The world is made of high fructose corn syrup ...

... and we just live in it.

Or at least, that's the conclusion I came to the other day.

There was I - being all smug with myself. My mother-in-law had come home with some snacks for the kids, that turned out contained HFCS. I felt rather full of myself in the belief that I'm very careful about such things, I always check the labels before I buy anything at the grocery store, blah blah blah, blah ....

... until a few day after when I tossed a can of kidney beans into the cart with no thought or care. Only to discover when we got home that the canned kidney beans I tossed in were packed in high fructose corn syrup!

What a fucking maroon! I'm sure my mother-in-law has a recipe for humble pie she's dying to serve me.

I understand grocery chains pretending to claim they are looking out for our health and all that claptrap. But really Safeway, must you fuck up a canned vegetable like that?

P.S. Now I check every label.

United States, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/this-corruption-in-washin_b_441308.html

This says it all -

"Bizarrely, the Supreme Court has decided that corporations are "persons", so they have the "right" to speak during elections. But corporations are not people. Should they have the right to bear arms, or to vote? It would make as much sense. They are a legal fiction, invented by the state - and they can be fairly regulated to stop them devouring their creator. This is the same Supreme Court that ruled that the detainees at Guantanomo Bay are not "persons" under the constitution and are deserving of basic protections. A court that says a living breathing human is less of a "person" than Lockheed Martin has gone badly awry."

It's never a good sign for a republic, a democracy, or frankly any system of government representing people, when non-individuals are elevated to a status of right above actual living individual human beings.

Those were the days

It's really (or would be really) funny to think how much life has changed in this country over the course of a few years.

A few years ago, decisions me and the Mrs. made involved things like where to go to dinner, what time should we end up going to bed, what movie to check out, what show to go see. For myself, which guitar to use on which track, which gig to accept in the band, when are me and my songwriting partner going to meet up on that next track, macaroni or spaghetti to go with meat sauce, etc....

It's really hard to believe how truly far away from that we are now.

Nowadays, everything is a battle for the dollar. I think about it constantly. Having so many mouths to feed makes one really think about where and what we spend things on. It seems like our ability to get ahead has completely stopped, and we're now simply fighting to stay afloat in a pool of potential disaster.

This wasn't how it was supposed to be.

The Mrs. does her part. She's become a fabulous baker. I seriously cannot envision eating bread, rolls, or buns from a store ever again. She's found that sweet spot in baking in creating things that both taste good and are pretty healthy. And she's a good Mom to our kids. They certainly try her patience (they certainly try mine), but I think all in all it's worked out well.

But I know in a sense, not moving up in my job has hurt us in so many ways. With food, gasoline, health insurance so much more expensive now, plus two growing children, it's no wonder we're stretched.

I also know, not finding or making the time to pursue my ideas, my music and my goals, has hurt us as well. It all comes back to that need to pursue happiness I guess. One can get lost in all the minutia of everyday life, only to forget the bigger picture.

Still I realize it's not so bad. It could always be worse. We could be on the streets, or I could be struggling to find a job, or one of us could be really sick. Perhaps it's just fate that we've made it out this far.

2009: End of year thoughts.

Somehow I thought 2009 would end better than 2008.

Last year ended on a hopeful note. I thought this country and its voters had moved this country away from the point of no return. I thought people had finally come their senses and realized that electing conservatives and right-wingers into public office is a very bad idea, because said groups are incapable of governing nations.

And I think on most levels, so did most Americans.

So, what happened since then?

• The government that the people elected chose to put the large banks ahead of everyone else in terms of helping.
• Barack Obama didn't learn from the major event in Afghanistan in 2009 and essentially the Bush War On Terror, became his war.
• Our government failed its citizens again by putting the the health insurance and drug companies ahead, under the guise of health care 'reform'.

However it's not just that.

On a personal level, I found this year much harder. I found myself once again in a position of not knowing as much as everyone else around me, and always being the person with least amount of authority. Conveniently, I'm also usually the person who's forced to be the most polite. It makes me question whether what I do will ever be considered valuable and important enough to be treated with equal respect compared to those with 'technical skills'.

I let my family talk me into taking in a coprophagic dog who does nothing else but shit, sleep, and crave attention or food. Completely untrustworthy and disobedient. As the year draws to a close, I find myself weary of having to constantly fight the same daily battles with an animal whose personality I dislike.

I've no one to blame but myself. Essentially, I chose to allow these things to happen. I failed to ask the right questions, and failed to act when not all right with the answers. Perhaps it's because I chose to trust those around me in that I thought they were being honest, or that I relied on people to provide me information to do my work, in that I thought there were no hidden agendas and so forth.

I've always had problems trusting or relying on others.

I realized in 2009 that happiness only comes in this life when you are actively pursuing it. The moment one stops pursuing one's dreams, one is not living anymore, but functioning.

So, my goal in 2010 - move myself finally in the direction of pursuing my dreams. Some may call it selfish. They can fuck off. It's been too long for me to not care about my needs, my desires, and my dreams. I need to get myself back on that path to happiness. Of course, I mustn't neglect my responsibilities. The difference between 2010 and 2009 is that with the latter, I let those responsibilities take over to the point where my happiness was pushed out of importance. My goal this year is to work out a plan to balance both, while at the same time moving my life towards my happiness.

As with everything in life, it's a matter of focus.

You tell 'em Jane - The US Health Care Bill/Starter Home analogy put to sleep ...

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2009/12/30/dear-sen-harkin-these-are-terrible-materials-for-building-a-starter-home/

"The bill is built on the extremely wasteful and inefficient private insurance system and contains one of the biggest rollbacks in decades of women’s reproductive rights. It, in effect, gives a permanent exclusivity to expensive biologics, and still denies Americans the ability to buy cheaper drugs from overseas. It has insufficient regulations and leaves the regulator enforcement purely up to the states, which have a poor track record enforcing the current regulations on their books. Regulation without enforcement is worthless. It throws good money after bad without fixing the underlying problems. The cost of the insurance will be too high and the quality of the insurance is too low. Funneling billions of dollars and forcing millions of Americans to buy a product that is frankly a terrible bargain is not a good foundation to build on. It is only a good foundation for the private insurance companies because it further enriches and entrenches them. Rewarding the failure of the private health insurance system with even more money and more customers is not how you want to build your “starter home."

The question is - is there time to stop this disaster from happening to the American Public?

Public Health care option reportedly removed from health care reform - a win for the insurance companies.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/10/pelosi-backs-off-public-o_n_387197.html

The public health insurance option died on Thursday, December 10, 2009, after a months-long struggle with Senate parliamentary procedure. The time of death was recorded as 11:12 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.

Its death had been rumored numerous times over the past year, but the public option repeatedly and defiantly battled back. The Senate's insistence on 60 votes, combined with President Obama's decision not to intervene on its behalf, eventually proved overwhelming.

The public option leaves behind a Medicare buy-in for people aged 55-64, an expansion of Medicaid, a quasi-public option for those under 300 percent of the poverty line and a collection of national private plans managed by the Office of Personnel Management.

The one remaining chance for the public option rested with the House somehow forcing its will on the Senate.

But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pulled the final plug in a press briefing with reporters Thursday.

Yeah, unless Obama vetos the bill and sends is back demanding a public health care option, it's basically dead.

The kicker in the bill is that all Americans are legally required to have health insurance. The public health care option represented the only real alternative Americans would have, in view of all the insurance plans that we'd be locked into And if it was a viable option, it would provide the insurance companies a clear incentive to provide better health 'services' at lower rates.

The thing is, I suspect the insurance companies know what I known all along - if a public health option were ever to actually become law, and it were viable, I think the majority of Americans would go for it, en masse. We all know that the insurance companies offer bullshit and at ever increasing prices. To these companies, such a thing represents a clear danger to their profit margins, and more importantly the next step to a single-payer health care system. The public health care option is really the critical mass point, and the insurance companies know this. That's why they've fought so hard to have it killed.

I'd say it's not been a good few weeks for Obama, the country and the world -

• The demise of the public health care option
• Delays in dealing with global climate change (lack of action in the Copenhagen conference)
• Pending esclation of violence and bloodshed in Afghanistan ...

All of these things are happening due the wrong decisions being made.

How fucking nice .... United States Health Care continues to remain in 19th Century ...

... while the rest of the civilized world knows that basic viable health care for all is a given and a smart thing.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-weigant/assessing-reids-healthcar_b_386490.html

This fellow is cautiously optimistic about the latest compromise made to the insurance companies, drug companies, and the right-wing.

This commenter sums up my initial thoughts to a tea ...

"Not only have the democrats shown their lack of back bone and made Insurance companies richer, they were pulled by their nose by the Republicans to ensure that if a bill was passed, it would piss off the democratic base so Republicans would be back in power in 2010. You guys are idiots not to see that you are giving both the Insurance Companies and the Republicans exactly what they want."


Time will tell.