Flush Toilets

Remember that old "Star Trek" episode about the planet about to be burnt to toast by its dying sun? Our lads hustle thence to save the population, only to find that all have already saved themselves by going back in time to a place of their choosing. (All save one.)

Suppose that were your option today. Where would you go, what and who would you take with you, and how would you prepare? Why there and then?

It's an interesting proposition, isn't it?

At the metaphoric level, it makes me think of survivalists. At the level of imagination, it fascinates me. My first thought is Knossos, Crete, in its prime (of course). After all, they had flush toilets.

And You Say I Don't Have a Sense of Humor. . .

Laff of the day Texts from Hillary . . . .

Creeping American Fascism

Denying your constitutional right to a trial by jury. (Check your credit card or Internet contract for the "arbitration only" clause where you waive your right to trial by INDEPENDENT JURORS IN THE FULL LIGHT OF DAY and agree to a binding deal by your corporation's favorite arbiter in a private backroom settlement. Guess who benefits. That would be NOT YOU.

Packing your courts. See the Oliver Diaz story about Rove/Bush's campaign to remove honest judges from the federal bench and replace them with bought boys and girls.

Intimidating honest judges with false and expensive indictments. See the Oliver Diaz story, and look into all the ways the Republicans are stacking the courts and intimidating honest judges.

Rescinding your right to fair compensation for damages. The fact is that in TX and other states where "tort reform" has been imposed, legal costs and medical insurance costs have escalated. The truth is that there is no widespread, epidemic of frivolous lawsuits and out-of-control damages, but rather that "tort reform" is just another astro-turf campaign to roll back basic, and sacred, constitutional safeguards. Corporations cannot fairly judge, nor can legislators, what you should receive if a doctor's negligence renders your child helpless for life. Only a jury of your peers can make that call. Tort "reform" removes that jury, replacing it with arbitration, and limits damages, replacing them with arbitrary and minimal caps regardless of the real-world costs to you. Who wins? Big insurance and big corporations. Who's screwed? American citizens.

What did George Carlin say? Something like, "The only freedom we have left is whether to choose paper or plastic."

It's getting there. I'm making a list.

Just yesterday, kids at a California university were pepper-sprayed for protesting tuition hikes. Hell, they can't even protest, let along take over the administration building! That's how much has changed since the early '70s. The mere thought of publicly speaking out gets you a face full of pepper spray.

And don't think for a minute it can't get worse than that. Have you followed the Occupy Movement lately? That whishing sound you hear is your First Amendment rights flushing down the toilet. Do you care? I do.

Hot Coffee

Watched a documentary last night called "Hot Coffee." Remember the famous McDonald's lawsuit? Yeah, it's about that (and more). You think you know what happened. But watch the documentary--because, well, you don't.

So it's about tort reform -- more accurately, tort deform -- how corporate advertising tilts the political climate to the far Right, against the people's own best interests. In this case, the myth of overzealous lawsuits and exhorbitant jury damages awards is used successfully to remove yet another constitutional protection: the right to a jury's determination of proper compensatory damages when doctors, corporations, and others screw or injure us. In this case, the truth of the McDonald's suit was buried in a blizzard of misinformation, and used to persuade us to undo our own constitutional rights. Seems we'll believe any crap we're told if it makes someone appear to be "getting over" at our expense. Like we believe the McDonald's suit was frivolous--until we learn the truth of it.

That's not all. It's also about court packing, the second way Karl Rove and George W. Bush moved America closer to fascism, intentionally, deliberately, and dishonestly. With the help of that parliament of whores called the US Chamber of Commerce (the largest corporate lobbyist in the USA), corporate America wages war on honest federal judges to replace them with bought boys and girls who'll rule against the people in cases of criminal or even tort suits. This they do by side-stepping limits on direct campaign contributions to judges' re-election campaigns and using both donations aggregated by the "independent" Chamber, and (when that fails) specious criminal investigations of any judges who survive their election shenanigans. See Oliver Diaz for a case in point.

There's more. See "Hot Coffee" on HBO "on demand." It's worth your freedom.

I'm Back

Nothing like a year's vacation to make you miss blogging.

Hope you missed me! I missed you!

In that time, I've solidified the first-ever nonprofit, statewide Doberman Pinscher rescue in Arizona, which I founded from thin air in January 2009. Now, today, it is strong, vibrant, and able to blossom under the transition to a new Executive Director, which frees me to get back to writing and to polymer clay art making. More about that later.

Stay tuned. The dissolution of our constitutional democracy to a bona fide fascist pluto-oligarchy should give us all plenty to talk about. And if that fails, there's always this crop of Republican whores running for President, right? What else? Email me at picodegallo@cox.net and let me know what else you'd like to chew on and who else I should add to my Pico's Wee-Wee List!