRY IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD!" and we can't afford to pay our women what we pay men and we can't afford to pay our least skilled workers a living wage? Our economic system is so fragile that girls can beat it up? Are you fucking kidding me?

That's why- dickhead that he is- you have to appreciate Dekkers's honesty. You can't afford it and we didn't make it for you. Therefore, you can't have it!

Martha MacCallum and the other Faux blondes are being less honest with us. I mean- has she ever turned down a raise at FOX thinking it might put her into a Hannity bracket? I'm going to say no. I'm rather certain that she has an agent which is like extremely personal Union representation. I'm thinking she's less honest than Mr. Marijn Dekkers. That's probably why he makes more than her. Yeah, that's it.

Then, ON TO POLAND!

Can we not piss on the Holocaust enough that we must defecate too? Listen to this asshole:

Writing from the epicenter of progressive thought, San Francisco, I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its “one percent,” namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the “rich.”

From the Occupy movement to the demonization of the rich embedded in virtually every word of our local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, I perceive a rising tide of hatred of the successful one percent…. This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendent “progressive” radicalism unthinkable now?

That was from billionaire venture capitalist, Tom Perkins, in a letter to the editor of The Wall Street Journal called "Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?"

People find this Nazi stuff appealing for a variety of ignorant reasons. Obama and his healthcare reform has been compared to Hitler. Matter of fact, pretty much everything Obama has done has been compared to Hitler. Comparisons of Obama to Hitler are as ubiquitous as those memes where Hitler complains about (usually) football games but pretty much anything including The Oscars. Those are funny though. Seriously comparing anything to the holocaust other than other acts of genocide is obscene.

Rich people have suffered no indignities other the The Kardashians and Paris Hilton. Kristallmacht- the night of broken glass- the breaking of windows at rich-owned shops would be so hard to pull off with malls closing a 9:00 pm that it would just be silly. And what about the uber-wealthy who don't own shops that made their fortune but pushed paper around or inherited their wealth from family? No glass to break there! Many rich people already live behind fences with guards. Why would they leave those gated communities (ghettos?) for the other kind? I'd venture to say that this venture capitalist is a fucking idiot.

How can people even consider making these outrageous, insensitive claims. How did this asshole get to be a billionaire with such a convoluted 'thought' process. Must be a corporate raider or some Rmoney-like gig. Politics- I could see. Him writing that as a ordinary citizen I can see. I say that because I have seen non-wealthy idiots extrapolate like that. I question why he didn't hire someone to write the letter for him. He's a billionaire. Is he that cheap? Certainly not a job creator.

I saw a cartoon of a man and some kids sitting around a campfire. A disheveled man says to the children, "Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders." Some people think that way. That's extreme capitalism. This is why you hear ordinary people disavowing global warming or calling for the complete dismantling of the EPA.  They have been told to believe that carbon emissions and pollution are good for the shareholders and, therefore, good for all. Well, they are ordinary people or they get paid to post as ordinary people on the internet. But evidently many people see making a mess as progress. Can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs, right? 

The notion that Americans don't like rich people is pretty flimsy. Most of us want to be rich ourselves someday. I personally intend to win the lottery. Many of the republicans among us not only want to win the lottery but they have planned for that by supporting the lowering of taxes on millionaires. Now that is planning ahead! How many of us become rich without supporting a party that caters to the rich? What a fox paws that is!

We don't persecute the rich. But ya know, some day we might have to. If they keep taking all our money, we will have to. It's bad enough that they trick our most gullible citizens into screeching against their own interests on the internet, they also trick them into voting for people who can implement those policies against their self interest and convince these rubes that they are patriots for doing so!

The Nazi's and their holocaust were not a revolution. Some day we will rise up against our oppressors but it won't be (hopefully) in defense of our wealthiest one percent. It'll kinda be the other way around, Richie Rich. A famous communist once said that, if God did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. True. But did you know that if greedy, obnoxious rich assholes were  not ruling an entire country, making a mockery of capitalism and virtually enslaving 99% of a country, communist revolution would not be necessary.True story, comrades.

Positively 4th Street

Well, I guess the Virtual Wake for Angela is over- at least on the Chicago Dregs thread, that is. I think it still goes on at The Washington Post site where it appears she had a couple hundred friends and frenemies. The Dregs number but ten by their own count, even though several more people post there. They've always been more exclusionary than exclusive. It's not so much that a person is good enough to get in, it's more important that some must be kept out. 

Not me, mind you. I had my chance to be a Chicago Dregular years ago and I passed. When I post there now it's because I can and because some there think I should not. A lot of people confuse the openness of the internet with email. There's a huge difference! It's lost on dregs. Anyway, the point is I don't feel excluded, no matter how much they want me to. I've never come around to get back in. I was never that far 'in' anyway. I don't know why they can't get that.

Most of these people are assholes. For Chrissakes- the likes of Sublime, race and edog are in this gang! Somehow Ferrerman makes those jag offs look good??!! Apologies to any dedicated non-readers not up to speed on these miscreants but those three are teapublican, misogynist racists and, I'm not. I think most of the previous male dregs fit that bill too, now that I mention it. I caught a lot of grief from the Lady Dregs  (they wear pink jackets  that match the guy's pink jackets ) back in the day for picking on the likes of rational and nova. In fact, rational famously asked his daddy to ask some fake mob guy he did trim work for to have me killed. Mob hits don't work that way. Defaming a fake internet therapist who turns out to be a fake, internet therapist (surprise!) is not a whackable offense. Well, not mob whackable....

So, on the Chicago thread portion of the Virtual Wake For Angela, the dregs seemed to spend more time condemning me rather than praising her. Everyone mourns in their own way but, that's pretty fucked up. They've always had a funny way of doing things. I was rather surprised at the folks who didn't stop in to mourn her and/or say hello to the remaining dregs. Hard to say if the word didn't get out or if more people just didn't care.

There weren't any Original Gangster dregs on the list of ten that PEllen presented for Angela's friends and family. Maybe race was OG. He was there when I first came around. He's A770's bitch still too, as is Sublime. They've posted with her all these years. I guess that the other OG's didn't want to be part of that. Even the poster formerly known as "Teri at home" didn't get in on the memorial flowers gift. Well, maybe she wasn't asked. That "...some of you will be receiving PM's...' stunt that PElican pulled was kinda exclusionary. I guess that's what that was about.

I'm going to close with Mr. Dylan wearing his own shoes...

http://grooveshark.com/#!/s/Positively+4th+Street/3OQMMd?src=5

Cause For Effect

I have a Facebook and real life friend, who some days describes herself as a Ron Paul-style Libertarian but, most days, is even nuttier than that and is a tea bagger. Suffice to say, Christy simply hates Obama and democrats and will align with anyone else who does.

Christy is dirt poor. A mutual friend of ours advised me a few years ago that Christy has used every kind of entitlement available in her state. Things have been tough for her and the kids, for years. It would seem incongruous that someone like her would be so sternly against a helping hand but, it's shockingly common among red-staters like her to vote against their best interests.

I feel bad for Christy. But, she makes it extremely hard to feel bad for her. The friend who advised me of Christy's plight? She's one of the most genuine, loving people I've ever had the privilege of knowing but, she defriended Christy due to the sheer volume of reichwing hate that clogs up Christy's FB page. When it's not hate, it's insane paranoia. It's frustratingly sad to watch an old friend descend into the madness depths of politics. She sees government conspiracy in absolutely everything.

Justin Beiber's arrest for drag racing and DUI? I jokingly predicted that the reichwing would see it as just another deflection from current administration *scandals*. Sure enough there was a cartoon meme that read: "Justin Bieber arrested? What story are they trying to distract us from now?"

Now, I know from funny. Probably that meme's creator was being cute. In tandem with another meme on her page of the ubiquitous Keanu Reeves wondering: "What if terror attacks and shootings are staged by our own government to generate the support needed for an oppressive police state?"

Wow. That is some paranoia. It's fairly generic though. Some people on the left believe Cheney orchestrated the 9/11 attacks in order to get a very lucrative war with Iraq and a Patriot Act thrown in for good measure. There were people who believe Roosevelt allowed the attack on Pearl Harbor to happen so as to spark an isolationist America into supporting a very necessary war in Europe. Plausible but....why does he allow the better part of his naval fleet to be destroyed? Why intentionally handicap yourself like that? Within moments of Sandy Hook, crazies were proving that a government hit team perpetrated the massacre of the children. Why? To give reason to the confiscation of all our guns, of course. Well, that little slice of obscenity might fascinate some but, it's short-lived when not a single measure was taken in the literal wake of the murdered children or the year since.

I'm sickened and saddened that Americans think like this. This bullshit is not part of the republican party platform but they don't take a moment to disavow such talk in their extended ranks. Crazy people vote too, ya know. This is more than sour grapes based on losing the last two presidential elections. It's an avenue towards winning the next one. Well, if a filthy, back-alley of depravity can be an avenue, that is. All roads may lead to the White House but, you do not have to take each one.

Christy is not alone in her insanity. Topix and Facebook are chock full of such whack jobs. Who really believes this shit and who just wants to? Does Christy? It certainly seems as if she does. She doesn't do much vetting of posts. Most republicans would be ashamed to have the aforementioned memes on their Facebook pages, associated with their names. Christy probably fancies herself a patriot waiting for Obama's private army to come for her.

Don't hold your breath, Christy. You won't turn blue- don't worry about that. It wouldn't help your cause anyway, whatever your cause is today. 

Good help is hard to find.

I caught part of the movie "The Help" the other day on TNT. I didn't see enough of it to give it a proper review but, I think it makes for an excellent segue into today's discussion of race.

The movie is set in a time when this young Ferrerman (as pictured) barely new that black people existed. They were never featured on any of the three channels of my parents black and white television and there were none in the biggest part of my world, school and the neighborhood. I lived in a suburb of Cincinnati back then. My Wonder Years, where a kid could roam around without winding up on a milk carton. Mom would relate later that blacks- like the maids of the film- were to be out of town before sundown each day. No one we knew had a maid. In those days, all the moms stayed home raising children and/or watching soap operas. I had seen my first black person- as I recall it- on the train to visit grandma in Chicago. Mom says I was referring to the black conductor on the train but I distinctly recall a very dark, Aunt Jemima-looking woman seated nearby  I remarked, "Mama, there's a chocolate lady!"  Conductor or woman, mama was very embarrassed. But, I was about three years old when this happened. I think all the grown ups understood. Black people were a new discovery for me. They had not yet been given "their special rights" as some republicans and Supreme Court justices might call them.

But enough about me. How did the rest of the country feel about Negroes at the time?

Well, it depended upon where you lived. Cincinnati borders Kentucky so, given that proximity, racial guidelines were a bit less official than they were in Jackson, Mississippi. There were Jim Crow laws in the south as well as verbal laws passed on amongst the whites and the blacks. Young black children were undoubtedly versed very early on in how to interact with white people so they could live to tell about it. Could you imagine telling your children not to look an entire race of people in the eye? How to address that race properly? Where to sit on the bus and not to sit at the lunch counter at Woolworths?

People, this happened in my lifetime! I'm not that old!

Fast-forward here to 2014. No less a conservative *leader* like Sarah Palin uses the anniversary of Martin Luther King's birthday to exhort our half-black (but black) president to stop using "the race card" because, doncha know, we're in a post-racial society. The race card? There are like two black people in the entire GOP and a white lady, former half-term governor of a state that wasn't even a state when I was born, is telling the black president of the United States, on the birthday of a murdered black civil rights leader, that he makes too big of a deal of race??!!

Bitch, please! If there's no racial issues in this post-racial society, why are you asking the president to tone down his (non-existent) race card playing on a Federal holiday for a great American? Or, were you merely playing the "lack of fucking decorum card" you play so well?

You don't solve racial issues in fifty years, especially in a country where one party has declared The War On Poverty to be a lost cause. Retreat. Pull out all the "troops". The GOP has never met a war they didn't like except the one on poverty. These stupid assholes want to go back to Iraq! But, somehow fighting poverty is too expensive and futile. Iraqis can't decide their own fate but, poor American's can...as long as they have no help from the government in the form of money or, special rights... Go and figure that.

I believe the deck is still stacked against black folks. If you have to take one card out of the deck, how can the game be fair to all? Every other card can be played- by the dealers- but, you can't play that one. The one they say you don't need. That's a heavy hand. One that smacks all of us. We the people just haven't figured  out yet that we are all in this together.

Why Miss Palin, would you care for some pie? I made it jus' fo' you....

Another one bites the dust

She was a Queen fan. I think she would appreciate the title here.

There was another death in TopixTown. This time it was evidently real though. It wasn't faked for someone's self-aggrandizement.

It's almost always sad when someone dies. Angela- this someone- was in her forties and died after a rather brief battle with lung cancer. I think she found out maybe two months ago? Something like that. It was the icing on a really crappy life cake, the diagnosis coming a week after losing her job. It happens every day.

She was a long time poster on the Chicago regs thread and many other message boards. I do recall her boasting about being on the internet longer than anyone else in the world maybe. She really liked the message boards. And, she was pretty good at them.

I fairly liked her even though she twice (that I know of) wished me dead. Honestly, wishing Ferrerman dead is shockingly common on parts of the internet. And, she once volunteered to publicize all my personal info, another common occurrence on the net. Where do I find these people? Oh yeah- Topix!

I guess I grade these imaginary people on a curve, because they are imaginary because it never bothered me that she wished me dead. Why should it? She couldn't actually do anything about it. Just internet bravado.

I also didn't hold her death wishes for me against her because, when she wasn't doing that, she was usually pretty interesting. Not a lot of people on Topix can be that.From the start I was kinda leery of her. Though I was new to the internet, I wasn't at all new to liars and big talkers. Frankly, the way she talked about softball, anal and oral sex, drinking and porn, I thought at first that she was a dude, maybe even a gay dude, pretending to be female. That happens a lot on the internet, Topix in particular. It's a mixed up, jumbled up, shook up world, for sure. When I tended bar though, I knew a lot of real life women who were that bawdy. So, they do happen. When she wasn't posting that kinda stuff, she had a good liberal mind and the sense of right and wrong that goes along with that. And that's really what I prefer to take away from the oblique experience of knowing her.

On the dregs thread, reactions to her demise were as you'd expect on a social media site. Death is a shock even when people are imaginary but, it is obviously less urgent. The grieving process didn't last long.  Imaginary people grieve in their own way. Former posters dropped in to say hello and mention that they were sad but, like a wake it was a lot of socializing. Then everybody goes back to regular posting.

Not a lot of people were happy to see Ferrerman at the virtual wake'. But, ya know-  some of them never are anyway so, what are ya gonna do? You could almost hear them thinking: "You bastard! Redheadwithglasses hated you as much as edog, Sublime and PEllen all rolled up into one!  Why are YOU alive when SHE is dead??!!"

Yikes! Harsh, but, I get that a lot. Some of the most miserable people on earth don't like me. I count that as a blessing, if you're scoring at home.

Rest in peace, Red. 

                                                                       ****************

As a side note, I have to say that a couple of people reported awakening at 3:30am, the moment of the morning she died. That's really odd, isn't it? Odder still, this Ferrerman awoke that morning. I generally sleep through the night (clear conscience) but that morning got up, went downstairs and took an aspirin. I remember thinking that I should have checked the time but, I did not. Spooky, eh? Why would Angela leave this earth and  awaken me for it? I dunno. Why would she awaken those other two? Maybe I just felt a toothache coming after all....

I shoulda looked at the clock.

Meme ME!

I saw a meme on Facebook that had a picture of Sarah Palin, Michele Bachman  and maybe Ted Cruz(?) and the caption said: "Let's Stop Making Stupid People Famous". Yes, let's.

It got me to think though that my experience on Topix has been the opposite. Stupid people have made me famous! How 'bout that?

Really, if not for a very small but obsessive base of fanatic stalkers, I'm just a very good poster whom some people enjoy, some others don't like and many would just shine on by because "...there that Ferrerman goes again about politics and/or spanking women's bottoms..or both...." Just a profile in the crowd. Instead I have people who wait on my every post  and those of my compatriots to adorn those posts with negative, "clueless", "nuts" and "spam" icons. Of course, it's more than passive/aggressive icons though. Private Messages abound where Ferrerman is doing this or that and being this poster or that poster or whatever nonsense goes on behind the scenes in the all-important world of those that are anti-Ferrerman, in thought, word, deed and sentiment.

I guess I could thank them for making me Topix-famous, but it really doesn't matter. I go on as I would without them.

They go on as they do because of me.

And so it goes...