Did you know, for example, that there was a time when being called a “war profiteer” was a bad thing? But now our war zones are dominated by private contractors and mercenaries who work for corporations. There are more private contractors in Iraq than American troops, and we pay them generous salaries to do jobs the troops used to do for themselves ­– like laundry. War is not supposed to turn a profit, but our wars have become boondoggles for weapons manufacturers and connected civilian contractors.

Prisons used to be a non-profit business, too. And for good reason –­ who the hell wants to own a prison? By definition you’re going to have trouble with the tenants. But now prisons are big business. A company called the Corrections Corporation of America is on the New York Stock Exchange, which is convenient since that’s where all the real crime is happening anyway. The CCA and similar corporations actually lobby Congress for stiffer sentencing laws so they can lock more people up and make more money. That’s why America has the world;s largest prison population ­– because actually rehabilitating people would have a negative impact on the bottom line.

Television news is another area that used to be roped off from the profit motive. When Walter Cronkite died last week, it was odd to see news anchor after news anchor talking about how much better the news coverage was back in Cronkite’s day. I thought, “Gee, if only you were in a position to do something about it.”

But maybe they aren’t. Because unlike in Cronkite’s day, today’s news has to make a profit like all the other divisions in a media conglomerate. That’s why it wasn’t surprising to see the CBS Evening News broadcast live from the Staples Center for two nights this month, just in case Michael Jackson came back to life and sold Iran nuclear weapons. In Uncle Walter’s time, the news division was a loss leader. Making money was the job of The Beverly Hillbillies. And now that we have reporters moving to Alaska to hang out with the Palin family, the news is The Beverly Hillbillies.

And finally, there’s health care. It wasn’t that long ago that when a kid broke his leg playing stickball, his parents took him to the local Catholic hospital, the nun put a thermometer in his mouth, the doctor slapped some plaster on his ankle and you were done. The bill was $1.50, plus you got to keep the thermometer.

But like everything else that’s good and noble in life, some Wall Street wizard decided that hospitals could be big business, so now they’re run by some bean counters in a corporate plaza in Charlotte. In the U.S. today, three giant for-profit conglomerates own close to 600 hospitals and other health care facilities. They’re not hospitals anymore; they’re Jiffy Lubes with bedpans. America’s largest hospital chain, HCA, was founded by the family of Bill Frist, who perfectly represents the Republican attitude toward health care: it’s not a right, it’s a racket. The more people who get sick and need medicine, the higher their profit margins. Which is why they’re always pushing the Jell-O.

Because medicine is now for-profit we have things like “recision,” where insurance companies hire people to figure out ways to deny you coverage when you get sick, even though you’ve been paying into your plan for years.

When did the profit motive become the only reason to do anything? When did that become the new patriotism? Ask not what you could do for your country, ask what’s in it for Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

If conservatives get to call universal health care “socialized medicine,” I get to call private health care “soulless vampires making money off human pain.” The problem with President Obama’s health care plan isn’t socialism, it’s capitalism.

And if medicine is for profit, and war, and the news, and the penal system, my question is: what’s wrong with firemen? Why don’t they charge? They must be commies. Oh my God! That explains the red trucks!

Bill Maher, host of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/new-rule-not-everything-i_b_244050.html

Since him, the Republicans in office should more aptly have claimed the Corporatist Party. And the everyday people who vote Republican should claim the same party under the United Federation of Sheeple. They seem not to be able to think or reason amongst themselves. McCain has flipflopped not positions he espoused twenty years or even ten…though he has changed those too but rather he is flipflopping on positions he had two months ago, two weeks ago, two days ago. He is saying whatever he can to win the election. What is most infuriating are the masses who seem incapable of calling him on his crap.

Look, if Obama suddenly wanted to give corporations tax breaks and take away our civil liberties or started riding around on tank declaring the victory in a war he plans to continue, I would NOT stand behind him. I would NOT vote for him. Some change, some flexibility is necessary. Obama has demonstrated his entire career a reasonable amount of flexibility. This is not the same flexibility McCain is demonstrating. His only demonstrable flexibility is in stretching the truth in commercials and townhall meetings to fit what he thinks you want to hear, what Obama has been saying along. So, if suddenly his views are coinciding with Obama’s views, why again are you not voting with Obama instead? The original maverick? The guy who came up with the plan instead of the guy who stole it?

How many times will McCain conveniently adopt a stance he has never voted for and has heard Obama advocate? This is no more than cheap ploys, mimicking the other guy because he makes sense. But I ask, “where’s the beef” in McCain’s empty words? And I am shocked that more Republicans are not doing the same. What happened to you Republicans? SHEESH! Bring back the old-time real Republicans…they would never stand for someone because of one issue. Republicans are so narrow these days… it is all about getting their sold-out party into office or generally falls to one issue-voters. That is why they STILL can’t get their heads around an idea that Hillary supporters are not Palin supporters, afterall she is a woman. Their reasoning for supporting their candidate is flawed, weak, ridiculous.

I will save for tomorrow the topic of the weak-knee’d, pansy Democrats of today. It is time to stand up and call a greedy, corporatist LIAR (AKA JOHN MCCAIN) exactly what he is… a greedy, lying, power hungry Corporatist. He is not Republican, not a real Republican anyways. And Democrats must come to realize, they can’t just wait for the new Republicans to do the right thing. Gone are those days!

In case you are interested in real politics. I am posting the transcript of the speech (in the youtube video above) below.

Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961

Public Papers of the Presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960, p. 1035- 1040

My fellow Americans:

Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.

This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.

Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.

Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the Nation.

My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and, finally, to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years.

In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the national good rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the Nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling, on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.

II.

We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America’s leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

III.

Throughout America’s adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology — global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger is poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle — with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research — these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs — balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage — balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.

The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of stress and threat. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. I mention two only.

IV.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present

* and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

V.

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society’s future, we — you and I, and our government — must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

VI.

Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war — as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years — I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.

VII.

So — in this my last good night to you as your President — I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.

You and I — my fellow citizens — need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nation’s great goals.

To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America’s prayerful and continuing aspiration:

We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.

This is such a slap in the face to anyone who wanted Hillary to break through the glass ceiling. Her support did not come from just being born a woman. That was a side note, an added bonus if you will, to people who do wish women had equal rights and equal opportunities. However, I digress, despite my urges to explain in detail how important equality is today (and always), I will get back on topic. Hillary has experience and cares about this country. She has made positive, real change in our country’s policies, especially with regards to health care for children. Now, I am not saying Palin has not done anything positive, I do not know what she has done, yet. What I am saying is as a feminist, I am cringing. And as a political citizen, I am retching.

The fact that very little is known about her works in the McCain camp’s favor but against logical reasoning. She is wet behind the ears politically speaking, what if something happens to McCain? Is she really ready to become president? The irony almost goes without saying, almost. McCain has attacked Obama for months now on his “inexperience” while stealing his ideas only a few days later and now he chooses someone with even less experience? This defies logic, unless the logic is to gain political attention and perhaps the attention of some fringe voters completely fixated on getting any woman into the White House at any cost.

This is what I have read about Sarah Heath Palin so far… she is anti-choice (aka Pro-Life)², supports teaching creationism in schools³, a lifetime member of the NRA, a former beauty pageant contestant (see picture) ⁴⁵, pro death-penalty⁶, supports the 2nd Amendment (right to keep and bear arms), opposes privatizing social security (even funded a relief bonus check to senior citizens for extra aid), “strongly opposes” shifting our reliance to alternative fuel sources⁷. I need to do some more research but I find it particularly interesting her husband, Todd Palin, works for BP — the oil company and there is controversy over this and some legislation she tried to push through which would affect BP to the tune of multi-millions⁸. She agreed with Obama’s energy plan in as much as the gas line she wants to lay across her own her state to get cheaper gas to the U.S., she wants to open ANWR⁹, this being a long-term debate between capitalists and environmentalists over the effects. She doesn’t even believe humans have an effect on global warming and wants to remove the endangered species protection on the polar bear.¹⁰

I recommend you research her. I will continue to do so as well and then we can comment further. In so much as I have learned today I know she lacks in experience having only been a State Governor for 2 years and having served previously as a mayor of a small town (population less than 6,000).¹¹ This hardly gives her the experience necessary to be Vice President.

While I do not know enough about Mrs. Palin to know if she is someone I would like personally, I do know enough about her to know I wouldn’t vote for her, especially not simply because she is a woman. And make no mistake about it, I am an ardent feminist. I am also a fan of Hillary Clinton. She was my candidate. She lost. I moved on. I support Barack, he has won me over completely. I agree with the policies he supports. Senator Obama and Senator Biden are the clear choice of any reasonable, rational person. If you have been paying attention at all, you must recognize this, unless of course your annual income is over 5 million.

Sarah “Barracuda” Palin does not have a long list of accomplishments nor the experience Hillary Clinton brought to the table. Nor does she have the national political experience that Biden clearly has. She is not prepared for this job. Sadly, she is the token female being used by the McCain camp to win over the imaginary disgruntled, dejected Hillary cast-aways. I think anyone who would have voted for Hillary, who would now swing towards McCain to spite Obama or because this vain gesture of picking a woman even McCain barely knows, doesn’t really know why Hillary was a good candidate, or for that matter, what is really important politically. I suggest they stop whatever they are doing politically and educate themselves, make an informed decision based on the real issues rather than relying on the news or superficial, irrelevant reasons for picking the people who will run our country.

1. Johnson, Kaylene 2008. “Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska’s Political Establishment Upside Down”. Epicenter Press.
2. http://www.ontheissues.org/Governor/Sarah_Palin_Abortion.htm
3. Kizzia, Tom October 27, 2006. “‘Creation science’ enters the race”, Anchorage Daily News. Retrieved on 2008-08-29.
4. http://www.televisioninternet.com/news/pictures/sarah-palin-beauty-queen-1.jpg
5. , against same-sex marriage ((http://www.ontheissues.org/Governor/Sarah_Palin_Abortion.htm
6. http://www.ontheissues.org/Governor/Sarah_Palin_Crime.htm
7. http://www.ontheissues.org/Governor/Sarah_Palin_Energy_+_Oil.htm
8. Ross, Mike (August 21, 2007). “Mr. Palin goes back to Prudhoe”, KTUU-TV. Retrieved on 2008-08-29.
9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_National_Wildlife_Refuge
10. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/29/124640/036/945/578739
11. http://wasilla.areaconnect.com/statistics.htm