That’s the current balance owed in child support for the Kid.

The Kid is 15, there are exactly 36 months left before he turns 18. If his dad were to try to pay all the back support before Kid turns 18, that would be $1245 per month. Enough to provide the kid with food, shelter and clothing.

But he won’t pay that. He won’t pay the $328 that is the monthly amount, expecting him to pay any of the back child support is like believing in Santa.

And what really chaps my hide is I can see that douchebag saying “well, I’d rather owe it to ya than cheat you out of it”.

It’s not me that he owes it too though. He’s cheating his kid out of a decent life. That’s inexcusable.

This has been your daily bitter rant. Please remember that 70 percent of all child support cases in this country are in arrears, and not a damn thing is being done about it.

Last night I finally got around to watching Taken (Liam Nesson-I love you) and a few nights ago I watched The Brave One .I was struck by how these two movies have basically the same theme: you hurt/killed someone I love and now I have to find something to do with all this rage, but the way the story is handled makes the difference between an action movie where you wince through everything that isn’t a fight scene and a movie that is just straight up awesome without relying on played out stereotypes.

Spoilers below people. Spoilers!

Let’s start with Taken. Liam Nesson. Seriously I would have watched this movie if they cut out the entire lame plot and just called it “Liam Nesson kicks ass for 93 minutes”. He is, as ever, fabulous. He is understated mostly in his acting, which is good cause if he was anything else it would be Schwazenager-esq. He makes fight scenes worth watching.

And that is all the good I have to say for this movie. Mind you, Liam Nesson is a whole lot of good. But…

It doesn’t pass the Bechdel test. Actually there isn’t a single female character in this whole movie who is treated like a human being. We have precious virgin daughter, bitchy money grubbing ex wife, spoiled pop star, and a whole lot of rape victims who are basically ignored except for frantic camera shots from one drugged, chained, half naked girl to another.

Plus there’s the whole purity angle shit. Kim, the daughter is a virgin, which means the kidnappers have extra special plans for her. Kim’s friend is slutty, she jokes about sleeping with the hot french guy they just met. Kim’s friend will end up dead of a drug overdose, chained half naked to a bed. Kim gets to be saved because her “certified pure” status makes her uber-valuable to rapey brown men.

Oh yeah, and every single one of the bad guys in this movie is a brown dude, except for a Frenchman or two. Seriously, it could be the blueprint for the “evil muslims want to rape our daughters!” playbook.

Now on to a movie that doesn’t treat women like fuckholes or virgin angels, and treats brown people like *shock, awe* people.

In The Brave One, Jodi Foster and her boyfriend are brutally robbed and beaten. Her boyfriend is killed. To overcome her agoraphobia, she buys a gun. And then she starts using it. Terrence Howard (who in real life is a SUPER DOUCHE!) plays a cop trying to catch the “vigilante” who keeps killing criminals in the city.

First, this movie passes all the tests. Women talk to other women about things that aren’t boyfriends. POC talk to POC about things that aren’t racism related.

But here’s what really surprised me, and made me damn near giddy. In nearly every single scene in the movie, there is a POC. And they aren’t all bad guys. Actually, most of them are just going about their lives, like normal people. It’s beautiful. It’s not even some ham-fisted anti-racism colorblind message. It’s just “these people exist in the world”, you know, like they actually do exist in the world.

I’m not going to spoil much of the plot for The Brave One. Go watch it. It’s good. Really really good. And then you can still watch Taken, just fast forward through every scene where Liam isn’t kicking ass.

watch action movies before bed.

I will not watch action movies before bed.

I will not watch action movies before bed.

Not even if they star Liam Nesson.

Nope.

Feckles.

I’m so not going to sleep tonight (today, it’s today already)

(As a preface lemme say this-Dr. Phil is a douchebag. He has no business counseling living people. But his whole “get real” schtick is useful in political analysis)

So I have this idea, and it’s only a wee bit flushed out at the moment. If you all wanna help me with the flushing, yippy. It started as a random thought while in the kitchen making Awesome Fried Rice. Why won’t the administration come straight out against the right wing loonies? In Dr. Phil speak- what does it gain Democrats (capital D, TM) to have these violent folks screaming for blood?

I’m thinking about Machiavelli and the reputation of princes. A prince must be seen to have certain qualities (humane for example) while not actually having these qualities because they make for a bad leader (can’t go around actually being just, fair, merciful and generous because what would your corporate sponsors think).

So how might one go about being seen as just or fair or liberal without actually being any of these things?

Well you might start by refusing to label right wing terrorists as terrorists. You might make yourself seem fair by giving fellow Americans the benefit of the doubt that they don’t want to start a massive race war, even though they keep saying they do.

And from this small act of non-confrontation you get a shit ton of rewards.

1) The appearance of benevolence, especially after you’ve just thrown half the population under a bus
2) You get to corner the political market on rational discourse, because even if what you are saying isn’t really beneficial to the majority of the people, at least you don’t sound like the screaming bloody teabaggers
3) You get to paint the dissenters from your own party with the same crazy brush that you paint the opposition with. Either they shut up, or they get thrown into the pot with their worst enemies.
4) You can pretend bipartisianship (let’s be real folks, we are governed by an Omniparty with a far right and a semi-far right corporatist bent) by making deals with the screaming crazies. Then they look more crazy when they complain, corporate sponsors are happy cause they still get what they want, and it “looks” like we have a 2 party government.

So I am not really surprised that Obama isn’t calling domestic terrorism for what it is. It’s not in his best interest to do so. For very little effort and risk on his part, the Teabaggers serve a useful purpose to the administration. However, for the rest of us, the teabaggers are pretty dangerous. Oklahoma City bombing didn’t blow up the politicians, just clerks and secretaries and a bunch of kids in a daycare.

(FTR- I actually lean towards the Machiavelli wrote the Prince as satire camp. In his own life, he was an intensely ethical person. I think he wrote a blue print for us common folks to know what fresh new hell our government is inflicting on us)

I was going to do an entirely different post about rents and risk, but my brain not functioning today and there is a mosquito buzzing around me trying to push me over the edge. Shortly I will be dancing around my room batting at invisible annoyances like a tin foil hat lady.

So instead you get some really basic supply/demand market stuff.

We all know pretty much what supply and demand means. People need or want stuff, the market supplies stuff that people want or need. The idea behind a free market is that if you leave it alone, competition for profit will make the market regulate itself. If you are, say a shoe maker who only makes left shoes, you will shortly be run out of business by someone who makes both left and right shoes. Or if you make shoes that cost more than buyers are willing to pay. Or if you make ugly shoes that no one wants. This is the invisible hand at work, competition making markets self regulating.

And that’s fine, for some items or in a very small setting like a small town market square. It fails in large markets. Lemme give you an example.

Say you live in a small market town. Everyone knows everyone and once a week you go to the market to buy your needed goods. You want to buy some steaks from Bob the Butcher. Yay! Steak! But before you walk into Bob’s, Bob’s neighbor calls you over and says “dude, you don’t want steak today, the meat is from one of Bob’s downer cows. I saw it fall over dead in the field this morning and then Bob butchered it.”

Information is key in deciding what goods and services we want to buy. In a small market you may be able to get that info before someone dies of downer cow ecoli. In a large market, you have no idea where the steak in the plastic wrap came from. You have to trust that your grocery store didn’t go for the cheap option downer cows because the risk of hurting their customers was too great.

But….

Your grocery store has to compete with Even Larger Grocery Store, and Even Larger Grocery Store has contracts to buy steak dirt cheap from every rancher for a thousand miles. They sell downer cow meat, but because they have eleventy billion stores the ecoli risk is spread out over a large geographic area and hard to trace back to one single source. So Even Larger Grocery Store spreads the risk around and gets away with it.

After the news today about the people arrested for plotting to kill police officers in Michigan, I thought this song was appropriate

Moxy Fruvous: Michigan Militia

And since were doing Moxy Fruvous

King of Spain

And The Gulf War Song, from the first Gulf War

I had this argument with Wonder yesterday, and I keep having these arguments with people I love and respect but am often totally exasperated by, so for the sake of efficiency I’m just going to lay down a few things here so that I don’t have to keep repeating them over and over and over.

1) I don’t give a flying fuck what the rethuglikans are up to now. They are going to eat themselves. They have always been obstructionist assholes. Criticizing them for continuing to be assholes is a bit like being pissed off when pop stars wear skimpy clothing and lip synch. We all know they are assholes. Shooting fish in a barrel is both boring and pointless. The are in the minority. They don’t matter politically. They are not the reason our president and congress suck. Stop using them as an excuse. It’s just as bad as when rethuglikans blame 911 on Clinton. We’re in power, we have to take responsibility for that.

2) Someone, anyone, tell me when we have enough Democratic support to enact Democratic policies, real ones, not relabled moderate rethuglikan ones. The Dems under Bush said we have to have a majority in Congress before we do anything. Then we had to have a majority in the Senate. Then we had to win the White House. Then we had to be filibuster proof. Then we had to deal with our own assholes. We have a majority everywhere. We have popular support according to the polls. Why do our policies look so much like compromises then? If anyone can tell me what the magic fucking pony line is for Dems acting like Dems, I will throw myself into it whole heartedly and work for it until my dying breath. But that line keeps moving.

What is the magic pony line? What is it? And why does our magic pony line have to be so much farther away then rethglikans magic ponyline?

3) Speaking of lines that keep moving, if Dems are way less likely to use a filibuster when they are in the minority, why don’t we eliminate it? Now some would say that it’s better to have the option, I suppose.

But…………..

Let’s spot the pattern, shall we?

Lieberman makes nicey nice with rethuglikans, doesn’t lose a damn thing for it. He even backed McCain in the election. Doesn’t lose a damn thing for it. Threatens to block health care reform, doesn’t lose a damn thing for it. But healthcare reform moves decidedly closer to insurance company interests.

Stupak threatens healthcare reform, in exchange for his vote he gets the president to executively declare that lady parts have no business in government funded healthcare. Insurance companies now have it written into law that they don’t, as a matter of fact they can’t, cover certain aspects of women’s healthcare. But there is nothing in the bill that says that insurance companies must lower women’s premiums by such and such a percent to make up the difference of what they now will not be required to cover.

Nelson actually gets the anti-lady bits language into the bill.

These are all Democrats.

Dems don’t go nuclear on the filibuster because it gives the party as a whole a way to cover the fact that they are the party of corporate welfare by letting the DINOs of the party move policy to the far right under threat. It is in their best interest to do so, and they get to maintain the illusion of being, you know, Democrats. There will always be some new excuse for why they can’t do the right thing right now. The next places that the Dems will fail to be able to do the right things despite a majority and a big “win” on healthcare are: unemployment/labor and reform of banking and finance. Oh and watch out for Social Security to be put on the chopping block too. Social Security can only be killed by a Democrat, and we may just have the president to do it.

4) This brings me to the tittle of this post. I get the fucking politicking. I understand it completely. See above. Did you perhaps wonder why the Dems were being so squeamish about eliminating a tool that has been used against them more often than for them? Did you shake your head in wonder at how JOE FUCKING LIEBERMAN STILL HAS ANY SWAY. I didn’t. I am not in awe of the game playing. To those who think I am ignoring it. Yep- because the process is so fucking obviously corrupt. Marveling over the minutia of the political machine is like thinking you can win a shell game and I don’t waste my time on it. There is no way to win by picking either of the dominant parties. There are a few moments of actual progression from some of them sometimes, but even super progressive Dennis Kucinich voted for the healthcare bill.

5) I would never ever tell someone under some kind of oppression to suck it up in some way, for example by saying things like “yeah it really sucks that Obama signed the executive order, but it doesn’t really change anything”. I would never advise patience or calmness or use patronizing “I’m sorry your right to control your own body just got shit on but look on the bright sides”. Nope. Not. Gonna. Happen. And I do not understand people who think it is okay to tell someone who is oppressed to be patient. I wouldn’t do that. I’d say “fuck that shit, let’s go fight that right now”. And I have said that. Over and over. Next person who says something like that to me gets stabbed with a fork. Period. Human rights are not negotiable. Period. I’m not fucking kidding person who knows who they are. Not negotiable. Not okay.

6) While having this fight with Wonder about my “negativity” I said “It’s like I’m fucking Noah and it’s gonna flood and everyone keeps pointing to the sky where the sun has peaked out for a second from behind the clouds to show me just how wrong I am about this flood thing”. 10 minutes later and it started to pour rain. I may or may not believe in a supreme being, but thank you universe for emphasizing my point. I also understand just a wee bit how climate scientists feel when faced with global warming deniers.

(FTR- Wonder and I are fine. We’ve been working our asses off this week and are both tired and bitchy and hurty which contributed to the argument.)

Look peeps, I kinda hate the I told you so racket. I told you so about Obama. I told you he was a corporate shill. I told ya he didn’t think women have the same rights as men. I told ya he was wishy washy on DADT and DOMA. I told ya he was not the “anti-war” candidate that we were looking for.

And I was right. But instead of gloating, (because truthfully I’d rather be wrong wrongity wrong about him) I just want to point that out so I can maybe get a wee bit of credit on healthcare. Just a little is all I want, just enough to make you think about the craptastic “reform” that was just passed.

First- go read this handy chart at Reclusive Leftist

PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF BABY JESUS NOTICE WHO WROTE THE SENATE VERSION OF THE HCR BILL THAT WAS PASSED. Hint- it rhymes with sminsurance company smellcraft.

No cost controls, no public option, no anti-trust measures, no premium or OOP (that’s out of pocket for you non health care wonks) caps. But us super poor folks are going to get coverage through medicaid. I could just say “hahah suckers, I got mine” but that would make me a TeaBagger and I am not one of those. I am a progressive, I want progress for all of us.

So what will happen in say 2014 when all these measures have been enacted?

Well premiums and OOPs are going to skyrocket for anyone not poor enough to be on Medicaid or old enough to get Medicare. And from personal experience I know exactly who is going to get the blame for that. Not insurance companies and their grubbing greedy hands, but fat people and poor people and brown people and and and.

Reforms to the reforms will be called for. Cuts to Medicaid will be demanded. Rethuglikans will be screaming “See this is what socialism booga booga does”. And any hope we ever had of real universal single payer coverage will be gone forever. Poof.

So I am not doing a happy dance because this bill is the death of universal care. It’s not “a good start” or “universal care with some kinks”. It is the most fucked up way to get people to think that universal care means skyrocketing prices for the middle class and freebies for the poor. It is a way for the elites to piss off the have-lesses by offering crumbs to the have nots so they can keep their shiny pile of gold plated medical care to themselves.

Fuck that.

This is probably my favorite Monty Python bit ever. I love it more than fish slapping, spam and sperm songs.

this reminder of the inherent violence of the system is brought to you via Stump Lane the Lesser