posted by richzubaty on Jul 8
CLICK HERE to listen to The Rude Guy Podcast #69
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posted by richzubaty on Jul 8
The Rude Guy Podcast #69 July 8, 2010
[BP and the CIA, The Cost of War, and Grow Your Own]
Rich Zubaty here. Cranking out another podcast for no reason other than I’m turning 62 and have no good idea what else I’m supposed to be doing with my life.
Old age sucks. My memory is going the way of the giant bluefin tuna, I have bone spurs in my neck so I can’t lift heavy suitcases, if I get five hours a day where my attention span is greater than that of a hummingbird I feel like throwing a party. I can’t sensibly go on one of my famous invigorating, therapeutic, traveling expeditions, to Brazil, or Bali, or somewhere, to clear the cobwebs out of my brain, unless I somehow recruit a younger stronger traveling companion.
On top of that, Kathleen Parker from the Washington Post just seemingly ripped off one of my podcasts, and gave me no credit whatsoever. On June 30, 2010, she came out with an opinion piece called: Obama: our first female president. In October 2009 I made a podcast called: Barack Obama: our first female president. How about that? She even segued into it like I did by saying…if Bill Clinton was our first black president, then Barack Obama is our first female president. Then she echoed me again, this time from last month’s Podcast 68, noting Obama’s cautious feminine, management style…in the face of the gulf oil gusher, that cried out for decisive leadership…saying, as I had said…what was he doing delivering jokes to the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, when he should have been on Air Force One flying to the Louisiana coast. Three coincidences in a row? It looked like flat out plagarism to me.
So I emailed her and the Washington Post Ombudsman. She said she’d never heard of me, and that anyway she doesn’t write the titles to her pieces, someone else does. After a few more emails back and forth I concluded that she did not go to my podcast, listen to it or read it, and rip it off. I am not accusing her of that. However I still believe some combination of summer interns at the paper, clever quipping at Washington cocktail parties, by trendy eavesdroppers, and maybe even some precipitation from the…Overmind, [RG voice: the Overmind] conspired to materialize my ideas in her head. That’s kind of how memes work, spreading like a virus from mind to mind. And it happens to me a lot. Which is why I do not think it is entirely accidental. For instance, I do a podcast bit about how being born a poor white guy in America does not confer any great advantage, and three weeks later presidential candidate Obama is saying that being born a poor white guy in America is like arriving here as an immigrant. Someone out there is listening. And repackaging my stuff.
Years ago Bill Maher lifted material right out of What Men Know That Women Don’t, but in that instance I had sent him the book, so I know it got across his drawbridge. Yes, I’m delighted they steal my stuff, I just wish they would mention my name and send a few dozen more people to my podcast and web site. But I’m sure they learned years ago, from their media attorneys, never to admit to anyone that they stole your idea, because that admission might mean they legally owe you something. Said Lionel Trilling: “Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.” By and large mainstream media types are thieves. That’s how they got there and that’s how they stay there. What could it hurt to say: here’s an idea I got from Joe Blow, or Rich Zubaty.
[donkey]
And then, of course, as you know, I’m demoralized by the job Barack Obama is NOT doing, running our government. We voted for Martin Luther King Junior and got Redd Foxx. He fired McChrystal but didn’t fire the war. The only word for that is…stupid. He got handed an opportunity to pull out and blame it on the generals, but instead he’s doubling down. On track to spend more money on war than any president since World War Two.
The man is too gullible to be president. He BELIEVES in things, that are not worthy of being believed.
His first mistake was believing Tom Dashle – that he was the perfect Washington insider to spearhead healthcare reform. But Senator Daschle had neglected to pay his taxes on a free limousine service that had been provided to him for years, by a billionaire patron, so the Republicans ate him alive, and fucked health care reform right out of the gate.
Second Obama mistake was believing that the health insurance companies really wanted healthcare reform. Is he soft in the head, or what? Then he believed the generals who told him they could wrap up this Afghan war lickety split, if Obama would just give them more troops so they could have a surge, like in Iraq. Problem is, our surge in Iraq had nothing to do with decreasing the violence. The Shiites beat the crap out of the Sunnis and the Sunnis made peace with them. At the same time, we gave up our insane plan to have our oil corporations run the Iraq oil industry by finally resurrecting the Iraqi government Oil Ministry. The surge won’t work in Afghanistan because it didn’t work in Iraq. It’s irrelevant. It’s stupid. It just makes them hate us more.
Next Obama made a total ass out of himself, telling us offshore drilling is safe, because he had believed in the oil industry’s reassuring propaganda, on oil-spill containment. From that he moved right along to believing Wall Street’s opinion that America needs mammoth, too-big-to-fail, banks, in order to compete globally, right…and that capping credit card interest rates would quote “hurt small business”, right…and that fantasy synthetic derivatives, like betting on movie box office receipts — that bleed capital out of the nuts and bolts REAL economy — will NOT be regulated as the Las Vegas style casino gambling they really are, but will get allll dressed up in the thin-lipped arrogance of Wall Street securities…right. And there’s no need to discuss putting a tax on all stock market transactions, like England has, to raise money to put our people back to work rebuilding bridges and roads. The people saved the markets, but we have no right to expect the markets to save the people. Right…So much for banking reform. Over and over again Obama’s employed the same guys who made the mess, to clean up the mess. You do that with plumbers and auto mechanics. Not with bankers and oil companies.
I just read a column in Huffington Post by John Hari, from the London Independent, who said, in 2006 speculators like Goldman Sachs saw the housing market start to collapse, so they pulled their money out of that and started speculating in the worldwide food market, driving up the price of wheat 80% and rice 320%. 200 million people starved, there were food riots in 30 countries and one government was violently overthrown. But bizarrely, more food had been produced that year than the year before, but the year before the real market had set the prices of food, and in 2006 the market speculators had set the prices. The greedheads and banksters took their hundreds of billions in profit out of the housing mess, and had nowhere to stick ‘em, so they stuck ‘em in food. And starved and murdered people worldwide. Barbarians in $2000 suits.
And these are the people Obama believes.
Does anyone see a pattern here? Read the rest of this entry »
posted by richzubaty on Apr 16
CLICK HERE to listen to The Rude Guy Podcast #67
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posted by richzubaty on Apr 16
[The Rude Guy Podcast #67 April 16, 2010]
[The Two Kinds of Freedom]
I’m Rich Zubaty The Rude Guy…We all love freedom right? We’re just a bunch of freedom lovin’ fools. But that’s how politicians fool us. Because there are two kinds of freedom.
Conservative freedom and Liberal freedom
Conservative freedom is the freedom of Thomas Jefferson. Often called Liberty. The – I’m a huge plantation owner with hundreds of slaves and I don’t want the government to fuck with me – kind of freedom. Fuck Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson was the first neocon. An aristocrat in democrats clothing who thought voting was for rich people only, and who didn’t want any politically potent church wagging a finger at his slave holdings… A world built entirely on conservative freedoms would be a dangerous hell, where nobody would stop at red lights, and corporations would pollute every river, and fresh water fishing would be an extinct pastime, right up there with teepee building. Think Afghanistan, or Mexico. Liberty is basically anarchy, commerce without responsibility, rule of the jungle. Republicans are free market anarchists, blowing up everything in their way, to make millions.
Liberal Freedom is Equality of Opportunity. The Martin Luther King Jr kind of freedom, where a person will be judged by the content of his character, not the color of his skin. It’s the opposite of… the don’t fuck with me because I’m rich, freedom. It’s the, don’t fuck with me because I’m poor freedom. It’s the freedom, the RIGHT, to equal treatment before the law in government, school, jobs, everything. It’s the authority to demand that:… I want my kids to have the same opportunities your kids have…kind of freedom.
I’m bored to death with health care talk and so are you. But stay with me here. Precisely because we were immersed in that insane debate for over a year, we’ve all absorbed some complex information, that will help us understand the two kinds of freedom. Conservative freedom and liberal freedom.
The Obama health care bill serves up BOTH kinds of freedom, and even demonstrates absolutely clearly why they cannot coexist. So let’s have a look at what we got with Obamacare. Which is really just Richard Nixon’s health care proposal 40 years late.
The main thing I love about the new healthcare bill is that it reverses the demented Ronald Reagan philosophy, that government is always wrong. Always the enemy and always the problem. That the worst thing you can ever hear is a knock at your door, with a guy standing there saying: we’re from the government and we’re here to help. That’s what we’re supposed to be afraid of? Fuck Ronald Reagan. GE TV puppet.
The liberal freedom Obamacare provides is the freedom for everybody to have health care. Not to be free FROM having health care, but to actually have it. Everyone is good enough and equal enough and qualified enough to get health care. And if you don’t have enough money then we’ll figure out some way to help you.
The conservative freedom Obamacare offers, is the freedom from government competition for insurance companies, hospitals and drug companies. Freedom from competition is the exact opposite of capitalism, but never mind. This is the healthcare industry we’re talking about. It OWNS the Congress and the courts and the president.
So, under Obamacare, the Insurance companies will not have to compete against a public option. Despite the fact that we are always being told how efficient corporations are, and how inefficient the government is, in back room deals Obama torpedoed the public option, that vile form of government INTERFERENCE — that could cut our national healthcare costs by one third or more. So, we will all pay one third more for healthcare, to preserve a fundamental conservative freedom. The freedom to make money from sick people. That makes about as much sense as closing down all interstate highways and forcing us all to drive on corporate-owned toll roads. Thank you Ronald Reagan you cockroach in the cupboards of history.
Also…drug companies will not have to compete against foreign drug imports. Our sold-out government actually PREVENTS imports, as if importing a drug is a risky behavior, but importing uninspected beef and pork from Costa Rica and Brazil is not.
Also…rest assured, there are no brand new public hospitals on the architects drawing tables. When I grew up all hospitals were in some sense public. Supported by local government. Ever since Nixon gave us private HMOs, as a substitute for his original comprehensive health care proposal, hospitals have been for-profit businesses, not, not-for-profit, public facilities.
This is why health industry stocks shot up the day after Obamacare was passed. It’s a multi-billion dollar corporate welfare giveway to the healthcare industry.
And then…there’s the GIANT disconnect. The reason this new healthcare bill will never work, is, of course, the mandate requiring all Americans to buy health insurance. Forcing Americans to buy anything IS against the constitution. I really hope this gets overturned in court or we will have all kinds of weird mandates coming down the road at us from this insane precedent. Read the rest of this entry »
posted by richzubaty on Apr 15
CLICK HERE to listen to The Rude Guy Podcast #53
or RIGHT CLICK HERE (Apple command/click) then click “Save Target As” to DOWNLOAD the podcast to your computer or playback device
Or CLICK HERE to read the TEXT version of The Rude Guy Podcast #53
posted by richzubaty on Apr 15
[The Rude Guy Podcast #53 April 15, 2009]
[Socialism is no longer a dirty word. Obama's trickle up economics. Rush Limbaugh is the High Priest of Hate. Ronald Reagan was the worst president in U.S. history. Eat the Rich.]
This is Rich Zubaty, the Rude Guy no more.
( RG laugh: ho ho ho ho ho)
It’s been a year since I’ve made a new podcast, and it’s time to catch up on what’s happened.
Here’s good news. Socialism is no longer a dirty word. After all my years of podcast ravings, and letters to the editors, advocating Democratic Socialism, NEWSWEEK finally came out with a February 2009 issue that spelled out on the front cover: We are all socialists now!”
That was a take-off on Richard Nixon’s statement that: We are all Keynesians now. A good old Republican cloth cap, tipped toward Liberal Keynesian economics, which recommends helping people who need help… unlike trickle down economics, Reaganomics, which recommends abandoning people who need help. Bail out corporations when they’re in trouble, but close shelters for homeless people to teach them “market discipline”. Reaganomics… And remember, it was Nixon, not Johnson, who gave us food stamps. It helped the farmers, and it helped the poor people. Though he, like me, despised Richard Nixon, Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, called Nixon, our “last Liberal president”. We’ve had thirty straight years of conservative government and BOY is it time for a change.
For someone like me, who has been promoting trickle UP economics, for decades, it is with great pleasure I report to you, what our new president, Barack Obama, had to say in his first budget report in February 2009. Sez Obama, quote:
The past eight years have discredited, once and for all, the philosophy of trickle-down economics—that tax breaks, income gains, and wealth creation among the wealthy, eventually will work their way down to the middle class. In its place, we need economic opportunity to trickle up. Unquote.
Did ya hear that? Trickle up!
[RG voice:] ha ha hah
George W Bush was a knee-jerk ideological supporter of Reaganomoics. Continues Obama quote:
It’s no surprise, then, that wealth began to be ever more concentrated at the top. By 2004, the combined net worth of the top 1 percent of families, was larger than that of the bottom 90 percent. In fact, the top 1 percent took home more than 22 percent of total national income, up from 10 percent in 1980. unquote.
Can you believe it. The richest 1 per cent of Americans own more than the bottom 90 per cent?
[lion roar]
Anyway, free market cowboy capitalism is out, and democratic socialism is in. Thank god. Actually, thank George W Bush. I spent seven years fighting George Bush and his insane war – I hated the man – and incredibly, his last act, as president, was to make us a socialist country by giving Wall Street a 700 billion dollar bailout. With strings attached. Read the rest of this entry »
posted by richzubaty on Apr 1
TRICKLE UP [excerpts from the upcoming The Rude Guy podcast #53]
For someone like me, who has been raving about TRICKLE UP economics for decades, it is with great pleasure I report to you what our new president Obama had to say in his first budget report in February 2009. Sez Obama:
“The past eight years have discredited, once and for all, the philosophy of trickle-down economics—that tax breaks, income gains, and wealth creation among the wealthy, eventually will work their way down to the middle class. In its place, we need economic opportunity to TRICKLE UP.”
Did ya hear that? TRICKLE UP!
Still talking about Trickle Down, continues Obama:
“It’s no surprise, then, that wealth began to be ever more concentrated at the top. By 2004, the wealthiest 10 percent of households held 70 percent of total wealth, and the combined net worth of the top 1 percent of families was larger than that of the bottom 90 percent. In fact, the top 1 percent took home more than 22 percent of total national income, up from 10 percent in 1980.”
Can you believe it. The richest 1 per cent of Americans own more than the bottom 90 per cent?
Eat the rich!
The issue here is: when are Americans gonna finally get mad at the rich people? It’s long overdue. We should be enraged at bankers. Hedge fund managers should be shipped to Paraguay to raise bees. Stockbrokers should be cleaning up oil spills with teaspoons. Society babes should be forced to make sandals, from old tires, for people with no shoes. But what do we hear on corporate media? Rush Limbaugh hopes Obama will fail. Fuck Limbaugh. Limbaugh should be dragged by his heels though shark infested waters.
I wanna see rich people stripped of all wealth above 10 million dollars. Let’s start with that. No more foundations and 401Ks to hide money from taxes, so poor people have no food or shelter. Screw non profit corporations. Non profits feed off corporate profits and inevitably hew to the corporate rich people’s agenda.
Let’s get MAD. Really really mad! We know whose fault this is. Rich people. They caused it. Rich people. It’s time for them to pony up to fix it. All over the planet. The pollution and health problems they caused all over the planet, ripping up gold and copper and oil. The pain and suffering they’ve caused here. Working people’s wages have been dropping ever since Ronald Reagan took office. We make less money now, adjusted for inflation, than we did in 1980. The lower middle class has joined the lower class. The working poor.
It’s greed, it’s Limbaugh, it’s Reagan, it’s Milton Friedman’s free market bullshit. It’s rich people all over. Bullshitting the poor. Stealing from the poor and giving to the rich.
Rich people must go. Greenland sounds good. Paraguay too. Siberia has always been a perennial favorite. Either pony up, or get the fuck out of America. We need you like we need the plague. And maybe if things get bad enough we’ll just eat you. Yeah, that’s it.
Eat the Rich!
They taste great with mayo and barbecue sauce. Eat the rich!
[lion roar]
Blessings.
And may god help you to be the person your dog thinks you are.
