“The Rude Guy”
Everyone who is calm and sensible is insane – Rumi

CLICK HERE to listen to The Rude Guy Podcast #31

Tonga Part One. Rich Zubaty rants about impeaching Bush and Cheney, Democrats abandoning their historical base, living in his truck, and reads excerpts from his book, The Corporate Cult, about his adventures on a South Pacific isle

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[Tonga Part One. Rich Zubaty rants about impeaching Bush and Cheney, Democrats abandoning their historical base, living in his truck, and reads excerpts from his book, The Corporate Cult, about his adventures on a South Pacific isle.]

This is Rich Zubaty, The Rude Guy, welcoming you to the Reality Cult. The show that believes that now that Democrats have regained control of the Congress, REPUBLICANS should lead the charge to impeach George Bush. Throw Bush and Cheney and Alberto Gonzalez in jail, for lying to us and destroying our country. Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly too, while we’re at it. What the hell. They kill people with lies, and don’t lose a minute of sleep over it. Making these freaks walk the plank, is the only way to prove to the rest of us, that the ethically rotten house, built by Abraham Lincoln, has a couple structural timbers left in it. Impeach Bush and Cheney and the whole gang of criminals. I’ve been calling for that for three years, and I’m not gonna stop now. They lied and people all over the world died, and they should be in jail.

But what do we have? Nancy – I’m OK you’re OK, Pelosi – saying she wants a partnership with the president. A fucking partnership. Here we go again. Neither me, nor tens millions of people like me, came out to the polls, to vote for Dems, so Nancy could have a partnership with a criminal. We came out because we want this compulsive liar and his ship of fools OUT of the White House.

Nancy thinks we need civility in politics. I’ve been busting my ass for free for three years trying to polarize Americans. Trying to ask the questions that create choices. And now Nancy is gonna trade that all away for CONsensus. Fuck the Democrats if that’s how this plays out.

We want a living wage, health care, affordable housing and out of Iraq — yesterday. And Nancy thinks she’s gonna get that by being civil, with a rattlesnake. One who made no effort whatsoever to meet the Dems half way, for THE PAST six years.

No Nancy. The way you get the things we want is to tell George Bush you’re gonna investigate him, impeach him, throw him and Cheney and Alberto and Rummy and Rove in jail – unless they give us what we want. That’s how you deal with rattlesnakes. That’s how Lyndon Johnson would have handled it. LBJ, a fellow Texan, and the LAST Democrat who knew how to get things done in Washington. This is not about gloating, it’s about surging ahead with the popular, populist tide.

This election was not about making Nancy Pelosi Speaker of the House. It was about kicking George Bush in the ass. And if the Dems are too ignorant to follow through on that, we’re gonna be back to the same old shit again in two years. Talking about gay marriage instead of living wages and health care.

The Dems didn’t win the 2006 election, the Republicans lost it. The Democratic Party has abandoned its base. Who’s its base? Here’s a clue. In the past 30 years, 30-year-old men have lost 30% of their real wages. Let me say that again… In the past 30 years, 30-year old men have lost 30% of their real wages. Working men are being shit on, because the Democrats became the party of social issues instead of economic issues, as defined by FDR. FDR said: Wall Street hates me and I welcome their hatred. Does any Democrat have that kind of balls today?

The Republican Party is the number one, rah rah, capitalist party in the world. The SECOND most capitalist part in the world is – you guessed it – the American Democratic Party. The third, is the British Tories. So that’s the Democrats. Hung up there right between the Corporate Vampires and the English Lords. This party has absolutely no sense of who it is. Or where its strength lies. The democrats are SUPPOSED to be the party of working men: black, brown and white. Not ONLY the party of working men, but certainly, in great measure, the party of working men. Is that what we’re gonna get out of Nancy Pelosi?

I’m not ruling her out yet. A mom from a political family who got into politics as kind of civic hobby. And stayed with it. She’s got heart, and as such she’s gotta realize that if she wants to build a broad base of support, she needs men. She needs to talk to the needs of men.

And men need to see action. We need to see John Conyers investigate the White House. We cannot be timid about using the “I” word – impeachment. Impeachment was put in our Constitution for a reason, and George Bush personifies that reason. The president who would be king. We have a chance to humanize the operation of American government for generations to come if the Dems can honor what the 2006 election was really about. Kicking George Bush in the ass.

[bird]

Here’s an update in our continuing series: Adventures in Homelessness

Last night it was ants. I parked over a clump of grass in a pineapple field, and woke up at 4 am COVERED with ants. Everywhere, on everything, inside the car. Crawling all over my legs and arms and face, tickling me to death, for two hours, until the sun came up and finally I drove to a gas station. But even as I drove, they were crawling all over my legs, driving me insane, as I rubbed one leg against another, squishing them, and PUSHing them off. Finally bought some ant traps and parked in the hot sun by the pool in Lahaina, and baked the little fuckers to death.

Stuck around for the annual Lahaina Halloween block party, wearing my American flag Impeach Bush hat. Got lots and lots of spontaneous votes for “best costume”, ha ha ha. This issue ain’t goin away.

I’m starting to recognize the other car dwellers. There’s a certain “slept in your clothes” look about us, and a pile of crap in our cars that gives us away: coolers, sleeping bags, wet t-shirt hanging on the mirror.

Hoovervilles, that’s what we need. Bushvilles. Places to put up tar paper shacks like in the Great Depression. I’m trying to convince the County of Maui to do exactly that, but they’re so embarrassed by the homeless problem they want to pretend it doesn’t exist. This is one of the wealthiest places on earth, and people are living in cars because of the fucking Free Market. We have condos for tourists but no homes or land for locals. Fuck the Free Market. It NEVER works. It’s ALWAYS about money and never about people.

I want the county to buy some land right now. Bring in a water truck and some portable toilets. Let us put up shacks and tents and cook with wood, or camping stoves. We’ll handle it. We’ll do it. Fuck your zoning laws and let us live. Anyway, that’s a REAL free market… NO zoning. Let us live on any land nobody is using. These capitalist bastards are always talking about a free market, but as soon as we actually create one, they smash a bunch of very UNfree, laws and regulations, down on our heads to protect THEIR property values– and tax all of us, to pay the cops, to enforce them. Bizarre. So we aren’t free to build our houses, but they’re free to build theirs. Get it. The free market is a mechanical monkey. It only dances for the people, who have the money, to wind it up… the money to buy the politicians to buy the laws, to enrich themselves, and keep us poor. Fuck the free market. The country with the most successful free market is communist China, about to overrun our entire economy because it only pays starving people three dollars a day to make shirts and shoes and cameras. Corporate communism. It’s a world wide plague.

[bird]

Then… there’s St Theresa’s church, which serves a free hot meal every night. Very Christian of them. In years past I used to volunteer to cook for the meal. Now I’m on the receiving end. It’s spotty. Dinner is usually fried pork sausages and noodles. But last night it was curried chicken, yum yum. And you can’t go wrong with the green salad and the day old cheese-Danish pastries either. I‘d like to get George Bush and Dick Cheney down here to check it out. Mingle with the drooling addicts and twitching alcoholics for awhile. Probably fit right in.

[kookaburra]

Lot’s of listeners emailed me that they liked the Peruvian Jungle story, Podcast # 18, and they asked for more stories like that. So…I’ll read one now. Or the first half of one, because it’s too long for one podcast. But the thing to do is: LEAN on your local library to order my book “The Corporate Cult” by Rich Zubaty, then you can read ALL my travel adventures. From South America and the South Pacific and Mexico and India. And more… And so can other library card holders.

So here goes:

[gulls, jungle birds?]

……………….

I KNOW I’M IN THE THIRD WORLD when I hear old women with twig brooms sweeping the packed dirt around their houses – clearing away dead leaves, fallen fruit, pig droppings, centipedes, ants and fish bones licked clean by dogs. It’s a daily ritual more regular than the tides, which begins the instant pure dark gives way to the first gray light, seeping between palm huts and coconut trees, exposing worn footpaths which were invisible moments ago, creeping over windowsills, prying at eyes locked against the dawn, until the rhythmic “scratch…scratch…scratch” tickles my ear drums and pries open my eyelids, dragging me from my dreams, reminding me where I am not – not America nor Europe nor Australia. I am somewhere in the rest of the world. But where? Peru? India? Thailand? Oh yeah. Now I remember. And while I toss my head wondering whether to get up, old women scrape a tiny ordered zone, amidst the chaos of the natural world, so their children and grandchildren may test today’s first wobbly steps, in an uncluttered safe-zone. It’s just old women with brooms – again – organizing the world before anyone else gets up.

And that’s how the day begins on the island of Ufo, a South Pacific atoll, poking its sandy eyebrows above the turquoise flats, of a broad lagoon, which filled in the throat, of a sunken volcano, eons ago – long before gray-haired Manna’s ancestors arrived here to sweep up the night. (more…)

CLICK HERE to listen to The Rude Guy Podcast #30

Rich Zubaty rants about living in his truck, Homeless in Hawaii, homeless shelters that don’t provide housing, and Female Aristocrats who ignore the plight of poor people

or RIGHT CLICK HERE (Apple command/click) then click “Save Target As” to DOWNLOAD the podcast to your computer or playback device

[Rich Zubaty rants about living in his truck, Homeless in Hawaii, homeless shelters that don't provide housing, and Female Aristocrats who ignore the plight of poor people.]

This is Rich Zubaty, The Rude Guy, the fly in the ear of popular culture.

I’m back in Hawaii. I’ve been living in my truck for two weeks, and it sucks. Sometimes I park near the beach, sometimes out in a pineapple field, where no one’ll bother me. I tore out a seat, so sleeping inside the truck is not a problem. The problem is showering, cooking, bathing, making podcasts, finding a telephone and taking a shit. Every morning I drive off at dawn to Wal-Mart or some construction site, to take a dump on them. They deserve it.

The beach where I often sleep is filling up with luxury houses, sprouting like poison mushrooms, wiping out the ocean view, while homeless locals camp out in cars along the beach road. Capitalism gone suicidal.

It’s not all bad. Yesterday I went snorkeling and followed a big sea turtle around, swimming through schools of iridescent blue parrot fish, over dead coral reefs. Free fun. But I’d rather live in a place where I could throw up a grass shack and have my own little cooking fire, like we used to be able to do around here before white man’s zoning laws.

Living in your car is not cheap. You constantly have to keep moving, spending gas money, so you don’t get busted by the cops. Cooking is really rough so you eat more restaurant food. I thought I was gonna save money doing this but now I’m not so sure.

After a week of camping out I went to the homeless shelter/slash/subsidized housing office, to try and get a little room or something. I was told that I DON’T MAKE ENOUGH money to qualify for poor people’s housing. Can you believe it? I DON’T MAKE ENOUGH money to qualify for poor people’s housing. Do these people listen to what comes out of their mouths?

And my other major DEFECT is, I’m NOT a woman. Not a woman.

Hummmphg. But… they WILL take me into at the shelter and enroll me in a homeless people’s rehabilitation program, where they’ll stick me in a dorm, and send me to classes on how to use a computer and balance my check book.

A big, handsome, blond, non-profit corporate CEO, ASShole, started explaining to me about all the wonderful things they offer at the shelter. From mandatory IQ testing, to teaching remedial reading, to cooking classes. None of which pertain to me. But that’s always the non-profit problem. Isn’t it. They’ve gotten funding for all these good sounding things, that nobody needs or wants. So they’re desperate for clients.

They NEED clients to keep their funding. They NEED to sign people up, and certify them, and start shoveling services at them, so they can justify their own pay checks. All this, lovingly bestowed, without any real understanding if what they do is needed, or wanted. They never ask you what you need. They just tell you what services they offer. It’s like talking to voice recordings on the phone. I can’t get my point across. I’m unable to have a genuine conversation with these people. They’re just full of soundbites. I keep telling them, you’re giving me answers, without solving my problem. What does that add up to?

And if you’re new at the non profit shuffle, you sign yourself up and waste an unbelievable amount of time discovering that what they’re offering you is their own fantasy, and meal ticket, and nothing more. Not one iota more. It’s like you took your car to a mechanic, and he only fixed what HE wanted to fix, not what YOU wanted fixed.

For example. Last week I went to the small business development office and wanted to make a local phone call. This is an office with several employees that provides so-called support for getting business loans. I already wasted three months of my time last year NOT getting a loan from them. Though I did happen to notice THEIR paychecks didn’t stop.

Anyway, the secretary said I couldn’t make a call. She told me they didn’t want me to tie up the phones. None of which were being used. Then she tried to shame me (ha ha ha good luck) by saying: You DON’T have a cell phone? I said lady: I don’t have a roof over my head. And I don’t have much patience at the moment. You have SIX phones including that fax phone sitting there. Let me use one… She was silent, like a road-killed toad.

This is what they call small business support. None of these programs work, because they’re built around the brainstorms of the grant writers, not around the needs of their clients.

Like me, most of the people who come to the homeless shelter, just want a cheap place to stay. Something affordable. Like the 180 dollars a month I paid for a one bedroom apartment, two years ago, in Cologne Germany, where everything costs MORE than here… EVERYthing… food, cars, even wages, are more than in the USA. And 180 dollars a month for a small apartment. I found one in Paris for the summer for $150 a month.

“But…” the bloviating, non-profit CEO, told me,” the homeless shelter is NOT supposed to provide HOUSing. That’s not our mission. That’s not what we do. First we’re going to rehabilitate you… then send you back out into the world.”

I cut him off right there.

“I already AM out in the world,” I said.

“And another thing. I’m not a flat tire to be fixed.”

We live in a country where there are 19 jobs for every 20 people. ALWAYS! 19 jobs for every 20 people. The bastards who run things KEEP it that way. They flood our borders to keep wages down. So even if you succeed in training me to become a well-groomed, cheerful, competitive, burger-flipper… all I’ll be doing, is bumping another guy out of Burger King, and into here. This place is a self-fulfilling nightmare.

I’m not a flat tire to be fixed. It’s the ROAD that needs to be fixed. The political/economic road we all ride on. Until we fix the road, there will never be an end to the deflated human tires rolling in your door.

According to George Bernard Shaw: the only way to succeed in an insane society is to become INSANE yourself. I need no convincing that the non profit institutions of our time have become every bit as insane as the greedy war-mongering society that bred them. And the well-intentioned people who run them can’t – or don’t want to — see that. We need systemic change. We need to ban all non profit corporations and make real corporations pay ALL their taxes. So the government has some money to spend solving these problems instead of starting foreign wars.

[bird]

So… I left the homeless shelter, where I don’t qualify for subsidized housing because I make too little money, and am NOT a woman. I eased my cranky 1986 Bronco out onto the highway, past the county jail, and ended up right behind a white-haired woman in a brand new crème-colored Jaguar, automobile imported from the other side of the earth…

And it all came crashing down. (more…)