Ding, Ding, Ding: We Have a Winner!

Fans of the fantastic, we have a winner in this week’s Absurdity Sweepstakes. Well, we have today’s offering. It does “Trump” the one from last week which arrived the other day courtesy of Ben Carson. But hell, it’s only Monday.

The winner is Marco Rubio, the junior Senator from Florida who may (or not) be an “anchor baby.” He seems to have finally realized that the long-standing argument that Planned Parenthood runs abortion mills using “your tax dollars” wasn’t going anywhere. For one, someone must have whispered to him that abortions make up just the tiniest sliver of their services (around 2%) and, for another, no Federal monies can be used for abortions. So he went back to those tapes that purportedly show Planned Parenthood personnel talking about harvesting baby parts and fetal issues and selling them for a profit.

Rubio seems to have grasped that the tapes were doctored. There were no fully formed fetuses with beating hearts waiting to be cut up for their brains and, presumably, other parts because you can’t use someone else’s brain for anything (Carly, are you listening?).

But, alas, he bought the lie that a profit was being made from the sale of fetal tissue and that this financial gain would somehow encourage women to have abortions.

In an interview with KCCI, a Des Moines, Iowa CBS affiliate, he said that Planned Parenthood has created “an incentive for people to be pushed into abortions so that those tissues can be harvested and sold for a profit.” The video can be see here.

It’s gonna be hard to top this — certainly no woman will since only a man could say something so stupid, heartless and brutal.

No woman undergoing an abortion is happy about it. It is a trying, difficult and stressful situation.

Every woman using Planned Parenthood abortion services provides informed consent for the use of fetal issues from the procedure. No consent and the tissues are not used. Most give consent often stating that it helps balance to struggle. It’s like organ donor cards that many of us sign hoping that our body parts will extend someone’s life or return their eyesight.

No profit is made by anyone. The fees are paid by the laboratory or research unit receiving the tissue to cover expenses and transportation.

The very idea that women might intentionally become pregnant specifically so that they can have an abortion and make monetary gain from it is today’s winner.

Mr. Rubio, who’s been walking a tight line lately with idiotic nonsense denying climate change, dodging evolution and shifting from his once-reasonable stance on immigration to the GOP’s standard xenophobia, has now disqualified himself from the presidency, just as Ben Carson did the other day and Donald Trump on so many occasions….

Eventually the only one left will be Jeb! and we’ll all end up where we knew we would: Bush v. Clinton redux.

So sad.

The Truth Behind the WSJ's Lie About Sanders

I don’t normally import other’s words — all us egocentric writers with academic backgrounds prefer our own — but this column by Robert Reich gets to the point so clearly and makes the case so succinctly that there’s no sense in trying to say it any better. As noted, this originally appeared on Reich FB page. Reich wants the truth spread. I’m spreading it.

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The Wall Street Journal’s $18 Trillion Dollar Lie About Bernie

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich’s Facebook Page

17 September 15

‘ve had so many calls about an article appearing earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal — charging that Bernie Sanders’s proposals would carry a “price tag” of $18 trillion over a 10-year period — that it’s necessary to respond.

The Journal’s number is entirely bogus, designed to frighten the public. Please spread the truth:

(1) Bernie’s proposals would cost less than what we’d spend without them. Most of the “cost” the Journal comes up with—$15 trillion—would pay for opening Medicare to everyone. This would be cheaper than relying on our current system of for-profit private health insurers that charge you and me huge administrative costs, advertising, marketing, bloated executive salaries, and high pharmaceutical prices. (Gerald Friedman, an economist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, estimates a Medicare-for-all system would actually save all of us $10 trillion over 10 years).

(2) The savings from Medicare-for-all would more than cover the costs of the rest of Bernie’s agenda—tuition-free education at public colleges, expanded Social Security benefits, improved infrastructure, and a fund to help cover paid family leave – and still leave us $2 trillion to cut federal deficits for the next ten years.

(3) Many of these other “costs” would also otherwise be paid by individuals and families — for example, in college tuition and private insurance. So they shouldn’t be considered added costs for the country as a whole, and may well save us money.

(4) Finally, Bernie’s proposed spending on education and infrastructure aren’t really “spending” at all, but investments in the nation’s future productivity. If we don’t make them, we’re all poorer.

That Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal would do this giant dump on Bernie, based on misinformation and distortion, confirms Bernie’s status as the candidate willing to take on the moneyed interests that the Wall Street Journal represents.

Dalai Lama's Conundrum and a Solution

The Dalai Lama has a problem. He’s getting along in years and must begin the preparations for his eventual reincarnation. The Chinese know this. They are waiting. As soon as the child who is identified as the 15th reincarnation of the Dalai Lama is known, they will swoop in and kidnap him.

There’s no secret about this. They already pulled off this child snatching thing back in 1995 when the 6 year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima was identified as the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama (the Lama just below the Dalai in Tibetan Buddhism). The Chinese claimed that Gedhun was not the true Panchen Lama (they had nominated one Gyaincain Norbu as their candidate) and they spirited him away for “his own safety.” He has been in captivity since then and the folks who know where he is being kept aren’t talking.

In 2011 the Dalai Lama, anticipating a similar move by Beijing, began deliberations about whether he should reincarnate. Westerners generally don’t “get” Tibetan Buddhism. It’s quite complex with many rituals and regulations and, as is typical of sophisticated philosophies and religions that have been around for extended time, there is much debate and deliberation about tradition and text, their meanings and interpretations. In an extended public statement Tenzin Gyatso, the current Dalai Lama, outlined the nature of reincarnation, examined tradition and text and concluded that “… the person who reincarnates has sole legitimate authority over where and how he or she takes rebirth and how that reincarnation is to be recognized.”

He announced that around the time of his 90th birthday he “will consult the high Lamas of the Tibetan Buddhist traditions, the Tibetan public, and other concerned people who follow Tibetan Buddhism, and re-evaluate whether the institution of the Dalai Lama should continue or not.”

Clearly, this will be a significant moment, not only in Tibetan Buddhism but for Buddhists everywhere and for millions of non-Buddhists who have come to view the Dalai Lama as a significant figure in international affairs, the United Nations and, intriguingly, among cognitive neuroscientists whose research he strongly supports.

While Tibetan Buddhism is Tibetan, while the Lamas have all been Tibetans, nothing I have seen requires that the Dalai Lama be Tibetan. In fact, as Gyatso notes, the individual has “sole legitimate authority of where and how he or she takes rebirth.”

The solution to the problem, then, is obvious. Reincarnate somewhere other than Tibet, somewhere outside the reach of Chinese authorities. They can get away with a swift kidnapping in Lhasa but they’re not going to be able to pull one off in Toronto or Portland.

Do the usual leg work. Identify a young boy from a Buddhist background who has displayed the chops to fill the role. Make appropriate proclamations and raise the child with the requisite education in a Buddhist monastery. As he grows he can, as the 15th incarnation of the Dalai Lama, slowly assume the same role that the current one has, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists in exile.

Not only would this save the position of the Dalai Lama, it would piss off the Chinese and that, in and of itself, may be enough. Their behavior with regard to Tibet and Buddhism has been disgraceful.

Still Here

Whew. Dodged another bullet. Back soon with thoughts about reincarnation. Seriously. Serious thoughts. It’s a big issue.

Jade Helm 15 -- And All That

It’s early in the afternoon, Tuesday, September 15. In a few hours Jade Helm 15, the military training exercise that has been going on for some months now in the southwest, will come to an end.

The US soldiers who are part of JH-15 are, as we were told in no uncertain terms, are actually members of an elite, secret army dedicated to Imam Obama. They have allowed ISIS fighters to enter the country illegally to join this effort. The immediate goal is to take over Texas and, using it as their military base, the rest of the country. Secret tunnels have been built under the border to allow other, revolutionary mercenaries in and vacant Walmart warehouses have been taken over to be used as prison camps. All privately held guns will be confiscated — though that one looks like it may not happen. Lotta guns not much time left.

I’m trying to get this column out before my access to the Internet is cut off. If this is my last post you’ll all know that conspiracy theorists like the truly wackadoodle Alex Jones was right (it will be a first for him). If I’m back again … well, …., you know. Life’s like that.