Friday, March 19, 2010

Supreme Court Whackiness/Nice Haiku From Lilliput/ Blake, Sagan & Denner on Mystery/


(P1) Political

Senator Exxon & Soylent Green

So I got to wondering why, since the Supreme Court, in an act of infinite mischief, has ruled that corporations are actually "people," how long will it be before corporations will be legally able, not only to contribute vast fortunes to buy elections and politicians, but also actually run for political office.

My tongue is only loosely planted in cheek when I muse that, in addition to using the fullest measure of their bribery powers for influence, the corporations (not the new ones, smaller by definition. These are precluded from running because a "person" must be at least 25-years-old to run for congress) could eventually run for congress and become "Senator Exxon," "Congressman (or woman) Halliburton," or even "President Goldman-Sachs."

How lovely such a prospect! I mean , if these same people can "reason" that a marriage between two people of the same sex will lead to inter species marriage, is that less far-fetched than the jump from "corporations are people" (sort of like Soylent Green) to "corporations are our elected officials"?

Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous," but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.

(P2) Poetical

Nice Haiku

today's weather map

says winter rain is falling

on my father's grave


--from Joe Hutchinson in Lilliput Review


(P3) Philosophical


William Blake, Carl Sagan, and Rychard Denner on the
Mystery That is "Man"

Blake:
"The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could perceive....Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of, & enslav'd the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects: thus began Priesthood; Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales.

And at length they pronounc'd that the Gods had order'd such things. Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast." (from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell)

Sagan:
"God is an invention of Man. So the nature of God is only a shallow mystery. The deep mystery is the nature of Man." (Narei Koburi, late Abbot of the Buddhist Temple of the Shining Dragon in Kyoto - quoted by Sagan & Druyan in Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors)

Denner: "the shallow mystery is the nature of deep" (Rychard Denner as Jampa Dorje, Poet and Tibetan Buddhist monk)

Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous," but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.











Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Google 411/Eve Ensler/Tears/Bauman Paintings/Hey Look Where I Live!/


Google 411
If you're not using this absolutely free telephone directory service, it's got to be because you don't know about it. Google 411 is free, works like a charm and is fun! Just dial 1-800-goog. I suggest adding the number to your speed dial.
I've been using it for well over a year. It even connects you!


(P1) Poetical



Martin Bauman (Santa Rosa, CA)







Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous," but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.

(P2) Philosphical

Tears and Bullets

Bullets are actually hardened tears.

(press >)
Eve Ensler













Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous," but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.


(P3) Political

Hey, Look Where I Live!

Top communities:

Boulder, Colo.

Holland, Mich.

Honolulu, Hawaii

Provo, Utah

Santa Rosa, Calif.

Santa Barbara, Calif.

San Jose, Calif.

Washington, D.C.

Ogden, Utah

Oxnard, Calif.

Source: Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, www.gallup.com



Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous," but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Hot Air(coletti w'color&crayon)/Wonderful Palindrome/Breast Cancer/Doug Landis/


(P1) Philosophical

A palindrome reads the same backward as forward. This video reads the exact opposite backward as forward. Not only does it read the opposite, the meaning is the exact opposite.

This is only a 1-minute, 44-second video and it is brilliant. Make sure you read as well as listen…forward and backward.

This is a video that was submitted in a contest by a 20-year old. The contest was titled "u @ 50" by AARP. This video won Second Place. When they showed it, everyone in the room was awe-struck and broke into spontaneous applause. So simple and yet so brilliant. Take a minute and watch it. Amazing........

Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous," but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.



(P1) Philosophical

Stupidity and Cupidity
Perfectly lamented in cartoon













Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous," but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.


(P3) Poetical


Recently I received this message from my friend Ray Taylor in Kentucky. It's certainly worth sharing. There's a link to Doug Landis' site at the end. He paints with his mouth!

Dear Ed,
Happy New Year to you and your lovely wife Joyce!
Should you find it worthy, please feel free to include the following in your very worthy Blog:
"Especially during these trying times, inspiration, as found in the following pencil sketches by Doug Landis, is always appreciated!":



Here's the link to

Thursday, December 31, 2009

Cash & John/Leissring Drawing/Andrew Sullivan: Inch by Inch/Non Sequitor Disses Facebook/Blake's Motto/

P1 Poetical

HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!

That's my son, NYC poet John Coletti low-fiving Cash Wollard! (above)

Jack Leissring Drawing

and a cartoon from Wiley

William Blake's Motto


I must Create a Syetem or be enlav'd by another
Man's.

I will not Reason & Compare: my business is to Create."


Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous," but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.


P2 Political

Barrack Obama Slowly Moving Mountains

Andrew Sullivan, former conservative, first a sample, then go to the full article

No recent president has had such a substantive start since Ronald Reagan. But what Reagan did was to shift the underlying debate in America from what government should do to what it should not. His was a domestic policy of negation and inactivism, and a foreign policy of rearmament and sharp edges. Obama has, in a mirror image of 1981, reoriented America back to a political culture that asks what government will now do: to prevent a banking collapse, to avoid a depression, to insure the working poor, to ameliorate climate change, to tackle long-term debt. The point about health insurance reform, after all, is that it represents a big expansion of government intervention in the lives of the citizenry — and that’s a game-changer from three decades of conservative governance.


Andrew Sullivan: Inch by inch, Barack Obama is moving mountains

Posted using ShareThis

Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous," but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.



P3 Philosophical

Philosophy is the no-man's-land between science and theology, exposed to attack from both sides. - Bertrand Russell

I cannot enjoy the present happiness, for anticipating the future; which is about as foolish as the dog who dropt the real bone for its shadow. - Charles Darwin


Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous," but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Spitzer on Politics/Herbert and Coletti on War/Bizarro on Fear of Flying

P1 Political

(painting by Jim Spitzer)

Another Big Mistake?

From a recent Bob Herbert column:

"I hate war," said Dwight Eisenhower, " as only a soldier who has lived it can, as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity."

He also said, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed."

(Ed: Yikes, Eisenhower, in today's relative terms, appears to be the "progressive"! This is pretty profound stuff.) Bob Herbert continues:

A recent Bill Moyers program on PBS played audio tapes of Johnson on which he could be heard telling Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, "Not a damn human thinks that 50,000 or 100,000 or 150,000
(American Troops) are going to end that war," McNamara replies, "That's right."

As one of the strongest Obama supporters there is, I personally have one (actually several) huge question(s) for the man who purportedly studies history, "Do you, Mr. President, seriously believe that this escalation in Afghanistan will do anything more than placate unnamed American interests? Do you seriously believe that, in a multi-thousand-year-old tribal culture, you can succeed in creating an effective National Afghan Military? What of those same words about the ARVN in Vietnam? Do you not see even the hint of similarity? I'm kind of lost here. What happened to your guts? What happened to "just say no"?


Here's a link to the full Bob Herbert column.

Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous," but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.

P2 Poetical

American Interests – Part II

Oil juice sloppy slick
energy-bartered lives
human bodies exploded
like dinosaurs
into fossil fuel futures,
if there is a future to be.

Defense Department
defending what? ——

America?
you? me?
my children?
my father?
all those kids who go to war
to defend
liberty
shores
nation
way of life? ——

When was the last war
to defend against invasion?
World War II
after Pearl Harbor?
Afghanistan after
World Trade Center?
Certainly not
“Remember the Maine”
“Remember the Alamo”
Korea
Vietnam
Iraq.

Why then can these
our boys and girls
desire to fight
for American
Interests?
spheres of influence?
oil?
dominoes?
treaties and pacts?
war contractors?
college education?
jobs?
manliness?
thrills?
personal honor?
jingoes and jangoes?
Their fellow soldiers?
the kids and families
they’ve killed and wounded?

Who attempts to embrace
these “American Interests”
(young women are trained to fight and die for)
stress the “American” part
as in fighting for America.
They gloss over those troubling
“Interests”
as in America
(n) interests.

Soldiers long to proudly declare
“I’m defending America
and what she stands for.”
So tell me, America,
what do you stand for
right now, this very second?

(ed coletti 2009)

Comment or Read Comments Here on
any of the above or below. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous," but
please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is
best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it
.

P3 Philosophical (sort of)



Sunday, September 27, 2009

Dad/Zebras/Swaney/Edelen/Health Care




(P1) Poetical

John J. Coletti (August 31, 1914 -
September 9, 2009)

link to obituary



So Many Poems
(for John J. Coletti)


My father lies dying
(so many poems)
His chest rises and doesn’t
(so many poems)
then rises again
(This is our moment)
My beacon now phoenix
(so many poems)
I draw him,
soothe him
(so many poems)
I sponge his lips with cranberry
He sucks on it
(honey bee)
So many poems
he’ll never read —
has never read —
so many.


(ed coletti - sept. '09) Please see full 7-Poem Suite For Dad at No Money in Poetry site

Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous," but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.

(photo by Katherine Hastings in Kenya 1989)














(poster by Ray Swaney)

(P2) Philosophical

VIRUSES OF THE MIND

by William Edelen
April 26, 2009

A child comes into the world, born an atheist as all babies are, and then is quickly indoctrinated with the religious virus of his or her parents and culture. A child through enculturation absorbs the culture of his, or her people. Enculturation is the process by which an individual learns the patterns of the family;

Children, through innocence, believe everything the parents tell them. They believe in the "tooth fairy"..."Santa Claus"..."The Easter bunny"..."witches changing princes into frogs"..."a man being born of a virgin"..."a man who could rise up from the dead"..."walk on water" and so forth. Children, being gullible, are easy prey for mental infections. It is easy for a child's consciousness to be exploited by a mind virus that is identical in nature to a computer virus or a biological virus.

The helpless young are easy victims of an insidious propaganda regardless of how ignorant or bigoted.

RELIGION IS A CULTURAL ACCIDENT. Children believe what their parents tell them and so follow the religious belief of their parents, or culture. The diety of ones worship is a product of ones culture. Catholic nuns do not have visions of the Buddha...nor do Buddhist nuns have visions of Christ.

Religions come with built in guilt mechanisms if the host starts to question. It is like a computer's warning statements if you try to delete a file needed for its operating system. Fear will usually remain even if guilt is overcome. A woman in my Congregational church in Tacoma, WA had grown up as a Roman Catholic and left to become a Congregationalist. She told me that she often awakened in the night in a cold sweat afraid she was going to be punished for that after death.

In my university class I would tell the students that the only reason they are Christian is due to the fact they were born in the United States to Christian parents. Had they been born in Israel they would be a Jew...in Japan a Buddhist...in India, Hindu...and so forth going through the various religious traditions. I told them they were not Christian because they had studied all the other religions of the world and then chose Christianity. And the only reason they were a Methodist, say, is because they were born into a Methodist home in the United States..They were not Methodist because they had studied all the other Protestant traditions and then chose to be Methodist. . In other words, quite simply and factually, they were only an enculturated Methodist Christian.

Link to Complete Essay


Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous," but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.

(P3) Political

Tuesday, September 08, 2009

After great pain/ Preamble/ Edelen


(P1) Poetical

Emily Dickinson

After great pain a formal feeling comes--
The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
The stiff Heart questions--was it He that bore?
And yesterday--or centuries before?

The feet, mechanical, go round
A wooden way
Of ground, or air, or ought,
Regardless grown,
A quartz contentment, like a stone.

This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow--
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.

Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous," but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.

(P2) Political

Healthcare For All

Preamble to the United States Constitution

We the People of the United States,
in Order to form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility,
provide for the common defence,
promote the general Welfare, and
secure the Blessings of Liberty
to ourselves and our Posterity,
do ordain and establish
this Constitution
for the United States of America.

Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous," but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.


(P3) Philosophical

Reply From William Edelen

My feeling about death is...as they say in Taoism and Zen...there is nothing to fear...at all...it is just a perfectly natural part of the cycles of nature...birth growth and death...everything is a part of that process...even the galaxies...the flowers of a rainy spring...and the grasses of a showery summer...are good...and beautiful...and sufficient even tho they will vanish..."life" so called...is only a brief interlude between two mysteries.which are yet ONE..birth and death are just perfectly natural part of the rhythms of nature...it is ONLY the people of the "book"...the bible...Islam and Judaism and Christianity that have made it a fearful event...so...my friend...I hope this helps a little...with love...Bill

Go here to William Edelen's Website


Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous," but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.

Monday, August 17, 2009

Mad As Hell Doctors/Chris Giovacchini Ramirez/Cartoon


(P1) Political

Single-Payer System is the only solution to the nation's health care woes! Democrats in the administration say that it cannot pass. Yet they have the necessary votes to do what they want. Republicans vigorously opposed our two most popular programs, Social Security and Medicare, but two very courageous presidents, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, respectively, used all of their powers, including persuasion, to get the measures passed. This is a time for courage in the face of disgusting scare tactics and lies similar to those used by the same special interests who have opposed all social programs over the years.

The Democratic administration and congress not only are choosing to bypass a single payer provision, but we're also hearing noises that they may give up on the lesser public option and also not negotiate with drug companies for lowered prices. Both of these measures are necessary for even a modicum of success. In the event of their absence from the bill, President Obama must veto such a gutted mess that, in a year or so, Republicans would use as proof that healthcare reform had failed.

The devil is not in the details. The devil is in the health insurance and drug companies who will spend any amount of their vast wealth to stay alive and to thrive.

Let's not let insurance company profits dictate the quality of our health care. Those who stand and shout against reform are the very ones who suffer the most when insurance companies maximize profits by denying services.

Take a look at Dr. Adam Klugman's (yes, Jack's son) major efforts through Mad As Hell Doctors.Com.

Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous," but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.
(P2) Poetical

Machine of a Man
by Chris Giovacchini-Ramirez
(see photo)

Suddenly, the elephant garlic is too big.
It hasn't been planted customarily

During t
he full moon in November.
T
he jeep battery goes dead.
Tippy nudges and drools at his elbow
For handouts once taboo.
She remembers that he doesn't.

The shovel is missing.
The raised vegetable beds are untended.
A homemade bird house is hung upside down.
In the shed, wine is turning to vinegar.

An aviary of wooden birds, whose pinwheel wings
Represent a progression of prototypes,
Hangs crippled in the garden breeze.
He can't get a dial tone on the television remote control.
The workbench and tools that created reindeer for Christmas,
Cats and dogs when it rained, lies silent in chaotic repose.

In spite of the latest medications, swallows weave the air,
Building mud nests in the corners of his mind.

A kiss on the cheek from
An old acquaintance, he rants, is a secret affair.
Television is mysterious array of images.
"Is that guy talking to me?," he asks.

Wrist watch worn upside down reflects a change in time.

It's a stigmata, on the family heart, that bleeds through stoic
Bandages and concealing clothes.

We cope.
We hold hands, I scratch his back, we sit together,
I ply and stretch his clenched hands.
When our eyes meet I tell him I love him,
"I love you too," he replies.

"I don't know where I am," he says. "This is a nursing home," I answer.
"Where do I go from here?", he asks. "Go toward the light," I tell him.

A tireless machine of a man.
An old piece of farm equipment,
Retired to a far corner of the field, oxidizing.

Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous," but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.

(P3) Philosophical

Friday, August 07, 2009

Arby/News?/3d World Health Care/Rove&Plato

(P1) Poetical

Final Words
(for Arby Kenny 1943-2009)

You did not call 911. Instead
you summoned your friends who
streaming out from The Witch's Brew
found you sitting breathless
on the tavern steps.

The publican who had been an EMT
asked you if you knew who you were.
Goddamn it! you retorted,
You know who I am!

Those words helped your friends
feel better. They sounded like you,
you who were being packed
into a Salem ambulance
never to be seen live again.

Your final words vital to your friends

Goddamn it! You know who I am!


(ed coletti August 5, 2009)


Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous," but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.

2700 citizens lined up at 5:30 AM for The 2009 Remote Area Medical (RAM) Expedition which recently came to the Virginia Appalachian mountains. Are we a "third-world country"?

(P2) Political


Whatever Happened To the News?


These days do you ever wonder why you see TV ads
from corporations like Lockheed-Martin and wonder who's going to buy a fighter jet because of a TV commercial? It's not like Lockheed wants to sell you a fighter bomber. It's more about these ads and similar ones intentionally being placed to maintain control over the networks. If Lockheed, for example, doesn't like a particular show and demands that the station pull it, what recourse does TV "news" have but to comply rather than lose the bribe (I mean advertising)? None.

Some time ago (probably around the time Ronald Reagan succeeded in getting rid of the Fairness Doctrine, and Rush Limbaugh went on the air four weeks later), TV News Divisions were subsumed under the Entertainment Divisions of TV stations and networks. While TV news had been non-commercial and provided as a public service, the Entertainment Divisions did all the earning and supported the news. Now, however, the News Division is expected to earn its own way, and we see more and more "news" shows of the type portrayed above (The Today Show cast on NBC).

Where are we now to go for the news? As much grief as it gets, the New York Times still provides a reasonable product. You might also consider the Huffington Post and Politico.com among a few others.

Peter Zenger is turning over in his grave.

Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous," but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.

(P3) Philosophical


http://www.funnytimes.com/archives/files/art/20051208.jpg

Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous," but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.








Saturday, July 25, 2009

Blackberries&Bromige/Dresden James/Bill Maher


(P1) Poetical

More of the Lasting Contribution of David Bromige

Perhaps it was 2 years ago that I shared the following poem with David Bromige. He suggested an addition that is in the second version below. Suffice to say, it is the second version (with David's addition) which has been accepted for publication by Xanadu.

Picking Blackberries Without Me

She sd
I could have used you
to hold the dog
Your height
to get to the good ones
Your body mass
to push aside the vines,
tough out the thorns
and get just a little bit juicy.

Picking Blackberries Without Me

She sd
I could have used you
to hold the dog
Your height
to get to the good ones
Your body mass
to push aside the vines,
tough out the thorns
and get your face
just a little bit juicy
so I could lick it off.


Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous," but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.


(P2) Philosophical


When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over gerations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic. - Dresden James -

Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous," but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.

(P2) Political

Bill Maher's New Rule: Not Everything in America Has to Make a Profit
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/contributors/bill-maher/headshot.jpgHow about this for a New Rule: Not everything in America has to make a profit. It used to be that there were some services and institutions so vital to our nation that they were exempt from market pressures. Some things we just didn't do for money. The United States always defined capitalism, but it didn't used to define us. But now it's becoming all that we are.

Did you know, for example, that there was a time when being called a "war profiteer" was a bad thing?...Prisons used to be a non-profit business, too. And for good reason --­ who the hell wants to own a prison? ...unlike in Cronkite's day, today's news has to make a profit like all the other divisions in a media conglomerate... ...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.... ...If conservatives get to call universal health care "socialized medicine," I get to call private health care "soulless vampires making money off human pain."...

...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 (at Huffington Post), host of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher airs live tonight at 10pm

Get the entire essay.

Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous," but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.