Something special tonight...

Hey folks, just wanted to let you guys know that I have something special planned for tonight's News Pundit Report over on ShockNet Radio. If you haven't had a chance to tune in yet, THIS is the perfect time for you to do so!

The News Pundit Report is my fifteen-minute segment which talks about news with my own unique take on them. Unlike my regular rants and columns, this is totally off-the-cuff... unless of course I include a special comment like I will do for tonight's show. The News Pundit Report is a regular part of ShockNet Radio's "American Heathen®" program which airs every Friday and Saturday nights from 7-11pm EST (6-10 central, 4-8 pacific) and is broadcast both on ShockNetRadio.com and FreethoughtRadio.com. The "American Heathen®" show also has a live chat room that listeners can take part in, and some parts of the discussions there do end up on the air.

So please tune in, listen to my special comment, and then feel free to leave your own comments both in the chat room and on my own blog site.

You can hear the show at...
http://www.shocknetradio.com

Oh, and by the way, I may have an announcement regarding my regular Brutally Honest audio rants and with ShockNet Radio in the next few months, so keep ShockNet's address in mind!

Brutally Honest Rant - 09/05/07

Brutally Honest Audio Rant: Destined to Fail
Audio Transcripts
09/05/07

[Start Program]

(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – “American Idiot Remix” – by Green Day and David Matthews 2)

Good evening and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.

“Good ol’ Charlie Brown”, the round-headed central character in the legendary “Peanuts” comic strip, was the ultimate born loser. I say “was” because the comic strip pretty much ended when creator Charles Schultz died. It’s been living on in repeats since 2000. This is the kid who couldn’t seem to get a break, no matter how hard he tried.

But probably the most notable thing about his animated young life was that the biggest of failures that he endured were intentionally caused by other people. He never could kick the football from Lucy Van Pelt because she would intentionally sabotage it every single time. She would orchestrate the other kids to make fun of him. She would belittle him at every opportunity. She would demand she take part in team activities and then sabotage them. In fact, Lucy was always the saboteur of Charlie Brown’s life… which makes you wonder how a kid like that would ever grow up with that kind of abuse and torment on his psyche.

Charlie Brown was destined to fail, no matter how hard he tried, no matter how optimistic he was, no matter how determined he was to finally win, he would fail… because other people would make sure that he failed.

If you think about it, there are plenty of people out there who are just like Charlie Brown. They try hard, they think they can pull off a win, but they simply can’t do it. They can’t because the system is intentionally DRIVING them to fail!

Think for a moment about the gambling casinos. Everyone who goes there has dreams of beating the house and raking in the fortune, but everything about casinos are designed to make sure that you LOSE. That’s how they make their money. The odds are ALWAYS stacked in favor of the house. And it’s all legitimate.

Lending institutions have certainly pulled this off with their subprime mortgages. Millions of people who were sold into the compulsion to buy or to refinance their homes did so through subprime mortgages that essentially were DESIGNED to fail. Interest rates that would go up and up and up beyond the ability to make even the minimum payments, forcing those people to go into bankruptcy and foreclosure. I mean, come on folks, did you REALLY think that Federal Reserve Board would keep key rates at zero-point-five percent forever?

So who do you blame in this? Do you blame the people who were suckered and pressured into getting into these risky loans even though there was a chance they would fail? Or do you blame the lending institutions that convinced Congress to change the rules and allowed these kinds of risky lending practices to take place?

There’s plenty of blame to go around here, folks. I understand the drive by stupid and naïve people to convince you to buy things that you shouldn’t. I hear it as well. Stupid and naïve people tell me that I should sell my car once I pay off the loan and then get another car… as well as get another car loan. Stupid and naïve people tell me that I should buy a house for no reason whatsoever other than to buy a house. Never mind wondering if I could afford to make the mortgage payments and pay for the utility costs, homeowners insurance, and taxes associated with owning a house. Oh no, just BUY a house. Do these people even THINK about these things? Nope. Not in the least! They’re just parroting the sales pitches that they heard from other people.

Well guess what? You HAVE to think about these things! And you have to say NO to them! Just like you have to say NO to those stupid credit card offers that you see on TV. Those stupid American Express commercials and those stupid Chase Visa commercials that tell you that you can do all sorts of really NEAT things with their cards. Yeah they’re great IF you can afford to keep up with the payments on them AFTERWARDS. If you can’t, then you’re screwed!

College students are falling into this trap as well, with credit card companies EAGER to give them credit cards so they can spend to their heart’s content, not realizing the burdens of having those cards and in keeping up with the payments. Never mind that many students simply can’t AFFORD to be in debt like that because they will have HUGE student loans to pay off on top of everything else. Doesn’t matter… give them the cards and let them figure it out later on.

People who take out payday loans are in a similar situation. They take out a loan, promise to pay it off by the next pay period, and not realizing that the finance charges for such a loan are literally HUNDREDS of times more than other methods of borrowing. But people do it because they’re in dire straits and they usually don’t see themselves having any other option.

These folks are all destined to FAIL, and they don’t even realize it. And no matter what they do, the system will make sure that they continue to fail.

And that’s not counting the number of businesses that are set up on the promises of success and money and instead are designed to keep the suckers working diligently for a payoff that will never happen. Day traders and multi-level-marketing people are all sold on this idea that if they work hard enough, if they put in enough effort, that they will make oodles of cash. They have no idea that the only people who are making the money in those games are the ones who sold them the idea in the first place.

They all have one thing in common… they were all sold on a DREAM. But what they are really BUYING is anything BUT a dream.

And how do you deal with that? Government action is a short-term option, but I wouldn’t even dare to call it a solution, because it’s far from one. There needs to be an INDIVIDUAL solution, not a government one. Besides, the government is the institution that ALLOWED these things to happen in the first place! When the time comes to help people out, who do you REALLY think they’re going to support? You? Fat chance!

Sure life is about RISK, but people need to understand that YOU’RE the only party that is really taking the risk here! These lending institutions and businesses are no different than gambling casinos in that the deck is ALWAYS stacked against you and that “the house” ALWAYS wins. And if you can’t afford to lose, then you have an obligation to yourself and your loved ones to walk away BEFORE you put your name on the dotted line.

And, speaking of the government, that brings me to a certain government program that is also destined to FAIL.

I’m talking about the FAILED phony “War on Drugs”. I say “phony” because it’s not a real war in the same regard as, say, the War in Iraq. It’s a phony war. It’s a fraud. It’s a joke foisted up by mealy-mouthed politicians pretending to take the problem seriously.

Oh I know that drugs are a problem in society, but the government adopting a neo-prohibitionist stance is NOT the way to deal with it!

Okay… follow me on this. Let’s start with a really simple message that can be expressed in a way that even little kids can understand.

“Drugs are bad.”

Simple, direct, easy to remember. “Drugs are bad.”

Okay, so you take that message to Little Johnny Precious or Suzie Purebred and you have them repeat it over and over again. “Drugs are bad.” “Drugs are bad.” “Drugs are bad.”

Then they go to school… and they find out that if they don’t sit down and don’t shut up in certain classes that the teacher will send them to the nurse to put them on a pill that will make them behave. And the parents have to pay for this pill that they will have to take every day so that they will behave.

But… drugs are bad.

Then they go home and they turn on the TV and they discover that grown-ups have to take a pill for all sorts of different problems. If they’re not happy, they need to take a pill. If they have problems going to the bathroom, they need to take a pill. If they can’t sleep, they need to take a pill. If they have too much stress, they need to take a pill. If they sneeze too many times, they need to take a pill. If they can’t do some sort of activity that usually produces other children and somehow involves really cheesy music, they need to take a pill.

But… drugs are bad.

They hear about all sorts of problems with this thing called “smoking”, which involves a substance called tobacco, that some parents take on a regular basis that everyone says is bad but the government still rakes in millions in taxes from it and they want to rake in even more from the few people who do take part in this thing.

But… drugs are bad.

Then they visit their older brother, who talks about ingesting this drug called “alcohol” that makes people do really stupid things and really messes up their lives, but it’s a neat thing to take and they ingest too much of it every time. And once upon a time they used to ban it, but then changed their minds because too many people were breaking the law.

But… drugs are bad.

Then they visit their older sister, who tries to hide the little container of pills that she takes so she can also take part in those activities with the really cheesy music… but without producing other children from it. And if by some chance she forgets to take these pills, then she has to take some other pills afterwards so she won’t have children when she’s not ready for them.

But… drugs are bad.

Then grandma and grandpa come over to visit, and they each pull out their bag of medications that they have to take every day. And they will line them all up in a row and mark off when they have to take each of them so they won’t take too much or forget to take them at all.

But… drugs are bad.

And let’s not forget that the sugary carbonated substance that the kids drink and the black liquid that the adults drink to keep themselves awake that are full of something called “caffeine”… which is also a drug.

But… drugs are bad, right? I mean that’s the message that the government wants us to accept, right?

Do you see where this is all going? And I haven’t even gotten to the really TRICKY subjects!

Let’s get brutally honest here… as a government program, the fraudulent “war on drugs” was BORN to fail! It was born to fail because the extremist neo-prohibitionist philosophy behind it – namely to BAN everything and deal with the consequences later – is incompatible with the REALITIES of our society!

The simple fact of the matter is this: we LIVE with drugs in one form or another. We can’t just spout off some extremist zero-sum mentality about how “drugs are bad” and then expect people to buy it when we use all sorts of drugs in our own lives.

Oh sure we CALL them something else! We call them proscriptions, medications, coffee, soft drinks, cigarettes, beer. But it’s still hypocrisy. We crucify athletes who take steroids, but we think nothing of the doctor that gives us a steroid injection to help our body heal after an accident. We’ll all condemn the crack whore who will do anything for her next hit, but we all probably know a parent or a grandparent who puts more chemicals into their body on a daily basis and will spend any amount of money to do it just to live another year. We’ll demand that drug dealers go to prison, but we’ll help put pharmaceutical executives in mansions.

And we expect the next generation to understand that? We have a hard time accepting it ourselves!

We need to seriously rethink this whole approach. People are going to mess up their lives no matter how they do it… either through sheer stupidity or simply as a means to pass the time away and possibly hasten their own demise. Outlawing the MEANS doesn’t make the DESIRE go away. It just gives people more opportunity to find ways to get around the law.

(Computer – some appropriate stuff)
(Fade Music In – “Mythodea” by Vangelis)

There is a significant difference between someone failing and someone being FORCED to fail. When a person fails on their own accord, you can tell them to get up and try again, and the onus is actually on them to do better. But the man – or woman – who intentionally forces that person to fail and then tells them to just get up and try again so they can fail again is nothing short of a sadist. And whether it’s for profit or simply for the sheer pleasure of watching a person fail at your own hands, it’s still despicable, deplorable, and just plain evil.

What do you do when you’re faced with that kind of evil that was displayed in people like the Lucy Van Pelts of the world? At that point is it really the fault of guys like Charlie Brown when they can do nothing BUT fail? I’d have to say no.

But then again, I have more in common with “good ol’ Charlie Brown” than most people would dare admit to.

(Pause)

Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production; all opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, and I’ll speak with you soon!

(Fade out)
(Computer – Ending/“End of Recording”)

[End of program]
------------------------------

Re: Delilah...

You know the song "Here there Delilah" by the Plain White T's? Well apparently there's a backstory to it that you might find a little disturbing.

Apparently there really was a girl named Delilah, but she didn't know that the lead singer had any kind of feelings towards her, and she was already in a relationship. Supposedly she's bugged that there's even a song about her, never mind that it's being played on radio stations across the country.

Anyway, a parody song writer came up with the perfect response to the song, so here it is...


What do you think? Sound off and let me know!

Brutally Honest Rant - 08/29/07

Brutally Honest Audio Rant: Phony Martyrs
Audio Transcripts
08/29/07

[Start Program]

(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – “American Idiot Remix” – by Green Day and David Matthews 2)

Good evening and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.

I’m trying to clear out a few things this week… and much of what I have to cover can fall under the category of a phony martyr.

Now if there is anyone that you can thank for coming up with the concept of phony martyrs, you can probably thank the mothers of the world, because some of them really knew how to transform their past into YOUR personal guilt trip. You know, how many times have you heard a mother say “I was in labor for NINE HOURS because of YOU”? Odds are she probably spent most of that time numbed up, but she’ll never let you know that.

Anyway, tonight I want to talk about a few people who pretty much claim to be martyrs in one way or another.

First up: Atlanta Falcons superstar Michael Vick.

Hey, I’m in Atlanta so you KNOW this subject would come up at some point!

Okay, first, as longtime listeners know I’m somewhat jaded when it comes to sports, and especially when it comes to sports figures and the cultish mindset that surrounds so-called “athletic superstars”. Hey, if sports is your thing then have at it and have fun. But don’t try to call these overpaid prima-donnas “heroes” because they pale in comparison to the real things.

Anyway, back to Michael Vick. Michael Vick got himself into some serious trouble. Not the first time this happened mind you, but for once this was something that couldn’t be excused as a misunderstanding.

Apparently Michael Vick was involved in a little dogfighting ring. Not only was he involved in it, but he actually HOSTED these things in his own home in Virginia.

Now folks, the way the law is written in Virginia, if you own the home where dogfighting is taking place, then you’re GUILTY of the act, even if you had no knowledge or participation of it. It’s crazy, I know, but then again we’re talking about Virginia.

So this has been something that has been brewing for several months now. Evidence is collected, witnesses summoned, and Vick’s friends basically cut deals to turn on him. There are stories and allegations of Vick actually killing some of the dogs that underperformed. Anyway, you have state charges and federal charges brewing up. You have the animal rights people and pretty much anyone who likes dogs not only wanting Vick to be FIRED from professional football, but ready to have him treated like he allegedly treated his dogs.

Now mind you, I’m watching all this stuff with amusement. Like I said, from just the stance of the state law, since he OWNED the house involved, he was screwed.

Anyway, Vick FINALLY cuts a plea deal. He pleads guilty to one federal count of conspiracy and takes all the lumps of that charge, including possibly going to prison.

And NOW Vick and his few remaining supporters are out playing the martyr card.

You have special interest groups claiming that Vick is being crucified because he’s BLACK and you have Vick himself claiming that he’s turning himself over to God and claiming that he found “Jesus”, he’s looking to, quote, “grow up”, and hoping that the judge will be lenient.

Sorry… not buying it!

First, Michael Vick wasn’t being crucified because he’s BLACK. He was charged because BROKE THE LAW. Like I said, he owned the home that was used for dogfighting. Under Virginia law, that means HE is responsible for what goes on in it. Which part of that does not register in your brain? I think that people would be just as pissed off about the charges if it involved Payton Manning or some other equally overpaid and over-hyped athlete.

Oh, and lay off the whole thing about “he’s an innocent man who is being wrongly persecuted”. That MAY have worked before this week, but as soon as he knowingly and willingly entered his GUILTY plea after consulting with his lawyers, that whole line about being “innocent” is thrown out the door.

Second, this whole thing about “finding Jesus”… why is it that Vick “found Jesus” only AFTER he pled guilty in an arranged plea deal? Why didn’t he “find Jesus” when the charges were just coming out and BEFORE his friends cut deals to throw him under the bus? Why is it that he “finds Jesus”… or Jésus… only BEFORE he ends up meeting with Carlos and Ramon and the rest of Cellblock H?

I’m sorry folks, but this sounds like it comes out of some shyster lawyer’s playbook. You know, drop enough buzzwords and hope for forgiveness and a light sentence. I’m just waiting for him to announce that he’s going into rehab just to make the whole phony redemption scam complete.

The funny part is watching Falcons owner Arthur Blank claim that the team was NEVER ALL ABOUT Michael Vick! PLEASE! That’s a Clinton-quality lie and you know it! Arthur Blank BET THE FARM on Michael Vick! He put everything he had into Michael Vick! EVERYTHING was about Michael Vick! All he supposedly NEEDED was Michael Vick! And he’s not the only one who does it, of course, but then to turn around and deny it is just plain STUPID.

On the plus side, when Vick gets out of prison, Arthur Blank will have a dedicated contractual employee that he can have stock the shelves over at his Home Depot corporation. So at least Vick will have a JOB to look forward to… just not one playing football.

Next: Bye-bye Gonzo!

Attorney General Alberto “Gonzo” Gonzales has finally announced his resignation, and it couldn’t come soon enough for this online commentator.

The press wants to paint Gonzo as the ultimate “Yes Man” for the Bush Imperium. But in truth, Gonzo is a “Make-Yes Man”, as in he would find ways to MAKE the answer “yes”. Want to get around the Constitution? Gonzo would find a legal expert that would MAKE that answer a “yes”. Want to get around the Geneva Convention? He himself crafted the loophole being used today! He’s not a boot-licker… he’s the hatchet man of the operation.

Now here’s the problem: that kind of person may good for the White House as part of your legal staff. But it’s NOT good when you put that person in charge of the nation’s law enforcement branch!

Let’s think about this for a moment… here’s a person whose mission in life is to make the President’s “YES” answer happen, by any means necessary, and he’s being put in charge of a branch of the government which by its very nature in this country has certain LIMITATIONS. That means that you have to ACCEPT that the answer will at times be “NO”. The two concepts simply DO NOT work together!

And that is what led to the scandal about his office firing eight attorneys, which I admit in the grand scheme of things was blown up to being more than what it should have been. Basically you had the White House PUNISHING eight prosecutors for either going after Republicans or for not targeting Democrats. In other words, they were being asked to carry out a POLITICAL agenda instead of a LEGAL one, and they got fired because they chose instead to do their jobs. Now the neo-cons have been, still are and will continue to weasel this issue because they have no other way to excuse it. And IF the Department of Justice simply went ahead and fired ALL of the prosecutors so that Gonzo could carry on with a new staff, I really don’t think that would have been an issue. It’s been done before. But instead, Gonzo and his staff of hatchet men (and hatchet women) carried out their political agenda, and supposedly violated the rule of law in the process.

And it’s in TRYING to explain this whole thing that got Gonzo in hot water the new Democrat-controlled Congress!

But try telling that to our Doofus-in-Chief. Bush Junior is bitter because his number two Texas buddy and inner-circle confidant felt that it was time to leave and he’s playing the phony martyr card, claiming that Gonzo was “a victim” of the Democrats. Oh give me a freaking break, Junior! You wouldn’t know what a martyr was if one came up and slapped you upside the head. Actually I think that anyone who manages to slap George W. Bush upside the head would probably end up BEING a martyr after they do it anyway; so at least at that point, Junior would really KNOW what a martyr was.

Let’s get brutally honest here… Alberto Gonzales has nobody to blame for his problems but HIMSELF! He got caught in a LIE and people were actually CALLING him out on it!

In fact, Junior playing the phony martyr card was disgustingly too much, because there really was a good chance that Gonzo would have managed to stay in office even if every single lie he ever told was exposed and verified. The do-nothing Democrats lack the very SPINE needed to do what’s right, and in all likelihood they would have let Gonzo stay right where he was because their inept consultants would tell them that it would be good for them in next year’s elections.

If anything, his departure was probably orchestrated to specifically stymie the Democrats and take yet another so-called “election tool” away from them. They lost Bush’s brain – Karl Rove – because of their ineptitude… they lost Bush’s mouth – Tony Snow – even though he did nothing to warrant scrutiny… and now they’re losing Bush’s spine. As long as Condi behaves and Dick doesn’t shoot anyone else in the face, it’s pretty much a safe bet that the only thing that Bush Junior will have to fear between now and January of 2009 is another bag of pretzels.

(Computer – some political stuff)
(Fade Music In – “Mythodea” by Vangelis)

There’s a really great line in the movie “Dogma” that pretty much separates real martyrs for the phony ones. “One of the drawbacks to being a martyr is that you have to die.” Phony martyrs, of course, aren’t dead. They just make YOU wish that you WERE dead so you wouldn’t have to put up with their guilt trips.

In the end, phony martyrdom is really nothing more than another form of psychological warfare, and it should pretty much be treated as such. The only reason why it works is because we get caught up in it by those that we lack the courage to challenge head-on. As long as we don’t confront it, it will continue to be used against us.

(Pause)

Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production; all opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, and I’ll speak with you soon!

(Fade out)
(Computer – Ending/“End of Recording”)

[End of program]
------------------------------

Brutally Honest Rant - 08/22/07

Brutally Honest Audio Rant: Right Vs Efficiency
Audio Transcripts
08/22/07

[Start Program]

(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – “American Idiot Remix” – by Green Day and David Matthews 2)

Good evening and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.

There’s a scene in the move “Fight Club” where the unnamed narrator and star of the film talks about what he does for a living. Basically he goes around the country looking at automobile accidents, trying to determine if the cost of the defect is worth either a recall or just paying out people in lawsuits. Eventually he blackmails his boss with all the information that he knows about the automaker and their shoddy craftsmanship and tells him that his new job would be to simply stay quiet about these things, and that he can even do this job from home.

It’s somewhat confusing if you think about it, and the narrator doesn’t help matters with his math equation, but what it all boils down to is this… this fictional automaker would rather spend money either on recalls or in lawsuit settlements than in doing what it takes to fix a defect before their cars leave the factory.

It all comes down to two things… doing what is RIGHT versus doing what is efficient.

I’m sure that you’ve seen the commercials for VISA about their check card and how easy things seem to flow when all you have to do is swipe your card or ping it at the register and you’re on your way… and then some ugly dork shows up with actual CURRENCY, and everything grinds to a halt.

But what you don’t see is how many of those people who are “pinging” their cards or swiping them are using stolen credit cards. And maybe that explains WHY you have the dork having to pay for things with actual currency… because their credit card information was STOLEN from them by one of the other good-looking people, so they have to pay for everything in CASH.

It’s all about doing what is right versus doing what is efficient.

We’re seeing that now with all of these goods coming from China being defective or toxic! China apparently can’t even build an airplane that doesn’t explode! One of them exploded just the other day on the runway over in Japan! Sure they executed some guy who was the head consumer quality person, but that doesn’t solve the problem that they have right now, especially with the crap that is out on the shelves a half a world away.

Doing what is right versus doing what is efficient…

And of course efficiency is considered to be a good thing, right? It sometimes means being well-organized and well-kept. Unfortunately efficiency also means cutting costs, cutting steps, taking shortcuts when possible.

Our energy policy, going back several DECADES now, has been based on what is efficient instead of what is RIGHT. So now we have outdated refineries and outdated pipelines that we can’t afford to have replaced, nobody WANTS to replace them, and it’s cost-effective for them to simply repair what they have now and jack up the cost of energy to obscene degrees to make up the difference. We have become ENSLAVED to our own energy problems and in turn that has us ENSLAVED to unstable markets and unstable nations. None of it is RIGHT, and it was ALL done in the name of efficiency!

Same thing with our auto-makers. The so-called “big three” are DYING because NOBODY wanted to actually come up with a fuel-efficient vehicle even though we’ve been having an ever-increasing energy problem since the late 1990’s! You’d think that at least the gas crisis leading to the Gulf War would have served as a frigging wake-up call to them, but it wasn’t! They decided that it was better to just churn out these gas-guzzling urban assault vehicles and market them like they were chariots of the gods. And now, of course, they have all these vehicles that nobody wants to buy because they can’t afford to keep blowing a fortune on gas!

Think about it… it was actually more efficient for them to create and mass-market a vehicle with an inefficient fuel system than to do what was RIGHT!

This problem between doing what is right versus doing what is efficient can certainly be seen in the world of POLITICS today! In fact, it explains some of the problems that both parties are suffering from.

Ten years ago the Republican-controlled Congress brought forth articles of impeachment against the President of the United States for lying about an affair. Sure it was an uphill battle for them to pull it off. They had to take time away from normal legislative matters to argue whether or not they should even try it. But they did.

And even though they continually heard about how time was wasted and how the charge was meaningless and the subject of the lie was worthless, the Republicans continually said that was all about upholding the rule of law.

And you know what? At the time, they WERE right! It WAS about the rule of law… and that no president was above it, no matter how trite the subject was. And that was part of their character at the time. They acted on what they believed was RIGHT, not just what was “expedient”, because the most “expedient” thing to do would have been to do NOTHING and just let the Ken Star Report stand as the sideshow that it was.

It’s a pity that they forgot about that point, though, because eight years later, they pulled a complete reversal. They decided that it would be better to be expedient than to do what is right and get rid of their corrupt members. People like Bob Ney and Mark Foley. Maybe “good ol’ boy” politics kept that corrupt bastard Tom DeLay in place until his criminal indictment, but overlooking folks like Foley were simply inexcusable. And THAT ultimately helped to do them in.

And it’s not like they didn’t know HOW to do what is right either! These guys took time out of their legislative schedules to expel James Trafficant in 2002 after he was convicted of felony charges. They KNEW how to do what was right, but they decided to simply be expedient, and that cost them their power-hold in 2006.

So now it’s the Democrats that are calling the shots in Congress… and guess what? They’re making the same mistakes!

You have the Attorney General caught up in a lie, and you would THINK that the Democrats would seize upon that, but they aren’t. You have former White House aids actually engaging in open contempt by refusing to appear when given a subpoena, and the Congress isn’t taking things to the next step. And if you don’t know what I mean when I say “the next step”, then you need to understand that there is a REASON why the House and the Senate have a position called the “Sergeant at Arms”, and it is for this kind of situation!

Their liberal base has been clamoring for impeachment for months now, and the Democrats REFUSE to even consider it! You know why? Because they’re listening to their stupid, idiotic so-called “consultants” who get in front of the media and actually EXCUSE their inaction as being good for their changes in 2008 election!

“Oh no,” they constantly say, “Democrats shouldn’t act on this. We shouldn’t be wasting valuable time in the legislature pursuing this stuff. We have the Republicans right where we want them! Just having this out hurts the Republicans. We should just let this fester and hang it over their heads in the 2008 elections!”

And not only do the Democrats NOT take action, but they actually CAVE IN to the demands of the Bush Imperium time and time again! Oh, they can’t trust the words of the Attorney General, but they’ll still vote to give his office unlimited and unchallenging power to peer into our lives! The White House invokes Executive Privilege so often it pretty much becomes the resurrection of “Divine Right of Kings” but the Democrats continue to play ball with them.

And all of it is because their “consultants” are telling them that it’s good for them in the next election!

These so-called consultants are IDIOTS! They are pathetic, inept, incompetent MORONS! I have seen better crap from my cat’s litter box!

First of all, it’s becoming clear to this commentator that the Democrats really have absolutely NO FRIGGING IDEA how the hell they got back their power in Congress. NO IDEA WHATSOEVER! They didn’t just wake up one morning and have it magically fall on their lap. They were HANDED it to them by the ineptitude and incompetence of the Republicans. They weren’t the “better” candidates. They just weren’t the “worst”. And there IS a difference between the two concepts.

And now that they HAVE this power, they have an obligation to use it AS they promised that they would! They said that they needed to keep the Bush Imperium honest. Well guess what? You don’t do that by caving in! You don’t do that by making deals! You don’t do that by going part-way in an investigation and then say “oh, this is enough for us; we’ll just hang them with this in the next election.”

Let’s get brutally honest here… there comes a time when you HAVE to do what is right and TO HELL with what is considered “efficient”! That is what REAL CHARACTER is about!

Take a look at Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s request for articles of impeachment against the Vice President. For right reasons or wrong (and the neo-cons obviously will say it’s wrong), he’s taking a stand for what he believes in, just like the Republicans did ten years ago. He is showing more CHARACTER than all of the Democratic front-runners put together! In fact you look at the people who are still in the running… the ones who are constantly being told that they don’t have a chance in hell of winning. THESE are the people with CHARACTER! I would rather vote for any of them before I vote for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Thug Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mitch the Bitch Romney or any other so-called “front runner” out there.

Character is not about winning or losing. It’s about standing up for what you believe is RIGHT.

This is why the Democrats have a piss-poor record when it comes to elections. They have plenty of things that they stand AGAINST… but they really have nothing that they truly stand FOR! And those few things that they CLAIM to stand for are easily negotiated away. They’re bargained down, reasoned out of, and traded like old-fashioned baseball cards. It’s all about being “efficient.” It’s all about keeping things moving. And because of that, THEY LOSE!

I’ll make this really simple for the Democrats… if you say that you cannot trust the Attorney General to tell you the truth, then you DO NOT vote to give his office more power. PERIOD! NO EXCUSES! You start taking that power AWAY from him! PATRIOT ACT – GONE! FISA – GONE! If the White House doesn’t want to cooperate with you, then you DO NOT cooperate with the White House! It’s that simple!

You don’t play games with this sort of stuff. You don’t pussyfoot around with neo-cons on a power-trip, because they play for keeps. You don’t “mildly threaten” people with contempt because they decide not to show up for a hearing when given a subpoena. You send the Sergeant-at-Arms to their residence – WITH SIDEARMS – and you haul them over kicking and screaming like Paris Hilton!

You Democrats NEED to take a stand for what you believe in, and you need to take that stand NOW, because you WILL NOT have a chance to win in the next election if you don’t! There is no time to debate this anymore. Forget it! It’s GONE! You pissed it away! And you can personally thank your idiotic consultants and your so-called “political experts” for that!

And by the way, I am not saying all this as a Libertarian or as a political cynic, but as an AMERICAN CITIZEN who is tired of the games and who is tired of seeing my hard-earned tax money go to pay for this crap! Maybe we all need to organize a march on Washington to wake these people up… at the very least to do SOMETHING to show our discontent at the crap going on with BOTH parties!

I know this will be difficult to comprehend because of who is Speaker of the House right now, but you Democrats need to grow some frigging BALLS.

(Computer – Fired mix)
(Fade Music In – “Mythodea” by Vangelis)

Every time you have a two-term president on his final years in office, there is a very dangerous tactic that gets played. You do everything you can to stay in office until your time is up. Bill Clinton knew how this game was played, and actually he played it quite well, even after he was impeached.

And if anything, George W. Bush can afford to be even MORE dangerous than his predacessor, because he’s got NOTHING left to shoot for right now. He doesn’t have to run for re-election and he doesn’t have a “political heir” that he can pass his crusades to. So between now and January of 2009, all he has to do is stay in office and TO HELL with the rest of the world!

And that’s something that the Democrats need to bear in mind. This isn’t just “a game” to these neo-cons. They’re not playing to win… because as far as they are concerned, they have already won! They’re now playing for keeps! You’re not dealing with a “lame duck”… you’re dealing with a bunch of cornered pit bulls, and you Democrats need to respond accordingly.

(Pause)

Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production; all opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, and I’ll speak with you soon!

(Fade out)
(Computer – Ending/“End of Recording”)

[End of program]
------------------------------

Stupid Commerical-Think!

Okay, you watch enough Internet videos, you're going to get these really stupid annoying commercials that just piss me off. So I'm just going to come out and say it...

I'm tired of hearing how the people who make Tylenol put "love" in their product!

Look, if I'm popping two Tylenol, I'm not looking for "love". I'm looking for something that will get rid of my stupid migraine! And preferably BEFORE I decide to do something drastic to get rid of the SOURCE of my stupid migraine!

So I'm not interested in your "commitment to quality" and how much "love" you put into those little bottles that are a bitch to open in the first place. I want to hear how fast my migraine will go away. I want to hear how it will WORK.

Oh, and don't get me started on the bad singer in Progressive's ad or the systematic abuse of that stupid Rolling Stones song by Chase. You guys are part of the reason WHY I need to frigging take Tylenol!

Brutally Honest Rant - 08/15/07

Brutally Honest Audio Rant: No Place In GA For Genarlow
Audio Transcripts
08/15/07

[Start Program]

(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – “American Idiot Remix” – by Green Day and David Matthews 2)

Good evening and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.

You know, one of the big problems for commentators like me is that trying to discuss certain issues is at times difficult… because we all live with this damnable sound byte mentality. If it can’t be delivered in ten seconds, some of you folks just don’t get the whole picture and you simply go by what quickie morsel you pick up and then react on it as if you knew the whole thing.

So I’m sure that some of you will get pissed off with what I have to say on this subject, because this is something that you really have to put some thinking into. And yes I mean for more than just ten seconds.

There was a local issue that came up just a couple of weeks ago on the case of one Genarlow Wilson. Genarlow was a local high school athletic “HE-RO”, which of course is just nothing more than just small-town hype. And like many over-hyped athletic players, Genarlow believed that he could pretty much do ANYTHING that he wanted! After all, he’s a “superstar”! He’s UNTOUCHABLE!

So one New Year’s Eve, Genarlow and his buddies are having a little private party in a hotel room and there are a couple of hot chicks involved. It’s New Year’s Eve, there’s drinking (illegal of course), a bunch of dudes, and some babes. I mean, come on, do I have to paint a picture as to what happens next?

And this is where Genarlow makes three SERIOUS mistakes.

Mistake number one… one of the hot chicks is FIFTEEN YEARS OLD! Now it would be one thing if she was sixteen… that’s the age of consent in Georgia… or even seventeen like the other girl there. But she was FIFTEEN! I don’t care if she’s drunk, drugged, brain-dead, sleeping, or stone cold sober, wide-awake, and willing… if her age is younger than sixteen, then any kind of carnal activity with her is ILLEGAL, PERIOD!

Mistake number two… is that they RECORDED it! Hey, I can understand… you’re having the best damn time of your life and there are a couple of hot chicks willing to help you live out your darkest fantasies, oh hell-yeah you’d want to record that for posterity! But combine that with the first mistake and you have two things… the first being EVIDENCE of a criminal act… and the second is child porn.

Mistake number three… he should not have gotten oral gratification from the fifteen-year old and just had sex with her. And I’ll explain why in a minute…

You see, the next day, the older of the two girls, the one who was seventeen, said that she was raped. She went to the police; the police investigated the hotel room and found all of the evidence, including the video. So they charged Genarlow and his buddies and it goes to trial. His buddies rat on him and take deals. He fights it to the end. The jury acquitted Genarlow of the rape charge for having sex with the seventeen-year old girl. But they convict him of having oral sex with the fifteen-year old girl.

And here’s where mistake number three comes in. If Genarlow had just intercourse with the fifteen-year old girl, then he would have been guilty of a misdemeanor offence and served maybe 12 months in jail, if that. But because she gave him what Monica Lewinsky once gave President Clinton, Genarlow was guilty of a FELONY with a mandatory TEN YEAR PRISON sentence as well as a lifetime scarlet letter on his name for being a sex offender.

Now you’re probably wondering how that became such a damnable offense when regular intercourse would have been just a couple of months in jail, right? Well there’s really no mystery behind that. That’s one of those stupid hypocritical freedom-hating moralist games… and if you took the time to seriously research the whole thing you’d probably find that it came after some TV or newspaper report of kids giving oral gratification to older guys and some local moralist thugs deciding to make that their cause of the moment.

Anyway, Genarlow is in prison to serve his mandatory ten year sentence, and his attorney has been desperately trying to change things so that Genarlow’s sentence would somehow be changed so that he could get out of prison AND avoid the stigma of being a sex offender. His buddies took a plea deal and they get to have parole and the sex offender stigma, but Genarlow is sticking to his stance that he did nothing wrong and that he shouldn’t be in prison to begin with.

So now what I am going to say next is probably going to piss off a lot of people if they don’t think things through, but it really needs to be said after looking at the bigger picture.

I think that Genarlow Wilson would be better off staying in prison.

Now don’t get me wrong, boys and girls, I sympathize with his plight! I really do! Hey, hormones and booze never are a good combination to begin with. And it has absolutely nothing to do with race or the fact that he was an over-hyped high school athlete.

It has EVERYTHING to do with this very caustic neo-Puritanical environment that Georgia has falling into, thank in no small part to the redneck Taliban mentalities that infest this part of the country.

Let’s get brutally honest here… Genarlow Wilson and his convicted buddies are marked men. They are convicted sex offenders, and in the State of Georgia, they pretty much have no place to go BUT to prison. And yes, it IS intentional. It IS deliberate. It IS intended to be that way!

You see… Georgia is one of those states that have enacted some of the most totalitarian laws when it comes to ANYONE convicted of a so-called “sexual crime”. They are not allowed to be within 1000 feet of ANY kind of church, school, park, playground, mall, or unofficial bus stop. Anyplace where kids can gather, these men and women are expressly PROHIBITED from being near. They can’t even LIVE or WORK in those general areas.

Want to set up a business? Not in this state! If you set up a business and you’re a registered sex offender, all that it takes is the start-up of a nearby church or day care center to shut your business down, even if your business was there first! There’s a guy by the name of Anthony Mann who tried to do that and he was forced out of business TWICE, and each time by an arriving day care center!

There is a man in Augusta who will be spending the rest of his life behind bars because he is a registered sex offender and he actually COULD NOT find a place to live! Thanks to these moralist laws, the only place he could stay in was at a hotel, and he couldn’t afford to do that! HE BECAME HOMELESS!!! And because he no longer had a legal residence to report to the police, the police picked him up and put him back behind bars, where he will now be in for the rest of his life!

THIS is Genarlow Wilson’s future, boys and girls! Not just ten years or even two years behind bars… but a LIFETIME conviction! And he won’t have to do a single damn thing to get that lifetime conviction! All he’ll have to do is EXIST and he’ll be convicted.

And I know that some of you are thinking that all that needs to be done is to somehow find a way to let Genarlow Wilson’s felony sentence get changed into a misdemeanor conviction and he’ll be free with time served and without that damned stigma! Well folks I WISH that it were that easy, because in the bigger picture it is not.

Sure, it might buy Genarlow some time… a couple of years at best. But he’ll still have a target on his back, because he’ll be known as someone who “beat” the system. And the people who created that repressive system and actually MADE it as draconian as it is today WILL NOT allow that to continue. They will make an example of Genarlow. In fact, they’ve already tried to do just that with them trying to make the evidence of that case public… not caring, of course, that they were breaking federal laws against child porn in the process.

The moralists and their corrupt friends in the government will not stop with simply targeting people convicted of felonies. This is just a trial balloon for them; a test to see if the courts will allow them to take it even further. If it passes judicial muster, then they’ll raise the stakes. They’ll raise the barrier from 1000 yards to 2000. Then 2500. Then a mile. They’ll expand the forbidden zones to include residential neighborhoods, hospitals, treatment centers, anyplace where a child MIGHT be located. They’ll expand the law to include those convicted of misdemeanor sexual offences. So that “little youthful indiscretion” of yours when you were caught by the police for skinny-dipping… or caught banging your girlfriend in the backseat of your dad’s truck… or pulled over for flashing your boobs or butt out the car window… that will become part of the latest legal leprosy. They did it for past felonies and they can apply the same argument for previous misdemeanor convictions. If it’s on the record, it’s fair game to them.

These moralists, these preachers and politicians and social crusaders and so-called “concerned parents”, have one simple goal. They want to criminalize anything sexual in nature and then BANISH it either out of the state or into a correctional facility. They can’t come out and say it, of course, because it exposes them to being no different than the Taliban in Afghanistan. So they have to do it in piecemeal, knowing full well that as long as the masses stay ignorant and the masses stay scared, they will eventually get their way.

Now I’m not saying that Genarlow Wilson was an innocent young man caught up in a bad law. He did something stupid and he did something criminal, and he does need to pay for it. But there is a distinct difference between a sex-based crime and being a sexual predator, and this is the line that has been intentionally, deliberately, and systematically blurred by preachers and politicians and prosecutors and police officers and members of the ego-driven media. You punish him for the crime. You don’t punish him with a lifetime of condemnation and Taliban-style discrimination for simply having a libido.

What Genarlow Wilson did was wrong, and, in fact, criminal. But the greater injustice is NOT the ten-year prison sentence that he is serving, but rather the lifetime conviction that was needlessly added to it. As long as that is still in existence in this state, people like Genarlow Wilson would be better off staying in prison, on the taxpayer’s dime, for the rest of their lives.

You want to help Genarlow Wilson out? You want to REALLY help Genarlow out? Then you make sure he has someplace to go WHEN he gets out other than back to prison. You work to REDRAW that line between sex and a sexual predator. And then you TARGET the preachers, the politicians, and the prosecutors who have been deliberately blurring that line for their own gain. You go after them and you get them out of their cushy positions of power so they can’t pull this kind of a stunt ever again. THEN, when Genarlow serves his time, you can say that justice has truly been served.

(Computer – something evil)
(Fade Music In – “Mythodea” by Vangelis)

Somewhere in this whole debate the concept of actual JUSTICE is missing. Justice is not about payback. It is not about revenge or protectionism. It is about correcting an imbalance in society. Someone does you wrong, they need to make up for it. THAT’S where the whole idea of an eye-for-an-eye came from!

The problem here is that conservatives have abandoned the concept of justice to the liberals and then embraced this perverted mixture of revenge and protectionism. If you think about it, they actually adopted a socialist stance and are calling THAT “justice”.

With that kind of philosophy behind it, is it any wonder why their ideas for dealing with crime are bound to fail?

(Pause)

Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production; all opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, and I’ll speak with you soon!

(Fade out)
(Computer – Ending/“End of Recording”)

[End of program]
------------------------------

Darth Rove Leaving

The dark lord of politics, Karl Rove, has announced today that he is leaving the White House at the end of August.

Am I overjoyed that he’s leaving? Yes and no.

I’m glad that he’s leaving his post as the man behind the throne. When you have a position like Deputy Chief of Staff having more power and influence in the White House than the Chief of Staff, that little tidbit sounds off some serious alarm bells.

Unfortunately he’s leaving under his own terms.

He is not being fired for Plamegate or forced out from any number of political issues that have come up in the past few years. He’s not leaving under indictment or under arrest. He’s chosen when and how he will depart.

Of course his dark cloud will still haunt the White House. The Democrats in Congress will still debate over what he had a personal hand in and how it can be used against the Imperium. He will still serve as the modern-day incarnation of Rasputin and Machiavelli, only now he can sit for a bit and look at the new campaign season and see which conservative horse to back. If he can put a doofus in the White House and convince the conservatives that this doofus is nothing short of being their messiah, imagine what he can do backing someone with real ruthless ambition!

Bernake pisses off CNBC's Cramer

"HE HAS NO IDEA!"

Actually I think "he" does...

"He" being Ben Bernake, chairman of the Fed, and the keeper of the job that was once held by market guru Alan Greenspan.

The criticism is coming from people like Jim Cramer of CNBC, a guy who has had his ear to the ground of the market for many years now. Bernake was the one that has put a halt to the rise of the interest rates and hasn't moved them for several quarters now.

The initial move to freeze the rate was smart, but that decision to continue the freeze is causing problems from those in the market who rightly see bad times ahead. In fact, Cramer recently went on a tirade about how Bernake supposedly has no idea how bad the market is now.

"He has NO IDEA!!" yelled Cramer. "NO IDEA!"

The problem, though, isn't Bernake. It's the guy who put him in Greenspan's chair... namely Junior.

Junior NEEDS the economic news to be bright and sunny! The neo-cons are continually uttering this mantra that the economy is the best that it ever has been. He needs to hear about nothing but good times with a healthy and robust economy. And no doubt his puppets are on the phone with him on a continual basis demanding that rates go UP to further back this claim.

So you have the Imperium on one end screaming to RAISE rates, and you have the business leaders on the other end screaming to LOWER rates. One positive, one negative; they cancel each other out. So the happy medium is to keep rates the same.

Look, I agree with Cramer... the economy is pulling a Titanic act right now, and Captain Bush wants Bernake to just shuffle the deck chairs and go full steam ahead. Even an ordinary guy like me can see the signs. But that doesn't mean that Bernake is simply clueless. If anything, he's probably trying to reach an unhappy medium between the two factions.

Speaking which, here's the rant...

Brutally Honest Rant - 08/08/07

Brutally Honest Audio Rant: Infrastructure
Audio Transcripts
08/08/07

[Start Program]

(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – “American Idiot Remix” – by Green Day and David Matthews 2)

Good evening and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.

I believe that it was Benjamin Franklin that once penned this little ditty in Poor Richard’s Almanac…

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

The magical watchword for these past few weeks is INFRASTRUCTURE! It is the backbone of any operation; any body of government; any social institution. This is what keeps things moving.

And here’s the problem… much like Ben Franklin’s ditty about a missing horseshoe nail, nobody really gives a crap about infrastructure UNTIL it starts to break down! And then we panic about it! We don’t know what to do!

I’m serious about this, folks, because I’ve actually seen it happen repeatedly!

You turn on the news and what do you hear? Air travel delays! Monstrous, unbearable, inhuman delays!

Flights are overbooked, too many planes are at the airport, and all that it takes is a thunderstorm at one of the major cities to turn air passengers across the country into grounded hostages by nameless, faceless air traffic controllers who keep planes locked in position on the tarmac for HOURS at a time! Toilets get backed up, the air conditioning gets turned off, planes run out of food and drink before takeoff… and they can’t go anywhere. They’re stuck. They are literally held HOSTAGE without any legal rights or recourse whatsoever. And all that it takes is a rainstorm to screw things over not just in that city, but for much of the country!

And everybody has a convenient target to point at. There are not enough airports. Too many airlines. Not enough air traffic controllers. Badly outdated computer equipment. But nobody wants to come out and say what the real problem is.

The real problem is that the whole INFRASTRUCTURE for the air travel service is falling apart!

You have too many planes and too many people wanting to fly on them! Big business wants to spend the time and money to build new planes, but nobody wants to pay for and replace the technology needed to keep all those planes from crashing into each other. And the way the infrastructure is set up now for it, many of these airports simply cannot AFFORD to shut down to do that sort of changeover anyway!

And of course nobody wants to say what needs to be done by consumers to force these changes. Nobody except yours truly that is. If you don’t like the travel delays and being held hostage at the tarmac, then STOP FLYING! Stay at home. The fewer people who decide to fly means that there are fewer planes in the air. That gives the airports time to get their act together.

Same thing with DRIVING! The price of gas continues to go up and up and up, and we continue to get raped at the gas pumps, and our gas prices are still supposedly determined by something going on in all of these unstable areas of the world. And I don’t just mean the unstable nations. I’m also referring to the unstable people on the futures market on Wall Street and the dickheads who decided that our nation’s energy resources should be on a hypersensitive hyperactive system of speculation. That’s like giving an epileptic a vial of nitroglycerin and then feeding him nothing but chocolate.

The refineries are over two decades old and NOBODY wants to build a new refinery. The pipelines are even older than that and NOBODY wants to replace those! All it takes is a hurricane in just the right spot and America’s energy resources are shut down! And guess what? We actually SAW that happen in 2005 with Hurricane Katrina!

But we still keep on driving. We continue to buy gas-chugging urban assault vehicles. We continue to complain about the unstable gas prices. The whole INFRASTRUCTURE is coming apart, but we don’t want to do anything about it. We will point fingers at everyone except OURSELVES, because WE are the ones that need to simply STOP DRIVING!

Sleepy little small bedroom towns become big metropolitan areas in just a couple of years. And that actually SHOCKS people! What they don’t realize is that you have these rich developers that see a square inch of grass and they buy it and turn it into a subdivision and mini-mall. And then they repeat the process over and over and over again!

And these developers that make a fortune turning these sleepy little small towns into metropolitan monstrosities absolutely do not give a crap about how that affects the community! You know why? Not their job! That’s the job of the small town politicians who have their heads back in the past when things used to be simple and easy.

I’ve lived in several small towns in my life and I have personally seen the process repeat itself over and over and over again! Everybody thinks that it is neat to have new subdivisions pop up, and to suddenly have five Wal-Mart supercenters in your area, and to actually have a mega-mall… but nobody realizes that when you bring in five thousand new families, each with two-point-five kids, that you have give them power, and water, and sewers, and schools. And you CERTAINLY can’t expect them to all drive the same outdated roads and bridges!

And NOW… hey, speaking of roads and bridges… we now have to deal with that infrastructure problem as well! A major traffic bridge in Minneapolis just collapses out of the blue! Five people are confirmed dead and possibly eight more are missing and presumed dead. Over a hundred people were injured in the collapse. Before that, there was a major steam pipe eruption in New York City. And now, as of the other day, there’s a mine shaft collapse in Utah.

And everyone is looking for reasons, when they simply don’t understand that the reason has been before them all this time. Nobody is watching the INFRASTRUCTURE!

We have roads and bridges all across America that are crumbling. We have water and sewer and steam and power lines in our major cities that are old and they are breaking down and either the cities can’t afford to replace them or they’re not in a position to where they can be replaced. The City of Atlanta actually decided that it was cheaper for the taxpayers to pay millions of dollars in court fines instead of fixing their deteriorating sewer system, and now it will cost taxpayers millions more to do both. So we have deal with sinkholes and continual potholes… because it’s easier for us to simply throw a patch on them than to do what is needed to really fix them. Nobody wants to be diverted fifteen miles out of their way and construction crews certainly don’t like working at 3am so as to not inconvenience the commuters.

THAT is what it has become, folks… a matter of CONVENIENCE!

Hey, speaking of infrastructure… look at our economy! The neo-cons continue to utter this mantra about how much the economy has grown, but let’s look at what has been behind it. We had low interest rates – because of the recession in 2001 – fueling this huge push for people to buy houses. EVERYONE needs to buy a home! That’s the mantra, and I’m still hearing that crap from people today! Mind you, these are the same people who told me that I should sell my car once I paid the car loan off, just for the sake of getting into a new car loan. Everyone needs to buy a home! Oh and don’t worry, there are PLENTY of people willing to help you get that home loan so you can buy that home. Sure you’ll be in debt for thirty years, but, HEY, you’ll have a HOME!

People took advantage of the rising housing prices and low interest rates to refinance their homes. THAT is where the extra income came from for many middle-class Americans. It wasn’t because of better jobs. It was because they refinanced their homes.

Well guess what? Not all of those loans were good ones. Some folks ended up with a loan that started to get more and more expensive once the interest rates went back up. There are plenty of folks right now who are finding their payments have grown right out of their means to pay them. In the next few years you’re going to hear more and more talk about bankruptcy and foreclosures, and what folks don’t realize is that our government has CHANGED the bankruptcy laws and CHANGED the banking laws to better protect the institutions so they will continue to get their money.

Personal savings are as low as they were in the 1920’s, while personal debt is running extremely high. We are all putting our futures on credit, and I’m certainly no exception. We hear about low unemployment numbers, but do you REALLY know what they represent? I certainly know, but do you? We hear about new jobs being created, but how many of them were really temporary jobs to begin with? These things are NOT discussed in the ten-second soundbytes that the media give out, and they CERTAINLY are not mentioned by the neo-cons. If all you know is that our economy is doing well without figuring out HOW it got to be that way, then you won’t know when it will start to break down.

It’s all about the infrastructure.

Look at our government. We have a government that is more interested in passing new laws than in enforcing old ones. Sure it’s ego-driven… these grifters and shysters simply want to have THEIR NAME on these things… but they don’t even have the courtesy of revoking the old laws to make way for the new ones! You have redundancy on top of ever-expanding overlapping government agencies on top of more redundancy.

You have a political party that makes promises that they later refuse to keep, and another party that has become so corrupted with power and money that we wouldn’t trust them to babysit a well-fed turtle, much less the whole country! Their own infrastructures are breaking down, and nobody seems to realize it and nobody wants to pick an alternative.

Let’s get brutally honest here… there is infrastructure crumbling all around us, both figuratively and literally!

And at some point you gotta give a damn about it! At some point you have to swallow your pride and swallow your egotism and actually DO something to get it fixed!

There are only two times to fix up the infrastructure: BEFORE it becomes a problem and AFTER it becomes a problem. Fix it before it becomes a problem and you may piss people off and you may have to spend some tax money on something other than yourself. But fix it AFTER it becomes a problem and you not only piss off EVERYONE, but you may also have to deal with the loss of life BECAUSE of it… AND the cost of fixing it afterwards will be infinitely MORE expensive.

Just take a trip over to Minnesota, New York, or Utah if you need an example of that.

(Computer – some stuff)
(Fade Music In – “Who am I” by Peace Orchestra)

Did you ever wonder how the Roman Empire finally collapsed? This was THE great empire that conquered much of Europe two thousand years ago and set the stage for much of the Western society. It started as a republic, transformed into an empire, and it lasted for approximately one thousand years.

You know how it fell? It collapsed upon itself. It couldn’t protect its outposts, it couldn’t protect its citizens, and it couldn’t afford to keep all of their advances going. It failed to maintain its infrastructure.

I know this will piss off the neo-cons, but America is pretty much the modern-day version of the Roman Empire. We like to think of it as a noble republic, but, come on, we do take on that imperial tone at time.

The point I’m trying to make is this… if we want to outdo the Roman Empire, then we have to make sure that we don’t make the same mistakes that they did. We have to maintain our infrastructure. We have to remember that even the best of governments can be lost… all because they forgot to maintain their supply of nails.

(Pause)

Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production; all opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, and I’ll speak with you soon!

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