F*** Obama’s Real Health Care Reform

My favorite 4-letter F-word is, you guessed it: FREE.

Despite the cautionary advice that “nothing is free” or “you can’t get something for nothing,” I’m a sucker for free stuff. What can I say, I’m a public school teacher, and I know better than to jump into the middle of a rabid teacher scrum when post-it pads are at stake.

If anyone has mastered giving away free stuff with an invisible price tag attached, it’s Obama, Inc. Obama the Campaigner mastered giveaway marketing during his presidential bid and has lobbed these practices into his presidential money-raising strategy. During the campaign, my addiction to free-stuff helped me procure an “Obama ‘08” bumper sticker and button, neither of which I contributed any money — despite the accompanying solicitations for donations.

Regarding the latter, I will admit that I was thoroughly disappointed when my button showed up and it was the size of a quarter and could only be seen with satellite vision. I realize size isn’t supposed to matter, but I was too embarrassed to sport my new microscopic button in public, as if the button itself symbolized my free-stuff addiction. Either that or I had an affliction of button envy and was not about to compensate for my inadequacies by sporting a flag pin on the lapel of my collared t-shirt.

More recently, Obama, Inc. was giving away free bumper stickers to help push its health care reform through the dysfunctional aisles of Congress. All I had to do was sign a petition pledging my support for President Obama’s three principles for real heath care reform.

Actual Size?

Unfortunately, I will have to wait 4-6 weeks until my free bumper sticker arrives. By then, the duct tape keeping my bumper attached to my car could become unglued, much like Obama’s health care objectives once they gets tied down with red tape and green lobby money in Congress. Although 6 weeks in Congress is a mere blink-of-the-eye in the big picture of getting things accomplished. As the old saying goes, “If you don’t like the way things are going in Congress, just wait a couple of years and you still won’t like the way things are going in Congress.”

In the meantime, I’ve decided to come up with my own bumper sticker ideas, one of which I may order from an online bumper-sticker company:

1. My Other Car Is a Health Insurance Payment

2. All I Wanted Was Real Health Care Reform, and All I Got Was This Lousy Bumper Sticker

3. Shit Cancer Bankruptcy Happens!

4. W.W.J.I.? (Who Would Jesus Insure?)

5. Coming to a Hospital Near You: Attack of the Right Wingnuts Socialized Health Scare

6. Underinsured Baby on Board

7. So it goes…!

8. FREE Obama’s Real Health Care Reform!!!

Feel F*** to vote for your favorite bumper slogan (or offer up your own, hence public option) in the COMMENTS below…

Oxymoron 101: POLITICAL ACTION (Figures Sold Separately)

Unidentified busy-body congressman is bound in red tape and locked in Senate chamber closet

There are two kinds of people, those who talk about getting things done and those who actually get them done. If you’re looking to jump into the latter pool, don’t chlorinate contaminate the pool with politics, especially since CLEAN POLITICS is not only an illusion, but it’s an oxymoron as well.

Moreover, if you’re one of those idealistic politicians — meaning somebody who has never heard of politics or has yet to be contaminated by the status-quo cesspool – who wants to serve as a catalyst for political change, avoid ascribing to POLITICAL ACTION at all possible costs, even if those costs amount to losing an election.

To see political in-action, look no further than our beloved Do-Nothing Congress, whose job is to help protect U.S. citizens from themselves.

In between do-nothing inactivities, Sen. John McCain takes a nap in Senate chamber

Ironically, the more action Congressmen take to protect us, the more harm they do — unless of course you have a stable of well-groomed lobbyists mortgaging political influence on your behalf. In doing so, politicians are creating the illusion that we need them. Crafting bills and amendments is nothing more than hammering out press releases or political ads:

“See, you need me after all, dear Constituent. Who else, using your money, could help protect you from yourself?”

Like farmers, maybe we, the taxpayers, should pay lawmakers subsidies to do nothing, literally speaking of course — thus saving us money in the long-term, preserving the topsoil of laws already enacted, and preventing lawmakers from over-saturating the global market and driving down demand for recycled ideas. Not to mention, paying politicians to do nothing will help them focus on their primary objectives of political office: raising money to fill their campaigns with empty rhetoric.

A red flag of suspicion should pop up anytime you hear a politician decry: “This is an outrage and calls for immediate action!” Although it makes voters feel as if their ELECTED OFFICIALS are actually being heard, politicians, like fear-induced Chicken-Little alarms, are programmed to go off and say this every two months as a means of giving angered citizens less time to sharpen their pitchforks and shout in an all-CAPS e-mail message to their representative:

“YOU NEED TO TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION ON THIS ISSUE – BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!!!”

These threats, however, usually end with these words or the threat of pepper spray, unless the angered citizen tacks “…OR ELSE” on to the end, which may provoke an arrest or restraining order. However, this rarely occurs in America – one of the only self-described Democracies wherein the employers are STILL afraid of their employees.

To help capture political inaction and serve as a homeopathic cure for insomnia, Brain Lamb created C-SPAN (Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network), a COMMERCIAL-FREE television network dedicated to around-the-clock coverage of politicians doing what they get paid for: Nothing. Similar to the popular situation-comedy “Seinfeld,” which broke the formulaic television envelop by creating a show about “nothing,” C-SPAN created an entire network about “nothing.”

C-SPAN’s Merry Pundits spread new brand of POLITICAL ACTION in Magic Bus during 2008 campaign

Although to C-SPAN’s credit, it did lay the foundation for 24-hour news channels, which takes 30 minutes of news and stretches it out over a 24-hour period. The difference between “Seinfeld” and C-SPAN is that people actually watch “Seinfeld” (syndicated episodes), whereas the only people who watch C-SPAN are the wives of politicians, who tune in to make sure their husbands aren’t out cheating on them.

If POLITICAL ACTION wasn’t bad enough, some politicians have slapped on the word Committee to Political Action, thus formulating Political Action Committee. Once POLITICAL and ACTION cancel each other out, you’re left with “committee.” And any figurehead, whether public or private, knows that the quickest and easiest way to divert attention away from a controversial issue is to appoint a committee to study the matter. Death-by-Committee will ensure that nothing ever gets accomplished.

Newly formed Political Action Committee gathers outside White House to take immediate action

Besides, PACs are nothing more than money fronts for politicians to launder campaign contributions while simultaneously masking the identity of the contributors.

From T.M. Lindsey’s UNPUBLISHED BOOK, Oxymoron 101: The LONG-LOST GUIDE to AWFULLY GOOD Oxymorons.

Bureaucratic Genocide: Iowa Politicians Attempt to Kill Off Elders with Acronym

The Iowa Assembly has set the stage for an epic battle-to-the-metaphoric-death between the state’s elderly population and the up-and-coming elected power mongers. Fearing the Elders may usurp their power, Iowa Lawmakers approved a bill changing the state’s Department of Elderly Affairs (DEA), not to be confused with the fed’s Drug Enforcement Agency, to the Department of Aging – or more aptly Dead on Arrival (DOA).

Recently appointed Head of D.O.A., Will T. Corpse, moves into new office in State Coroner's basement

Despite the age-old prophecy espoused by the Blind Prophet, Iowametheus, that one day a group of power-hungry legislators, armed with a deadly acronym, will rise up and destroy the Elders, the latter refuses to relinquish their walkers and allow their power to be usurped.

Masking their true intentions, Des Moines Democrat Rep. Janet Petersen, 38, claimed that the move was needed, because some people don’t like the word “elderly.”

And they would prefer being labeled DOA?

WTF?

BTW: What’s in an acronym?

When the slang acronym WTF? (What The F*CK) started popping up on e-mail and text messages, neither the World Turkey Federation or World Taekwondo Foundation caved in and changed their acronym to alleviate any confusions on behalf of the acronym-challenged. Ironically, this was not the case with the World Wrestling Federation, which threw in the white towel to its arch nemesis, the World Wildlife Foundation, which threatened to sue them after people had a hard time differentiating between George “The Animal” Steele and a Canadian black bear.

"Please Don't Feed or Recesitdate Black Bears. -- Canadian Park Rangers (CPR)"

During my formative years, I had the deepest respect for my Elders, thanks to the ‘70s television shows “Kung Fu” and “Shazam!” The only reason I wanted to be a Shaolin monk like Kwai Chang Caine and go on adventures was so I could spiritually evolve and become an Elder and give young, apprentice monks names like “Grasshopper,” or “Dung Beetle.”

In second grade when my hack optometrist diagnosed me with a severe stigmatism and prescribed lenses that looked like the bottoms of Coca-Cola bottles (hence the nickname “Coke Bottles Lindsey” at swim camp), I knew I had taken my first step into a larger world. Everyone knows if you want to be a credible prophet or a wise elder, you have to be blind, for it is written in the LARGE PRINT BOOKS.

And the only reason I wanted to be Shazam, other than probing the Elders for infinite wisdom and yelling “Shazam!” every time I needed a magic lightning bolt boost to fight evil or kick-start me after my afternoon cat nap, was so I could get into Isis’ pants.

Oh zephyr winds which blow on high,
Lift me now, so I can fly
With Almighty Isis to a motor lodge, nearby.

Come fly with me as the crow flies, Isis...

Unfortunately, I think it was the high frequency of impure thoughts such as these that helped kill any future as a prophet or wise elder, pounding the final nails into my coffin labeled with big, black stenciled letters spray-painted on the side: D.O.A.

Spring Forward: Daylight Savings Next Casualty in Economic Downturn

The Clock Also Rises

In states that still participate in Daylight Savings, which may soon be nationalized by the federal government if Americans continue to lose confidence in daylight and are reluctant to spend their time, everyone bemoans the loss of an hour – namely because they could have used the hour to reset all the clocks in the house.

But seriously, what would they have done any differently had they had that extra hour this weekend? I’m sure if we conducted a family-feudal survey, the survey’s number one answer would be: sleep. Of course this assumes that those surveyed do not have children or milk cows, whose biological clocks resist man-made cosmic alterations in the Timexian universe. By the time these biological clocks are completely recalibrated, it will be time to “Fall Back.”

In Iowa the designated witching-hour to either spring forward or fall back centers the 2 a.m. bar-closing time, thus clearing up any confusion among alcohol peddlers as to when they should stop nursing the drunks passed out at the bar. The delayed time-switch also provides the lonely beer-goggle populace an extra hour to lose even more focus as they zero in on their intended target, preferably the one in the middle – even though they’ve only locked in on one target.

Local drunk attempts to pull back clock's big hand to extend "last call"

So why do we still have Daylight Savings, which allows Mother Nature’s invisible hand to unhinge our time-structured world without any government oversight and/or transparency? Better yet, what are some of the advantages and disadvantages of Daylight Savings and the age-old prospect of Springing Forward?

ADVANTAGES:

Less time for our Do-Nothing Congress to do less of nothing

More daylight in the evening to watch your new Plasma television

Provides excuse to take off for lunch an hour earlier or justify extending your afternoon cat nap: “Really, it’s an hour later, so…”

Get your newspaper an hour earlier, so your metabolism can get a jump start digesting all of the depressing news

Milk cows, whose teats aren’t prematurely pulled, are less likely to conspire with the pigs and the horses in overthrowing the Animal Farm and/or the government

DISADVANGAGES:

More time for the GOP-arm of our Do-Nothing Congress to obstruct Congress from doing less of nothing

If you die before ‘Fall Back,” you’ll be robbed of an hour of precious life, assuming every hour of your life is not already preciousssssssssss…

More daylight in the evening to shed even more light on the melancholic faces of those folks who have lost their jobs, homes, dignity, or thought injecting botulism into their foreheads ten years ago seemed like a good idea at the time

More time for Rush Limbaugh’s shadow to eclipse the sun, especially after he has succeeded in fully consuming the GOP

Insomniac’s more likely to join Fight Club, but we’ll never really know, because the first rule of Fight Club is never talking about Fight Club (looks like my membership has just been revoked; now what Tyler?)