Windtunnel. Horses. Swords. Shitty CGI. It's got it all!

posted by lazlow at 9:48 AM  on Monday, August 31, 2009

posted by lazlow at 5:45 PM  on Friday, August 28, 2009

We're in full crank on some intense projects at the moment, and spare moments are thin, especially to update a website or do a radio show. But as the nation goes at each others throats over healthcare, it's an inescapable, sad dialog. Strangely, people are protesting in the streets against having access to a doctor if they're broke, a service that every other first world country seems to have sorted out except for us, where the middle class throws a tantrum at any indication that people well above their means might be asked to give a bit extra to help this thing we call community, society, and decency. Despite statistics that Europeans live longer than Americans, receive a month or more of vacation time, and work less hours, we loath and hate them. They are skinny, happy, relaxed and disgusting. The protests and pundits are frothing, calling the idea of healthcare for all a move towards nationalized services! Socialism!

Let's take a quick look at some of the other nationalized entities in our society.

Every child is guaranteed:

Education
Water
Roads

According to the screamers who are shouting down the plan for nationalized services and the ability for any American to see a a doctor, we should shut down all public schools, roads, and water systems, as they are "nationalized" and "socialism" and people should only be able to get what they can afford to pay for in some kind of bizarre system where everything is for profit.

and strangely these are the religious members of our political landscape, who believe God wants them to get rich, screw the poor, and abandon the sick.

Unemployement hovers at 10%. I have many friends who are out of work. None of them can afford to go to a doctor if they get sick. And if you have an older family member who has dealt with the morass of stupidity that is the insurance industry that tosses people out of hospitals while still recovering and denies treatment to those seeking it, you know what a failure this greedy mess we call healthcare is.

But most likely the politicians will prevail - those who have been bought off with millions of dollars each in campaign contributions from insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Meanwhile those "horrible" places like the UK and Europe have a currency that makes our dollar look like trash. Third world trash. We keep printing more of it and filling the airwaves with talking heads who assure us that Wall Street doesn't need regulation, that the health care industry should be left alone, and it will all work out.

Television has become a battlefield of psychological warfare. And it's the precise reason I canceled cable last month. Nobody needs this much anger and resentment brought into their living room. It's enough to send you to the hospital. If you can pay for it.

posted by lazlow at 10:37 PM  on Wednesday, August 19, 2009